Decentralized webmail outfit Mailpile scraps beta program for now

When I wrote about the decentralization movement a year back, one of the big pro-privacy hopes was Mailpile, which is ambitiously trying to build a user-friendly yet rock-solid encrypted webmail system with a hybrid desktop/in-browser approach. On Friday, Mailpile’s Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson announced the rejection of the Mailpile beta, saying feedback had led the team to go back to the drawing board. One key issue was unsurprisingly related to making “all that crypto stuff completely seamless.” Iceland-based Einarsson is taking a break to get married (mazel tov) and, with the back-end providing most of the problems, front-end designer Brennan Novak has “moved on to other things for now.” Here’s hoping Mailpile gets back on track when development resumes next month.