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Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

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Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#41
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use such stark language on HN. There's a much friendlier way of saying that, something along the lines of "I think you misunderstood the author's concerns".

You are left-coast/euro sensitive. Nothing that he said was incorrect, non factual, or otherwise out of line.

I have no idea what you mean by "left-coast/euro-sensitive".

However, I will put what lorenzhs said a bit more bluntly.

Please don't go out of your way to be a dick - there is no need for it, and it benefits nobody.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#42

I've done this before. It becomes tedious to maintain, but I can imagine myself doing it again in the future to allow me to do what cannot be done in the common clouds (iCloud, G Suite, O365). I would love a whitelist-only inbox. I'm sick of spam, marketing mail, etc. I'd like one public email address that catches all the garbage. Then, I'd like a private email address that accepts emails from my contacts, and bounce…

This is really easy to set up using Dovecot Sieve [1]. I set it up the other day to bounce reject messages that had too many swear words as a proof-of-concept for an idea a Facebook friend had about making sure people stay nice in email. The syntax of the server-side filters is a bit strange but there's even a Thunderbird plugin that allows you to edit them from the client.

[1] https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#43
Hosting calendar and contacts on a personal server accessible over the web smells like a potential security nightmare to me. For example, how do you make sure that whatever third party tool you use to sync your phone with the web server has been well designed to protect against a large attack surface?

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#44
post #43

Hosting calendar and contacts on a personal server accessible over the web smells like a potential security nightmare to me. For example, how do you make sure that whatever third party tool you use to sync your phone with the web server has been well designed to protect against a large attack surface?

You'll need to be more specific. Is it worse or better than running your own mail server? Your own git repo? Your own VPN server? In what ways, and why?

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#45

After spending way too much time messing around with stuff like DAV and syncing using same, my current scheduling and reminder system is based on this: * https://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind/ Every day at 6am my server runs a cron job. If there are appointments I get an email and an SMS. The server also makes a unique noise over the house PA system (I live alone) but that is mostly because I can.

What exactly was wrong with a DAV server? I can't imagine it being more complicated than what you've settled with.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#46

Something I've been looking for is a web service and android app that I can self-host that will allow me to read and send SMSs from my desktop. The important thing here is self hosted. I think something like this would be really useful. I've seen services that provide this via a 3rd party hosted service but I don't trust someone at some random company not to read my messages.

This should really be handled by the carrier. Look for a carrier that allows you to use your number from anywhere via SIP or WebRTC.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#47
post #46

Something I've been looking for is a web service and android app that I can self-host that will allow me to read and send SMSs from my desktop. The important thing here is self hosted. I think something like this would be really useful. I've seen services that provide this via a 3rd party hosted service but I don't trust someone at some random company not to read my messages.

This should really be handled by the carrier. Look for a carrier that allows you to use your number from anywhere via SIP or WebRTC.

I'd rather have a self hosted service, that I can modify if need be, than be tied to a carrier.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#48
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should really be handled by the carrier. Look for a carrier that allows you to use your number from anywhere via SIP or WebRTC.

I'd rather have a self hosted service, that I can modify if need be, than be tied to a carrier.

In that case you'd need an app on your Android phone to relay SMSes between the phone network and your web app. The advantage of doing it via the carrier is that the phone is taken out of the loop and you're directly sending to the carrier via the internet.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#49
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have a self hosted service, that I can modify if need be, than be tied to a carrier.

In that case you'd need an app on your Android phone to relay SMSes between the phone network and your web app. The advantage of doing it via the carrier is that the phone is taken out of the loop and you're directly sending to the carrier via the internet.

> In that case you'd need an app on your Android phone to relay SMSes between the phone network and your web app.

I'm fine with that.

> The advantage of doing it via the carrier is that the phone is taken out of the loop and you're directly sending to the carrier via the internet.

The disadvantage of doing that is you than need to stay with that carrier. I'd rather be able to change if my carrier starts doing things that are shifty without needing to change the way I interact with my phone.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#50
post #17
post #3

People looking for easier ways, Nextcloud/Owncloud already does this and you also get with file sync/backup/share for computer/smartphone and more as a bonus; all you need is just a LAMP server.

I have about 1TB of data that I tried to sync with NextCloud. The Windows client crashed every night, so I finally gave up and moved to Syncthing. Has anybody else had a similar experience?

For that much data rclone might be better.
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