31–40 of 305 posts
Gmail -> Outlook forwarding iCloud Photos -> OneDrive
etc
Overall good analysis but this one quote is kinda crazy if you think about it "I put a little effort into avoiding grey areas (not filing chargebacks to Google, not taking pictures of my kids in the bath) but otherwise don't worry about this."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If, perhaps, you decide against self-hosting, but still want a reasonably good solution, consider owning your domain but buying a hosted mail service. You own the MX records, so you can point it to a service and change it in the future if you need to (without fiddling with setting up a new mail host). Say you use XYZ mail provider, but they shut down for business. You can buy mail hosting from someone else within a d…
Is it possible to „own“ a domain? I thought domains are basically rented. If you don’t pay (or payment fails), then u lose your domain.
And regarding failed payments: My registrar at least emails me 30 days in advance, will email in case of failure, and will not put the domain up for sale until after a grace period (IIRC at least a week), during which they will repeatedly attempt to contact you.
Also, even if you can't own it: that's true of self-hosting also and doesn't apply to just purchasing hosting
This reminds me, again, that I should look into setting up my own home mail server. Is there an off the shelf solution for this? I don't mind setting up another PC as a server for this, but how hard is it?
If, perhaps, you decide against self-hosting, but still want a reasonably good solution, consider owning your domain but buying a hosted mail service. You own the MX records, so you can point it to a service and change it in the future if you need to (without fiddling with setting up a new mail host). Say you use XYZ mail provider, but they shut down for business. You can buy mail hosting from someone else within a d…
It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…
This reminds me, again, that I should look into setting up my own home mail server. Is there an off the shelf solution for this? I don't mind setting up another PC as a server for this, but how hard is it?
The problem with home-hosted email is, as most folks said many times, that an email sent from a non-major provider would be marked as spam at best and dropped at worst.
My personal solution is to use my own domain, but have mail delivered by protonmail. This is an inexpensive option in a Swiss jurisdiction with generally sane laws. I maintain a copy of all emails on my home system, so if I wanted to switch from protonmail to a homegrown solution or another provider I can easily restore the same IMAP state there. And I would obviously keep the same email, so will not need to notify anyone of any email changes.
Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)
I'm not sure I understand.. where do you pay $5/mo for a service similar to Gmail? Or do you mean you have a paid Google account with extra storage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If, perhaps, you decide against self-hosting, but still want a reasonably good solution, consider owning your domain but buying a hosted mail service. You own the MX records, so you can point it to a service and change it in the future if you need to (without fiddling with setting up a new mail host). Say you use XYZ mail provider, but they shut down for business. You can buy mail hosting from someone else within a d…
Is it possible to „own“ a domain? I thought domains are basically rented. If you don’t pay (or payment fails), then u lose your domain.
It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…
"I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln. I don't want people social engineering my identity provider.
More generally, how do you actually get a measure of risk between two providers, when the absolute frequencies of measurable events are very low?
It seems plausible to me that FastMail could have 10x or 100x the level of security incidents as GMail, and it would still net out to an undetectable difference in the number of public complaints.
If we had internal data… but of course we don’t.
But damn are non-Google ecosystems bad. At work we use m365 and everything is atrocious compared to Google. Loggin in is a mess, email search is dreadful, OneNote search unhelpfully defaults to searching the current pagwe, integration with Android is weak, Outlook Calendar never seems to do what I want it to and doesn't seem to handle location in any sane way... I could go on but every time I switch to my private machine and Google-first setup, it's like a weight has been lifted.