Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

laforge.gnumonks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 267 posts

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#151

Post by zecho »

a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #120
eropple wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Zimbra at work. I'd have a hard time recommending it unless you really, really want 80% of Exchange and 40% of the usability. (Outlook Web Access is still the only webmail client I've found that is in GMail's ballpark. Since running an Exchange server is beyond my skillset, my interest, and my budget, and trusting a managed Exchange host feels odd--at that point I might as well just stick with GMail. So I do.…

"[Gmail/Facebook/USGov/etc] isn't going to find anything particularly interesting about me by my mail, anyway." There are two problems here: 1. We look at our data from our point of view. Other people and orgs have their own points of view, and it's their actions driven by their points of view that we need to worry and think about. For example, you think your mail is uninteresting, yet Google enhances the value of th…

Yeah, but it's also email. You could delete every email you've ever created and everyone who's ever saved their copy still has their copy.

Even if you were trying to be all sneaky about your email by having your own service set up somewhere, you're still making copies of everything you send by virtue of sending it. It's more vectors for the government/Evil Google/whoever to need to scan to get a picture of the data you're creating, but it's not impossible.

I know you're just making a point, but to the people who actually are all tinfoil hat, this whole conversation to shift to whether or not you should even use email as a method of communicating.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#152

Post by a3_nm »

Setting the privacy and security issues aside, I wonder why do so many self-respecting hackers use the Gmail web interface (instead of, say, fetching their mail via IMAP and use another client). Dedicated mail clients like mutt can be much more efficient (keyboard-driven) and are a lot more customisable (run macros, pipe mail through external commands, etc.). I wonder why so many hackers aren't put off by Google's "one size fits all" approach.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#153

Post by rufo »

Niten wrote: post #105
nabilt wrote: post #16

Funny. I just asked for alternatives to Gmail and other hosted software on the Richard Stallman post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3551345 Harald's suggestions boil down to - share the administrative and financial effort with friends - use hosting form NGOs or non-profits - use small companies and ISPs The first suggestions might work for me, but what does everyone else use? If you host your own what software?…

> If you host your own what software? Dovecot and Postfix on a small FreeBSD VPS. Easy to set up, and it takes almost no effort to maintain once you've got it running. (The last time I modified my Postfix configuration was over a year ago, to relax my attachment size limit.) Between the FreeBSD handbook and the official Postfix documentation, all the info one could possibly need is provided. A combination of Postgrey…

Getting the email server set up is easy, almost trivially so.

It's dealing with all the other issues that's an immense pain. SpamAssassin is not always a magic bullet, deliverability to third-party mail servers can be a major problem even if you follow all the rules, and Gmail's UI has a number of advantages that many mail programs can't compete with.

If you compare the hours of time a month that takes with the up-front elimination of hassle that Google Apps provides, it's not hard to see why a hacker might prefer to just outsource it and focus on tasks more pleasing to them.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#154

Post by ansible »

But almost all of those lists are about very technical projects, where the only subscriber base should be people from either the IT security community, or the Free Software community.

Sample bias.

Why would I be concerned about anything other than convenience with regards to the email account used for public email lists? The messages are public, my address is already likely been harvested, so anything I do is essentially public.

If I want to keep stuff private, that is maybe the time to set up my own email system. And use encryption and all the good stuff.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#155

Post by alextingle »

davidw wrote: post #108
mike-cardwell wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy to install SpamAssassin and point your MTA at it. Even the default configuration is highly effective.

I did that, back in the day, but it just wasn't enough.

I use SpamAssassin server side, and Thunderbird's own filter polishes off the rest. I see perhaps 1 spam mail per week (from the literally tens of thousands that hit my server).

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#156

Post by magic_haze »

ohgodthecat wrote: post #126
klodolph wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... why don't you buy something like Rackspace email, which costs $2/mo?

Because the minimum cost is $10/mo for Rackspace email. I personally have switched between payed google apps for domains and fastmail (those are both $50/yr and under).

Re: rackspace, you can always sign up for a trial account for something else, and once you're in, get the single email subscription for $2.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#157

Post by alextingle »

hammock wrote: post #137
Deadsunrise wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you pay for this? For the last 3 years I've been creating a platform for this kind of servers for a small spanish ISP. It has grown to 15 Openvz hosts. A rails app connects to the host to create the virtual machine. Centos is installed and configured with puppet. A rails app is installed in every server and used to configure the accounts, domains, etc. Postfix, Cyrus, IMAPS, SMTPS, POP3S, HTTPS, Sieve for filte…

Why pay when you can get it from Gmail? :)

Aren't you a little bit uncomfortable giving Google all that data? Do you keep a back-up??

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#158

Post by scq »

Deadsunrise wrote: post #135
api wrote: post #92

1. Running a mail server is an unbelievable pain in the rear from an IT perspective. Note that by "mail server" I mean a good setup with spam filtration, webmail, SMTPS, IMAPS, etc. 2. Really good rich webmail. I personally use Mac Mail.app most of the time, but having that rich webmail is nice. 3. Filters mail at the server side. 4. Very good spam filtering... I post my gmail addresses on web pages with no obfuscati…

Would you pay for this? For the last 3 years I've been creating a platform for this kind of servers for a small spanish ISP. It has grown to 15 Openvz hosts. A rails app connects to the host to create the virtual machine. Centos is installed and configured with puppet. A rails app is installed in every server and used to configure the accounts, domains, etc. Postfix, Cyrus, IMAPS, SMTPS, POP3S, HTTPS, Sieve for filte…

You only have ~100 email accounts per server?

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#160

Post by bruo »

bwarp wrote: post #119
fbuilesv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unlike you, took the pragmatic way (without quotes or Unix). Email is part of my life and I don't want it going down. I don't spend time configuring servers, updating packages, guaranteeing uptime. My email is federico@mheroin.com, and I write it everywhere. I still don't get any spam. If I need an alias I just append characters to the email address and I don't have to fiddle with anything else. I can get it quite…

Some more info... Email augments my life but does not control it. That's where the distinction is. Much as writing letters is a tool, so is email. If it went away, the world would not end for me and I intend to keep it that way. Availability? If mail doesn't get delivered immediately, thanks to the joys of SMTP, it will come later (when my ADSL line is back up). If it's urgent, someone can put mouth to phone rather t…

"Email augments my life but does not control it." I can't really say that the way self respecting hackers are, but self respecting people are.

I'm not a hacker, i don't plan to be one. I run my own server with a similar config as you do [i do run spamassasin]. I don't let telephone, mail, im, or letters run my life; as i don't let google, yahoo, facebook or whatever do the same. I'm not a hacker, but i share and respect the values Harald Welte wrote about, as a person.

Post reply on HN