Dumped by Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Dumped by Google

#151

Post by x0054 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 9:31 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #118

cpncrunch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a real hacker, you should probably manage your own email/file server.

There's a hardware startup opportunity here somewhere: sell a box which does this for an end-user, and makes it really trivial to setup replication mirrors elsewhere. Probably dies on the platform of "people don't have good broadband".

It's a good idea in general to run a privet cloud. I have been playing with an idea in my had that would make it profitable too, without charging subscription, which is notoriously difficult to do.

Rather then hardware solution, a VPS image solution would be best. A VPS image with core email, web, and file services, and an easy way to add more as needed.

We really need to decentralize the web again before we start connecting to the world wide google or the world wide facebook :)

The recent closure of reader really damaged googles reputation in eyes to the point were I can believe this story completely. It almost feels like they switched their slogan from "do no evil" to "do at least a little evil every day, just for the fuck of it!"

Re: Dumped by Google

#152

Post by ableal » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 9:34 AM UTC

oulipo wrote: post #137

kybernetyk wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

Start by simply backing up your emails regularly with BaGoMa

"BaGoMa - A script to Backup Google Mail."

http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/

Thanks

Re: Dumped by Google

#153

Post by Nitramp » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 9:41 AM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #124

ceph_ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a really wild accusation to me. Is their anything to back this up besides their speculation?

The thing is, if Google actually gave some kind of explanation, there would be no room for speculation. They're the one opening to the craziest speculations are rumors.

In many cases, companies cannot give explanations for such actions. Either because they'd be sharing private information, or because they'd be helping spammers/defrauders/... to figure out detection systems.

Re: Dumped by Google

#154

Post by vizzah » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 9:42 AM UTC

damncabbage wrote: post #143

drchaos wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried th…

What do you use for spam filtering? I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process? Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists? Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand wi…

Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy (ASSP) (written in Perl) does wonders for me with a minimal tweaking. My own account`s Inbox has less spam than Gmail`s "Spam" folder. And that's considering my e-mail is scattered all over the net (thanks to the WHOIS).

Re: Dumped by Google

#155

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 9:49 AM UTC

OGinparadise wrote: post #109

capo wrote: post #3

Same as every other “cloud provider”, yet somehow Google is the one subjected to these overwritten accounts and the almost mandatory pseudo law/policy musings that follow. You might want to take a look at some policies from others in the industry to get a more accurate picture of this landscape. These policies are constructed as such to mitigate litigation, which the author concedes. Regardless I'm glad this instance…

Microsoft gets a lot of beating for changes to Windows, simply because of widespread use; an OS with 0.5% market share will not be messing with so many people. By being banned by Google you lose your email, youtube, adsense, adwords, docs...your financial life could be destroyed, even if the 'violation' is for an unrelated offense (example: posting copyrighted material on Youtube and getting adsense disabled)

Another difference, as an example, when the company I work for had some issues with the hosted mail from MS, my boss was able to get to a real, live person .. not left fluttering in the breeze as so often happens with google.

The handful of times I've had issues, I usually take to twitter, and it magically gets resolved within a day... I'm overly tethered to google at this point. via Andriod and Google Voice alone, it's been a difficult weekend with the issues GV seems to have had since Friday. I've recently cloned my dropbox to both google drive, and skydrive... which gives me a little security.

For the past two years, I've been using my gmail address more, and my own domain email less, because the gmail ui has been more convenient... without igoogle/reader I don't think that's as much the case, but if I lost my email (logins for other sites) I'd be boned... I recently had to re-enable a domain on my mail server just to change an old account on a site I needed to recover. Not cool/fun.

Re: Dumped by Google

#156

Post by rplnt » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:01 AM UTC

kybernetyk wrote: post #127

robomartin wrote: post #117

Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on b…

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

I use Google Mail, just with my own domain (via Google Apps). It's a painless setup and if anything had happened to my Google account I can host the email anywhere else in seconds. But for now I don't have to worry about setting up VPSs, mail daemons and whatnot...

(Of course I have to keep a backup of all the mail, but that's as easy as having some client download it.)

Re: Dumped by Google

#157

Post by mkup » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:29 AM UTC

sgift wrote: post #142

robomartin wrote: post #117

Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on b…

This reminds of a story I've read about (big) companies and electricity: At the start of the 20th century it was typical for companies to produce their own electricity. The concerns where basically the same as they are now with Internet services: Your business depends on another company; what will you do if they close down? Or throw you out? And what about the transmission - I've heard the net is not stable? and so o…

Well, there is a plenty of electricity providers, but just one Google.

Re: Dumped by Google

#158

Post by flyinRyan » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:33 AM UTC

damncabbage wrote: post #143

drchaos wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried th…

What do you use for spam filtering? I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process? Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists? Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand wi…

DSpam.

Re: Dumped by Google

#159

Post by coldtea » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:37 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #91

coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a fallacy to me. It's not as clear cut as the P vs P you make it be, anyway. In many cases you're better of with Google that with some _small_ paying service your paying $20/month to use, merely because Google has more money/people/tech to spend on making the service better, avoiding to fall under, etc. As for paying a _large_ company to their service, well, if you're like 0.001% of the profits of the serv…

I'm not sure what kind of fallacy it would be that I make decisions based on my rationally derived probability estimates. If there is such a fallacy I would love to hear about it.

>I'm not sure what kind of fallacy it would be that I make decisions based on my rationally derived probability estimates. If there is such a fallacy I would love to hear about it.

The fallacy that those are "rationally derived probability estimates" instead of numbers pulled out of one's arse in the first place.

What gave you the impression that putting random intuition numbers on the P(paid)/P(free) boxes makes it "rationally derived"?

If you didn't do that, what's your methodology, and where are the source numbers of your empirical research one the matter?

Re: Dumped by Google

#160

Post by drchaos » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:52 AM UTC

damncabbage wrote: post #143

drchaos wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried th…

What do you use for spam filtering? I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process? Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists? Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand wi…

I use the sender/client/HELO restrictions from Postfix to block misconfigured spambots (no FQDN HELO etc.), and a custom rule to block submissions where the sender domain equals to one of my own domains. This alone catches quite some spam, for the rest I use the NixSpam RBL[1], which has a very lenient policy (only IPs actually sending spam are listed, with a TTL of 12 hours, so false positives are pretty rare, while still covering the major botnets).

Usually less than 5-10 spam mails per day survive with this config, which is acceptable for me, I view it as a typical 80:20 solution and don't want to lose potential customer communication anyway.

Regarding outbound mail, in my experience it is sufficient to have a clean IP from a reputable provider with proper reverse lookup to have most sent mail go through. I don't check RBLs regularly but I did once when setting up the server, since sometimes one can get an IP which has been burnt by a spammer before. For a quick check whether everything is configured properly I recommend using the email check of webcheck.me[2], while not covering every single aspect, it gives starters a good overview where they can improve.

If you want to host a blog or personal site in addition to e-mail you should definitely have a look at Froxlor[3]. Froxlor (fork/successor of SysCP) is a lightweight control panel which allows to add domains and mailboxes through a web interface, without taking over your whole /etc (like Plesk or cPanel). Even if you don't use it in the end, the suggested configs contained in Froxlor are a good starting point.

[1] http://www.heise.de/ix/NiX-Spam-DNSBL-and-blacklist-for-down... [2] https://webcheck.me/ [3] http://froxlor.org