361–370 of 549 posts
Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a month.
But what do you actually use as the email host? If you just set up your own mail server, you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. You still need to register with someone like google, or Proton, etc.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
They aren’t doing this for free
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That our education system wasn't resilient to that well-funded propaganda machine is what reflects poorly on it. That such a machine is allowed to exist reflects poorly on our institutions more broadly. I'll never blame human greed. Systems are designed for humans, if they fail to account for human nature then they're bad systems. I'm not really interested in litigating whether humans as a species are bad.
>Systems are designed for humans, if they fail to account for human nature then they're bad systems. Systems will always be bad. It's why corporations will always be bad. The complexities are too much for humans. You will never account for all variables. Account for one, with that you are exposed to another. This becomes clear to me when you look at government and the systems it tries to use, since forever. Climate c…
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I did some work with Verizon and an IoT customer was asking about SMS pricing and the VZ guys laughed and said it cost less than a penny for every 1M SMS.
the VZ guys laughed and said it cost less than a penny for every 1M SMS. Didn't stop them from charging $0.10 per text message in the 2000s and earning a fortune.
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The highest comment in the thread is somebody defending Google, a trillion dollar company that profits hundreds of billions of dollars per year, with a wide-ranging monopoly on tech services, as being a victim providing a free service for the public good. While stating that holding onto data is a liability. As though the data was not the point. As though the data was not the payment. I need to get off of this fucking…
I hate Google when they pull anti-consumer crap. I believe they're too big, too unaccountable, and something needs to be done about them. Their power rivals that of a country and that shouldn't be considered acceptable. But man, I would hate to be the one dealing with Gmail. It's a nightmare for the reasons I listed above. Someone can in fact hold both of those opinions. I was also actively telling people to de-Googl…
It's bizarre how you make up a sob story about how Gmail is just so hard for Google to deal with. They aren't maintaining it for charity. I'm sure, if I had no ethics, I could manage the burden of dealing with a software system that harvests the data of >1 billion people as part of my corporation's business plan that nets hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The reasons you listed for why it would suck to be Google -- it's "free" for users, expensive for Google, and oh god, you have to hold on to the data... are not reasons at all, because Google profits from it and Google wants the data. The data is the point. You belabour how Google has the burden of controlling a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure, as if gaining control of a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure is not literally their anti-consumer goal.
Any Gmail person can tell me why Gmail is tolerating Gmail phishing emails that use Google's own services (e.g. https://storage.googleapis.com/savelinge/ ... ? More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414
Spam is getting horrible lately. I get all sorts of new techniques including: - using legitimate sites to bypass filters, like sending you a bill through a legitimate bill-creation site - pretending to be a tracking service for something you supposedly ordered, then over the course of days pretending the package got lost on the way and offering a discount code for the 'purchased' amount, expecting you to use it on th…
I get, maybe, one actual spam email per year through gmail's spam filters.
I get more actual spam at my work email, which is not hosted by gmail, even though the email volume of emails sent from outside of my employer's network is orders of magnitude smaller than my personal email volume.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. No way they are doing it for free. Basically they tied Gmail 1:1 to Android accounts. I have a Gmail mailbox for a few reasons: 1) self-squatting my usual handle, because they are a large email provider 2) it's my Android account and it's where I get documents shared on Drive 3) maybe it's the way I login to Google…
>Anyway, gmail is their way to manage a part of the Android infrastructure and it seems they like running Android.
I've deleted my Gmail mailbox and Android works fine, any document share notifications go to the email address on the Google account.
If anything it's better without a Gmail mailbox because those notifications used to only go to my Gmail no matter what alternative email addresses I set, now they all go to my actual email address.
Only problem is I can never reopen the mailbox because the "Add Gmail to your Google account" screen has decided I've already used my mobile number before.
Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a month.
But what do you actually use as the email host? If you just set up your own mail server, you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. You still need to register with someone like google, or Proton, etc.
Rollernet.us is a good one. They have excellent deliverability, reasonable prices, and everything you could want related to email.
They have a few minor other services, like DNS management, but they are not a cloud compute provider.
Another option is to use a cloud compute provider like AWS. You don't need to run the VM yourself to use SES for email messages. The hard part is the webmail access: you have to choose between a poor interface (an S3 bucket) or running a managed VM to host something like Roundcube.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
People pay for it dearly with their data for advertisement.
In fact, even when you _do_ pay, you still get ads!