It’s been about four months since I started hosting my own email again.
I have absolutely zero regrets. As large providers prove, now more than ever, that they are not on our side, it feels great to have that aspect of my online life under control.
I used the wonderful Run Your Own Mail Server book by the fedi’s own @mwl to guide my install.
It has been absolutely stable, I have perfect deliverability to the email empire, I’m on zero blocklists, and spam control is great.
If you’re a sysadmin, self-hoster, homelabber, ignore the nay-sayers. You can do it too.
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bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lffld6dl6227
People assume that oligarchs destroying education and independent sources of information makes people easier to control. Quite the opposite. The people become isolated and alienated. They form into masses and fall to the madness of the mob. They are no…
bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lffey45qik27
Billionaires aren't human. They're immoral soulless parasites on society that shouldn't exist.
bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lffg2zw6dk27
Many cities only have religious homeless shelters which will turn away LGBTQ people by default. As a result, homeless LGBTQ people in many cities do not have any shelters they can go to. And now they can be arrested for sleeping outdoors. [contains quote…
The NGO holding Israeli soldiers to account
The Hind Rajab Foundation is using Israeli soldiers’ own social media footage as evidence for war crimes investigations.
aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/10/i…
@palestine
#Gaza
#Israel
#HindRajabFoundation
Sense of impunity ‘absolute’: The NGO holding Israeli soldiers to account
The Hind Rajab Foundation is using Israeli soldiers’ own social media footage as proof of war crimes.Simon Speakman Cordall (Al Jazeera)
“People don’t regard Palestinians as even human now, if they ever really did. To most people, Palestinians aren’t even vermin. Vermin has to be killed. Palestinians are less than that.”
“Most people don’t even feel that Gaza has anything to do with them.”
“On the one hand, we continue to bomb it, on the other, we feel we’re unaccountable for what goes on there.”
Ori Goldberg
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Switched to Linux
Switched to Linux is dedicated to helping people make the switch to a Linux based desktop system and get real work done. Our site author has experience in Windows, Linux, and Mac computers and he uses them every day in his web design business.YouTube
Oxfam director: Conditions in Gaza "apocalyptic"
Oxfam director: Conditions in Gaza "apocalyptic"
Israel kills aid workers, empowers armed gangs to loot food, fuel in starved Gaza.The Electronic Intifada
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Beyond the Stars
legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/508373/Beyond-the-Stars
Publisher: Mind Master GamesThis is an Expansion to To the Stars: A Science Fiction Role-Playing Game. Do not buy this unless you already own that. This expansion truly changes the game. It adds in new character generation options and items, but mainly…
Since Fedi seems ablaze (once more) with Threads defederation chatter, I wanted to just remind folks that having your own Fedi instance allows you to make whatever moderation/defederation/blocking decisions you want, on your own terms. I don't mean to discount any of the cons that naturally come with running your own instance and being alone on it, but there are certainly a lot of pros, this is kinda one of them.
I actually wrote about the benefits of owning your own instance a while back when I stood up shellsharks.social - shellsharks.com/own-my-social#…. Even back then, "defederation control" was one item I had explicitly mentioned.
Owning My Own Social
A walkthrough of how and why I stood up my own personal Mastodon instance.shellsharks
Michael Lucas
in reply to amd • • •vertikar
in reply to amd • • •@mwl
Michael Lucas
in reply to vertikar • • •it is!
but use rspamd.
Joseph A di Paolantonio
in reply to Michael Lucas • • •yes, @czds and I have been self-hosting our email since 1999, first on Linux then MacOS. Just bought @mwl book and hoping that we can finally get Hotmail/Outlook/AOL (yes, still) accounts to finally accept our emails. We recently bought a new car and Hyundai wouldn’t send us the dealer survey because we self-host. Just nonsense.
Thanks for the recommendation
Aaron
in reply to amd • • •Michael Lucas
in reply to Aaron • • •Most (not all) people who write those pieces don't dig into the real problems.
Getting off those block lists takes, at worst, patience.
Some ISPs give their addresses to block lists and say "never, ever take our addresses off the list." Don't use those ISPs.
Aaron
in reply to Michael Lucas • • •Auli
in reply to amd • • •amd
in reply to Auli • • •YMMV but:
I cycled through creating IPs at a vps vendor until I found a mostly clean IP and held onto it for a couple months while I waited for RYOMS to come out.
Then I requested removal from the couple lists it was on and there were no issues with removal as there was no recent spam.
Then I built up my mail server and started to build a reputation with it by corresponding with friends and relatives on various big email servers.
Now it has enough reputation that I don’t see any issues and I keep it clean so I don’t land on any blacklists in the future.
CyberB
in reply to amd • • •Michael Lucas
in reply to CyberB • • •amd
in reply to CyberB • • •it’s also important to know that not all blocklists are created equal and not all blocklists are universally utilized.
There are some that are nearly extortion rackets and will probably not be worth your time trying to correct, they may not even affect your deliver ability.
Michael Lucas
in reply to amd • • •CyberB
in reply to CyberB • • •appreciate the recs! I'm getting my lab test servers spun up right now so I can start really playing with all these protocols, and maybe eventually have my self hosted email.
Been a few years since I bought a domain. What do you folks like for registering your domains these days? A quick search and I'm seeing cloudflare and porkbun come up as recs and that I shouldn't touch GoDaddy with a 10ft pole.
Michael Lucas
in reply to CyberB • • •