StrawberryPigtails

joined 2 years ago

I've been using Private Email as my email provider. I think it's owned by NameCheap, my domain registrar. While I'm interested in a decent spam solution for my particular setup, I was just as interested in hearing how everyone else handles their spam. And their choices for getting email, as it turns out.

I've gotten a lot more responses from people running their own email servers than I really expected. Back in the day it was considered a herculean challenge, almost impossible for your mail to be accepted by the big 3 email providers.

From the other responses I've gotten so far, it sounds like most email providers, including mine, might have decent built- in spam filtering. Others are saying to look into aliases. both are sounding like good plays going forward.

Gmail's excellent spam filtering was the main reason I had switched to them way back when. When I moved away from them, I just never looked at it, assuming spam filtering at the provider level to be non existent, and used Thunderbird's junk mail filtering as it was a known way to solve the issue.

One of the problems with getting old is that you wind up getting blind to advances that have happened while you weren't looking.

I'm a geek who drives a truck and I learned a good chunk of what I know, tech-wise, almost 25 years ago. I try to keep up, but falling behind on tech just kinda goes with the territory.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46161145

I've been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I'm currently in the process of moving and as a result I've had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it's been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46161145

I've been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I'm currently in the process of moving and as a result I've had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it's been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46161145

I've been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I'm currently in the process of moving and as a result I've had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it's been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46161145

I've been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I'm currently in the process of moving and as a result I've had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it's been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

 

I've been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I'm currently in the process of moving and as a result I've had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it's been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Much as I like this idea, it feels like this may backfire badly. They'd be better off doing things that would reduce the cost of housing, like building more housing.

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I'll believe it when it gets released.

You can’t post a video directly, but you can link to a video hosted elsewhere.

haha. And their current website is improved over the one I opened 20 some years ago! I think it took me a few weeks of poking around in the shell they provided to fully figure out what they were about.

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The SDF started back in the late 80's as a anime dial up BBS. SDF is a reference to the anime Robotech, A show released in the 80's but that I grew up watching as a kid in the 90's.

In the early 2000's, I was trying to figure out this thing called Linux, I found a site that would give me access to a unix machine for free and it had a name and logo that reminded me of the anime I loved as a kid. While poking around I found that they had a fairly active message board, were willing to give me an email address, usenet access (albeit, limited), and would host small personal web site for me if I wanted. They were my primary email address through most of the 00's before I, regrettably now, switched to gmail like everyone else.

Fast forward to 2022, and I find out that there is this thing called Lemmy and it's supposed to be like Reddit but better. So I put up my own server... and it crashed and burned. Mainly due to my own stupidity. I failed to make backups and borked an update.

While I was playing with my own server, I found something interesting. Not only was the SDF still kicking, but they had decided to host Lemmy and Mastodon servers as well. So I signed up for both and started donating to the SDF again. Been here ever since. Good place, decent folks. I don't see myself going anywhere else for a while.

How does one company have that much impact?

Because they are a very good CDN and provide excellent DDos protection. They then expanded to do a whole host of other things, to the point where they do pretty much everything. Basically, they have become the first name most folks think of when they want to put something on the internet. A one stop shop for your web hosting needs. Wouldn't surprise me to learn they rent servers and VPS's as well.

Been seeing it in the selfhosting communities and subreddits for a while now. "Oh I want to put this selfhosted service on the internet. I should put it behind Cloudflare!" Most of the time it's not needed in that context.

Do you think that's concerning?

Well, they did just take out "half" of the internet today so.... In general, if it seems like "everyone" is using a single service, it's probably a good idea to see if an alternative exists and will suit your needs. Which reminds me, I should probably start looking for a replacement for Tailscale. They're starting to look a bit like Cloudflare to me, in the sense that "everyone", including myself tends to recommend them as a VPN.

Avoiding the usual toilet paper and paper towel answers, Bluetooth speakers.

Decent sounding ones can be had dirt cheap, but I've found that ones made by power tool brands tend to last longer and be more reliable when abused. I'm more than happy to pay double price if it will last me 4 times as long before it fails on me. I haven't had my current one very long, but the last one lasted almost 6 years of genuine abuse before it died after falling into a vat of used motor oil. The usual life span for bluetooth speakers is about 6 months (general abuse) to a year or two (battery failure). I'm a bit rough on my kit.

I don't want to see a single server grow to the size of Reddit. I wouldn't mind the network as a whole growing to that size, though.

I suspect that if the lemmy side of the fediverse did grow to the size of Reddit we would probably see a lot more fragmentation than we currently have.There'd be upsides and downsides to that.

Matrix would probably be one of the better options, but xmpp is a pretty good choice as well.

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Listen to them, and go "okay". Then if it was helpful, follow the suggestion. More often than not, though, the advice is not helpful. I'll still listen and go "okay", and then go and do whatever it is that I thought was best.

Painful truth is that I am not an expert in everything. I don't know everything. Even having reached middle age, I've not experienced everything. But by listening to those around me, I can often learn something. That thing may not always be what the advice giver intended, (often it's "This person is an idiot") but learning is good.

The most important piece of information you can ever learn is "Where can I find more information?" Occasionally it's the annoying asshole that keeps giving unsolicited advice.

If a bot isn't declaring itself as a bot, yes. Report it.

 

Sadly, this isn't your mother's (or more likely these days, grandmother's) 50lb vacuum that could suck up household's shag carpeting into the bag, follow it up with the pet cat and golden retriever, burp and ask loudly if it could have the baby next. We're firmly post "Think of the Children!" here, thank you very much. However, as tame and weak as it is, it is a rather powerful vacuum for this gilded day and age.

In my usage, if it could fit up the tube, this vacuum had no problem eating it. Litter, kitty crunchies, dirt, dust bunnies, hair, fur, pet dander, Legos, screws, unidentifiable detritus I'm too lazy to pick up or identify. This thing doesn't really care. It'll happily eat it. While I used it mostly on hardwood floors, it also did a wonderful job cleaning our few carpets, pulling far more dirt and hair out of them than our Roomba could ever hope to. Honestly, it did a better job on the rugs than the mains powered upright it's replacing.

It's also great for cleaning couches and upholstery and comes with a smaller powered head just for that. It did an amazing job of pulling all of the cat and dog hair our pets so lovingly deposited on the furniture for us.

And it does so somewhat quietly, With my Apple watch showing around 75db on medium and around 80db on High.

The floor head on this thing has a pair of rollers that are easy to remove for cleaning or detangling any long things that happen to get tangled in them. A nice touch and something that I've not seen on any vacuum except a Roomba. Ryobi claims it can eat hair up to 9 inches long without getting tangled too badly, and I've not had any problems with tangles yet. It's also got a nice powerful light to let you see clearly exactly how badly you've let your housekeeping go.

Probably the only real downsides to this vacuum are the bin's capacity and the vacuum's endurance.

The vacuum bin has a 1 liter dust bin which is... fine, but, unlike the floor head, I've found that the dust bin gets a bit fussy when you vacuum up a whole bunch of pet hair. When it thinks the bin is full, the unit shuts off and flashes red at you. It's fine, not a problem, just empty the bin and keep going, but if you have pets, you are going to have to empty the bin after every use and if you've let the housekeeping go a while, you may need to empty the bin once or twice during the vacuuming run as well.

Now we get to what might be either it's biggest strength or it biggest downfall, depending on how deep you are into Ryobi's ecosystem. This thing chews through battery like there is no tomarrow.

For shits and giggles, I ran the unit using a 2 Ah battery pack to get a rough power draw for each of the power levels. Why the small pack? Two reasons. First I figure that since Ryobi likes to put the smaller packs in pretty much every single kit they sell, that most folks in the Ryobi ecosystem will have more spare small packs than the larger packs. And second, I'm lazy and the smaller packs will die faster during testing. Upside, This should give us a rough, worst case estimate for endurance. If I've done my math correctly, High draws 12.3 W/min, Medium draws 3.7 W/min and low draws 2.25 W/min. Below is a table where I've extrapolated some rough run times. The times for the 2 Ah pack are the actual times I got.

The math was:

Wh / Runtime = W/min

Battery High = 12 W/min Medium = 3.7 W/min Low = 2.25 W/min
2 Ah = 36 Wh 3 Min. 10 Min 16 Min
4 Ah = 74 Wh 6 Min 20 Min 32 Min
6 AH = 108 Wh 9 Min 29 Min 48 Min
8 Ah = 144 Wh 12 Min 40 Min 64 Min
12 Ah = 216 Wh 17 Min 58 Min 96 Min

In practice, the battery in the kit did slightly better than the extrapolated values. I had no problem vacuuming the hardwood floors and carpets in our 1200 sq foot home and was then able to get halfway through vacuuming our furniture before the kit's battery played out. On it's default (medium) setting you can expect to get a bit over 20 minutes of run time with the 4 AH battery that comes in the kit. On high, that gets cut down to roughly 10 minutes. Upside, if you are already deep into the Ryobi ecosystem all you need to do is swap the pack for a fresh charge and keep going. Otherwise you will need to stop and let it recharge. Ryobi has done a solid on the charging front as well as the charger it comes with is a 105 W fast charger and is actually faster than the other chargers that I have.

Being a One+ tool, there is also nothing stopping you from upgrading to a larger battery if you find you need to. Except perhaps your wallet, the bigger batteries get expensive.

All in all, though, I like this vacuum. It's light weight, powerful and does an excelent job. But for what I paid for it, it damned well better last.

Now for the BIFL folks, while Ryobi has taken steps to prevent the motor on this thing from burning out, and replacement filters and rollers can be easily had, basically every single part is unobtainium. At least through official channels. Additionally, the floor head uses a flexable tube that is likely to crack over time leaking air pressure. While the tube is easily accessible for repair (duck tape, perhaps?), the lack of repair parts, lack of data sheets, and lack of repair documentation causes me to not recommend this vacuum for the BIFL crowd.

 

Not sure why I tried to do that. I knew when I did it that it wouldn't work and I was kicking my self for being stupid when the prompt showed up asking me to confirm that I wanted to download to that location. My jaw hit the metaphorical floor!

Now I'm wondering what other neat tricks I've missed over the years!

To be clear this is in Firefox on NixOS with the KDE6 desktop environment. No clue if it works on other browsers, DEs, or OSs.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36954801

So I just woke up from what might be one of the weirder nightmares I've ever had. It didn't happen, but it did introduce a scenario for which I am not sure what the right thing to do in that moment is. I thought I'd toss it to y'all for ideas on how to best deescalate the scenario in my dream as I have often found myself in dejavu situations.

I was walking into an indoor mall of some sort when a woman stops me and tells me that I owe money for something. I disagree, turn around and begin to leave when I see the woman exiting the mall ahead of me and a male security officer (not police) begins to follow me. As I step off the curb and onto the parking area blacktop, the security guy reaches over and pinches my arm. In shock and surprise, I about face and shout "What the fuck was that for?" He replies something about a cop that was lost as I woke up with a spiked heart rate.

As far as dream interpretation, I'm pretty sure that it's just the result of stress from everything that is happening in the US and the world at the moment plus caffeine before bed, plus my cat probably deciding to pad with claws on my arm at the moment that I woke up.

Again, it hasn't happened. It was a dream. But a long time ago, when I was in JROTC, our SAI said that the best way to deal with a situation was not to deal with it in the moment, but rather to come up with how you are going to deal with it before hand. Basically, play what-if with the situation until you have covered every likely possible scenario.

 

So I just woke up from what might be one of the weirder nightmares I've ever had. It didn't happen, but it did introduce a scenario for which I am not sure what the right thing to do in that moment is. I thought I'd toss it to y'all for ideas on how to best deescalate the scenario in my dream as I have often found myself in dejavu situations.

I was walking into an indoor mall of some sort when a woman stops me and tells me that I owe money for something. I disagree, turn around and begin to leave when I see the woman exiting the mall ahead of me and a male security officer (not police) begins to follow me. As I step off the curb and onto the parking area blacktop, the security guy reaches over and pinches my arm. In shock and surprise, I about face and shout "What the fuck was that for?" He replies something about a cop that was lost as I woke up with a spiked heart rate.

As far as dream interpretation, I'm pretty sure that it's just the result of stress from everything that is happening in the US and the world at the moment plus caffeine before bed, plus my cat probably deciding to pad with claws on my arm at the moment that I woke up.

Again, it hasn't happened. It was a dream. But a long time ago, when I was in JROTC, our SAI said that the best way to deal with a situation was not to deal with it in the moment, but rather to come up with how you are going to deal with it before hand. Basically, play what-if with the situation until you have covered every likely possible scenario.

 

Edit: Changed link to a non amp version of same story from same news organization.

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