Comment on Email provider for home server alerts
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 month agoIt just boggles my mind that we haven’t moved away from this archaic technology.
None of the alternatives are as standardized as plain old email. You can use whatever you like to read them, you don’t have to rely on a single company like Meta with WhatsApp for communication, it’s easy to use, pretty damn reliable and fault resistant and just ticks all the boxes you’ll ever need for a simple message delivery.
Personally I would absolutely hate if software started to offer notifications only on slack or signal or whatever. Just let me have my email and I can then read it with a browser in library, on my cellphone, on my desktop and laptop and on pretty much every other internet connected device on the planet. And if I want, I can pass that trough to teams, sms, all the messaging platforms and even straight to my printer should I need to. With other message delivery options that’s often either pretty difficult or straight up impossible.
it’s easy to use, **pretty damn reliable **
Unfortunately not when you’re self hosting… Can’t rely on it when you’re supposed to receive an email (account validation, reset password email,…) which never arrives and you’re stuck clicking on « resend the email » on the website with no hope…
I meant that the technology itself is reliable. And you can do self hosting just fine too, I’ve been doing it since 2010 or so, but running a local smarthost which sends messages via reputable SMTP provider works just fine too. Or even directly interacting with the SMTP provider from all the applications you’re running.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
Decentralization is not a concept that is reserved for SMTP
No one suggested such a thing. I suggested several other alternatives that aren’t reliant on any particular company or service, and are easier to run and manage without requiring approval from your ISP or whatever else.
With other options you wouldn’t need to because they already provide the features you’re looking for in those apps.
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
What other than email provides that? Browser notifications generally don’t work on mobile. Most of the common instant messengers rely on a single instance running the thing if you’re not suggesting sending messages via IRC or XMPP (or matrix or…) which have their own problems. App notifications require that you have the thing which app is running to be available and online and they more often that not require some spesific device. Also even if you had linux desktop “app” it requires that the software is running.
Also I have not met an ISP which would block sending email via gmail/amazon/protonmail/whoever. Sure, my current ISP blocks tcp/25 to the world by default, but you can request to open that too if you really want to and ports 587 and 465 are open, so you can work around that if you don’t want a smarthost for some reason.
Which other protocol allows notifications at the same time on all the mobile devices, all the workstations and allow easy way to send the very same message to arbitary amount of recipients to all of their devices? I had email on a palm pilot device at 2001 or so, over mobile data with IRDA and you can read email even with Commodore 64 if you really want to (well, to be more spesific, use C=64 as an terminal for *nix server to access email, I think there’s no actual IMAP/POP client for it). There’s just no way for any other modern service to even try to compete with versatility with email.
And then there’s the more sopisthicated approaches like pushing email trough however complex procmail/perl/python/whatever scripting you like where you can develop quite literally whatever you can imagine. Set up a old fire alarm bell, hook it up to your home automation, process incoming emails and if it’s severe enough turn the bell on. Sure, at least a some of that is possible via instant messengers too, but with email I can be pretty sure that if I write a script today for it it’ll still run quite happily for the next 10-15 years.
Please do tell me which of the modern messaging alternatives offer all of that.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
Matrix? For one?
…of course they do?
Among others. Email has much bigger problems.
I have no idea what any of that means…
Which makes no difference when self-hosting…
See above.
I…don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. You want to argue that email is superior because it’s old? You can run a Mastodon server on a Commodore as well.
Yes? There are a hundred ways.
…why wouldn’t you just send the signal directly to the server?
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
That checks out. You conveniently skipped the part where I requested a single messaging solution which works with either modern android/ios devices or with anything you’ll find in your dad’s(or grandads I guess) drawer, can manage multiple recipients, escalations to sms/home automation bells, works reliably even if the uplink goes down for few hours and so on.
And no, you very much can not run mastodon server on a Commodore 64.
But you seem like a young and enthustiatic individual. I was one “a few” years ago. Keep it going, but that arrogant attitude won’t get you anywhere. Email has been a thing since the 1970s and there’s a reason why it’s still going strong. Things like XMPP has been around for a good while and there’s a reason why they’re not even close of overtaking email as a primary communication technology around.
You’ll live and learn. My guess is that when you reach my age, email is still working just fine and majority of the hot stuff which is around right now has faded to the history.