Just saw somebody unironically say self-hosting email is "not that bad" because it's "just a lot of work to make it deliver to Google or Microsoft"

Soooooo ... it's just a lot of work if you want it to ... work with the dominant services other people use?

They also said it's "helpful if your ISP encourages self-hosting"

Soooo ... where do I find that ISP? Because every ISP I've ever had is the exact opposite of that.

Sometimes the cloudflare bot filtering in their web analytics is just hilariously bad. I just had some IP (looks like some automated security scanner run by UT Austin) flag my security system, fail the (also cloudflare) captcha 12,000 times over the course of a day, and never get flagged by them as a bot.

Epiphany of the week for last week: A multi-zone mini split is actually cheaper and better than replacing our existing HVAC system. We want to replace our central air AC/heating system next spring for a number of reasons (boils down to "it's a huge overly complex system and a huge pain in the ass"). It's never even worked great for cooling our condo, because it's central air, but the condo is two stories with an upstairs that has tons of solar gain. So there's a massive natural temperature difference between rooms, and some naturally need massively more cooling than others. Before we got a window unit for the hot room, getting it down to anywhere below 80 meant the living room would wind up cold, like sometimes 65. Even with all the vents downstairs as closed as they go. It's stupid, it's inefficient, and it's not even especially comfortable.

We also need very little heating in the winter, because of the same large amounts of solar gain, and our current heater is ridiculously overpowered. Especially since we have trees that lose their leaves and make basically the whole south side of the house a solar heater in the winter. So little electric heating strips in a mini split will be fine to replace our goofy hydronic coils and the freakishly large and expensive water heater they require us to have and maintain.

So we're thinking we'll replace our entire current system with a multi-zone mini split. So there'd be one big condenser on the roof, and then individual AC units in each room that each run to it separately. No more turning downstairs into a walk-in refrigerator just to get the office habitable! No more cooling the entire house all night (again mostly on the wrong floor, even) just to cool the bedroom!

A mini-split should also cost like 1/2 to 1/4 as much as a central heat pump. We'll also be able to tear out all the ductwork and HVAC cabinets and whatnot and drop ceiling that hides it all downstairs, which will let us get 10' ceilings throughout downstairs instead of 10' in the living room side and 8' in the kitchen side.

It's really just a win/win. The only loser is some HVAC contractor who would much rather get to charge us $15-20k to spend 1-2 days replacing $5k of stuff. Fuck them though, I refuse to pay $500/hour for some goof to pay some other goof $50/hour, just because New Mexico HVAC contractors' prices are for some reason completely unhinged compared to our neighboring states.

The same sort of "professionals" are also the reason our system sucks right now. They definitely just blindly installed the exact same system in our unit as in every other unit in the complex without even thinking about it. Never mind the fact that being on the south end with a ton of extra south windows means we're obviously in a completely different boat when it comes to heating and cooling needs.

Jesus, Outlook is a mess. You've got your "Classic Outlook", your "New Outlook", and your webmail Outlook. There are many, many configuration tools and even just ... really basic features (like as basic as moving folders), that might only work in one of those.

What the fuck is going on at Microsoft these days? How is their flagship office software such an incredible mess?

I can't believe I just saw somebody asking why we need all these vaccines and stuff we do today when "babies were perfectly fine hundreds of years ago."

Here's the thing: babies absolutely were not perfectly fine hundreds of years ago.

Here in the US, two hundred years ago ALMOST HALF OF CHILDREN DIED BY FIVE. That number was ONE IN TEN LESS THAN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. In living memory. Like my grandparents had almost 1 in 10 chances of dying by five, while my odds were basically zero. Vaccines have saved more lives than ... really anything else anyone has ever done in human history, and it's not even close.

DHS/ICE didn't even exist when I was in high school. It's not an ancient and storied pillar of our society. We were fine before it existed, and we'd be fine if we abolished it.

omg advertising is everywhere and it drives me nuts. There's an ad for the site I bought my glasses from, on their own site, on the confirmation page for my order.

YOU DON'T NEED TO ADVERTISE TO ME THERE. I ALREADY BOUGHT SOMETHING FROM YOU.

Social Security isn't a Ponzi Scheme now, but it sure will be if Elon Musk steals it from us to give himself a tax cut.

People have some wild ideas of how things work. I just came across somebody who's afraid of washing a fancy backpack the way the manufacturer recommends, because they're afraid that warm soapy water might "hurt" the frame, which is made of titanium.

I hate to say it, but if anybody finally ushers in the year of the Linux desktop it's gonna be Valve. The Steam Deck is creating a real incentive for big game developers to support Linux, and I'm pretty sure gaming is a big part of what's holding more than a few people on Windows right now.

The other day somebody at a search and rescue training called PTSD "spicy deja vu" and that's been living rent-free in my head ever since.

Congratulations to China on their ascendance to research leadership of the world, I guess.

tbh I'm still stewing about my realization a year or so ago that tons of the people I went to college with were not in fact in the same financial boat as me. A lot of these people were acting like they were self sufficient and living off the same jobs as me, but were actually also getting 2-3 times what I earned at my job from their families every single month.

I spent a long time thinking I was bad at money, or irresponsible or something because I couldn't just up and go on huge trips all the time with them, or throw in on huge amounts of booze multiple times per week without thinking about it. Like where was I blowing all my money that they could all budget so much better than me?

Nope. I was doing fine. Turns out a lot of them just had several times as much money as me, and were only cosplaying as broke college students.

I would submit that making one little thing good wherever you have an ounce of control is a radical act in 2025.

I also did a bit of distro exploration in my latest hopping session, and you know what? I still like Debian. It’s just a very low-bullshit operating system.

It's gonna take under an hour for me to migrate like 15GB of emails from Proton to iCloud this way.

(this is on a university LAN that is symmetrically blazing fast, to be fair)

Pro tip: If you're migrating from one email service to another, don't bother with the various platforms' import/export tools.

If both services support IMAP, just connect to both of them with Thunderbird and move all the messages through it. Much faster and more reliable, and doesn't require any intermediate storage or granting permissions for services to access each other.

Why is it always "I'd die for my family" and never "I'd drive calmly and safely so I don't kill my family in a fiery crash" or "I'd learn to emotionally self-regulate so my family feel safe around me?"

Just read: "The sheriff said Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped the investigation by ... and giving investigators video of the suspect at charging stations along its route from Colorado to Las Vegas." And I have questions and concerns.

So ... were there any checks and balances involved? Or can Elon Musk just grab any current or past footage from the built-in cameras of any Tesla ... just like whenever he feels like it? Is there a paper trail? Is there any oversight whatsoever?

Is there any actual process at Tesla for this kind of thing? Do they need a warrant? Or is the process for pulling footage "when Elon personally asks for it?" Because that's a bad process.

Is the standard for when it's okay to pull and share video "when Elon thinks it's a good idea?" Because that's a bad standard.

The CEO of a large corporation should actually not be directly involved in these sorts of processes.