Why would you sign a one year contract with an lawyer? You pay these guys by the hour generally.

Not enough workers means not enough people willing to work for the crap pay and conditions employers want.

Sadly even Linux is a fuss. This is primarily due to full os updates needed every four years plus the changing security landscape. Then there are the hardware issues and replacement every ten years. I guess a partial alternative is a rolling release but then you have the issue of constant change.

Windows 2000 was nice. MS could have pretty much stopped there.

The thing is AI is expensive, and to be useful needs to be trustworthy. Just seems like that in the end it will need to be a pay service. Maybe quite expensive.

Keep in mind that there is some history too. Linux was released under the GPL earlier then BSD became open source. It then developed faster and got more support. So it became the popular kernel.

There are not a lot of choices. People in the US typically either use Google, Microsoft, Apple, or their ISP. Beyond that you have to go to a hosting provider or host your own. One of the most important things of a mail provider is that it support MTA-STS. There are many providers in the EU that do. Not many in the US. It is also important to pay for an email product, rather then be the product.

Regarding MTA-STS. Fastmail did not the last time I checked, you should check if that has change. Google does. Microsoft was testing it but I don’t know how that turned out. There are EU providers that do including Proton does support MTA-STS last time I checked.

I actually use Namecheap cpanel email. They don’t do MTA-STS but the do allow opportunistic transport encryption. Technically I should be able to configure incoming MTA-STS but I’ve not gotten it to work. Maybe just does not, or maybe I’ve not put enough effort in to do it.

Basically agree. AI helps but it still needs an expert to get the job done. There are so many times AI just does strange stuff and you have to know enough to know when it is just wrong. I think we all constantly encounter that.

Go back far enouph we are all not native. We are all immigrants from Africa as far as I know.

I would guess it is simple, we have big oil lobbies and China is a big oil importer.

I use my own domain and cpanal email in the namecheap shared hosting plan.

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Who could have known.

If you are talking internet connections, that is the realm of big providers. Cell, Fiber, Cable, Satalite, and WiMax like services. There have been some local Wifi mesh systems but these ultimately need to link to telecoms.

If your talking apps and services that run on an internet connection, there are many solutions.

Just to emphasize it is the reputation problem and getting common mail providers the accept. You’ll need to get a well known domain like a .net or .com domain. You probably need to have a web site too on the domain. Then let that stuff age. You’ll also need to get a static IP for the VPS your using that has a good reputation and your hosting provider will have to allow you to send email which means you’ll have to talk with them to make sure everything it setup. You’ll also probably want certs both for the website, and for your SMTP server. Then there are SPF, DKIM, DMARK, and DNS configuration you’ll have to make too. Optional other configs like MTA-STS, or DANE. Just a lot of detail. Once your setup, there are testing sites you can go to test or SMTP server.

Another issue is you want email to be full time. So I think that probably means 2 incoming mail servers on two different VPS systems maybe in two different data centers. Then you need IMAP, and maybe a webmail system. I guess these last two could be one one of the VPS systems hosting one of the SMTP servers. Lot of components.

I don’t actually using my own VPS based mail system for my main email addresses. Instead we use a shared hosting plan and our own domain instead. You might want to look at is Namecheap CPanel Email that Comes with their Stellar Hosting plan. That is what we use. You can use up to 30 addresses on their base plan and maybe unlimited on the next level up. It is less then $100 per year after you add all you need, the hosting plan, a domain, and certs (maybe more in the $60 range?). The advantage of this, the hosting provider takes care of the infrastructure, and it is cheaper and lest time consuming then two VPS systems and all the work to maintain them.

About getting other providers to accept your mail, I’ve found Yahoo and the domains they serve to be one of the worst offenders.

Late April and early May is nice. I always find the time between mid-March and mid-April stressful. There is always a bunch of tax and financial stuff then I have to get corn gluten put down on my lawn. Just a really busy time. I always kind of crash after that. So last week and this week has been really nice, though not that productive.

There is some data that shows generational wealth dissipates in a few generations. This is probably for at least three reasons. As we know the majority of people are not very good at saving and investing. Lot of reasons for that but some is just short term thinking and consumer mind set. Also when you have kids, even if they have generational wealth, it is likely that their partner won’t. Finally there is a real timing problem. In the next generation both non-financial and financial help has the biggest effect between under say age 30. Starting kids out with good skills and no debt has huge impacts. Money later in life is not that useful.

I’ll use myself as an example. The big advantage that I had was that I got out of college with good training, no debt, a car, and a job, and a small emergency fund and everything after was a fairly easy. I probably will actually inherit a fair amount of money at some point, but frankly I’ll be 70’s before that probably. It won’t have much impact. My financial life problem is already solved. Just pointing out that it was the under 25 years that mattered.

Not against generational wealth to a point but I think the details are important.

Edit: Just a reminder. Any low risk FIRE plan based on and investment portfolio generally has a big median estate. You can’t know what it will be, but it is likely to be large, though it could be zero.

We love our Volt, sadly not made anymore. The thing in short supply is OEM battery replacements. Both price and timeline means you would buy third party. Our Volt is 11 years old now battery fine.

Yes, love it. Hint, AI really helps with some of the stuff though HA has changed over time so sometimes AI is talking about another version. I just set it up a month ago. I used their Z-Wave adaptor but installed HA on my Ubuntu Media Center instead using the Ubuntu Snaps.

Great. Any time someone has a successful business that supports Linux somehow it is just terrible. I always wonder if these are these real people or just FUD from competitors trying to make Linux support undesirable. Sure I prefer FOSS, but I’m also happy there is some commercial game support. Maybe I’ll use it some day, maybe I won’t.