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Managed mail server clusters for years with an ISP. Agreed, too many things that can break and cause PITA. However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper yo

Managed mail server clusters for years with an ISP. Agreed, too many things that can break and cause PITA. However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper you are in a trade or the longer you have done it, the easier it comes to feel. I visited a family farm and found it very very hard to squeeze milk outta buffalo. My great uncle however has dealt with that buffalo that for years and didn’t sweat it one bit. In a similar vein, do I really want to tend a buffalo in my backyard, when I can get the milk I need from a supermarket?

xrisk 7y ago
This is a great analogy. Why do more work when you can get the same result with less effort?
- bad_user 7y ago
  If you're living at the country side, producing your own milk is healthier, can be a good hobby while you're young and a great occupation after you're retired. Manual labor is good exercise and can be fulfilling. But I'd probably go with goats instead. I don't think maintaining your own email server can be very fulfilling, but hobbies are a matter of taste.
  - purple_ducks 7y ago
    > producing your own milk is healthier How's that?
    - bad_user 7y ago
      Growing up in communism, under the Iron Curtain, we weren't finding too much milk in the eighties at the store, so our source for dairy was the country side, friends, family, grandparents, so I grew up with raw milk. Raw milk from grass fed animals has a very different, much richer taste. For one you can control what you feed your animals. The taste and quality of milk varies greatly depending on what they eat. You can feed them high quality grass, although in winter some cereals are fine. Anybody that drinks raw milk knows that the taste of what they eat really is reflected in the milk. E.g. if you let them graze on a field with flowers, it will have a flowery taste. Leave raw milk on the table to turn sour and you get yogurt. It's quite good too. And you can't do that with the pasteurized milk from the store, it doesn't matter if it's whole or not, doesn't work. Goes without saying that with high quality raw milk it's quite easy to make cheese too, which again, you can't with the milk your can find at the store. As for why it's more healthy, the pasteurization process reduces the nutritional quality of milk. There are also weak indications that people with a lactose intolerance can tolerate raw milk better than they can tolerate pasteurized milk. It might be that it contains some lactase. Although this claim you should take with a grain of salt. And in the US at least you can argue that the pasteurized milk you find in stores is ultra-processed. Read the following article: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-02-fo-62752-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-02-fo-62752... Note that I'm not saying that you can't find a good source of raw milk from a farm with free range, grass fed animals and great quality control. But it's harder to do so and if you're living in the city, depending on the city, next to impossible. I do encourage you to try find such a source. The difference in taste is well worth it. And if you grow it yourself, it's much like anything else. For example tomatoes no longer taste well due to being picked too early. Grow your own tomatoes in season and the difference is night and day.
      - hexane360 7y ago
        There's little evidence that raw milk has higher "nutritional quality". Taste you can make an argument for, and raw milk is definitely required for yogurt & cheese if you don't want to introduce your own cultures. I'd also note that "pasteurization" can mean different things in different countries. In Europe it's usually more extreme than in the U.S., as the milk is heated ~60 °C higher for a shorter period. [1]: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/drinking-raw-milk#claimed-benefits https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/drinking-raw-milk#claim...
      - purple_ducks 7y ago
        > I do encourage you to try find such a source. The difference in taste is well worth it. I'm in Europe. > the pasteurization process reduces the nutritional quality of milk It doesn't reduce the nutritional quality substantially though does it? Europe Food Safety Authority advises to not drink raw unpasteurised milk due to potential health risks (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3940.htm http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3940.htm) echoing what many national countries have advised "at a minimum, boil the milk before drinking it to kill potentially harmful bacteria" Any perceived nutritional gain is marginal and is far outweighed by risk of illness.
- chongli 7y ago
  This analogy applies to everything and the answer is always the same: if we centralize then we are vulnerable to tyranny. It seems inevitable that we do this though. Human history is a cycle of people investing more and more trust in an authority, then being abused by that authority, followed by a revolt and the installation of a new authority.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > This is a great analogy. Why do more work when you can get the same result with less effort? If you wake up one day and the only email you can use is the one you can get from a major provider, you have just become a consumer.
  - paulie_a 7y ago
    Honestly what's wrong with that?
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      It all depends on what you value and how independent and self reliant you would like to be.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  Q. Why might a single agent stuck in a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, along with 100s of millions of others, not make a different choice that might cost them more? A. Ideology. If the agent wants a different global equilibrium, they might decide that them choosing differently, (1) calms their conscience and/or (2) actually make a material different in the choices of others.
- nocman 7y ago
  Because it is not the same result. Yes, it is a similar result, but not the same. You give up a lot of control even using a smaller email service provider -- not the least of which is direct control of your own email data. Obviously, since it is email, there is nothing you can do about what others do with emails once they are received on their end, but it is still nice to have direct control of your side. The counterpoint, however, remains valid. There is some work involved in maintaining your own mail server. If you use a provider, you don't have to deal with any of that -- it's always about tradeoffs. As the article says, however, maintaining your own mail server isn't as hard as a lot of people make it out to be. It takes a little of your time, but once you know the few things you need to do, I find it to not be a big deal at all.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    Setting up offlineimap to backup your mail is easy. I run daily backups of my protonmail account so in the even they decide to do something nasty to my account, I wouldn't loose more than a day of mail.
    - nocman 7y ago
      True, and I use offlineimap for a different scenario where I do not have control of the mail server. However, it is still not the same level of control as managing the mail server yourself. I understand why some people don't want to do that, but again, I don't find it to be much trouble at all.
bch 7y ago
Buffalo milking is the new yak shaving
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- johnnycab 7y ago
  Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal. Buffalo milking seems to be variously related to experience (see effortless squeezing) or Buffalo as a service ie. no buffalo on-prem or a backyard required.
simmons 7y ago
However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper you are in a trade or the longer you have done it, the easier it comes to feel. I agree with this. I don't think mail is particularly harder than other serious Linux and network system administration tasks. But it does require those sysadmin skills, and it's not something I would recommend to a typical software developer unless they were interested in broadening their sysadmin skills or had a particular need that could benefit from a self-hosted mail server. I've been operating mail servers continuously since 1992, so I guess that's the buffalo I'm milking.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
You might if the supermarket milk was reporting everything you say back to the farmer.

xrisk 7y ago

This is a great analogy. Why do more work when you can get the same result with less effort?

bad_user 7y ago
If you're living at the country side, producing your own milk is healthier, can be a good hobby while you're young and a great occupation after you're retired. Manual labor is good exercise and can be fulfilling. But I'd probably go with goats instead. I don't think maintaining your own email server can be very fulfilling, but hobbies are a matter of taste.
- purple_ducks 7y ago
  > producing your own milk is healthier How's that?
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Growing up in communism, under the Iron Curtain, we weren't finding too much milk in the eighties at the store, so our source for dairy was the country side, friends, family, grandparents, so I grew up with raw milk. Raw milk from grass fed animals has a very different, much richer taste. For one you can control what you feed your animals. The taste and quality of milk varies greatly depending on what they eat. You can feed them high quality grass, although in winter some cereals are fine. Anybody that drinks raw milk knows that the taste of what they eat really is reflected in the milk. E.g. if you let them graze on a field with flowers, it will have a flowery taste. Leave raw milk on the table to turn sour and you get yogurt. It's quite good too. And you can't do that with the pasteurized milk from the store, it doesn't matter if it's whole or not, doesn't work. Goes without saying that with high quality raw milk it's quite easy to make cheese too, which again, you can't with the milk your can find at the store. As for why it's more healthy, the pasteurization process reduces the nutritional quality of milk. There are also weak indications that people with a lactose intolerance can tolerate raw milk better than they can tolerate pasteurized milk. It might be that it contains some lactase. Although this claim you should take with a grain of salt. And in the US at least you can argue that the pasteurized milk you find in stores is ultra-processed. Read the following article: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-02-fo-62752-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-02-fo-62752... Note that I'm not saying that you can't find a good source of raw milk from a farm with free range, grass fed animals and great quality control. But it's harder to do so and if you're living in the city, depending on the city, next to impossible. I do encourage you to try find such a source. The difference in taste is well worth it. And if you grow it yourself, it's much like anything else. For example tomatoes no longer taste well due to being picked too early. Grow your own tomatoes in season and the difference is night and day.
    - hexane360 7y ago
      There's little evidence that raw milk has higher "nutritional quality". Taste you can make an argument for, and raw milk is definitely required for yogurt & cheese if you don't want to introduce your own cultures. I'd also note that "pasteurization" can mean different things in different countries. In Europe it's usually more extreme than in the U.S., as the milk is heated ~60 °C higher for a shorter period. [1]: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/drinking-raw-milk#claimed-benefits https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/drinking-raw-milk#claim...
    - purple_ducks 7y ago
      > I do encourage you to try find such a source. The difference in taste is well worth it. I'm in Europe. > the pasteurization process reduces the nutritional quality of milk It doesn't reduce the nutritional quality substantially though does it? Europe Food Safety Authority advises to not drink raw unpasteurised milk due to potential health risks (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3940.htm http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3940.htm) echoing what many national countries have advised "at a minimum, boil the milk before drinking it to kill potentially harmful bacteria" Any perceived nutritional gain is marginal and is far outweighed by risk of illness.
chongli 7y ago
This analogy applies to everything and the answer is always the same: if we centralize then we are vulnerable to tyranny. It seems inevitable that we do this though. Human history is a cycle of people investing more and more trust in an authority, then being abused by that authority, followed by a revolt and the installation of a new authority.
ekianjo 7y ago
> This is a great analogy. Why do more work when you can get the same result with less effort? If you wake up one day and the only email you can use is the one you can get from a major provider, you have just become a consumer.
- paulie_a 7y ago
  Honestly what's wrong with that?
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    It all depends on what you value and how independent and self reliant you would like to be.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
Q. Why might a single agent stuck in a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, along with 100s of millions of others, not make a different choice that might cost them more? A. Ideology. If the agent wants a different global equilibrium, they might decide that them choosing differently, (1) calms their conscience and/or (2) actually make a material different in the choices of others.
nocman 7y ago
Because it is not the same result. Yes, it is a similar result, but not the same. You give up a lot of control even using a smaller email service provider -- not the least of which is direct control of your own email data. Obviously, since it is email, there is nothing you can do about what others do with emails once they are received on their end, but it is still nice to have direct control of your side. The counterpoint, however, remains valid. There is some work involved in maintaining your own mail server. If you use a provider, you don't have to deal with any of that -- it's always about tradeoffs. As the article says, however, maintaining your own mail server isn't as hard as a lot of people make it out to be. It takes a little of your time, but once you know the few things you need to do, I find it to not be a big deal at all.
- zaarn 7y ago
  Setting up offlineimap to backup your mail is easy. I run daily backups of my protonmail account so in the even they decide to do something nasty to my account, I wouldn't loose more than a day of mail.
  - nocman 7y ago
    True, and I use offlineimap for a different scenario where I do not have control of the mail server. However, it is still not the same level of control as managing the mail server yourself. I understand why some people don't want to do that, but again, I don't find it to be much trouble at all.

bch 7y ago

Buffalo milking is the new yak shaving

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
johnnycab 7y ago
Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal. Buffalo milking seems to be variously related to experience (see effortless squeezing) or Buffalo as a service ie. no buffalo on-prem or a backyard required.

simmons 7y ago

However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper you are in a trade or the longer you have done it, the easier it comes to feel. I agree with this. I don't think mail is particularly harder than other serious Linux and network system administration tasks. But it does require those sysadmin skills, and it's not something I would recommend to a typical software developer unless they were interested in broadening their sysadmin skills or had a particular need that could benefit from a self-hosted mail server. I've been operating mail servers continuously since 1992, so I guess that's the buffalo I'm milking.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

You might if the supermarket milk was reporting everything you say back to the farmer.