Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 13

No Podcast Tomorrow

I can’t talk, sorry.

“Run Your Own Mail Server” off for tech review

I just finished the first draft of “Run Your Own Mail Server.” Copies have gone to my volunteer tech reviewers and my sponsors.

When I need to mass-mail my sponsors, I normally can only mail a dozen or so at a time without making Google and Microsoft throw a fit. This time, I mailed all 147 sponsors at once. None of the big providers even looked askance.

Requested feedback by 15 April, just to make tax day extra special. That’ll let me open the Kickstarter by Penguicon.

37: Send Physical Postcards

Still focusing on Run Your Own Mail Server, and so close to the end I could spit on it.

Remember, we’re talking about a protocol that doesn’t require validating certificate authenticity. The standards for TLS in email are low, no matter how we might wish otherwise.

So, what do we do?

One group of mail operators prioritizes broad compatibility. They still allow deprecated TLS and weak ciphers because they’re better than plain text. Postfix ships with this configuration, because otherwise people c...

February’s Fantabulous Sausage

(This post went to my Patronizers at the beginning of February, and the public at the beginning of March.)

Last month, I made plans. Immediately thereafter, life gave me a surprise.

Since my last doc visit in June, seems my blood pressure has doubled. It’s been 80/110 my whole life. Suddenly it went to 130/190.

What changed?

I had my first bout of covid, that’s what.

Fortunately high blood pressure is a well understood problem. I am resistant to the medication, but it’s been dragged out of “holy...

36: The Thirty Ton Replacement

As sort-of expected, the last chapter of Run Your Own Mail Server is getting split into tech detritus and social detritus. I’ll probably split this into two chapters.

Spambots all choose shortcuts. Postscreen catches many of them. Greylisting plays against others. A popular shortcut many spambots choose is to ignore backup MX records. These spambots attempt to contact the target’s primary MX, but if that fails they proceed to the next victim.

Remember, the SMTP protocol comes from an age when “h...

35: The Day’s Third Hogshead

Here’s a snippet from my forthcoming Letters column for the FreeBSD Journal.

While “no” is sufficient answer to your question, the Journal editors insist that I respond in more depth so that they’re not left with blank pages. I don’t understand why they don’t simply cover that space with advertising, especially as I was not officially informed that the sales department is on a week-long gelato cruise that I was not invited to, but I suppose amateurs and hobbyists have a right to develop their me...

The end of the Findaway Voices saga (hopefully?)

See part 1 and part 2 for context.

Last night Findaway changed their terms of service last night to something mundane, but it doesn’t matter.

I’ve worked with developers for decades. Developers do extra work, but only certain kinds of extra work. They will rearchitect your entire front end in Rust and Pascal for the sheer joy of it. What they won’t do is change the terms of service for the fun of it. That’s boring.

I know several lawyers who have fun drafting proposed contracts. This isn’t that....

Findaway Voices followup

Yesterday I posted about Findaway Voice’s rights grab. Last night I received this email from Findaway Voices.

Earlier today, we shared planned updates to our Findaway Voices by Spotify. Terms of Use that are set to take effect on March 15, 2024. Our goal was to introduce language that would allow us to offer authors innovative features, improve discovery, and provide promotional tools such as share cards while assuring authors that you “retain ownership of your User Content when you post it to t...

Dear writers: Delete your Findaway Voices account NOW

When Findaway Voices first appeared, it made it comparatively easy for independent authors to do audiobooks. Audio was still hard, mind you, but it was possible.

Spotify bought Findaway. They began playing with payments, refunds, and returns. And now, the licensing terms have changed.

Accordingly, you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, cre...

34: My Magnificent Sponsors

I have finished the rspamd chapter, and am what I think will be the last chapter. Unless I break it into two pieces, one social and one technical. Haven’t decided yet.

Sometimes you legitimately need to contact two hundred people with mail run by Microsoft or Google, but suddenly spewing lots of email is a leading indicator of spambot infection. I mail people in the Email Empire every day, but one at a time. When I finish writing this book, however, I’ll have to notify my magnificent sponsors v...