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Nice article!

It's heartening in the new millennium to see some younger people show awareness of the crippling dependency on big tech.

Way back in the stone ages, before instagram and tic toc, when the internet was new, anyone having a presence on the net was rolling their own.

It's actually only gotten easier, but the corporate candy has gotten exponentially more candyfied, and most people think it's the most straightforward solution to getting a little corner on the net.

Like the fluffy fluffy "cloud", it's just another shrink-wrap of vendor lockin. Hook 'em and gouge 'em, as we used to say.

There are many ways to stake your own little piece of virtual ground. Email is another whole category. It's linked to in the article, but still uses an external service to access port 25. I've found it not too expensive to have a "business" ISP account, that allows connections on port 25 (and others).

Email is much more critical than having a place to blag on, and port 25 access is only the beginning of the "journey". The modern email "reputation" system is a big tech blockade between people and the net, but it can, and should, be overcome by all individuals with the interest in doing so.



Just for reference, take a look at this email system using FreeBSD:

https://www.purplehat.org/?page_id=1450

p.s. That was another place the article could mention a broader scope, there is always the BSDs, not just linux...




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