This looks great but delivery via Amazon SES is a problem. I'm an academic and I tried to set up a work newsletter like this with Listmonk recently, but SES rejected my request to relieve me of sandbox mode for unspecified 'security reasons'. Everything was set up properly, it was under a domain under my personal name, I gave links to my profile page on my university website, ample explanation about what I would do with it (one email ever few months), that I would be the only sender, but they rejected it. So in the end I've opted for a hosted solution... anyone else had similar issues?
Postcard originally used Postmark. But, Postmark deliverability has been decreasing. And, for the open-source version, I wanted to simplify dependencies. So, I moved it to SES. It works for small lists, but won't scale to massive ones.
I welcome PRs to add additional sending providers - it wouldn't be onerous.
Would be nice to have just send using sendmail or what ever smtp server we chose. This is HN, and some of us have already done ip warming and to avoid any big players, as they all drop/block emails without telling their users and are not be trusted for reliable communication.
SMTP is a must. My advice is to never bother with proprietary mailer APIs - you will need to change providers sooner or later (sometimes on short notice, if your current provider temporarily suspended you on a false positive for example), which is much easier when you just need to swap the SMTP credentials vs implementing yet another proprietary API. Plus it makes local testing easier - there's no shortage of "fake SMTP for development" projects out there.
Of course, tech bros don't want you to do it, as it reduces their vendor lock-in.
I think SMTP is the way to go unless you're actually using specific proprietary mailer API features and there's no way to do the same via SMTP.
Solution is:
* SMTP by default
* if you want, some setup examples of using third-party mail services using their SMTP endpoint (most offer one)
Again you don't have to, it's an open-source project and you owe nothing to anyone. But if you fancy doing it, this is the way to go and will save headaches later.
And just remember the more HAM you send out to different domains and not SPAM, the better the IP gets overtime. And then BAM you got your own little self hosted poormans mailchimp.
A few years ago AWS used to be quite generous with SES. As a result it became the source of a lot of spam. Thankfully they started becoming strict since the last 2 years. This along with new features like managed warmup, multi-region sending, has made AWS SES very desirable.
I actually had the same issue getting rejected for SES since I didn't have any reputation or something and ended up re-implementing the SES (and SNS) api for use with a regular IMAP/SMTP server, I intended to clean it up and open-source it but never got to it.
For academic newsletters with SES sandbox issues, consider using Mailgun or Postmark which often have more straightforward verification processes and reasonable free tiers for low-volume senders.
European digital sovereignty in email depends on having a decent FOSS email client, but the best we have is Thunderbird. I hope TB can make up for all those years of lost time and catch up with Outlook. From their emails it seems like the focus is to compete with Exchange and to build smartphone clients. Personally I just really hope they find time to deal with the absolutely shoddy search.
Not saying that Thunderbird is great, but ms Outlook has serious problems finding mails even for very specific keywords if it is older than a few months. They seem to hyper index recent mails and forget all else.
Ironically, I have set up thunderbird as a client for my exchange email just for archival, and it does much better finding them.
I never used an email client in my life, I don't personally know anyone who does it either.
I wonder what's the distribution between people who use clients vs just web.
FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".
Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.
FOSS can also be a software suite built by a well-funded international partnership for the specific purpose of making something that can replace Europe's current dependence on proprietary US-based software.
Yes, it's important to try to make sure Europe is in good shape with the software (and hardware) it depends on now, but a solid long-term strategy can—and, IMO, should—include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community. It's likely to take years to truly come to fruition, but if done thoughtfully it will benefit everyone.
> Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.
> FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".
Sure. Firefox is good. The fact that it's FOSS is of second nature
But let's not kid ourselves, the majority of "User facing" FOSS apps has terrible UX.
And then it always goes back to "it sucks but it's free"
We should go for FOSS choices that are good, free/open shouldn't matter (if they are from European vendors)
> include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community
Sure, who should do that? Pretty much all linux vendors went out of business, and managing those solutions is easier said than done, also it looks much cheaper than it actually is.
The reason Europe should use FOSS software is that it cannot, inherently, be beholden to any company or country. It can't be bought, or subverted without that subversion showing up in publicly-viewable code repositories. These are attributes that inherently go with the fact that it is built in the open, with anyone able to take the source and make their own version of it even if the people who originally built it want to start doing nefarious things. And there's nothing about this that makes software hard to use; that's a consequence of the volunteer, distributed nature of most independent open-source software, combined with the lack of strong incentives to create good UX.
So if Europe wants to get serious about this, it can, and should, make some that's high quality and still open. There are a number of ways it could do that, and the amount of money it should cost to make it happen should be pocket change by the standards of the entire EU working together. There are plenty of good programmers and UX engineers in Europe.
unfortunately nowadays almost every software has terrible UI and UX
commercial because of the insane dark pattern hell and contact us for pricing and 345 step signup onboarding madness to get the sweet sweet data juice
FOSS, on the other hand, because it starts with build it yourself with CMake or cry because there's only a 3 years old prebuilt binary but not for your platform/architecture
Right, I don't understand how these people are legitimately talking about "UX" and then looking at Microsoft products (???).
Are we blind or something? Is there a single Microsoft product that has an even halfway decent UX? We're up to like a dozen setting panels in Windows. Excel can't open two workbooks with the same name. Nobody likes Outlook.
then they fucked it up gradually but royally. Office is completely ridiculous for like 20-30 years. (I still think people who heralded the ribbon menu as some kind of UX panacea should have stopped sniffing glue before it got too late.)
Man here. Female friends key to my not feeling lonely. Couldn't identify less with men who only see hanging out with men as key to not feeling lonely, which is what this app seems to offer. Seems like the target market for this is lonely lads, when lad culture is driving male loneliness. But hey, I guess some men, even in the West where this app is targeted, really just feel uncomfortable making friends who are women. Open yourself up, lads.
CTAN is the central repository for all TeX packages, it's the natural link to give. If you want to see examples it's as easy as clicking on the relevant package name (eg XCharter) and then click 'Package documentation' which will request the relevant pdf. TeX outputs into PDF so it's the natural medium for demonstrating and documenting things. It's got nothing to do with not 'living in the current century'.
They used freely available NASA data to map Russian and Ukrainian electronic warfare systems. The jammers used leak into the 1.4 GHz spectrum, which is suppose to be silent, and does so which sufficient power that you can be pretty sure it's man made.
So if you're looking for an intersting target, you could do worse than those lit up areas.
Small correction: the jammers used are specifically targeting the L-band, because it is used for navigation and satellite communications.
Normally ground transmitters in this band are using just a couple watts or less, so they don’t significantly impact the readings of a satellite looking at a large area on the earth, but a jammer uses a lot more power and can be noticed.
There is a satellite that listens to solar radiation reflected off the earth to tell different things like ocean salinity. That particular frequency is also used in warfare. This satellite can be used to find areas where electronic countermeasures are in place.
There's a satellite that's measuring ground moisture by looking for radiation in a specific frequency. Some jammers in Ukraine (devices that send noise on radio to make communications impossible for other people) emit radiation in this frequency which makes it visible when looking at the data from the satellite.
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