Another vote here for Fastmail. I also like Posteo, Mailbox and mxroute, but these are not as fully featured - which may be perfect for you if you’re after email only. What I really like about Fastmail is that on top of being a customer-focused business (rather than a customer is the product business), they offer a really snappy web interface with excellent search - and they are extremely compliant with email standards, building everything on JMAP.

I do not like Proton or Tutanota. I have used both, including using Proton as my main email account for the past two years. I do believe they are probably the best when it comes to encryption and privacy standards, but for me it’s at far too much cost. Encrypted email is almost pointless - the moment you email someone who isn’t using a Proton (or PGP encryption), then the encryption is lost. Or even if they just forward an email to someone outside your chain. I would argue that if you need to send a message to someone with enough sensitivity to require this level of encryption, email is the wrong choice of protocol.

For all that Proton offer, it results in broken email standard compliance, awful search capability and reliance on bridge software or being limited to their WebUI and apps. And it’s a shame, because I really like the company and their mission.

Well, the reality is, search costs money. Quite a lot of money it seems.

So that is either paid for by you, or by someone else. Nobody is going to run search as a charity. So it’s going to be paid for by parties interested in paying for your attention.

Even if you run ad blockers or use meta search engines like searx, you are going to be finding results by companies that have paid to be there.

I am a heavy search user. My search quantity is reasonably large just from personal use (I’m a curious dude, what can I say?) but my professional use of search as a software developer is staggering some days. My anecdotal experience is that that Google search has been declining in quality for years, and especially over the last two or three. DuckDuckGo is a nice alternative for privacy (potentially), but I while I find myself feeling less in a walled garden with them, I don’t actually find their results to be any better than Google’s.

I have tried Kagi recently. So far, I really like it. I genuinely feel like I get good results (read: find something quickly that is relevant to what I searched). I love their lensed searches that let you search the indie-web, and I love that they let you add weightings to websites that you trust.

It is expensive, no doubt. But for a certain audience that relies on quality web search, prefers to not be walled in by paying search engine optimizers and values paying for a product rather than opting to be the product, Kagi offers a solution.

Having said that, I would love to see the cost come down and make it more accessible to the many and I appreciate that for most people, the “free” search engines are good enough.

I default to DuckDuckGo as well. I don’t really like it, and I certainly don’t trust it any more than I do any other for-profit organization. I just wanted something that isn’t Google, Amazon or Microsoft.

It’s really quite fruitless though. Maybe 80% of my searches end up having a !s or !g (really just for variety…) thrown in, as Google’s results are just better.

DDG image search spits out porn as often as it does something relevant. I can change content moderation options if I want to reduce it, but I don’t have to do that with Google.

Kagi has caught my attention lately. I’m going to try it and see if it feels good value for the money. I’m not opposed to paying for search, but this does feel expensive (I say that having no idea of the true cost of running a search company). Obviously, privacy is out the window as it’s paid for and linked to an account. But as I feel I’m not really getting that anywhere else either, I’m more hoping that it will just provide good search results.

Can confirm. Endless rain this summer in the UK. No grass watering required (not that it is ever required…). Didn’t stop my neighbour watering on the few sunny weeks we’ve had…

It’s not even that these evangelizers think we should all be using the same browser. It’s that there are currently only two realistic choices: Chrome (and it’s derivatives) and Firefox (and it’s derivatives). There is safari too, of course, but it hardly compares to either in it’s current state.

Given those two choices, only one of them is in support of the open web. The other is literally trying to add DRM to the web.

As to your first point: I agree that here it may be preaching to the choir and that we all get it. But it has such a small marketshare, I’m not sure it is good for those encouraging it to be quitened.

I get it with the others, but given what Google is currently trying to do with Chrome and the open web, I think the Firefox evangelism is the least sinful of these by far. Or maybe I just became part of the problem.

Who are you with? I get 150 symmetrical for £25 with Swish.

How often is that bootable Linux drive useful to have on hand though? I can’t imagine it being useful more than once a year or so, but maybe I’m not thinking creatively enough.

I make this all the time. An absolute staple of our weeknights.

It doesn’t need to be an authoritarian government or an evil government as such.

It would just need to be a govermt that doesn’t prioritize fairness and egalitarianism above all.

If the people dishing out the housing have biases and they’re not favourable to you, you’re stuck.

At least in the existing system you have the ability to progress and determine your quality of living to some degree.

I don’t think our current system is good by the way. I just don’t think state owned housing is the right medicine. Not unless we can find a way to instate benevolent dictators.

The problem with this idea is, what if the state is controlled by unsavoury people? I know that is kind of a hard thing to imagine, but just humour me and assume it’s possible.

It gives far too much power to too few people.

I don’t think your /s is necessary. Especially on a UK community where sarcasm is expected by default :)

My understanding is that it was responded to, but not debated.

170 cm is not big for a man though. At least not where I’m from. Are you from a country with a low average height or was that a typo?

Yeah maybe. But even that is hardly exceptional battery life. And then the watch will be less than 50% by the time you’ve slept with it.

…Samsung watch 4, and it was a whole different story. Snappy. Great UI. Great battery life.

Do we have a different Samsung watch 4? Or a different expectation of great battery?

I got one last year, and it’s my first smartwatch. It lasts one day. Having to charge it every night makes it a burden. Of it hadn’t been so expensive, and if I didn’t want to get the body tracking It offers, I’d simply leave it on a drawer.

My friend has a Garmin of some kind. It’s bulky, but o kind of like that. He reckons his lasts nearly a week. That would be my idea of great battery.

This one is not likely to be popular here, but I have to be totally honest and say: Miley Cyrus.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not really a fan of her or her music (nor am I a hater). But my god does that woman have an incredible voice and a mastery of how to use it.

Good bot. But in this case, the linking is appropriate.