Consider using Digital Mars C compiler - <AUTHOR> https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/17786 <comment><USER2> I am probably going to get downvoted for this, but let me try. I am assuming, this is related to VirtualBox using the OpenWatcom compiler [0] for BIOS because it is the only reasonable way to handle x86 segmentation from C.

So this ticket is basically asking the VirtualBox maintainers to take a reliably working part of the product and to port it to a different compiler, retest everything, fix any bugs caused by differences between compilers and update the build process as well. So as an end user of VirtualBox, I would either notice no difference at all (BIOS isn't a performance bottleneck really), or will get a regression due to bugs.

With all due respect to the free software community, I would say switching the compiler used in a stable product without an apparent improvement noticeable by the users would not serve their best interests. It is also a bit strange to see it not in a form of "hey, we really care about free software, so we ported this part to use a free compiler, here's the performance comparison, here are the unit tests, here are the build instructions", but rather in asking someone else to spend considerable effort on implementing this.

[0] [https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12011](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12011)

<comment><USER3> > because it is the only reasonable way to handle x86 segmentation from C.

That's nonsense, both GCC and Clang handle this perfectly well. It's how we handle compiling 16 bit option ROMs in qemu:

[https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob;f=pc- bios/optionrom/...](https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob;f=pc- bios/optionrom/linuxboot_dma.c;h=4754282ad736ac3be6459d59dcca6edb64d3f4ed;hb=HEAD)

<comment><USER4> This is the thing I don't get. qemu / SeaBIOS seem to build fine with a normal compiler like gcc or clang, as far as I know, and they're in Debian main. Why is VirtualBox different? What user-visible feature does its BIOS have that qemu doesn't - does it support booting OSes that qemu doesn't, or something?

Can VirtualBox just switch to SeaBIOS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I realized I had neglected to make the source to the runtime library available. Fixed that:

[https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc/tree/master/src](https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc/tree/master/src)

Everything in it that is copyrighted Symantec or Digital Mars is now Boost licensed. In particular, stuff that is copyrighted by Microsoft is NOT Boost licensed and cannot be redistributed.

<comment><USER6> This is going to sound like an stupid question but it could be just lack of marketting or lack of documentation but I'm reading through the website and it only mentions supports for Win32, Win16, DOS and DOS32, is this correct? I'm curious to know how is that going to work for VirtualBox given that I use it on my Mac. Is the ticket suggesting they switch from VisualC++ compiler to DMC?

<comment><USER4> The ticket is suggesting that for building the BIOS that runs inside the VirtualBox image, they switch from OpenWatcom (another C compiler for DOS) to Digital Mars. VirtualBox emulates an IBM-compatible PC, and the traditional boot protocol for IBM-compatible PCs involves a BIOS that sets up the machine and provides a rudimentary runtime library for things like screen output or disk access. This BIOS is written for 16-bit x86, same as / binary-compatible with DOS, so any good compiler that can produce DOS object files can be made to work here too. (Most bootloaders / kernels will quickly switch to 32- or 64-bit mode, but they expect to be started in 16-bit mode and expect to make calls to the BIOS to load their own code.)

This ticket is not about changing the compiler that builds VirtualBox itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree! [https://www.digitalmars.com/download/freecompiler.html](https://www.digitalmars.com/download/freecompiler.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is almost as bad as the drive-by "rewrite it in rust" type comments some open source projects get.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not just use gcc or clang?

<comment><AUTHOR> Problem is that x86 segmentation support is lacking, which is important for things like the BIOS.

<comment><USER4> For certain ways of writing the BIOS - you can have the BIOS immediately enter 32/64-bit flat addressing mode (as if you were a 32/64-bit kernel) and then drop back to 16-bit mode when you're done if you need to do a legacy MBR boot. I think this is how coreboot/libreboot/linuxboot/etc. and Tianocore/EDK2 work.

Can you use Tianocore as your BIOS for VirtualBox the way that you can use it (in the form of OVMF) for qemu?

How is SeaBIOS built?

<comment><AUTHOR> And even writing some 16-bit code using gcc is not impossible too. The problem is that it lacks support for things like near and far pointers.

<comment><USER5> Without near and far pointers, it is hopeless to write non-trivial programs for 16 bit DOS.

<comment><USER4> Sure. My argument is that unless you're interested in retrocomputing (which is a cool field, but not the field VirtualBox is in) you shouldn't be writing non-trivial 16-bit programs at all any more - VirtualBox doesn't even support emulating any 16-bit-only CPUs. You should be writing 32-bit programs with a tiny bit of 16-bit code on each end (either in assembly or in trivial C) to switch from 16-bit to 32-bit mode and back. Since you only need the BIOS for a very small amount of time to support a bootloader loading itself, the slowness of switching modes at each interrupt will hardly be your limiting factor (especially given that you're in a VM).

This has the advantage that you don't need _any_ new compiler to build your program, neither OpenWatcom or Digital Mars. (Nothing against the Digital Mars compiler! I just think that it isn't the right engineering direction for VirtualBox to depend on retrocomputing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Though it is worth mention that the runtime code that implements BIOS services (INT 10h, 11h, 12h, 13h, etc...) for the most part can't switch to protected mode without breaking compatibility.

<comment><USER9> You're in an emulator - you don't have to switch to protected mode within the emulation, you can instead exit the VM and do the work outside the emulation. The caller within the emulation won't notice unless it's trying to single-step the BIOS code (and why would they do that?).

Edit: unless the code within the emulator is trying to run the BIOS within an emulator of its own. Turtles all the way down...

<comment><AUTHOR> >Edit: unless the code within the emulator is trying to run the BIOS within an emulator of its own. Turtles all the way down...

Common with the VGA BIOS BTW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even most UEFI/BIOS are compiled by MSVC.and MASM. Why to ignore OVMF?

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't use x86 segmentation and normal gcc should work fine.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Context: The Open Watcom license has been a problem for years.

<comment><USER11> Could you please expand more

<comment><AUTHOR> I had an issue about the problems: [https://github.com/open-watcom/open- watcom-v2/issues/271](https://github.com/open-watcom/open- watcom-v2/issues/271)

<comment><USER12> So there's a theoretical problem, and a solution available.

Why should VirtualBox take the pain now rather than waiting and seeing if the theoretical issue every materializes? I mean, if someone does the work and tests it, then sure, VirtualBox should adopt it. But why is this their problem to solve now?

<comment><USER4> There is a practical problem that VirtualBox is in Debian contrib and not main because it cannot be built with tools in Debian main. (Whether this is a practical problem that matters to anyone is a different question, but it's more than theoretical.)

<comment><USER13> I don't think DMC is in Debian main yet, is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably not yet, but the license means that it can be.

<comment><USER14> So that is _also_ just a theoretical idea at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, they just open sourced it, so it might take a while for it to be packaged for Debian. I don't even know if it is ported to Linux yet at this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Attention Federal Employees: If You See Something, Leak Something - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/leak/ <comment><USER2> The site claims to be non-partisan, but the only presidential names cited are Republican, and it ignores abuses and issues under Democratic administrations, except the NSA surveillance scandal.

Admittedly, they are seeking input from disaffected people at a time when Republicans hold the presidency and both houses of Congress, but it seems they are so completely biased they think their examples are "non-partisan."

<comment><USER3> Have a casual look at Glenn Greenwald's Twitter feed and then come back and tell me his news organization is partisan.

<comment><USER4> Their last line is fully ironic considering the Obama admin's war on whistleblowers.

"Becoming a whistleblower is not an easy decision, but sometimes it is the right thing to do."

[https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/obamas_war_on_whistle...](https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/obamas_war_on_whistleblowers_forced_edward)

[http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/mouths-wide-shut- obam...](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/mouths-wide-shut-obamas-war- on-whistleblowers/)

Did the "nonprofit, nonpartisan" Intercept publish similar instructions over the last 8 years? For a "journalistic piece" it's odd there is no author of the article. They don't have any contact links beside an onion address and a PO Box.

Who funds the Intercept anyway?

I think Greenwald, a self described liberal, has been fair in calling out other liberals in their hypocrisy, especially the Obama admin.

[http://www.alternet.org/glenn-greenwald-remember-when- obama-...](http://www.alternet.org/glenn-greenwald-remember-when-obama-vowed- protect-whistleblowers)

<comment><USER5> The Intercept launched in 2014, partly as a way to publish material from the Snowden leaks.

So the answer to your question is "No, but...".

Pierre Omidyar funded The Intercept. He got wealthy as the founder of eBay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Asking people to uphold their sworn oath is one thing, but equating unlawful government abuses with getting a lawful tax write off.... Wow

Is this going to be the "birther movement" equivalent against trump?

<comment><USER7> Equating means to show how two things are equal. Listing examples of various leaks is not equating them as equally damning or criminal.

Stop extrapolating from singular data points to a preconceived conclusion.

Put forth a falsefiable hypothesis, and weigh all available evidence. Dont allow prejudice to select the sources of that data.

<comment><USER6> The article writer picked the examples not I. Picking clear abuses of government power veiled (or not) as lawful and then listing clearly lawful activities of Trump as being in the same "leak worthy" statement is the writers bias in equating them.

There is your evidence since it was to much to ask you to read the article.

<comment><USER7> You've chosen to see the world through a binary lens: Either you're with us or against us. The answer to every extreme is to race as fast as possible to the opposite extreme. Shades of gray are illusions. Balance is an illusion. Compromise is an illusion. Either articles support my beliefs or they are false.

Any two analogous subjects in the entire universe can be demonstrated to be similar, as well as demonstrated to be different. That is the inherent nature of similarity and analogy. If two analogous subjects were in fact identical in every way, they would cease to be two distinct entities, as they would be identical.

In which jurisdiction of The United States of America is it "clearly lawful" to grab women by their genitalia without their consent?

What evidence lead you to conclude that I did not read the article?

How have you arrived at the unequivocal primacy of your own ideas?

<comment><USER6> "Because they let you"

That is consent.

Please point out this binary nature in my post. It's not there. You are the one reading with your bias goggles on. I'm pointing out that the article made a strong case for the need of leaks in actual cases on government abuse. Then they undermine their case by including targeted "hit pieces" as useful leaks. If it was unbias then where was the Hillary email leaks? Oh that's right, it again was something targeted to undermine and not to show the value of whistle blowers.

<comment><USER7> Your top post shows that you can't see shades of gray. Every list of examples is proof that the examples are all equal. You follow it up with equating a smear campaign based on sensationalism and spearheaded by a charlatan, with journalism demonstrating the value of whistleblowing. Just like our president, you are allergic to blame, even when it's spelled out in plain English. I have no illusions that you will deny the wetness of water, if it stands between you and being "right".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having had my name smeared before by journalist from a certain "broadsheet" who took the truth and twisted it to make me look like some sort of criminal regarding a story where the parent company of this newspaper has sent my startup an injunction and this journalist was sent to harass me (no other papers, media printed the story because there was none)

f^&k journalists! they will sell you down the river, ignore your side of the story and lie lie lie

/posting from throwaway account

<comment><USER9> If you're throwaway, what harm is there in naming who you told, at least the publication. Will that yield too much info?

There is wikileaks and him, Glenn Greenwald, who at least to us seem to be fair (dare I say honest?) journalists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's definitely an agenda in place on HN. Every comment even remotely pro Trump has been downvoted to grey text.

<comment><USER10> I don't think see that as a particularly strong correlation here. I see comments on both sides that are grey or dead, many of which have clearly violated the guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a great resource for people who make fake news

</comment><comment><USER12> This article would not have been posted if Hillary had won.

The entire site reads like an anti-trump ad : [https://theintercept.com/](https://theintercept.com/)

<comment><USER13> You need to learn more about The Intercept. Glenn Greenwald and his crowd spent the election cycle relentlessly attacking Clinton over her emails and Obama over his drone strikes.

<comment><USER14> Had you preferred he joined the relentlessly attacking of Trump over the leaked video recording?

What is more important, the content of a private conversation between two people off-camera, or drone strikes? Or is the content of such private conversation more important than say, keeping a private server for government business and outside of official records?

<comment><USER7> Why is only the most important topic worthy of discussion? Why can you only see the other side's extremities?

Trump's admission of grabbing woman by their genitalia was a conversation he assumed would remain private. Podesta's emails were conversations he assumed would remain private. Yet, the naked partisans of our country somehow see the subject matter of one as the the important take away, while the method of acquisition as the distraction. Those same naked partisans, without any modicum of irony see the other matter in the complete opposite terms: the method of acquisition is paramount, and absolves the content discovered.

Por que no las dos?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


End of anonymity: Identification of random passengers - <AUTHOR> https://birdinflight.com/ru/vdohnovenie/fotoproect/06042016-face-big-data.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is the app used by the photographer:

[http://findface.ru/login](http://findface.ru/login)</comment>


Show HN: Virtual Book Club but for Podcasts - <AUTHOR> https://usehoneycomb.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> My friends and I love podcasts and are WFH - so we're doing virtual book clubs but for podcasts!

We're experimenting with formats but right now are doing theme based podcasts - i.e. one person chooses a theme (ex. "COVID-19") and selects 1-3 podcasts, everyone listens to them, and then we do a virtual discussion over pure audio- Zoom. We also have slack channels for those that just want to discuss it asynchronously.

Would love to get some people from HN on board as well :) Feel free to comment themes/ideas/podcasts you think are interesting and would want to discuss.</comment>


Wet Phone Glove - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone tell me if the phone glove is wet via weather - and you turn it on and touch the thumb to your ear - what the potential is for shock?  Capacitive indicates a capacitor of some type, which holds an electrical charge.  I mean, this is our hearing here - and we only have two ears for a lifetime. <comment><AUTHOR> I suppose the risk is small, however, when my grandmother made everyone get off the phone and there were no baths allowed during an electrical storm, well. Does one struck by lightning retain their hearing very well? What's the potential for electrical build up? Does it depend on the duration of the previous call? So, you are talking to a tow truck driver for 30 minutes, then get out of your car to put out a flare or something, the glove gets wet by snow, then you call your autoshop to let them know you're bringing it in and you accidentally touch your thumb to your ear? Anyone tested this?

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/20/apple_static_earbuds...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/20/apple_static_earbuds/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we place ads based on the content? - <AUTHOR> Why don't we place ads based on the content, instead of the user, the way print does? Given all the concerns about user privacy with targeted advertising in general, as well as the fickle revenue from this [1], it seems like it should at least be considered.<p>I admit I am coming from a place of ignorance about this topic and am just curious. This seems like an obvious thing, at least in some cases, so I don't understand why it isn't even considered.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22856324 <comment><USER2> Two main reasons, in my view :

\- It's way more profitable for the advertising platforms (that remains to be seen for the advertisers, see point 2) because you multiply/combine the number of different audiences infinitely or so => more campaigns, more budget...

\- The user engagement metrics (clicks on your ads, return on invest, etc) are waaaay sexier with targeting advertising. It's pretty logical, since people you adress your content with are much likely to be at least a bit interested.

Privacy and user's anger might effectively have an impact, but we can also suppose advertising platforms will adapt anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is exactly what DuckDuckGo does and what Google did prior to targeted tracking and advertising. It's basically the old school web advertising model. I'm guessing it's not as popular anymore because it's not as profitable.

</comment><comment><USER4> By most measures, both for ad platforms and advertisers (and subsequently users), audience-targeted ads outperform context-targeted ads. You could go back to a world of only context-targeted ads, but publishers would need to make their business models work with lower RPMs, advertisers with lower ROAS, and users with less relevant ads (to them).

</comment><comment><USER5> The ads you see are determined by a combination of factors:

1\. The bid price

2\. The clickthrough rate of the ad (must pass a minimum % to be displayed)

3\. The keywords used and the audiences the ad buyer has targeted

Ultimately, it comes down the audience, and not the content. Ad buyers want their ads to be seen by "people who like X", and not "people who are currently viewing a video/web page about X".

There isn't really a way to target an ad for a specific NYTimes page for instance, because they cover a variety of topics, and multiple stories are published each day. To be more precise, there are ways, but the economics of that probably wouldn't be in favour of the ad seller.

It is possible to do this for YT channels, as they tend to be more focused; MKBHD stuff will always be tech or gadget-focused for example.

</comment><comment><USER6> We still do, it's called native advertising and it's a HUGE market.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well they do

[https://www.silverpush.co/mirrors/](https://www.silverpush.co/mirrors/)</comment>


2010 Summarized With Google Searches (Google Video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0QXB5pw2qE

<comment><USER2> Although submitted later, this item has a comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991352></comment>


Introducing .NET IL Linker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/30 <comment><USER2> Fun fact, the Mono Linker project started 10 years ago during the second edition of the Google Summer of Code!

It was originally used to reshape the entire Mono class library into a subset to expose the Silverlight class library API surface for Moonlight.

It was then used to link iOS and Android applications in MonoTouch and Mono for Android, and Xamarin continued to use and improve it.

The Mono Linker has an open architecture making it reasonably easy to customize how it processes code , and detect patterns specific to each platform to link them away. Xamarin added linker steps to do more than tree- shaking, and remove dead code inside methods. For instance:

      if (TargetPlatform.Architecture == Architecture.X64) {
        // ..
      }

The entire if body can be removed if the linker knows that TargetPlatform.Architecture will not be X64.

And now, it's the base for the .NET Core linker. Quite a journey!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's been a few years since I used .NET, but the self-contained deployment story sounds like a big win that I used to really want:

"Self-contained deployment. Unlike FDD, a self-contained deployment (SCD) doesn't rely on the presence of shared components on the target system. All components, including both the .NET Core libraries and the .NET Core runtime, are included with the application and are isolated from other .NET Core applications. SCDs include an executable (such as app.exe on Windows platforms for an application named app), which is a renamed version of the platform- specific .NET Core host, and a .dll file (such as app.dll), which is the actual application."

So, this IL Linker is in support of that story, and aims to reduce the over all size of self-contained applications... Maybe it's time to start tinkering w/ .NET again.

<comment><USER4> My company has some apps that we need to install on our customers servers. A linker would have been amazing for us 7 years ago as we could have targeted the (as of then new) 4.0 runtime and redistributed or binary. But as it was, we could only expect the 2.0 runtime to be installed so we can't really leverage a lot of stuff that's been out since then and had to write our own hacky versions of lots of common things.

Nowadays with dotnet core you can bundle the entire runtime with you binary. The linker is cool, in that it will create a strictly smaller binary, as in "hello world" might be 12mb instead of 50mb. That's cool, but it makes me wonder if .NET would be in a strategically better place today if the linker were present 10 years ago. How many companies didn't choose to write their app in c# simply because a customer might not have the runtime installed?

In any case I'm really impressed with everything Microsoft is doing with dotnet core and hope that I get to use more of it.

<comment><USER5> It certainly would. The reach of .NET was artificially restricted in many respects by making it a component of Windows. Mono provided the ability to just ship the runtime alongside the app, but Mono was also not "enterprise grade"; and of course there were always the missing bits and pieces, especially on the desktop front where such deployment made most sense.

It took a Microsoft that understood open source and non-Windows platforms, and was serious about it, to ultimately get us to the point where .NET Core could be a thing.

<comment><USER6> Until .NET Core provides support for many of the .NET Framework APIs still lacking from .NET Standard 2.0, many companies won't consider it "enterprise grade".

Examples on our case, WPF, WCF, ODP.NET drivers for ADO.NET.

<comment><USER7> I think .Net Core will never include WPF.

As far as I know, there are not plans for cross-platform GUI on .Net Core. And WPF is pretty much a dead technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > And, it wouldn't be right to announce this linker without a hat tip to Joel > Spolsky who we can give the honorary and historical distinction of feature > requestor.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/01/28/please-sir-may- i-h...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/01/28/please-sir-may-i-have-a- linker/) \- Joel asked for this in 2004 - Better 13 years late than never!

</comment><comment><USER9> If .NET (using C#) can produce a native binary I'll switch to that for as many projects as I can. Currently I use C++, mostly to interface with the OS. I love the feel I get when working in C#. Everything is so nice and cozy.

Memory: The memory usage "looks" bad. I suppose maybe GC would kick in when it needs to. It has not been a problem for me, but when you see the code in C++ taking 1MB ram and a C# implementation taking 10MB, well, you have to wonder.

Performance: C# performs bounds checking, which I take it is a significant performance hit. I've not had this matter _yet_ , but I've not converted everything over to .NET.

<comment><USER5> The nice thing about C# is that, unlike Java, you actually get all the low- level things. They're just tucked away, out of sight of your average coder who's more likely to shoot themselves in the foot with them. But if you know how to use them, it's all there. Let me enumerate.

C# has value types, which follow the same memory model as in C (i.e. stack- allocated for locals, embedded directly into the outer object as fields). You can request explicit layout mode, whereby you can set an offset for every field manually - if you set them all to zero, you get a C union. Alternatively, you can request automatic layout mode, where the JIT is allowed to reorder the fields in arbitrary ways to optimize memory and/or access, which is something you don't even get in C.

It has raw pointers. Unlike object references, these have the usual C semantics - there's no GC involved there, and you're responsible for keeping the objects alive, so you can have dangling pointers etc. No boundary or null checks, either - it's zero overhead. You can do pointer arithmetic on them, including indexing with []. If you P/Invoke malloc or equivalent, this gives you C-style heap allocated arrays.

It has stackalloc, which is a language operator that's equivalent to the non- standard alloca() function in C - allocate a chunk of memory on the stack, and return a pointer. This immediately gives you stack-allocated arrays as flexible as C99 VLAs.

With generics, if a generic type parameter is a value type, the specialization for that type is separately JIT-compiled and optimized. This can be used in a way very similar to C++ templates, for zero-overhead inlined callbacks and similar shenanigans.

All in all, if you want to write high-perf code in C#, you certainly can. You'll hit the limits of the JIT optimizer soon enough - it can't be as good as a full-fledged AOT C++ compiler, say - but you can certainly shed most of the overhead associated with a managed language.

<comment><USER6> In Java some of them are there, although the Unsafe package is not sanctioned, and marked to be replaced by something safer that can provide the same capabilities (e.g. VarHandles on Java 9).

As for the rest at least we can hope Java 10 brings them.

You missed a few C# goodies from 7.0 up to 8.0, coming from the experience with Midori.

<comment><USER5> The goodies in question are local refs and ref returns, right? Which really only make a difference when you're writing memory safe code. If you're dropping down to "unsafe" and manual memory management for other things, then refs don't do anything that raw pointers don't.

<comment><USER6> There are other goodies, like memory views, blittable structs, interior pointers and readonly refs.

[https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%2...](https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%20Feature%20Status.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is neat as it brings smaller DLL sizes. It does not include self- contained executables that can be shipped, however. You still end up having to ship a directory full of DLLs. I've been wanting self contained executables for a while now. CoreRT (.NET Native) seems to have been put on the backburner, plus sometimes the JIT case is faster.

Source: discussion at [https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/915#issuecomment-32608...](https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/915#issuecomment-326081258)

<comment><USER11> Not sure about .NET Core as I haven't used it yet, but you can use ILRepack to merge DLLs into the executable so you don't need to ship a directory full.

[https://github.com/gluck/il-repack](https://github.com/gluck/il-repack)

We do this at work with one of our utilities

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Relevant Scott Hanselman blog post: [https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExperimentalReducingTheSizeOf...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExperimentalReducingTheSizeOfNETCoreApplicationsWithMonosLinker.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought this technique of eliminating dead code was called tree-shaking. And linking to be something entirely different: linking assemblies at (compile|run|analysis)-time.

<comment><USER14> I've only ever heard it called dead code elimination. Tree shaking appears to be more a javascript thing? Not sure I don't participate in that community at all.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_code_elimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_code_elimination)

<comment><USER15> It's an old Lisp term going back decades. Strictly speaking it's not the same as interprocedural DCE, because due to the dynamic features of Lisps you might need the user to specify the extent to which they are willing to disable the dynamic features to save space.

<comment><USER14> Gotcha, would it be fair to characterize it as tree shaking is more white listing things that have been used versus eliminating code paths that cannot be accessed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now they just need a modern (XAML, QML) cross-platform UI story and they can eat Qt and Electrons lunch.

<comment><USER17> MS/Xamarin is working on XAML Standard implementations for Win/Mac/GTK.

[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/05/19/introducin...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/05/19/introducing- xaml-standard-net-standard-2-0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "The linker removes code in your application and dependent libraries that > are not reached by any code paths. It is effectively an application-specific > dead code analysis."

Putting aside the discussion on whether this is a good practice, I assume this would remove methods that are only called dynamically, or via reflection.

<comment><USER4> I'm also curious how this would work without breaking reflection

<comment><USER19> They talk about this here [https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/samples/linker- in...](https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/samples/linker-instructions- advanced.md#limitations)

<comment><USER4> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how this interacts with the "no-PIA" feature, where the compiler would embed and dead-strip COM interop types. Seems like some of that system's guid-based type identity attributes might be relevant.

<comment><USER7> This is (at least for now) only for .Net Core, which does not support COM interop, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can you create a self-contained deployment (SCD) of a GUI app, or does it only work for console apps?

<comment><USER22> The technology will work with any kind of app. I know that some folks working on one of the bigger UI frameworks, Avalonia ([https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia](https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia)) have toyed with it recently. One thing to keep in mind is that lots of these frameworks do dynamic, reflection-based data binding, which might be easily broken if the linker removes too much stuff. You can tinker with the settings of the linker to force it to preserve things that are actually necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't forget to check the license of every library, even many of the more permissive ones will require an attribution notice.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice to see this progress, hopefully it's a serious part of the roadmap and not just a side experiment.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is java has linker feature?

<comment><USER6> Yes, shipping on Java 9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Going from over 46MB to under 12MB seems impressive on a relative scale, but if this is the code of the "dotnetapp-selfcontained" example,

[https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker- samples/blob/master/...](https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker- samples/blob/master/dotnetapp-selfcontained/Program.cs)

That is still, absolutely speaking, _twelve million bytes_ for not much more than "Hello World" levels of functionality, which means there remains _plenty_ of room for improvement. I estimate the lower limit for this particular app is somewhere in the hundreds of bytes, most of it being string constants.

<comment><USER27> I see this fallacy repeated often. "Hello World is 12 MB - just imagine how big a real app will be!!!"

Hello World doesn't benefit from that 12MB. Your real app would.

12MB is not for Hello World. 12MB is for Hello World + Common Language Runtime (garbage collection, bounds checking, memory protection, execution environment etc.) + the .NET standard libraries (LINQ, task parallel library, etc.)

You're probably going to need those things in a real app.

If you're actually doing Hello World -- and that is _all_ you're doing -- and if using 12MB of your 16GB of RAM is unacceptable for you, yes, by all means write some native code.

<comment><USER28> Put another way: what should be left after linking is just the parts of the CLR + BCL that the runtime needs to function. Apparently that takes 12MB today. There is a JIT, GC and Execution Engine all in there.

The number might shrink as the linker gets more aggressive but i wouldn't count on it much.

The application IL code is perhaps 50 bytes to for hello world.

<comment><USER29> 12 megabytes doesn't sound too bad for the things you mentioned, especially if it's a constant cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Interview" with Freeman Dyson about climate change - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/letters-to-a-heretic-an-email-conversation-with-climate-change-sceptic-professor-freeman-dyson-2224912.html

<comment><USER2> A most interesting exchange, on reflection I find Dyson's reaction intellectually honest and quite consistent. There's lots to read between the lines here.</comment>


Languages of Papua New Guinea - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"Today, there are 851 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. These languages are spoken by the tribal groups inhabiting Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. In 2006, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stated that "Papua New Guinea has 832 living languages (languages, not dialects)," [1] making it the most linguistically diverse place on Earth.[2][3]"</comment>


Ryanair's CEO loves Dark Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ryanair-ceo-stupid-passengers-deserve-212107723.html

<comment><USER2> When I'm travelling about, I might not have easy access to a printer. This penalizes low-income and high-mobility travelers.

</comment><comment><USER3> what if you ran out of ink or simply, don't have access to a computer ?! This is a pure reapoff, like the busses tickets to reach those so called low cost airports that costs you more than the flight itself !</comment>


Show HN: Noderize, create modern Node apps in 30 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://noderize.js.org <comment><USER2> Was taking a brief look and just wanted to let you know that most of the links in your footer are broken.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I accept a Scala Dev job? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to graduate from undergrad with a degree in CS and am considering a Scala job in the financial industry.
Ignoring the particulars of the offer and the company, I'd like to base my decision partly on the value of the skills I'd be learning. The job would center around ETL pipeline development and involves heavy use of Scala.
Is Scala in demand, either inside finance or in tech more generally? Will demand for Scala increase in the future? <comment><USER2> In your career you are likely to be using many, many programming languages. I'm well into the double digits (and my current job has me juggling 4 different environments at once!)

If it's a good job, then take it. Build yourself up as a general programmer and you will never be out of work. If you become a X-programmer, you'll be in trouble in the latter half of your career, almost for certain.

And, yes, my friends who work with Scala all seem to like it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scala is a nice language.

You can go to Indeed.com and see how many Scala jobs are in NYC, for example.

Go to Meetups and network:

[https://www.meetup.com/ny-scala/](https://www.meetup.com/ny-scala/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, you should</comment>


Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/africa/1772671/ethiopia-launched-its-first-space-satellite-with-chinas-help/ <comment><USER2> I am very familiar with the purchasing process of satellites by LATAM countries. Basically the Chinese or the French (i.e. Airbus) come in and offer you a satellite that ranges between 180M-380M USD in price depending on what you want. The price includes a building with a ground station, the launch, and some basic training. If you negotiate correctly, the full telemetry is send only to you and you process it all locally. If you don't, then they have a hook on you and hand hold you through the entire process - at an additional cost.

Additionally, after a country purchases one, they tend to have their own development path for the future ones.

For example, the Argentinians did their first four satellites with the help of the US (SAC-A, SAC-B, SAC-C, SAC-D), the next two were done by themselves (ARSAT-1, ARSAT-2), two more with the Italians (SAOCOM-A, SAOCOM-B) and one with the Brazilians (SABIA-MAR).

It is a process filled with a lot of politics, questionable monetary interests, and pseudo national pride.

It is the new shortcut process by which countries are entering the space era. Buy a satellite when you don't know what you are doing, then co-build it with somebody, then build it by yourself. It effectively saves you billions in trial and error tests that other countries had to go through... but it really begs the question of when is it _truly_ yours, because if you don't follow the rules (e.g. taking high res imagery of an area you are not supposed to), "your" satellite can easily be temporarily or permanently disabled... and there goes your 300M

<comment><USER3> Why do these countries need satellites anyway, what exactly are they using them for?

<comment><USER4> I dunno how true this is but my african friends have told me that telecom in africa is extremely expensive and calling someone the next village over can have huge charges. So african countries under the African Union created the African Telecommunications Union to send out an african owned telecom sattelite instead of having to pay for western owned telecom sattelite usage.

Again this is second hand info and I don't know much about African politics but telecom is clearly one important reason.

<comment><USER5> Call to the next village? Really?

Unless you were having that conversation two decades ago, they 100% were just having you on.

<comment><USER4> Exaggerating, sure. But, the general point is accurate especially when looking at cost relative to income: [https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/o...](https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original- size/20110521_WOC767_0.gif)

More recent: [https://a4ai.org/extra/mobile_broadband_pricing_heat_map-201...](https://a4ai.org/extra/mobile_broadband_pricing_heat_map-2019Q2)

<comment><USER5> Your first link is from _2011_ and is about cost of devices, and your second is about data plans, not mobile call rates.

I doubt your intention was to prove my point very loudly, but here we are.

<comment><USER4> Actually it's based on this data on mobile services cost: [http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/ipb/](http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/ipb/)

I included the data from 2011 because it includes mobile services cost whereas the other is newer but on data costs.

Not sure what your point is at all other than to be pedantic and obfuscate the general point to be honest. The point being that african telecom costs are some of the highest in the world and this would be one use for a satellite...

<comment><USER5> My point is that "it's too expensive for Africans (from an unspecified country, because of course the entire continent of 1.3 billion people has the same socioeconomic status everywhere) to call people in the next _village_ (and it being the next village is somehow relevant because mobile call rates are tied to literal physical distance, obviously)" is exactly the kind of poverty porn nonsense that Westerners lap up about SSA without thinking, and I make an effort to call it out everywhere I see it.

I am curious about your thoughts on satellites as a particularly cost- effective way to improve mobile telecoms, considering that cellular networks are largely driven by masts that are very much on the ground and (in West Africa for instance), backed by submarine fibre-optic cables.

As an aside, it's extremely interesting to me that in most of my interactions with Westerners they seem rather incapable of finding very easily discoverable primary sources on living conditions in Africa. It would take maybe ten seconds to pull up actual December 2019 call rates and tariff plans from telecoms companies in Ethiopia or Nigeria or Rwanda or Botswana or wherever, but I instead get linked to data that aggregates mobile device and data plan prices from years ago. Then again I suppose that if one unironically believes that people here are stuck unable to call people in the _next village_ it wouldn't occur to them that this sort of information is widely available from Africans themselves.

For example, I use MTN and pay a flat rate of (the equivalent of) $0.0003 per second for calls and $0.011 to send texts. I'm on a 15GB data plan that costs $13.83, and the monthly plans go down to $2.77 for 1.5GB. There are also plans that will give you access to certain social media (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc) for a month for less than a dollar.

<comment><USER4> > "it's too expensive for Africans to call people in the next village"

What's the point of using quotes if you're not quoting...

What was actually said: "I _dunno how true this_ is but my african friends have told me that telecom in africa _is extremely expensive_ and calling someone the next village over _can have huge charges_.

Again this is second hand info and I don't know much about African politics but telecom is clearly one important reason."

If we consider saying "in the midwest fiber optic internet is extremely expensive" to be poverty porn then I suppose I'm guilty...

They were Cameroonian btw...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sub-Saharan Africa feels like a missed opportunity now for Europe and the US.

While the US and EU has been focused on donating aid, or through NGOs merely shipping Africans into Europe without much of a plan and then shrugging their shoulders when problems arise, China has been making deals there and investing an utterly staggering amount on an on-going basis into its development and future prosperity.

Some will proclaim "But they'll owe China! That won't end well!", which is shortsighted, lacking in self-awareness and playing into the "everyone that isn't us is the boogeyman" narrative the West likes to maintain.

In the same time that China has been spending its money on African investment, the US has been spending literally trillions on literally baseless wars, directly costing the lives of a countless amount of people in doing so and upending the lives of countless others.

Good on China, and good for Africa. I hope to live to see that continent prosper, although if any success is in sight I'm sure we'll see the US find _some_ _reason_ to deploy the so-richly invested military there.

<comment><USER7> > Some will proclaim "But they'll owe China! That won't end well!", which is > shortsighted, lacking in self-awareness and playing into the "everyone that > isn't us is the boogeyman" narrative the West likes to maintain.

Exactly. There aren't many Uighurs in Africa, so Africa should be fine.

<comment><USER8> Do you know what Uighurs are?

I mean, I guess China doesn't so much mind them when they are in Africa. Thousands of miles away. But they're all muslim.

<comment><USER9> Pretty sure it was a joke.

And China doesn't care about who they are dealing with in Africa or anywhere else. As long as you have money, are willing to ignore China's human rights abuses and aren't a threat to the stability of the Chinese governing structures you're all good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I mean no disrespect to Ethiopia but no, China launched it.

This is important because the ability to put an object in space is a huge achievement with geopolitical consequences. If you can put an object into space (even low earth orbit) you can put one in Time Square or the Kremlin and no one can stop you. That's why it's a big deal when a country first launches a satellite...

Sorry to be the arsehole here. But it should be made clear Ethiopia has NOT just jumped up on the possible threat scale...

<comment><USER11> The accurate title would be "China launched Ethiopia's first satellite into space."

The original title, "Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space with China's help", is still mostly accurate with a generous reading.

The submitted title was strangely altered to drop the key caveat, not sure if the submitter disapproves of "Chinese influence" or something.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure dang or whoever will add the "with China's help" bit, no biggie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ethiopia's GDP growth has been on a tear since 2000. [1]

If you visit the capital, you can't miss the Chinese influence. Last time I was there, a huge Chinese bank building was going up kiddy corner to the Airport in Addis.

BTW, if you haven't visited Ethiopia, put it on your list. It's an amazingly beautiful country.

[1] [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:ETH:TZA:UGA&hl=en&dl=en)

<comment><USER14> I just spent three years driving around Africa. I visited 35 different countries all around the continent. [1]

The Chiense influence is _staggering_. I'm writing a book about it now. Many, many parts of Africa are developing faster than any of us can comprehend, because we've never seen it.

In the last ~20 years cities like LA and Vancouver have gotten bigger, but they're more or less what they were - there were skyscrapers, electricity, water, freeways etc. Now it's just a bit bigger.

There are hundreds of cities in Africa that have gone from dirt streets to modern city with skyscrapers, 4G internet, subways (or above ground rail), running water end electricity, etc. in just 10 years.

It boggles the mind

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition- overview](http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-overview) & [http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme](http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme)

<comment><USER15> > hundreds of cities with subways

No, there aren't. There is exactly one (1) city in sub-Saharan Africa with a modern urban rail system, and it's Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In the rest of the continent's megacities (Nairobi, Lagos, etc) decent urban transit remains a dream. China has funded a bunch of long-distance rail, but that's primarily for trade (read: exporting raw materials).

But I still tip my pith helmet at you for crossing the DRC by Jeep!

<comment><USER16> While it's not surface light rail, I'd argue that the Gautrain in Johannesburg & Tshwane counts as a modern urban rail system, especially as it incorporates substantial subway sections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _The Chinese satellite was designed and built at a cost of $8 million, with > China paying around $6 million of the capsule's price_

It is odd that the article mentions these details about the satellite cost, but then completely ignores the much larger cost of the launch itself, which should be on the order of $50M.

 _edit_ : apparantly it was a rideshare with 9 satellites total. [https://www.space.com/china-long-march-4b-rocket- launches-9-...](https://www.space.com/china-long-march-4b-rocket- launches-9-satellites.html)

<comment><USER18> It's a 70kg satellite. Would have to be a rideshare, not a primary payload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ethiopia is on a real tear right now! The prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, came into power about 2 years ago and the first thing he did was release 100% of political prisoners in the country. It's the first time the country has had no political prisoners in decades. He then grabbed all his opposition together and worked with them. The reforms he's introduced are incredible, and show how things can be fixed in a nation that's torn apart for years by dictatorship and war. Abiy is definitely the greatest leader of our modern era. The man took a totalitarian country at war with its neighbors and flipped it 180 degrees in 18 months. He ended the war, removed totalitarian policies, and the country's people can even admit that there were government funded murder campaigns, something that if you'd talked about previously, you'd have been murdered. A great story all around. He heartily deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

</comment><comment><USER20> Almost every time there is a story about a non western country launching rockets or satellites, the trolls come out commenting on how these countries need to be focusing on poverty _instead_ of launching satellites. As if science isn't a way to improving the lot of people. As if science isn't a way to motivate a new generation of kids. As if all the communications, weather monitoring, and resource management that satellites make possible aren't ways to improve the place. As if national pride amounts for nothing. As if countries can only focus on _one thing at a time_. As if western countries fixed all of their social and economic problems before working on technological advances.

Racism has many forms, and this is one. Learn to recognize it and move away from it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wait so China launched it from China, with China paying most of it's price.

How the hell is this "Ethopian"?

</comment><comment><USER22> Bit misleading - China designed and launched the satellite, partially paid for by Ethiopia

</comment><comment><USER23> Why has the title been edited, I posted this story the other day with the "... with China's help" ending.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850364)

</comment><comment><USER24> Was wondering how democratic Ethiopia was, and:

> The EPRDF won the 2010 elections by a landslide, taking 499 seats, while > allied parties took a further 35. Oppositions parties took just 2. Both > opposition groups say their observers were blocked from entering polling > stations during the election on Sunday, May 23, and in some cases the > individuals were beaten. The United States and the European Union have both > criticized the election as falling short of international standards. > Additionally, the EPRDF won all but one of 1,904 council seats in regional > elections.

<comment><USER12> Ethiopia is also an early adopter among developing nations to adopt NSA style surveillance. And like all countries with weak or nonexistent judicial oversight or independent courts, it was used immediately to target the ruling parties political adversaries phones. Including journalists and lawyers.

Citizen Lab based out of Canada did a lot of great research exposing it. Of course the Ethiopian gov bought it all from that Israeli "we don't sell to bad guys" NSO and other western companies.

From my understanding the recent election switched the ruling tribe which has resulted in some positive movement and economic development. One of their big issues recently was the ruling tribe suppressing one the other major ones which resulted in big protests and protestors getting killed. I _believe_ that tribe got into power or at least in a better position.

<comment><USER25> > And like all countries with weak or nonexistent judicial oversight or > independent courts, it was used immediately to target the ruling parties > political adversaries phones. Including journalists and lawyers.

To be fair, that was done in the US (though not immediately, that came to light), which is why we have FISA.

<comment><USER12> I don't consider secret courts like FISA sufficiently comparable to independent judicial oversight. It's oversight theatre.

The FISA rulings and arguments never become public, most of the domestic surveillance warrants are justified merely by the fact the people will never find out they were surveilled and therefore won't be "harmed" by such behaviour (this was the exact argument which Yahoo was given and lost trying to fight it in one of the only public FISA rulings available online).

Most importantly only the NSA government lawyers gets to argue the grounds for surveillance is justified. There is never a point in time where it is critical analyzed by outside parties so we put 100% of the trust in the FISA judge panel doing their due diligence and standing up for American citizens rights.

But as we saw with the recent Carter Page FBI investigations the feds can feed the FISA courts complete crap and they'll sign off on it anyway. Multiple times.

I love when people act like this isn't some rubber stamp court and is actually sufficient to protect Americans constitutional rights. It so obviously isn't and you'd have to be a serious military authoritarian hawk not to see through that nonsense.

These secret courts live and die because the average person doesn't understand how it works and the government is just telling everyone to "shut up and trust us"... including decades of congressman on the House Intelligence Committee.

<comment><USER25> > I don't consider secret courts like FISA sufficiently comparable to > independent judicial oversight.

I never said they were, that's a different discussio. I said the concrete fact of abuse of the national security surveillance apparatus against political opponents when we didn't have even that is why we have FISA (the law, which involves a lot more than the two courts it creates.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> China is looking for an African location for its deep space network. Perhaps a dual use station in Ethiopia will fill in that gap. The third partner is Argentina.

</comment><comment><USER27> Little surprised to see all the ice flaking off the rocket at launch, isn't this a danger to the rest of the booster, lower fins?

<comment><USER28> No, it's only really a problem for payloads strapped to the side of the booster, like the space shuttle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is a dead comment by someone whose grandma kept donating to charity for Ethiopia. The grandma died poor save the poster is upset that nobody from Ethiopia ever thanked her and now they are prospering. I don't like that comment, but it is actually quite interesting, especially if taken together with another comment on a parallel discussion about the huge growth in Africa and the very visible Chinese influence.

It makes you wonder how China's involvement has lead to do much growth in such short time, while the West had been focused on providing to poor, starving African children for decades. I wonder how much the attitude reflected in the comment about the donating grandma is common and how it contributed to the connotative lack of results from Western aid efforts. Did we deep down not want results, but instead mainly make ourselves feel good while keeping Africa in a position where they can provide that feeling to us? What concretely is China doing that we failed to do? How will this pan out on the long term for Africa? So many interesting topics in here!

<comment><USER30> China is exploiting them. They're not doing it out of kindness, or for some moral self-aggrandizing.

<comment><USER31> Yet even this exploitative relationship may prove much more helpful than the grain and occasional squad of observers the US or UN sends. It's a funny sort of problem isn't it - perhaps the only way to get genuine investment in these areas is an almost parasitic relationship. More interesting would be if this forces the US or other western countries to more aggressively step up to the plate...

<comment><USER32> The West will never step aggressively to the plate. We aren't allowed to by our own domestic politics. One of the major reasons China can become so directly and aggressively involved is they aren't white. They don't have a history of African colonialism, Apartheid, or slavery in Africa. They've done all these (or similar) and worse, but not in Africa and not in a way which found domestic disapproval.

If the West ever entered Africa the way China has the politicians leading it would destroyed at home. It's more domestic politics and history than geopolitics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: World class unlimited email hosting for all your domains from $4/month - <AUTHOR> https://www.migadu.com <comment><USER2> This looks pretty slick and well done for having a comprehensive FAQ section and plenty of info which answered most of my questions.

For me, email is the 'master key' for most of my online accounts (because password resets are done via email so if your email account is compromised an attacker can quickly leverage access to other services) and email security is top priority. I didn't see anything about using two-factor authentication with this service - is it available?

Also, your site only supports obsolete HTTPS protocols. TLS 1.0 and SSLv3. You should drop SSL 3 and enable support for TLS 1.2. Here's a test you can run with feedback and resources to learn more about secure configurations: [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=migadu.com&s=...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=migadu.com&s=184.108.40.206&latest)

<comment><USER3> I was also discouraged to see there was no 2fa option. Email is simply too important. One of the reasons I stick with gmail is because I know Google hires some of the best security people in the world and takes it very seriously. They also support 2fa and other security measures.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, unless you use their paid service or you know someone, you don't really have many options to get in touch with them.

<comment><USER5> Even if you're paying for G Suite, my experience has been that it's tough to get a hold of a human Googler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While looking through I noticed this from the latest changelog post:

> Until the end of November, you can use the discount code NOVEMBERRAIN to get > 50% off any Migadu plan, permanently. Offer is valid only for new upgrades.

$2 per month is pretty good, or it makes the 'standard' plan roughly the same as non-discounted 'mini'.

Not entirely sure yet where you enter this code so I sent them a question.

\--edit

Very quick response from the team.

You have to upgrade once first, then apply the code via Account > Coupons. So, upgrade to a monthly mini, apply the code, then upgrade to the plan you're after (the initial $5 will be subtracted from a yearly code if you select one). The code should apparently remain active no matter what once it's applied.

<comment><USER7> I couldn't figure how to apply the coupon though. It says that the coupon has been applied, but I am charged 48 usd for the Mini/Yearly plan.

<comment><USER8> I contacted their support and got several replies very quickly. Looks like they kind of slapped together the coupon thing. You can't apply the coupon until after you switch to a paid plan, so it doesn't take affect until the next billing cycle. But Dejan from Migadu was really helpful, and I expect they'd refund half of your first bill if you want it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I contacted the support and I got quick reply from Dejan that they will refund half of the bill.

I just noticed that the support email was marked as spam by outlook.com (weird, since I'd already marked the invoice and other emails from Migadu as "Not Spam").

<comment><USER9> Yeah outlook is doing the same to me, keeps marking migadu emails as spam despite corrections as well as from my newly-setup-on-migadu domain.

Just upgraded to paid though, hoping it'll sort itself out in time.

<comment><USER10> That's a bit of a red flag to me. If they can't deliver their own mail to the inbox, how am I supposed to trust them with mine?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fine with us. Nevertheless, I am not sure you appreciate or fully understand how email works. If outlook is marking as spam a valid, DKIM authenticated email, with a correct SPF from a server with excellent reputation of 99/100 (SenderScore) and good domain reputation...who is to blame?

Everyone is quick to jump and blame the small guy. :) Our reputation score is actually better than some of the largest email providers because of our low volume and individual verification.

<comment><AUTHOR> @TheGrumpyBrit - I am sorry, did not meant to imply you did not know about the email internals.

I agree with you, but in the end, if all of those are correct on our side, it simply can be the spam filter on the other side. It is not only the sender who decides the deliverability :)

We do not use any tracking pixels.

Btw. Any suggestion is more than welcome and highly appreciated! Thank you for looking at Migadu!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think one of the things I appreciated most about this service is the drawbacks[0] section. I've started to look for this section in major JS frameworks[1] as well as other SASS/PASS services when I'm evaluating them and I've found them all immensely helpful.

[0] [https://www.migadu.com/en/drawbacks.html](https://www.migadu.com/en/drawbacks.html)

[1] [https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html](https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes, same here.

I was surprised actually. I do usually see this in some FOSS projects, but never in a commercial project.

It was actually quite refreshing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounded interesting, but it seems abit misleading to me.. The title says "unlimited" and the page says:

> We do not count your domains, mailboxes, gigabytes or teeth.

yet the pricing page says:

> up to 100 outgoing emails per day

Even the most expensive plan says 2000. I'm not saying it's unreasonable, but it's certainly not unlimited in that respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thank you for your comments. It depends how you look at it. All email services have limits. However, the limits we set are more as a protection for ourselves and our users.

We have to deal with spammers, phishing attacks etc. We diversify based on the actual, realistic needs of the organisation. For instance, a startup of 3 would not need to send 500 emails a day, that is a clear red flag. In practice we have yet to have a case of a user reaching those limits. Thanks again!

<comment><USER12> I appreciate the fact that you guys made product decisions, but this statement was a little red-flag to me:

> For instance, a startup of 3 would not need to send 500 emails a day, that > is a clear red flag.

There are many startups that do cold outreach, via cold emailing, that could do roughly 500 emails per day. I am not sure how typical this is, but as someone that has started doing sending cold emails as a direct sales tool, it seems to me that you just haven't had any customers like that yet.

If you do though, don't assume they are spammers.

<comment><USER10> If you're sending 500 unsolicited emails a day, you're spamming. "Cold outreach" sounds very much like a nice way of saying "Spamming" to me, and I wouldn't want to share a mail server with you.

For me, the bigger red flag is the response you got - I would expect a reputable mail provider to make it abundantly clear that the behaviour you describe is not welcome on their service.

<comment><USER12> I hear you. The term 'spamming' is quite subjective.

Either way, the fact of the matter is sending cold emails is actually a powerful way to build sales -- there is a simple reason so many people do it, it works.

Like it or not, many startups do it.

So I was simply pointing this out for the OP's benefit.

<comment><USER10> There's an equally simple reason why they do it from botnets or hacked mail servers. It's illegal in many places, and its a great way to get your mail host blacklisted. There is no benefit whatsoever for OP to allow spamming through his service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been looking for a personal email provider to migrate away from Gmail to. I was assuming Fastmail, because i've heard many good things about them.

Can anyone more "in the know" compare this product to Fastmail for a simple personal email solution?

Note i don't care about most features, including custom domains. In fact, i'm not even sure i'll use a custom domain since that just increases the attack vector to my email. I just primarily want simple, reliable, and secure email.

<comment><USER14> As a self-reply, i will say that Migadu having a permanent free tier is very nice. Not that i intend to use it exactly, but knowing that if i go broke and homeless, still having the same "internet contact address" is useful to me.

Not that the pricing is likely to ever be an issue (knock on wood), but i'm a planner.. of sorts.

<comment><USER15> Just understand that there is a large risk to a service that has a free tier as its draw. Free accounts have resource demands that cost money. If the company becomes insolvent, your "permanent" account ceases to exist. Fastmail is appealing to many in part because it is a paid service. Regardless of the number of users, the service remains funded and will continue to exist. (Unlike the many startup services that have been pulled due to depletion of investor funds or user loss.)

<comment><USER14> Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is how I do email:

\- Use my domain providers 1GB mailbox.

\- IMAP on the phone, POP3 on the PC.

\- I'm currently not subscribed to any high-volume mailing lists, and won't unless I'm a very active contributor. The only lists I follow is the announce lists from GNU, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. You don't need to subscribe in order to post to many email lists.

\- Pop my mail into my computer, use procmail to check for spam & virus (spamassassin, clamav), sort likely spam into spam mailbox, non-spam into inbox, rest to /dev/null (spamassassin score>5 and/or clamav virus check positive). If I'm on any moderate-or-high-volume lists, sort them into different mailboxes (most the content there is not sent to me, so no need to have them in front of me every time I look at my inbox).

\- My inbox receives many updates from services and newsletters I'm subscribed to. I delete most mail from those if I won't have to return to them (e.g. a message about an event next week, I add the event to my agenda if I'm participating, and delete the mail; copy the relevant text to my agenda if necessary).

\- Report to spamassassin and delete any message that escaped it and made it to my inbox.

\- Check spam every-so-often, report ham and move to inbox, delete the rest.

\- Use a combination of mpop, msmtp, procmail, spamassassin, clamav, Rmail, Org-Mode and mairix to get all this going (K9 mail on Android for IMAP there). Sounds complex, but isn't, nowadays I've tuned my setup to be pleasing. The only thing I'd like to do in future is to do POP, SMTP, sorting and search in Emacs instead of through all those programs.

One shortcoming of my setup is that once I pop my mail, I can't view it on mobile anymore. That's something I can fix (maybe there's an app for Android that can read local mail in the SD card), but I haven't had a problem up until now. And no, I'm not a unix-vintage-guy or whatnot, this setup is practical and pleasing to use (at least in my case), and I own all my mail the moment I pop it from my server, and nobody has a copy of it. If it's not on your disks, you don't own it.

<comment><USER17> This is why I don't host my own email. I pay a provider that I trust to do all of this for me.

<comment><USER16> Neither do I host my mail, I just fetch it from the server. Even if you have your mail kept _up there somewhere_ , you still have to do all this (grouping, spam reporting, ham-checking [i.e. mail you want to read that went into spam folder], getting rid of unwanted mail, managing subscriptions, etc.), but the differences are (a) you don't get to decide which software does all that, (b) you have to use a half-arsed interface to configure groups, filters, etc., and (c) an attacker with your login can get at all your past messages whereas in my setup all he gets is what I didn't fetch yet. All I did was configure the software once (a couple days on-and-off hacking), and I saved myself from those disadvantages and spared ~$30 per year (used to use FastMail).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are wondering about jurisdiction, according to their FAQ they are in Switzerland, and according to geoip their servers are hosted by OVH in France.

<comment><USER19> Their web server or the actual email servers?

<comment><USER18> Strangely, both seem to use the same IP addresses (Maybe there is a load balancer there?) So, as far as I know, both are in France.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly, they use the Nodejs-based Haraka MTA instead of a more conservative choice like Postfix or Exim. I wonder what exact advantages they traded in more mature and certainly not much less performant software in for?

A very good and even cheaper alternative to this service I can recommend is mailbox.org, run by German IT service specialist Heinlein. They deliver a full OpenXchange setup (mail, calendar, contacts) with custom domain, 3 different mail aliases and additional + aliases and good privacy policy for 1€/month. They are very realiable (using a more conservative MTA, postfix), and the company is mature. They provide better value for money than migadu.com just by looking at it.

<comment><USER21> If I recall correctly, they have some laughable storage limits like 250 megabytes. Not a big fan of storing all my email locally and doing backups myself + no mobile search. So 1990ish, in my opinion.

<comment><USER20> 2G storage for mailboxes. Search via IMAP sucks for pretty much all hosted IMAP I tried, only time it worked decently was when I was messing around via a self-hosted Dovecot and configured indexing manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When you go to add your payment card, there is a barely noticeable dropdown box to select your plan, which defaults to the medium tier plan.

I just wanted to add the card and then go to another page to sign up for the very small $4 a month plan, but ended up being charged $17 immediately.

Love the service concept, love their FAQ and apparent expertise, but hate that they did that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, dejan from Migadu here. Sorry about that. It is an oversight on our side. We intended that dropdown as an aid, not a dark pattern. We'll get it rethought. Thank you for bringing it up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems like a cool solution for guys like me who have about 7 or 8 email domains to keep track of.

Also, thanks for pointing out that GMail also has a daily cap on sending emails out. I've never ever come close to it, but never realised there is a cap on their service.

<comment><USER24> May i ask why you not simply redirect all your emails to a single inbox?

<comment><USER23> As another user pointed out - I use the separate email addresses for separate side projects. Some have additional team members on the domain, some have just me.

I used to try and run them all under one email client, but it got messy to try and keep replies separate and coming from the correct domain address (for support and marketing queries etc.). Also, trying to run one inbox on mobile was achievable, but tricky.

I like having each web app domain in a totally separate, sandboxed inbox. Occasionally I delegate the handling of a particular inbox to another team member for a week or two while I am either away or working on a project, so it is nice to be able to attach/detach an Inbox from my conscious management whenever I like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been using these guys now for about a month - fantastic customer service and the ui is stupidly simple. They're doing one thing and doing it well,can't recommend them enough

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Very appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there any plan to support two-factor authentication?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, not at the moment, but we will bring it up for discussion! May I ask why do you consider it a worthy addition? Thank you!

<comment><USER27> As another commenter said above, email security is crucial given the number of sites and services that rely on email for password resets.

I can't imagine switching to an email provider that didn't use 2FA for that very reason.

<comment><USER28> Second that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just want to echo that 2FA should be your next highest priority. I love everything I see otherwise.

Having the ability to integrate TOTP or U2F (or both) would make this my go to recommendation for, well, everyone.

</comment><comment><USER30> I understand why you put in the drawbacks section, I know that kind of anti- marketing can work. But it's a little too honest - nobody wants to read that their emails might end up as junk mail. Maybe be a bit more vague. Or if you're not significantly worse than your competitors on that front it's a bit misleading if you're disclaiming it as a drawback.

Also, when you open up a link in the menu as a new tab (via middle mouse button) the current tab becomes unusable due to the loading icon you overlay. Very annoying!

And finally - it'd be good to have a demo of the web client without having to register. Because that's essentially what most people will be paying for since email plumbing is pretty standard across providers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the input! I see your point and thank you for it! Honestly, we're not trying to play any marketing tricks, but rather give all help possible in order to decide whether it works for the interesting parties. Surely, we've got to trim down and brush off a lot of things.

The mail going to junk is an unfortunate reality, there are never any guarantees with any mail service, and especially with new services. We've already had the big ones play muscles on us several times.

Thank you for reporting the new tab bug, will be fixed!

The webmail / ui demo is coming up too. Thank you for suggesting it!

<comment><USER31> I really appreciate that and further think you are on the right track with honesty (drawbacks, etc.), as people get more and more immune to marketing bullshit.

> We've already had the big ones play muscles on us several times.

Without calling names, can you elaborate on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had our servers blacklisted for "low traffic" and completely legit, authenticated emails marked as Spam. Completely new IPs with 100/100 reputation were blacklisted just because they were not known from before. To get us off from their lists we were in for a web of problems. It is all rigged against the small hosters. If you are a bigger one, you can just get directly in touch. I was personally all for the idea of running own mail servers, but after the experience so far, would say good luck with that. Unfortunate though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For everyone else wondering what the catch is: the number of outgoing mails is limited (100/day for the $4 tier).

<comment><USER33> Which for someone with several hobby domains, but one person is fine... the standard tier isn't a huge expense either.

<comment><USER34> Also if that is a concern for you, a postfix server on a $5 digital ocean droplet will allow you to send any number of emails.

<comment><USER33> Then it becomes my job to keep said system, anti-spam settings, etc updated... I don't want to do that work... Frankly if I didn't have to work for a living, I'd start a new open-source mail system that didn't suck.

I typically don't send more than 40 emails a day. But have several domains I would like to have email for... paying $10/address is a bit steep to say the least for that use case.

<comment><USER34> Here's my anti spam solution. I created an entire domain for it with a catch all address. When I sign up for a service I use email@example.com, if I get a lot of spam I reject mail for that address at the server.

You are paying for convenience here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just switched over my Google hosted domains to this. I really only need email, so GSuite is overkill. Why does my throw away email address need a youtube/calendar/google+ account...... I actually originally switched from my old gmail address to my GApps email, but Google ruined it by making GApp accounts inferior. You can't do tons of stuff (Family Library is just 1 example), so I switched back. I use my gmail account as a webclient for my other accounts (pop/smtp).

I got Google apps when it launched and was a great free option. Now they're removed free accounts, and even on the grandfathered free accounts, they don't let you add new domains anymore... I really just have 1 important account, and unimportant ones for hobby domains, so this is a great option for me. I considered PO Box for my important account, but for now, I'll just try this for all my domains.

I really like the simplicity. I sent some test emails: Google and my work's exchange correctly get the email. outlook.com flagged as spam. I only have 2 concerns. 1, they need 2FA ASAP (which they've acknowledged), and 2, how long will these guys be around. How many employees are there, how much investment. It would suck if 12 months from now they shut down. It would be a scramble to move something as important as email. Rather than shutdown, most companies in these types of businesses up the price, remove features from the cheaper plans etc...there's no promise of price lock-in here, but since that's their market, I suspect they're aware of the effect a price increase might have.

</comment><comment><USER36> Fantastic. I just set it up on a personal domain using AWS Route53. My first message was sent to Gmail and did not go to spam. It was my first time using "TXT" records and took a total of about 45seconds to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER37> It was very easy to setup. I like the interface. My only complaint is the annoying signature that I can't figure out how to remove[0]. It doesn't appear to be listed in the settings.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/512ZG2F.png](https://i.imgur.com/512ZG2F.png)

<comment><USER19> This seems to be on the free plan only (see pricing plan). Which makes sense to me - if you're not paying, you might as well be advertising.

<comment><USER37> Ah, that explains it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know how good the service is... but the clean design of the site is appealing.

</comment><comment><USER39> This comes at the perfect time for me since I plan to move the mess of 4 domains with about 12 email mailboxes for projects, private and my family to a single more reliable service. Right now its on some Google Apps free tier from back when it was free and a cheapskate VPS hoster with terrible spam reputation and customer support.

Just signed up for the mini plan and if it does in fact give me about 15 somewhat reliable email mailboxes for just 48$ a year I'll be a happy customer. With the 50% off it's a steal compared to other services, especially with my number of mailboxes.

<comment><USER28> Seriously, take a look at Zoho.

<comment><USER39> Zoho definitely seems to offer more but at a way higher price because I'm billed by mailboxes/users it seems. Thing is all my 12 mailboxes together over 4 domains send maybe 150 mails a month overall. So low traffic, but multiple domains and mailboxes used by two or three people - simply to keep email from different places and for different purposes across 10 devices automatically sorted by mailbox. It's why I've been using a small VPS in the past but running my own mailserver is a pain to keep up to date, secure and spam free.

And Zoho has too many features I wouldn't use, I really just need a few (hopefully) reliable and (somewhat) secure IMAP capable inboxes which can be accessed by 10 different stationary and mobile devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've not spent any time thinking about pricing for email SaaS targeting consumers but a few quick thoughts:

\- You have to have a _lot_ of subscribers to make $4/month amount to real money. Also, churn is higher. My SaaS service Cronitor used to offer a $6.99-turned-9.99 plan targeted at individuals and churn rates on that plan is literally 10x higher than our $25 tier.

\- If being cheap is your thing, and I'm willing to spend $50/mo for business email, do I feel comfortable going with the people who are competing primarily on price?

As a datapoint, We use Pobox.com for Cronitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comments. However, Migadu is not intended to be "cheap". That is not the selling point of it.

We used to use Google Apps for multiple domains for our starup projects, ideas etc. Switching between these multiple accounts was becoming ridiculous and complex. Then, they made it $5 per account. We actually had many addresses but only two users. Our total cost of that would be measured in hundreds of $ which def would not be worth it.

What I personally dislike regarding other services is that they claim storage as one of the most important selling points but then do not account for the price drop per GB. Since GMail for work launched (2006?), the cost per GB dropped more than sixty fold: [http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte- update](http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte-update)

Any update in price? Nope. And then, the price of Google Apps (Gmail) are global. We have clients in Zimbabwe for instance. $5 per month per account is not the same as it would be in the US. Yet if a company from Zimbabwe uses a @gmail address, it won't be taken serious.

Migadu is profitable since a while ago, and real money is relative. We're not after exits and TechCrunch, just doing what we like and hacking at it daily. :) Pays the bills. Ironically, we are also in Switzerland, where living expenses are among the highest in the world.

Thanks for the assertions though! :)

<comment><USER40> I agree that your pricing model is more user-friendly and it's more inline with your cost model (mailboxes are free to provide). It's why I clicked on it. I spent about 3 minutes given my browser history, looking at your homepage and pricing page. What I absorbed, after seeing your HN "email from $4/mo" and then your homepage, was that this was primarily about being cheap. Maybe I'm an outlier, but that seemed to be the message you were sending me.

And I totally understand you're not trying to "Tech Crunch", I think a SaaS is a great side business -- i've done this myself -- but also the only way to ensure stability of a project over long term is for it to provide financial rewards inline with effort.

Also, I definitely should've added: Congrats on shipping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Very appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As far as I see you don't support Apple's native email push notifications, which is the exact reason I switched from Gmail to FastMail.

Are you planning to implement that feature?

<comment><USER21> A great service, netherless.

There should be more independent email providers out there, not just google, ms,yahoo,apple and behemoths alike.

<comment><USER41> I agree 100%. I just wish I could take the gmail interface and use it to manage my mail on my server. It's the UI that keeps me on Google for email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Looks great. Do you have any screenshots for the webmail? I couldn't find any on the site.

<comment><USER7> I signed up today. It's pretty slick.

[http://imgur.com/a/Xt4CQ](http://imgur.com/a/Xt4CQ)

<comment><USER43> Looks like they are using Rainloop ([https://www.rainloop.net/](https://www.rainloop.net/)) with a customized skin.

<comment><USER44> I'm a bit suprised: While Rainloop seems to the most modern opensource webmail client I could find (and I did do some research), from their github: _This is NOT a stable version of RainLoop Webmail. It's not recommended to use in production environment._ From my own testing there are certainly still a few bugs. Interesting they go with this for their primary webmail.

<comment><USER45> If they are using the AGPL community version of Rainloop, that might also pull in some obligations they aren't meeting.

AGPL is pretty viral, even for a web app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Are there plans for providing an API for creating mailboxes/domains? We previously used Mailgun for mailboxes (back when they still provided them) and ever since they discontinued mailbox support we've been looking for a solid mailbox provider that can handle any number of domains, mailboxes and aliases.

<comment><USER28> Have you checked out Zoho? They are free for up to 25 accounts per domain.

<comment><USER46> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been testing fastmail recently via their free trial (for my eventual migration away from google apps/domain)...so seeing some up and coming competition is always healthy; gives us more choices in the future. I wish these guys plenty of luck, as we need more options just like these guys! Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER48> Is it possible to setup a catch-all address or does each new email address on a domain need to be manually created?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it is. Regex is supported too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is it possible and does it make sense to migrate old emails from GMail to Migadu?

<comment><USER6> Possible, yes (`imapsync` makes it easy). Does it make sense? Depends on you.

<comment><USER4> Been migrating a few accounts using impasync. It works great for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What is the backup and redundancy strategy? It has some mention of backups and maintaining copies of deleted emails for you, but what happens if the specific server your account is on suffers catastrophic failure?

<comment><USER51> Hi, thank you for your question. We do hourly incremental backups on external servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Are there any plans to allow people to utilize an API to create and manage accounts or forwards? If not, this would be awesome feature given how you bill.

<comment><USER53> Same question. The "unlimited" domains would be very useful in some scenarios where I'd like many domains to simply act as email forwarders (rather than storage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Anyone here used Fastmail but migrated to this service, and able to provide a more detailed comparison?

I'm happy with Fastmail, but Migadu's pricing is very appealing...

<comment><USER45> I would put Migadu more in the hobby category...they seem pretty upfront about their drawbacks: [https://www.migadu.com/en/drawbacks.html](https://www.migadu.com/en/drawbacks.html)

If you have a domain where those drawbacks aren't showstoppers, you might also look at Yandex hosted email. Can't beat the price (free), it has decent storage (10GB) and the limit for sending is 500/day[1].

See: [https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/](https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/)

[1][https://yandex.com/support/mail/spam/sending- limits.xml](https://yandex.com/support/mail/spam/sending-limits.xml)

<comment><USER55> Those drawbacks are also valid for any other small provider. Fastmail also has the problem of mails classified as spam. Really any service except the biggest 3-4 have occasional reputation problems.

The difference is just that Migadu is honest about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Really wish you could give a display name for an alias in the UI so you can use more random aliases for services and still know easily where it belongs

<comment><AUTHOR> Note taken! Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I love how fast the website is.

</comment><comment><USER58> This looks great, moved a couple of my domains and looking forward to test it out.

Does anyone know if forwarded e-mails count as outgoing e-mails?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for giving us a spin. They do (via aliases / catchalls).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I would say that reliability is not perfect so far. I'm getting timeout error on IMAP and webmail

</comment><comment><USER60> Tried to signup but getting errors. Tried to send message via contact me page and the page crashed.

Not very comforting.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been overwhelmed by the interest. Thank you guys for all the interest and great comments! We're re-adjusting our infrastructure to deal with the demand. The site and infrastructure is a bit suffering today, but we're hard at work and get all ready during the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Anybody got it working with cloudflare? Support is helping me but there are some setup problems

<comment><USER62> I got it to work, what step are you stuck on?

<comment><USER61> SPF

<comment><USER35> I got it working with Cloudflare add a TXT record under name, enter (without quotes) '@' under key, enter (without quotes) 'v=spf1 a mx include:spf.migadu.com ~all'

You must delete all other SPF TXT entries (so if you were previously on google hosted, delete the Google SPF record.

<comment><USER61> Thanks. The support also helped me out, now it is working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Do you accept PayPal payments?

<comment><USER6> They don't currently - they use Stripe for card handling. Ideally they should probably be using Stripe's own recurring payment feature rather than storing card numbers themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, we use Stripe and their subscriptions with their payment method storage.

We do not accept PayPal in the interface, but will accept payments for yearly plans on individual basis. So if you wish to use PayPal, please just get in touch for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> How is this better than proton mail? [https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, thank you for the question. ProtonMail is a different kind of email for a different kind of audience, so it depends on what your needs are. Honestly, we're ourselves puzzled over benefits of ProtonMail over just using yourself GPG.</comment></comment>


Sark really is a world apart - <AUTHOR> https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/04/19/sark-really-is-a-world-apart/ <comment><USER2> Having grown up on Guernsey and been to Sark several times, I have a slightly less romantic view of the island. The Sarkees regard tourists as another form of cattle, there to be milked. Everything costs, and by the time you have paid for seats on the toast rack, bike hire for the day, lunch, and of course the boat fare, its quite an expensive day out.

The bit about the Barclay brothers is actually a bigger issue than this article really makes out. The Barclays are buying Sark property whenever it becomes available and then simply closing it. See for instance [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe- guernsey-30035969](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-30035969) and [https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2017/01/barclay- brothers-t...](https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2017/01/barclay-brothers-to- close-sark-vineyard/). Given that the Barclays could buy the whole of Sark out of pocket change were it to become available, this is as clear an example of economic bullying as any I have ever seen. I'm surprised that a Marxist outlet like this didn't make more of it.

<comment><USER3> Not sure you can still call Spiked a Marxist outlet these days. They have more in common with /pol than Marx.

<comment><USER4> Very much so - they've got a very weird position on the right, and have done for some time now.

There's an interesting article at the LRB that explores the Spiked/IoE/related nexus: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are- they](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I visited Sark some years ago, while the Barclay brothers were still investing in the island. There was indeed incredible tension between the pro and anti- brother Islanders, as per the article. There was also tension between those who thought that Sark's horses should have Sunday off vs. continue to pull carts for the tourist incomers, or whether their day off should be Monday.

Definitely a different world.

</comment><comment><USER6> See also the FT coverage: [https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/01/30/1548828002000/Alphavi...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/01/30/1548828002000/Alphaville- spent-36-hours-on-the-island-of-Sark--Here-s-how-it-went-/)

(While this article is non-political, I would caution readers against Spiked magazine; it is the inheritor of _Living Marxism_ , and produces a lot of clickbait contrarianism.)

</comment><comment><USER7> '...It was at this location where, in 1859, the islanders gathered to greet Queen Victoria, who was expected to stop off at Sark on her way to Jersey. They had prepared a lavish banquet, and the quay was decorated with flowers, flags and a red carpet. But the queen and her entourage simply sailed by. To make matters worse, by the time they got back to the Seigneurie the dining room where the banquet was to be held had been trashed by peacocks.'

Ouch, royal rejection is a whole another kind.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this the Spiked magazine that's funded by the Koch brothers?</comment>