I've been vibe coding a way to stream my music files collection. Right now I have a server in my NAS which serves a website that streams my music, like an Internet radio but on my local network. I've been very happy to rediscover my collection, especially when I wake up and let it put something random. Maybe it could be something that I could use beyond my local network? (for personal use, of course), what I have now is already making me happy.
I've been exchanging postcards on Postcrossing (https://www.postcrossing.com/) for years, it's very fun! I've even been to Postcrossing meetups, where several members gather to sign postcards so you send them to people.
In Postcrossing you put your address, and then you can request a random one. You put an ID, so when the recipient receives it, they register that number and you get a postcard from a random member.
I recently started Postcrossing. 5 sent, with 2 traveling to Russia and China (from the US, it's been ~40+ days, I figured those 2 would take a while, but we will see if they get delivered!)
So far I've gotten 2 from Taiwan, and 1 from Germany and Belgium.
I'm excited to find my next stash of cards to send out! It really is such a wholesome activity.
I've been sending postcards to a list of ~15 local friend and family for the last couple years. I travel a lot for work so have a lot to send. I get so few responses, only 2 people have ever replied, and one of those was some random person I met on Discord. I really wish more people would send mail. My mom will occasionally text me to say she liked the card, but she never seems to get the hint that I'd super appreciate a physical response even if it's some scribbles on notebook paper in an envelope. I teared up a little bit when I got my first postcrossing card.
I’ve had my email address in a `mailto:` link in plaintext on my then-web-site, now-blog, since the early 2000s, and spam is no real problem. There are a few spam messages in my spam mailbox per day.
Perhaps my provider’s just great at filtering spam - but I kind of doubt it’s better than the major players (for years I’ve used Zoho for email - and it’s ‘okay’ enough that it’s not worth switching).
you know what's funny is that llms are also good at detecting spam as they are generating it. I've got an automation that scores incoming emails and it's getting better and better each day (also more expensive haha)
I can’t explain it well, but I think there is an asymmetric issue here… that the ability for an LLM to write a plausible email, and the ability for an LLM to detect that it’s spam are mismatched.
If an LLM and make a plausible email, the best another LLM can do is to rank it as plausible. Blackbox creation and detection have to be on the same level.
Perhaps if you said the detection LLM had all your context and websearch. That it could know that a Penny Pollytree at Coco Co isn’t a real person, but… that just seems like burning a ton of coal to detect fraud where the creation LLM was able to easily come up with the fictitious spam cheaply.
The real story here is this will go beyond email verification. That every system we have is going to need to up its security. Paper birth certificates and social security cards and email addresses and all manner of identity is going to need new systems of auth. The challenge will be to prevent authoritarian centralization.
But I think there's also an asymmetry strongly favouring the defense, namely that for a spam mail to be worthwhile, it needs some call to action, a way to lure in the victims.
A link to a shady website, an infected attachment, a weird freemail address in the body or Reply-To header that doesn't match the forged From header, etc. They're trying to get cleverer for sure -- I started getting phishing mails where the malicious link is only in a QR code in an embedded image -- but I think the need to somehow link to the trap is an inherent weakness against any defense. SpamAssassin rules give a good overview of stuff that help detection no matter how the rest of the mail is generated.
I doubt it. Most of the signals spam filters use these days are reputation based. You have to build up your domain and IP reputation for a long time first.
> You have to build up your domain and IP reputation for a long time first.
Or buy/rent domains/IPs that have good reputations, as there are services that specializes in just bringing up the reputation for stuff so they can sell it once "good". Same exists for user accounts for various platforms like reddit and so on.
> But I like this review of techniques, even the simplest ones are very effective, that surprised me.
because harvesters don't care until one technique gets massive use. if you come up with a unique but simple enough scheme for your sites and keep a few dozen email addresses out of their reach.. they've still gathered a million addresses. it's not really worth their effort to get the last 0.0001% of extra email addresses
so it's best to just not advertise your solution and make sure it doesn't get n
any outside traction - if it gets popular the harvesters will defeat it
The author of the article mentioned that they are using it as a honeypot to detect when bots (or rather authors of the bots) implement a work-around for the obfuscation technique. Which is pretty smart!
I've also been like this. But if as the article suggests trivial options like HTML entities or elements with display:none will keep my email out of >90% of harvesters I'm reconsidering as they seem to have no downside other than an extra couple of bytes on the wire.
I swear my apple hosted mail spam filter works in reverse. The inbox is full of spam and the legitimate messages (including apple billing notifications) in the spam folder.
I have mixed feelings with this. I've just checked out my GitHub repo and just realised that Claude itself inserted as a contributor without giving me a heads up it would do it.
I've been in your place. I was 36 when I decided to separate, after 7 years of marriage/10 years of relationship with my first serious relationship ever. It was also a few months before the first COVID lockdown, so I could say I was really alone. At least physically, I had my family and some friends, but I had also recently moved to a new city. The circle of colleagues who I'd thought would become my social circle disappeared overnight due to COVID.
In the past 6 years I've made a small circle of friends who live physically close, the kind that you don't need to plan 3 weeks ahead to meet. Just pick up the phone and meet in 15 minutes. I feel that this is a fundamental block for wellbeing. I grew up with the Internet, I love it to bits, but it's no replacement for human contact.
You've also read about hobbies. In my particular case I picked up the ukulele. During lockdown I participated in an online session that happened daily. That formed a community, and although I don't go to those online sessions anymore, I made friends, and I meet them a couple of times a year, when we meet at ukulele festivals to play together. A smaller group we meet every 2 or 3 months at someone's house to play for a couple of hours and have lunch. I myself run a monthly session at a pub, where we gather a small bunch.
To this day I have not gone into dating anyone consistently. I tried a couple of times, but they weren't the right person. Although I'd like it very much to date someone, it's not really a big thing in my life.
I am, of course, living in a city where I can walk to most places. I am not sure I would be able to do this in a suburb. It's a genuine fear I have that moving away from the city, being as single as I've been in the last years, would make me become a monk, and learn the ways of distilling whisky, or transcribe bibles.
I don't have much advise from this, really. Meeting people for the sake of knowing them (rather than trying to get into another relationship), be a little vulnerable, be open to be a little inconvenienced. We really do need each other to survive out there.
I really hope things improve for you, and that you find your community <3
I separated around the same time, and at about the same age, also in a new city. It was rough. A city I never wanted to be in. I'd never find friends there.
A few years later, I have a couple friends that like you, I can just call them up or text and they're available. There are great places to meet, eat, and clubs to join.
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