dan

In my experience, no large business would decide to only accept encrypted inbound SMTP

For submission (connections coming from users that have an account on the server) or for relay/target (connections coming from other email clients)? All email clients support encryption so I think requiring encryption for submission is reasonable. Server-to-server (port 25) can't have it enforced though, like you said.

SMTP is one of the worst protocols I have ever seen so widely used

It's from a era where everyone trusted everyone else. All connections were unencrypted, spam protection and rate limiting weren't needed, and security really wasn't on people's minds. Modern security and spam protection is hacky because it's built on top of protocols that weren't designed for it.

The other major issue with old protocols is that they're stateful. Modern protocols are mostly stateless since it's generally easier to deal with. They've also had more and more features hacked into them over time, so the specs are enormous.

There's been one major attempt at modernizing it: JMAP. It's stateless, uses JSON, and intends to replace both IMAP and SMTP. FastMail started the project. https://jmap.io/why-jmap/

However, they've only looked at the "easier" part to replace: Communication between a user and their email server. They're not looking to replace server-to-server communication at all.

I've used that on automated systems. No need to worry about email quota and everything incoming is single-use input for other systems so there's no need to store messages on the mail server

You can do this with IMAP as well, you just need to delete and expunge the emails. Any good email client or library will have an option for this.

POP is literally just downloading all the emails, then deleting them. That's it.

You can't have a script that only downloads emails that match a search (for example emails from a particular sender), since POP doesn't support search. A basic use case is to check for bills/invoices from certain companies and import them into an accounting system, while leaving other emails untouched.

You can't receive emails in real-time and have to instead poll, since POP doesn't support real time notifications. IMAP supports IMAP IDLE.

If you have rules that filter emails into folders, you can't download them via POP, as it doesn't support folders.

For automated systems, if you don't want to store the emails, you can configure the email server to pipe the emails directly to a script. That way they're not stored at all, and your script gets them immediately rather than having to poll.

I used to use POP for some situations, but the protocol is extremely limited. I don't think there's anything POP can do that IMAP can't.

Yeah, there's no risk of the mortgage falling through, and not as much dealing with banks. I don't really know the specifics but it was something I had to be aware of when buying my house. Luckily I was buying while it was a buyers market a few years ago, so prices were lower, fewer people were looking, and there weren't any competing all-cash offers.

It's $3/month more than Spotify, and you get both music and videos. That doesn't seem that bad to me? Tidal is probably a better deal though, since it's cheaper and all plans come with lossless (FLAC).

I've been using a Plex server with my own ripped CDs for a while. Jellyfin is good too. If you listen to the same music a lot of the time, why pay a monthly fee when you can just buy the album once, rip it to your server, and listen to it forever?

I love the libraries in my area because they're well-funded and pretty much always accept requests for new content (books, movies, etc). If there's a new book and they don't have it, I can ask them to order it and it'll usually be available within a week.

You can also set up a Jellyfin or Plex server and have your own streaming service :)

Even easier is https://monochrome.tf/

For Soulseek you should use a VPN that support port forwarding. AirVPN is the one that's usually recommended.

Revanced works for Google Music too.

It doesn't help that payday loans have been rebranded as "pay advances" or "cash advances" (trying to distance themselves from negative connotations) and have flashy mobile apps that can give you the money instantly. They're not banks, so they don't get regulated the same way that banks do.

It's hard in nice/desirable areas because the rich people make all-cash offers, and sellers prefer that over people that will get a mortgage.