dredmorbius

Mutt. Seriously.

(Other software has bugs. Mutt has fleas.)

See also: Neomutt.

Alpine. Probably fits your requirement for "simpler", though mutt, as with vim, strongly rewards familiarity.

Gnus or mu4e, under Emacs.

Old school: Elm, pine.

See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_email_client>.

DRAM/eMMC shortage impacts accrue.

Title adapted from text for length/clarity.

If you want pure-play Linux, there's Purism (PureOS), Pine (PineOS), SailfishOS, Ubuntu Touch (33 supported devices, including Fairphone, Xiaomi, Google Pixel, and Lenovo, amongst others), Tizen, Mobian (based on Debian), and postMarketOS (based on Alpine Linux).

If you want an alternative to the iOS / Android duopoly, and will accept AOSP (Android Open Source Project) or de-Googled Android, there are AOSP devices (including KaiOS), GrapheneOS, LineageOS, /e/OS, LightOS (Light Phone), and a number of feature phone / dumbphone OSes including System30+ (S30+), OpenHarmony, and a few others, see Wikipedia's list: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system>.

Practically, I'd suggest a feature-phone plus either a small laptop (far more capable than iOS/Android), or a tablet/phone running GrapheneOS or LineageOS, possibly one of the full-featured Linux OSes above. Google Pixel is ironically amongst the most viable non-Android hardware devices, with Fairphone and Purism being my next-strongest options. Apparently Lineage is now supporting Samsung's Galaxy series: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339930>, and GrapheneOS Motorola support has previously been announced, though remains pending: <https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at...>.

I'm not sure which of these include bundled AI, though I suspect that that's going to be coming to more platforms, absent AI backlash which seems to be swelling presently.

Earlier coverage (St. Louis KETC / Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain for data access):

"Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285418>

This is working out largely as I'd suggested it should, albeit with a court's intervention. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293058>.

I'd still argue that I.M. should have anticipated this situation, and have some process in place to address it. "See a court" might well be part of that process.

uBlock Origin Element Zapper can do that in a point-and-click fashion.

(Presuming the site doesn't update/revise element identifiers frequently. See FB for one which apparently does this, per recent HN submissions.)

See also Bonhöffer.

National- yes.

Socialistic German Worker's Party, would be the following terms, though.

There's another N-term which is more familiar.

Boox devices are nice, and the stock e-book reader is actually quite good.

The firm's support is decidedly sub-par, however, should you encounter issues. I'd advise not splurging on their higher-end (larger) devices on the potential lost investment. Though a 13" screen is quite delish for reading technical articles.

There's also the GPL compliance question.

I'm still reasonably pleased with my CNN-to-newspaper scripts.

Discussed / screenshots: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122>

Unfortunately nonsubstantive HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723661>

Works quite well on an e-ink tablet, as well as on desktop.

Questions about spam mitigation possibilities raised the question of just how many email servers there are anyway.

Roughly: a half-million or so, based on a 2024 survey.

The next interesting question: how is traffic distributed amongst those, and what are the persistence / juvenility of those servers?

Firefox Reader Mode also bypasses CNN's nags.

A fave of mine for much of the past decade, part of my morning info review and frequently consulted during various events (fires, storms, heat- and cold-waves, aurora, etc.).

The site has an absolute wealth of meterological data. Wind is just the start. Temps, precipitation potential, mean sea level pressure (MSLP) --- which can give a heads-up on tropical storms, particulates, pollutants (tracking air and sea routes by SO2/NO2 prevalence is fascinating, I recommend looking at past years' traces around the Cape of Good Hope to see the impacts of Red Sea attacks), wildfires (not just "Fires" under the Bio tab, but CO, SO2, and particulates), sea temps, aurora, ...

On sea temps, contrast current mid-Pacific readings with a year ago, to see the scope of El Niño:

August 14, 2026: <https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents...>

August 14, 2025: <https://earth.nullschool.net/#2025/08/13/1200Z/ocean/surface...>

Oh, and there's not just forecasts (up to about a week), but history dating to 2013, so that it's possible to compare conditions over time.

Other tweaks and twiddles: atmospheric conditions can be reported for a given altitude, from surface to remote stratosphere; grid density can be set low or high; interpolation can be enabled or disabled (values given are the average within a grid, this is particularly apparent when trying to estimate maximum wind speeds from a localised storm, for which this tool is poorly suited), and alternative map projections (ObXkcd: <https://xkcd.com/977/>)

I suspect both of these (and other weather / meterological visualisers) draw on the same data sources.

Nullschool lists its sources on the "about" page. Weather data generally come from GFS (Global Forecast System): EMC / NCEP / NWS / NOAA.

I've been searching online content since the 1980s (computerised library catalogues), the Web since the mid/late '90s, Google since 1999, DDG since 2013.

My search-fu is pretty good.

Correction: my search-fu was pretty good. Tactics which used to work, regularly, don't. And I'm often intentionally not searching keywords but framing questions (generally to DDG's Search Assistant) to suss out stuff.

And that works pretty well, for general online stuff.

That's a subset of my searches. Often I'll go directly to a site via DDG bangs, such as HN (!hn by:dredmorbius <something I said once>), Wikipedia (!w <topic>), or a few other specific sites.

Discussion sites are ... dead. Reddit is absolute shit. Far too many discussions have gone into closed channels (Birdsite, FB, Discord, etc.), or ... are simply no longer online.

I do fairly well on the Fediverse, though that's still a pretty small world. (Getting bigger, and punches above its weight or so I find.)

Search engines themselves seem 1) no longer comprehensively index everthing, 2) don't retain previously-indexed content, 3) have fucked with how search queries are processed to a degree that even if the content is online and indexed it's not found, and 4) have polluted SERP rankings such that top results are increasingly irrelevant.

(DDG, on that last point, does permit blocking sites from results, which is useful, though a pain in how I use the site, which doesn't persist such preferences across sessions.)

"Knowing how to use a search engine" no longer affords utility in a way it did, say, five years ago. And things were already starting to rot then.

I'm aware of station identification requirements. It's possible that there were top-of-the-hour announcements I didn't hear or don't remember.

What I distinctly recall was that it was possible to get through a full weather or traffic report without the region being identified.

These days, a frequent gripe is that local-media websites (radio and television) fail to specify the state. Where a call-sign is available, I'm obliged to look that up on Wikipedia to figure out what location the story concerns. Place names are often given only as small town or county names, neither of which typically have national recognition, and many of which repeat from state to state.

1. If you're hosting third-parties at scale (as in: more than one), you'll have procedures for validating ownership and access.

2. That doesn't actually seem to be Iron Mountain's argument here, though the reporting isn't crystal on the point.

Perhaps "Flock-You Detection", by SimeonOnSecurity?

<https://simeononsecurity.com/articles/flock-you-detection-pr...>

Quite.

Perverse incentives, generalising.

Hardin's original essay addressed just that.

<https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of...>

Unclear signals and long lag times make systems management a real bear.

I'd been noticing very spotty availability of sardines (a long-time fav of mine) going back to last October/November.

Some stores are out entirely, others will alternate through available brands over time, but often have slim pickings. I'd suspected an issue with fisheries, and am very sorry to see this confirmed.

"Cannery Row" in Monterey, CA, famous from John Steinbeck's stories set there (including an eponymous book), was initially a sardine fishery opened in 1902, peaked in 1946 at 142,282 tons, falling one year later to 26,818 tons. Most canning factories closed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. By 1973 the last cannery closed, and was no longer packing sardines but a mix of tunay, anchovy, and mackerel.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannery_Row>

The backups (and servers) seem to still exist, but KETC's vendor is estranged with its own hosting / siting provider, Iron Mountain, which is a going concern.

IM seem to be holding KETC's data hostage, which is Not Cool.

The affected entity is a single PBS station, which As Is the Present Custom fails to provide call letters or geographic location.

"Nine PBS" seems to be <https://www.ninepbs.org/>, A/K/A KETC, St. Louis, MO.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KETC>

The upstream cited article which should be subbed in for this submission does clearly identify the station in the first line of its report: <https://current.org/2026/08/nine-pbs-sues-iron-mountain-over...>.

(I've submitted this to HN's mods via email. The original submission was to a very poor TomsHardware link.)

OT: The tendency of local broadcasters to fail to identify either on websites OR QUITE OFTEN ON BROADCASTS THEMSELVES even vaguely where they operate is ... a long-standing annoyance of mine. Sure, local audiences may know, but those passing through, or catching the signal at a distance, likely won't.

I've spent more than a few nights at higher elevations (campgrounds, highways) listening to clear channel stations reporting on weather and traffic "in the local area", sometimes for hours, without ever hearing what "the local area" is. That for signals travelling hundreds of km, and not infrequently multiple thousands of km.

(Don't get me started on entire countries where stations are identified simply by number, e.g., "Channel 4" in the UK.)

Scale doesn't matter in a clear 4A violation.

Scale does matter in what characterises a clear 4A violation.

Nationwide pervasive cross-referenced AI-augmented ALPR is a 4A violation on account of that scale.

(I'd argue that that relevant scale threshold is far lower, but probably above the single-officer-in-a-single-cruiser manually taking notes level.)

Scale fucking matters.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13548498>

Thanks!

There are features available for most phone types / plans, with varying levels of effectiveness.

For old-school landline phones, look for "Smart Call Block" or a similar feature. These direct all unknown numbers to voicemail, with numbers in your contacts or allow list ringing directly. The feature is phone-specific, so you'll need a device which supports this capability. Unknown calls don't ring but are screened. Call block can be enabled or disabled if you're expecting a call from an unknown number.

For smartphones, various options:

- Numerous third-party call-blocking apps, such as NoMoRobo, Spamblocker, Saracroche, Sereniphone, and more.

- OS-level Unknown-caller blocking. iOS offers a full version of this, see: <https://support.apple.com/en-mide/111106>. Android, produced by the world's largest advertising agency, unsurprisingly doesn't have quite a satisfactory setting, though there are some approximations: <https://www.android.com/intl/en_uk/articles/stop-spam-calls-...>.

- Carrier-level call filtering. "Call Filter" on Verizon, "ScamShield" on T-Mobile, "ActiveArmor" on AT&T. Many Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) don't offer network-level spam call blocking. (This is companies such as Mint Mobile, Cricket, Boost, H20 Wireleess, Helium Mobile, etc., see: <https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/>.) Carrier-level filtering may work through an app, at the network level directly, or both. App support may be dependent on your specific device and OS.

VOIP services should in theory afford the highest level of capabilities, though this depends on what your provider enables for you. Rather to my surprise, Xfinity/Comcast actually has one of the better network-level spam-blocking systems by description, "Voice Spam Blocker". This is a three-tiered risk-based system with complete rejection, direct-to-voicemail, and CAPTCHA challenge. (Presumably there's also a whitelist option.) See: <https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/change-spam-blocker...>.

Peers, with a bonding obligation, and no transit offered to unbonded (never bothered, bond rejected/expired) carriers.

See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679> from a few days back.

Volume and calling patterns alone should be sufficient to identify spam calls in most cases.

Audio analysis (probably AI/LLM-based) might be invoked on some, but even that is probably overkill.

Better: an appeals / review process which more-or-less automatically grants an initial reverse judgement, though if complaints continue from additional sources, that decision is reversed.

The real goal of my variant of this proposal isn't to nail the call originators but the networks (carriers) which either serve as origin or transit this traffic.