Well now i know Linux is ready to switch over to.
Thanks Microsoft!
Eat shit, microsoft
I am a newbie in LibreOffice, but I am wondering whether me chronicling my first experiences in it would be worth doing.
I think what we sorely lack is more people like Nick and Michael Horn making approachable tech news about this niche.
I understand that to some the idea itself of the tech news cycle, focused on its own navel all the time is not appealing, but I think that is exactly there that a channel like this could distinguish itself, showcasing OSS solutions having an impact on the public good, something the usual news outlets cannot afford to do since every second is lost revenue.
The only risk is being boring.
This isn’t a conspiracy…
It’s the reality of using Hotmail as a business account in 2025.
Which is frankly nuts.
But the author even says the same thing happened to them before too
95% of senior government officials across Africa will give you a fancy-ass, taxpayer funded, full color laminated plastic business card that lists their email address for official business as Gmail or Hotmail.
Like… Today. Right now. I used to have a collection. Once got one with a 3D hologram thing. Fucking hotmail and gmail address.
Yep, I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but in these situations, I assume incompetence before I assume evil intent.
Maybe it is intentional but the incompetence is in how obvious they are.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetentance
Is the saying, but it’s definitely not always true.
It’s more like some of the best evil can be hidden behind incompetence for quite a while
I mean, the phrase is for associates and random people you run into for one specific interaction
Basically:
Give em the benefit of doubt
It doesn’t mean if your neighbor kicks you in the balls everyone morning, you still try to shake his hand tomorrow.
Using Hotmail for anything was already a bad idea, using it for an open-source dev account is worse. I don’t understand why they haven’t switched to something else 20 years ago.
It’s been a 365 account for years now. They just still use the domain.
High likelihood this just some AI bot with no oversight fucking up than something malicious. Outlook.com’s support system is atrocious and devoid of humans at this point unless you’re an enterprise.
I tried to go through their support to tell them their junk filter was fucking up (bank alerts being marked as junk with no way to override) and got nowhere after like two months. Had to change the email I use for banking.
Deleted by author
By the way, ignoring as much of this big tech corpo crap as you can also makes you live an easier life.
Whenever I see a story of “some guy who relies on <big tech account> working loses access to it and suddenly can’t do anything anymore” I think “this can never happen to me”. Which means there’s a whole category of problems you’re suddenly never going to see. It also means you’re less naive. So just don’t vendor-lock yourself in. Don’t put a log-in for an account which you don’t control in front of important things you need to do. Simple as that.
On top of that, you’ll also leak less private data about yourself and probably others as well. So you even make yourself less of a target when it comes to data protection laws or something. I know, these get routinely ignored. I’m just saying, if you don’t even use the problematic stuff (or almost never), you’ll also have potentially less legal troubles at hand. And you never know, legel troubles might not appear for a while but they could lurk far in the future. For example, many Nazis got into legal trouble for their participation in Nazi Germany, even decades later.
I know, the guy from the story probably only needed that account to ensure he can compare some stuff with how MS Office is behaving compared to LibreOffice, or things like that. So it’s probably not a big deal. But generally speaking, you really shouldn’t vendor-lock yourself in.
I have this exact same thought. I see things like this and I’m like, God, I’m glad I don’t have any of that shit.
Empty story with clickbait title. Wouldn’t expect any less from modern “journalists”
I’m not as in the loop these days - are some Linux pundits still trying the “maybe MS isn’t as bad as they used to be” line or have we learned again now?
What, Microsoft? The corporation built almost entirely out of copying Apple and buying up competitors to destroy them? Microsoft the convicted monopoly?
Noooooo! It can’t be! They’re so . . . uh . . . ubiquitous.
The corporation built almost entirely out of copying Apple and buying up competitors to destroy them?
Ironically enough, their biggest failure to do this was when they let the iPhone (with the help of Android) bitch-slap Windows Mobile and Windows Phone out of existence.
Who in their right mind uses hotmail?
Same kinds of people who still pay for AOL.
Microsoft + GitHub = if you’re using it still W T F are you thinking!!!
Cries in NixOS
What are you waiting on again? Remind me.
What question.
What standard is that.
What personal details did I make up.
Why did you call me Danny.
Was it an attempt to dead name me.
Define woman
And last but not least are you sure I’m anti woman not anti feminist? I’ve tried to explain the difference to you and you just breeze on past.
No real reason to be using a hotmail account in this day and age, even less so if you’re a developer of a direct competitor for Microsoft.
Do they even still issue them? Like prior to ~2007 Hotmail was THE free email to have before Google, like, did it better. But aren’t they issuing outlook.com addresses now?
Dunno… the last time I dealt with it was someone trying to reach my mom and couldn’t.
I asked them to verify the address…
@hotmale.com
Oh, well there’s your problem!
Oh, well there’s your problem!
Or is it?
-yup, it is :-/
I stopped using Hotmail when gmail launched and I was given one of the early invites from a tech relative. I have the welcome email from '04.
But now I’m looking at moving my emails to a self hosted solution because they have used everything in my >20year email history for Ai and I don’t want that to continue into the future.
When MS ditched the Hotmail name, they went to their “Live” branding. I have an account with that domain, in addition to my old Hotmail account.
I wish I held onto my old Yahoo account, but it got so full of spam that it became completely unusable; so I deleted it 🫤
Yahoo still exists. Somehow. Apparently the brand is extremely popular in Japan, Yahoo Japan is on the list of top 50 visited websites. IIRC the brand was bought by Verizon, and I have no idea if Yahoo even offers web search anymore.
Apparently Yahoo uses Microsoft Bing for their search backend.
How the hell are we down to two meaningful web engines and two meaningful search engines?
There’s Firefox and everyone else, and everyone else uses Chrome.
There’s Google and everyone else, and everyone else uses Bing.
I just don’t really value email accounts much. I have several and only rarely check them.
Eh, that’s the problem with email - it’s much harder to change and migrate, because you can’t guarantee others will use your new email, much less find out who somehow still has the old email to send messages to and expects a reply from.
This is an argument for having your own domain for emails. There is an annual cost but at least your address isn’t locked to a specific provider sokcd you can change some DNS settings to point at a different mail server.
It’s also an argument for not having your own domain for emails, because you may one day loose that domain too, and someone could poach the domain to impersonate you.
Yep, it’s a great idea
I’ve been with Tuta mail for years now and it just keeps getting better. It’s not free, but I believe that that’s why it’s a good choice. They’ve add the calendar app and are expanding to cloud storage.
Eh, that’s when you just turn on auto-reply/forwarding and abandon it.
But of course they need to be able to access it to enable auto-reply. :)
This. Don’t ever delete the account because someone will scoop it up and impersonate you. Just set auto reply and log out. Check the terms, you may need to log in every 6 months though. Do that a couple of times at least.
Unless you own the domain. Then switching providers is a simple DNS/MX/DKIM/DMARC update.
compared to what? much easier than phone numbers
Also you can get locked out of other services that use email for 2FA and password resets
What alternative do you recommend that won’t be blocked by Google and Microsoft? I hate Microsoft, but I can’t even sign up for a Google account, and everywhere else I’ve tried is blocked by Google, Microsoft, or both.
I self-hosted my email from 2006-2021, and do not have the stamina to do that any more.
If your concern is being blocked, the best advice is to avoid any free email service and pony up for a paid one.
ProtonMail used to be the big one, but IIRC they had some controversy recently:
Other commenter already mentioned Zoho, but also mailbox.org.
I use posteo.de
Zoho works well for me with my own domain (though I am on the old free plan that allows IMAP, while today the free plan only supports webmail or their own app). I also know someone who uses Tuta without problems sending to Google and Microsoft.
To much of a power use to use LibreOffice exclusively, but it is amazing for what it is and Microsoft is absolute shit
Anyone who has projects on Github they care about, you might wanna move it to self-hosting or another git host while you still can, because once MS gets tired of killing e-mails, Github repos are probably going to start getting sniped next.
Even if you stay on GitHub, definitely mirror to another host. Git is designed to be distributed, why not make use of that capability!
So either Codeberg, Sourcehut or Gitlab ?? If you want to quit Git entirely then Fossil or Darcs/Pijul ?
Oh man, I hate the whole git system so much, it was like the worst part of coding.
I host my main repository on my “lab server” at home, I got a copy on codeberg, and my public repo are mirrored on github.
I specify in the github description that’s a mirror with a link to codeberg.
Github is the little outcast kid of the bunch…
Self-hosted GitLab is what GNOME and Debian chose to do.
I still use the main GitLab for most things.
https://repo.or.cz/ provides just git hosting.
It’s also relatively easy to just self-host Git, though permissions can be wonky, at least last time I tried.
I can’t recommend Darcs. Luckily I don’t see MS (or any other corp) being able to take over core Git development. I really should try Pijul again, but least time I played with it, the history/branch visualization (which you can do without, but I really like to have) was actually still worse than Darcs.
codeberg is owned by a nonprofit. highly recommend it
They probably meant purely self hosted. You can self hosted Gitea, Forgejo, GitLab, and probably many others.
git (by itself) is no harder to host than SSH.
I wouldn’t say it is particularly easy to setup, not easier than using a Docker image at least.
Gitea (and hopefully Forgejo as well) really is.
I can vouch for Forgejo, it is pretty easy.
Or self-host if that’s feasible, MAS has been self-hosting for a while now, for example.
