[chris-orgmenta]

> - Self hosting is a bit elitist - not for the masses.

Is it? Most people, including nomads & unhoused, seem to have smartphones these days (at risk of theft, but arguably easily replaceable). And 4/5G/PublicWifi connectivity in urban areas is so saturated.

I wonder, is it reasonable for me to want government investment and legislation (but no other state interference) into some open source server project that we can run on our phones for this? (heck, give us mesh network functionality too while you're at it).

And am I reasonable in my (left-leaning thought) that, like sexual health consumables, mobile phones should be subsidised by tax revenue, along with other necessities/'empowering tools'?

[chrismorgan]

You can’t realistically host an email server on your phone, which is what is meant. For that to work, your phone would need to be able to be woken up (to handle receiving a message) by arbitrary parties on the internet at any time, which is generally considered undesirable, quite apart from the bother caused by your phone ever being offline (sender’s server will keep retrying every so often for a couple of days, sender will generally be notified of this each time—and note the problem of the sender’s phone-hosted mail server being offline too if that’s what you were doing).

[nulbyte]

> You can’t realistically host an email server on your phone, which is what is meant. For that to work, your phone would need to be able to be woken up (to handle receiving a message)...

What you have described is normal behavior for a modern wireless device.

Temporary interruptions occur regularly, a reason for which store and forward designs feature in email servers to this day.

The problem to overcome is not temporary disruption but addressing.

[chrismorgan]

The modern wireless device communicates regularly in this way with one trusted, well-known, well-behaving service. That’s very different from allowing anyone in the world to ping your phone and wake it up, at any time.

[arccy]

woken up to contact one of the big cloud notification services, which defeats the point of not using them

[harshitaneja]

As a nomad, and someone who does run a self hosted mail server for fun, I don't think that's such a good idea. As mentioned, phones can be stolen or broken or just off. Do I want to increase dependencies on phone further by it being the primary store for all my mails as well? Each platform, which is not using TOTP MFA would still depend on email OTPs and so with a broken phone one completely loses access. With TOTPs atleast I get to save a few recovery codes. The cost of losing a phone would mean losing all that data as well. Now, one could say we could and should keep backups. Then, comes the cost of losing access to new mails while the phone is incapicitated. Then, even setting up of email server on a phone with dynamic IP is a whole can of worms in itself and let's go with the easiest solution of using a VPN. So, now we need a VPN, a backup solution and a device to quickly accept emails when the primary device is down. Aren't we just building remote mail servers now? I do have a cloud instance serving my own email but do we expect most users to handle the infra? So now for making it easier for everyone and amortizing the costs let's start offering a solution where multiple people can run email accounts in a single server. Now we have gmail and other providers.

[chris-orgmenta]

I suppose I haven't been fully compelled by any of these replies (but I don't have anything compelling in return). Sorry, my lack of knowledge is the failure here (Dunning Kruger effect: I don't see why dynamic IPs / mac addresses / OTP / VPN / encryption are real insurmountable issues here)

Also nomadic, also in tech - And I would happily run a mail server on my phone, sacrifice thickness of phone for the extra necessary battery life, and keep a spare phone somewhere for quick restore/swap (I have a spare old android I keep in case I break my current one, which I can keep at a friend's place, an Airbnb or a subscription locker / safe.

What's the alternative being proposed though, Google et al? Or a home server (I have no home)? Or still free market, but providers are smaller businesses that are more heavily legislated and are watched over by the state to ensure our data is safe? I'm just not sure 'where' my data+computing should be, other than right next to me in my pocket (but then where do my backups go?).

Sorry for the appalling and directionless writing, it's just that everything just seems to circle back to the solution being: *'two small portable battery operated wireless devices that we have control of and the big providers do not have access to; keep one of them on our person and one in another safe place for DR purposes.'*