Runbox are a good option - company and servers in Norway: https://runbox.com/
Been around since 2000. They're also working on JMAP support and are the top financial contributor to the Stalwart mail server (https://opencollective.com/stalwart) so I think they'll have a more compelling offering soon.
Also worth keeping an eye on Thunderbird pro which will also use Stalwart: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/
Can recommend Runbox for a lot of reasons, but one gotcha that bothered me in day-to-day use was that emails are delayed by a minimum of 30 seconds, with no real upper bound, just a probability curve with, say, the 90th percentile around 5 minutes. On rare occasions, that means OTPs or login links valid for 5 minutes have expired when you get them. Yes this was really on Runbox' side, yes I talked to support, yes they cared, yes they subsequently ghosted me when delivering the requested headers of emails delayed for more than 5 minutes which they considered a normal delay "because email wasn't supposed to be real-time" (be that as it may, that doesn't take away that you sit there 30 seconds... 60 seconds... 90 seconds, wondering if you should go do something else while you wait for the confirmation link and get back to your current task later)
Seriously though, nothing but recommended in every other regard. Alias management, anonymous domains you can use, configuring the sender in Thunderbird no problem, everything else was great. My colleagues didn't seem to mind this delay so much as me so it's something to be aware of but might work fine for you
Edit: I realised this is already like four years ago now, it could have gotten fixed in the meantime. It was an issue for several years before we switched away for some reason related to calendars (don't remember the details, I wasn't my choice)
I agree, as a happy Runbox customer of several years. But probably the parent post meant non-EEA too, as Norway is effectively subject to any and all EU regulations.
Recently Runbox had a couple significant outages which made me rethink hosting my email with them. I and my family have used them for many years and I liked what they offered (didn't like bad web UI) but will probably be migrating to Fastmail or other when my current subscription expires.
I was disappointed more by their lack of communication than by the outages. And one outage wasn't even reported on their status page although they confirmed it via support. That's a very bad communication.
atproto feels like a move in the right direction for personal publishing that makes content discovery easier withtout the need to post to multiple channels / platforms. https://standard.site/ is one initiative working towards making this a reality.
I don’t think it does. ATProto is merely “managed storage for apps” by Bluesky and it’s quite opposing to POSSE - You rely on third parties entirely, not just for hosting but also access and moderation to your own content.
What you can and can’t do with your own content is also limited and managed by someone else. The entire premise that you can move your posts history etc, while technically true, is not compatible with the web (e.g. support for things like redirects, canonical urls being handled currently etc is again all outside of your control and a not a goal of Bluesky).
ATProto is in many ways like the custom HTML extensions Microsoft had in Internet Explorer to “make better user experience”.
For me one of the main points of POSSE is resilience. If the VCs behind Bluesky got tired of it tomorrow, all that would die is some links to your website. Your posts and content, RSS subscribers, people who linked or bookmarked your website etc - remain unaffected.
With the IndieWeb version of POSSE, the source of truth is the webpage you control.
For the ATProto version of POSSE, the source of truth is the record in your PDS. That record is interesting because it is both content-addressed and signed with your private key.
Where ever that record is syndicated, the reader (or app displaying the content) should be able to demonstrably verify the authenticity of the record.
And you can host your own PDS entirely independent of Bluesky, there are several interfaces for both reading and publishing Standard.site records:
> content-addressed and signed with your private key
Technically valid but also not required. ATProto works hard to present them as valuable or needed, like added value of sorts but:
- The need for signed content is niche to specific use-cases. Not sure even news outlets need this as long as they control their domain.
- The PDS is a funny contraption of protocols and technologies that are quite complex and probably can't (usefully) exist on their own outside the "atmosphere" ... even if you manage to set one up.
The question would be, why bother with all this complexity and layers when you can self-host your website anyway.
The added value of a PDS/ATProto is to participate in the social cloud of Bluesky. Without it, the entire thing is more of an engineering showcase than a useful tool.
ATProto is a great idea that will never go anywhere because of its close association with Bluesky the service, and Bluesky the company, and that's a shame.
I enjoyed about your blog post, but I was curious about the claim in point 2 above. I asked Claude and it seems the claim is false:
# Fact-Checking This Climate Impact Claim
Let me break down this claim with actual data:
## The Numbers
*US Air Conditioning:*
- US A/C uses approximately *220-240 TWh/year* (2020 EIA data)
- This represents about 6% of total US electricity consumption
*Global Data Centers:*
- Estimated *240-340 TWh/year globally* (IEA 2022 reports)
- Some estimates go to 460 TWh including cryptocurrency
*AI's Share:*
- AI represents roughly *10-15%* of data center energy (IEA estimates this is growing rapidly)
## Verdict: *The claim is FALSE*
The math doesn't support a 4:1 ratio. US A/C and global data centers use *roughly comparable* amounts of energy—somewhere between 1:1 and 1:1.5, not 4:1.
The "40 times AI" conclusion would only work if the 4x premise were true.
## Important Caveats
1. *Measurement uncertainty*: Data center energy use is notoriously difficult to measure accurately
2. *Rapid growth*: AI energy use is growing much faster than A/C
3. *Geographic variation*: This compares one country's A/C to global data centers (apples to oranges)
## Reliable Sources
- US EIA (Energy Information Administration) for A/C data
- IEA (International Energy Agency) for data center estimates
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studies
The quote significantly overstates the disparity, though both are indeed major energy consumers.
I still have a 25 year old HP LaserJet printer that has a built in FAX function. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to use it since we gave up our landline about 20 years ago. Still prints well, however.
The aha moment for me was to type a space after the characters I'm searching for - then hit tab. You then get the list of options ranked (and a nice view showing the contents of each folder).
For people who have tried the new agent panel in Zed, how does it compare to something like Cursor or Windsurf?
(I've yet to dive deep into AI coding tools and currently use Zed as an 'open source Sublime Text alternative' because I like the low latency editing.)
I'd say it's closer to Claude Code than to either of the two IDE-oriented ones. I say this because it actually does the right thing more often than either Cursor or Windsurf. It gathers the right context, asks for feedback when needed and has yet to "go back and forth between two failing solutions" like I've seen Cursor do.
I don't know what Zed's doing under the hood but the diffing tool has yet to fail on me (compared to multiple times per conversation in Cursor). Compared to previous Zed AI iterations, this one edits files much more willingly and clearly communicates what it's editing. It's also faster than Claude Code at getting up to speed on context and much faster than Cursor or Windsurf.
Been around since 2000. They're also working on JMAP support and are the top financial contributor to the Stalwart mail server (https://opencollective.com/stalwart) so I think they'll have a more compelling offering soon.
Also worth keeping an eye on Thunderbird pro which will also use Stalwart: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/
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