bazmatazable

Agreed, most people I have asked also think the switch is an additional safety feature. I can see that it is helpful to isolate a device and so can make using all manner of devices safer, but it requires that you know what the switch does and when and why you would switch it so this kind of excludes babies and toddlers.

My wife is from North America and common knowledge there is that wall sockets are just incredibly dangerous at all times. The UK style plug is quite different.

Have you tried to stick anything metal into one of these plugs? It is fairly todler proof. I think a 7 year old has the dexterity to defeat it but certainly not a baby.

Manufacturers sell the wall sockets in both switched and unswitched versions so I would say the switch is just there for convenience of the user.

It seems that maybe in the 60s having a switch on the wall was very useful because most electrical devices would have been designed to be switched on or off from its mains power connection (like lamps, hairdryers, vacuum cleaners, electric whisk, etc). I assume the standard was to have a switch as this gave a little extra functionality. Today however many electrical devices have digital electronics that don't expect to be power cycled and so a switch is not really a feature but an inconvenience (think smart bulb, or Apple TV).

How does the switch protect children?

Not to spoil the nostalgia vibes but wanted to share the Palma2, popular enough that they made a second version. Briefly: its an e-ink reader, in the form factor of a 6 inch smartphone. It runs Android for compatibility, no cell data only WiFi and even has a basic camera for document scanning. It's definately not privacy protecting but it is resistant to endless online slop traps, which I think is part of what makes a modern smartphone problematic. I'm not recommending it but just noticed the similarities to some of the classic PDAs, especially the high contrast interface and reduced animations.

Few weeks late to pitch in now but I can +1 docker-mailserver.

It has almost everything included and the configuration files are quite straightforward and flexible enough that you can drop little edits into the individual services if you need to tweak something.

My setup is very close to what you want: I use fetchmail to pull in from my old gmail and yahoo inboxes, I also have my own domain so I configured the MX records so that emails go straight to my server, with a fallback to my email provider (any mail that doesn't make it directly to my mailserver will still get pulled into my inbox with fetchmail when it comes back online).

Docker-mailserver allows you to set the SMTP of your instance to use your provider. This is important because it means that they do all the reputation stuff so that your emails work properly (and both my home ISP and my VPS provider don't do sending over pot 25 anyway).

So when I need to connect a new client (like Thunderbird) to my email I don't need to manually config anything as docker-mailserver has all the auto config messages so its really seamless. At the same time my risk is low because even if my sever is off my provider will still receive anything on my behalf. I can only send using the username I have paid for from my provider and switching between gmail and yahoo is not possible without rewriting configs and restarting services but its not something I want anyway. On the receiving side I can have any number of aliased usernames that will all be received by my server (but only when its on so i use them rarely and for disposable addresses).

Big downsides are:

• backups are now my problem as I don't keep duplicates.
• I route my traffic via a VPS+VPN to get a static public IP address - this was a headache to get all the little details just right but its stable now
• I have to host separately my own webmail, although I'm mostly using my phone with k-9 Mail and Thunderbird (I use roundcube)
• Getting server side filtering rules working was also annoying and so far I still have to add new rules through roundcube (there was a plugin for Thunderbird but I don't want to open the additional ports required)
• !!! Spam !!! Docker-mailserver has a great Rspamd default settings out the box so its actually fine but now I have to manage all the additional rules and its not super intuitive especially because I am doing all this just for myself (yay!) but the tools are clearly meant for managing a fleet of inboxes so everything takes me longer to figure out
• integrating contacts is not included and might be important for your experience (again I was able to add this as a plugin to roundcube ..... eventually)

Most of my complaints stem from the fact that I'm not very good at this but in the end it has been very satisfying to drop the occasional: "I host my own email BTW"

Good luck! Let us know how you get along!

And they have know about it for a long time..... https://climateintegrity.org/plastics-fraud

Many great reasons raised to explain why the current system persists so its clear to me that there isn't just a single roadblock. One reason, in my mind, is the challenge of reaching consensus. Even in small groups this can be problematic and more so for an entire population. It frustrates me no end that often small disagreements in the details of an idea is enough to prevent any positive change, even though at a macro scale the idea is good and universally supported.