Folks, I can't find much documentation on how to use getmail with Exim (Debian's default). I was wondering if it would be on topic here. Or on SuperUser? I hear that ServerFault only let's professional sysadmins post there or something.

I found lists.debian.org/debian-user-german/2005/04/msg02823.html for example, but little discussion.

I'm obviously Debian-specific, so my feeling is U&L would be OK, but possibly not optimal in terms of expertise.

seems like there's a few Debian users around here; worth a shot IMHO

SU has getmail questions, but no getmail tag. U&L has a getmail tag, FWIW.

@JeffSchaller Sure, but as far as I can tell, this isn't really a sysadmin heavy forum.

I suspect that the largest minority group of Linux people on the site are Debian or Debian-derivative users.

well, I have a few extra pounds, sure, but I still think you stand a chance :)

@FaheemMitha Really? I have exactly the opposite impression. We have quite a few sysadmins or at least possessors of sysadmin knowledge around.

Perhaps surprisingly, SF doesn't have a getmail tag either.

@terdon Certainly, but that wasn't what I said.

I think SF is probably the most central site for sysadmin stuff. But I hear they only talk to suitably anointed people.

And I'm saying I have the opposite impression, that this is a sysadmin heavy community.

ok ok, I'll start exercising today!

@jesse_b man you look much older there than in your profile photo!

he moved recently, right? That'll do it

Not yet, I backed out of the first house I was under contract for but am under contract with another

@JeffSchaller damn, Dad, that was really bad. It took me ages to guess that you were deliberately misparsing "sysadmin heavy" as "heavy sysadmin". :P

well, I am going for a jog in ~3 hours, so it was on my mind. Mis-parsing English is one of my favorite hobbies

it might even be above 0C when I get out there

RED ALERT! A US citizen has been detected using Celsius instead of Farenheit!

I was just arguing with a group of carpenters the other day about how metric has been the official measurement system of the US since 1975

@jesse_b so they hit you over the head with 2×4s?

@StephenKitt no, by some 5.08x10.16's!

I was mostly telling people from the UK because they were talking about how the US is "one of only 3 countries still using imperial"

@JeffSchaller you mean 50.8×101.6s, don’t you? :-P

I'm not sure where that statistic comes from because our government made metric official in 1975 and george hw bush enforced it in 1991, our people still use imperial because they have the freedom to do so but so do canadians, some people in the UK, and really imperial measurements are still used daily in most european countries. Obviously not to the same extent as the US but it's all unofficial usage

@StephenKitt how to make an Imperial vs Metric debate into a "it was THIS BIG" fish story

@jesse_b I actually had no idea that we had passed such an act, but indeed we have

and canada uses imperial almost as much as we do

"most european countries" ?

"The Act also established the United States Metric Board with representatives ... to plan, coordinate, and educate the U.S. people for the Metrication of the United States"

I believe even Ireland use metric system

yes, all european countries are officially on metric, like the US, but you will still see some aspects of imperial used in various trades

Imperial measurements are extremely unusual outside the UK and Ireland (unofficially, as you say).

most pipe thread for example is imperial

@jesse_b that used to be true but it’s pretty much disappeared now

All oil and gas pipes are NPT, household plumbing has some sort of BPT I believe

My brother works as a welder in germany though and he says machinists there still use "thousandths" (one thousandth of an inch) in measurements frequently, probably just because most equipment is made for that measurement

@jesse_b not any more, it’s all sized in millimetres now

but old tools still uses thous, yes

and obviously people trained on thous still use those

@StephenKitt Yes they are called something in mm but they just buy US pipe sizes and throw their own sizing at it

a "19 mm" pipe is actually just a 3/4" pipe but you obviously can't call it 3/4" in europe

@jesse_b right, but people are used to using 12/17/19/25mm etc. nowadays

and that’s what the sizes get called, the old imperial sizes really are disappearing

not as products but in the lingo

I think tyres dimenssion are in inchs

@Archemar ah, that’s true, really hub dimensions; tire dimensions are in millimetres

e.g. I have 235 tires on 17” hubs

well radius is in inchs, while wideness is in centimeter

@Archemar yes, that’s it

no end of confusion

I think it's mostly to add confusion and catch the unwarry :(

"Why did you put tractor tires on my sedan?" --well sir, that's what you ordered

Anyway I said obviously no country uses imperial as much as the US but if both of our governments officially recognize metric as the measurement system where is the cutoff to say "US is one of only 3 countries that uses imperial"

at least I use kilometer, littre and litter per 100 Km

@jesse_b lies, damn lies, and statistics

Right, °F→°C and mpg→L/100km are the two imperial to metric conversions for which I find myself needing to resort to my calculator

well mpg is a dumb measurement for reasons other than imperial. It should be gallons per mile

engineering explained did a very interesting video on why measuring miles per gallon is extremely flawed

everything is going to be moving to kWh/100km anyway

I really don't believe that but I guess we will find out soon

oh dear, a composite ratio? kilowatt-hour per km

I think we are not even remotely ready to replace all cars with electric. The battery technology is simply not there yet and really isn't even promising to be there any time soon. The one upside is people are extremely adaptive so when the deadlines hit and we have no other choice that might force a rapid evolution of technology. It still just seems like a forced solution and not a good one. Natural gas/propane seems to be the better solution.

They have lower overall carbon emissions than electric vehicles too especially when you consider that used cars can easily be retrofitted to use natural gas and/or propane with very minor modifications

People are using kWh/100km for non-electric vehicles too, for comparison purposes. We’ve had LPG in Europe for years but it’s never really taken off (except literally on old tanks without valves when they blew up).

That is an interesting video but he only compared gas vs ev. He did however estimate that with the average emissions produced per kwh of electricity production (In the US) and EV driven 12000 miles a year will be responsible for 1500 kg of co2 emissions. A propane vehicle that gets 35 mpg (not unheard of) will produce 1961 kg of co2 in that same time. Since used cars can easily be retrofitted with this system that saves roughly 10,000 kg of co2 required to produce an ev

At the very least it's comparable

Another issue I find interesting but obviously wont play into the decision making process of any first world nation is what happens to the poorer countries. They generally use our second hand vehicles and when we stop producing them they aren't going to switch to EVs, they are going to keep using increasingly inefficient gasoline engines probably to the point that it cancels out any effect we gain from switching to EVs

back to bicycles, I say

@JeffSchaller +1 from me

poor countries might just skip to whatever is next, like they did for telephony (skipping landlines and going straight to mobile)

There are some interesting "mini documentaries" on the cuban car culture and what happened there due to the US trade embargo

For like 40 years they were just fixing old cars to keep them on the road because they had no other choice

There was a lot of really neat engineering and ingenuity because they also couldn't even really buy parts for them, but ultimately those cars were extremely inefficient

I was in Madagascar in 1999, our taxi was à fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_4 driver inherit it from father, car just has about 1 000 000 Km, and dusty but not rusty.

good goal in life -- dusty but not rusty :)

There’s a load of fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_505 cars used as taxis in parts of Africa. Egypt for some reason has loads of old US cars (Cadillacs etc.)

@JeffSchaller excellent, we have a name for our next programming language, Dust — it leaves Go and Rust in it

so many opportunities for bad jokes there it’s hard to resist

another one bite the Dust ?

or better "another one byte the Dust"

I'm a little surprised it doesn't exist yet! I had to check tio.run to see :)

the compiler should check for off-by-one errors and emit that message :)

please no more new languages

Just saw this; it hasn't been "featured" yet, so our feed demon hasn't picked it up:

prefamulated ammulite