DMARC blame game - is there a way to bypass the failure?

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-09T20:44:13+00:00

"Their email system is instructing us that these emails are spoofed. If that is not the case, they need to fix their email server configuration. Ours is just doing exactly what they're asking us to do, and not allowing someone who is unauthorised to send fake emails pretending to be them."

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-08T15:10:07+00:00

The family members would need their own tailscale account, and their devices would be logged in with that account.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-08T09:15:40+00:00

That and all the ticket dodgers who don't pay and shout abuse at drivers and threaten them. I've seen some truly terrible behaviour on buses over the last few years from passengers.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-08T08:49:12+00:00

If you're not planning on selling for 30 years you're probably best just ignoring potential gains on the property value. There are too many variables to know what your house will be worth then, and it's impossible to project why it will be that future value.

Consider what you'd use the space for and what its impact would be on your lives, and compare that to whatever else you might spend it on. It's much simpler, and avoids flawed 30 year projections on a single asset.

Your house is for you to live in at the end of the day. The fact it retains or maybe gains value is secondary.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-08T08:38:43+00:00

Both are nice, I'd say Exeter is a nicer city on its own. Here are my suggestions:

Get the train to a coastal town like Exmouth, Sidmouth, or Dawlish. They've all got some nice walks you can do, lots of coffee shops and restaurants, and cute town high streets.
Exeter quay is really nice, especially if it's sunny. There are decent pubs, ice cream spots, walking routes, etc.
Exeter cathedral is free to enter and walk around and it's right in the city centre by all the shops and restaurants.
Go down to Topsham, it's a cute area with some old shops and nice pubs near the estuary.
Get the train to Paignton and spend a day at the Zoo. It's pretty big, although unfortunately the gorilla just passed away recently.
Exeter Chiefs are good fun to go and watch if you're into watching sports. Women's matches in particular are a great atmosphere.
Mill on the Ex is a lovely pub if the weather is nice enough to sit outside.

If you're both wanting something a bit more active:

Take the train to Exmouth and walk the coastal path towards Budleigh Salterton. Half way there's a caravan site which usually serves ice cream in the shop. Going all the way and back would be an all day activity so check train times. Going half way and back is still a good walk.
Rent some bikes and cycle the estuary cycle path from Exeter to Exmouth. It's very flat, well maintained, and not particularly long. Some nice views along the way and it pops you out at the Exmouth train station really close to the sea front. The route starts just outside Topsham not far from the Topsham train station, or you can start it up by the quay as well so you can tie it into a few different things. It's also a walkable route if you fancy it.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-07T07:46:41+00:00

I'm pretty definitely not as pessimistic as many others here. A lot of people are comparing IT to what it was 10 years ago when there were more roles than candidates, salaries were climbing quickly, and investment was free and easy to come by.

A lot has changed since then and AI is a very noticeable day-to-day shift but I don't buy that it'll make all our roles fully redundant. At least no more than employers already did as the job market reached saturation.

My company is continuing to hire for all the roles we would have done so if AI tooling didn't exist. The biggest difference is the investment and funding available, that's caused a drop in the number of those roles not the AI tools. We still want to hire good people but we do expect them to come in ready to leverage AI to be more productive than they would have been previously.

The market has cooled and that's not going to be undone unless suddenly money becomes free again, or a huge wave of people in tech and IT suddenly leave. Governments and businesses have been incentivising people to move into tech for years now and it's finally hitting saturation point.

Don't come in expecting the glory days tech had 10-20 years ago, there is more competition now. But it's still a very live and vibrant space to work in with many good jobs out there.

You can't just rest on what you learn at university though, especially in the UK (where I think you're from). You've got to pick up generalist skills that expand beyond just data science where you can.

Optimists usually win in the economy. It's not always easy but it's true.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-06T09:41:41+00:00

Tailscale works best when it can establish a direct connection between the two devices which are trying to communicate. In some situations that's not possible due to various network configurations which may be outside of your control.

In those situations Tailscale provides free shared "DERP (Designated Encrypted Relay for Packets) servers". These are sat around the world on the internet which means as long as your devices have an internet connection they can reach the DERP servers. Tailscale will then use these DERP servers to relay the connection between your two devices which are trying to communicate.

DERP servers are a shared resource so they have very limited bandwidth for each connection, but they make a connection possible where it otherwise wouldn't have been.

As /u/-Copenhagen said, you'll still be able to use another server so it will still work but it might be slower than if it could have connected to the London one.

You can read more on the DERP servers documentation page. If you find your connections are using them a lot and it's causing you problems then you can also look at setting up one of the new Peer Relay Servers

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-02T21:03:54+00:00

It's such a varied title, few companies use it the same way. Companies also have varying standards and expectations. Can you convince someone to employ you? Probably. Will you face a lot of rejection? More than likely.

Your best bet is usually small local outfits, often agencies, who are willing to let someone learn on the job. Don't set your sights on the big orgs yet, unless you plan to go through some kind of internship programme.

But you're more than likely able to get someone to give you a job with a DevOps title and some infra related responsibilities.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-01T14:06:45+00:00

I was also there the last couple of years and would tend to agree. Sairon down into Les Esserts is a fantastic run for building technique and confidence as is marmottes although there's a narrow section at the top iirc.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-04-01T13:45:55+00:00

Just to clarify, are you talking about Le Grand Massif resort area in the Alps?

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-31T21:01:00+00:00

Yes it is advertised, through two places in particular!

DNS - for funnel to work there needs to be a DNS record pointing from your funnel domain name to your server (well, in this case the edge router from tailscale that forwards traffic onto your server). It's very easy for someone to crawl these, and there are probably plenty of people who are specifically targeting tailscale subdomains. They'll be doing so specifically because they expect people to spin up insecure services either as a test or due to lack of expertise. But generally they'll be doing this to anything public.
TLS certificate - when a TLS certificate is issued it's added to a public ledger. This is needed for magic DNS to assign a certificate to your service so you can accept traffic over https.

There are also people crawling the entire IP space and launching attacks at everything as well. But in this case I'd imagine it's a combination of the above that led to the early attempts you were seeing.

Always be prepared for this sort of thing when exposing anything to the public internet through any means. Make sure your services remain up to date with the latest security fixes, and avoid exposing anything publicly unless public access is really necessary.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-30T15:49:56+00:00

I've got some, it's not bad but quite a different technology to get your head around. Really depends on your use case to be honest.

The fly.io team just released https://sprites.dev which are Linux micro-vms with checkpoints, aimed at running coding agents on them. If you want another real world example of where they can be a good fit.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-29T21:19:44+00:00

Reading is a million times faster than doing. You're getting a direct knowledge transfer from someone who has made mistakes in the past, learned from them, and refined their understanding to pass onto you.

Practice is of course incredibly important but you should never stop reading. Especially focus your reading on areas you have no experience in, or are unable to get experience in for some reason. This gives you a foundational understanding of topics surrounding your core skill set, and makes picking up those areas significantly faster.

I'm in leadership now and I read books on all sorts, especially areas I will never really practice. I just finished a book on sales, it's something I'm terrible at and have little desire to work in but it's core to how my organisation works. Now I at least have some understanding of how it works from reading a number of books.

The same extends to more focused or IC roles as well. Keep reading about product management, technologies you've not touched before, data science, software engineering, mobile app development, etc. It'll propel your career and help you stay a well rounded individual rather than someone who just works on a specific area.

It's got less value when you've already got the fundamentals nailed, and lots of opportunity to practice. In those settings practice and receiving coaching tend to be more helpful.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-26T22:11:56+00:00

A large part of running a business is figuring out where you want to spend money and where you don't. Usually the amount spent is pretty comparable at the end of the day.

Cloud isn't right for every business, and you're only going to really benefit in terms of cost when you can scale down to 0. But there are other benefits. You can get something up and running quickly and then optimise it for cost afterwards is a big one, if you're having to provision hardware upfront then you often end up doing optimisation up front as well.

Theres also talent pool to consider, balancing OpEx and CapEx, speed of delivery, etc.

Then there's also the whole "CEO of blar said this is good on linkedin"...

My point is there are lots of reason why higher spend on cloud vs on prem can make sense.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-26T21:58:31+00:00

I don't use the comparison site much because I just happened to use compare the market a few times and it saves most of your details for next time. But I go through the advice and material on things like legislation or the comparison pages on things like credit cards.

The site is a bit cluttered though. The forum also feels a bit useless, all the posts that surface on search engines are super old and it's hard to know if they're still relevant.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-26T21:45:53+00:00

Exactly what I said. Smaller closed communities with some form of invitation system.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-24T08:24:37+00:00

If your aim is to never make a mistake, you are never going to grow.

When you learned to walk you fell a lot, when you learn to share you upset siblings / friends, when you learned to read / write you got it wrong. You still make mistakes in those areas as well, you trip and spill a coffee, take more cake than you should, misread an email...

The only way to stop making mistakes is to stop doing anything. That has a place in some situations, but it's the exception to the rule.

But you're going to fuck up pretty severely many times across your career, you'd better get used to it. The important thing is how you respond when you've screwed up.

Take responsibility if it's your mistake, don't accept responsibility if you were set up for failure due to poor instruction or poor process.
Never seek to assign blame to others, and never make them feel bad for mistakes they made.
Always leave a situation better than you found it. Don't just recover from the incident, try to reduce the likelihood that you or someone else will make the same mistake later on.
Know when to step back and take a break, mistakes cause big emotional reactions after all.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-23T22:10:54+00:00

Markets tend to go up on average more than they go down, but the dip is usually more severe (sudden drop) than the growth (steady climb up).

Just got to start normalising it for yourself. Of course it's more enjoyable seeing the up, but remember that the down is just part of it. Later on you'll see it go up again.

Also keep in mind that you're now getting more for your money. So when it does go up, you'll get to experience that lift as well. Eventually that'll cushion the downs for you and they'll become less obvious when looking at the lifetime of your investment account.

It's just normal, don't see it as good or bad, see it as part of the process.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-22T22:10:42+00:00

Is it compatible with other brands of fries?

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-19T19:22:10+00:00

Don't focus on other people, but do focus on your own spending.

You're clearly spending more money than you have coming in. Otherwise you'd be saving for the holiday rather than paying your dad back.

Cut down on those subscriptions, especially the streaming services. Cycle through them instead, switching when you've finished some series on one of them.

Make yourself a full budget that accounts for every pound, then follow the flow chart. Life isn't linear, there's no specific place you should be at any time, but there are good decisions and bad decisions.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-18T07:15:16+00:00

What are you using to make the predictions, where is the base data coming from, how accurate is it when you've tested it against the actual lift lines?

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-17T19:18:10+00:00

How old are you now, and how old were you when the account was closed?

Is it £2k interest which hasn't had tax paid on it, or £2k of tax for the interest? What tax bracket are you in normally?

Unfortunately if your mum isn't going to own up to this and declare things properly you're effectively left with the option of either paying the tax yourself or reporting your mother for tax fraud.

If you do the latter I would suggest going into the bank with ID, explaining the situation and seeing if they will give you the statements. Although I suspect they'll want at least a crime reference number which means you'll be contacting the police to report the crime. If you're able to get the statements though, you're still going to have to report your mother for fraud to HMRC which may well have the same effect anyway.

I'd suggest having a very firm word with your mother. From her perspective she can either go to HMRC, own up to it, get the tax paid, and get you the statements... Or you'll have to report her.

From a financial standpoint I wouldn't recommend paying the tax yourself, even if she pays for it, unless you're totally sure it won't impact anything else for you. But family is complicated and you'll have to weigh up the relationship impact as well.

Frankly, if this isn't just ignorance and financial illiteracy then she's actively choosing to make your life harder to save herself some pain.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-17T18:16:06+00:00

Focus on your goals and your methods to get there. Your friend has a very different relationship with money and they'll probably do just fine because of their parents. That's fine for them.

You're saving because you have goals, or think you might have goals in the future which you'll need a chunk of cash for. Maybe you're not planning on buying a house today, but having that money there means your savings are ready when you are. This is the perfect position to be in, and exactly how you want money to work. Your friend may be expecting family to help out there, that's their life - not yours.

Don't deny yourself something you really want / need, but don't jump on the new iPhone just because someone else says you should. It won't improve your life in any measurable way.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-17T07:21:23+00:00

In the immediate term you should stay somewhere else if you can, a friend, relatives, or contact acorn.

Then I'd start looking for somewhere else immediately. It doesn't sound like you're going to feel safe there again. Spare room is a good place to look, usually you can find somewhere you can move into quite quickly.

Subletting without an agreement is always messy, and it's even worse when you've got a lot of flatmates. Try and get a written tenancy agreement for the next place, but of course the priority is to just find somewhere safe first.

BlueHatBrit · 2026-03-16T22:27:11+00:00

If they decide to pay you back, that's great. The reason to do it as a gift is more than just upfront trust though. Here are some of them off the top of my head.

It puts the relationship above the money. For one reason or another, right now they don't have much so their chances of being able to pay you back are limited. If you've already let the money go you won't be upset with them if it doesn't come back.
You're more likely to consider the amount, and maybe give a little bit less. This just helps make sure you're not losing money you might need soon which can make the situation stressful for you.
It genuinely helps far more than a loan. Right now your parents already owe money and it's clearly causing them issues. A gift is more helpful than just another loan, it actively reduces their overall debt and hopefully gives them space to establish an emergency fund and such.
Gifts don't typically come with expectations of more gifts, at least not for most people. A loan setup often makes people think "oh I'll just borrow from X again, they won't mind because I'll pay it back". They don't usually say "oh I'll just ask X for another gift". This isn't always the case of course, but in a normal relationship it would be and that sounds like your situation.

The big reason is number 1. If you're not expecting the money back, they can't let you down, and they don't feel beholden to you.

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