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Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

thehelm.com

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Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#181

Post by ale42 »

Causality1 wrote: post #87
xvector wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the biggest problems with subscription services. My favorite band's album was pulled from Spotify. Wouldn't have been a concern if I had set up Lidarr on my NAS.

Streaming is great for music discovery but storage is cheap enough I keep all my favorite music on my phone.

Same for me. I prefer buying FLACs (or actual CDs) of the music I want to have and keep it on my devices, so there's no future risk of losing it (I do have backup). Plus, streaming requires a working connection, uses more energy, etc... so as you say, it's (very) good for discovery, but has many downsides too.

And actually, I think that in many cases piracy happens because it's the easiest option, not because people wouldn't be willing to pay. But this is a bit off topic ;)

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#182

Post by phone8675309 »

dsr_ wrote: post #177

Summing up: - the hardware looks okay - the mandatory subscription provides value, but if the company folds, all the services go away and there's no instructions on how to set them up yourself -- at which point you might as well have bought an RPi with a preconfig'd distro. - The selling point is "escape Big Tech" but the services are provisioned via AWS. - The CEO is arguing with people here telling them that they a…

It shows how much people distrust big surveillance tech that snake oil like this can thrive.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#183

Post by phone8675309 »

a3n wrote: post #98
gsreenivas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see elsewhere where I discuss what the subscription provides. I think there's a huge difference between subscribing to companies that share customer values around privacy and security vs being at the mercy of companies looking to extract as much value from your data as possible.

Speaking cynically and pessimistically, when it's your planned exit and who are your potential buyers?

Keeping an eye out for when their "fantastic journey" ends.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#184

Post by denton-scratch »

"Innovative hardware"? It says it's an ARM, with a secure root of trust. There's this Bluetooth "proximity token". Looks cool, I guess.

It's running Linux, Dovecot, Postfix and Nextcloud.

"Email senders now support sending emails over an encrypted SSL/TLS channel where the email is only decrypted once it reaches your personal email server. Helm is not able to decode these emails because we don't have access to the encryption key."

Yabbut, Helm is that personal email server; Helm is the terminator of the TLS encryption. The email is in plaintext by the time it reaches Postfix. Postfix then stores it in an encrypted disk, but Helm can decrypt the disk. Please try again!

Then there's this business about email deliverability. My experience is that if you have run a nice, clean email domain for (say) 8 years, then you won't have serious deliverability problems for personal email. But if that's the case, then you already know how to set up and run an email server, right?

People on HN are saying that Helm retains the root account on this device, but I can't find that information on the website. If it's true, then that would be completely the opposite of retaining control of your own data. Here is a pile of FOSS software, running on commodity hardware, where I have complete control; and here's Helm, with the same stuff, but - a proximity key, and offsite backup - in exchange for $100PA subscription, and I have to hand over root.

What's the benefit, and how come they're sold out?

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#185

Post by phone8675309 »

gsreenivas wrote: post #84
Saris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not on the site maybe? So far I haven't been able to find anything but the 128GB option.

We haven't launched these tiers yet - that's why

Why would you allow customers to purchase hardware with storage capacity that you can’t fully support on the back-end yet?

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#186

Post by [deleted] »

gsreenivas wrote: post #144
kortilla wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a stupid design decision at that point to have a dedicated instance per user. For a pass-through they could multiplex tens of thousands of customers easily onto a single instance.

Please read up on how email works before arriving at this conclusion.

[deleted]

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#187

Post by elzbardico »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #178

I used to run my own mail server for decades. I gave up when it became nearly impossible for my domain not to end up on some list or some reputation. The big cloud email providers make it a lot of work to run your own. A friend of mine tried setting up a mail server a couple of months ago at Digital Ocean on a VPS and a couple of others and his mail bounced back all over the place. I ended up with an account at one o…

I found a compromise by hosting my email with a company that makes their money out of selling email hosting and stuff instead of advertising. Not being American companies is a bonus to me, as much as I loathe facebook and google, the government is always a far more sinister threat.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#188

Post by comprev »

theblazehen wrote: post #173
smoldesu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or famous freeware synthesizer by Matt Tytel.

Or the kubernetes package manager

This was my first thought too. Having the same name as the most popular package manager for the most popular container orchestrator seems unwise.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#190

Post by somberi »

@gsreenivas - Congrats on launching an useful service.

Is it still true that whenever we provision a new user they have to be physically present near a Helm device? Parents living elsewhere, and so are kids.

How does the pricing work if someone owns their domain already and prefers to keep their registrar? Is the cost still 99$?

This may make an interesting alternative for small businesses (10-20 employees) who prefer private storage and email addresses. Do you have any feedback for customers looking to use it as such?

Thanks.

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