Helm: Personal Email Server • Hacker News Board

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#141

Post by morley » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #108

garry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the first and biggest investor in Helm and I'm on the board. I created email-based Posterous previously (YC funded) and was a YC partner for 5 years. I funded this team because they're high integrity software engineers first, and we built this out of need— a company like this needs to exist because for this to work, you need both great user experience as well as great software. Helm actually solves this exactly -…

If I can trust someone to do off-site cloud backups of my e-mail, why can't I trust the same person to run a Fastmail-like service so I don't have to have a $500 server in my house to get e-mail?

I don't understand why you're so upset about this. If you don't think the product is a good value for your time and money, that's fine: don't purchase it.

I think Helm comes with some obvious trade-offs, but the product looks nice and I think (judging from other HN comments) there's a market for it. I don't know if it's a large market for this to be a success, but it seems interesting at least, and at first blush the product looks well-made.

I don't think this product is exactly for me as my main email, but it could be interesting as a side email service, or one for really sensitive emails. Depending on the price point, I'd consider purchasing. If the price point is too high or the maintenance costs are too large, then I won't. What's the big deal? That trade-off not working for you or me doesn't mean the product shouldn't exist.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#142

Post by delroth » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

garry wrote: post #113

cwyers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can trust someone to do off-site cloud backups of my e-mail, why can't I trust the same person to run a Fastmail-like service so I don't have to have a $500 server in my house to get e-mail?

Because with Helm only you hold the encryption keys.

Does it matter if Helm is pushing auto-updates?

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#143

Post by lvh » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #95

andr wrote: post #65

I never understand why people think having your files physically in their homes is somehow more secure than a data center. - You run the risk of hardware failure, which would take days to recover. When your warranty expires, it'd cost you, too. - Disk failure may lose all your data. - Fire, theft, or hurricanes may destroy it. - You still give access to your data to a company, which controls software updates and the…

Yeah, there is no convenient backup policy that doesn't obviate most of the purported benefits of this device. You have to store your backups somewhere off-site to have any kind of data safety, and unless you're dumping out to tapes or some other physical media and stashing your backups in a safety deposit box, that's going to be a server somewhere.

I'm skeptical of this device, but don't follow your reasoning. One of the device's concerns is security and privacy -- what security or privacy am I giving up by giving my backups to Tarsnap?

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#144

Post by gsreenivas » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

q3k wrote: post #64

gsreenivas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex - Giri Sreenivas, co-founder of Helm here. We've designed security from the silicon up to make this device very difficult to hack. That means implementing secure boot, full disk encryption and utilizing a Secure Enclave for managing keys on the device. And yes, you could definitely do this on a raspberry pi. That's what we used to prototype. It's not great for a long last, durable and secure platform though.

Fairly sure parent meant 'hackable' in the good sense of the word - ie. repurpose the hardware for your own uses and have root on it.

good point - I read it with the other connotation in mind. We plan to make a developer program available in the future. Stay tuned!

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#145

Post by garry » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

Dnguyen wrote: post #123

garry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the first and biggest investor in Helm and I'm on the board. I created email-based Posterous previously (YC funded) and was a YC partner for 5 years. I funded this team because they're high integrity software engineers first, and we built this out of need— a company like this needs to exist because for this to work, you need both great user experience as well as great software. Helm actually solves this exactly -…

I like the idea. But can it handle multiple domains? Also, if I put one in my brother's house, can it connect the two and use them as fail over? That will eliminate my worry about outage and backups.

I believe multiple devices are in the roadmap... I know because I ordered a 2nd one for my office so I would have self-backup and instant recovery.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#146

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

scott00 wrote: post #57

jawns wrote: post #9

Don't most ISPs ban residential accounts from running something like this? Comcast terms: > use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited t…

You are correct. However I think in practice you can get away with it if you keep bandwidth low. I've been running a OwnCloud/NextCloud server from my residential Comcast account for years with no issues.

Meanwhile, I installed backblaze on my home machine, which started backing up around 500gb of my disk, and summarily got a message from my provider that outbound traffic of 30gb is an ‘inconceivable’ amount of traffic during normal use, and if I could please stop, or else (lawyers).

I wonder what happens if nextcloud does a full sync to a new device.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#147

Post by balabaster » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

This is my perspective alone and isn't meant to sway anyone's opinion, this is just my experience as it's been.

Having owned and run my own mail servers myself for some 10 years, I'll tell you something for nothing. Owning your own mail server is not something that comes for free. At least, it wasn't for me.

Unless your product has brought something that's drastically different in terms of software, security and spam maintenance, it's too much of a pain in the ass for a non-technical person to manage. Heck, I'm about as technical as they come. I ran plenty of different kinds of mail servers in those ten years. The effort and inconvenience it caused in that time just wasn't worth it to me any more.

Having to stress out every time I moved, needing to make sure my internet wasn't shut off until I left the premises and making sure it was already on at the new premises before I could move anything, always being the guy on call if my mail server went down.

Then came Cloud and I no longer had to worry about physical hardware ownership and maintenance. I no longer had to worry about if my internet at home was working. The opportunity to move my mail server to a VM, and then hosted Exchange and now Office 365. This has offered me so much mental freedom, I don't think I could go back.

The added stress wasn't worth the extra flexibility and security in my mind. All my email is now handled by Microsoft. Sure it costs me a little money each month, but I've got the peace of mind that their security team is on it and while I'm pretty security savvy, I've got nothing on their security team. In addition, I'm not the guy on call when everything falls to pieces.

I realize that most technical people won't have my perspective on this, but it's definitely something you should think about.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#148

Post by garry » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

gambler wrote: post #131

andr wrote: post #65

I never understand why people think having your files physically in their homes is somehow more secure than a data center. - You run the risk of hardware failure, which would take days to recover. When your warranty expires, it'd cost you, too. - Disk failure may lose all your data. - Fire, theft, or hurricanes may destroy it. - You still give access to your data to a company, which controls software updates and the…

It's hilarious how solvable most of these problems are, and yet they aren't even closed to be solved. Like, backups. Everyone knows how this can be done. Have automated scheduled backups. Encrypt them. Send to offsite storage. This should be handled through a generic backup protocol so you can choose your provider and be sure the app doesn't siphon your personal data. Users should not need to manually fuck around to…

I agree with you absolutely here. Yes, literally Helm does this: encrypted automatic backups.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#149

Post by lvh » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

If the thing you're going against is "corporate server controls your data", why is the answer "EC2 proxy we control"? It sounds like I have to trust that server just as much, and essentially you're telling me you're, for some unspecified reason, more trustworthy than Google?

Do you have stats on e-mail deliverability given that you're suggesting I send all my e-mail through a random EC2 EIP? (Is it actually an EIP, or is it just default EC2 egress?)

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#150

Post by sjs382 » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #114

garry wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because with Helm only you hold the encryption keys.

But that's completely orthogonal to owning a piece of hardware. You could run a managed cloud e-mail service where only the users hold the encryption keys, too. How is this a hardware problem?

> You could run a managed cloud e-mail service where only the users hold the encryption keys, too. How is this a hardware problem?

This is the key question, in my mind. There's only one reason I'd want to own the hardware—to manage/add/create my own services and handle my own backups because I don't trust a company's involvement in these[0].

If this is so tightly controlled that I can't add my own services and I can't restore a backup without Helm's involvement, why do I even want the hardware?

[0] I don't mean that I don't trust them in a privacy sense. I mean that I don't trust them to make sure the backups are actually working and able to be decrypted and restored. Or be able to be restored without their software/hardware. There doesn't seem to be any transparency wrt/ these concerns.