4 ms·

The original post was about the perils of hosting your mails at home. I'm not clear what your answer is about. For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work.

by lolc 8y ago

The original post was about the perils of hosting your mails at home. I'm not clear what your answer is about. For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. You say it's not a problem with a charged battery and LTE. I think you're talking about a cell phone and I don't understand how that's related. Sure, one could run Helm on a UPS with LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against the promised simplicity. Also I don't see how encryption prevents the device from being physically destroyed.

blablabla123 8y ago
> For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. I mean you can connect it to a Uninterupptible Power Supply "USP". It's not clear if they have a high power USB connector to connect USB batteries, however: "Built-in battery backup for safe shutdown On mode: 10 W Standby: 0.4 W" (https://thehelm.com/pages/technology https://thehelm.com/pages/technology) > LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against > the promised simplicity. There are low-cost routers with USB ports that allow plugging in an LTE stick. > Also I don't see how encryption prevents the device from > being physically destroyed. You can create a backup and store it on an untrusted storage (cloud for instance). I'm surprised these devices didn't take off 5 years ago already, as this is technology wise almost a step backwards into the 90s. But I think it's worth it, and in fact you don't need helm to set up a system like this yourself. Get a Raspi, stuff an LTE stick and a juicy USB storage into it together with external USB-battery in passthrough and you even have a superior device.
- lolc 8y ago
  You are introducing a lot of moving parts to go from 99% to 99.5% availability. And you can't get much better than this at home. In that vein, for most people, the availability of a Raspi solution would be 0%. They just can't handle it. If you can accept the bad availability Helm looks like a fine solution to get your mail out of the cloud.

by lolc 8y ago

blablabla123 8y ago

> For example, in a power outage, Helm won't work. I mean you can connect it to a Uninterupptible Power Supply "USP". It's not clear if they have a high power USB connector to connect USB batteries, however: "Built-in battery backup for safe shutdown On mode: 10 W Standby: 0.4 W" (https://thehelm.com/pages/technology https://thehelm.com/pages/technology) > LTE backup. But then that's extra infrastructure against > the promised simplicity. There are low-cost routers with USB ports that allow plugging in an LTE stick. > Also I don't see how encryption prevents the device from > being physically destroyed. You can create a backup and store it on an untrusted storage (cloud for instance). I'm surprised these devices didn't take off 5 years ago already, as this is technology wise almost a step backwards into the 90s. But I think it's worth it, and in fact you don't need helm to set up a system like this yourself. Get a Raspi, stuff an LTE stick and a juicy USB storage into it together with external USB-battery in passthrough and you even have a superior device.

lolc 8y ago
You are introducing a lot of moving parts to go from 99% to 99.5% availability. And you can't get much better than this at home. In that vein, for most people, the availability of a Raspi solution would be 0%. They just can't handle it. If you can accept the bad availability Helm looks like a fine solution to get your mail out of the cloud.