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A comment on Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance). Parent comment

Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by bokchoi on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:04PM (#36060028)
That sounds pretty neat. I wonder why they didn't pivot away from hardware to a service?
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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by sowbug on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:37PM (#36060587)
It sounds like "hardware > service" was not just core to the product's value proposition, but also a core value of the founders.

And if so, I get it. But it seems like 99% of people will choose convenience over privacy, even if they claim that privacy is really really important. So if you're selling something that is more private than convenient, you should accept that you've eliminated 99% of the world from your TAM.

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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by eduction on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:33PM (#36061484)
Curious how you would do it as a service, interesting idea. It always felt to me like you couldn't do it without the hardware component, because without a box in your home how can you be assured of privacy? The box is where the cert protecting your privacy lives, and it it's in some data center it becomes a "trust us, we won't look at it" situation (and if your threat model involves subpeonas or PRISM type requests you are SOL).

But maybe I'm missing something.

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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by wmf on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:38PM (#36061544)
if your threat model involves subpeonas or PRISM type requests

Very very few people have that threat model and Helm probably wasn't secure enough to beat the government anyway. The "cloud providers don't look at your data" security model is good enough for people who are just looking for privacy.

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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by cortesoft on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:59PM (#36061809)
> because without a box in your home how can you be assured of privacy

Right, the idea is to install it on an existing box at your home… your always on desktop, or a raspberry pi, or whatever. Lots of people have home servers, and it would be much easier to install on an existing home server than to get a single function hardware device.

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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by eduction on Thursday May 25, 2023 @11:17PM (#36079378)
That’s a great idea!
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Re:Looking Back On Helm (secure email appliance) by bokchoi on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @02:05PM (#36061877)
I haven't thought hard about this, but maybe sell a little usb dongle or something?
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