renamed posts

content/posts/first-entry.rst

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: A first entry
+date: 2020-04-13
 ---
 
 This is the first entry of this blog.

content/posts/switching-to-migadu.md

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+---
+title: Switching from Proton Mail to Migadu
+date: 2022-11-02
+---
+
+Today I took the decision to switch mail providers, moving from [Proton Mail] to
+[Migadu].
+
+[Proton Mail]: https://https://proton.me/mail
+[Migadu]: https://www.migadu.com
+
+I've been a loyal paying user of Proton Mail for about 5 years now, and during
+those years I've been fairly happy with the service they provide. However,
+looking back on it, I don't think I'm their target audience, and I've come
+to realize my mailing life would be much better without them.
+
+I first heard of Migadu when reading Drew Devault's [Email provider
+recommandations][providers]. If I were to only trust one person about best mail
+practices, that would probably be him.
+
+[providers]: https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/19/Mail-service-provider-recommendations.html
+
+In this post I write down some thoughts about the change.
+
+## Pricing
+
+What I like most about Migadu is that they charge **by usage** rather than by
+some artificial metric like the amount of custom domain names or mailboxes you
+have.
+
+I own --- rather, rent --- several domain names for which I need mail adresses
+available, even though I rarely use them. *With Migadu, I can create as much as I
+need*, even at the lower tier. In contrast, to use several custom domains with
+Proton Mail you need to have at least an Unlimited subscription (12€/month), and for more
+than 3 it's only possible with the Business tier (11€/user/month), even
+if the total space used by mailboxes amounts to less than 15GB, the space
+allowed in the Plus tier (4€/month).
+
+Additionally, one of my domain name looks like `[familyname].me`, which I've
+been using for years to have a short mail address `[firstname]@[familyname].me`.
+My relatives have grown quite envious (not really) and I've offered to create mail
+adresses for them too. But with Proton Mail, every new user and its associated
+mailbox under the same custom domain incurs additional cost, unrelated to
+the *real* cost of memory space and bandwidth usage.
+
+With Migadu, adding as many users as you want is free, so long as the total
+storage space remains under the limit granted by the subscription tier you pay for.
+This is how it should be measured. I. like. this.
+
+## Encryption
+
+The main feature put forward by Proton is the pervasive use of public-key
+cryptography to store your data. When mails are sent to your address, Proton
+will use your public key to encrypt them on their servers. The associated
+private key is derived from your password, and in principle Proton never has
+access to it. All the decryption happens *on the client side*.
+
+While the idea is appealling, it does require quite a bit of trust in the
+provider, trust I'm not sure I'm willing to grant. Fastmail has [a great write-up
+about this][privacy]. If you --- as a user --- truly required so high privacy
+standards, you'd either control the entire infrastructure yourself, or use
+something other than mail.
+
+[privacy]: https://fastmail.blog/advanced/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/
+
+Indeed, it feels like it would *technically* be very easy for Proton Mail to
+update the web client to retrieve private keys. Unless you are willing to
+thoroughly audit the client you use and stick with it, you just have to believe
+that Proton has no incentive (or external pressure) to do so.
+
+Considering this, I somewhat feel like pushing encryption so much to the front has 
+mostly become a marketing argument. Not so different from how some VPNs claim
+to do [encryption over encryption][double-vpn] for *twice* as much security.
+
+[double-vpn]: https://nordvpn.com/features/double-vpn/
+
+My main motivation for going to Proton Mail in the first place was moving away
+from big corps whose business model relies solely on advertising and data
+harvest rather than being paid by users for the *good* service they provide. Not so
+much out of concern about encrypted storage.
+
+If that's what rocks their boat, and attracts new customers, frankly let them have it.
+However I simply can't help but notice that this obstinate push for encryption
+is the source of many complications.
+
+### No IMAP and SMTP support
+
+Because of how they store encrypted mails, they are not able to provide an IMAP
+and SMTP server for your favourite mail clients to connect to directly[^1]. To
+remedy this, they released [Proton Mail Bride](https://proton.me/mail/bridge),
+an app that will run on your computer, decrypt mail locally in the background
+and act as a private IMAP and SMTP server. I've personally had many issues with
+Bridge on Linux, I am [not the only one][deletion], and it really does feel like an
+annoyance that is hard to justify, especially to less tech-savy relatives.
+
+[^1]: At least that's how they justify it. Considering they don't encrypt mail
+  subjects, and I assume sender information, I'm not sure I understand why they
+  cannot just provide an IMAP server that would deliver OpenPGP encrypted mails,
+  that could then be read by any mail client that supports it (many of them do).
+  But I don't know much about how they store things, so I'll give them the
+  benefit of the doubt. It's also possible that they purposely want to avoid
+  customers having to deal with OpenPGP, hence the bridge. If that were the
+  case, it's inexcusable that they don't let people that *choose* to be able to
+  access a regular SMTP server directly.
+
+[deletion]: https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/220
+
+On mobile though, no such thing as Proton Bridge, you're stuck with the clunky,
+slow, half-assed official client from Proton Mail.
+
+### Webmail search
+
+For a very long time, it was *impossible* to search your mail by content on the
+webmail, because of encryption and all. They recently released a new feature
+whereby you can choose to pre-process every single mail in a specific browser so
+that search becomes possible. That's a very impressive improvement. But
+considering I don't care much about encryption, that also was a considerable time
+waiting for a quite basic feature.
+
+## Mail provider vs Software suite
+
+(Not so) recently, ProtonMail has been renamed to Proton, an entity providing
+many different services, from the original mail provider to a VPN
+service, an encrypted cloud, an encrypted calendar, and likely more to come.
+
+This may be appealing to many, especially as a replacement to big corp do-it-all
+solutions like Google services. To me however, it's not a good sign: it
+*feels like* by trying to do *everything*, the development of any of those
+services gets slowed down, and we end up with half-assed solutions.
+
+I don't care about VPNs (and most people probably don't need one). I don't care
+about having an encrypted calendar. I manage my own cloud at home. What I want
+is a proper mail service, and if you're gonna force me to use a shitty SMTP
+proxy and your official mobile app, you better make sure they are *really* good.
+
+In contrast, Migadu only does mail hosting. Nothing more. It provides IMAP, SMTP
+and POP3 servers accessible over authenticated TLS, that just work. The
+administration interface is feature-full but straight to the point. They simply
+go out of your way.
+
+## Agressive marketing
+
+After the official launch of their suite, Proton unveiled a complete rebranding,
+with a shiny new visual identiy. They really strengthened their storytelling,
+and started agressively advertising their brand. Maybe that's the only way to keep
+growing and acquire new customers. But I find it very tiring. Even as a paying
+user, you are often bombarded with calls to upgrade your plan, benefit from an
+AMAZING discount for the new VPN tier, black friday yada yada.
+
+I like the simple presentation of Migadu. Nothing much to add to this.
+
+## Location
+
+Proton argues that because they are based in
+Switzerland, the stricter local privacy laws should protect *you* from abusive law
+enforcement claims. Migadu is also registered in Switzerland but hosted in
+France (therefore having to abide by European data protection laws). I don't
+think there is any substantial difference between the two situations, even though
+you probably shouldn't count on your mail provider defending you either way if
+authorities are onto you.
+
+## Unfair criticism
+
+Although I've been critical of Proton Mail in the past paragraphs, I do think it
+is the target of many disingenuous attacks. A recurring complaint has been the
+fact they do not make their products open-source from the get go. This happened
+when Bridge was released, when the Android app was released, and so on.
+
+I think Proton Mail has dramatically improved over the years. Making things from
+scratch under public scrutiny is hard, and it somehow feels normal to me to take
+time to refine something in private and audit it before making it available.
+Especially is there are security concerns.
+
+If I write code in private, I am able to take many shortcuts and produce quick
+ugly code that works. Cleaning it out for public appreciation and release comes
+later.
+
+## About the actual move
+
+Not much to say here, nowadays it's fairly easy to export all your Proton Mail
+mailboxes using their own [Import-Export app][export]. Importing this into any
+IMAP server isn't too hard either.
+
+What I do want to note is how surprisingly quick it was to setup Migadu.
+The administration panel is very clear and the instructions for updating DNS
+records incredibly informative. It even talks about *autoconfig* and
+*autodiscovery* records, which I had no idea was a thing! This lets Thunderbird
+fill out proper server information automatically, even for custom domains. Neat.
+
+[export]: https://proton.me/support/export-emails-import-export-app
+
+----
+
+## Bye
+
+I wrote down this post mostly for myself, and to slowly get into the habit of
+throwing words at my computer and publishing without overthinking it.
+Feel free to comment on this by sending me a mail --- hosted on Migadu --- at
+[flupe@acatalepsie.fr](mailto:flupe@acatalepsie.fr)!
+

content/posts/syndication.rst

@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 ---
 title: Syndication for the greater good
 description: Where I setup an Atom feed
+date: 2020-09-26
 ---
 
 I stumbled upon Matt Webb's `About Feeds <https://aboutfeeds.com/>`_ and