Right. Also, when it comes to the other aspects of TLS, such as preventing middlemen from making sense of what information flows between you and the server, what exactly is the threat in this case? I mean, it's a public blog post, which you only ask to read and so you are served.
It's not about threat, it's about privacy. I understand your statements but 'what is the threat in this case' to answer that: I don't want to know, I've moved on from those worries. Always encrypt.
What privacy? Whoever is watching your traffic can see you accessed their website with HTTPS, they can guess with high accuracy which article you are reading based on the response size.
I prefer a nice cappuccino, but sometimes all that's available is plain black coffee from the shared pot in the canteen (which someone could have tampered with).
But we drink it anyway (at risk) because it's free.
You almost had a great point here. If he began every blog rant with BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE and included a digital key somewhere secure, somewhere that I could go and verify, just Debian does with updates, I maybe could tolerate the cleartext. But he clearly didn't (pun alert!)
Please don't get me wrong. I'm glad the world has mostly transitioned over to HTTPS, but what are you actually concerned about with reading a blog post over HTTP? If you had to log in or post form data, or hosted binaries or something I would get it. But what is wrong with reading an article in the clear? And how would SSL prevent that?
