this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
2 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

59587 readers
3117 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Unmapped@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

This is what made me finally completely switch my email and docs to proton. I'm so close to being able to delete my google account now.

Well this and the docs live collaboration feature they recently added.

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I thought it'll take many more years until the acquired Standard Notes

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Switched mail and I'll switch VPN once my old sub expires.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's refreshing to see in a world of ever increasing enshittification. Wish more companies move in this direction.

[–] FatTony@discuss.online 0 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Yeah, kinda makes you wonder as to why proton is adding A.I. features though.

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I think it might be because AI (aka LLMs) is genuinely useful when used properly.

I use AI all the time to write emails. I give the LLM the email thread along with instructions like “I can’t make it Tuesday ask if they can do Wednesday at 2pm”

The AI will write out an email that’s polite and relevant in context. Totally worth it.

I think the problem is people/companies trying to shove LLMs where they don’t make sense.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 0 points 3 months ago (15 children)

Then just write that.

I don't understand why we're having AIs verboseify simple information?

Why do many word if few word do trick.

How long until we start using LLMs to summarize messages over-verbalized by LLMs?

And offloading the accounting for context WILL bite you in the ass. If you can't remember what a discussion was about and what needs considering, you're no longer doing the thinking.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] plasticcheese@lemmy.one 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

I am not a fan of this. I see it all the time at work and it's very obvious when someone has chatGPT write an email for them (it's always such a sterile and yet overcomplicated writing style). If it's a direct email to me, I tend to feel insulted that they couldn't be bothered to write those 4 paragraphs themselves, it would have taken them 2 mins. There is a definite human disconnect going on in society at the moment, and its worrying.

[–] Carrick1973@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I agree. I actually think it's a net negative as well for friendships. As in the case of OP, I would rather get an original email from the sender saying they couldn't make it, so let's meet the next day, but instead I have to read thru several paragraphs of boilerplate and AI crap instead, which wastes my time, and I know the sender did it, so I'm mad at them for being impersonal. At some point, we're just going to have people's AI responding to each other without any person actually reading it.

We're only doing this because every company doesn't want to be left behind so they go all in. It feels like Ian Malcolm said it best in Jurassic Park

"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should"

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I can understand that. I don’t actually use chatGPT to be fair. I use a locally run open source LLM. This all being said I do think it’s important to fine tune any LLM you use to match your writing style. Else you end up with chatGPT generic style writing.

I would argue that not fine tuning a LLM to match tone and style counts as either misuse or hobbyist use.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Maybe to keep pace with trends, and be able to put a check in that box amongst competitors

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Switched from gmail to Protonmail and Outlook to Tuta.io and love it! Companies that put privacy and the individual first.

[–] palarith@aussie.zone 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

How is spam filtering compared to gmail.

Afraid to switch as gmail spam filtering is excellent

[–] brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago

I've been using proton for a few months now with a yearly Mail Plus subscription and I have yet to receive an actual spam e-mail. Your experience might be different than mine since I take precautions not to invite spam in the first place, but even then, Proton looks to be doing an excellent job

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Good. Profit and privacy are mutually exclusive in this industry.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago

That's roughly the opposite of what the article says.

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You mean record breaking profit and privacy. Edit: actually I bet drug cartels are probably do both, at least some (\s)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Matt@lemdro.id 0 points 3 months ago

Proton is still a for-profit company and has shareholders who expect to to make money. The change is that the largest shareholder of the for-profit company is now a separate non-profit organization. It is still a positive move, but not entirely what the marketing makes it seem.

[–] Baccata@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Didn't they get shit recently for AI and crypto related decisions ? Did they backtrack on that ?

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How is this related to what the previous person said? Do you understand what "enshittification" is? Proton Wallet is an entirely separate application while the AI feature in Proton Mail is completely optional. Neither of these decisions have impacted the user experience of Proton customers.

[–] asap@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Do you understand what enshittification is? It's a slow descent over a long period. You add optional, privacy-respecting AI now, and over time, (like a decade,) it becomes more shitty until eventually all your data is opted in to centralized data harvesting or wherever.

I'm an Unlimited paid Proton user, and these new trend worry me too. Enshittification is a slow process. I watched Google turn from "Do no evil" to what they are today, and I'm too tired to want to watch the same entire process happen again to Proton.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago

Shouldn't we worry of enshittification when we are on the verge of, or on the descending side of trajectory?

So far they added features in a way that keeps respecting users rights, without changing their business model (which is 90% of the reason why companies enshittify BTW). Just because these products have something in common with products of companies who enshittified doesn't mean the same applies here.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 0 points 3 months ago

Even if they did, so what? We should not then recognise positive decisions?

If we don't allow companies and people to make any mistakes, for fear of being forever scorned, then we'll end up with either unprogressive risk averse companies that cannot compete against their peers, or a host of good companies that go bankrupt from the slightest misstep.

Personally I'm glad companies such as proton exist, and are prepared to take risks, as they are currently our best hope against the likes of Google and Meta.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Cool. I switched to Tuta because it fits my use case better (2 domains, one for my personal email and one for everything else). I don't need any of the bells and whistles Proton has, and I also don't want to pay extra to get more domains. The Tuta app kinda sucks, but it gets the job done. I'm hoping my wife and kids will be interested in private email, but they don't seem to care, and I don't think they'd like the tradeoffs.

Now, if Proton revises their tiers, I might be interested. Give me something like the Tuta tiers, and I'll probably switch to it. I prefer the UX of Proton, but $10/month is a bit steep for me, especially since I'm not going to use the other stuff they're bundling in (I use Bitwarden for PW manager, have my own NAS, and I prefer Mullvad over Proton for VPN).

That said, it's super cool that they're going non-profit. When that's done, I'll give it another look.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

They also have mail-only tier at 4.99.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

Did you also maybe go outside and touch grass before you wrote this? Are you breathing heavily and need someone to call emergency?

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago

Your response makes it sound like you're responding some kind of rage-rant. But from my reading, the post you responded to basically just lists a few things they like and dislike - clearly given as personal opinions. So your response reads as unprovoked hostility.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

?

I think Proton is a cool project, I'm just a little disappointed at their pricing tiers. It's probably fine for a lot of people, and hopefully becoming a non-profit encourages them to improve the value at each tier.

I actually used to pay for Proton when I was consulting. I think it's a fantastic service, but now that it's not really a business expense, I find it's a little to expensive. So I have my business domain, my personal email domain, and a "junk email" domain all at Tuta, and I like that setup. But it's not worth $10/month for me, it's worth about $3-4/month, so I use Tuta. Privacy is really important to me, but price is also important, and Tuta checks both boxes.

I know I'm an outlier, just giving my 2c that Proton is a good service, and I hope they adjust their pricing with their new non-profit model.

[–] lupec@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (7 children)

FWIW Proton does offer a mail only plan that's $5/month, 4 if you go for yearly

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Did you respond to the wrong message?

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Arn_Thor@feddit.uk 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

You say you use Bitwarden. Is that self hosted by any chance? If so, how do you handle the potential for an outage or server failure, where you’d presumably need some of the passwords to fix the problem in the first place.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The Bitwarden client has all the data cached, so the server can be down and you still get access to the passwords (same for internet connection).

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The local cache solves this problem mainly. Mine also replicates to one of my other servers occasionally.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] lemming741@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

I also self host vault warden, it's pretty straight forward. Like the other person said, it caches locally.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

This is old news. Why are you posting this just now? I mean I don't really care much. I transitioned to Posteo as soon as I learned that they stored the private key. They don't even let you use your own GPG key, useless honeypot. Their recent bitcoin wallet supports this. If they cared about privacy, they wouldn't go with Bitcoin. They have been ignoring requests for monero since years.

They also are getting into the AI hype, so I can't trust my data with them.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You can use your own GPG key (https://proton.me/support/importing-openpgp-private-key or using the bridge), whatever tool does the signing needs the key (duh) so I am not sure what you mean by "they store your private key" (they stored it encrypted as per documentation https://proton.me/support/how-is-the-private-key-stored), their AI was specifically designed as local, exactly to be privacy friendly, plus is a feature that can be disabled (when it will reach general subscriptions).

I don't care about cyptocurrencies, but I suppose they started with the most popular, nothing to do with privacy as they just let you store your currencies.

Anyway, use what you like the most, of course, but yours don't look very solid motivations, quite a lot of incorrect information, I hope you didn't take your decision based on it.

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea. No thanks. They can do the signing and encryption with my public key and then I'll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (18 children)

You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea.

An encrypted key is a useless blob. What matters is the decryption key for that key, which is your password (or a key derived from it, I assume), which is client side.

They can do the signing and encryption with my public key

They can't sign with your public key. Signing is done using your private one, otherwise nobody can verify the signature.

Either way:

and then I’ll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it.

You can do it using the bridge, exactly like you would with any client-side tooling.

load more comments (18 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I switched to Proton Mail in 2019, and recently started switching to their VPN service to use port forwarding. Glad to see Proton is putting their money where their mouth is.

[–] MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago

I've been too critical of them in the early days and will admit that many of the issues that plagued their VPN service years ago have now been fixed.

Just wanted to point out that it does not change anything from privacy and security perspective about their products.

Also they are still operating as a normal company internally (they still offer their vpn through a third party provider and they still work to achieve the highest income from their products).

load more comments
view more: next ›