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It's going to be pretty short. Proton would be there for comms, for hosting related stuff I would trust Hetzner before any big US based cloud company. For the AI domain I wouldn't trust any of the big players, they're all just jockeying for position and want to achieve lock-in on a scale never seen before and they have all already shown they don't give a rats ass about where they get their training data and I expect that once they are in financial trouble they'll be happy to sell your private data down the river.

Effectively you can trust all of the companies out there right up until they are acquired and then you will regret all of the data you ever gave them. In that sense Facebook is unique: it was rotten from day #1.

Vehicles: anything made before 2005, SIM or e-SIM on board = no go.

I'm halfway towards setting up my own private mail server and IRC server for me and my friends and kissing the internet goodbye. It was a fun 30 years but we're well into nightmare territory now. Unfortunately you are now more or less forced to participate because your bank, your government and your social circle will push you back in. And I'm still pissed off that I'm not allowed to host any servers on a residential connection. That's not 'internet connectivity' that's 'consumer connectivity'.

> I'm halfway towards setting up my own private mail server and IRC server for me and my friends and kissing the internet goodbye. It was a fun 30 years but we're well into nightmare territory now.

Every day my doomer sentiment deepens, and I am ashamed when I come onto here and see all this optimism. It is refreshing to see people whose opinions I have come to respect on this forum to be as negative as I am.

If you're not to some degree pessimistic right now that simply means you haven't been paying attention for two decades or so. I would expect that for a number of people we are now well into 'don't look up' territory, they realize in their gut that this all isn't right but they prefer to pretend everything is alright as long as they can because the alternative is just too uncomfortable. I see this around me all the time and I don't blame them at all, people as a rule have problems enough without having to think about the larger implications. Unfortunately that is exactly the kind of loophole the power hungry contingent needs to drive their trucks through: by structurally worsening quality of life they ensure that the bulk of the people is distracted while they make out like bandits over the backs of the rest.
Proton is quite a privacy washing front. Surprised than even in HN nobody check behind the facade what was signed.
> Surprised than even in HN nobody check behind the facade what was signed

Such as?

These aloof comments that talk about something we're supposed to know about without referencing anything are very unhelpful.

Yes, they're losing it.

It's a pity, they were doing well for a long time.

I'm surprised that someone on HN would paint all of HN with the same brush.

It's one of those 'lesser evils' things. If you know of a better email provider I'd love to know.

Proton complied with a court order once (that we know of), no? I have seen a lot of negative sentiment from HN commenters toward them but not a lot of evidence to back it up, particularly when you consider the email marketplace.
It was a legally mandated court order they couldn't just refuse. No encrypted data, the contents of their emails, was handed over. The person would've also been safe had they used vpn/tor as I recall the story.
It's all so tiring isn't it? It's become a meme, but everyday more and more, I yearn for living in the middle of nowhere, unplugged, with just my friends and family around. Very unrealistic, but still.
Yes. My old farm in Canada was pretty good in that sense, but with the madman next door even that would not have felt very stable right now.
why the (e)SIM cars concern? i ask since the data transmission (bidirectional) can be used to justify lower insurance rates, for an example, than without that data.

( https://www.lemonade.com/fsd is an example )

"Justifying lower insurance rates" is just algorithmic bias described from the perspective of someone it doesn't (currently) harm. See also: credit scoring, insurance claim acceptance, job applications, etc., etc.

You only get offered a discount if most other customers are being compelled to pay full (or even increased) prices for the same offering. Otherwise revenue goes down and company leadership finds itself finding other ways to cut costs and increase profits.

Because I don't trust that that location data won't end up in the wrong hands.
This, but stronger. It’s not a story of why Johnny can’t trust anyone. The vast majority of companies have proven time and time again that they are not capable of handling this data securely against inadvertent disclosure. Not even mentioning the intentional disclosure revenue stream.
wrong hands being advertisers or insurance companies or something else? i also thought of stalkers being a vulnerability.
Proton? After the last two years of enshitification and purely revenue driven product decisions really?
Barely. Your points are well made and I'm sure that it is just a matter of time before they're just as untouchable as the rest. Hence the remark about mail. The Siloization of the internet is almost complete.
Mark, can you conceive that some people don’t trust any companies?
Yes, I can!

After reading Jacques's response to my question, my list got smaller. Personally, I still like Proton, but I get that they have made some people unhappy. I also agree that Hetzner is a reliable provider; I have used them a bunch of times in the last ten years.

Then my friend, we have to worry about fiber/network providers I suppose.

This general topic is outside my primary area of competence, so I just have a loose opinion of maintaining my own domain, use encryption, and being able switch between providers easily.

I would love to see an Ask HN on secure and private agentic infra + frameworks.