Does a wrench make us more lonely?

To be fair, Proton’s hands were tied. It was either give up the customer data for a few customers or their business would have to be shut down for all the users relying on it.

In reality the activists made a crucial mistake of not using a VPN. If they used the Proton VPN in conjunction with Proton Mail they would have been safe.

I would look for a hosting provider that hosts servers outside a 5-eyes country (which is just about every western country, unfortunately). After doing A LOT of web searching I came across cloudsigma. They have servers in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. No, they haven’t paid me for this (although, cloudsigma, if you’re reading this…I’m your biggest fan!).

I’d give https://dnt.abine.com (also called Blur…not really sure what to call them) a look. It’s kinda like privacy.com but from what I can tell there’s more privacy and any card you create is client-side encrypted.

I presented an idea at the recent Linux conference. I think I probably botched the talk. :-(

In any case, the idea I was proposing was this…

Just hire people.

The current way of hiring is high risk low reward.

But if you initially hire someone for a small project as a 1099 that’s low risk high reward. Seeing how the handle a small project can indicate how they’ll handle a large one.

Not sure of a left solution…I suppose passing a law that limits the number of interviews a company can do; or creating a public hiring department so that all hiring decisions are decided at a state/local level and then passed on to employer; or shutting a company down if there are too many complaints about their hiring process…but I can imagine a lot of issues with these.

It can be very tempting to immediately jump on the “ban signal” bandwagon, but I think it would be wise to take a step back and understand where they’re coming from.

In reading the blog post their focus is on user privacy as their top priority. I don’t believe signal would make this decision without privacy in mind. What’s the alternative?

If spammers run rampant, Signal has a bigger privacy nightmare on their hands. Maybe by a miracle you got Grandpa to join you on signal. But a spammer then reached out to him with “hot young singles in your area” and Grandpa just had to click. Now suddenly Grandpa’s retirement savings are gone.

So I’m not saying it’s not worrisome. I’m saying let’s remain open-minded. After all, it’s nearly impossible to have 100% open source software in any stack. You’re either using an AMD or Intel CPU. They’re both closed source, but they allow you to interact with a privacy community.

Excellent article! Truly.

In my failed product launches I’ve gotten advice from 2 groups:

1. Successful non-technical founders who pushed for product validation & clear explanation of pain points…both of which aren’t necessary.
2. People in technology who work on SaaS products who aren’t wanting to create anything new.

With the tech job market feeling very dry right now I think I might consider launching something small.