sudneo @ sudneo @lemm.ee

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1 yr. ago

"Oh no, a person who didn't demonstrate any quality worth of respect so far is calling me names". Spare the effort, insults only work when someone values your opinion. You clearly demonstrated not being able to even argue your opinion.

Now I will block you and go earn my salary lobbying in other threads /s

There are a ton of imports that are not (yet) sanctioned, and therefore tons of companies that did not divest.

As I mentioned, when possible or equivalent I absolutely support the choice. In this case, there are conflicting benefits and everyone can do their choices based on the way they value the different benefits.

This obviously can't be an absolute moral argument, otherwise residing in US or Russia (or UAE, or China and many many more countries) would be immoral ipso facto, and same for buying any product made by any company in those countries. The globalized world makes this basically impossible.

Anyway, I feel we are going in circles now, so I will close it here.

"You can't call me buddy" - proceeds to call "homeboy".

I explained my reasons, if you disagree or you decided not to read them it is your problem. Keep your compassion for those who need it.

I will give you more data points. I live in Estonia, and just now Estonia is disconnecting the power grid to Russia. It means that just by turning on my light, I might give (have given) some money to an actual Russian company. Let alone knowing which companies use Russian gas or other resources etc.

There are choices that personally make sense, I refused a job at a Yandex spinoff - israeli-russian company, for example. In this case the amount of money is so small, so indirect, that I personally accept the fact of giving money to Yandex - of which a small portion I assume ends in taxes and a portion of that ends up in weapons that will be used to kill Ukrainians is nothing different from buying a product that I am unaware was produced by a company which uses some Russian import. However, using kagi I can at least positively contribute to other aspects that for me are important in the world, like for example the protection of privacy. For this, I even accept to give money to Google and Microsoft, despite they are companies that made incalculable damages to society, and also pay (little) taxes and work directly with the US military, which means some money also ends up in weapons that are used to kill Palestinians (today).

Now, everyone has their own moral scale, so I completely understand if for someone this is unacceptable. That said, their technical reason why they don't have an easy way for people to choose search backend is reasonable, and if we go to the point where they shouldn't use X for moral reasons than they wouldn't be able to use yandex, bing, google, brave (and maybe something else). In fact, using Kagi itself means paying taxes in US.

So to me their current approach is the only reasonable outcome. If for someone the tiny amount of indirect money is worse than the benefit (not personal, but collective) of fostering a healthy tech company, boost privacy etc. then they can reasonably make the decision to not pay for the service. Painting not doing so as "supporting Russia" though is disingenuous IMHO (I am saying in general).

Funny note, my wife also uses and loves Kagi, and not because she doesn't care about the work or her family (who thankfully is in a safe-ish area).

Let me explain it to you:

• first comment with meta-statements about down votes (I didn't downvote, but still shows the tone)
• one comment in: "how many figures you get"
• two comments in: "I feel like I am talking with a secret operative".

Now, you might think everyone is stupid, but it doesn't take that much that all these statements are passive aggressive and they are a way to insinuate your interlocutor is arguing in bad faith or for ulterior motives.

so much energy into something you don't have a monetary interest in

I don't agree. First because it's little effort, if any. I am right now taking a dump and tapping on my phone. Second, by the same logic your commitment would show also financial incentive? So are you paid by Google to smear competitors?

I instead think that we are simply commenting on stuff that we are interested in. I want kagi to succeed, of course, and I do because it's a great product but much more importantly because I want their business model to succeed. I want more and more companies adopting it and stop thinking that fucking over users is the only way to make money. From this perspective, sure, I am invested because I want a healthy tech industry which works for humans and their rights.

Not that I have to justify anything anyway.

BTW, if you start every conversation with the mindset that "everyone who disagrees with me must be paid by whom I am accusing", I hardly think you can consider yourself fair. As I said, using your own logic I need to assume you work for Google or Microsoft and are paid by them to smear competitors.

She doesn't, but that's my whole point: it's a personal perspective. If you ask a person from Palestine, Vietnam, many places in South America, Yemen, Iraq, etc. their gripes would be different from my own, which as an Italian are different already from my wife's etc.

So which moral claims do you accommodate? The obvious answer is everyone's, by allowing each user to choose where indirectly give money. However this is apparently technically hard, so either you shut down or you simply decide that you can't accommodate any, and make good in other areas (I.e. through privacy-preserving services).

I am repeating data points they shared during the community event.

BTW buddy, you can cool it with the passive-aggressiveness. Not everyone on the internet is out to get you.

The info about them breaking even at 25k was shared in the discord channel (which I very rarely look). The rest are stats that are published on their website and as I said shared during the yearly community event.

I work in tech, and I would be blind to not acknowledge that a company which:

• is profitable/breaks even after few years of operation
• does that with 25k users
• doesn't have a marketing budget (used to, now they might have a ridiculously small one).

Might be a healthy business, different from 99% of tech companies that generally bleed money even with millions of users.

You seem completely sure of the opposite, whatever, don't use their service lol

My wife is Ukrainian. I will leave it at that.

I have also a colleague from Afghanistan, for example, guess what their opinion is (and the list could be long, I just happen to have a colleague from there).

I remember Yandex being brought up during the Brave debacle, and I don't remember them claiming anything of the sort. I think they simply stated the position that choosing search providers based on moral claims would simply lead to them being able to use only the niche search providers.

Are you referring to using Yandex?

I think they did explain that implementing turn off and on of specific engines per user is a complete rewrite of their querying system, so it is an expensive and complex change.

Removing yandex is OTOH not a great move as results in Russian language often come from there. Also morally I would generally agree, but then - especially now - you could argue about "giving money to US companies", and that means they need to shut down, they can't use bing, google, yandex.

You said "if your product is not interesting enough for users to use".

The product has to be useful, and the user growth for a obviously premium service I think is a good testimony of that.

Have you considered that they might be a healthy business that doesn't bleed money (like most tech companies) and therefore doesn't need to rely on trapping users in subscriptions hoping they won't use the product?

Also what's with the passive aggressive tone? We are talking about a search engine, chill.

The user growth has been bigger than usual in the last months, they have live stats. Not to say they were breaking even at around 25k users, they now have 38k.

Also their product shouldn't be interesting, should be invisible. It's a search engine, not a toy.

If you really want to see malice, I would say it's more of a marketing move because very very few users will not make any search at all in a month. And those users have indeed no cost for them. Giving them credit still means you are getting the money eventually.

I get the racial stereotypation, but at least it should be funny.

Btw, taking a hunting license requires a medical exam (including psycho-physic evaluation), a basic zoology exam to recognize species, an exam on laws around hunting, one about nature preservation and one on weapons handling. It has to be renewed every 5 years.

Nothing too complicated, tons of idiots have it, but still quite a process.

If you likes it takes two, in march the same studio should release "split fiction".

Other titles that come to mind: cuphead, untitled goose game, overcooked (!), valheim.

But you try to make it seems like it was an intricate and nuanced position.

No, I integrate it with the thoughts he expressed. He didn't back down from his opinion (on reddit), he simply elaborated more. Quite common for a tweet that due to the idiotic limitation on characters is very easy to write in ways that don't fully express what you want to say.

I understand why some people are pissed. But some people see politics in the same way football fans see the sport. So even a tiny, indirect praise for an action that Trump does that might be actually positive (even for the wrong reason) is seen as a capital sin, because you can't be nuanced, you can't have specific opinions, either you are against or you are a supporter, like in football. And I fully, wholeheartedly, disagree with this attitude, at least for external observers (in this case, non US citizens), and especially once the elections are over (my judgment on this tweet would have been different if the election didn't happen yet).

I disagree. I for sure will keep using the service, this has nothing to do with it.

I genuinely can't see any issue with his statements, I read them in context and - while I don't have an opinion on the subject - I think they are totally reasonable personal opinions.

Also lumping together "tech CEOs" is another (in my opinion) completely wrong generalization.

• proton is a company with a healthy business model that doesn't harm users
• the CEO decided to give control of the company to a nonprofit to ensure the values will be followed with no pressure.
• the company is not a social media nor a company that controls what you can see, which is a big difference because alignment with one or other political view can have a huge impact in those cases (which is why zuck alignment is a much much bigger deal than Andy Yen supposed alignment).
• the company is not american, it's not part of big tech.

So yeah, I disagree even with this part of your interpretation of the situation.

I don't think there is any way to find a common ground. Personally I find your interpretation really forced and therefore exaggerated. Context, track record and most importantly the words of this guy do not seem to point out at all to a "mask off situation" in my opinion.

Edit: I really dislike meta-comments. I am commenting based on what interests me, whether other people do other stuff is not something I can do anything about. Please refrain to use the "people like you..." type of statements. You have no idea who I am or what I think besides this conversation.

Oh no, he tagged trump (did he? Or did he reply to the tweet in which trump announced the antitrust pick?). This 1 second action changes everything. I am glad we have already moved the goalpost. Why tagging trump would change the context of his message it's really a mystery to me.

Look, for me it's simple. He has expressed himself in a way that was easy to misinterpret. He clarified his thoughts, I judge him for his thoughts.

You want to judge him for what you think he meant? By no means, go ahead. Just don't pretend it's a fact, because it's literally an opinion. A legitimate one, but still an opinion. The fact is that he said something and clarified that he meant something. Whether he is sincere or not is an opinion, but it doesn't change the fact.

For the rest I don't care to convince you or anybody else, I don't care of Andy Yen either. What I do care is people damaging one of the very few tech companies out there that are positive exceptions to a shitty industry. I think this is way worse than a tweet - even if it praised republicans in a general sense.

Besides this, I also hate this aesthetic of purity. MacCartysm in modern sauce.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/m7hfhdh/

I will quote his own words:

Unfortunately that was misinterpreted. If you go back to the original tweet in question, it is clear from the context that that is about "little tech" vs "big tech

I know we are in the internet in 2025, and nobody has the right to clarify their opinion anymore, one strike and you are out, but still.

To me it was obvious from the context to be honest, without even needing his own explanation (that you call backpedaling because good faith is never assumed). But then again, I was not looking for reasons to be outraged.

It's hilarious though that reporting the authors own thoughts you call misinformation. Instead drawing your own conclusions that are explicitly denied by that person is supposedly objective. If there are no more rules of logic then everything goes.

Also this is not bootlicking, it's just a timid defense of rationality in the face of people building castles in the air.

You can if you use the bridge, which is not perfect but basically does the GPG encryption/decryption for you and exposes IMAP etc. (I think you can also do your own PGP encryption on top, not sure).

The supply chain issue you discuss is the same with any tool, with the exception that with proton you have an automated update system (I.e. every time the page loads js code), while with more traditional tooling you upgrade based on your choice (more or less). You are likely not checking the code in either case, but a malicious update could backdoor or bypass your encryption either way. Technically you can build the proton client yourself but anyway, this is just theoretical stuff, nobody does that.

Gmail + GPG is anyway worse, first of all from a UX perspective, where every device needs to be managed separately (GPG keys need to be available, you need to manage them, managing keys and keeping them secure is hard). Second, you will use GPG only with selected people of whom you have the key. With proton you will use it automatically for all Proton users at the very least and all proton users can use it with you automatically too.

Then there is the problem with metadata. They cannot be encrypted of course, and with gmail you are 100% sure they are using them to profile you and mine whatever data can be mined (e.g., who you talk to), while with proton you can reasonably be confident they don't.

I mean, "spin it", that's literally what the tweet said, in a response to a tweet (from trump, hence the tag) that announced that pick. He praised the pick and generalized on the fact that republicans are more likely than democrats to fight big tech. Good or wrong that's everything that was said and a perfectly legitimate opinion, even if I may disagree.

This also happened in December, not yesterday.

the Republicans are now the party of the small people

He didn't. He clearly meant small tech in that context, opposed to big tech\monopolies. Not only this is the only interpretation that makes sense, but he said this himself in a clarifying (personal) reddit comment.