Because they’re all fraternity rejects who still want college boys to think they’re cool

> “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August.

What a jerk. I agree that security doesn't have to be given time—like all software, implementation takes the time it takes.

But he doesn't have to be such an asshole about it. In my book, there's nothing more representative of "loser thinking" than casting petulant aspersions like "loser thinking."

Dunno, but it's a big reason why I hated living in SF, hate being lumped in with "tech bros", and absolutely cannot stand people who turn their entire personality into being "all in on AI".

There have been a number of signs over the past few years that they are very much not the good guys.

This doesn't make them bad guys, though.

edit: stating this based off of the linked post, but will read the article linked in the post as well.

edit edit: Okay, yeah. This seems like an awful place to work.

Failure to take advantage of available tools does not suggest whether you are a good guy or a bad guy, just whether you are a competent guy or an incompetent guy.

Yeah this sounds a lot to me like blowback from current or former employees. There's no specific evidence yet of bad security practices, but the mere suggestion of it is a problem for a company whose image is centered on privacy. It's a knife well-aimed by someone who knew where to aim it.

Posting the CEO's own words seems pretty fair to the CEO.

You know any decent alternative? I have a Tuta address, but sometimes emails don't arrive.

It seems like it has. My father who is provacy conscious but not really one to seek specific things out started talking about / investigating proton a couple of weeks ago. He is almost 80.

Those are the media outlets to cut out of your life. They're just proxies for PR firms.

Does this change your estimation of whether they will keep logs?

Who are the others? Mullvad I assume, although they had their own brush with bullshit not too long ago.

Damn.

Any good alternatives?

The CEO sounds like .. a loser. :) I'm kidding! He sounds very smart!

If the company isn't going to hit revenue targets they might actually need to fire people and this can be a good way to provide cover that devs aren't meeting requirements so they can be fired with cause.

A past company CEO sounded very similar to this internally before they fired 30% of the staff because they didn't have enough money.

My current vibe reading on CEOs who think every job can be done with AI today is the athlete who starts celebrating before crossing the finish line, to be passed bysomeone who takes the win. My guys, it's not that good yet!

The issue is that, per the article, "Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,”

I think anyone who has been working around in IT long enough, knows that it is in fact very, very hard to be fast and secure. Even with AI.

Commonly attributed to Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Just like other advances in technology have replaced jobs, AI will replace jobs.

I'm sure the elevator opperators lamented push-button controls that anyone could just press too.

It sucks, but I imagine most programmers are smart enough to be able to pivot careers or how they do their jobs.

You can absolutely shake people out of their ways without being a raging asshole.

Humans still write the code, we just do it using AI tools.

If we abdicate and let all software development and operations occur through the use of fully autonomous agents, someone is still ultimately responsible for the agents work/screw-ups. Thus, there is still a human writing code, from an ownership perspective. We all know it won't be the capital/manager class holding the stick there.

Prototype self-driving cars where able to handle 90% of driving around 1990. Sometimes it is very hard to go from something that works very often to something that works always.

Depends on what do you mean by "writing code". Once, writing code meant punching holes in pieces of paper and feeding that into a machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became entering cryptic numbers into the machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became typing words and punctuation that have some passing connection to English but otherwise meaningless to a non-professional. Then the technology changed. Writing code became much more like writing text but still not resembling any actual text. Then the technology changed... It will change again. It still won't magically produce something sensible out of nothing.

> Do we really need humans writing code anymore though?

Yes, we do.

> Another year of development and AI is just going to be superior to a human writing code.

I've been hearing that for multiple years now. Why is it true this time when it wasn't in the past?

Regardless of who or what writes it, it needs to be tested.

I don't even care about that. Sure, use LLMs to write code. But the way Andy talks to his employees and treats them is so disrespectful, I find it actually despicable.

Unfortunately, it's not super easy for me to migrate away from Proton, but it's the next personal tech project I'll undertake.

Companies need somebody to yell at when hackers get in.

Ahh yes, the final ten percent is always easy to predict like this.

This bubble can't pop soon enough.

You are right. Let's just hand the keys to everything to the AI companies. They've proven to be trustworthy and ethical. I trust them so much, I'm just going to stop thinking and say yes.

/s

That seems highly optimistic.