One other thing to be made aware of is that the macOS ecosystem seems to be a little hostile towards pCloud and it seems to be fighting a never ending battle in order to the get the remote drive functioning reliably there. It works, but it can be a little annoying at times.
pCloud seems to have been having a few wobbles in the past few months, and it's unclear to me whether the root cause is external or internal. Two different Windows machines both needed manual removal and reinstallation, and the Mac installation needed manually updating to a later version due to (apparently) an SSL certificate renewal. FWIW the current version on my Mac (on Sequoia) seems solid outside of rarely needing to select 'Enable Drive' from the menu.
I have been a user of gmail since you needed an invitation to register, and even though I have felt for years the pressure to de-google myself, I find it a daunting task due to the amount of people/services that think my email account is gmail, and forever will be.
Then I setup a new mail account (by now I abandoned Proton for Infomaniak there as well)
The next year I just kept responding with my new email address, asking people to update their contact data and each time I logged in somewhere I changed my email address. This went really well, just 1 or 2 services where I couldn't change it because they only accept the big providers, no custom domains.
In the end the first 3 weeks were really painful, afterwards it was smooth sailing.
Since then I've swiched provider quite a bit from Proton to Zoho and now to Infomaniak (where I will stay for a long time I think) and each of those changes took me about 2h each time.
So in sumnary, you will curse yourself for a few weeks and thank yourself later!
At some point I downloaded the emails from Hotmail by adding the account to Thunderbird and copying the contents to a local folder. Probably imapsync or some other dedicated tool would be more reliable but it seems to have worked for me (don't forget to also copy the sent folder). I don't really look back at it anymore, after a few years nothing of interest lands there. It's still out there though. Data hoarder issues with definitively deleting the data from it
I'd keep the account name just in case someone finds that it can be re-registered and used to gain access via password reset somewhere
I started to use my own domain within Gmail 2 years ago. Transitioned things I cared about to use that email at that time.
Then this years I moved to Proton using that domain. And I'm forwarding Gmail to proton indefinitely.
I told my family, friends to start using that address going forward.
Slowly but surely as I get email into my gmail folder on proton I take the time to go change the address.
The big change is using an address from you own domain.
Instead of Startpage, try DDG (DuckDuckGo) - been using it now for several years instead of Google as I found no difference in search quality.
I definitely know that an open mapping solution could gain traction and be supported by bigger companies that would use it. It seems like a good candidate for the kind of collective OSS work that supports other projects- that there are enough big-enough companies out there that want an open non-google reliant mapping solution that are willing to pool resources.
I know that with mapbox and others that active work is being done, but it just doesn't quite seem like it's there yet.
Even Apple Maps is heavily, heavily behind Google Maps simply because very few users are entering Point of Interest info into Apple Maps.
New restaurant opens, or store closes, or opening hours change? Google Maps has the updated info within a few days. Apple Maps in a year or two, maybe.
That's the moat. The only way either Apple or the other corpos catch up is by offering massive financial incentives for their users to contribute PoI data.
It may not matter for your purposes (i.e. replacing Google-Maps-the-product in your daily use as a consumer).
I'd naively expect that having hundreds of thousands of Amazon drivers dogfooding these maps daily does help with data quality though. So maybe OSM dataset works best as a Google Maps replacement if you can shoehorn your usage into something that overlaps with the things a gigantic logistics operation cares about.
Startpage is owned by an American advertising company https://system1.com
You're paying for any of these?
Look at their revenue breakdowns.
But their stuff just feels a bit weird somehow. I didn't really want to commit yet. I'm glad to hear you had good experiences.
Mail is stored e2ee on server, so not even Proton can read it. Proton mail has also made PGP very easy to use. It’s Swiss based and a foundation, not a corporation. They’ve done this so they cannot easily be bought.
It ticks most boxes in terms of privacy and security.
The encrypted mail storage adds no value for me because I pull all my mail from the server immediately anyway. It's just a big hassle to deal with that bridge. And when a mail comes in they have to handle it in plaintext (and also, the other party sees it which is 90% of the time microsoft or google or another bad actor). I just view email as a lost cause really.
The only thing I get from Proton is the VPN.
And of course the recent allegations that they hand over your metadata on >90% of requests. See https://x.com/DoingFedTime/status/2030108076531995016
Exclusively, or do they keep caches around? I am asking since everything is clear text in the webmail. I wonder if they handle the rare case of proton to proton (encrypted) mail differently from regular unencrypted mail. I assume they have to decrypt a master key stored on the server with your password, and then decrypt every encrypted email on the fly on the server, or they have to send the master key to the client side.
Now think that through when you have thousands of searchable e-mails, sorted arbitrarily. I won't say it is impossible, but I think that maintaining plain text indexes rather than encrypted ones are really tempting.
Mail is stored e2ee exculsively. The’ve been summoned to hand over mail many times, which they weren’t able to do. Quick search on Ecosia and find the articles.
They don’t have a master key or else the whole e2ee story is a fad, which it isn’t. The Proton code is in Github so you can check how it works yourself. Part of the password is used to decrypt the data.
Search is done client side. You have to download a big search index in order to have proper search. The iOS app doesn’t support downloading the index so search is limited there.
Please think and do some work before you reply.
You can store an encrypted master key (like Luks), download that key to the client and decrypt it there. Or you can have it in decrypted in server memory, but only during an interactive session with the user. But that quickly turns into a fad, as you pointed out, which was exactly my question.
> The Proton code is in Github so you can check how it works yourself. Please think and do some work before you reply.
I asked a simple question, so that at others could chime in about the exact details and limits. I don't understand why that was highly offensive to you, but I assume it is something like a Monday Mood.
As of today, there is no official Proton Drive client for Linux that I'm aware of. There is unofficial support via Rclone, but it is still beta and I try to avoid mounting via Rclone anyway. I recall that it wasn't a really convincing experience when I tried it with OneDrive.
Just fyi
Registrar, and search? Not possible.
Maps? Paper would be more practical.
Browser, done.
Git, a lot of extra work for no gain.
On the contrary, maps are (IMO) one domain where FOSS is genuinely better. OpenStreetMap data is far more detailed than any corporate map, and the available clients (Osmand in particular) are far more powerful.
You-know-who can only compete because of its (admittedly useful) data on businesses. And, alas, because of ignorance among normies, many of whom are still clueless that, for example, for hiking or outdoor wayfinding, there are much better alternatives available.
Some anecdata I can offer: since last year I have used exclusively Osmand for navigating over 3000 km of cycle touring, on roads and paths of all types. The most common problem that arises is wrongly tagged surfaces (and occasionally access rights) for tracks and paths, i.e. for "roads" that do not even appear on the corporate maps. There is no comparison in terms of detail. Obviously this is less relevant for regular car drivers.
And certainly the situation for FOSS public-transit navigation is still quite poor.
https://transitous.org/ (https://github.com/public-transport/transitous) works quite well.
Gocryptfs works well for that.
Maybe try Immich?
Maybe corporations can start to market this: we are not an American company.
Don't waste your time trying different map services.
Everything else is super easy to switch to better alternatives, especially search, e-mail and browser.
Apple Maps does driving directions way better in general - better visuals, speech etc. It does foreign pronunciations better too IIRC. It's even not bad as a PWA on Android ( https://maps.apple.com ).
Google Maps loves to say take eg "exit Via Emilio Enrico" on some random roundabout in some random Italian town, seemingly with no idea that there are big signs to eg "VERONA". The street name is often totally useless.
I also find Google Maps does a great job at directing me into traffic. Like, not unexpected traffic at all.
Google Maps is great at giving you terrible recommendations because of the heavily, heavily filtered/gamed reviews however. Nothing more untrustworthy than a 4.7 star review on Google.
And of course there is also Mapy, HERE, TomTom etc...
"They’re rare, but I’ve consciously decided to stay away from some Canadian alternatives. The main customers of most Canadian tech companies are in the US, and I feel they would happily move there if needed."
So in an effort to veer from the US based on idealogical positions you wouldn't support your own countrymen because you think in some future state that said copmany might hypothetically move to the US?
Canadians unable to support Canadians is what everyone around the world should read from this comment. Tall Poppy Syndrome in its purest.
Consider for a moment how you would feel if, after carefully composing and sharing your thoughts in good faith, you received this response.
FWIW in case you are unfamiliar with it -- Canada has a history of not supporting its own products and companies - so this sentiment expressed above is tough one to swallow given the exceptional talent and capability of Canadians and some countries efforts to undermine that.
I learned something new today, thanks! I did face this a LOT in Canadian workforce, never knew it had a term, but the way you get undermined and attacked for not being an average is crazy, taking/sharing the credit, and pushing you on the sides, excluding you from meetings and all shenanigans haha. Completely the opposite in the US, not just productivity wise, but US companies embrace individualism and “as long as you get shit done”, go wild! It’s why US companies do better, I doubt it’s the market size as always brought as a justification, I am sure if Canadian companies did better they will have US based customers too just like Switzerland had European ones.
My first focus is sharing, search and discoverability.
The biggest issue is that I have thousands of photos but I don't have a good way of filtering by person, date, location, and finding exactly what I'm looking for. Basically browsing my photos like I would browse an online store like Zalando. Search for something and refine with filters.
In addition - I implemented S3-like storage. Makes it cheap and easy to host in the cloud.
Edit: oh just saw, it's a fork of immich! Cool!
We are in a state of permanent horror at what the voting majority has done, all to avoid voting a woman of color into office, to own the libs, to hate on brown-skinned people, etc., ad nauseum. Votes against today, instead of towards tomorrow. Hatred and fear as prime motivations.
I am not aware of Denmark giving meaningful control of Greenland to China or Russia, nor or any plans to push the US out: therefore, while I think the principle is worth considering, I find it to be a small concern not worth angering allies over.
Does that answer your statement of confusion?
I disagree.
Probably something along the lines of "nice nuclear deterrent shame if it was to stop working" or "nice carriers, shame if the only aeroplanes that can fly from them stopped working"....
American voters witnessed this demagogue incite a riot in an attempt to steal an election, and after that 2/3 of them still couldn't be bothered to vote against him.
As an American myself, blaming Americans for this situation seems pretty fair.
but indignant when other nations return in kind.
This is not some end state of success, but a process. It's people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and strategies on how to accomplish a relatively challenging economic shift.
What you are witnessing and commenting on is quite literally the messy business of a market organically evolving and developing. "Not American" is now a selling point for services.
I see it as an effort to divest themselves of moral inequity.
And the result isn't the point: the effort and the reason for the effort, is.
This is the first iteration/calibration of a more conscientious intention.
When moral imperative is an unidentifiable road feature on the highway towards wherever the US is going...small efforts matter
The usage of the term 'virtue signaling' is almost always a sign that the person saying it isn't being intellectually honest - it's usually just meant to be a putdown.
You are showing us who you are and what you believe, but you are not describing the parent commenter.
Virtue signaling takes place wherever changes in group behavior are required by changes in conditions but calling it just virtue signaling is reductive. People are moving off of US services because of the behavior of the US government and US citizens.
> Proton AG is a Swiss technology company offering privacy-focused online services and software. It is majority owned by the non-profit Proton Foundation.
So how is the US "controlling" Proton, can you enlighten us as you seem to be more knowledgeable about this?
If I was a citizen of a nation directly and recently threatened by the U.S I would consider it more as a "screw you" than virtue signaling.
This is probably because I am not especially caring about virtue, but I do like pointing out ways that alternate explanations for things some people might find virtuous could pertain.