The post is just an ad disguised as a guide

That said:

its obvious they want to be like google but with “privacy” as a gimmic because its only private until they get a government order telling them to do something to unmask a user or monitor an email.

Besides the fact that Proton is based in Switzerland where government warrants aren’t issued willy-nilly, please learn how the mathematics behind encryption works – or, if not, at least trust that it does. For emails that are sent E2EE, Proton can only have garbled data that requires a key they don’t have.

You’re just constantly talking out your ass, and I have no idea why; it’s so unearned. Like I’m not going to debate you on whether ads or corporations are good because a) I broadly agree and b) that’s just, like, our opinions, man, but then you just say shit that’s so demonstrably untrue that all I can think is: “I fucking hate what this decade has done to people.”

Before I address the substance: that’s not what an ad hominem is in the context of an argument. I’d already 100% finished attacking the substance of their argument. An ad hominem would be if I fallaciously appealed to a personal characteristic (real or otherwise) to attack an argument of theirs. “You’re wrong because you’re a dipshit”.

Anyway: man, I dunno. It’s 2026, and I’ve gotten really fucking sick of being unilaterally bound by etiquette when the bullshit asymmetry principle and the Dunning–Kruger effect are being stretched to their limits by insufferable, insolent shitheads who’ve unburdened themselves of critical thinking and assume having a platform to the entire world makes them qualified to say anything about everything (I can fall into this trap too, but holy shit sometimes).

I was still more polite than they were, still exercised more critical thought than they did, and still addressed the substance, and that’s fine enough by me not to tone police myself.

but i guess thats why I don’t work in marketing

Yeah, I guess it is, because this article works in Proton’s favor on multiple levels:

• Plenty of Proton users have switched over from Gmail, still have their old account, and still, even with forwarding, occasionally need to use those old addresses.
• People who search for or are sent a guide who’ve never or rarely heard of Proton might end up on their site and read a guide that lambasts Google and its usage of AI.
• Meanwhile, Proton’s alternative product is being advertised everywhere on the page outside the guide and even is advertised within it.
• These guides are going to exist anyway (many, in fact). You’re acting like this is some extremely niche thing users might want to do. Having your own guide but poisoned with your marketing when you’re the underdog is a sound idea.
• This gives a benevolent image of “Good Guy Proton” who just wants to keep people’s data private regardless of business – and a “Bad Guy Google” image because it’s apparently so dire that their competition has to do this.
• Consumers becoming more privacy-conscious generally is a boon long-term for businesses like Proton.

You’re so smarmy about this but just come off as a complete dipshit who gave this two seconds of thought.

So that’s why vegans are more likely to be iron-deficient.

Technically the numerical code still gives you a precise search key to find other people discussing the same issue.

… You know, as would be useful for a serious operating system where online support doesn’t mean trawling the bowels of Reddit praying somebody’s had the same issue and found a reproducible solution.

Heroic is an impressive achievement. It just isn’t a full replacement – and most of these points I’m about to list aren’t things it’s trying to or should necessarily do as a games launcher. Off the top of my head:

• It doesn’t work for social aspects like friends, statuses, etc.
• It doesn’t work for monitoring achievements.
• The storefront is just the actual gog.com webpage rendered as a surface. GOG Galaxy’s store UI, by contrast, flows with everything else.
• I don’t think games auto-update, although I could be wrong.
• It’s bloated by nature of also being a launcher for Epic and Amazon – platforms I will never use. GOG Galaxy allows crossplatform stuff, but it’s not a full-on multilauncher.
• The UI is pretty ass. I sympathize a lot with this one as someone who works on the (often disastrously undercoordinated) UI of a similar-profile project.
  • Rectangular UI elements’ corner rounding is all over the place (from sharp 90° to Material 3 and everything inbetween).
  • Themes are extremely samey with an enormous bias toward dark themes (I say this as someone who exclusively uses dark themes: a single light theme and thirteen dark themes means you don’t give a shit).
  • You can’t hide the left-hand menu bar to actually center the page you’re viewing.
  • Actions like toolbar dropdowns have no animations (I understand not wanting these; that’s accommodated with a “Disable Animations” option).
  • There’s absolutely zero compatibility with Orca (screen reader) that I can find.
  • Etc.

Again, all of these except the UI aren’t things Heroic is doing wrong or even supposed to be doing at all.

Side note: in Heroic, the GOG storefront opens with UTM parameters in the URL for “adtraction”. Wonder what that’s about.

I take some sense of ownership over my Steam library in that I can and will immediately pirate the game with the DRM stripped out if Valve ever decides to revoke my access to it.

On the other hand, this – and buying from a better company – is why I actively prefer GOG, even in cases when the price is higher. (But pssst, hey, Beyond a Steel Sky is $3.50 on GOG right now compared to Steam’s $35.) The fact I have to launch the Steam client to play a game I paid for is absurd, and I regret every purchase I made, like Stardew Valley Terraria, before I knew GOG existed. The main outstanding issue to me now is that GOG refuses to port its Galaxy client to Linux.

The reason I think this is important is because we keep throwing money at bigger and bigger dark matter detection chambers, and we keep operating on the possibly incorrect assumption of dark matter while we create new theories.

Okay, Sabine, whatever you say. I’m sure bubble chambers and TPCs (I assume since you’re targeting “chambers” that other experiments like DEAP are fine) for direct detection are a catastrophic money sink that you’re totally not exaggerating even a little.

Edit: Wait, are you specifically targeting the funding for the search for WIMPs? Since you’re just joining us from your 15-year coma, I’m afraid to inform you that problems have gotten much worse for science than bubble chamber and TPC costs.

American Megatrends flashbacks

Pictured: sanitizing the words “fuck” and “perverted” out of a joke about voyeuristically getting off on watching real, actual birds having sex.

People who premeditatively use words like “cunt” and then decide to censor it are behaving like 12-year-olds playing MW2 on Xbox Live who want to call somebody a “fucking bitch” but whisper it into the mic so their parents don’t ground them.

Like, we all know what you mean, and you censoring it isn’t protecting anyone’s delicate sensibilities. You only end up looking immature. Just use polite language or fucking don’t, you daft cunts.

In your urethra, and then you shoot it out during sex. Sex work is generally outlawed because this practice is so dangerous.

No problem at all. Full disclosure: I’m a longtime member of and frequent contributor to Wikipedia. I have a bias in this. I’ll say, however, that because we’re not a monolith, internal criticism of the project is varied, rampant, and welcomed. It’s no surprise when everyone is a volunteer and the entire draw of editing is “this thing sucks; make it better”. Criticism is so prolific that for the project’s 25th anniversary, the English Wikipedia’s official newsletter, The Signpost, published a dire, 6500-word warning about our trajectory.

We’re constantly looking for criticism so we can improve, and it’s why, if you can believe it, we love seeing new faces and articles published like “I tried to edit Wikipedia for a week; here’s how it burned my house down”. What we don’t value is criticism made in bad faith; there’s nothing to talk about when one side of the discussion wants to just sit around and Gish gallop all day for transparent political ends.

For those out of the loop, this user’s entire purpose on Lemmy is to spread negative coverage of Wikipedia, one of the few remaining strongholds against far-right disinformation.

And yes, that does include signal-boosting criticism from literally anyone who’s against the project, including Israeli courts, US House Republicans…

Effectively, their job is to stir up FUD.

Ah, yeah, I knew what you meant. I just thought it was funny imagining the serious tone of Blade Runner’s replicants pasted onto Reddit bots astroturfing for Burger King.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a corporate troll manipulating public opinion.

This blog post was plausibly written by AI. Look at the fabricated source on the 2020 study and at the wording.

I don’t think we know what the actual figure is because this blog post ostensibly fabricates this alleged 2020 study.

Edit: But of course this post is taking off anyway because Lemmy users are soooo much more discerning than those dumbass Reddit users.

The study is likely fabricated by this blog post from what I can find.