cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/technology@piefed.social/p/2533091/proton-to-re-interview-staff-about-ai-to-see-who-gets-to-keep-their-job
If you’ve got to prep for a job interview either way, then you might as well do a few more.
Oh cmon, now which email provider do i use?
Start with buying your own domain.
If you are interested, self hosting email has an outdated bad reputation, I have had much more problems with google blocking microsoft email from custom domains than from self hosted emails.
That said, it is still a lot of work. For a hands off system, find a national provider that can use your domain, so you can switch later while retaining your address.
Yeah, self-host … then you end up on a VPS with a bad spam/RBL reputation because they have other customers being spammy dickheads, and their entire IP allocation is listed. This covers far too many VPS providers. So, when you’re trying to simply get things done, you end up randomly having to troubleshoot your emails not going through or ending up in remote spam folders.
Its a mess. Email sucks. Wouldn’t suggest self-hosting if you have low patience or are busy.
I think the best option for self-hosters who don’t want too much headache from their email is to host the email yourself, but send your emails through a relay other providers actually trust. It sucks to get so close to full control and give it up, but if you’re like me, you send almost no email, so there’s almost nothing at all to see for the relay, and all your received mail still comes straight to your server.
then you end up on a VPS with a bad spam/RBL reputation because they have other customers being spammy dickheads, and their entire IP allocation is listed.
Sure, if you don’t do your own research and legwork, first.
In fact, there are a shitton more bad corners you can paint yourself into if you are too fucking lazy to do some trivially basic research ahead of time, from hosts to software chosen to how you configure things.
Hell, a lot of these bad corners also involve turnkey solutions hosted by others. So simply having someone else do all the work can hose you just as badly. Sure, Azure/O365 or AWS Workmail or Google Workspace solutions are usually not that kind of corner, but unless you are willing to pay out the nose for minimal needs, you’re usually going to go for something a lot smaller and possibly more sketchy.
Self-host if you care about privacy and tech ethics, otherwise whatever seems most stable.
Self hosting an email service is a pain in the ass since most providers will block your email or show it as spam
Hasn’t been my experience with a correct DKIM & DMARC setup.
I already stopped giving a shit about Proton after the CEO praised Trump, members of Trump’s cabinet, and the Republican party. Then claimed to still be “politically neutral”
Did he actually praise trump directly? If I recall correctly it was his admin pick that was praised
Well the admin pick is even worse lol
my work has also been ramping up AI rhetoric too. forcing training on how to use it and automated meeting invitations to feedback groups. this last week they sent at least 20 invites.
I’ll keep declining them and refusing to use it until it’s a requirement for employment. then I’ll break out the “AI goes against my religion” card.
We’ve all seen how well top-down interviews pays off. Workers bees are the grist of corporations. Pay grades above them decide what happens with all resources - generally without input from they who turn the crank. Bottom-up should be the direction. How to create a product is important to those in sales and marketing.
They’ve been replying on Reddit and it hasn’t made them look better. They say they aren’t firing people and are just looking for people who can accelerate their work with LLMs. Like, sure buddy.
The AI stuff is so frustrating. I’m terrified to really talk about how I feel about it, because my opinions are too nuanced to be shared in a bullet point in a performance review. Everywhere I’ve been lately, it’s been about how much you use something, not about your output.
“Everyone look busy”
What is the computer equivalent of “walk fast and always carrying something”
This looks too l33t. I fear if I had this going, typing like a maniac, everyone in the office would gather around and start reading the code.
I don’t want your ai, make your email and calendar better
Executives: “But how do we do that without the incredible investment of AI?!”
Developer, sitting in the corner, arms crossed and covered in cobwebs: “Harumph”
As a developer, our executives and stakeholders have really losed focus. It seems like 10-20 years ago we were being asked to solve tightly scoped problems. Now we get massive sprawling edicts, tons of how I want it, and the result is a very unpolished product. No one seems to care about basics or details anymore. This predates our current AI mess and the AI boom has only made things worse.
That gave me a good chuckle
We need to ensure you’re compliant with the competency solvent credibility chipper, place your nostrils around the ice pick blades.
Wow proton give it at least a decade before you start to enshit… Oh wait. Right on schedule it seems. Unfortunate.
Non paywall in German: https://stadt-bremerhaven.de/proton-nachinterviews-zum-thema-ki-sorgen-fuer-unruhe/
AI policies are so dumb. You don’t evaluate people’s perfs on how much they use a tool. So what’s the damn end goal of such evaluation??
"Hey! I did nothing useful this year, but all with AI! -You’re promoted!!
I fixed hundreds of bugs and developed 3 new features all cheered by users! -With AI? -Err… not much -You’re fired!!"
The policy my company has implemented is the opposite. AI use is allowed, but no confidential client information is to be sent to any cloud AI service. Logic is that if we don’t have an actual NDA with OpenAI (or whoever), their privacy policy is not robust enough for us to take on that liability.
Interested in your thoughts on that!
For the LLMs killer feature, software development, you don’t really need confidential information 99% of the time.
It continues to annoy me how both haters and glazers will over-simplify the topic by calling everything AI. There’s a giant difference in usefulness, ethics, and quality between LLMs that produce code guided by an experienced developer, and “art” slopped out for greed by some random schmo.
Multiple companies have that approach, I’m not denying there ARE companies doing things right (or at least better).
I work in a company using multiple agents. One of them is supposed to be off Internet, and even with that one we’re not to share sensitive IP.
But Proton is not an isolated case. I bet some execs have invested and promised so much they need to report some good numbers on usage, and you can’t make up productivity improvement if there are people left getting as much done without AI.
Proton talks a big game externally, then spends the rest of its day just absolutely shitting the bed. As disappointing as always.
This came up in my financial news feed. If you’re a publicly traded company you want to be a growth company and not a mature company. The latter group are stable and provide steady dividends. The former have shares that become more valuable and increase your worth.
This is how we get people pivoting from sparkling water to AI.
And it’s how we get software companies that have a solid product suddenly deciding to ruin it by adding AI.
from sparkling water to AI
The AI is all around you.
istg these imbeciles are going to get me to self host my own email server.
white hairs here i fucking come.
Damn, this mofo still has hair
I’m looking to migrate to Tuta.
I’ve done that and learned a lot. Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail) won’t accept your email without paying them, or forwarding through someone who does (proton?).
i’m surprisingly ok with microslop not accepting my email actually
Thanks for making me realize that I literally don’t even need to be able to deliver to MS and I can just use my mailserver 😭
As am I. i don’t forward through anyone. All working well, but the learning process did, as you alluded to, give me white hairs.
noted, thank you.
while we’re here, any other tips i should keep in mind? what’s your stack (if you don’t mind sharing)?
Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL (MariaDB), postgrey, spamassasin.
Tips:
- once you get it running, keep close control and be prepared to shut down when the spam hounds find you.
- Do set up dmarc, dkim, and spf
- Put your server on spamhaus.org
- Don’t start if you’re feeling lazy, this will take a lot of mental attention.
I did mine before LLM’s, so I can’t comment how useful this will be, but I worry one might not understand the decisions made.
Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail) won’t accept your email without paying them, or forwarding through someone who does
That’s absolutely not true. They sometimes bork some messages and signatures internally, but aside from that, delivery to MS stuff (and that includes a lot of business behind their “outlook protection” service) has been fine for years.
And, contrary to old beliefs, it has been mostly fine all around. Just properly setup DKIM, your DMARC and SPF records, and don’t actually send spam. The worst that could happen is if you’re trying to send through some residential IP, as large blocks can occasionally get blocked. But a cheap hosting anywhere (even in a spamfarm-ridden provider) is very likely to work fine.
Lol no
Maybe if you’ve got a 10 year old domain that’s been actively sending legit email everyday or something, but my email from my server goes straight to spam on outlook. Literally everywhere else is fine.
// yes my dmarc, dkim and spf are fine. No I’m not on any blocklists. No my IP is not a residential IP lol. The domain and server just turned 1 year old last week :]
Well, I must have imagined all the traffic being fine going out from an OVH server all this time then /shrug
I just looked and they’ve blocked the whole IP range from the VPS provider (digital ocean in this case). I assume many vps’ have the same issue.
Sent a few messages to them so here’s hoping.
I’m sending through a vps and have properly set up all the things (dmarc, dkim, spf, et al).
It was years ago when I set up, but I spent some time trying to get the mail to go through (wife uses Hotmail). The rabbit hole led me to a service I could purchase that would allow the mail to go through. Many fora articles paralleled my own experiences.
I don’t send spam, and my “reputation” is good. I’ll look into it again.
