i dont think its that easy as others pointed out but yes I think it would help to have some strict startups around EU maybe that force companies to comply...but then again, from indie hackers/indei makers sides, europe hasnt been too incentivized/friendly for/to start ups either compared to other parts of the world...I think this is one of the major reasons.
Moving away from US cloud services
191–200 of 383 posts
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#192A shame that OP recommends Proton. The fact they don't support open email protocols like IMAP/SMTP without an extremely frustrating proxy setup is what ultimately turned me away from their service. Being able to "just" use a native mail client is pretty much a must. The vendor lock-in from something like Proton feels way worse as a result. Can't speak to Proton Pass, but it strikes me as a replacement that seems unne…
What's a good alternative to Proton? Still haven't migrated my business away from Google Workspace, and I was thinking Proton would be a good alternative, but apparently not if they don't even support IMAP/SMTP.
Fastmail[0] is what I use for my personal email. They support all the standards, but are also pushing things forward with standardising the JMAP protocol[1] which is much better suited to mobile clients than IMAP.
They only have email and calendaring though, no equivalent of Drive/Docs/Sheets.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#193Infomaniak is Swiss company and is a very nice alternative to 365. It covers emails, cloud storage and office editors (via OnlyOffice editors), and plenty more services.
For source code, BitBucket is provided by Atlassian, which while not European is Australian, so also from a trustworthy country.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Privacy rights in the EU are being eroded as we speak. Unless people there get off their high horse, they'll succumb to the same level of authoritarianism and surveillance as in the states. Last time I checked not even the US is proposing to install AI agents on everybody's phone to surveil your encrypted messages (look up chat control, last meeting not even 2 months ago). Soon people will start looking for non-EU…
Yes ChatControl is a worry indeed. But we have been successfully fighting it for a long time. And it is only pushed by a small number of politicians. Surprisingly enough the drive to do this does not come from within Europe but from the US (Ashton Kutcher and "Thorn"). They have managed to pocket some influential politicians.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is factually true:
Chat control: EU Ombudsman criticises revolving door between Europol and chat control tech lobbyist Thorn
> Breyer welcomes the outcome: “When a former Europol employee sells their internal knowledge and contacts for the purpose of lobbying personally known EU Commission staff, this is exactly what must be prevented. Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.”
Source: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-c...
> And it is only pushed by a small number of politicians.
Including the chief Ursula von der Leyen and her commission.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#195Even if you try to look at the situation from a detached POV I think you can't help but be baffled at how much influence the US is giving up for no apparent reason. It always felt like a house of cards here in Europe - we rely on defense from the US, we store so much of our data there, and almost all of our stuff comes from China or its area of influence.
Now there's a guy at the top of the US who doesn't understand human interactions beyond anger, disgust and mindless loyalty. Or diplomacy beyond simple monetary transactions. He and his rich friend are getting rid of anything they don't understand (or that they don't understand to be of value to them right now), and apparently that's almost everything.
We're living in interesting times.
I wonder what game theorists are doing right now. All I know is that old joke about economists can't be true, about blindly assuming that everyone acts in their own best interest. People do factor in stupidity, right? But there must have been limits, and we're clearly far beyond those.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
he mentioned also Quad9 - Cloudflare DNS replacement. I didn't know about and will probably switch to it. My other picks: SEARCH: qwant (france) LLM: mistral (france), librechat.ai, openwebui VPN: mullvad (sweden), protonVPN (swiss) AUTH: OpenID (sadly seems like not many sevices implement it) CLOUD: Hetzner (germany), OVHCloud (france) MAPS: here wego, openstreetmap EMAIL: protonMail (swiss), fastmail (australia) DN…
Fastmail is based in Australia [1], not Germany. [1]: https://www.fastmail.com/company/about/
Fastmail's servers are apparently located in the United States[1] - and the Netherlands, but there doesn't seem to be a way to know in which country your specific mailboxes are stored.
> Our colocation providers could be compelled to give physical access to our servers. Network capturing devices could be installed. And in the worst case an attacker could simply force their way into the datacentre and physically remove our servers.
So as far as warrantless surveillance is concerned, Fastmail is no better than if it were a US company or subsidiary thereof. They may themselves not be in a position where they would have to comply with US requests that would be illegal in Australia but whoever is operating their US-based DC absolutely is and they admit as much, even if they handwave this scenario as being no different from an ordinary hacking attempt[2].
[1]: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-u...
[2]: Of course the flaw in this comparison is that an ordinary hacker can't make on-site staff comply with their demands and prohibit them from disclosing the hack. To do so without the authority of the law, you'd need a Hollywood action movie level of criminal enterprise that would usually involve taking a retired police officer's granddaughter hostage for some reason.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#197I know this going to offend many but as an outsider, it is heart wrenching to see a foolish, greedy and extremely corrupt property dealer dismantling the greatest empire in the human history, piece by piece from its soft power (VOA, USAID) to its core functions (tempering with science and education) and there's no political force in sight that can be of any significance.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perfect is the enemy of good. The EU has it's flaws, but if you can't see the difference between the US privacy climate and the EU privacy climate then you need a reality check.
Yup, in the USA you can still have VPN server that is not storing logs, something that is simply illegal in European Union countries. In the USA you can purchase prepaid SIM card in Wallmart with cash, put it in your phone and you have anonymous phone number, again, this is illegal in Europe in a typical stupid European way, as any criminal who needs an anonymous card would pull in to the retailer some drunk or homel…
> In the USA you can purchase prepaid SIM card in Wallmart with cash, put it in your phone and you have anonymous phone number, again, this is illegal in Europe in a typical stupid European way
This is illegal in some European countries but not all. I more than bought one phone and one SIM card with cash in the past.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#199> Wrapping up - Migrating away from US cloud services was easier than I expected. This is absolutely not the main takeaway and I find it difficult to see how he could write this - there are gaping holes. Git repos (it's too difficult). NPM (ditto). Startpage uses Google's index. The only meaningful switch he mentions is Proton, but as other comments have pointed out they have vendor lock-in problems. The real takeawa…
> It feels like there's a real opportunity here for European companies to step up and make a big play, but will they? Or for the EC to stop their "rearm" BS, and actually do something useful for the people by helping such companies. This is the real battleground for European independence and freedom.
No it is not. Proton mail won't stop Putin from knocking on the next door after Ukraine.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#200Interesting how for a (junior) dinosaur, like me, this was never a problem: I still run my mail, web, nextcloud, xmpp, forgejo, etc server on a former thin client under a cupboard. With a symmetrical fiber 1G connection it's been surprisingly reliable. FAQ: Yes, you can run self hosted mail. Yes, it's complex. No, it's not hard, but it takes time, as it is complex - if you want to understand it. If not, go for someth…
Can you please write more details about "I block many AI crawlers from accessing code and photos"? The bots are trying to access your nextcloud instance? I'm also self hosting a few services, including nextcloud.