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I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

zeitgeistofbytes.com

201–210 of 266 posts

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything, just want to add a downside of proton which is often forgotten: there is no search. You cannot search your emails’ body (headers work, but keywords like “from:” still do not work for search), you cannot search the content of your files, etc. It’s the price of end-to-end encryption. The only workaround is synchronising everything locally and searching locally.

But you still can use Thunderbird for that. I recommend it no matter what mail provider is used. Web interfaces are so heavy nowadays, compared to that, Thunderbird feels so fast.

yes, so I can search my emails solely on my laptop if I install proton bridge and synchronize 50GB of emails. And in case you have ever tried to search 50GB of data with thunderbird, it’s slow.

I tried synchronising the data directly in the browser, without any email client and the search is mediocre and slow.

This is not a great experience for search.

But again, it’s not a critique of Proton, it’s just how it is with E2EE. At least it demonstrate they are really doing E2EE.

I still hope some time in the future homomorphic encryption will help, but I think we are at least a decade away from that.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really tried migrating to Proton, but unfortunately I found their suite not really fit for purpose and I had to request a refund. - No search in Mail. You can use Bridge to pull your emails into something else, but this means it's no longer secure, and not really feasible for a non-techy partner! - No search in Drive - 3 domain limit for Mail(???) - Drive sucks. No previewing files, viewing photos etc. due to missi…

Valid points. For me the no search is feature (due to everything being encrypted), not a bug. But this is an individual decision. I have a similar list after 2 years of using (and managing) my personal M365 subscription (Onedrive on macOS sucks, search on iOS is very slow, spotlight integration doesn't work etc.). I just wonder what you use now as an alternative, because it seems the perfect solution will not exist.…

Unfortunately we took the simple option and reverted back to Google. I was lucky that my wife even went along with my plan to migrate everything in the first place!

I'm considering self-hosting Immich to replace photos, but not sure when I'll tackle that and don't fancy having to use Tailscale all the time. No idea about a Drive replacement as yet!

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#203

It is not an EU based stack. Proton is Swiss and Switzerland is not in the EU.

Which was actually for me a pro argument of picking Proton. The EU has a growing need to monitor and spy on its citizens (see chat control madness). Switzerland is not perfect regarding online privacy, but even if Proton was hosted somewhere else, remember that they do encrypt (mostly) everything.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#204
post #65
post #41

I really wanted to switch to the Proton stack and even tried it for a couple weeks but the search in Proton Mail is so bad I couldn’t use it for even simple things like finding my airline tickets. I had to switch back to Google Workspace. It doesn’t seem like Proton even really cares about the how bad their mail search is and is more focused on releasing new products.

> search in Proton Mail is so bad I couldn’t use it for even simple things like finding my airline tickets. Not sure if it's related but Proton does not hold your unencrypted email body content consequently only you do once you are logged in. Thus you can't have server side search on your email content, only on email title. What you can have though is client side full-text search on body content. For that you have to…

Yeah I tried it and it was still unusable. I barely noticed any improvement.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything, just want to add a downside of proton which is often forgotten: there is no search. You cannot search your emails’ body (headers work, but keywords like “from:” still do not work for search), you cannot search the content of your files, etc. It’s the price of end-to-end encryption. The only workaround is synchronising everything locally and searching locally.

This is a problem of encrypted storage in general (and hopefully homomorphic encryption will solve that), but I knew this and for me that is a feature, not a bug. I use 2-step password auth (NOT 2FA) explicitly so no one can read my emails without my consent - not the provider, nor the government.

Can you elaborate on how the second password improves the privacy/security posture? I might switch to it.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably know but Substacks’ free speech thing is a huge turn off. That’s how you end up sending push notifications for your latest Nazi content. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-p... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-e...

Unfortunate as that notification error might be, you cannot call free speech free if you only allow if for some opinions.

Nazism is not an opinion. It is a dangerous ideology that has cost the lives and freedoms of many people. And will do so again, if left unchecked.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#207
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has always and always will be moving away from US tech

I’d argue the opposite, that the US is moving away from the rest of the ‘free’ world. ‘Free’ meaning not run by dictators.

Dictators typically don't win popular votes legitimately. Dictators typically don't have the courts constantly overruling them.

Europeans tend to have very little idea how the US government functions. Trump is able to do what he does simply because the people voted for a congress that supports him.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're linking a US media website, one famous for having its head way up the american exceptionalism hole. Oh, I didn’t notice we are already in the censorship phase and we can’t even link Fox News. It’s a factual news (but you are free to contest it) and if Fox is the only one willing to publish it, it says more about European descent into madness than you think. > Also, didn't you vote to not call yourself Europe…

If Fox is the only one willing to publish it, it says a lot about the news story itself.... Whilst they may time to time have some journalism I'm sure, it's not a respectable news organisation in the same way as AP or Reuters and such. If it was a decent story it would be picked up on and re-reported by other outlets. There is not some conspiracy where all other journalists refuse to publish the 'truth'...

When your only problem with a news, is who is willing to give it instead of the facts on the news, says a lot about your notion of "truth".

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#209
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunate as that notification error might be, you cannot call free speech free if you only allow if for some opinions.

"Free speech" is a thing between persons and the state. It does not require persons to accommodate nazis. Some corporations claim otherwise because they think nazis are good for business.

> Some corporations claim otherwise because they think nazis are good for business.

And they are right at this time in various major tech hubs.

We will see how that works out.

Re: I migrated to an almost all-EU stack and saved 500€ per year

#210
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue the opposite, that the US is moving away from the rest of the ‘free’ world. ‘Free’ meaning not run by dictators.

Dictators typically don't win popular votes legitimately. Dictators typically don't have the courts constantly overruling them. Europeans tend to have very little idea how the US government functions. Trump is able to do what he does simply because the people voted for a congress that supports him.

> Dictators typically don't win popular votes legitimately.

It also isn’t how you win in the US. The winner of the popular vote was Trump this last round (unlike his first term), but with a far-from-resounding 1.5%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

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