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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

TranscriptA post by [object Object] (@[email protected]) saying: courtesy of @[email protected], Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957

It has a reply by the author saying: in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f

given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public

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[-] [email protected] 154 points 6 days ago

Um, it’s a public repository. You can view the code that’s been added. Even if it IS AI generated, you can review it yourself.

I’m as anti-AI as anyone but this is misplaced AI-alarmism.

[-] [email protected] 85 points 6 days ago

Does anyone here actually review code?

[-] [email protected] 241 points 6 days ago

Only my own code and so far most of it has been unacceptable.

[-] [email protected] 47 points 6 days ago

Pure, unabashed honesty. I love it. 🫶

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

i once wrote a script to launch a program with specific flags that i think was mostly correct, it holds center place on my CV

[-] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Yes, and it's one of the most important things I do. Given the AI codegen boom we're seeing, it's also the skill I have that is increasing the fastest in value.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

yes as a consultant/freelancer THIS is where the majority of my work is coming from now. if you're good at this SERIOUSLY consider consulting and freelancing for various companies that are now desperately trying to fix their AI tech debt. It's the ONE thing that is completely in demand right now due to the sheer incompetence of all these places that decided vibe coding and AI was the way to go.

you have no idea how much money you can potentially be making right now doing this. I'm booked solid for the rest of the year purely because of this.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Not gonna really be thing long-term. Up front savings vs customer long term retention. The up front savings are what business cares about. So yeah you'll get some companies who fucked up. Most just double down on the a. I.

What you're doing is entering the bargain-phase

[-] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Uh yeah? You’d be stupid not to review code, whether written by an AI or a human. I don’t trust either.

[-] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago

I'm guessing OP means code you use rather than code you write, in other words auditing. Likely very few of us do that with any thoroughness. IIRC proton does have some independent auditing.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

That’s what I mean too. Y’all don’t just copy-paste from stack overflow praying it works do you?

[-] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

That obviously not what they meant. They mean, do you review the code for every open source application you use? Do you review every library you utilize? I'm willing to be it's a no for both of these, because no one has time for that.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago

No, like proton mail app. Have you reviewed it? Or Signal or Veracrypt or TheNewHotness.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Does anyone here realize that one person using Cursor doesnt mean "tHeY'rE vIbE cOdInG aCrOsS tHe wHoLe pLaCe!"

[-] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Then why didn’t they just say that instead of being shady and rewriting history?

[-] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

Because thier bosses aren't accounta le to you and I? That don't have to say a dn thing

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

that would make sense if it wasn't a fucking business selling the promise of security lol

[-] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Again. They don't answer to us. They don't have to say anything

Now. I agree that they SHOULD. It would be not only be better buisness, BUT its the right thing yo do

But no, they don't. The should.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

oh so you just want to be annoyingly pedantic, cool

[-] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

No. I'm saying quit bitching and switch f you don't like it. I have

[-] [email protected] -5 points 6 days ago

Because it's also not a great idea to expose your rules files, and tell people first "oh shit, we mentioned rules files. Please don't look!" before

I'll be honest here, I've had less dogmatic conversations with conspiracy theorists about COVID. If you just need to make this a huge problem that later turns out to be a nothingburger and you'll never look back and grow as a human, then hey, you do you. But know that you'll look like a fool to anyone that isn't a goldfish and remembers more than 3 months at a time. Because you clearly don't know what's a big deal and what's not, and this is a Grade A waste of all our time to pitch a fit about.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

can review it yourself.

You're a supervisor and you have 2 employees: Bill and Jim. As a supervisor your job is to ensure the work is being done correctly.

Bill is competent and rarely makes major mistakes. Jim does a decent job most of the time ... but he's also a savant at screwing up -- he regularly fucks up in ways that aren't immediately obvious but are guaranteed to cause serious problems days to weeks from the screw up.

You can glance over Bill's work and be fairly certain it's fine. You need to go over every single piece Jim's work to check for problems, and even then some are probably going to slip through.

AI is currently Jim, and Jim has no business writing code for anything privacy or security focused.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 4 days ago

This is a great example since AI isn't taking on the role of an independent software engineer here, so there is no "Jim" and this is much less of an issue than y'all are making it out to be. You know that auto-correct is also a form of ML right? Have you considered that tools can be used responsibly and that standards for software developers still apply even when they use new tools?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

You know that auto-correct is also a form of ML right?

Yeah, and I don't fuckin use it.

Also, my auto-correct is saying that sentence is missing a comma, so I guess you don't either.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Cool that's great. Can you tell me that none of the software you use has been developed by software engineers making use of machine learning methods?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I can: I do not use any software.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago
[-] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago

That is pretty immaterial to the issue. The issue is that when it comes to security, it's extremely poor form to rely on unintelligent mimicry.

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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
437 points (85.2% liked)

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