The CEO “apologized” this morning (after being duly chastised, I’m sure):

Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.

First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.

The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.

This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.

I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.

Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/

Am I being paranoid when I notice that the binary at the end of his username translates to 88?

As an Old, I started with an Apple ][ and learned BASIC. We did get the classic B&W Macintosh computers when I was 12-13.

Weird, I would expect Steam to be in the Ubuntu repos (assuming that’s what you were using, since you mention apt), but maybe not. As for apt, or apt-get, they are just the terminal equivalent of the GUI package manager (synaptic? it’s been a minute since I ran ubuntu), so if something isn’t in the repos, apt at the terminal won’t find it either. If it’s not in the repos, you should be able to download and install steam from the website just like you would in windows. It gives you a .deb file which will launch just like an executable installer in Ubuntu. But to your point, yes, sometimes things in linux take a little extra thinking to get to work. Getting accustomed to the way Linux works can help overcome hiccups like this. Windows has many quirks as well, it’s just that if you use WIndows often you know your way around them.

Most games on Steam work just fine when you turn on Proton. Gaming on linux has come a long way.