Transcript

A post by [object Object] (@zzt@mas.to) saying: courtesy of @davidgerard@circumstances.run, 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

      • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Unfortunately, so is Visual Studio and VS Code.

        The presence of an AI assistant isn’t evidence of vibe coding. Even using that AI assistant to auto-complete lines or small sections of boilerplate isn’t vibe coding. To do that you need to ask the AI for whole swaths of code and then just accept what it gives you.

        Proton’s repo here is open source. What portion of it presents issues? Any?

        • irelephant [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          8 months ago

          Sure, but cursor is different since it’s marketed as an Ai editor. VScode is just a general one.

          Proton’s repo here is open source. What portion of it presents issues? Any?

          Ai code is plausible bullshit, it may work, it may have bugs or vulnerabilities. It’s harder to spot these since its plausible bullshit.

          • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            but cursor is different since it’s marketed as an Ai editor. VScode is just a general one.

            See, that is just the thing: VS Code is marketed as an AI editor. The homepage is literally an autoplaying video of an AI writing code with this title, big and bold, right at the top of the screen:

        • ShoeThrower@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          Why would you use Cursor instead of VS (the standard for decades) if you’re not going to use the AI features Cursor was specifically created for?

  • galoisghost@aussie.zone
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    8 months 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.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      8 months 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.

      • grindemup@lemmy.world
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        8 months 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?

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          8 months 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.

          • grindemup@lemmy.world
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            8 months 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?

    • expr@programming.dev
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      8 months 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.

      • hansolo@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

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

    • James R Kirk@startrek.website
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      8 months ago

      Probably anti-Proton. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the amount of pro BlueSky, anti Proton, anti Signal people I see on Lemmy make me wonder sometimes.