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I have not run OpenClaw and similar frameworks because of security concerns, but I enjoy the author's success, good for him. There are very few companies who I
by mark_l_watson 8mo ago
I have not run OpenClaw and similar frameworks because of security concerns, but I enjoy the author's success, good for him.
There are very few companies who I trust with my digital data and thus trust to host something like OpenClaw and run it on my behalf: American Express, Capital One, maybe Proton, and *maybe* Apple. I managed an AI lab team at Capital One and personally I trust them.
I am for local compute, private data, etc., but for my personal AI assistant I want something so bullet proof that I lose not a minute of sleep worrying about by data. I don't want to run the infrastructure myself, but a hybrid solution would also be good.
- jacquesm 8mo agoAMEX, Capital One and Apple are not even close to the top of the list of companies that I would trust with my digital data.
- mark_l_watson 8mo agoJacques, do you mind sharing your list of trusted companies? Thanks in advance.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 8mo agoIt's going to be pretty short. Proton would be there for comms, for hosting related stuff I would trust Hetzner before any big US based cloud company. For the AI domain I wouldn't trust any of the big players, they're all just jockeying for position and want to achieve lock-in on a scale never seen before and they have all already shown they don't give a rats ass about where they get their training data and I expect that once they are in financial trouble they'll be happy to sell your private data down the river. Effectively you can trust all of the companies out there right up until they are acquired and then you will regret all of the data you ever gave them. In that sense Facebook is unique: it was rotten from day #1. Vehicles: anything made before 2005, SIM or e-SIM on board = no go. I'm halfway towards setting up my own private mail server and IRC server for me and my friends and kissing the internet goodbye. It was a fun 30 years but we're well into nightmare territory now. Unfortunately you are now more or less forced to participate because your bank, your government and your social circle will push you back in. And I'm still pissed off that I'm not allowed to host any servers on a residential connection. That's not 'internet connectivity' that's 'consumer connectivity'.
- BoredPositron 8mo agoProton? After the last two years of enshitification and purely revenue driven product decisions really?
- jacquesm 8mo agoBarely. Your points are well made and I'm sure that it is just a matter of time before they're just as untouchable as the rest. Hence the remark about mail. The Siloization of the internet is almost complete.
- blueaquilae 8mo agoProton is quite a privacy washing front. Surprised than even in HN nobody check behind the facade what was signed.
- jacquesm 8mo agoYes, they're losing it. It's a pity, they were doing well for a long time. I'm surprised that someone on HN would paint all of HN with the same brush. It's one of those 'lesser evils' things. If you know of a better email provider I'd love to know.
- unethical_ban 8mo agoProton complied with a court order once (that we know of), no? I have seen a lot of negative sentiment from HN commenters toward them but not a lot of evidence to back it up, particularly when you consider the email marketplace.
- Itoldmyselfso 8mo agoIt was a legally mandated court order they couldn't just refuse. No encrypted data, the contents of their emails, was handed over. The person would've also been safe had they used vpn/tor as I recall the story.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
- marxisttemp 8mo agoMark, can you conceive that some people don’t trust any companies?
- mark_l_watson 8mo agoYes, I can! After reading Jacques's response to my question, my list got smaller. Personally, I still like Proton, but I get that they have made some people unhappy. I also agree that Hetzner is a reliable provider; I have used them a bunch of times in the last ten years. Then my friend, we have to worry about fiber/network providers I suppose. This general topic is outside my primary area of competence, so I just have a loose opinion of maintaining my own domain, use encryption, and being able switch between providers easily. I would love to see an Ask HN on secure and private agentic infra + frameworks.
- appplication 8mo agoI’d be very curious what your list would be
- jacquesm 8mo agoSee other comment.
- rukuu001 8mo agoNever mind the list of companies - I'd be very curious to know what the 'trust signals' are that would help you trust a company?
- jacquesm 8mo agoDecent management. A lack of change of business model, no rug pulls and such. Fair value for money. Consistency over the longer term. No lock in or other forced relationships. Large enough to be useful and to have decent team size, small enough to not have the illusion they'll conquer the world. Healthy competition.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- NBJack 8mo agoAdmirable, but short of a local credit union I used to use (which I am no longer with as they f'd up a rather critical transaction), I can scarcely imagine a business that fits such a model these days. The amount of transparency needed to vet this would be interesting to find though, and its mere presence probably a green flag.
- jacquesm 8mo agoIt's much easier to use this to reject than to accept.
- lovich 8mo agoAre there any companies existing you would trust? I honestly can’t name a single one I know of who could pass that criteria Edit:found your other comment answering a similar question
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- 8note 8mo agoI'd go for a co-operative ownership model rather than capitalist? and make sure the member/owners are all of like mind, and willing to pay more to ensure security and privacy
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Aurornis 8mo ago> There are very few companies who I trust with my digital data and thus trust to host something like OpenClaw and run it on my behalf: American Express, Capital One, maybe Proton, and maybe Apple. I managed an AI lab team at Capital One and personally I trust them. I don't really understand what this has to do with the post or even OpenClaw. The big draw of OpenClaw (as I understand it) was that you could run it locally on your own system. Supposedly, per this post, OpenClaw is moving to a foundation and they've committed to letting the author continue working on it while on the OpenAI payroll. I doubt that, but it's a sign that they're making it explicitly not an OpenAI product. OpenClaw's success and resulting PR hype explosion came from ignoring all of the trust and security guardrails that any big company would have to abide by. It would be a disaster of the highest order if it had been associated with any big company from the start. Because it felt like a grassroots experiment all of the extreme security problems were shifted to the users' responsibility. It's going to be interesting to see where it goes from here. This blog post is already hinting that they're putting OpenClaw at arm's length by putting it into a foundation.
- throwjjj 8mo ago[flagged]
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago>Apple Lol Their marketing team got ya. I aspire to be as good as Apple at marketing. Who knew 2nd or worse place in everything doesnt matter when you are #1 in marketing?
- eutropia 8mo agois this marketing or is just relating what they did to keep things secure? https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/ https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoDidn't have to click the link. Words don't matter. The fact that their phone security was poor enough for someone to get killed and thousands of others exposed... Oh and PRISM, so... Marketing.
- internet2000 8mo agoSorry to pile on, but Capital One is an insane name to drop there.
- lvl155 8mo agoSorry to break it to you but I would not trust any financial companies with my personal data. Simply because I’ve seen how they use data to build exploitive products in the past.
- shevy-java 8mo agoYou really trust them? My trust does not extend that far.
- blks 8mo agoPrivacy aside, you can never trust an LLM with your data and trust it to do exactly what it was instructed to do.
- iugtmkbdfil834 8mo agoYou raised a good point I am now personally basically expecting to see this year ( next at the latest ). Some brave corporate will decide for millions of users to, uhh, liberate all users data. My money is not of that happening at Googles or OpenAIs of the world though. I am predicting it will be either be a bank or one of the data brokers. With any luck, maybe this will finally be a bridge too fast, like what Amazon's superbowl ad did for surveillance conversation.
- jiveturkey 8mo agosorry to say it, but C1 LOL. they don’t care at all about privacy! Don’t mistake your team for the company values.
- vessenes 8mo agoWell it’s not even just data, you have to trust actions taken if you want the assist to, you know, assist. I have been yoloing it and really enjoying it. Albeit from a locked off server.
- rubenflamshep 8mo agoQuick plus one for Capital One after also working there. They're by far the most tech-forward of all the larger financial institutions, and by virtue of being a FI they take data-security much more seriously than any other "tech" companies. No this is not a paid post lol
- shimman 8mo agoNot a paid post but a bunch of generalities with no specifics. C1 is by far the worse of the bunch in the banking sector. C1 now openly engages in stack ranking and has absolutely destroyed employee morale, all due to hiring ex Amazon directors. For any future workers, be highly forewarned that if ex Amazon leadership enters your company their number one goal becomes inducing mass misery to magically raise the share price. It'll never work because they are coming from a company that has a massive unregulated monopoly (or oligopoly if you want to be technical) that is able to subsidize poor business ideas indefinitely. They mistake working in this environment as having competence so be warned: they will fuck everything up, collect massive bonuses, and you'll be collecting unemployment soon enough under their guidance.