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  • About XSLT -- I remembered that I thought it was a bad idea. Let XML look like XML. Trying to make it look like an HTML page, how does that make any sense. Like opening the hood of a car and seeing a big picture of the outside of the car. People aren't really that dumb, but some people like to complain a lot. The rule of the web is if you don't like what you see, that's what the freaking back button is there for. Probably just a troll anyway. Show them your JSON and RSS. If it's done nicely it can be quite illumifying.

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  • Health care is phone tag in US

    The healthcare system in the US is grossly inefficient, incredibly bad and getting info to and from patients.

    Teach everyone in healthcare to try to use their portals as their first resort of communicating with patients.

    They waste so much of their time and our time playing phone tag.

    I don't know if it's this way in other countries, but it is universally a phone-voice-based comm system in the US.

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  • I wrote a piece entitled The Web of Markdown on Oct 6. I have to keep looking it up, but I do remember writing it very quickly and deciding it needed a memorable title, like the ones about textcasting, and podcasting and all the other bits that went on to be something. It's one of those times when it seems to have potential with other developers, they seem to see the same logic in it that I do. A way to disconnect from VC control of the web and try again with the open basis, the un-owned basis. There was a fork here at some point in the last 10 or so years, we just refused to see it as such. And btw it was not a very polite piece, but I wasn't feeling polite when I wrote and decided not to edit the anger out of it. I don't like having been so wrong. But it's a fact and denying it doesn't change it.

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  • La justice, l'attente et le pouvoir de nous voler notre temps

    Il existe une forme de violence dont on parle rarement : celle qui consiste à faire attendre.

    Je suis tombé sur une vidéo évoquant Pas de lettre pour le colonel, de Gabriel García Márquez. Dans ce roman, un ancien colonel attend depuis quinze ans une pension que l’État lui doit. Chaque semaine, il espère recevoir une lettre. Chaque semaine, rien n’arrive.

    Mais c’est une réflexion de l’auteur de la vidéo qui m’a profondément marqué :

    « Faire attendre quelqu’un, c’est lui rappeler que sa vie ne dépend pas de lui, mais de la décision d’un autre. »

    Cette phrase met des mots sur quelque chose que je ressens depuis des années.

    Depuis 2017, nous attendons que la justice française avance dans l’affaire OKC-Spatz. Mais notre histoire judiciaire commence bien avant, en 1997, avec les premières grandes perquisitions visant la secte Ogyen Kunzang Chöling.

    Près de trente ans.

    Trente années pendant lesquelles nous avons grandi, vieilli, tenté de nous reconstruire et de vivre, tandis qu’une partie de notre existence restait suspendue aux décisions des tribunaux.

    Et cette attente n’a rien d’ordinaire.

    Car Robert Spatz n’est pas simplement un ancien dirigeant d’une dérive sectaire religieuse bénie par les plus grandes références du Bouddhisme Tibétain.

    Il est le fondateur de la secte OKC, son gourou, celui autour duquel toute notre existence avait été organisée. Un pédocriminel condamné par la justice belge pour des abus sexuels et physiques sur mineurs, des faits d’emprise et d’autres infractions graves, mine de rien c’est plus de 170 chefs d’accusations qui se sont écroulés avec le temps de la Justice.

    Un homme dont deux de ses anciens médecins personnels, aujourd’hui eux-mêmes sortis de l’organisation, ont décrit, selon leurs appréciations cliniques, un psychopathe doublé d’un pervers narcissique et d’un pédocriminel.

    Ces termes ne sont pas, pour moi, de simples insultes destinées à exprimer mes propos.

    Ils renvoient à des appréciations de professionnels qui l’ont personnellement connu. Mais au-delà de toute qualification psychologique qui en principe aurait dû informer la justice sur la dangerosité du personage, ce sont surtout ses actes, son emprise et ses crimes reconnus par la justice qui importent.

    Et surtout, cette histoire ne s’est pas simplement arrêtée lorsque les autorités ont commencé à enquêter. Bien au contraire puisque ces derniers abus en Belgique se passe à la barbe des autorités près de Charleroi et qu’il a même le toupet de se tirer en Espagne, pendant l’instruction judiciaire.

    Nous dénonçons depuis des années des faits et des comportements qui, selon les témoignages et signalements recueillis, se seraient poursuivis pendant les procédures judiciaires.

    Des inquiétudes subsistent également sur ce qui a pu continuer à se produire après son installation en Espagne.

    Ces accusations méritent d’être examinées, précisément parce que l’ouverture d’une procédure ne signifie pas nécessairement la fin de l’emprise ni celle des abus. Bien au contraire.

    C’est à la lumière de cette réalité qu’il faut comprendre ce que représente notre attente.

    Le temps qu’il nous a volé c’est aussi le temps qu’il a pris pour continuer ces crimes.

    Nous sommes nés dans cette secte. Nous y avons passé notre enfance et notre adolescence, pour certains plus de vingt ans de notre existence.

    Nous avons grandi isolés du monde extérieur, privés d’une éducation normale, d’une véritable formation, des outils les plus élémentaires pour comprendre la société dans laquelle nous allions devoir un jour vivre.

    Nous avons été endoctrinés, soumis à une autorité présentée comme spirituelle et incontestable, et maintenus dans l’ignorance de la réalité des accusations et des procédures judiciaires visant l’OKC et ses dirigeants.

    Pendant que la justice enquêtait, nous étions encore prisonniers de son système.

    Et lorsque nous avons finalement réussi à en sortir, il ne suffisait pas de franchir une porte pour devenir libres.

    Il fallait apprendre à vivre. Comprendre le monde. Acquérir une formation, trouver un travail, reconstruire des relations humaines, comprendre ce que nous avions subi et, pour beaucoup, apprendre à mettre des mots sur des violences que nous avions été conditionnés à considérer comme normales.

    Il fallait également trouver la force de dénoncer celui qui avait occupé une place centrale dans toute notre existence.

    Tout cela prend du temps.

    Des années, parfois des décennies.

    Ce temps de reconstruction n’était pas un choix. C’était une conséquence directe de l’emprise et des violences que nous avions subies.

    Et pendant ce temps, Robert Spatz continuait sa vie, disposant de ressources financières et matérielles considérables, loin des conditions dans lesquelles nous tentions, nous, de reconstruire les nôtres.

    Le temps qui lui a profité

    C’est ici que notre histoire devient révoltante.

    En Belgique, Robert Spatz a finalement été condamné à cinq ans de prison avec sursis. Le dépassement du fameux « délai raisonnable » a notamment contribué à cette issue, je ne vais pas m’attarder ici sur le rôle de la justice belge et française dans cet état des lieux.

    Le droit à être jugé dans un délai raisonnable est un principe fondamental de notre justice. Et je ne conteste pas qu’il doive exister.

    Mais il y a quelque chose de profondément pervers dans son application à notre histoire.

    Comment un homme peut-il bénéficier du temps écoulé alors que ses propres agissements ont contribué à créer les conditions de cette attente ?

    Par l’endoctrinement. Par le contrôle de l’information. Par l’isolement des victimes. Par les obstacles procéduraux. Par toutes ces années pendant lesquelles nous n’étions tout simplement pas en mesure de nous défendre.

    Bien sûr, tous les retards judiciaires ne lui sont pas imputables. Les dysfonctionnements des institutions ont aussi leur responsabilité. Et ils continuent encore aujourd’hui.

    Mais comment la justice peut-elle mesurer le temps écoulé sans mesurer celui qu’il nous a fallu pour échapper à son emprise ?

    Comment peut-elle considérer les années de procédure sans prendre pleinement en compte les décennies de silence et de dépendance qui les ont précédées ?

    Le temps qu’il nous a fallu pour devenir capables de le dénoncer a contribué à devenir le temps dont il a bénéficié pour échapper à une peine de prison ferme.

    La justice lui a fait un cadeau qu’il s’est préparé lui meme.

    Voilà le scandale.

    Il bénéficie du temps une première fois en nous maintenant sous son emprise, dans l’ignorance et l’incapacité de nous défendre.

    Il en bénéficie une seconde fois lorsque l’écoulement de ce même temps contribue à atténuer les conséquences pénales de ses actes.

    Et il en bénéficie une troisième fois avec la prescription d’abus sexuels sur mineurs.

    C’est pas beau comme plan ?

    Et nous ? Nous avons payé chaque année de notre propre existence.

    Une justice conçue par des hommes, pour des hommes

    Notre justice est l’héritière d’institutions historiquement conçues et dirigées par des hommes, avec une préoccupation centrale : protéger les droits de la personne accusée contre les abus du pouvoir judiciaire.

    Ces garanties sont indispensables. Personne ne devrait vouloir d’une justice qui condamne arbitrairement.

    Mais à force de placer la protection de l’accusé au centre du système, quelle place réelle reste-t-il à celles et ceux qui ont subi les crimes ?

    Le droit au délai raisonnable existe aussi, dans certaines conditions, pour les victimes qui font valoir leurs droits civils. Mais dans notre histoire, nous n’en avons guère vu les effets.

    Lorsque le délai raisonnable est dépassé pour l’accusé, la justice peut en tirer des conséquences sur sa peine.

    Lorsque les victimes ont attendu trente ans, que reçoivent-elles en compensation du temps perdu ?

    Et quid de la prescription? Littéralement un laisser passer pour les pédocriminels.

    Qui leur rend leur enfance ? Leur éducation ? Leur jeunesse ? Les années consacrées à survivre plutôt qu’à vivre ?

    La justice reconnaît le préjudice des crimes. Mais reconnaît-elle suffisamment le préjudice de sa propre lenteur ?

    Car la procédure judiciaire peut elle-même devenir une violence supplémentaire. Répéter son histoire. Revivre les abus. Attendre une expertise, une audition, une décision. Voir les années passer sans savoir si les responsables seront un jour pleinement jugés.

    L’attente c’est l’horreur.

    Tout cela pendant que celui qui a été condamné continue à vivre librement.

    Je ne demande pas une justice privée de garanties.

    Je demande une justice qui cesse de considérer le temps des victimes comme une ressource inépuisable.

    L’attente comme prolongement de l’emprise, oui, car d’une manière plus subtile, Robert Spatz est en jouissance de voir son nom écris sur cette page et de constater qu’il occupe encore nos pensées et nos mots.

    Nous avons quitté OKC. Nous avons rejeté son autorité. Nous avons dénoncé ses crimes. Nous avons obtenu sa condamnation en Belgique.

    Et pourtant, près de trente ans après les premières perquisitions, nous sommes encore contraints de consacrer une partie de notre vie à lui, à ses actes, aux procédures qui le concernent.

    Comme si, même après notre départ, il pouvait encore nous imposer son calendrier.

    Vous pouvez partir, mais vous n’en aurez pas fini avec moi.

    C’est cela, la violence de l’attente.

    Et c’est la Justice qui l’organise.

    Elle ne nous enferme plus derrière les murs de Château de Soleils ou dans les dogmes d’OKC. Elle nous maintient dans une autre forme de dépendance : celle d’une justice qui tarde à nous permettre de refermer ce chapitre de notre existence.

    Le temps ne nous sera jamais rendu

    Avec l’association Chardons Bleus https://chardonsbleus.org, nous continuons à accompagner les parties civiles et à nous battre pour que la justice française assume enfin ses responsabilités.

    Non par vengeance. Mais parce que la reconnaissance des crimes, l’établissement des responsabilités et la fin de l’impunité sont essentiels.

    Nous ne récupérerons jamais nos enfances.

    Nous ne retrouverons jamais les années passées à grandir dans l’isolement, ni celles perdues à essayer de réparer les conséquences de cette vie.

    Mais nous refusons que cette perte continue à profiter à celui qui en porte une responsabilité majeure.

    García Márquez avait compris quelque chose d’essentiel : le pouvoir ne détruit pas toujours les êtres humains par la violence directe. Il peut aussi les détruire en les faisant attendre.

    Pour nous, cette attente dure depuis près de trente ans.

    Et elle révèle un paradoxe insupportable :

    Celui qui nous a volé notre temps a également bénéficié du temps que la justice a laissé passer.

    Nous avons payé ce temps de nos vies. Lui en a bénéficié jusque dans sa condamnation.

    Il serait temps que la justice comprenne enfin que le temps des victimes n’est pas une variable d’ajustement de ses procédures ou une case à cochée pour les carriéristes qui passent sur notre dossier en le mettant de côté.

    Parce qu’une justice qui arrive trop tard ne se contente pas de retarder la réparation : elle risque de prolonger la violence qu’elle était censée faire cesser.

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  • Le pouvoir ne détruit pas toujours les humains par la violence, il l’est détruit...

    Le pouvoir ne détruit pas toujours les humains par la violence, il l’est détruit aussi et souvent par l’attente.

    Faire attendre quelqu’un, c’est lui rappeler que sa vie ne dépend pas de lui, mais de la décision d’un autre.

    C’est ce que la Justice fait du haut de son piédestal.

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  • I was thinking continuing or forking the work done by the excellent indie.pass t...

    I was thinking continuing or forking the work done by the excellent indie.pass to bring a #Micropub mobile app to the stores… But… Since I have managed to make Plume work on mobile, I’m questioning the need for a native micropub mobile app altogether.

    This post is created from Plume on my mobile, it works on Vivaldi or Firefox mobile nightly, out of the box.

    Publishing and maintaining app stores app have become so tedious, I’m not sure I want to do any of that if I can avoid it.

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  • J’aime bien ce que fait Infomaniak dans tous les domaines de la Tech que cette b...

    J’aime bien ce que fait Infomaniak dans tous les domaines de la Tech que cette boîte Suisse touche depuis plus de 30 ans, c’était d’ailleurs mon premier hébergeur pour mes premiers sites Web il y a plus de 20 ans…

    Ce qu’il font avec l’IA et leurs datacenters est un modèle à suivre en terme d’intégration dans la ville, la prise en compte de leur impact climat et leur capacité à recycler la chaleur produite pour de l’eau chaude, douches, chauffage et j’en passe.

    Comme quoi c’est possible de faire autrement.

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  • I didn't notice it at the time, but in the all the work we did about blogging, we had open channels of communiation, meant to make everyone feel like they had a stake. Big mistake, because they took this too literally and the way many people communicated was through orders, demands or ultimata. All of it came from the power we gave them by making everyone's voice supposedly equal. Of course they weren't all equal. Power has to be a function of your contribution. And as it says in Rules, power comes from users of your product. If being compatible with you means I have access to more users, then I will listen. I will also listen if you remain respectful -- and don't presume to give me an order. Someone just did that today, and it froze me, then I re-read the message and it was an order, and not nicely phrased, condescending, presumptive, and very wrong. I started writing a reply, even posted one, then realized what was going on, and deleted my reply and blocked the person.

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  • Worth repeating: Expect an avalanche of new software because the dam has broken, one person who knows what they want, and understands UI design can make a big complex app in 2-3 months. Over a weekend you can snap together an app from common UI concepts. Think of making software the same way you play with LEGOs.

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  • Google just warned me about a stories.scripting.com blog post from 2007. Perfectly safe archive. Want to know how we started doing code distribution via RSS? Google thinks it's a dangerous site. I'm getting so angry at their condescension. Not a good look for a tech giant trying to convince people that their AI model is better than the others. They don't care about the truth or being honest, or protecting unique resources, or the history of the medium they helped build. Google, some day someone will want to know what you destroyed. I'm going to make sure that part is easy to find. (BTW, the irony of Google's blockage, the page it warns you about is a freaking 404. That's the real enemy of historic sites. Linkrot. Wouldn't be cool if instead of tearing down the web they helped keep it running? The people running these companies are children. They positioning themselves with hate, what do you think comes right back to them.)

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  • Occam's News reports that Trump et al are selling out the US. Putin can get the US to do what he wants by giving Trump money. Total win-win. And the US is flushed down the toilet. That's all that's going on there. All of the journalistic feigned bafflement is make-believe. It's totally obvious what's going on. And don't forget Musk has the world encircled with satellites. If he doesn't want you communicating, you don't communicate. In other words the selling-out has been going on for some time.

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  • The web of hairballs

    The browser and the web it defines is a hairball in a hairball in a hairball in a hairball in a hairball.

    The hairballs are named Chrome, Firefox, MSIE, Netscape, Mosaic.

    Each in turn has had their way with the web.

    The stack of hair defines a "web" that is far far away from the web we started with.

    The tech industry kicked the web out of the web.

    It was going pretty good for a while, if you could live with the all the modal popovers and paywalls, but now the current owners are excluding old sites, and imho when you do that, it's not the web any longer.

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  • I dunno about you but I can’t wait for Musk’s 276M #midterms rescue to become a...

    I dunno about you but I can’t wait for Musk’s 276M #midterms rescue to become a total waste of money, like everything he does.

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  • firstSentence, a JavaScript function that returns the first sentence in a string. Useful in coming up with something to display for an untitled post. It's always been a klooge, but this time with Claude's help we're using a new API in JavaScript, and supposedly it really works. I'm using it in one of my apps, and you might find it useful too, and let me know if it works for you.

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  • In Manhattan, I lived on 57th St and Eighth Ave. Best location. The Columbus Circle subway station is under the building. Whole Foods a block away. Three Starbucks one block or less from the apartment (one was on 58th on the same block). Central Park has a six mile bike-only road (at least that's how bikers view it) and down the hill there's a much longer path along the Hudson River. Everywhere you look, a skyscraper is going up. Two were visible from my 50th floor window. New York is an amazing city because it can start up a huge gravity-defying construction project with almost no impact on the surrounding area. If I didn't know where to look I'd never see it. One of the biggest industries in the city is building the city. It's never finished. That's the way good software is too. And we just got a whole new tool for software construction, and it's like nothing we've ever had before.

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  • Nice…

    Nice…

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  • Lorsque, au nom de la modération, les centristes qualifient toute alternative ra...

    Lorsque, au nom de la modération, les centristes qualifient toute alternative raisonnable à l’austérité sévère d’« absurdité », ils ne laissent aux électeurs qu’une seule rébellion électorale – et l’extrême droite est heureuse de la fournir.

    https://regards.fr/melenchon-a-raison-sur-la-dette-de-la-france-par-yanis-varoufakis/

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  • Testing indiekit beta 31

    Testing indiekit beta 31

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  • Testing indiekit beta 30

    Testing indiekit beta 30

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  • Hmm it seems #Funkwhale gitlab is down : https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/f...

    Hmm it seems #Funkwhale gitlab is down : https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/issues

    I wanted to update my Funkwhale bare metal deployment

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  • Basic lesson for people who use Claude Code -- it's your time that's valuable, not the bot's. If you find you're lost in the weeds supporting Claude for whatever reason, find a good stopping point, pick up another project, that doesn't use AI to do your code-writing. If you have a question ask ChatGPT browser version, but only for the kind of stuff you'd ask it in 2025. You're not co-developing. You're doing it yourself. It's very important to be clear about your coding, not Claude's output. Here's the key point -- it's your time that's limited, that has all the value. You can get Claude to develop something, but if you don't have time to use it, to nurture it, nothing will come of the work. I was surprised at how I'd lost the rhythm of writing my own code, and also how much I liked doing it myself. It's easy to get lost in the miracle of AI, good to pop up for air every so often.

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  • La Face Cachée du Yoga par Elodie Emery provoque exactement les mêmes réactions...

    La Face Cachée du Yoga par Elodie Emery provoque exactement les mêmes réactions que les abus criminels dénoncé dans d’autres milieu : Bouddhisme tibétain, Catholicisme, Cinéma, Politique, Culture.

    Des violences sexuelles sont dénoncées et, à chaque fois, le même refrain : « Oui, mais pas tous les hommes », « Faut arrêter de généraliser », « Pas dans notre communauté », « Pas mon maître ».

    On pourrait changer de disque, là ?

    Nous, les hommes, sommes-nous si fragiles que, face à des crimes graves, notre premier réflexe soit de défendre notre image ? Et dans les milieux concernés, la réputation d’une religion, d’une pratique ou d’un maître compte-t-elle davantage que les personnes qui ont subi ces violences ?

    Avant même un mot de solidarité pour les victimes, voilà qu’on monte les barricades : « Oui, mais moi, je n’ai rien à voir avec ça. » Très bien. Alors, qu’est-ce que vous faites pour que ça cesse ?

    Personne ne vous demande de vous déclarer coupables de crimes que vous n’avez pas commis. On vous demande d’être capables, une seconde, de regarder ailleurs que votre nombril. D’écouter les victimes, de les soutenir et de remettre en question ce qui permet à ces violences de perdurer, y compris dans les milieux auxquels vous êtes attachés.

    Si votre première indignation porte sur la réputation de votre milieu plutôt que sur les violences qu’on y dénonce, il serait temps de revoir vos priorités.

    Franchement, cette solidarité qui va spontanément à l’image du groupe plutôt qu’aux victimes, ça fait pitié.

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  • Grosse mise à jour d'indiekit

    On avance vers le milestone de la v1 à grand pas !

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  • rmdes/framework16-local-llm: Fast local LLM inference on a Framework 16 (Ryzen 9 7940HS + Radeon RX 7700S / gfx1102, 8GB) on Fedora — ROCm + Vulkan llama.cpp, benchmarked, one-command setup

    Updated my local-ai for https://frame.work 16 laptop

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  • This is a test from Plume & beta indiekit version

    This is a test from Plume & beta indiekit version

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  • Today I did something different. I wrote a little Node app, without Claude's help. It was a revelation. It's been most of a year since I actually started even a test app and wrote it from beginning to end. I used to do this routinely. Nothing routine about it anymore. What this app does, it generates a Markdown-only version of scripting.com for testing. I want to see what such a site looks like. It'll be a start.

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  • CROW: Classifier-Routed Organization of LLM Wikis

    CROW: Classifier-Routed Organization of LLM Wikis

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  • Les forces du désordres (🇫🇷 🇧🇪) sont entrain de produire la plus grande mont...

    Les forces du désordres (🇫🇷 🇧🇪) sont entrain de produire la plus grande montée en puissance d’une génération qui ne va jamais oublier, qui ne va jamais pardonner et qui va dégager par les urnes, dès qu’elle pourra voter, toute la clique de facho élu qui forme aujourd’hui la caste politique.

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  • New Frontier example. I'm working on the menubar we're going to ship with in Atlantis. Came across an ancient bit of code. Symbolic of the whole project, code written in 1997, still useful in 2026.

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  • Partout, les convulsions du vieux monde ne sont que les spasmes d’un ordre en fi...

    Partout, les convulsions du vieux monde ne sont que les spasmes d’un ordre en fin de course, incapable d’offrir à sa jeunesse les conditions pour s’épanouir. Alors il frappe, réprime et s’accroche. Mais cette génération en a assez de prendre des coups tout en se voyant confisquer son avenir.

    Le monde de demain commence par ce que nous refusons d’accepter aujourd’hui.

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  • J’échange beaucoup avec ma fille sur ce qu’il se passe en France et en Belgique...

    J’échange beaucoup avec ma fille sur ce qu’il se passe en France et en Belgique et ailleurs (Palestine, Iran, etc) et honnêtement je suis fier d’elle, fier de cette génération politisée, fier qu’ielles ne baissent pas les bras, moi je dis la relève est assurée et les gouvernements vont se ramasser une leçon magistrale, car dans la guerres de communication qui fait rage, ils ont déjà perdu et ils ne s’en rendent même pas compte.

    Il y aura beaucoup d’encre versée sur cette période et autant de critiques de canapés, mais cette jeunesse ne vas pas se plier devant le neofascisme qui vient, devant les mensonges d’une caste politique aveuglée par sa propre bulle coupée de la réalité.

    Il faut tous les dégager, on le pensait déjà il y a 20 ans et de fait rien n’a changé, la génération militante d’avant s’est peut être rangée, voire assoupie, mais elle sent d’autant plus fort le vent qui se lève porté par une génération qui n’a pas froid aux yeux et qui va découvrir dans les luttes sociales et politiques, les graines des mouvements politiques de demain, adapté au monde de demain, celui qu’ils et elles voudront bien construire.

    Chasser le vieux monde ne se fera pas sans effort, persévérance, il y aura des bras cassés, des éborgnés, voir pire, car les forces du désordres n’ont plus qu’une obsession en tête : mater, tuer, noyer, toute forme de remise en cause du désordre établi.

    Ça ne passera pas.

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  • Web of Markdown, part 2

    The tech industry kicked the web out of the web.

    scripting.com is your canary in a coal mine.

    If you can read it then your browser is a real web browser.

    If it can’t it’s phony baloney.

    That's the big picture behind the Web of Markdown, an idea that has generated surprising interest among devs, esp now that Claude Code exists to enable weekend projects that can do miraculous things.

    My longtime friend Andrew Shell has quickly put together what looks like a Chrome plugin that starts work on how to display a Markdown web page. And it looks fucking beautiful, as I imagined it might. Get rid of the bullshit just tell me what you have to say. A web that you can read. A web without interstitials. A web every write lusts for as well as an editor that can be used everywhere. This is the nightmare of the companies whose products inhabite the de-webbed web of 2026 (and that's all there is). Let's go back and pretend the VCs didn't run all their get-rich-quick schemes, what would the fucking web be like if it was all about two things -- writing and reading and the tech got out of the fucking way and let the writers do their thing. I think it'll actually work this time because they really fucked up the web and we can show them dramatically what it would be like if they hadn't. I've said this before if they insist on twisting what remains of the web into more bullshit, our option is to re-create the web and forget about them, leave them in the dust.

    By the way, now I'm glad I have a source:markdown element in most of my RSS 2.0 feeds. I knew they'd come in handy! :-)

    Back to Andrew's project, I said in a comment, I want more Markdown and absolutely no Chrome.

    I have to trust Google for far too many things, but I think we can get rid of our dependency on Chrome. Now is the best time in a long time, as there's a hybrid product forming and they don't have the best AI system, and btw -- even if they did as users we are highly motivated for them to get some competition. And the AI companies don't do HTML or CSS, they do Markdown. So much so that Google had to convert their office product to Markdown before OpenAI would work with them. The wind is blowing away from Google and into Markdown, and I'm going to insist that they support HTTP in addition to HTTPS to make sure Google hears loud and clear that they can't run the web as if it were a corporate platform.

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  • BTW, Mets fans do not root for the Yankees, while Yankees fans are happy to wear Mets caps when we're on top. Their only philosophy is that the Yankees always win and if they don't we hate them. And the Mets' philosophy is incomprehensible (I hear) to Yankees fans. Our philosophy is to have a philosophy and there's nothing about winning in there because the love of the Mets is rooted in a team that couldn't even run the bases. They were loved because they were losers, probably because we knew their fate was to reward our belief in them. Now this year the Mets sucked. The reason why is kind of obvious. The Mets got confused, and they thought they were the Yankees. That. Does. Not. Work. And we already have one heartless low-philosophy baseball team in NYC, we sure as hell don't need another one. But this year is different because we have the fucking Knicks, who won in 5 and it would have been a clean sweep if it weren't for that buzzkill mofo, Trump. So anyway, I hear the Yankees were eliminated yesterday. Well then, it's on with the NBA season now and we'll try again with the Mets in April, or more realistically after the NBA championship for the new season is settled.

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  • Indeed it kind of already exists Implemented this for my indiekit blog but only...

    Indeed it kind of already exists Implemented this for my indiekit blog but only for Articles post type rmendes.net/llms.txt

    Also added an AI transparency JSON-LD custom property that declare if AI was used per post

    Also integrated with my Plume Micropub Browser extension

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  • That said, surprisingly Nicolle Wallace's podcast is really good, which surprised me because her two hour afternoon MSNOW show is kind-of nothing. On this show they have a lot of time to talk with one person, and maybe there are limits on the TV show that aren't on the podcast? Another theory, I listen to her podcast, and thus can't see her facial expressions. On TV she looks utterly hopeless, I'm not kidding, and she's justified. I worry about how much of this she can take. But on the podcast she comes off as she's curious, respectful, let's the guest speak (so many hosts don't). She reminds me of a Diane Rehm, a podcast host on NPR through 2016. She never let her guests talk down to us, her audience, which I appreciated. A lot of times you hear a science, history or tech topic and hope you might learn something, but they only repeat the intro over and over, with a lot of giggling, of course. BTW, Diane Rehm has a new podcast. I bet it's great, probably gets right to the point and I guarantee you there is no giggling.

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  • DisInfo2026 : Europe cannot defend itself with its eyes shut

    Apparently, asking whether the United States interferes in Europe is still too uncomfortable for some of the institutions supposed to defend us against foreign interference.

    Rapporteur reports that the EEAS, Lithuania’s foreign ministry and Global Affairs Canada disappeared from the supporters’ list of an EU DisinfoLab conference amid controversy over a panel examining American interference. A Lithuanian official explicitly linked his withdrawal as a speaker to disagreement over the assessment of the United States. The reasons for the EEAS and Canadian withdrawals remain unconfirmed.

    The possibility that such a discussion could cost a conference institutional support is already appalling. Treating American interference as an unthinkable possibility is ludicrous. The record stretches from attempts to shape European elections to surveillance of European institutions, military pressure and sanctions against international judges.

    In a 1948 report published by the US State Department, the American ambassador in Rome described his embassy’s organised efforts to strengthen selected parties ahead of Italy’s election. These included distributing political material and publicising warnings that American assistance could disappear if the Communists won. Washington was actively trying to influence another country’s democratic choice.

    Decades later, Snowden’s disclosures exposed US surveillance targeting EU diplomatic missions and French, Italian and Greek embassies. The European Parliament subsequently called for guarantees against US espionage targeting EU institutions and facilities.

    Then there is Belgacom. Documents exposed in 2013 attributed Operation Socialist to Britain’s GCHQ. An expert report commissioned by Belgium’s intelligence oversight body, drawing on the Snowden disclosures, described the apparent use of NSA-controlled servers to infect employees’ computers. The European Parliament raised the possible consequences for EU institutions using Belgacom’s services.

    The available public evidence places Belgacom within the wider GCHQ–NSA intelligence-sharing partnership. It does not disclose the operation’s entire chain of command or every communication intercepted. We are examining the portion of a classified system exposed through leaks, investigations and official records. That visibility is incomplete. It is no reason to minimise the breaches of trust already documented.

    European countries. European allies. The European Union itself.

    All of this predates Trump.

    Nor were Americans immune from abusive surveillance before him: in 2014, the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that the bulk telephone-records programme lacked a viable legal foundation. The existence of legal safeguards and the willingness of intelligence agencies to respect them are separate questions. And American authorisation has never amounted to European consent.

    Trump’s two presidencies added further examples of dependence being turned into political pressure.

    In his first term, his administration withheld congressionally appropriated security assistance to Ukraine. The US Government Accountability Office concluded in January 2020 that the withholding violated the law.

    In March 2025, Washington paused military assistance and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine while pressing Kyiv towards negotiations. The joint statement of 11 March announced their resumption alongside Ukraine’s acceptance of a proposed ceasefire, subject to Russian agreement. That sequence showed how quickly support for a country resisting invasion could become an instrument of pressure on that same country.

    The diplomatic shift was equally stark: on 24 February 2025, the United States voted alongside Russia against the UN General Assembly resolution on a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. These decisions do not make Washington responsible for every subsequent Russian attack. They do make blind confidence in American commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty impossible to justify.

    The same coercive logic runs through Trump’s approach to NATO. In February 2024, he said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to allies he considered insufficiently committed to defence spending. In June 2025, NATO agreed a target of 5% of GDP by 2035: at least 3.5% for core defence, with up to 1.5% for broader defence and security expenditure.

    I am not opposed to Europe taking greater responsibility for its defence. We need the capacity to act without waiting for Washington. But threatening to abandon allies to Russian aggression turns a security guarantee into a means of extracting compliance.

    JD Vance made the political dimension explicit at Munich on 14 February 2025. In his speech, he presented Europe’s internal politics as the threat he feared most, attacked its handling of speech and migration, and rejected political firewalls. The same day, he met AfD leader Alice Weidel ahead of Germany’s election. I regard that as an overt intervention in Europe’s political choices: an American vice-president using his office to pressure Europeans over whom they should admit to power. Being public does not make that pressure politically neutral.

    On Palestine, the obstruction is there in the voting record. On 4 June 2025, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid. Every other member voted in favour.

    And when international justice reaches American or Israeli conduct, Washington has moved to punish those administering it. Trump’s first administration sanctioned ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior official Phakiso Mochochoko in 2020. Those measures were revoked in 2021. In his second term, Trump issued a new sanctions order, explicitly attacking the ICC’s actions concerning the United States and Israel. It provides for asset freezes and restrictions on supplying funds, goods and services to designated people.

    The consequences reach into ordinary life in Europe.

    In sworn testimony to France’s National Assembly on 8 April 2026, French ICC judge Nicolas Guillou described the cancellation of his Visa card, loss of digital services and blocked health-expense reimbursements. His French bank had retained him as a customer but had not provided a replacement payment card. He attributed the insurance problem to European companies’ excessive compliance with American sanctions.

    A French judge, living in Europe, facing restrictions on everyday life because of a decision taken in Washington.

    The Microsoft case requires precision. Associated Press reported, citing ICC staff, that prosecutor Karim Khan lost access to his Microsoft email. Microsoft denied suspending services to the ICC as an institution. Questioned about Outlook and Office 365, Guillou said Microsoft’s position on services to sanctioned individuals had changed over time. He also confirmed that the court was migrating towards non-American alternatives.

    This remains a live problem. On 1 October 2026, Reuters reported that the ICC and AXA had ended their insurance contract. The court confirmed the change without specifying a reason; the Financial Times, cited by Reuters, reported that AXA had invoked risks from US sanctions.

    AI services carry the same dependency. Anthropic’s commercial terms restrict access involving US-sanctioned persons and allow service suspension where provision is prohibited by law. That establishes a mechanism for exclusion; it does not establish that a particular ICC judge’s AI account has already been closed. Building public institutions around these services means accepting that external legal and political decisions can affect their availability.

    Espionage, electoral intervention, military pressure, sanctions and foreign information manipulation are distinct activities. Together, these documented episodes demolish the assumption that alliance with Washington protects Europe from American coercion. Allegations of FIMI deserve scrutiny according to the evidence, including when the actor is American.

    Past US support for European integration cannot erase that record. Washington’s own internal policy documents connected that support to American strategic objectives. A stronger Europe serving those objectives and an autonomous Europe willing to oppose them are very different propositions.

    Europe needs a backbone. A spine to resist interference from any power, including the United States. No ally should receive an exemption from scrutiny, and no history of cooperation should oblige us to accept coercion.

    We need to abandon the comforting assumption inherited from the post-war Atlantic order that whatever serves Washington must, by default, serve Europe too. It does not. American interests are American interests. Any alignment with ours has to be established on the merits, issue by issue.

    The internet, markets, climate, democracy, agriculture: in none of these areas should American priorities be our starting point. We should decide what protects our citizens, our rights, our food systems, our public services and our environment. Where cooperation serves those aims, cooperate. Where American demands undermine them, we need the capacity and the political will to refuse.

    Trump has made the cost of dependence impossible to ignore. Yet too much of Europe’s institutional response still looks like an attempt to endure an unpleasant interruption, keep Washington comfortable and wait for a more familiar president. Waiting for America to “return to normal” is no strategy for European independence.

    The old normal of unquestioned trust is gone. Kaput. Another administration may change American policy; it cannot erase the demonstration of how easily our dependencies can be used against us. Returning to the same vulnerability after seeing that would be a conscious political choice.

    Europe needs the practical ability to defend Ukraine, pursue justice for Palestinians, protect its institutions and keep its judges, researchers and public services functioning. That requires control over more than military budgets. It requires resilient communications, payments, software and access to computing—and officials willing to defend European decisions when Washington objects.

    European sovereignty means being able to say no to the United States—or any other power—and still function the next morning.

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  • EEAS runs scared of US 'disinformation' debate

    Europe is ready to talk about foreign interference provided it does not have to identify the US as a possible source

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  • 32 years and still diggin!

    On 10/7/1994, I wrote my first blog post.

    I've been blogging ever since.

    In the first years when wifi wasn't in every hotel room and restaurant as it is today, before cell phones or even iPods, there were weekly lapses when I went on vacation or to a massage retreat in the middle of nowhere.

    Or in 2002 when I had life-saving heart surgery. I was gone for a week then. But as soon as I got home, I added a post so people knew I was okay. I understood that I was missed, and appreciated that. ;-)

    But other than those week-long lapses, I'm pretty sure I've blogged every day since. I am what you would call a Natural Born Blogger. I got the blogging bug.

    We've done a lot on this blog, it's hard to sum up. We created things that had lasting value. Told the truth about what the tech industry was up to, from the point of view of a Silicon Valley insider (me) who knows the language, where most journalists are intimidated. We fought the big companies and won. Podcasting was created in the community defined by this blog in the early 00s, and it remains independent to this day.

    The bigs declared RSS dead, another product of this community. Wishful thinking perhaps, but things like RSS don't die. It's not like that. You can't create a better format for a standard. All the competition RSS has ever received, just changed the names of things, that's not competition, that's being petty.

    I think we're on the verge of having new relevance, it feels that way because my secret weapon, Frontier, is running again and it will get even stronger and fit in better, now that I've been working primarily in JavaScript for the last 13 years. Today we're adding Node-like packages and support for WebSockets. Last time we worked on this, neither of those existed.

    I take blogging seriously, you should too. It's very powerful, as long as we're really working on the web. There's a difference between having a product you can access through a browser and being on the web.

    Small pieces loosely joined. All parts replaceable. Never forget that. If you can't plug in replacements for any component, if one piece gets too large to replicate, you should hit the Back button, as Google says you should do on my blog.

    Why are they trying to destroy the historic record about the web on the web itself? I have no idea. Certainly they must have had some discussion internally, or with their partner at the EFF about the cost of destroying so much history. Usually when a platform vendor is going to break you, you get invited to a private meeting where you can tell them the cost and beg them not to do it. Not with Google.

    And, as they say --

    Still diggin!

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  • The web of Markdown

    How about a Markdown web browser. No CSS, no frameworks, just Markdown files. That would be how you would restart the web in 2026. When you've had enough of Google, let me know. I start posting my blog in that space, right away.

    Google will not be allowed into this web. Buh bye.

    We need our own EFF to keep the Old Arthritic Corporate Excuse-makers for the Tech Industry EFF from fucking it up, same with the W3C. There won't be a WordPress there to own 81% of the websites. Just Markdown please, we don't need Gutenberg. The cool thing about it is you could always fork off your own New Web of Whatever. You don't like Markdown, that's cool. Maybe the web of SVG or The Web of Hypercard cards. Just make sure you support inbound and outbound RSS.

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  • Google Chrome, nice browser, but it doesn’t support the web.

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  • Surréalisme belge : vu sur le site internet de Lalibre.be en étant connecté en l...

    Surréalisme belge : vu sur le site internet de Lalibre.be en étant connecté en lisant un article sur leur site depuis mon mobile en Wifi:

    Pour accéder à cet article, veuillez vous connecter au réseau internet.

    Clap, clap, clap.

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  • What's the best way to block a browser from a website? Is there a meta code for that? Like Firefox is fine, but Google is blocked. Just an idea. Sort of like, you're not blocking me, I'm blocking you.

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  • Google's new gate for scripting.com

    Until last week I was mostly using an old version of Chrome, so had never seen the gate it puts in front of my blog, scripting.com.

    Here's a screen shot of their awful dialog.

    An easy FAQ of what they're doing wrong, why a free web is so important and why you should care.

    So far no response from Google or the EFF, also promoting this.

    BTW, someone please put us in touch with historian Heather Cox Richardson. I'm a fan and regular reader. But I want to tell her there's more to tech than the big tech companies. There's the web, which historians will wish was preserved, instead of being paved over by the big tech companies. This is scandalous. This is happening now. We can help each other by assuring the open web continues, and we get to ask informed questions. Most reporters are intimidated by the tech, we can help there. And btw we can also create tools and publishing platforms that don't have the lock-in problems of the ones you're using. And we would love to make software for you, for love, for the cause, not for money.

    Compromise? Look for a page called googleIswrong.md on any site it is about to accuse, and offer the reader a chance to hear our side. This is so against any sense of the web being an open platform. My blog should have the ability to hear the case against it and offer a defense.

    Think about what comes next, and remember that their CEO goes to public meetings with top US government officials.

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  • Claude's biggest most amazing strength is its ability to inhale a lot of source code and understand what's going on, any language, any OS, anything, in an instant.

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  • The climate will kill you

    Great scene from The West Wing.

    CJ and Josh, on the street outside the White House.

    The president was hiding serious disease, and it’s about to come out. Back in those days such a revelation meant the president has no chance of being re-elected.

    Anyway, the kid has an idea and starts explaining, and as he does CJ laughs. The kid asks what’s so funny.

    She tells him about a scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as the kid.

    They’re cornered, on a cliff, preparing to jump into a river far below. Redford says he can’t swim. Newman says it doesn’t matter, the fall is going to kill you.

    Okay so why mention this now?

    I hear there’s a monster heat wave in California. Over 90F every day for two weeks. That’s unusual for October IIRC.

    We’re all fretting about AI killing us.

    Imagine CJ laughing. Haha she says, so you’re worried about AI are ya? It’s the climate that’s going to kill you.

    Josh would correct her. “Us. It’s going to kill us.”

    CJ tells him to go away she needs to be an adult right now.

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  • Twitter as a blog platform

    Twitter with its relaxed character limit is getting pretty close to being a blogging platform. I wrote the first draft of this post on my iPad, that's how useful it is.

    Imagine if a real blog platform created a super simple way to write posts, no need for Gutenberg, just Markdown and that would be optional. Default would be a normal wizzy text editor, bold, italic, using a standard user interface.

    Add web links and a reply structure, open source, nice API and developer program to shine the light on the cool editors independent devs were creating, and all of a sudden a bunch of new blog platforms emerge, and get this — they all work perfectly with each other because of the common foundation and API. The web of social media. It would be exciting and would pressure the other social media apps to peer with this truly open system.

    It would change the freaking world I tell you. And it would be so wonderful with AI. No need for the cheesy chat UI. A real revolution. Undo all the craptastic silos that strangled the web?

    It would be pretty damn easy imho, fwiw, ymmv, mmlm.

    PS: MMLM is an acronym for My Mother Loves Me. Anticipates flameage. Okay you don't like me, but my mother loves me.

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  • The reason I moved to my own AP instance, based on Fedify, isn’t yours but I’m n...

    The reason I moved to my own AP instance, based on Fedify, isn’t yours but I’m not looking back, my own domain is my Fedify/Indiekit server and I love how I can reply to you from it, without having to open Mastodon or have a Mastodon account.

    The downside was to develop a full blown ActivityPub extension for Indiekit, which was also a very rewarding experience to better understand how AP works but it also cost me time and headaches, since stability is a moving target, things break and I’m constantly finding things to fix and improve while I’m eating my own implementation.

    But the upside is worth it, my handle is now @rick@rmendes.net and when I create a post I can syndicate it to AP and the followers I migrated to my own account get my posts and that’s all I care at the end of the day.

    For the timeline issue I have built a UI from which I can follow any Public time lines from any Mastodon instance and I use it as a Discovery approach for when I’m bored and am looking for new interesting people to follow, for example I can quickly skim who use #indieweb on any instance I’m monitoring or any other tag by the way, which allows me to find interesting people that I get on my timeline after following them.

    And for me and my use case that’s more than enough 😊

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