Notices by ploum (ploum@mamot.fr)

I believe that all the programmers who like "vibe-coding" simply have not been exposed enough to a real-world messy codebase.

I remember when banks were writing Java software to encapsulate their Cobol legacy software without touching them, thinking it was the best way to deal with such radioactive codebase.

I’m sure some are already working on "containing" vibecoded stacks that "just work if you don’t sneeze too hard next to them" and are in production.

Just learned today about the Xteink X4 device, which seems really nice pocket e-reader (with physical buttons)

gemini://axxuy.com/blog/2026/i-also-got-an-xteink-x4.gmi

And there’s an Open Source firmware:

https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

Has anybody tested it?

Americans don’t realize how weird they sounds to non-Americans when they use brands instead of proper name.

"No ManlyFit today, as I’ll go to Zurf and will have a Smith&Benny."

And we are supposed to understand you don’t go to gym because you need to buy some hardware and will have an ice-cream afterward.

What is striking is how reducing their language to brands (that non-US don’t even know about) is shrinking their worldview…

4 humains sont en route vers la lune: 3 hommes et une femme, Christina Koch, qui est déjà la femme la plus éloignée de la terre de l’histoire.

Et devinez qui est responsable officiel de la toilette ? Oui, c’est Christina bien sûr !

Comme je le disais dans « Stagiaire au spatioport Omega 3000 », le rôle de madame-pipi de l’espace ne peut pas être confié à un homme !

https://pvh-editions.com/product/stagiaire-au-spatioport-omega-3000-papier

Et si vous ne me croyez pas, lisez la section Spécialiste de Mission 1 sur
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II

Donc #Linkedin envoie à Microsoft la liste de toutes les extensions installées dans votre navigateur.

https://browsergate.eu/

LOL!

Je crois que je vais arrêter de cracher sur LinkedIn, ça devient trop facile et celleux qui sont encore dessus pour ne pas rater le dernier post généré par le ChatGPT du patron le font désormais en pleine conscience.

Et si votre boulot dépend de LinkedIn, il est temps de préparer votre sortie…

https://ploum.net/je-ne-suis-plus-a-vendre-sur-linkedin/index.html

One year ago, I joked that #offpunk would be renamed #xkcdpunk

https://xkcdpunk.net/

Today, I can say that "xkcdpunk" is a command-line that I use every day! And this was not anticipated!

https://ploum.net/2026-02-09-offpunk3.html

#xkcd

@aaribaud : je dois juste signer un contrat avec un prestataire de service. C’est parfaitemenl légitime (et sinon, le prestataire ne peut pas légalement fournir le service).

Je suis invité à signer un contrat en utilisant la plateform Twikey.

Cependant, pour signer mon contrat, je dois d’abord signer un contrat avec Twikey lui-même. Et ce contrat en question est très bizarre : je m’engage à payer des dommages à Twikey si je n’utilise pas leur plateforme correctement et je les autorise à mettre mes données (y compris mon adresse de domicile) dans des "annuaires" non-spécifiés.

Vous avez des retours sur cette plateforme ?

There’s one very simple thing I learned from Chomsky and that will change your worldview forever. It is really simple.

Each time you read something in a media, simply add the following sentence before everything: "Someone want me to believe that…"

It completely modified my perception. It calmed my anger against lies. It allowed me to read something with no judgement other than "Someone want me to believe that".

Next, you will start questioning who is that "someone". But one step at a time…

Step 1: Convince geeks that copyleft is "against entrepreneurship"

Step 2: Convince geeks that all the GPL-licensed FLOSS foundational software should be rewritten using MIT/BSD license

Step 3: Provide a proprietary tool trained on GPL software which "rewrrite" the same software but without the license.

–––We are there, we can still move away from that path–––

..
...

Last step: congratulations, you have killed the last remains of independence in the software world

Using #LLMs for coding is so "good" that programmers are now faking using them so they can still write code by hand while making the management happy…

slow clap!

https://danq.me/2026/03/03/ai-agent-logging/

Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html

It’s logical: non-crazy people will, at some point, hit the "more money than enough even for my craziest fullfilling dreams".

People who are still destroying their social/ecological environment for more money above that level are, obviously, crazy. And dangerous.

Why there’s no European Google?
And why it is a good thing!

My answer to the European Commission "call for evidence on Open Source."

https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html

#geminiprotocol link: gemini://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.gmi

It’s official: @protonprivacy is randomly breaking some patches received through git-send-email.

I suspect https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail-calendar/suggestions/50753063-proper-support-for-format-flowed

Moving all my development emails to Galae.net , let’s test this new French mail hosting provider.

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots

How I managed to give an exam while giving the students the choice to use a chatbot or not.

And what I learned in the process.

https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html

I send exactly 2 emails per year using the Microsof Outlook, to announce the exam to my students.

Guess what? Outlook cannot show me those emails I sent. It displays a threads of answers by students, not the original one. Also, no subjects are displayed for each email. But, at least, I’m offered to summarize the thread.

Guess what? That summarize button open a sidebar chatbot which asks me to copy/paste the content of the email in the chat.

The whole thing is beyond parody.

How my students taught me that Github’s monopoly is hurting the Open Source ecosystem even more than I thought.

https://ploum.net/2026-01-05-unteaching_github.html

#github #floss

@davidho : as someone who develop a browser optimized to work offline, I was completely flabbergasted by a blog post wrote by a sysadmin working in Antarctica. He was trying to do stuff like updating every Windows machine on a very slow connection.

There’s a whole niche of #retrocomputing #permacomputing #smallWeb #smolnet people who are doing exactly that: using and developing minimal ressources tools optimised for low spec hardware on really slow and intermittent connections.

Mozilla has a new CEO who:

- Has been at Mozilla for less than a year
- Has no prior open source experience (but well in "fintech" and "real estate")
- Has a MBA (aka "brainworm diploma")
- Is all-in on AI

That’s exactly the kind of bingo profile the whole community has been waiting for.

Just had the realization that my last post could be summarized as:

"I’m a TCP person in a UDP world"

https://ploum.net/2025-12-15-communication-entertainment.html