Journal

Why a static site

This site is static. No database, no PHP, no CMS begging you to update seventeen plugins before you can type a comma. HTML files, some CSS, and that's it. And I'm going to tell you why that's exactly the right call.

Thank you, Mr Trump

Let's start with something I never thought I'd write: thank you, Donald.

Let me be clear: I reckon Trump has less judgement than a six-month-old baby. He's not even the real problem. The real problem is the people around him. His advisors are worse, by a long stretch. The difference is that Trump is a loud idiot. He talks, and talks, and talks, and by talking so much he ends up leaking state secrets in front of the cameras. His advisors produce the same catastrophes without making a sound. (still waters run deep)

So why "thank you"? Because by hastily signing a few executive orders, he exposed what everyone was pretending not to see: the whole of Europe depends on American digital infrastructure. Our data, our services, our tools, all hosted on the other side of the Atlantic. And when the man holding the servers unilaterally decides your rules no longer count, the scale of the problem suddenly hits home.

Disclaimer: politics doesn't interest me. "Everything is political," yes, very charming at dinner parties, deeply irritating in practice. I'm not left, not right, not centre, not anything else. I'm an engineer. International alliances, power struggles between nations, speeches about the world order, that's not my field and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. There's only one subject that interests me here: IT sovereignty. The pipes, the servers, the data, the code. That, I know.

AI is bad. Actually no. Actually it's a tool.

Artificial intelligence is going to replace us all. We'll lose our jobs, our brains will melt, robots will take over the world, and Skynet will launch the missiles on a Tuesday afternoon. At least that's what I read on LinkedIn between two posts from "thought leaders" who use ChatGPT to write their posts about the dangers of ChatGPT. (irony level: expert)

Except no. It's more complicated than that. And it's also simpler than that. Hold on tight, there will be swerves.

Mandatory disclaimer: this post is neither left-wing, nor right-wing, nor centrist, nor above, nor below. It has in fact been verified by an artificial intelligence to guarantee the complete absence of any political opinion. The AI confirmed: zero political ideas detected. Which, when you think about it, might be the most political statement in this entire post. (infinite loop)

Free software isn't a logo on GitHub

Microsoft loves open source. Google loves open source. Amazon loves open source. They say it at every conference, they put it in their slides, they sponsor foundations. You'd almost think they believe in it. Except their "open source" is to free software what an all-you-can-eat buffet is to fine dining: it looks similar, it feeds you, but it's not quite the thing.

And before anyone slaps a label on me: no, this isn't a "left-wing" or "right-wing" argument. I'm an engineer. What interests me is what works. And what works, in computing, for the last fifty years, is free software. The most reliable, most durable, most widely used software in the world is free. This isn't ideology. It's a technical observation.

Down with silos, long live federation

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, Messenger. Five names, one company, one man, and three billion users who don't get a say. And that's just Meta. Add Google (Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Android, Chrome, the Play Store), Amazon (AWS, where half the web runs without anyone realising), Apple (iMessage, the gilded garden you never leave), Microsoft (LinkedIn, GitHub, Teams, Outlook). They call it the "social" web. I call it an oligopoly. And oligopolies are for enriching oligarchs, not for connecting people.

Oh, and before anyone slaps a label on me: I'm left-wing, because I want citizens' data to be protected and public services not to depend on some Californian billionaire. No wait, I'm right-wing, because I want Europe to be sovereign and to stop being fleeced by foreign corporations. No, actually, I'm a communist, because I think communication protocols should belong to everyone. Then again, libertarian, because I want anyone to be able to host their own server without asking permission. Or maybe green, because a 200 KB site uses less energy than a 14 MB React monstrosity. Actually no: I'm an engineer. I couldn't give a flying fig about the political compass. "Everything is political." Wonderful. Go tell that to a TCP packet, it'll cope. Here we're talking about protocols, architecture, and who controls your data. The rest is for the op-ed writers.

First post

Welcome to Philaire. This first post marks the beginning of this personal site.