Publié le 20.03.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 13.03.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 21.02.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 16.02.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 11.02.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 09.02.2026 à 01:00
Publié le 20.03.2026 à 01:00
The Social Smolnet
It might have been an email thread. Or a lobste.rs comment. It was a discussion about yet another attempt at a new decentralized social protocol. And we reached the conclusion that with blogs and email, we already had a decentralized social network. We only needed to use it.
This was the last push I needed to implement in Offpunk the social features I had imagined years ago. Share and Reply. Available since Offpunk 3.0.
Share
Are you reading something interesting in Offpunk and want to share it? Well, simply write it:
share
or
share myfriend@example.com
A new mail containing the URL to share will be opened in your email client of choice (as determined by xdg-open). The title will be the title of the page. You only need to add some text to explain why you want to share that page.
Reply
Ever read a blog post and wanted to send feedback or a simple thank you to the author? Simply write:
reply
Reply will try to find a mailto link by exploring the page, root pages and, since 3.1, potential "contact" pages. It sometimes works really well. Often, the mail address is obscured or hidden. That’s not a problem. You only need to find it once because Offpunk allows you to save it for the page or the whole online space.
If you come across an email address that may be of use in the future but don’t want to react now, use "save":
reply save author@example.com
or, if you want to use autodetection:
reply save
Yes, it is enough
It looks like nothing. It looks like trivial. But for me, this really transformed Gemini/Gopher and the Small Web into a social network. As I use neomutt+neovim as my mail client, I don’t leave my terminal. I simply write "reply", neovim opens, I write "Thank you for this nice post", :wq, ,and voilà. The mail will be sent during my next synchronization.
Almost as easy as clicking a "like" button but way more personal. Even easier if, like me, you dislike touching a mouse or opening a browser!
This is the Social SmolNet
In less than two months, I already used this feature to react to 40 different online spaces, not counting that I’ve used it multiple times with some people.
I even started using Offpunk as an address book for my blogger friends. Instead of laboriously autocompleting their email addresses, I go to their blog/gemini capsule/gopher hole and write "reply".
The biggest lesson I take is that "social networks" are not about protocols but about how we use the existing infrastructure. Microsoft and Google are working hard to make sure you hate email and hate building a website. But we don’t have to obey. We can enjoy writing lightweight HTML and sending quick emails to each other. We have the right to read, write, and have social fun without Javascript and centralized platforms. We have the duty to keep this torch lit.
In the meantime, if you receive from me very short emails reacting to some of your posts, now you know why.
But, of course, feel free not to reply!
About the author
I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.
I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!
Publié le 13.03.2026 à 01:00
How I fought my smartphone addiction
In a poignant Gemini post, Kevin Boone wrote about his anxiety to go out of his house without his phone. (This is the Gemini protocol, totally unrelated to the Google chatbot.)
Around 2018, I had the same epiphany: I was unable to get out of my house without my phone. In fact, I was so addicted that it was hard not to take the phone with me even inside the house or, God forbid, into the bathroom!
I had this discussion with Matt Baer, Write.as creator, and he told me that he had started to consciously go for short walks without his smartphone. I thought it was a good idea. I started to leave my phone at home for short walks. I disabled notifications. I even invested in an e-ink smartphone and, later, in a Mudita Kompakt.
At first, not having a phone was a real source of anxiety. For me, the anxiety was not about being able to call someone or being called. It was really about missing notifications, about not knowing if I had a new email. It was about not being able to "feel like I was doing something" if I had to wait a couple of minutes somewhere.
What is even more scary about this particular addiction is that the anxiety of being without a phone is not only internal: it is also highly socially inflicted. My mother asked me: "What if there is an urgency for me or your father?" To which I replied: "I’m not a medic and I live 30 minutes away from you. If there’s an urgency for you, telling me about it is not urgent and will not help."
But, quickly, the feeling to be without a smartphone changed from anxiety to liberating. I felt really happy not to have a phone on me while outside. I was rediscovering my old way of getting lost in my thought, of sometimes talking to myself to clarify an idea. Which is less weird these days because everybody assumes you have an ear bud and are on the phone with someone else. In fact, when walking alone, I’m often on a call with myself.
It may seem weird, but instead of scrambling for my phone to find a direction or the name of that actor that was in that movie, I made peace with the fact that "I didn’t know something." I look around for clues about a bus schedule, I ask strangers for directions. I let my subconscious work in the background to surface the forgotten name half an hour later. And I appreciate that. Sure, there are times when things would have been easier with a smartphone. But nothing insurmountable.
I became more and more allergic to any kind of notifications, even from other phones. I feel them as constant aggression. In part because I was addicted, in part because those are, by definition, designed to disrupt your thought. That’s the whole purpose of a notification.
And we are only starting to understand the damage those are doing to our cognitive abilities.
These days, I use a Mudita phone which has a side switch to put it completely offline (a kind of hardware enabled airplane mode). Every night, I pull that switch. Some days, I realise I totally forgot to put my phone online in the morning.
When I go outside, I ask my wife: "Is there any reason for me to take my phone?" If there’s none, which is the usual case, I don’t take it. This ritual has two purposes: it allows me to consciously choose whether to take my phone or not and to remind my wife that I don’t have my phone with me.
My only exception is when I go cycling. I remember how my friend Thierry Crouzet broke his hip in the middle of the woods. So I take my phone, just in case. This is not problematic because you cannot mindlessly start checking your phone while pedalling. It’s just a little weight in my jersey pocket.
- Un auteur se fracture le fémur pour faire parler de lui (gemini.tcrouzet.com)
- Web version of the former
I would like to say that I’m cured of my smartphone addiction, but this is not true. Put a smartphone with a shiny coloured screen in my pocket and it would probably not take more than a few days for me to return to what is the new social norm. I’m an addict and will stay an addict my whole life. But at least I have put in place enough guardrails to be free of smartphones and feel a lot happier about it.
Of course, this only applies to my smartphone. We will talk about my laptop another time…
About the author
I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.
I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!
Publié le 21.02.2026 à 01:00
Capitalisme, IA et éducation
Extrait de mon journal du 29 janvier, en lisant "Comprendre le pouvoir" de Chomsky.
Le capitalisme n’a pas créé le système éducatif par humanisme, mais parce qu’il avait besoin d’employés qualifiés pour produire de la croissance. L’automatisation ayant détruit la culture de l’artisan et de l’ouvrier, raison du combat des luddites, une large population se trouvait réduite à se mettre au service des machines.
Mais les progrès de l’automatisation rendaient ce besoin de servants peu qualifiés de moins en moins nécessaire tout en nécessitant des personnes comprenant les machines afin de les entretenir et de les améliorer. Un système éducatif s’est donc naturellement mis en place dans les sociétés capitalistes, créant une élite intellectuelle dévouée au capitalisme.
Mais cette suréducation a créé trop de citoyens critiques qui remettent en cause les principes mêmes de la croissance infinie, notamment à cause des limites écologiques.
Face à cette suréducation, les guerres, les menaces de tout ordre et le totalitarisme politique permettent de restreindre l’éducation ou, a minima, de détourner l’attention. L’éducation informatique est la principale cible, car l’informatique est devenue la colonne vertébrale de la société capitaliste. Ne pas comprendre les enjeux informatiques rend même les citoyens les plus engagés totalement impuissants.
La promesse de l’IA, c’est justement de diminuer le besoin d’éducation tout en gardant un degré de production équivalent. Tout employé peut redevenir une main-d’œuvre peu qualifiée et interchangeable. L’IA est un Fordisme intellectuel.
Car les monopoles, la surveillance permanente, la consommation, l’érosion des droits et l’IAfication du travail ne sont que des outils pour garder les citoyens sous contrôle et dans les rails du capitalisme de production.
Et si ces citoyens s’imaginent échapper à ce contrôle grâce à leur groupe Facebook "anticapitaliste" ou un groupe Whatsapp "centrale d’achat solidaire du quartier", c’est encore mieux ! C’est plus subtil ! De toute façon, ils bossent la journée pour Microsoft et se contentent d’une image du monde générée par Google ou Meta.
Leur vie professionnelle est asservie par Microsoft, leur vie privée par Meta/Facebook et leurs centres d’intérêt sont contrôlés par Google. Maintenant que les humains sont définitivement ferrés, il est temps de réduire progressivement leur degré d’éducation et de connaissance afin d’améliorer leur servilité.
À propos de l’auteur :
Je suis Ploum et je viens de publier Bikepunk, une fable écolo-cycliste entièrement tapée sur une machine à écrire mécanique. Pour me soutenir, achetez mes livres (si possible chez votre libraire) !
Recevez directement par mail mes écrits en français et en anglais. Votre adresse ne sera jamais partagée. Vous pouvez également utiliser mon flux RSS francophone ou le flux RSS complet.
Publié le 16.02.2026 à 01:00
Préface à « La déception informatique »
Ce texte est la préface que j’ai écrite pour le livre « La déception informatique » d’Alain Lefebvre ». Le livre n’est malheureusement disponible en version papier que sur… gasp… Amazon ! Mais les versions epub et pdf sont librement téléchargeables !
- La déception informatique ! (www.alain-lefebvre.com)
- La déception informatique-V1.0.epub (drive.google.com)
- La déception informatique-V1.0.pdf (drive.google.com)
- La déception informatique, format Kindle (www.amazon.fr)
- La déception informatique, version papier (www.amazon.fr)
Depuis quelques années, lorsque je dois acheter un équipement électroménager ou même une voiture, j’insiste auprès du vendeur pour avoir une solution qui fonctionne sans connexion permanente et ne nécessite pas d’app sur smartphone.
La réaction est toujours la même : « Ah ? Vous avez du mal avec la technologie ? »
Oui, j’ai du mal. Et pourtant j’ai publié mon premier livre sur l’informatique en 2005. Et pourtant, j’enseigne depuis 10 ans dans le département informatique de l’École Polytechnique de Louvain.
Alain et moi sommes des professionnels de l’informatique qui avons, chacun dans notre genre, bâti une carrière dans l’informatique et la technologie. Nous pouvons même nous enorgueillir d’une certaine reconnaissance parmi les spécialistes du domaine. Nous baignons dedans depuis des décennies. Bref, Alain et moi sommes des "geeks", de celles et ceux qui perçoivent un ordinateur comme une extension d’eux-mêmes.
Alors, je me contente le plus souvent de répondre au vendeur : « Quand on sait comment est fabriqué le fast-food, on arrête d’en manger… » La discussion s’arrête là.
Mais au fond, le vendeur a raison : Alain et moi avons du mal avec la technologie moderne. Pas parce que nous ne la comprenons pas. Au contraire, parce que nous la comprenons trop bien. Nous savons ce qu’elle a été, ce qu’elle aurait pu être. Et nous pleurons sur ce qu’elle est aujourd’hui.
En toute transparence, je me suis souvent demandé si ma réaction n’était pas une simple conséquence de l’âge. Un très traditionnel syndrome du « C’était mieux avant » par lequel semble passer chaque génération. Il y a certainement un peu de ça.
Mais pas que…
Alain pourrait être mon père. Il est de 21 ans mon aîné et a construit l’essentiel de sa carrière alors que je tentais de faire fonctionner des lignes de BASIC sur mon premier 386. Alors que je concevais mes premiers sites web, Alain introduisait sa société en bourse en pleine implosion de la bulle Internet.
Nous sommes de générations différentes, nous avons un vécu informatique sans aucun rapport. Et pourtant, nous arrivons à des réflexions similaires.
Réflexions qui semblent partagées par des lecteurs de mon blog de toutes cultures et de tout âge (certains étant adolescents). Réflexions auxquelles se joignent aussi parfois certains de mes étudiants.
Nous avions cru que l’ubiquité des ordinateurs nous permettrait de faire ce que nous voulions, de programmer ceux-ci pour obéir aux moindres de nos désirs.
Mais, dans nos poches, se trouvent désormais des ordinateurs qu’il est interdit ou très compliqué de modifier. La programmation est désormais balisée et réservée à ce que trois ou quatre multinationales américaines veulent bien nous laisser faire.
Nous pensions que l’informatisation de la société nous libérerait de la paperasserie administrative qui deviendrait rationnelle et automatisable.
Au lieu de ça, nous sommes en permanence en train de lutter pour remplir des formulaires qui n’acceptent pas nos réponses, nous devons régulièrement faire la mise à jour de tous nos appareils électroniques et nous devons nous battre contre des procédures informatiques dont nous savons, de par notre expérience, qu’elles ont été explicitement construites pour nous décourager.
Nous croyions que la possibilité pour tout un chacun de s’exprimer et d’échanger sur un réseau mondial allait ouvrir une nouvelle ère de coopération et de partage de connaissances et de culture.
À la place, nous avons créé l’infrastructure parfaite où les beuglements de fascistes sont entourés des publicités les plus éhontées.
Techniquement, nous étions conscients que se servir d’un ordinateur nécessitait un apprentissage. Nous étions certains que cet apprentissage serait de moins en moins difficile.
Mais, bien que les couleurs soient devenues plus vivantes, les photos plus précises, les interfaces se sont complexifiées à outrance, forçant l’immensité des utilisateurs à rester dans les deux ou trois fonctions connues et balisées. Ce qui était à la portée d’un amateur il y a 20 ans nécessite aujourd’hui une armée de professionnels.
Au nom d’intérêts financiers, le partage de culture a très vite été criminalisé alors que les injures et les discours de haine, eux, étaient amplifiés pour servir de support aux messages publicitaires omniprésents.
Nous avions cet espoir que la démocratisation de l’informatique transformerait graduellement chaque personne en citoyen intéressé, curieux, éveillé.
Au lieu de cela, nous observons des masses faire la file pour dépenser un mois de salaire afin d’acquérir un petit écran brillant conçu explicitement pour être addictif et abrutir, n’encourageant qu’à une chose : consommer toujours plus.
« Avec l’informatique, tout le monde aura accès au savoir et à l’éducation » criions-nous !
Aujourd’hui, la plupart des écoles ont un cursus informatique qui se réduit à surtout arrêter de penser et, à la place, produire des transparents dans Microsoft PowerPoint.
Quand on a eu de tels rêves, lorsqu’on sait que ces rêves sont à la fois technologiquement possible mais, surtout, que nous les avons touchés du doigt, il y a de quoi être déçu.
Ce n’est pas que l’informatique n’ait pas exaucé nos rêves ! Non, c’est pire : elle a produit exactement le contraire. Elle semble avoir amplifié les problèmes que nous souhaitions résoudre tout en créant des nouveaux, comme l’espionnage permanent auquel nous sommes désormais soumis. Les atrocités technologiques que j’exagérais dans « Printeurs », mon roman cyberpunk dystopique, semblent aujourd’hui banales voire en deça de la réalité.
Déçus, nous le sommes, Alain et moi. Et le titre de son livre le résume admirablement : la déception informatique.
Un livre qui est peut‑être aussi une forme de mea culpa. Nous avons contribué à faire naître ce monstre de Frankenstein qu’est l’informatique moderne. Il est plus que temps de tirer la sonnette d’alarme, de réveiller celles et ceux d’entre nous qui se voilent encore la face…
14 février 2026
À propos de l’auteur :
Je suis Ploum et je viens de publier Bikepunk, une fable écolo-cycliste entièrement tapée sur une machine à écrire mécanique. Pour me soutenir, achetez mes livres (si possible chez votre libraire) !
Recevez directement par mail mes écrits en français et en anglais. Votre adresse ne sera jamais partagée. Vous pouvez également utiliser mon flux RSS francophone ou le flux RSS complet.
Publié le 11.02.2026 à 01:00
Do not apologize for replying late to my email
You don’t need to apologize for taking hours, days, or years to reply to one of my emails.
If we are not close collaborators, and if I didn’t explicitly tell you I was waiting for your answer within a specific timeframe, then please stop apologizing for replying late!
This is a trend I’m witnessing, probably caused by the addiction to instant messaging. Most of the emails I receive these days contain some sort of apology. I received an apology from someone who took five hours to reply to what was a cold and unimportant email. I received apologies in what was a reply to a reply I had sent only a couple of days earlier.
Apologizing for taking time to reply to my email is awkward and makes me uncomfortable.
It also puts a lot of pressure on me: what if I take more time than you to reply? Isn’t the whole point of asynchronous communication to be… asynchronous? Each on its own rhythm?
I was not waiting for your email in the first place.
As soon as my email was sent, I probably forgot about it. I may have thought a lot before writing it. I may have drafted it multiple times. Or not. But as soon as it was in my outbox, it was also out of my mind.
That’s the very point of asynchronous communication. That’s why I use email. I’m not making any assumptions about your availability.
Most of the emails I send are replies to emails I received. So, no, I was not waiting for a reply to my reply.
My email might also be an idea I wanted to share with you, a suggestion, a random thought, a way to connect. In all cases, I’m not sitting there, waiting impatiently for your answer.
Even if my email was about requesting some help or collaborating with you, I’ve been trying to move forward anyway. Your reply, whenever it comes, will only be a bonus. But, except if we are in close collaboration and I explicitly said so in the email, I’m not waiting for you!
I don’t want to know all the details of your life.
Yes, you took several days to reply to my email. That’s OK. I don’t need to know that it’s because your mother was dying of cancer or that you were expelled from your house. I’m not making those up! I really receive that kind of apology from people who took several days to reply to emails that look trivial in comparison.
Life happens. If you have things more important to do than replying to my email, then, for god’s sake, don’t reply to it. I get it! I’m human too. If I sometimes reply to all the emails I receive for several days, I may also archive them quickly for weeks because I don’t have the mental space.
If you want to reply but don’t have time, put the burden on me
If I’m asking you something and you really would like to take the time to reply to my email, it is OK to simply send one line like
Hey Ploum, I don’t have the time and mental space right now. Could you contact me again in 6 months to discuss this idea?
Then archive or delete my email. That’s fine. If I really want your input, I will manage to remind you in 6 months. You don’t need to justify. You don’t need to explain. Being short saves time for both of us.
You don’t need to reply at all!
Except if explicitly stated, don’t feel any pressure to reply to one of my emails. Feel free to read and discard the email. Feel free to think about it. Feel free to reply to it, even years later, if it makes sense for you. But, most importantly, feel free not to care!
We all receive too many messages in a day. We all have to make choices. We cannot follow all the paths that look interesting because we are all constrained by having, at most, a couple billion seconds left to live.
Consider whether replying adds any value to the discussion. Is a trivial answer really needed? Is there really something to add? Can’t we both save time by you not replying?
If my email is already a reply to yours, is there something you really want to add? At some point, it is better to stop the conversation. And, as I said, it is not rude: I’m not waiting for your reply!
Don’t tell me you will reply later!
Some people specialize in answering email by explaining why they have no time and that they will reply later.
If I’m not explicitly waiting for you, then that’s the very definition of a useless email. That also adds a lot of cognitive load on you: you promised to answer! The fact that you wrote it makes your brain believe that replying to my email is a daunting task. How will you settle for a quick reply after that? What am I supposed to do with such a non-reply email?
In case an acknowledgement is needed, a simple reply with "thanks" or "received" is enough to inform me that you’ve got the message. Or "ack" if you are a geek.
If you do reply, remind me of the context
If you choose to reply, consider that I have switched to completely different tasks and may have forgotten the context of my own message. When online, my attention span is measured in seconds, so it doesn’t matter if you take 30 minutes or 30 days to answer my email: I guarantee you that I forgot about it.
Consequently, please keep the original text of the whole discussion!
Use bottom-posting style to reply to each question or remark in the body of the original mail itself. Don’t hesitate to cut out parts of the original email that are not needed anymore. Feel free to ignore large parts of the email. It is fine to give a one-line answer to a very long question.
I’m trying to make my emails structured. If there are questions I want you to answer, each question will be on its own line and will end with a question mark. If you do not see such lines, then there’s probably no question to answer.
If you do top posting, please remind me briefly of the context we are in.
Dear Ploum,
I contacted you 6 months ago about my "fooing the bar" project after we met at FOSDEM. You replied to my email with a suggestion of "baring the foo." You also asked a lot of questions. I will answer those below in your own email:
In short, that’s basic mailing-list etiquette.
No, seriously, I don’t expect you to reply!
If there’s one thing to remember, it’s that I don’t expect you to reply. I’m not waiting for it. I have a life, a family, and plenty of projects. The chance I’m thinking about the email I sent you is close to zero. No, it is literally zero.
So don’t feel pressured to reply. Should you really reply in the first place? In case of doubt, drop the email. Life will continue.
If you do reply, I will be honored, whatever time it took for you to send it.
In any case, whatever you choose, do not apologize for replying late!
About the author
I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.
I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!
Publié le 09.02.2026 à 01:00
Offpunk 3.0 "A Community is Born" Release
For the last four years, I’ve been developing Offpunk, a command-line Web, Gemini, and Gopher browser that allows you to work offline. And I’ve just released version 3.0. It is probably not for everyone, but I use it every single day. I like it, and it seems I’m not alone!
Something wonderful happened on the road leading to 3.0: Offpunk became a true cooperative effort. Offpunk 3.0 is probably the first release that contains code I didn’t review line-by-line. Unmerdify (by Vincent Jousse), all the translation infrastructure (by the always-present JMCS), and the community packaging effort are areas for which I barely touched the code.
So, before anything else, I want to thank all the people involved for sharing their energy and motivation. I’m very grateful for every contribution the project received. I’m also really happy to see "old names" replying from time to time on the mailing list. It makes me feel like there’s an emerging Offpunk community where everybody can contribute at their own pace.
There were a lot of changes between 2.8 and 3.0, which probably means some new bugs and some regressions. We count on you, yes, you!, to report them and make 3.1 a lot more stable. It’s as easy at typing "bugreport" in offpunk!
From the deepest of my terminal, thank you!
But enough with the cheering, let’s jump to…
The 11 most important changes in Offpunk 3.0
0. Use Offpunk in your language.
Offpunk is now translatable and has been translated into Spanish, Galician, and Dutch. Step-in to translate Offpunk into your language! (awesome work by JMCS with the help of Bert Livens)
1. Openk as a standalone tool
"opnk" standalone tool has been renamed to "openk" to make it more obvious. Openk is a command-line tool that tries to open any file in the terminal and, if not possible, opens it in your preferred software, falling back to xdg-open as a last resort.
People using opnk directly should change it everywhere. Users not using "opnk" in their terminal are not affected.
2. See XKCD comics in your terminal
"xkcdpunk" is a new standalone tool that allows displaying XKCD comics directly in your terminal.
3. Get only the good part and remove cruft for thousands of websites
Offpunk now integrates "unmerdify," a library written by Vincent Jousse that extracts the content of HTML articles using the "ftr-site-config" set of rules maintained by the FiveFilters community.
You can contribute by creating or improving rules for your frequently visited websites.
- Site Patterns | FiveFilters.org Docs (help.fivefilters.org)
- fivefilters/ftr-site-config: Site-specific article extraction rules to aid content extractors, feed readers, and 'read later' applications. (github.com)
If no ftr rule is found, Offpunk falls back to "readability," as has been the case since 0.1. "info" will tell you if unmerdify or readability was used to display the content of a page.
To use umerdify, users should manually clone the ftr-site-config repository:
git clone https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config.git
Then, in their offpunkrc:
set ftr_site_config /path/to/ftr-site-config
Automating this step is an objective for 3.1
4. Offpunk goes social with "share" and "reply"
New social functions: "share" to send the URL of a page by email and "reply" to reply to the author if an email is found. "Reply" will remember the email used for each site/capsule/hole.
5. Browse websites while logged in
Offpunk doesn’t support login into websites. But the new "cookies" command allows you to import a cookie txt file to be used with a given http domain.
From your traditional browser (Firefox, Librewolf, Chromium, … ), log into the website. Then export the cookie with the "cookie-txt" extension. Once you have this "mycookie.txt" text file, launch Offpunk and run:
cookies import mycookie.txt https://domain-of-the-cookie.net/
This allows you, for example, to read LWN.NET if you have a subscription. (contributed by Urja)
6. Bigger, better images, even in Gemini
Images are now displayed by default in gemini and their display size has been increased.
This can be reverted with the following lines in offpunkrc:
set images_size 40 set gemini_images false
Remember that images are displayed as "blocks" when reading a page but if you access the image URL directly (by following the yellow link beneath), the image will be displayed perfectly if you are using a sixels-compatible terminal.
7. Display hidden RSS/Atom links
If available, links to hidden RSS/Atom feeds are now displayed at the bottom of HTML pages.
This makes the "feed" command a lot less useful and allows you to quickly discover interesting new feeds.
8. Display blocked links
Links to blocked domains are now displayed in red by default.
This can be reverted with the following lines in offpunkrc:
theme blocked_link none
9. Preset themes
Support for multiple themes with "theme preset." Existing themes are "offpunk1" (default), "cyan," "yellow" and "bw." Don’t hesitate to contribute yours!
10. Better redirects and true blocks
"redirects" now operate on the netcache level. This means that no requests to blocked URLs should ever be made (which was still happening before)
And many changes, improvements and bugfixes
- "root" is now smarter and goes to the root of a website, not the domain.
Old behaviour can still be achieved with "root /"
- "ls" command is deprecated and has been replaced by "links"
- new "websearch" command configured to use wiby.me by default
- "set default_cmd" allows you to configure what Offpunk will do when pressing enter on an empty command line. By default, it is "links 10."
- "view switch" allows you to switch between normal and full view (contributed by Andrew Fowlie)
- "help help" will allow you to send an email to the offpunk-users mailing list
- "bugreport" will send a bug report to the offpunk-devel mailing list
- And, of course, multiple bugfixes…
About the author
I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.
I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!