Details that were of course corrected later on

Macron's actions and decisions speak for themselves

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_New_Caledonia_unrest

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests#Fataliti...

* https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_Files

* https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/10/24/i...

Instead of proving that Wikipedia is "bad", that professor didn't realize he proved that Wikipedia is working as intended: if you write something wrong in Wikipedia, over a certain period of time (yes, it can be long, I know), it will be corrected.

About this article in Nature, if you feed AI incorrect information, it's gonna spit it back at you. When you think about it, when did we say that AI was self correcting?

In a broader logic, imagine we teach kids something false, as an experiment of course. And then we wait a little bit, and we watch some years later how much of this people still repeat the false information they were taught. And then we'd write a paper to say "oh look at those people they're dumb", wouldn't that be a little unfair? even unscientific?

Adoption of Free Software:

2012 Prime Minister circular — the most important formal turning point: Orientations pour l'usage des logiciels libres dans l'administration, signed on 19 September 2012. It explicitly gave guidance to public administrations on free software use.

2016 Digital Republic Law — reinforced the direction by encouraging public administrations to use free software and open formats.

2021 action plan for Free Software and Digital Commons — launched after the Prime Minister’s circular of 27 April 2021, with goals to increase awareness, use, publication of source code, and reuse across administrations.

2024–2026 LaSuite / Suite Numérique — current state-led open-source collaboration suite, presented by DINUM as a coherent set of open-source tools for public agents and positioned as part of the state’s sovereignty strategy

Rollbacks and proprietary deals

Microsoft “Open Bar” contract with the Ministry of Defence / Armed Forces — a major counterexample. The Senate records say the framework agreement started in 2009 and was renewed for 2013–2017 and 2017–2021, without publicity or competition, giving the ministry broad access to Microsoft’s catalog.

Criticism and replacement with UGAP purchasing — later reporting says the open-bar arrangement ended in February 2021 and was replaced by a convention via UGAP, but the ministry still relied on broad Microsoft licensing and associated services.

2025 education procurement for Microsoft — a public tender worth 74 million euros for the Ministry of Education and higher education services was attributed to Microsoft, showing that proprietary dependence continued alongside open-source policy.

2025–2026 public-private partnerships in sovereignty language — France and Germany announced a partnership with Mistral AI and SAP for sovereign AI in public administration, which is not a free-software rollback in the strict sense, but it is a clear example of the state pursuing sovereignty through private-sector partnerships rather than purely internal open-source development.

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Conclusion:

Like anything in capitalism: it's a constant fight, permanent struggle. The big private companies will try to massively impact political life.

So, there IS in France this 'feeling', this consciousness, throughout the political landscape (mostly on the left and also a little bit on the right) that we need to have some sovereignty over our data, services, software, etc.

Every once in a while, a right-side political figure, who are basically ruling since 2000, (except from 2012-2017 where France had a social-democratic government and president) has a sparkle of dignity, decency, logic, and honesty towards the best interests of the country and leans towards Free Software adoption. But...the lobbies are always there to rollback each decision, or part of each decision, and gradually gain back their influence.

In 2025, I tried to access my services using IPv6 with 4G phones and different subscriptions (different ISPs), fact is, many (most?) of them did not support IPv6 at all :(

I had to revert to IPv4. And really I have nothing against IPv6, but yeah, as a simple user, self hosting a bunch of services for friends and family: it was simply just not possible to use only IPv6 :(

(for context, the 4G providers are French, in metropolitan France)

That page is also down.

Even previous ones, listed on Google when searching "QGIS changelog" are all down. So it's a server error on their side most likely.

I guess your point could be: LLMs are just another level of capitalistic opacity to maximize opacity and dilution of accountability.

I'm no German speaker, but I'm French, and without invalidating your initial claim (about the AI generated stuff), in France we do translate "good morning" by "Bonjour", which literally means good (bon) day (jour).

Any other translation would be weird: if you'd translate "good morning" by "Bonne journée" -> that would be super weird, because this is something one could say in France to say "Goodbye" xD

I lived in Germany for a short time back in 2022, and notice that saying "Hallo" is used a little bit everywhere. However I can tell you that you are NOT supposed to say "salut" in France ANYWHERE except with your friends.

Like, imagine, you're in Germany you enter a bakery, you can say "Hallo" -> no problem. Same situation in France and you say "Salut" -> either people will react badly or assume that you don't know French or maybe they'll think you're impolite for no reasons

It's a loop of captcha which never ends

However, what is true is that, you will sound like YOU. You can get close or make impressions of artists you like. But ultimately your voice is YOUR instrument and it can gain range, and power, but you'll sound like you.

For instance, I'm well aware that I will never have "Celine Dion's voice". I don't mean her skills, I mean literally her voice.

That's what one of the first AND biggest tough thing to accept when singing: you might never sound exactly like the singers you admire. But it doesn't mean you can't sing or be extremely good at it.

It's like Michael Jackson was sad because he knew he would never be able to sing like Barry White. Does that mean Michael Jackson is not a good singer? Nope.

Looking at a few metrics should be enough for you to understand that this article from The Economist is some kind of "everything is going well"-centrist-propaganda.

Suggested metrics:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_in...

Based on the Gini Coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

Based on the HDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

3.

And finally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

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All of the above are criticizable indices, by themselves. However, if you take the time to superpose those statistical markers, you'll get a much better picture than whatever The Economist is trying to say in this article

This is my way to say: you can choose to protect yourself, sure.

But laws can be changed, fast and easy. Particularly and actually always, when it serves the people in power and the system globally.

In my case, I administrate a small server at home, where I self host many services that are made available to myself, friends and families, over the internet.

In that context, IPv6, is SADLY (please note that I have NOTHING against IPv6), a limitation, even a nightmare to use.

Some programs do not handle IPv6 at all. Game servers for instance, do not support it, the one that I think about is: Arma 3. But there are many others

In 2025 (and 2026 too?), 4G (5G?) operators do not all route over IPv6 -> which means that if your domain only has a AAAA record, some people using 4G will not be able to access ANY of your services. This issue forced me to beg my ISP to obtain an IPv4 "fullstack" as they call it.

Without that IPv4 you have to go through some kind of tunneling (like Cloudflare) -> and guess what? Cloudflare sometimes crashes (it happened super recently remember?) and in that situation -> ALL your services accessible through the tunnel are "down" for your users. Plus, it is EXTREMELY unsatisfying to rely on an external private-owned service for a selfhosting project.

In almost ALL context IPv6 is seen as optional, additional, additional configuration and is NEVER the default. NEVER. Which means: more configuration, possibly more struggle.

Whose founders are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tabarrok and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Cowen

Tabarrok " In 2012, journalist David Brooks called Tabarrok one of the most influential bloggers on the political right, writing that he is among those who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way."[6] "

Cowen " Cowen’s work spans economics, philosophy, and cultural commentary. He is known for advocating a pragmatic form of libertarianism that emphasizes strong governance, economic dynamism, and technological progress—an approach he terms state capacity libertarianism.[3] In 2011, he was included in Foreign Policy’s list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and Prospect magazine ranked him among the world’s most influential economists in 2023.[4][5] "

Those people and this blog is not at all a scientific institution, editor, publisher.

And as mentioned in another comment, the person we're invited to read from Crémieux ("Earlier Cremieux showed exactly the same thing based on data from Sweden and earlier CDC data."). " He was a speaker at the 2024 Manifest conference. Eugenicist Jonathan Anomaly was also a speaker.[2] Lasker has spoken out in favor of natalism.[2][14] Early in 2025, Lasker was a speaker at the Natal Conference, which has been criticized for including speakers promoting far-right ideologies such as Raw Egg Nationalist.[2][15] "

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Those people are not scientists, they cosplay knowledge and scientific process and will use data to serve their narratives.

Yet another example that the info shared here in HN are vastly influenced by some angry teenagers with some kind of libertarian edgelord imperialist agenda. I mean, I'm assuming that's what they imagine they think between two games of League of Legends or wanking to deepfakes