Ted
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desfontain.es
Ted
@desfontain.es
A little pinch of randomness here and there and poof, your data is now protected. Magic! ✨

(I don't read DMs. Send me an email instead.)

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://hachyderm.io/@tedted, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
I wrote a ✨ new blog post ✨ discussing some proposed changes to the definition of personal data under GDPR.

tl;dr: good for my business, not great for society at large 🤔

Link ➡️ https://desfontain.es/blog/digital-omnibus-personal-data-definition.html
On “simplifying” GDPR's definition of personal data - Ted is writing things
I don't think it's a great idea to redefine what counts as anonymized data according to GDPR, like the European Commission is currently proposing. Here's why.
desfontain.es
January 8, 2026 at 2:30 PM
Learned how to #crochet during the holidays and made my first hat, complete with cat ears 😺
January 6, 2026 at 9:52 PM
LibreOffice takes *dozens of seconds* to load even small documents on my laptop. Are there faster alternatives? Preferably open-source, and that don't require me to install a billion dependencies? I don't need many features, this is mostly to read docs & spreadsheets.
January 6, 2026 at 12:43 PM
I don't have a whisk problem. I can stop buying whisks whenever I want
January 5, 2026 at 9:22 PM
Wrote up a list of my favorite books read in 2025 ✨
https://desfontain.es/blog/favorite-reads-2025.html
Favorite reads of 2025 - Ted is writing things
A list of the books that I particularly enjoyed reading this year.
desfontain.es
December 30, 2025 at 2:43 PM
This essay from 2 years ago resonates even harder today. Strong recommend:
https://catherineshannon.substack.com/p/everyone-is-numbing-out
December 27, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Yessss what a nice milestone for 2025 🥳
Reached 1900 in blitz earlier this year too. Maybe I'll get to 2000 in one of the formats next year?
December 25, 2025 at 11:59 PM
Nouvelle recette : soupe de potiron rôti. On continue sur la lancée de prendre des recettes simples et de les rendre merveilleuses avec un peu d'attention portée aux détails (et beaucoup de beurre) ✨

https://desfontain.es/recettes/soupe-de-potiron-roti.html
Soupe de potiron rôti - Les bonnes recettes de Ted
desfontain.es
December 20, 2025 at 1:42 PM
I'm packing books for presents and dismayed at how ugly all the covers are. Good art, ruined with unimaginative quotes from people I don't care about, or mentions of random literary prizes that won't exist in 5 years. And don't get me started on back covers that spoil half the story!
December 18, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Me: urgh, why is Typst using _text_ for italic and *text* for bold, this is a pointless and annoying divergence from the Markdown syntax

Me after a week of using Typst: wait actually this makes so much more sense than Markdown's syntax, all hail Typst
December 8, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Some draws feel more satisfying than victories
December 8, 2025 at 11:19 AM
La CNIL recrute pour leur équipe d'ingénierie et d'expertise technique: https://www.cnil.fr/fr/offre-demploi/ingenieuree-experte-au-service-de-lexpertise-technologique

Des gens sympas au service d'une mission positive et importante =)
Ingénieure(e) expert(e) au service de l’expertise technologique
L’équipe
www.cnil.fr
November 28, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Nouvelle recette: soupe de carottes caramélisées 🥕

Parfois, le secret, c'est un procédé scientifique optimisé 🧪
Parfois, c'est du beurre 🧈

… parfois, c'est les deux 👀

https://desfontain.es/recettes/soupe-de-carottes-caramelisees.html
Soupe de carottes caramélisées - Les bonnes recettes de Ted
desfontain.es
November 26, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Words to live by in Ed Zitron's latest blog post: « I learn a great deal by coming to things from the perspective of being a dumbass, a valuable intellectual framework of "I need to make sure I understand each bit and explain it as simply as possible." »
November 24, 2025 at 5:11 PM
First time making fried rice in my fancy new carbon steel wok ✨
November 24, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Managed to draw this position, with 5 seconds on the clock, in a 2+1 game \o/
November 21, 2025 at 11:55 PM
Nicholas Carlini's latest blog post about the risks of LLMs is, as always, worth a read: https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2025/are-llms-worth-it.html
Are large language models worth it?
Are the harms that LLMs have caused, and will soon cause, worth the benefits they may bring? This article (a written version of a keynote talk I gave at CoLM) tries to explore this question.
nicholas.carlini.com
November 19, 2025 at 1:56 PM
✨ New blog post ✨ on a hot, trendy, exciting topic: ISO standards 🙃

More precisely: how to implement ISO standards on re-identifiability analysis in a principled way? This is not trivial (these standards are not great), but it can be done […]
Original post on hachyderm.io
hachyderm.io
November 19, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Just hit "publish" on a blog post I've been working on for a couple of months, which took a lot more time and effort than expected. Very happy to be done with it…

Except of course GitHub Pages decided to have an outage at this exact moment, making new deployments fail 🙃
November 18, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Just tried Magic-Wormhole for the first time. Game changer. So easy. The second code I got was "8-miracle-freedom", which really sums up my feelings towards it 🩵
November 18, 2025 at 11:18 AM
I want the optimism of the judge who told OpenAI to "exhaustively de-identify" 20 million ChatGPT chat logs in 5 days, and the confidence of the NYT saying that "no ChatGPT user’s privacy is at risk" if they were receiving that data 🫠 […]
Original post on hachyderm.io
hachyderm.io
November 14, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Deux nouvelles recettes publiées ce soir : gâteau moelleux de potiron (largement plébiscité) et mixed spice, pour des gâteaux complexes et délicieux 😋

➡️ https://desfontain.es/recettes/gateau-moelleux-au-potiron.html & https://desfontain.es/recettes/mixed-spice.html
Gâteau moelleux au potiron - Les bonnes recettes de Ted
desfontain.es
November 10, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Got frustrated with how annoying it is to tweak default typography practices in Google Docs, decided to give @typst a try.

It is *fantastic*. I am never going back. Hurray for people making delightful software 💚
November 10, 2025 at 8:11 AM
J'ai publié la ✨ nouvelle version ✨ de mon site de recettes, avec plein d'améliorations, notamment une plus jolie page d'accueil avec plein de filtres, et un flux RSS pour être tenu au courant de ce que je publie 🔔

Le lien ️➡️ https://desfontain.es/recettes/index.html 🥘

Retours bienvenus! 💝
Les bonnes recettes de Ted
desfontain.es
November 9, 2025 at 2:19 PM