William Elimbi

With k3 I put Ubuntu 8.04 in the browser

With k3 i put ubuntu 8.04 in the browser, the real one this times. You can try it here https://ubuntu.elimbi.com/. Be patient It’s very slow
Originally posted on X

@levelsio nails exactly why I built this

@levelsio nails exactly why I built this.
Kimi’s web UI already does this natively (if you know where to find it), Claude has it too but only on the Max plan. Gemini and Grok, as far as I know, don’t.
So I built llm-web: one mobile-friendly page over every coding agent running on your box Claude Code, Kimi, Grok, Codex, Gemini. Browse every past session, resume any of them, or…

One of my biggest LLM use cases right now: getting them to take over my browser for tedious tasks

One of my biggest LLM use cases right now: getting them to take over my browser for tedious tasks.
I’m getting lazier and lazier. The moment I hit a new interface, I log in once, then hand the rest to the agent.
The setup: a VPS running Docker, a real browser (not headless) running 24/7 inside it, and the agent connecting to it over CDP via websocket — like it’s grabbing the…

I got back into weightlifting for the nth time

I got back into weightlifting for the nth time. And for once, I feel like it’s going to stick.
I installed wger (open-source, self-hosted on my homelab) to track my progress. Except the interface lost me right away. So I handed the keys to Kimi, it logs my sessions, and talks to the API on my behalf.
I don’t use the wger web app or the mobile app. I find both really not great.

White skin appeared only very recently

Interestingly, white skin appeared only very recently on the scale of human history, around 10,000 years ago (Homo sapiens is 300,000 years old).
And the cause of this mutation is not just climate, but the combination of climate and a plant-based diet linked to the emergence of agriculture.
Your browser does not support the video tag. Originally posted on X

Why Amazons Don't Exist

A few months ago I wrote that matriarchal societies never survived because they didn’t have enough children.
A book has just come out with exactly this title: “Why Amazons Don’t Exist”.
I’m not saying I wrote the book. But almost.
Your browser does not support the video tag. Originally posted on X

I had Claude download a movie because nobody was seeding it

My girlfriend wanted to watch Sparkle, Whitney Houston’s last film. I have a full *arr stack running, I thought this would take 30 seconds.
No seeders. Zero. Asked Claude to add better trackers. “They’re already configured, nobody is seeding this.” A 2012 Whitney Houston film and the internet has collectively moved on.
Found it on a streaming site. Problem: she…

After yesterday's nostalgic Linux post, I've been reflecting on how far my setup has come

After yesterday’s nostalgic Linux post, I’ve been reflecting on how far my setup has come.
I’ve used Linux for years, but I only truly dove into self-hosting after running a Bitcoin node with @umbrel.
From there, I started hosting everything I could — including my own full mail server.
Today, all transactional emails for my apps run from one single machine. No Resend,…

En 2008, j'ai failli être viré de mon école d'ingénieur à cause de Linux

En 2008 j’étais sur le point de me faire virer de mon école d’ingénieur parce que je ne captais rien à la thermodynamique. Je préférais passer des nuits blanches à installer Linux sur mon nouveau et premier laptop, un HP Pavilion de 1 Go, même pour l’époque c’était pas une machine de guerre.
À la manière de @levelsio, j’ai voulu recréer mes premières expériences…

Stockfish + LLM : un vrai coach d'échecs sans hallucinations

Depuis que nous avons accès aux LLM, mon rêve de joueur d’échecs était de les associer à Stockfish pour enfin avoir des commentaires explicatifs au lieu de longues lignes d’ordinateur.
Et je voulais ces commentaires justes, précis, et sans hallucinations. Je n’ai jamais été aussi proche du but. ♟
Le secret ? C’est qu’on ne laisse jamais le LLM lire…

Rebuilding my blog and self-hosting my newsletter

1. The itch It started with a small annoyance: my home page felt empty. It showed my avatar, my name, a tagline, and the last four posts. That’s it. I wanted something that looked more like a real archive, and I started wondering if I had outgrown Hugo.
For a moment I seriously considered throwing the whole thing away and rebuilding it with plain HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript.

The Roman Republic

I have almost never read science fiction, so naturally I had not taken an interest in one of its most prolific authors. But there it is, I don’t know why, while looking at the list of his works, my attention was drawn instead to his history of the Roman Republic.
Reading this book is a pleasant experience. It is not indigestible. The worry is that halfway through reading, I looked at the…

Reading Asimov on Rome, and a Chess Puzzle

Right now I’m reading a book by Isaac Asimov. I discovered this author because I wanted to read some science fiction, a genre that’s completely foreign to me. So I naturally chose to read his book on the history of the Roman Empire in 2 volumes! One on the republic and the other on the empire.
Sunday morning I was reading the chapter on the Punic Wars. The story of Hannibal…

Readest: The Open-Source Multi-Platform Ebook Reader That Syncs Everything

A Christmas Mishap Last Christmas holidays, I was traveling to visit family. In the rush of packing, I forgot my e-reader. Disaster for an avid reader like me. Two weeks without being able to finish The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich?
Fortunately, thanks to the setup I described in my article about my self-hosted digital library, I could access all my ebooks from my phone via…

The WEIRDest People in the World

Imagine: you’re in a car with your childhood best friend. He accidentally hits a child crossing the street. Your friend was clearly driving above the speed limit. The police question you as a witness. Will you tell the truth, even if it condemns your friend? Or will you lie to save him?
If you choose to tell the truth, congratulations: you answered like a true WEIRD person (Western,…

Accessing Your Homelab from the Outside: All the Methods

Hi! Here’s an overview of the ways to access your homelab from the outside. In France, we often have the chance to have a fixed IP, but I know that in the US or in Cameroon (my country of origin), it’s much rarer because of CGNAT. We’re going to review the options, from the most basic to the most advanced: port forwarding, WireGuard, Tailscale, and NetBird. The idea is always to…

Sync Your Data Across All Devices with Nextcloud: Regaining Sovereignty

I’m going to explain how I synchronize my data across all my devices (phone, computers, etc.). This guide is particularly aimed at iCloud or other proprietary cloud users who want to regain some control over their personal data.
I’ve been a Nextcloud user for several years now, and I want to share how I use it daily. Nextcloud is an excellent open-source, self-hosted alternative…

Civilization as the Inevitable Fruit of Organized Power

For a long time, I was a convinced anti-American. For nearly fifteen years, I saw in every U.S. intervention further proof of imperialist arrogance. Then, through solitary reflection, I changed my mind—not out of opportunism or weariness, but because historical logic led me there. This reflection deserves to be shared. Here is how it unfolded.
1. It All Begins with an Energy Surplus…

Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Us Who We Are

About the Author Peter Turchin is a Russian-American scientist who straddles multiple disciplines - history, evolutionary biology, and complex systems analysis. What I find most fascinating about his work is how he applies mathematical modeling to historical processes, something rarely attempted with such rigor.
Introduction: The Paradox of War and Cooperation I must admit, when I first…

The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

Accelerated Human Evolution: From Agriculture to Conquest About the authors Gregory Cochran is a physicist and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah. Henry Harpending was a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the same university.
Introduction The central point of this work is that humans continue to evolve, contrary to what one might initially…

The Perfect World Thought Experiment

The Perfect World Thought Experiment I can’t help thinking that if we gave a hypothetical quantum machine to many people and asked them to play with parameters to try to create a perfect world, the result would be far worse than the current world.
The Demographic Collapse of Developed Countries One of the problems facing most developed countries today is demographic collapse. All…

Building an Open-Source RAG System

Intro AI is becoming increasingly essential in our daily lives. Whether it’s ChatGPT for writing, GitHub Copilot for coding, or specialized assistants for various tasks, we’re all becoming dependent on these tools. The problem? Most of these services are expensive, closed-source, and require sending your data to third-party servers.
I wanted to explore how we could self-host AI…

Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

About the Author Chris Miller is a professor of International History at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Amazon link
Introduction Another recommendation from X, Musk’s social network. The author aims to paint a general picture of semiconductors. A technology of paramount importance in the modern world.
What stands out most to me after reading this work is how truly…

Self-Hosted Digital Library 2025: Z-Library Telegram + Syncthing + OPDS for Kobo, PocketBook, KOReader

Building Your Self-Hosted Digital Library: Complete Guide Today, I’m going to show you how I set up my personal self-hosted digital library. The goal is simple: download ebooks from Z-Library via Telegram, automatically sync them to my server, and access them easily from any e-reader (Kobo, PocketBook, Kindle, or Android) using the OPDS protocol.
Downloading Ebooks with the Z-Library…

Collective Intelligence: How Culture Shapes Our Evolution

About the Author Joseph Henrich is an anthropologist with a rather atypical background since he started in aerospace engineering before switching to anthropology. I came across him because his latest book The WEIRDest People in the World is widely shared on X. Maybe when I have the courage to finish it I’ll talk about it too.
The Fundamental Question This book tries to answer a question…

Between Rust and Go, I Choose V

I’ve known about V for quite a few years, and I admit I had stopped following the language’s development for some time. It’s a language that promises a lot, almost seeming too good to be true. The simplicity of a dynamic language, with a Go-like syntax (but better), yet with performance comparable to C/C++/Rust while maintaining good compilation speed.
println('hello world!')…

Self-hosting for indie-hacker

Intro I’m looking to increase my online presence, which was one of my resolutions for 2024. The objective is to build an audience before creating a potential product. I’ve procrastinated a lot, so things are progressing slowly. One constraint I set for myself was to use self-hosted services as much as possible.
1. Hosting In principle, what I would recommend for someone starting…

Mon homelab

I want to share the main software I use in my homelab. I won’t go into depth this time; it’s just an overview.
1. Homelab I’ll start by presenting the services running at my home. Some services, like the first one I’ll present, require access from outside, in which case I use Wireguard.
- Nextcloud I discovered it at least 5 years ago while looking for a seedbox for…

Managing Multiple SaaS on a Single Server with Caddy

1. Probleme The problem: I have a single VPS in the cloud, and I have many apps that I code myself or services (Bitwarden, Nextcloud…) that I want to expose to the public. So sometimes I may want to have more than one domain for a single machine. Is that possible?
The answer is yes.
This may seem trivial to a lot of people, but back in December 2022, I wasn’t sure if this was…

How I Back Up My Data

In my last article, I explained how Docker saved me when my Raspberry Pi, which hosted all my services, suddenly failed. Indeed, Docker allows for good compartmentalization of configurations and data, and lets you choose where to store them, which in my case was an external hard drive. In case of a failure, you just need to take the hard drive and connect it to another machine, and you’re…

Why i love docker

1. The problem This morning, I had a problem: my server, a Raspberry Pi 2 bought in 2016, no longer starts. I used this old machine to host many services (WireGuard, Nextcloud, Bitwarden, ODPS server, etc.).
After a few unsuccessful attempts, I gave up on the idea of repairing it and decided to use another one of my servers instead. I unplugged the external hard drive from my Raspberry Pi and…

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