About this website

This is a literate website: the code to generate the website is contained within its body. The current iteration has been generated using Org-Mode’s publish mode:

(setq my-website-source-basedir (expand-file-name ".")
      my-website-dest-basedir "/sshx:website:/var/www/website/")
(setq org-export-with-timestamps nil
         org-publish-project-alist
         `(("website-content"
                      :base-directory ,my-website-source-basedir
                      :base-extension "org"
                      :exclude ".*\.draft\.org"
                      :publishing-directory ,my-website-dest-basedir
                      :publishing-function (org-html-publish-to-html)
                      :recursive t
                      :with-toc nil
                      :with-author nil
                      :html-doctype "html5"
                      :html-html5-fancy t
                      :html-head "<link rel=\"stylesheet\"
                        href=\"/brutstrap.css\" type=\"text/css\"/>"
                      :html-head-include-scripts nil
                      :html-postamble nil
                      :time-stamp-file nil
                      :section-numbers nil)
           ("website-css" :base-directory ,my-website-source-basedir
                          :base-extension "css"
                          :publishing-directory ,my-website-dest-basedir
                          :publishing-function org-publish-attachment)
           ("website-attachment" :base-directory ,my-website-source-basedir
                                 :publishing-directory ,my-website-dest-basedir
                                 :base-extension "pdf\\|bib"
                                 :recursive t
                                 :publishing-function org-publish-attachment)
           ("website":components ("website-css" "website-content" "website-attachment"))))
(org-publish-current-project)

If I want to publish some changes or new pages, I just need to use the “C-c C-c” shortcut within the code block to update the live website on my server. The above code is all it takes to build the website (besides the work done behind the scenes by Emacs).

This is a Brutalist website. The main purpose of this website is for its visitor to read its contents; as such, it exposes its raw material to the reader. This isn’t the code that is used by a web browser to display the contents, but the content itself (a philosophy that is well espoused by using Org-mode as a publishing method).

This website does not track you. I do not believe tracking people’s activities, on the internet or in the real world, is ethical. This website does not use any JavaScript, make requests to third party resources, require solving a CAPTCHA, or set any kind of cookies. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I understand this website complies with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act (2018).

Caveat: due to the hostile nature of the internet, my webserver records a log of the IP addresses of its visitor, and which resources they are trying to access. This is for the purposes of banning any IP address generating excessive malicious traffic. I will not be reading these log files, but if you do not trust me to do so or believe your IP address to be sensitive information, you can hide it by using anonymity techniques such as Tor or a VPN (incidentally, this is one of the only two legitimate reasons to use a VPN for increasing your privacy, the other being using an untrusted wireless access point). While I firmly believe in the importance of consent for the processing of personal information, it is not the only legal basis for processing personal information; in this case, the vaguely defined “legitimate interest” applies. Even so, as long as I am not using your IP address to build a profile of your activities, I do not believe it constitutes Personally Identifiable Information, as depending on your setup, you are likely to share an IP address with other people. If you think I have misunderstood the law, please let me know! If you have a recommendation on a better privacy-preserving way to do this, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

All contents on this website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. You are free to remix, adapt, and build upon it, as long as you credit this website as the original source, and license its contents under the same.

Any source code published on this website is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). The GPL enshrines the for principles of Free software, where free is read as in freedom (libre), and not as in beer (gratis):

• The freedom to use the software for any purposes
• The freedom to change the software to suit your needs
• The freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbours
• The freedom to share the changes you make

Both the GPLv3 and CC BY-SA 4.0 are examples of a copyleft license: they allow derivative work, as long as it bears the same license as the original. While copyleft is more restrictive than non-copyleft licenses for someone who wants to create derivative work, as it does dictate the terms under which you will have to publish, it protects the rights of its consumers, who can now also exercise the freedoms granted to them by the license.