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Gilles Chehade

I write and run systems software. I’m the author of OpenSMTPD, the mail server that ships in the OpenBSD base system, and CTO of Plakar, where I work on kloset, a content-addressable backup engine. poolp.org is where I write about what I build.

I also take short consulting engagements — architecture and code review, technical due diligence for funds and acquirers, mail infrastructure — through my practice, aljuna.tech. If you’ve read something here and want the same eyes on your system, that’s the door.

Mind hacking: comprendre comment fonctionne notre esprit

·6319 words·30 mins
TL;DR: J’explique superficiellement comment fonctionne notre esprit, en partant du corps, puis de notre sens de la réalité, avant de finir par les états de conscience et personnalités. Je plonge brièvement dans les rêves et l’hypnose, préparant le terrain pour un article à venir. Avertissement # Mon intérêt pour les rêves lucides a débuté aux alentours de 2013, j’ai étudié seul puis suivi différentes formations de différent type d’hypnose entre 2015 et 2020, et je pratique l’hypnose en cabinet depuis 2016 jusqu’à maintenant. Sans lien avec cette activité, j’étudie la psychologie du travail depuis 2016 et ai, dans ce cadre, suivi des cours d’introduction à la psychologie clinique et à la psychologie cognitive.

Mind hacking: understanding how our mind works

·5789 words·28 mins
TL;DR: I explain very superficially how our minds work, starting from our body, following with our sense of reality, and ending with our states of consciousness and personalities. I dive briefly into dreams and hypnosis, paving the road for a future article. Disclaimer # I’ve started taking an interest in lucid dreaming around 2013, self-studying and training in various kinds of hypnosis from 2015 to 2020, and been working as a hypnotherapist since 2016 up to now. I started and am still studying work psychology since 2016, which had me take introductory classes in clinical and cognitive psychology.

Writing a custom Mail Delivery Agent

·1955 words·10 mins
TL;DR: In this article, I explain what is an MDA and how to write a custom one from scratch using only shell scripting. What is a Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) ? # When a mail enters an SMTP server it is initially stored in the server queue before being moved to its next destination.

November 2020: I wasn't slacking but no opensource work

·1207 words·6 mins
TL;DR: Haven’t posted since July but I wasn’t slacking, got temporarily context-switched out of opensource stuff. I tanked a year in work psychology # As some of you know, I study work psychology and have been attending evening classes for the last four years, sometimes up to 9 hours / week and more often between 3 and 6 hours / week. I’m pretty invested as you can tell, it’s a lot of time that I could spend in bed but that I spend in class instead :-)