Tootfinder

My Mac desktop is a nice complicated dark-ish rain-forest scene. This is not playing well with Liquid Glass.
Looking for a way to make the Dock non-transparent so I can actually see the little black dots that tell me whether something is running…
The transparent menu bar is change for the sake of change. Feaugh.
#MacOS

Not what I would have guessed about income inequality in Canada https://cosocial.ca/@mpjgregoire/114891565646498234

Checked in at Betaworks Studios. Prepping for Protocols for Publishers this evening — with Ted

This is beautiful; pure poetry: https://obsidian.md/blog/less-is-safer/
(Obsidian’s dependency-management philosophy.)
I have a suggestion: If you have a project or repo that's getting popular, stop writing features for a few months and implement this instead.

Less is safer: how Obsidian reduces the risk of supply chain attacks
Supply chain attacks are malicious updates that sneak into open source code used by many apps. Here’s how we design Obsidian to ensure that the app is a secure and private environment for your thoughts.

“Signal For Help” basics:
https://canadianwomen.org/signal-for-help/

Signal For Help | Use Signal to Ask for Help | Canadian Women's Foundation
The Signal for Help is a one-handed sign someone can use to silently indicate they need someone to check in with them safely.

“Yikes”: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says - Ars Technica https://share.google/ukrEc6jZFaKueb6N6

“Yikes”: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
FTC sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation for turning “blind eye” to scalpers.

If it’s a right, why aren’t they ALL government employees?
https://techhub.social/@giflian/115243685430354752

taking a page from Taylor 😂 https://cosocial.ca/@mick/115407560370081602

Introduction to AT Protocol – mackuba.eu https://mackuba.eu/2025/08/20/introduction-to-atproto/

Introduction to AT Protocol
Walkthrough of the various parts and concepts in Bluesky's AT Protocol (ATProto), the types of servers involved and how it all fits together

Strong piece; I wonder how much trouble Klein will get in for publishing it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/antisemitism-american-jews-israel-mamdani.html?unlocke…

Opinion | Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another
The consensus that held them together for generations is breaking down.

This can’t be true, can it?
https://mastodon.social/@lapcatsoftware/115237429379898354

My friend Shatini could use some volunteers to help fund raise for families in Gaza.
She has been doing this for a while and could use folks more hands. Please reach out if you can help.
https://techhub.social/@shantini/115064691640087780

Words fail me.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-indians-redskins-guardians-commanders-8863d8d95f56414f0f74cab0e897a93f

Trump's latest demand: Washington football and Cleveland baseball teams should change names back
President Donald Trump has called for Washington's football team and Cleveland's baseball team to return to their previous names. On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social urging the Washington Commanders to revert to the Redskins and the Cleveland Guardians to return to the Indians. He claimed there is significant public support for the change, citing heritage and tradition. However, both teams have stated they have no plans to revisit the name changes. The Commanders and Guardians adopted their…

So many things broken in this release, especially on iPad. No way they should have released it. https://mastodon.social/@boateng/115242113263870878

And great timing! Reading group post is up and got posted to the @… account
https://dwebyvr.org/dwebyvr-reading-group-first-meeting/

DWebYVR reading group first meeting
Our first reading for November 12th: Jo Freeman's essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

So much this. I do much of my reading at night, in a room with other people. Please write it out.
https://hachyderm.io/@petrillic/115063838306776558

Best wishes and sympathy to any former colleagues dealing with us-east-1 going pear-shaped. Looking at the signals, this outage is an extra-weird one, which is unsurprising because with decades of experience, all the non-extra-weird outage scenarios have been discovered and dealt with.
#aws

1/2 I asked Google a question the answer to which was a list of numbers. Of course, it offered me the list of numbers at the top of the results page, uncited. This is a total waste of space because OBVIOUSLY I’m not going to quote AI-generated numbers without tracking down a source.
#genAI

I just enabled the AP compatibility of the #DWebYVR Ghost site, which can be followed at @…
You can also subscribe by email on the website https://

DWeb Vancouver
Decentralized web and community collaboration in Vancouver|

Why the f does Apple News do this?
If I blocked it, why show it at all?

The WSJ piece is hilarious.
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/115238754240596307

As a former Rubyist and admirer of many people in that community… holy shit. Ruby Central power-play land grab over Ruby Gems (maybe for good reasons but nobody knows) and DHH writing love letters to Tommy Robinson.
Tough to know what to link to, I think some people are hiding truths. Anyhow, https://www.

C2PA news!
Google brings Content Credentials to phones for the first time: Digital Photography Review https://www.dpreview.com/news/0844251010/google-brings-content-credentials-to-phones-for-the-first-time

Australia is aiming to lower their emissions by 70% by 2035, Canada is building pipelines and expanding LNG production.
One of these countries is doing the right thing.
#cdnpoli

Wardley: Not a Fan of ChatGPT https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/3m3dmlo7t7k2t

Wardley: Not a Fan of ChatGPT - 3lxsr74rnk22h
Large language models are coherence engines not truth engines, we don't teach the critical thinking needed to properly evaluate the outputs.

Loving Wiser Than Me, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
First Catherine O’Hara is amazing, second I’d love to make Julia laugh, she’s got such a great sense of humour. https://overcast.fm/ ABASeEZdsXk

@rude1.blacksky.app@bsky.brid.gy does this bridge to Rudy? Feels like handle change issue.

Proton Pass vs BitWarden. Experience/opinions please?
#opsec #passwords

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/09/service-offerings-from-mastodon/

Service offerings from Mastodon
We're offering hosting, support and moderation services, to establish a more sustainable financial base while we continue to build a better social web.

Sometimes works in Safari too.
https://mstdn.ca/@SheamusPatt/115231396571202141

Last few pix from our Maritimes vacation, wrapped in a bunch of tourist tips: #Photography…

Maritime Wrap-up

TIL 2 things about Slack that surprised me:
PSA 1: Slack doesn’t have a “Block” function. It does however have a “Hide” function.
PSA 2: By default, Slack includes everyone’s email address in the info you get when you right-click on them and view their profile. Thankfully, this can be turned off.

News flash: There’s lots of really good new music out there! Here’s some of it: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/15/Current-Music
Featuring: Kwashibu Area Band (Ghana), New Eves (UK), The Good Ones (Rwanda), Alfa Mist (UK), Sona Jobarteh (UK/Gambia)…

@… hi there Jordi, thanks so much for composer, it’s amazing.
Is it possible to add to the autoloader in a pre autoload script? I’m trying to dynamically add some classes so they’re in the autoload.php
I tried using a class loader and calling the auto generator in my script but those efforts didn’t work.
Any guidance would be appreciated.

Picture in picture.
#Photography #prince_edward_island

Carney: “What makes those emissions go down will be carbon capture and storage.”
That is a declaration of war on Canada's environmentalists, who know (as does Carney) that scalable and viable capture/storage technologies are science fiction.
https://www.

Canada’s Mark Carney Defends His Climate Record
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he’s focused on climate policies likely to have the greatest impact at a time of strained resources and multiple crises, denying criticisms that he’s backpedaling on actions to protect the environment.

I’m sad and embarrassed and angry that Canada is failing at all of these
#cdnpoli https://jawns.club/@skyfaller/115220184382251240

Best wishes and respect from your northern neighbor to any American reading this who’s going out to carry the #NoKings message.

How about having a new /.aibots.txt (or maybe just /.ai.txt)?
All AI-focused crawlers expected to read it.
Start off with the exact same syntax as /.robots.txt - then there’s scope for adding genAI-specific stuff like iP claims and optimized paths and so on.
#genAI

With #Livewire and #Statamic, look how quickly you can build out your site. https://mastodon.social/@statamic/1152

Re Air Canada, this is not hard folks. If you work, you should get paid.
I stand w the flight attendants.
#AirCanada #unions

ETERNITY
#Photography

Horrifying story on a torrent of right-wing disinformation aimed at FEMA when it was trying to help out with catastrophic Florida/Carolina hurricanes. How do these people live with themselves? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

My first quoot!
https://kind.social/@Fruan/115219774480090854

Huh, spam from 1Password offering me “Early access to Comet, the new AI browser from Perplexity”. I’m perplexed all right, about why 1Password, an outfit I mostly like, is doing this. I want a serious relationship with my security-technology providers, not a spammy one that flirts with sketchy totally-unrelated products.
#genAI

The title is “DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good” and I for one hadn’t realized how true this is until I read https://talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/dcs-access-journalists-turned-the-news-into-a-luxury-good

DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good
Before the internet, what would today be called a “paywall” was just...

Hey, just a reminder that Thursday 18th there’s the “IPTC Photo Metadata Conference 2025”, a free Zoom event open to all. I’m a speaker (focusing on #C2PA). It looks like it should be interesting for anyone interested in the tangle of issues about media provenance, #genAI, publishing workflow, social media, and…

Photo Metadata Conference 2025 - IPTC
IPTC is the global standards body of the news media. We provide the technical foundation for the news ecosystem.

Nova Scotia miniatures.
#Photography #NovaScotia

Flowers!
#Photography #bloomscrolling

Imma be rich! Thanks Elon!

#Mariners got the #BlueJays right where they want ’em.
#mlb

I wish mastodon had a “throttle” feature. https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/115379960146577252

Islet near the LaHave Islands in Nova Scotia.
#Photography #SilentSunday

@…

#Eurovision over #Gaza

Israel says “Gaza is burning”:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-gaza-is-burning-it-launches-ground-assault-2025-09-16/

New glasses! Should have had that optician visit a while back. All my devices now have much greater pixel density. Family and friends too.

He’s coming to Vancouver as well: #enshittification

39. Cory Doctorow: Enshittification - Granville Island Stage - Vancouver - Oct 23, 2025
EVENT DESCRIPTION At last, a word has been coined that encapsulates our modern era, that eloquently sums up the pressing issues of our times: Enshittification. The term—which creator Cory Doctorow describes as a diagnosis about the state of exploitative online services, and the disheartening digital world as a whole—resonated so strongly that the American Dialect Society named it the 2023 Word of the Year, and it was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror. With incisive…

Achievement unlocked: Have swum in the Atlantic ocean.

Hard work.
#Photography

Whole lotta Canadians swallowed their boycott-the-USA principles and may currently be found in Seattle.
#mlb

I wouldn’t even notice https://kolektiva.social/@The_Counterforce/115208927090254727

Neat post on removing "needed" dependencies like Livewire, Inertia, GraphQL, instead doing it all in Laravel.
https://raheelshan.com/posts/livewire-without-livewire-inertia-without-inertia-graphql-wit…

Raheel Shan | Livewire without Livewire, Inertia without Inertia, GraphQL without GraphQL. And all with plain Laravel
Why pile frameworks on top of Laravel when Blade, DTOs, and AQC already give you everything? Build dynamic, SEO-friendly, single-page-like applications using plain Laravel—no Livewire, no Inertia, no GraphQL—just simplicity done right.

LinkedIn notifications.
(I’d rather my air carrier not be using AI but here we are.)

Cafe life.
(At Vancouver’s Purebread, which is a fine bakery.)
#Photography

Mastodon *does* have an algorithmic feed if you want one. It’s identified by different names in different clients but “Trending” is usually part of the name. I think it works well, hit the “Trending posts” and “Trending links” (called “News” in the Masto web client) once a day or so to get a feel for what’s happening in the world.
As with many other things, PhanPy is really good at presenting this stuff..

Current status.
#photography

Good NYT piece (gift link). Tl;dr: Financial whiz kids want to get their hands on mainstream retirement & insurance money so it can be plowed into unregulated private-debt markets and crypto. What could go wrong? https://www.

The Rules of Investing Are Being Loosened. Could It Lead to the Next 1929?
A group of financiers is trying to convince the public to invest heavily in private equity and crypto — a risky gambit with some real 1920s vibes.

Got bright Maritime colors if you want ’em: #Maritimes

Maritime Colors

The Internet Archive and UMG (the music biz organization that was suing over IA making the 78s available to the world) have settled their litigation.
Terms not disclosed: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/up…

Hadn’t heard about this previously, but the people who are organizing the version local to me are definitely good folk whose judgment I trust: https://drawtheline.world
(Not just Canada - the web site pulls in your local version.)

When I'm on the road and set up Airplay from my Mac on the random “smart” TV in the hotel/Airbnb/etc, about half the time my browsers lose the ability to play video. Searching the Internet turns up many similar problems, but not this one. Happens all the time. This just a well-known fail?
#MacOS #airplay

Gone but not forgotten.
#Photography

Marine Museum interior
#Photography #NovaScotia

I know listening to “albums” is over, but due to my Qobuz habit and to owning a record player, I still do sometimes. Here, to celebrate Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday, is a scrumptious collection of Pärt chestnuts from Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra. Great music. Fabulous sound. Play it loud!

Things are shitty out there. But not all the things. Here are three publications that focus on finding and delivering good news.
1. Reasons to be cheerful: https://reasonstobecheerful.world (founded by David Byrne, green focus)
2. Positive.news:

Home
A tonic for tumultuous times.

That time of year.
#photography #autumn

Graffiti written on sand. I think there’s a metaphor here struggling to get out…
#photography #graffiti

This is so deliciously meme-able that one has to be a bit skeptical. We'll see if it's an actual emerging trend.
https://www.404media.co/the-software-engineers-paid-to-fix-vibe-coded-messes/

The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes
Linkedin has been joking about “vibe coding cleanup specialists,” but it’s actually a growing profession.

About birds, bees, a lovely garden, and a remarkable old lens: #Photography

Maritime Birds and Bees

LOL right-Ctl no longer exists on Windows laptops, that’s now the CoPilot key.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381341532349661184

Rant: Microsoft took away my right ctrl key and won't give it back. I don't know about you, but I work with typed text a lot. And over past decades I've developed habits. One of them is navigating… | Kuba Wojciak | 10 comments
Rant: Microsoft took away my right ctrl key and won't give it back. I don't know about you, but I work with typed text a lot. And over past decades I've developed habits. One of them is navigating over text with cursor keys while holding right ctrl key down. For those of you who don't do it: it skips over entire words. Now ALL of the Windows laptops you can buy come with a Copilot key replacing right ctrl. On a vanilla machine I end up getting Copilot popups all the time, as I habitually rea…

O rly? Given that Alberta & Ottawa united to shove the TMX pipeline down the throat of the BC & Vancouver governments and several indigenous nations. And given that Carney has been saying “build all the pipelines”. ?!?!?
If my cynicism is misplaced I heartily apologize and salute in the direction of Minister Hodgson.

Alberta will need B.C. government’s backing to build proposed pipeline: energy minister | CBC News
Canada’s energy minister says Alberta will need to get its neighbouring province on board in order to see its proposed pipeline project to the West Coast come to fruition.

Still life with sand.
#Photography #Mosstodon

Big fat lies about mobile-cam lenses (not just Apple):
#photography

Still life and reflection.
#Photography #bloomscrolling #silentsunday

This, from Marc Brooker, seems self-evident to me: “AI is going to be most effective in problem spaces where there are what the authors call reliable verifiers.” For example, quality test suites and benchmarks. https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/10/12/barbarians.html

Here is some useful and wise advice for living in the 21st-century surveillance-state epoch: https://aphyr.com/posts/395-geoblocking-multiple-localities-with-nginx

TIL about the Octobass as a result of my random YouTube-live-music feed stumbling into a performance of Gounod’s “Messe Solonelle” which is pretty good and, well, has an octobass in the orchestra.
#music

Partially paywalled but still lots of juicy data. “State of the software engineering job market in 2025”: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-tech-market-in-2025
From which:

State of the software engineering job market in 2025
A deepdive into today’s tech jobs market, with exclusive data on tech jobs, AI engineering, Big Tech recruitment, the growing importance of location, and more

Wikipedia’s rejoinder to Ted Cruz is entirely fair and accurate, but don’t kid yourself that Cruz is interested in fairness or accuracy, he’s just pushing back against the tendency of factual reporting to exhibit a liberal bias.
#wikipedia

Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to understand Wikipedia, lawyer for Wikimedia says
Wikipedia host’s lawyer wants to help Ted Cruz understand how the platform works.

The IETF’s “AI-CONTROL Workshop Report”: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-ai-control-report-02.html
Where by “AI-CONTROL” they mean “dealing with LLM-building scrapers”.

[Still trying to get my hands on a photo with actual embedded C2PA metadata.]
Anyone out there got a Pixel 10? I poked around on one at the BigBox and if I was reading the menus correctly, it embeds C2PA by default.
#c2pa #photography

Summer in Autumn! (We moved and had to replace a lot of the back-yard topsoil, didn’t get that done till July, so we planted the spring flowers then and they think it’s midsummer.)
#Photography #bloomscrolling

The collapse of First Brands (it’s not just you, few had heard of them) is *probably* not the pin that pops the current bubble, but it’s entertaining. Wall Street will reliably engage in lethal/suicidal business practices given the chance.
But that bubble-popping pin is incoming.
Matt Levine: https://newsletterhunt.com/em…

Don’t worry bees happy.
#photography