Tootfinder

Hmmm. #ATmosphereConf wrapped, is this anything?
@olof-loves-ai.bsky.social will you join us in Vancouver in March? Would love to have you submit to the CFP: news.atmosphereconf.org/3m6z2b7ovyk2i
[contains quote post or other embedded content]

Boris (@bmann.ca)
Hmmm. #ATmosphereConf wrapped, is this anything? @olof-loves-ai.bsky.social will you join us in Vancouver in March? Would love to have you submit to the CFP: news.atmosphereconf.org/3m6z2b7ovyk2i [contains quote post or other embedded content]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@emilylowan/115680142012960012
Continuing to be impressed by the direction Ms Lowan and the BC Greens are taking. Old-school forestry just doesn’t work any more, creative destruction is the only way forward.

Pluribus, the new Apple show is interesting. Not sure about it yet, but Rhea Seehorn is amazing, as always.
#pluribus #appletv

Oh, today is my iTunes Match-iversary. I pay Apple ~$30CAD annually for them to store and sync my 30 year old digital music collection of like ... 100GB and counting.
Looks like I wrote about it last year.
Most of my music purchases are Bandcamp/indie these days and uploaded to my home Ampache. https://bsky.ap…

Boris (@bmann.ca)
Oh, today is my iTunes Match-iversary. I pay Apple ~$30CAD annually for them to store and sync my 30 year old digital music collection of like ... 100GB and counting. Looks like I wrote about it last year. Most of my music purchases are Bandcamp/indie these days and uploaded to my home Ampache.

This is an important, eloquent piece by @… - worth a boost I’d say: https://aphyr.com/posts/397-i-want-you-to-understand-chicago
What he wants you…

Fabulous article about a teeeeeny island off Norway, and how they now distill whiskey: https://www.positive.news/lifestyle/community-spirit/

The remote Arctic island, saved by an unshakeable community spirit
North of the Arctic Circle, beyond the maps of ancient mariners, a remote Norwegian island once thought lost to time has found new life in an unlikely industry

In Canada, the CBC might be the kind of entity to help run / coordinate “public service social media” as described in this Tech Policy Press article https://www.techpolicy.press/public-service-social-media-as-a-democratic-safeguard/
With interop…

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@hyphacoop/115685327547429897
They likely won't like my answers. 😅
FWIW a 7B param LLM costs around 55MWh to train and test, and about 300Wh per query. Then factor that 52% of the answers are unusable, so like Lay's potato chips, NOBODY does only one prompt.

Huh… CIRA runs the .ca TLD. Not high-profile but… seem to be OK?
[Tl;dr: They’re offering a free DNS resolver, Canadian-built and -run.]
https://cosocial.ca/@kgw/115503438874192927

RE: https://phpc.social/@ramsey/115840508587895842
Samesies

The @… framework, a kind of federated social app construction kit, is running a crowd fund campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bonfire/community

Lots of goodies: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/mastodon-4.5/

Mastodon 4.5
Quote posts, the end of missing replies, new tools for admins and better emojis. All of these and more, in our latest release.

Is there a “quick” to follow all the folks i follow on bluesky, over here? I know about the bridging bot, but is there a way to automate that?
Related, is there a way to automate reaching out to bsky folks that I follow that aren’t bridged with that bridging bot?

I did not know the Semble logo was a cairn.
Now I want a pet rock mascot. With googly eyes.
(I should make sure we have googly eyes at the conference)
Also a very good post by @wesleyfinck.org on naming in interfaces and products.
https://notes.wesleyfinck.org/3m6mpbihiy22o

FreeScout is AGPL licensed shared inbox,with one-time-purchase AGPL modules https://freescout.net/modules-faq/#license
I got the chance to try out buying / installing a module for FreeScout, adding CRM features
I run it on Cloudron, and after paying $16.99CAD and entering the lic…

The year is 2026 and I just fixed some broken Perl code. Living in the future, baby.
#perl

Congrats! The @… team hit their initial “maintenance” goal. The next unlock is working on federated groups.
Help fund their campaign!
https://indieweb.social/@bonfire/11566

Didn’t think it was possible that my contempt for FIFA could increase, but I was wrong.

The ‘z’ in my name comes from yogh: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-of-letter-yogh

The strangest letter of the alphabet
The rise and fall of yogh

In an attempt to embody what have recently been described as “male virtues” I’ve unsubscribed from the NYT. There’s still good material in their product but I don’t need to have my day ruined by clicking on the wrong “Opinion” link.
PS1: It’s now easy to unsub.
PS2: No, I’m not serious about “male virtues”, it was a lowlight in a piece I’m not gonna link to or mention the title of, don’t want to ruin anyone else’s day.
PS3: My hope that there still exist reasonable conservat…

When we were planning the August edition of @protocolsforpublishers.com we knew that being in the US wasn’t going to work for a lot of people.
@chadkoh.com is running with it & now has set a date for London in early February.
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca…

Boris (@bmann.ca)
When we were planning the August edition of @protocolsforpublishers.com we knew that being in the US wasn’t going to work for a lot of people. @chadkoh.com is running with it & now has set a date for London in early February. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Kilauea putting on a show tonight. Live on YouTube if you like that kind of thing.

LOL moment from #IETF124 pre-BOF was @awarm.space describing Leaflet as "macro blogging"
I just get like this picture of like carb loading, and like @schlage.town as my super intense coach. "GET OUT THERE AND MACROBLOG, PEOPLE!!!"

Any PHPStan/Larastan experts out there? Currently on level 2 and getting an error about a missing var. I don't really want to add another line to fix nor do I want to ignore this line, is there a better way?
Maybe @… knows?
#laravel

Another dispatch from the implementing-regular-expressions front lines. Probably of interest to very few, but who knows. Includes thoughts on coding while old.
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/01/01/Quamina-2026

Regexp Lessons

Neat article on why southern Australia has no cities. https://www.ryanjhite.com/2025/12/02/the-great-australian-void-why-an-entire-coastline-has-no-cities/

Why the Great Australian Bight Has No Cities: Full Geographic Breakdown
Discover why a 1,000-km stretch of Australian coastline remains empty. Explore the Nullarbor, Bunda Cliffs, and the geography that prevents cities here.

Long interview with Steven Guilbeault about his protest resignation from Carney’s cabinet, Canada’s carbon-emissions story, and #ClimateChange in general. It’s a Bloomberg podcast but there’s a transcript:
https://

One of the neatest things to do, come at low tide, then high tide. https://mas.to/@Canadian_Eh/115664962761563504

Sharing bits of Canada 'eh🇨🇦 (@Canadian_Eh@mas.to)
Attached: 1 image Hopewell Rocks: Walk the Ocean Floor in New Brunswick 🌊 At low tide, visitors to the Bay of Fundy can walk on the ocean floor around the towering Hopewell Rocks. These flowerpot-shaped formations are sculpted by the world's highest tides—a must-see marvel! 🇨🇦 #Canada #Geography #NewBrunswick #NatureWonders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_Rocks

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated
Fa la la la la.

Yes. A personal search engine, visualizer, and interface builder.
“look, the way grok is integrated into X is gross and stupid and bad, but i do believe having an LLM familiar help you navigate the dark forest of the internet is going to be the future — ideally this is on your device or through a trusted and secure host, but it will be immensely helpful”

dame (@dame.is)
look, the way grok is integrated into X is gross and stupid and bad, but i do believe having an LLM familiar help you navigate the dark forest of the internet is going to be the future — ideally this is on your device or through a trusted and secure host, but it will be immensely helpful

One of my top guilty Internet pleasures: Wonkette: #USpol

Jesse Watters Pretty Sure Going MAGA Makes Women Hotter
It's literally true if you consider that they look like melted Bratz dolls.

Give us feedback on what you want to see in Vancouver in March!
Please share this far and wide: this is not just a tech conference, it's building the communities and shared spaces that we want together.
#WeCanJustDoThings
https://

@… my mentions are like completely fucked up now 😂

RE: https://chaos.social/@slothrop/115665760748320616
Not just road test but load test. Climb aboard!

Yup my daughter had a trans guide in her unit.
Lovely organization. https://tech.lgbt/@Natasha_Jay/115662255521498194

Natasha Jay 🇪🇺 (@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt)
Attached: 1 image Statement by the Canadian Girl Guides Association. 🇨🇦 #Trans #Transrights

I suggest we call this “The Epstein Files War”.
#Epstein #Venezuela

In Canada, @gandersocial.bsky.social’s equity crowdfund is really resonating.
It turns out that people want Canadian owned and run social media.
Very excited to see!
https://gandersocial.ca/blog/just-giver-why-were-inviting-canadians…

What Ticketmaster and Meta think the future of advertising looks like. Looks pretty bleak to me.
https://www.404media.co/the-future-of-advertising-is-ai-generated-ads-that-are-directly-personalized-to-you/

The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
"Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else."

Me too!
https://mastodon.social/@cmconseils/115487186656267241

Haha, sorry MAGA, turns out you can’t power all those aspirational AI data centers without renewables. Wow, if they built a bunch of renewable infra and then the bubble popped, that’d be just (*snicker*) terrible… https://www.

Phew, it looks like iOS 26.1 and iPadOS 26.1 address many of the most grievous UI issues.
This is the one they should have released as the .0.
Now, is macOS 26.1 usable now?

Using @ngerakines.me atwork atwork.place to create "endorsements" that other folks were at #IETF124
Experimenting with different types of "attestation" proofs. https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/627

Saskatchewan
#photography

GOOSEFISH
Community mascot options just expanded.
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3m7lnfm34p22q

Boris (@bmann.ca)
GOOSEFISH Community mascot options just expanded. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Why I always go pick the food up myself. https://mastodon.social/@amirbkhan/115826283829344704

Amir Khan (@amirbkhan@mastodon.social)
Attached: 3 images Nothing like starting the year with a WHISTLEBLOWER confession from a BURNED-OUT, disgruntled - and rightfully ANGRY - Big Tech developer. Disgraceful Product strategy. Might be legal but screams immorality! This is Big Tech’s playbook: dehumanize workers, manipulate customers, and call it ‘disruption.’ I don’t care how “good” the service feels. As a consumer and a worker, it’s time to choose and redefine BETTER! Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.c…

For those of us shaking our heads over the Carney/Smith deal, this seems relevant and… not terrible? https://www.readtheline.ca/p/ken-boessenkool-carney-and-smith
Yes, I know Carbon Capture is not actually useful (unless something changed?)
Yes, I know they'…

Ken Boessenkool: Carney and Smith adopt the Trudeau-Notley plan
I apologize in advance for the acronym hell you are about to read.

We’re looking at global aggregation of blog tags again. Send your suggestions to @leaflet.pub
@kevinmarks.com any opinions or learnings you’d like to share from the Technorati days?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati
[contains quote post or other embedded content]

Definitely don’t start Mare of Eastown late at night. We made the mistake of starting the first episode at 9. It’s now 11pm and we’re debating whether to stay up too late to watch a few more.
Instantly engaging, amazing acting.

And all of those App Stores could be using an app Lexicon, and get curated for unique needs, with social signals and ownership details.
https://bsky.app/profile/davatron5000.bsky.social/post/3m6fkly5krk2w

Having been a (light but regular) Wikipedia editor for many years has made me reflexively disbelieve anything I read or hear that includes a number but doesn’t provide a citation to back it up. I think this is a good habit?

@… great meeting you at #IETF124
I shared Cyd with you https://cyd.social/ and yes, wo…

WTAF
https://ottawa.place/@stephanie/115832001829839888

TIL that the behavior of the “sort” utility differs between MacOS and Debian Linux.
[UPDATE: See replies; the behavior depends on the LANG value in surprising and pernicious ways.]
/tmp> uname ; sort problem
Darwin
OS-X
OSCO
tbray.org /tmp/ 503> uname ; sort problem
Linux
OSCO
OS-X
Does anyone other than me find this surprising?
#Linux …

Fuck you Google: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/115827988336467719

AWS Lambda Managed Instances: Serverless, only with servers!
Would like to see some app scenarios with detailed cost breakdown.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-lambda-managed-instances-serverless-si…

Introducing AWS Lambda Managed Instances: Serverless simplicity with EC2 flexibility | Amazon Web Services
Run Lambda functions on EC2 compute while maintaining serverless simplicity—enabling access to specialized hardware and cost optimizations through EC2 pricing models, with AWS handling all infrastructure management.

On compute as a commodity “people might be open to a new bespoke pickle vendor. So we're pickling some compute and selling that.”
And
“Our mission is to spread the joy of programming, both in people's personal lives and at work.”
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/pro…

Boris (@bmann.ca)
On compute as a commodity “people might be open to a new bespoke pickle vendor. So we're pickling some compute and selling that.” And “Our mission is to spread the joy of programming, both in people's personal lives and at work.” [contains quote post or other embedded content]

…and that’s a wrap.
Great series.
#StrangerThings

Hey CoSocialists, we had our AGM yesterday and while there’ll be a blog post coming, now is the time for members to cast a vote on priorities and activities.
https://cosocial.ca/@coop/115469528965103864
Survey is at

@… Does this screenie exhibit a bug? Note the lonely "Followers" text at the bottom.
Best of the New Year to you and yours, and thanks for all the fine work!

The Human Only Public License: #genAI

The Human Only Public License
A copyleft software license that restricts AI usage

A ceramic mug by Hell Wench https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3m4houjzte62j

This is so great!
Doctors in Montreal can now prescribe their patients tickets to the orchestra: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/orchestra-prescription-9.6960793

Doctors in Montreal can now prescribe their patients tickets to the orchestra | CBC Radio
Doctors in Montreal are prescribing music as medicine.

In which I write about the pretty-awesome experience of attending the MLS quarter-final game with my son and 53,095 other good friends, and how getting interested in fútbol has had the side-effect that I’ve lost most of my interest in football (as in NFL). https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20<…

Thread of videos from @betaworks.com Demo Day last month, focused on new interfaces for computing enabled by or used for LLMs.
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3m7h2osvsy22u

Boris (@bmann.ca)
Thread of videos from @betaworks.com Demo Day last month, focused on new interfaces for computing enabled by or used for LLMs. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/115639842170295353
OMG it turns out this is due to the Mac APFS filesystem’s default case-mapping behavior, so things like SSH and LS work (bleccch).
(h/t @stoey.bsky.social over on bsky)

Discovering Wawa Wiwa comics has made my day: #happiness

Saskatchewan winter study.
#photography

Finland uses “Russia-gauge” rails. They are going to move to European compatible rail gauge for their own resilience.
This is what we should be thinking about for moving to open social away from American platforms: it should come with significant spending commitments & is absolutely necessary.
https://www.

From the excellent Standard Ebooks, “Read 20 of the best books entering the public domain in 2026”. Seriously, check ’em out.
https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026

Idly working on my Quamina state-machine-based pattern matcher. (https://github.com/timbray/quamina)
Hit a bug that smells like an infinite loop. Looked closer. Hmm, seems like my code traversing a dinky little 4-state automaton thinks it needs to consider 25,165,824 possible state transitions. Need …

GitHub - timbray/quamina: Home of Quamina, a fast pattern-matching library in Go
Home of Quamina, a fast pattern-matching library in Go - timbray/quamina

Gambier Island in Átl'ka7tsem/Howe Sound.
#Photography

Learning #GarageBand. The learning curve is steep but not that tall. Does what I need. Downside: Listening to playback of my playing, all I can hear is everything that’s wrong.

As above, so below.
#Photography #Autumn

Grumpy at America; If you weren’t so dysfunctional I would go to Miami to see the MLS final, where Vancouver’s #VWFC is hoping to topple Messi and co.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice strike again! https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-employees-open-letter-artificial-intelligence-layoffs/?emci=8691…

Amazon Workers Issue Warning About Company’s ‘All-Costs-Justified’ Approach to AI Development
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice says that over 1,000 workers have signed a petition raising “serious concerns” about the company’s “aggressive rollout” of artificial intelligence tools.

Blocking the work of MSF is absolutely depraved. Israel continues to fumble its way out of the community of civilized nations.
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinians-ceasefire-war-news-286106d7a5a911704cdcf1c93…

Israel to halt operations of several humanitarian groups in Gaza starting in 2026
Israel says it will suspend several humanitarian organizations for failing to meet its new rules to vet international organizations working in Gaza. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said on Tuesday that the organizations that will be banned on Jan. 1 did not meet its new requirements for sharing staff, funding and operations information. It accused Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF by its French acronym, of failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with H…

At the public library.
#Halloween #photography #books

Pipeline projects such as the one being promoted by Carney and Smith typically end having to skirt the Hecate Strait (see https://paddlingmag.com/stories/columns/still/hecate-strait/) after hitting saltwater at Kitimat (see

Crossing Canada's Most Dangerous Waterway By SUP
What it takes to cross Hecate Strait and live to tell the tale.

From a Bloomberg newsletter. I guess if enough people believe Btc holds real value, then by definition it does, by analogy with gold. Still makes my skin crawl.
#Bitcoin

On Mac, open up a terminal and type or copy-paste: ßh
(Doesn't work on Linux)

The “Just coffee, black” meme brutally deconstructed: https://knowyourmeme.com/videos/433740-just-coffee-black
h/t @…

Jimmy Wales isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed reading this interview about #Wikipedia in 2025: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/magaz…

The Culture Wars Came for Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales Is Staying the Course.
Attacks on the site are piling up. Its co-founder says trust the process.

#Caturday, World Series edition.

#Bliuejays - Stay with Bassitt!

Guilbeault quits Carney’s cabinet over energy deal with Alberta | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-quitting-cabinet-9.6995299

Guilbeault quits Carney’s cabinet over energy deal with Alberta | CBC News
Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault has quit cabinet over the federal government signing Thursday’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta.

“Last night I had a very strange experience: About two thirds of the way through reading a Web page about myself, Tim Bray, I succumbed to boredom and killed the tab. Thus my introduction to Grokipedia. Here are early impressions.”
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/1…

Grokipedia

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@mpjgregoire/115617463612803295
MG is our own Tory exemplar — a Royalist even — keeping his head above Mastodon’s progressive river somewhere near the right bank.
Hey MG, your tribe needs a hashtag,

RE: https://mastodon.online/@davidaugust/115634589128655814
Citation needed. Oh, here it is: https://

TFW you're spelunking through generated HTML/CSS trying figure out where the unwanted white space is coming from…

Peeking inside the process of how raw camera sensor data gets turned into an image that looks something like what you see: https://maurycyz.com/misc/raw_photo/
h/t @…

Very decent year-end reading recommendations, featuring the contradictions of capitalism and whodunnits: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-12-30/capitalism-and-crime-books-that-got-me-through-the-year

Here’s my 35th “Long Links” outing, curation of long-form offerings, which assume that nobody has time to read all this stuff but one or two of the pieces might brighten your day. This one is mostly political but some of the politics are from France and China. Plus a way-cool analytical history of blogging and a section labeled “wonderful things”.

Slow Horses screen grab, gotta love it.
#XML #SlowHorses

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)…

Good explainer from Khelsilem of the Squamish about the recent Cowichan land decision, the background, and what it really might lead to: https://khelsilem.substack.com/p/setting-the-record-straight-on-the

Setting the Record Straight on the Cowichan Tribes Title Decision
What the Cowichan Decision Really Means — and What It Doesn’t