Tim Bray 🇨🇦

timbray@cosocial.ca

Web geek and environmentalist with a camera at the bottom left corner of Canada. He/him.These posts are coming from a member-owned cooperative: <a href="https://cosocial.info" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no">https://cosocial.info</a>My posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, see <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/</a>

Posts

Post #4457684
B.C. declares provincewide state of emergency as wildfires force thousands out of homes | CBC https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/bc-wildfires-aug-8-summerland-evacuation-9.7300648
Post #4385922
Definitely not wanting to live in Yegge’s future. Or at least to not have anything to do with software.
Post #4368289
“The mice are Maoists now”: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/666
Post #4331116
Being a Luddite Is Fun Again https://www.404media.co/luddite-events-nyc-off-tech-summer-of-ludd/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
Post #4331115
Seen on the Malahat. It’s about this: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/red-dress-day #photography #mmiw
Post #4331114
TFW you find and fix the rare-but-obvious race condition and the relevant unit test now runs 50x slower. #software #concurrency
Post #4331113
Tl;dr: In football/soccer news, the FIFA scum announced a plan to spin the World Cup and the rest of their tournaments into a private corporation with investment from the Kushner scum and specified some ridiculously short deadline. And now: https://www.uefa.com/news-media/news/02a7-213a92896eb0-54dfbf454e3b-1000--statement-on-behalf-of-uefa-and-its-55-national-associations/ #soccer #worldcup
Post #4331112
Fútbol match tomorrow in Vancouver is the Pride game: https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/spectator-aug-1-2026-pride-presented-telus They’ve been doing this for years, but I’m not 100% sure this is their best-ever Pride promotion: #pride
Post #4331111
He’s not very smart, but that fur. #caturday #photography
Post #4255968
Mostly just leaves. If they look a little weird, it’s because I’m shooting into a fishtank. #photography #FishTanksOfMastodon #Fujifilm
Post #4216953
Enjoying the crosscutting currents of Odyssey crit, including this, although Laurie Penny liking was not exactly on my radar: https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/theres-only-one-wrong-opinion-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=433868&post_id=209026786&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=wabr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Post #4212109
A symptom of a system that is deeply broken: https://popular.info/p/taxpayers-spend-about-2-billion-annually #USpol
Post #4172975
Say hello to Mr Shrimp. #Photography #CrustaceansOfMastodon
Post #4171923
In which I spend a week engaged and immersed in music, learn a new instrument and genre, am made full of joy. And suggest that some of you should do this too. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/07/26/Music-Camp #music
Post #4162070
This is cool: https://dnsisbeautiful.com/traceroute/tbray.org (I mean, it’s still always DNS, but cool nonetheless.) h/t @Quinnypig@awscommunity.social
Post #4144716
What could possibly go wrong? https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/the-trillion-dollar-borrowing-binge-lifting-the-stock-market-to-risky-heights-8d0377f9 #scary
Post #4122958
RE: https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/116988481487869187 Not that I’m obsessive or anything.
Post #4075547
Codeberg is OK by me. I’m not totally 100% sure that their calls (against #GenAI inputs and #Crypto related projects) will turn out in the rear-view mirror to have been correct, but at this point in history they’re hard to dislike.
Post #4047992
Walked by an open door at the Music Camp and there was this young-teens electric band inside playing “California Dreaming”, skinny little girls with pure voices just killing it. Stopped. The other old guy and I listening by the open door smiled at each other, tears in our eyes.
Post #3999963
For some reason, something opaque inside Google is sending a few dozen people a minute to this 2004 blog post: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/08/18/Borked (Ok, it's an amusing piece.)
Post #3927227
Wanna read a maximally-anti-#GenAI screed? Here ya go: https://hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decisionmaking I now only rarely work behind the doors of companies doing major tech deployments so won’t comment on how accurate-vs-overblown this piece is, but the writing is lucid.
Post #3791151
putt.day #62 ⛳ 10/12 Eagle · 🔥6 🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 https://putt.day/s/XU1QsN7bgZOZ
Post #3766233
I know this has been heavily linked to, but Evans’ “Ways to think about token pricing” - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/7/9/ways-to-think-about-token-pricing - is really very good and everyone making a bet on #GenAI should bloody well read it with close attention.
Post #3703111
#introduction - Hyperoverprivileged straight cis white greybearded neurotypical male, living in Vancouver with loved ones. Proud member of #CoSocialCa, a member-owned co-op Fediverse instance. I’m old. I can’t not write, as evidenced by the 2+ million blogwords at https://www.tbray.org/ongoing - also I was “timbray” on Twitter starting in 2007 but stepped away 2022/11/27. Tl;dr: Geek, photohobbyist, and environmentalist. For details, type my name into your favorite Web search, I’m overly p...
Post #3700270
I frequently find myself explaining, often to people I don’t know, why it is that my online home is on #Mastodon, why I’m putting time and effort into building and running an instance, and why those are the best choices. So here’s my latest effort to pull all the arguments I use together in a coherent sequence: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/07/05/Choose-Mastodon
Post #3619261
Hoping the employers in England are tolerant of less-than-100%-effective staff performance tomorrow morning. #worldcup
Post #3541916
Idea: For the next installment in the “Game of Thrones” franchise, base the plot on the endless IETF meltdown about non-hybrid post-quantum cryptography. The best write-up on the technology issues is, by far, from @sophieschmieg@infosec.exchange - https://keymaterial.net/2025/11/27/ml-kem-mythbusting/ - since it has a lot of math, I was thinking someone should write a story-oriented narrative, and the GoT scriptwriters have definitely shown the right skillset. I decided against a link to the...
Post #3457306
In which the non-technical world notices the concept of the “Open Web”, and Google’s abandonment of it: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/google-ai-oligarchy-and-the-end-of-the-open-web - Essential reading, I think.
Post #3437304
Huh… discovered our everyday VPN “Private Internet Access” has sketchy ownership with heavy Unit 8200 links and other red flags. Looked at some others… ick. What’s a good general-purpose VPN that doesn’t have weird ownership or a history of data leaks and is technically competent? Our instinct is to avoid free products. #VPN
Post #3421481
RE: https://flipboard.com/@cbcnews/toronto-qajtcaoiz/-/a-AsI_bKk-RO6ZBi4dIpufvQ%3Aa%3A107108217-%2F0 I'm old, I can remember when the CN Tower was new. A small group of artists anonymously plastered downtown TO with maps showing the radius that was at risk should the tower fall over. Cool visual design. There was a flurry of news coverage before people figured out it was art.