timbray

timbray, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

When you think, do you have an internal dialogue that includes words?

Boost if you're interested.

timbray, 10 months ago to random

This is actually not about XML, despite the title, it's about us geeks being fashion victims, and I really enjoyed reading it. https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles

timbray, 3 months ago to random

The Mastodon instance “queer.af” has been shut down… by the Taliban. No, not a joke, what country do you think “.af” is? Be careful with your cc TLD's, folks.

timbray, 1 month ago to random

I think the #xz incident is teaching us that our infrastructure is dangerously fragile in the face of well-organized/funded attackers. The response isn’t “try harder” or “donate to your OSS project”, it needs to be institutional, professional, and at scale.

So, here’s my proposal, called “OSQI”, aimed at starting a how-to discussion: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/04/01/OSQI

timbray, 11 months ago to random

1/2 Open Letter from Stack Exchange moderators: They’re going on moderation strike due to being forbidden from stemming the flow of LLM spam: https://openletter.mousetail.nl

timbray, 26 days ago to random

Passkeys were hot last year, don’t seem to be catching on, here’s one view of why that is. Dark and sobering but convincing: https://fy.blackhats.net.au/blog/2024-04-26-passkeys-a-shattered-dream/

timbray, 6 months ago to random

This is beyond outrageous. Adobe must stop doing this immediately.

https://petapixel.com/2023/11/07/adobe-stock-is-selling-ai-generated-images-of-the-israel-hamas-conflict/

timbray, 11 months ago to random

Long-Covid testimony, from my wife. Getting long-Covid or post-Covid or whatever will fuck up your life and is also not nice for your loved ones. Please read and consider: https://www.laurenwood.org/anyway/2023/05/this-is-not-over/

I was just out doing the family shopping at a crowded grocery store, almost nobody wearing a mask.

[Spreading the word on this would be a public service.]

timbray, 4 months ago to threads

Wave of anti-trans attack in progress on #threads - someone has figured out to game the algorithm so it's in a high proportion of people's “For You” feeds. Not clear if it's a moderation failure or if Threads is ok with this stuff.

timbray, 8 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Wondering about Long Covid (or Post-Covid Syndrome).
Do you know people who are suffering significantly as follows? (This is a multiple-choice poll.)

(pls boost if the subject interests you)

timbray, 9 months ago to random

Internet Archive: “Late Friday, some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old … the Great 78 Project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium.”

https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/

timbray, 5 months ago to random

Google is really losing the plot, there are lots of things in my blog that it can't find but DuckDuckGo can. My blog isn't that much of an outlier so I suspect this pattern exists more widely. If you do a Google search and come up short, don’t give up, try elsewhere.

timbray, 7 months ago to random

Suppose you’re generally progressive/left-ish (like me) and are a hyperoverprivileged white male techbro boomer (like me). Your social-media stream is going to be full of angry people attacking various aspects of what you are. So I wrote a piece about owning your privilege and sucking it up: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/10/07/Suck-it-up

timbray, 9 months ago to random

My letter to the editor of the local paper, which I suspect they won’t publish.

timbray, 9 months ago to random

If you are, or have ever been, a sysadmin, grab a bag of popcorn and cruise through this one. Thrills and chills! https://thomasp.vivaldi.net/2023/07/28/what-happened-to-vivaldi-social/

timbray, 6 months ago to random

Yow, I just got successfully phished on the Facebook Android app. I clicked on "Your friend X tagged in a post" and this thing managed to put a browser window over the top of the FB app so it looked like I was still in the app, totally consistent style, and asked for a Facebook login, which I haven't done for years so I thought made sense. I fell for it, and I bet most people wouldn't have noticed it was sketchy, which I fortunately did; password hastily changed….

timbray, 4 months ago to india

There are a lot of scary things in the world but what Modi is doing in India is right up there. I dropped by Twitter to look for an old post and (spoiler: mistake) hit Trending and found a flood of Modi-fan racists screaming obscene insults at Muslims. Modi is consciously whipping up racist rage against a 200-million-strong group of citizens. If this gets out of control the cost in human lives could exceed many big wars put together. #India #BJP #Hindutva

timbray, 7 months ago to random

Turns out Mastodon search includes image alt text.

Excellent! 👏👏👏👏👏👏

timbray, 12 days ago to random

Of geek interest: UUIDs have been around for a long time and they work well and interoperate fine, but the specification space is a mess. So the IETF just shipped RFC9562; it has a fine consideration of the history and the trade-offs involved in all the different flavors of UUIDs, and is well-written and I think, as of now, the place to start looking if something UUID-flavored is puzzling you. Strong work! https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9562.html

timbray, 5 months ago to fediverse

A few annoying problems with the #Fediverse could be solved if there were a new URI scheme with the right semantics. I notice that Bluesky has already provisionally-registered the "at:" URI scheme for similar purposes.

So, I sketched out a design for what a "fedi:" URI scheme might look like and how it’d work: https://github.com/timbray/fedi-uri

timbray, 10 months ago to random

I glanced at this and ended up spending 20 minutes reading it and I regret nothing: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/cobol-controls-your-money

(Mostly of geek interest: About the continuing survival/blessing/curse of COBOL)

timbray, 5 months ago to random

Proposal for HTTP Status Code 420: Requester Impaired.
Draft: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-richardroda-420requesterimpaired-02.html
Discussion. starts here: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2023OctDec/0239.html

timbray, 8 months ago to macos

Oooh, you really want to update your Apple devices right now today, this is an ugly one: https://malwaretips.com/threads/apple-discloses-2-new-zero-days-exploited-to-attack-iphones-macs.125702/

#macOS #iOS #iPadOS

timbray, 1 year ago to random

The problem with AI/ML isn’t what the tech is or isn’t useful for (we don’t really know yet). The problem is the people who build and own and operate it, a mix of giant tech monopolies and VC-funded growth-crazed startups. Both are entirely oblivious to ethics and the civic good.

It is fair and reasonable to be paranoid and suspicious about any tech pushed by this cabal.

[This post from a member-owned co-op Fediverse instance, see https://cosocial.info]

timbray, 1 month ago to random

Why we won't accept the narrative of regrettable incidents in Gaza | MSF https://www.msf.org/why-we-wont-accept-narrative-regrettable-incidents-gaza