Notices by Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)

From a review of a recent AC/DC concert randomly linked from my feed: “…the crowd exited smiling and, in many cases, well-juiced. Outside the arena exit gates, rows of teens were waiting to drive their parents home.”

#music

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.

@evan I decline to update that 21-year-old post. It represents 2005's state of the art.

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.)

Wikipedia entries for “Association Football”, “Football”, and other related articles, are a mess. Lousy (many broken) cites, dubious arm-wavey claims. Just did some basic top-down cleanup but much work is left. Keep your fingers and mind busy during hydration breaks and halftime!

#wikipedia #worldcup2026

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@ArtisanalPortents/116852226391726342

It’s on #CosocialCa so whatever it is, it must be Canadian. I was puzzled at the bold-face effect and (relatedly) why you can’t search for any of the “portents”. Sleazy #Unicode trickery FTW I guess.

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

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.

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

@evan Always Be Closing.

I’m pretty sure that some flavors of #GenAI will find wholesome uses in the post-bubble future, but for the moment I feel a wave of revulsion every time I encounter AI cheerleading because it never NEVER acknowledges the force-field of greed and fear under the overhang of the multi-trillion-dollar bet being made by people I loathe who are oblivious to the oncoming financial and social wreckage they are facilitating.

#uspol #worldcup

Aaaaand we're off. #worldcup

@jwz It was a standstill for hours, they just got going again like 45 min ago.

Why yes, I am watching the Kennedy Center livestream. If I were in DC I'd be there. And I'm not even American. #USpol

@evan We currently say nothing about how far a post might travel, because the nature of the federation protocol means it's an insanely complex. People should really assume that anything they post will be, in effect, public. The degree to which running a relay changes that would require a thousand-word essay which would probably have to omit some of the finer points.

More #Google layoffs today. Some senior people, 15+ years tenure.

@evan Yo! #hnom

TAB TRICK: A person watching over my shoulder asked “How are you switching around so fast?” and I realized that while most readers here know this trick, some may not, and it’s awfully useful:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/05/24/Tab-Lore

[This is an update to an earlier version from 2012. Most people already know the trick, but I keep encountering people who don’t, so here you go.]

In which I don’t accept an invitation to a high-prestige unconference. “I declined, because it’s in the USA”: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/05/19/Declining-America

#USpol