Notices by Tim Bray (timbray@mastodon.cloud)

@anildash I dunno if it's that hard to explain…

Their business model doesn't work, because on the one hand subscription fatigue, and on the other, Internet advertising is broken. So, as they fail, they will do things that are increasingly abusive both to their writers and to their audience.

@atomicpoet What's unique about this instance? There are lots of options out there…

@atomicpoet Cool. How do you plan to support it for the foreseeable future?

Paulaner. #photo

@nova ooh, you and I have a *lot* in common when it comes to music and audio hardware

#photo #tokyo #東京

One wonders whether chatGPT & related technology is like the Web in 1995, which limped a bit and was full of sharp corners, but quickly grew into something huge and magical, or like the early self-driving-car demos of say 2012, which convinced a lot of people (including me) that autonomous vehicles for everyone were just around the corner.

There have been plenty of technologies that made the first 90% of the solution easy but never managed to quite get to general usability.

@mhd Hah, I attended the "VRML '95" conference and all the attendees thought we had the world in the palms of our hands. There were some damn cool demos.

‘Mother of Internet’ Radia Perlman argues for centralized infrastructure:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/mother_of_internet_radia_perlman/
[Radia is an extremely wise person.]

#photo

@pkedrosky Hey, I just posted the poll, not gonna spill the beans just yet.

@Michele @kathygriffin @jeffjarvis

I disagree. An algorithm is not intrinsically bad. As long as we understand that it represents the interests of whoever paid to have it constructed. I think an algorithm with human values that simply wanted to enrich experience is perfectly possible.

I haven't seen one, probably because nobody has ever had a financial incentive to construct it.

Mastodon would be a good place to try to make one.

Canada needs to press harder and keep the Croatians out of the box! #worldcup

I have learned that new Mastodon users should do an #introduction.

I’m a hyperoverprivileged straight cis white greybearded neurotypical male. Living in Vancouver, Canada with loved ones.

I’m old.

I can’t not write, as evidenced by the 2+ million words on my blog at https://www.tbray.org/ongoing and also “timbray” on Twitter.

Tl;dr: Geek and environmentalist. For details, type my name into your favorite Web search, I’m overly public.

In which I leave Twitter: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/26/Bye-Twitter

@evan Don't let me get in the way. Happy to help with whatever gruntwork.

@evan I was just poking around the Govt of Canada registration pages and it look s crushingly similar to registering a nonprofit society in BC, which I've done. I could volunteer to do all that paper-shuffling stuff once you've selected directors and so on. Having said that, if there's a national-scope co-op bank like VanCity, might be a better choice? I'll look.

@Aphrodite @evan @bmann @trishussey @blaine @hypatia @walkah @awsamuel

Urgh, not sure masto is the best place for a threaded organizational discussion. Someone got an idea for a better channel? Anyhow, I've been looking, it's pretty easy and cheap to register a Canada Federal-level co-op.

Um… We have to pick a name and it has to be unique. It costs $10 to check. If we want to converge on a small number of candidates, I can run the checks & will cover costs.

@Aphrodite @evan @bmann @trishussey @blaine @hypatia @walkah @awsamuel

Note that VanCity is well-set-up to do business with co-ops: https://www.vancity.com/BusinessBanking/Financing/SpecializedSectorSolutions/Cooperatives/

So i'd recommend starting there once incorporation is filed. As I said, happy to do the grunt work.

@evan @bmann @blaine @walkah Sounds like something I'd sign up for.

I'm realizing that I don't really want to make my own instance because I want a neighborhood.