Notices by Brian Dear (brianstorms@mastodon.social)

@bruces

Gee and all this time I thought four-plus-trillion-dollar nVidia had something to do with #AI

@bruces

Very cool but note the songs come from a wide variety of dates — from 1905 thru 1987. IMHO it’s extremely unlikely that that first track, “Entertaining Song,” was recorded on a wax cylinder: the audio would be terribly scratchy with tons of surface noise. That first track rather sounds like a field recording made decades later with a good mic or mics and a Nagra machine or something.

@bruces HOLY FIRE comin'?

@bruces

So, we’re back to Knowledge Navigator era of Apple

Um, wouldn’t a cheap USB hard drive with 60 CDs’ worth of music on it make more economic and packaging and shipping sense than, um, 60 CDs?

#music #gratefuldead

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/grateful-dead-boxed-set-60-cds-60th-anniversary-enjoying-ride-1236335721/

@bruces

No way. My experience of SXSW was always that people were diligently cutting into line and then cutting further ahead in line when nobody was looking. Whole vibe was one of cheaters galore.

@dansup @PixelFed

I no longer want anything universal.

Never understood the attractiveness of having a whole bunch of "fediverse accounts." Seems like a bug not a feature.

Plus, I don't install apps anymore if I can help it.

Finally, whenever I see the word "fedi" I pronounce it as "Fido" (as in FidoNet 2.0).

Good luck. 🤷♂️

@Gargron

Hmm. Kinda like saying eh, this 4K retina screen might be nice and all but my MacSE still has the superior display.

@photomatt

Matt, Matt, Matt: always, always, always record media interviews. Gotta have receipts.

And late in the piece you mention Fast Company: I, like you, loved Inc and Fast Company back in the day. They’ve changed. Fast Company should rename itself Fast And Loose, as their articles can be wildly full of biased narratives and erroneous lazy reporting.

Wow…. end of an era.

Dr. Donald L. Bitzer, creator of the PLATO system, and co-inventor of many key technologies like the AC gas-plasma flat-screen display, passed away yesterday at 90. Don was the main person I wrote about in my book THE FRIENDLY ORANGE GLOW.

No words. RIP, Don.

#plato #computerhistory #techhistory #retrocomputing #bitzer

@Gargron

All good. And deserving of our gratitude and support. But calling anything “the future” means it’s not “now” and leaves open any answer to, “so, when then?”

I’m reminded of that great scene in THE CONTENDER where the President, played by Jeff Bridges, stingingly tells an annoyingly ambitious congressman, “You're the future of the Democratic party. And you always will be.”

I worry Mastodon is the future of social media. And always will be.

@FediFollows

Seems a little hyped, no? How many of these publications have even heard of Flipboard, let alone Mastodon?

Flipboard’s just a middleman platform—it doesn’t bring a publication’s team, and doubtful even their attention, and certainly not their engagement, to Mastodon. It just brings snippets of content to lure you to #Flipboard (if you’re not careful what you click on).

I think I’ll just hold out for the publications and their staff to join #Mastodon in an official capacity.

Translated: “We Found A Few People In Pennsylvania Willing To Say They’re As Uncertain About Kamala Harris As We Are”

#nytimes #uspol #politics #confirmationbias

@countcol

We skipped the Comprehension Age which should always come first so people are trained to effectively observe, analyze, evaluate, verify, question, challenge, organize, absorb, and share Information.

@dansup

On the contrary.

The walled gardens have not gone away with the fediverse. At all.

In fact there are more walled gardens than ever before. Every #Mastodon instance is its OWN walled garden, in terms of discoverability. Search is cordoned off: you can’t find anything for the most part except whatever might have been posted to your own walled garden and only if recent.

Talk of “freedom” is lovely but the reality is Mastodon is like a spy agency with severely compartmentalized info.

@Gargron

Wow, a band that still hauls around stacks and stacks of guitar and bass amps. Very retro.

@Gargron @Sarahp

More accurately, thanks to federation, the posts from not one but myriad social networks float by unnoticed in your feed unless you’re online watching like a hawk 24/7 😉

@Mastodon

who are active

@WarnerCrocker

Hyperbole.

@Gargron @ricmac

Understood. Let’s stipulate that all these facts are accurate.

But I’d postulate that by making search opt-in, search is pretty useless. It has hurt discoverability, and to compensate, put awkward burdens on individual users who stuff their toots with character-count-wasting hashtags in an effort to boost discoverability.

And I’d argue the Network Effect, so crucial to helping social neworks grow and thrive, has been weakened on Mastodon in large part by the search policy.