Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@stonekettle Also sounds very Amazon.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@mike You're failing to consider the possibility that I'm a trashy attention whore. Let me think about it; tbh the badge pleases my eyes, even on that otherwise-unbadged repo, but your point isn't crazy.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@mike (a) red=bad and dependencies are bad (b) all the other badges are green or blue, wanted to stand out
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@lgr (a) red=bad and dependencies are bad (b) all the other badges are green or blue, wanted to stand out
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@jan Ah yes I'm generally pleased with the breadth of Go's libraries and the quality of most of them. Didn't know that about Rust.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Troubling.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@mallory Joke noted but in fact you could host your own copy of the SVG file, I didn't copyright it or anything.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@jan Interesting: Why?
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
I made a little badge you can use on your projects, and here are some words on why: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/09/04/0dependencies
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Oh, and the commercials. Feaugh.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Based on 2 episodes, The Rings of Power S2 (Most Expensive TV Ever Made) seems like a colossal misfire. Dead-slow pacing. No non-portentous dialog. No humor. Petty, hard-to-like characters. Palaces and castles look like cheap plastic models. Lots more to complain about.
Worth going back for S2E3? Does it get better, eventually?
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
TFW you have an idea that *might* be fun/good and discover that the perfect domain name is available so I guess you just have to do it.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
This one kind of blew my mind. https://www.404media.co/email/63ca5568-c610-4489-9bfc-7791804e9535/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
The pharmaceutical industry needs a rethink.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@ww3real This is reminiscent of the Feisal/Lawrence strategy in WW1 - they could have crushed the Turkish pocket in Medina but kept it alive for two years, forcing the Turks to spend resources to feed & supply it while they built strength, attacked elsewhere, & supported the British move north, eventually to Damascus.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Honest privacy policy: https://www.myriadfacets.net/posts/honest-privacy-policy
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@raph I promise to link to that write-up when it appears.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@raph You are, of course, volunteering to write the multi-paragraph comment explaining WTAF is going on? But seriously, just kidding, that's really cool.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@robpike My Quamina project is providing me endless coding fun and blogging fuel too.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
The Greatest Happiness Possible - Existential Comics https://existentialcomics.com/comic/566
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
2/2 And here’s “Q Numbers Redux Explained”, a guest-authored entry from Arne Hormann, which explains the baffling bit-banging: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/08/31/QNum-Redux-Explained
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
1/2 Hey folks, to welcome September, a pair of ultrageek blog posts on representing 64-bit IEEE 754 floats in the minimum possible number of UTF-8 bytes. The 95% of you who just thought “Huh? What?” or “Who even cares” are being entirely sensible. For the rest of you, here’s Q Numbers Redux: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/08/28/Q-Numbers-2 which contains this terrifying Go code:
mask := (u>>63)*^uint64(0) | (1 << 63)
return numbits(u ^ mask)
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@ww3real Hmm, the category of “synthetic capital cities” in my mind includes Naypyidaw, Canberra, Ottawa, and Brasilia. Never been to Naypyidaw or Brasilia but seen pictures with those big wide boulevards suitable for military parades oops. Central Ottawa would be pretty defensible. Canberra haha what would be the point.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@GeePawHill Don’t wanna diss Mr/Ms Fahrenheit, whoever they were, but in °C
0 = freezing
10 = chilly
20 = nice
30 = hot
is all you need to know, feels objectively better.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@geoff_eg Cool. I think trees in the park works best.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@lawyersgunsnmoney @mastodonmigration Dunno about the cable network but the web site is… not terrible? It's shallow but not MAGA, really quite Kamala-friendly.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
“Google Thinks Beethoven Looks Like Mr. Bean” - by Ted Gioia
Dunno about Mr Bean specifically, but Google image search is off the fucking rails.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@briannawu We'd like that.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
[I hated them before that was cool.]
“Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/28/stop-the-celebrations-oasis-are-the-most-damaging-pop-cultural-force-in-recent-british-history
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@cfzzz_ /me waves
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@flexion OMG it's still there! https://www.textuality.com/zig/
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@flexion VRML! Be still my beating heart. I attended the VRML '95 conference and was convinced we were building the future. Got a company financed mostly because of a drop-dead cool VRML demo. Wrote a tiny little web service which would generate a parameterized VRML ziggurat for inclusion in your scenes. They had (historically inaccurate) spiral staircases you could walk up…
One of these days. Maybe.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Awww. I was on a cruise with Steve, I think the first ever Tech cruise, the “Perl Whirl”, in (I think) 2000. I was a lecturer, he was a Wired reporter; we hung out and had fun, corresponded in following years. Just a very decent human being who lived an exceptionally rich life. Will be missed.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@DePingus The issue is complicated, and defies compression to a single sentence. I think you're pointing roughly in the right direction but there are plenty of smart well-educated people who'd disagree.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@ww3real In '37, is Iran still in the grip of the clerics and IRGC? If so, it might collapse quickly.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
@brettk Neither @mmasnick nor I are lawyers; Having said that, I agree with pretty well every word of his longer piece about how everyone is wrong about §230. And having said *that*, it feels like the algorithms of social-media giants that drive engagement at the cost of all else, including human lives, ought to incur some legal accountability. New legislation? I dunno. Let’s see what the higher courts think.
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Probably OK to not agonize too much just now about the Section 230 rollback because it’ll be a long slow appeals slog to the Supreme Court almost certainly, but Matt Stoller has a decent backgrounder: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judges-rule-big-techs-free-ride-on?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=11524&post_id=148237911&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=wabr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Ongoing brutality and oppression… Eventually Israel's public-image bank balance will be sharply negative and they will find out what life is like when you have no friends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-jenin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Gk4.fPBC.S_RibBEmU00d&smid=url-share
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Sweetest interview ever, with Laurie Anderson: https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/aug/22/laurie-anderson-us-artist-musician-amelia-earhart
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
In which I go to a 200-singer performance of Mozart’s “Requiem” and have thoughts about the music, the theology, and the sound. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/08/25/Mozart-Requiem
#music #photography #Vancouver
Tim Bray
@timbray@cosocial.ca
Keyoxide is another public-identity-claim service: https://keyoxide.org - remember keybase? https://keyoxide.org
I think this basic idea has legs, did some work on it myself back in the early days of Bluesky: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/09/19/Blueskid-demo