Tim Bray

In which I offer a ringside seat at my struggle vs the temptation to use #GenAI on a couple of programming tasks: www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

“Eby says this election is about the future of the province, and not the small differences between New Democrats and Greens, who share a common vision in many areas.” The NDP and the Conservatives share a version for a future built around LNG extraction and export. LNG is mostly methane, an […]

Why Hunterbrook is shorting Meta: https://hntrbrk.com/breaking-news/muse-tickertrends A word of explanation: Hunterbrook is a team of investigative journalists in the employ of a private-capital fund. The journey dig up dirt on some company or investment […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

Went to a family wedding and did some touristing in Australia, where we have friends & rels. Came back with lightweight observations and a few decent pictures: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/10/12/Aussie-Visit-2026 #australia #photography

John Gruber @gruber says “The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive” Hmm, that's not how I remember it. So I spent an hour there and, maybe I’m weird, but… https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/10/13/True-Things-About-X

Color Study: Fujifilm vs Pixel https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/10/10/Color-Study-Fuji-vs-Pixel

In which I engage in heresy: The purpose of a system is NOT what it does: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/09/24/The-Purpose-Isnt-What-It-Does #POSIWID

“Regulate and standardize AI? Nope.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/09/18/On-Regulating-AI

The human face of the Autistici/Inventati affair, “Canceling Emilyh”: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/09/08/Emily-Got-Canceled “The wastrels in Washington can reach across the ocean and silence a Canadian creator on an Italian website. With no prior […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

Petition to block MAGA PE scum from owning crucial Canadian payment infrastructure, namely Moneris: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7712

In which I fix a straightforward concurrency problem in my Go code, with multiple side-trips: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/09/01/Un-Racing #software #concurrency #Golang

Hmm, the Linux Foundation has a thing at https://x402.org, payment infrastructure using the HTTP "402 PAYMENT REQUIRED" status code that: 1. Is said to "empower agentic payments at scale", 2. Specifically lists as an advantage that you can ignore Know-Your-Customer legislation, 3. Accomplishes […]

In which I try to clarify the issues around #GenAI watermarking its text output without requiring readers to be computer professionals: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/08/24/Text-Watermarking

In which I spend a week engaged and immersed in music, learn a new instrument and genre, am made full of joy. And suggest that some of you should do this too. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/07/26/Music-Camp #music

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 […]

In which I write about the costs & benefits of making automata deterministic, with graphs and tables, and assistance from bluesman Willie Dixon: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/06/14/DFA-Costs #automata #software

“War is bad. Don’t start one. But we’re already in a class war and we’re losing. Where by “we” I mean most people; the winning side comprises, roughly, the richest 0.1% of the population, who are morphing into a hereditary aristocracy. So, what to do in a war one […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

I read the 2¼ novels making up the new series “The Captive’s War” by “James S.A. Corey” i.e. Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham. They’re most famous for “The Expanse” and while so far I’m not enjoying this series as much, I think it’s on a good trajectory. More […]

In which I grab a camera and go for a walk at dusk and try to convince you to do the same: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/04/13/Modern-Cameras #photography

In which I think out loud about Password Managers and take a closer look at 1Password and Bitwarden: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/04/09/Password-Manager-Angst #security

“Recently I read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch and Algospeak by Adam Aleksic. The language we speak (and text) to each other is at the core of who and what we are, and the Internet is the strongest among the forces that channel and fertilize its growth […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

1/2 Two new blog pieces. In which I have opinions about GenAI and open-source: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/02/16/GenAI-and-OSS-opinion #GenAI #opensource

In which Claude Opus invades my open-source hobby project. The experience was… surprising. Fairly raw anecdata here, analysis and reactions still to come: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/02/06/Q-Plus-C-Ch1 #GenAI #claude

“Welcome to the first Long Links of this so-far-pretty-lousy 2026. I can’t imagine that anyone will have time to take in all of these, but there’s a good chance one or two might brighten your day.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/02/03/Long-Links This time out, featuring lots of […]

I assume there are how-to-migrate-to-Blacksky docs somewhere? First step: Move PDS, right?

It took a year, but Quamina now has a full regular-expression capability, so I released 2.0.0. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/01/20/Quamina-2.0 #Golang #automata #opensource

Huh, @icegov.bsky.social is an interesting case. In the Fediverse, most instances probably wouldn’t host that account, but some would. The account would be broadly blocked, and some instances would probably block the hosting instance. Some folks would migrate between servers based on these choices.

January 3, 2025: Start of the Epstein Files War.

“What happened was, a faucet started dripping. And then I managed to route around the malignant machineries of late-stage capitalism. These days, that’s almost always a story worth telling.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/12/18/Humanist-Plumbing

˚The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that. To me, the urgent and interesting questions are how widespread the damage will be and what the hangover will feel like.” www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

Tracy Numbers: “Here’s a story about African rhythms and cancer and combinatorics.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/12/02/Bell-Combinatorics (Also #caturday)

In which I write about the pretty-awesome experience of attending the MLS quarter-final game with my son and 53,095 other good friends, and how getting interested in fútbol has had the side-effect that I’ve lost most of my interest in football (as in NFL) […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

I thought the @sarahkendzior.bsky.social suspension was an interestingly nontrivial moderation scenario. I wrote up a little case study/explainer on how it might have been handled on Mastodon. Probably only for people who care about moderation nitty-gritty. www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

Dear World: Now is a good time to get off social media that’s becoming any combination of “less useful”, “less safe”, or “less fun”. I’ve been on Mastodon for 3 years and am convinced that right now, in late 2025, it’s the best place to go. Come join me. Here’s why. www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

Reinstate Sarah Kendzior

WTF Sarah Kendzior?!

Over the weekend I ripped Google search out of my blog because it doesn’t work very well any more and replaced with PageFind, which is really pretty cool. Details: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/11/01/Blog-Search-Pagefind

“Last night I had a very strange experience: About two thirds of the way through reading a Web page about myself, Tim Bray, I succumbed to boredom and killed the tab. Thus my introduction to Grokipedia. Here are early impressions.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/28/Grokipedia

*crickets*

News flash: There’s lots of really good new music out there! Here’s some of it: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/15/Current-Music Featuring: Kwashibu Area Band (Ghana), New Eves (UK), The Good Ones (Rwanda), Alfa Mist (UK), Sona Jobarteh […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

Check out the “Nadia story”, and an explanation of how we can make it easier to tell when media is faked and when it’s real, with existing technology: www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

Yesterday, Kristi Noem’s and Greg Bovino’s masked agents threw chemical agents near an elementary school, arrested elected officials exercising their First Amendment rights, and raided a Wal-Mart.

In which I (probably foolishly) make a bunch of predictions about the future of #GenAI: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/09/26/GenAI-Predictions

Last week I gave a talk at the IPTC’s “Photo Metadata Conference”. Here’s a blog-ified version, with lots of juicy digging into exactly what works and what’s broken in C2PA in 2025. Also strong opinions about provenance. And a link to the YouTube recording […] [Original post on cosocial.ca]

This Thu is the “IPTC Photo Metadata Conference 2025”, a free Zoom event open to all. I’m a speaker ( on #C2PA). Looks like it should be interesting for anyone interested in the tangle of issues about media provenance, #genAI, publishing workflow, social media, and so on. iptc.org/events/photo...