Starting the long and arduous journey to #cambridgebeerfestival. (Well, sort of arduous. Just a little bit.)

Another big boat in Leith. For a sense of scale, observe the light house in the first few shots, and perhaps the people under the yellow hook on the deck, in the later shots. This is the Seaway Alfa Lift, and it’s picking up bits of wind turbine to be […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Translation: "We like you a bit, but not enough to give you a pay rise" ;)

Another morning, another #ai #slop pull request to review. Sigh...

come to think of it, i've never tasted ATP before. i wonder if i could taste ATP. i wonder what it tastes like i don't have the right taste receptors to do it _properly_ but i'd absolutely lick pure ATP powder

I'm super hyped to announce that Bluesky Socal PBC has given me a grant to work on the Federated Credential Management (or FedCM) standards to make them really work for all decentralized web applications. This is why I stepped up to be an Invited Expert with the W3C FedID Working Group earlier […]

First meeting of the day. Title: "Review Software Test Plan". Actual topic of meeting: "Review this thing my LLM spat out, which looks a bit like a software test plan, but completely fails to include any details of how we actually do things, or even what the project is about." #ai #llm […]

Ooh, shiny!

free software folks: what design/org patterns are there for publishing community software to mainstream app stores these days? eg, is there an umbrella org/institution that publishes free software apps to the app stores, on behalf of community projects? could be an org like ASF. I'm not […]

Customer: "Hey, we found a bug in your stuff. Here's a .pcap which triggers it. Can you fix it?" Us: "Sure, we fixed it, and we added your .pap as a test case!" <repeat several times> <years elapse> Me: "This .pcap looks like a capture from a live network. Are we sure we're don't have […]

In previous years, I published two "fediverse tech roadmap" posts: - Fediverse tech roadmap 2024 - Fediverse tech roadmap 2025 However, I didn't publish such post this year because not much has happened in 2025. Many problems I talked about require complex solutions, but unfortunately proposed […]

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/ai-enters-operating-room-reports-arise-botched-surgeries-misidentified-body-2026-02-09/ > Most allegedly involved errors in which the TruDi Navigation System misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside […]

March marks my 5 year #fediversary, which I think I'll celebrate by moving this account away from mastodon.social. Anyone have any #instance recommendations? Key considerations: Big enough that it's not going to just disappear overnight, like my first instance did, but small enough that it's […]

#webdev question on session management: Some people put a session ID in the cookie and the session data in the DB. Downside: a compromised DB exposes all the session data. Some people put the encrypted session data in the cookie. Downside: this limits the size of the session data. What about […]

one thing that i really dislike about Unix is the zealous adherence to semi-accidental design elements that ends up interfering with the utility of the underlying useful principle for example: * early Unix could not run too complex a program due to hardware restrictions, so programs were […]

One simple change to copyright law that would make a huge difference is making exclusive licenses unenforceable. Here's an example. After decades of consolidation, an oligopoly of 3 corporations control licensing for the majority of the world's recorded music (Universal, Sony and Warner). If an […]

Useful creature. book of hours, Flanders c. 1300-1310. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.37, fol. 187v. #medieval #medievalart

Starting to wonder why I ever chose to look into #oauth in any detail. I don't think I've ever seen another protocol which attracts so many blowhards and reply guys. Tip: When an RFC starts with a section labelled "1. Introduction", it's a good idea to read that section, to get some idea of […]

It looks like @aaisp changed something, and now I can update my DNS in seconds rather than hours. Nice one :)

The #Whittlesey #StrawBear is a quaint yet somewhat #pagan custom in a small town near where I live, in which a man and a boy dress up in straw costumes and parade through the streets, accompanied by various #Morris and #Molly dancers, and a few thousand […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

My first week for work for #2026 draws to a close ... and most of the discussion with my boss has been on the topic of "what do we do about this bloody #idiot #slopmonger we've ended up with on the team"? I hope the year takes a turn for the better, ideally very soon. #aislop #aicoding #notoai […]

My first week for work for #2026 draws to a close ... and most of the discussion with my boss has been on the topic of "what do we do about this bloody #idiot #slopmonger we've ended up with on the team"? I hope the year takes a turn for the better, ideally very soon. #aislop #aicoding #notoai […]

Back to work, and this morning we welcome a new colleague to the Chinese team. His name is You. This isn't going to be confusing at all, is it? ;)

Happy New Year, Mastodon (and beyond)!

Merry Crimbo to anyone who can be bothered to read my posts ;)

According to the #wrapstodon thing, my engagement on Mastodon in 2025 consisted of "500 Internal Server Error". I was sure I'd written more than that.

In the _Starfleet Technical Manual_ , there is a throwaway detail of the LCARS user interface that when it is upgraded, users can still utilize the previous several versions. This is because their work is mission-critical and it is unacceptable to compromise the mission by forcing unfamiliar […]

Ooooh! ID-JAG or OAuth Identity Assertion JWT Authorization Grants looks interesting: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-oauth-identity-assertion-authz-grant-01.html #oauth

I want a new flagship #atproto app that isn't a Twitter clone on the surface. As much as I loved Twitter, I see what the result has been societally and want to move forward. Bluesky is almost a skeumorphic interface on top of atproto and I can't wait to see what's truly possible with this platform.

RE: https://www.no2id.uk/2025/no2id-comment-on-the-first-delay-to-the-id-cards-consultation/ Please welcome the UK's No2ID @sam to the #fediverse !

*signs on to work computer* *looks at email inbox* IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED - OMG SHAI-HULUD *looks at calendar* HOLIDAY: Thanksgiving (US) Coincidence?

How the mighty have fallen... "ftp.warez.org" used to resolve to 127.0.0.1. Now it looks like it's been taken over by some domain squatter. Where am I supposed to find my warez now?

The Romans called the town Ivybridge because the name Forth Bridge was already taken.

Any bets on how long it will take me to get to the next Fermat prime on this vape?

turns out that federating forums by ingesting microblogs with hashtags is an absolutely disastrous idea even worse, while forum<>forum federation might work, as soon as one forum ingests microblogs it ruins the ecosystem for the other forums who are connected to it

#friday evening, and I get to the #pub ... only to find the local #antivax nut in full flow, and he's found a friend. Gaah. :(

Jesus... Oh no, nothing could possibly go wrong here. Nothing at all...

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2025Oct/0001.html SocialCG people want to make their own FEP repository on GitHub where authors will be required to sign a CLA. I'd like to make it clear: this is not associated with the original FEP repository. The #fep process is meant to be […]

Just a thought as I work through some bugs reported to NodeBB... would there be interest in ActivityPub.space hosting a "security" category for discussion around vulnerabilities, CVEs, and such that are related to ActivityPub? For example, if NodeBB were to receive a bug bounty report and […]

War ravaged Portland

We've essentially allowed ourselves to be limited in what we can do, by just copying other software. We could do something different. Theoretically you could have ActivityPub backed by repos and merkle trees like AT Proto, at a storage layer, which would allow really easy data migration. We […]

Imagine if we had a site like this for ActivityPub that wasn't just focused on monolithic servers: https://sdk.blue/

I have been, and continue to be, of the view that the "fight" between #activitypub and #atproto is a distraction. Whether one is "more distributed" or "more decentralized" is, at best, a technical criticism based on de jure analysis that has little bearing on the practical, practiced reality of […]