The ActivityPub Trust & Safety Task Force is looking for a new Co-Lead (I'm stepping down because I'm leading the Social Web Working Group now). Specifically we'd like someone with trust and safety experience! Doesn't have to be paid/professional experience (volunteer moderation workers […]

I just discovered a great little charity in Ottawa 🇨🇦 called StoryBook. They give books 📚 to children in lower-income neighbourhoods to help foster an interest in reading & to improve literacy skills. As an avid reader, I would love to help pass on a passion for reading to at least one child! […]

Have you noticed a new magnifying glass on the front of your foods and drinks? 🔎 It's the new front-of-package symbol. This new symbol by Healthy Canadians can help you identify foods and drinks that are high in saturated fat, sugars, and sodium. Learn more: canada.ca/front-package-labelling

It's 1998, you make a website in the copy of frontpage express that came with your computer, it's just like Word and it's very easy, you figure out how to upload it to the couple megs of web space that your ISP gives you (the instructions are on their website), you visit your site in your […]

The suggestion page now links to a form for an easy way to suggest new stores and libraries. It would be amazing if you would suggest your local library or book store. Ideally with a way how we could link to an isbn search. https://bookpile.org/suggest #bookstodon

Hey #bookstodon, I built something and now need your help. Do you also struggle to share a link to a book? Don’t want to link to a specific store? This might be the solution: https://bookpile.org/b/9780356508191 A site that lists the reasonable places where to get the book, including […]

Protecting home = Manyly Protecting planet = Not manly Protecting country = Manly Protecting many countries = Not Manly.

The inaugural issue of the online periodical Small Planet: The Speculative Fiction in Translation Magazine is now available! #sff #worldsf #worldlit #sciencefiction #litintranslation #bookstodon https://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=16928

Still valid: #javascript #programming #unix #meme

here I've been combing for old documents and stuff to free up disk space on my laptop, when all I need to do is do a little file system surgery to make sure Chrome will not be able to successfully redownload this *four and a half gigabyte* local model when […] [Original post on infosec.exchange]

Dismay! I bought "Westviking" by Farley Mowat a while ago and just started it, only to find that the appendices aren't included in the book; they only included a page with a URL and a QR code. The intro suggests to read the appendices first and then references […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

#ArtemisII My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

I just saw the most amazingly corporate expression of "we did what the bosses wanted us to do, even though the research didn't support that." The actual phrase was: > The research employed a methodology that prioritized stakeholder voice over researcher interpretation. I wonder if a data […]

what it was like writing code in the 90s

Age verification

Happy National Library Week! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_Week #libraries #nationallibraryweek #libraryweek #books #reading #bookstodon

I saw this truncated CBC headline and was expecting a different ending... #renewableenergy #oil #headlines #baitandswitch #canwepleasefocusonrenewableenergy

We’re happy to share that Mastodon has been awarded a service agreement from the Sovereign Tech Fund @sovtechfund 🎉 This covers five major initiatives through 2026 and 2027. We are very grateful for this support. Read about the details in our blog post […]

“Our purpose as humans is to find joy in lifting each other up by creating solutions together instead of destroying, and when you see it from out here it doesn’t change it, it just absolutely reaffirms that.” Jeremy Hansen […]

A warm welcome to our newest Associate Member: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)!🍁 🎉 As Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC has promoted culture and supported democratic life for almost 90 years. We’re looking forward to working together and sharing […] [Original post on digipres.club]

This all really good, love this. It's all analyzing social behaviors, not code at all. "Five git commands that tell you where a codebase hurts before you open a single file. Churn hotspots, bus factor, bug clusters, and crisis patterns." https://piechowski.io/post/git-commands-before-reading-code/

if you have avoided updating an iOS device because of some combination of hating the new UI or age verification nonsense, please be aware that a critical security patch has been back-ported to iOS 18 so you can install just the patch without a full upgrade. SCROLL DOWN on the Updates tab to find […]

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the unholy scourge that is "CEO said a thing!" journalism:

“To opt out, GitHub users should visit /settings/copilot/features and disable "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" under the Privacy heading.” https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/github_ai_training_policy_changes/

“So, sure, you can get better vendors to bid, do a better job of checking vendors’ references, and do a better job preparing to outsource, but better than all of those is simply hiring people who understand how software is made.” @waldoj […]

Patricia Fernández de Lis of the Spanish newspaper El País interviewed me about the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony moving to Europe. Here is the interview machine-translated into English. The original version, in Spanish of course, is on the El País web site […]

Happy Ides of March for those who celebrate. Sic semper tyrannis. #idesofmarch #juliuscaesar #sicsempertyrannis

New (non-work) blog post! 📝 “Generative AI vegetarianism” https://sboots.ca/2026/03/11/generative-ai-vegetarianism/

My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

Whew! I guess I have to stop tweaking this site. It won't get any better than this, but yay! I'm announcing my venture into small press publishing with a new novella! Now on PRE-ORDER!!! (available in major stores too!). It's a #solarpunk about a seventy-something year old woman, probably […]

You know what? HyperCard was a glorious moment in time that I dearly miss: an army of non-experts were bashing together and sharing weird and wonderful stacks that were part 'zine, part adventure game and part database. Instead of laughing at vibe-coders, maybe we should ask ourselves why the […]

I wanted the blue checkmark on LinkedIn. The one that says “this person is real.” In a sea of fake recruiters, bot accounts, and AI-generated headshots, it seemed like a smart thing to do. So I tapped “verify.” I scanned my passport. I took a selfie. Three minutes later — done. Badge acquired […]

Stealing someone else's work as a service. https://nvie.com/posts/15-years-later/

Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call their slop out this way.

Hello #fediverse! Thanks to my new DFF grant, I'm now looking to hire a PhD student to join me at AAU in Aalborg 🇩🇰 to work on "usable decentralization", i.e. on making distributed and federated cloud services accessible to the everyday user. For more details, see link below, and please don't […]

...horrifying message without context, thank you

If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how […]

"Open Source alone won't deliver digital sovereignty. Europe must fix procurement and fund those who actually build it." #technology https://werd.io/funding-open-source-for-digital-sovereignty/

Rocks are pretty cool. 🪨 Thundereggs! https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/geology-and-paleontology/rocks-and-minerals/thundereggs-geology-geodes-rep/ #geology #rocks #minerals

After several months of umm-ing and ahh-ing, I handed in my notice at work this week. If anyone knows of a Canadian company looking to hire a remote senior web developer who will NOT be working on LLM-related functionality (or be required to use LLM-based development tools), please point me in […]

Just going to throw this out there... No reason. https://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/how-rich-is-greenland/ #greenland #naturalresources

I do not want global reach. I do not want to hyperscale. I wish to be so, so small. I will wiggle into the cracks between the enterprise servers and make a nest. In the muffled quiet I will read Forth poems about a time before memory was vast and filled with angry noise.

My new year's resolution is to continue ignoring all technologies that I am told ignoring will result in me being left behind. I embrace the being left behind. I will become a forest witch, speaking to myself in invented programming languages. In the dark I will twist little bits of wire […]

Wooo it's up! New paper alert! I will write a summary thread about this paper tomorrow morning when I'm not quite as mentally exhausted! "An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions" by Thiele, Heiland, Boley, & Lawler https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643 Not […]

Our team is hiring a forms designer! Deadline to apply is December 19 and the position is located here in Whitehorse, Yukon. Small government, still so many forms to improve. 😆 https://yukon.ca/en/digital-blog/looking-forms-designer-december-2025 #getfedihired #yukon

Zuckerberg has blown 77 billion – enough money to revitalize entire countries – on an idea so overwhelmingly, obviously stupid that I have never once heard anyone, from the Thanksgiving avuncular table to the most wretched depths of social media, say they liked it or even tried it. He was so […]