Tim Bray
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timbray.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy
Tim Bray
@timbray.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy
Web geek and environmentalist with a camera at the bottom left corner of Canada. He/him.

These posts are coming from a member-owned cooperative: https://cosocial.info […]

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://cosocial.ca/@timbray, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
@quixoticgeek OK, that was abrupt. Sorry. I tend to react bitterly to generalized complaints about open-source maintainers being unresponsive, for reasons outlined here: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/11/16/Long-Links#p-12

Having said that:
1. I think it’s unfair to wield a brush […]
Original post on cosocial.ca
cosocial.ca
January 6, 2026 at 5:42 PM
The year is 2026 and I just fixed some broken Perl code. Living in the future, baby.

#perl
January 6, 2026 at 5:33 PM
@quixoticgeek Sounds like Open Source just isn't your kind of thing.
January 6, 2026 at 2:37 PM
@quixoticgeek That's what I used to say until I needed DBD:MySQL and all the package managers failed but "make" Just Worked, first time.
January 5, 2026 at 11:45 PM
@quixoticgeek Also bear Plan C in mind: Download the source and build the sucker. Many (not all) OSS projects build easily on MacOS.
January 5, 2026 at 10:02 PM
Another dispatch from the implementing-regular-expressions front lines. Probably of interest to very few, but who knows. Includes thoughts on coding while old.

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/01/01/Quamina-2026

#software
Regexp Lessons
www.tbray.org
January 5, 2026 at 9:55 PM
I suggest we call this “The Epstein Files War”.
January 3, 2026 at 1:50 PM
From the excellent Standard Ebooks, “Read 20 of the best books entering the public domain in 2026”. Seriously, check ’em out.

https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
标准电子书:2026年文学作品公共领域日
Standard Ebooks: Public Domain Day 2026 in Literature (standardebooks.org) 16:40  ↑ 108 HN Points
standardebooks.org
January 2, 2026 at 11:37 PM
Saskatchewan

#photography
January 1, 2026 at 9:54 PM
@cheeaun Does this screenie exhibit a bug? Note the lonely "Followers" text at the bottom.

Best of the New Year to you and yours, and thanks for all the fine work!
December 31, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Idly working on my Quamina state-machine-based pattern matcher. (https://github.com/timbray/quamina)

Hit a bug that smells like an infinite loop. Looked closer. Hmm, seems like my code traversing a dinky little 4-state automaton thinks it needs to consider 25,165,824 possible state transitions […]
Original post on cosocial.ca
cosocial.ca
December 31, 2025 at 6:01 PM
The “Just coffee, black” meme brutally deconstructed: https://knowyourmeme.com/videos/433740-just-coffee-black

h/t @gruber
December 31, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Blocking the work of MSF is absolutely depraved. Israel continues to fumble its way out of the community of civilized nations.

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinians-ceasefire-war-news-286106d7a5a911704cdcf1c93248e502
December 30, 2025 at 11:42 PM
@lety Is nostr still a thing? I had the impression it was sliding offstage…
December 30, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Peeking inside the process of how raw camera sensor data gets turned into an image that looks something like what you see: https://maurycyz.com/misc/raw_photo/

h/t @nelson

#photography
What an unprocessed photo looks like
Comments
maurycyz.com
December 30, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Very decent year-end reading recommendations, featuring the contradictions of capitalism and whodunnits: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-12-30/capitalism-and-crime-books-that-got-me-through-the-year
December 30, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Saskatchewan winter study.

#photography
December 30, 2025 at 1:01 AM
OH: “My mind was hashtag blown.”
December 27, 2025 at 2:09 AM
December 25, 2025 at 3:55 AM
My Mac is running hot, apparently because “WindowServer” is locked on 47% of one CPU permanently. Known bug?

#macos
December 24, 2025 at 6:06 PM
@FediTree Merry Christmas!
December 24, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Running pre-Christmas errands, a relative who likes cannabis wanted to stop at the dispo. I strolled in too, and at the checkout counter I noticed a sign about Tuesdays. Couldn’t resist, told the relative to consider this part of their Christmas present and pulled out my credit card.

Just so I […]
Original post on cosocial.ca
cosocial.ca
December 23, 2025 at 10:29 PM
What a charming story.

Even Its Author Is Shocked by How Fans Have Embraced “Heated Rivalry,” the Gay Hockey Romance Series
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/books/heated-rivalry-rachel-reid-hockey-romance.html
December 20, 2025 at 9:00 PM
“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
Humanist Plumbing
www.tbray.org
December 20, 2025 at 6:43 PM