davecb 🇨🇦 :heart_transgender:

Dave Collier-Brown, once of the late, lamented Sun Microsystems
Systems programmer and (published) author
Pronouns: he/they
Nom de Guerre: DCB

Public Key

npub1tr6cqe58l0zrmgtksg50fj5yf8g508fru9pyphu6hs2lkk05c3as46g4rt

NIP-05 Address

davecb@hachyderm-io.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs93avqv6rlh3pa59mgy285e2zyn528n537zsjqm7dtc90mt86vg7cpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvg9xeza

Publishing to

nostr-pub.wellorder.net

nos.lol

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1tr6cqe58l0zrmgtksg50fj5yf8g508fru9pyphu6hs2lkk05c3as46g4rt

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Last Notes

2026-10-14 14:22:37 UTC

#writersCoffeeClub Who do you wish you could share your work with, but can't?
Not me, but my friend Toke:
Everyone at risk in the United States (of Gilead (:-() who want to come to Canada. https://tinyurl.com/Fleeing-Gilead
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/117/439/708/925/278/253/original/5961b7babf54e3d2.png

2026-09-22 10:57:02 UTC

#ScribesAndMakers – 22nd Sept. Promotion day. Self or someone else. Or both.
Jane Jacobs, Systems of Survival. Our problems, first-caused.
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/systems-of-survival?sId=933c35b4-9e09-48c2-a7d8-c48a22c4d754&ssId=L_yfFYfglft6LRi22sIl8&cPos=1
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/117/314/329/738/976/981/original/7ece979672cb0f01.jpg

2026-09-04 00:40:16 UTC

#ScribesAndMakers Day 3 - Which ebook reader do you use?
Strictly Kobo. Amazon's business model appear to be "Always be evil" (:-))
I even did a year gig with them and Rakuten, at a significant cut in my income (I was contracting at the time).

2026-08-20 12:09:15 UTC

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@nprofile…n2fr Adrian was born in 1644. He's been learning new things since then, and *really* enjoys that. It makes him cheery, most of the time.
He works as a programmer, though, which sometimes makes him depressed and angry.

2026-08-01 23:14:06 UTC

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#WritersCoffeeClub – 2nd Aug. What’s the most challenging thing you've ever written?
@nprofile…mvd8 I was peripheral to three things friends and family faced that could have been very very bad for them. They dug their way out of the holes, with them leading, and with help from their friends.
Just *hearing* about one of them had me vomiting in the toilet.
I'm working on writing about them.
It's happy endings, thank god, or I wouldn't have been able to write about them. At all.
My neighbour said it best. Brigitte Eve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riO0vG2tGl

2026-08-01 12:27:10 UTC

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@nprofile…p9kg You lucky person (:-)) I grew up in Chatham, east of Detroit. August there is painfully hot and humid, and it doesn't break until well into September
It seemed odd to live in "the Great White North" and be having sweat pour down my face while reading a book.

2026-07-16 12:25:51 UTC

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@nprofile…p9kg We're getting slapped by forest-fire smoke in Toronto and Buffalo: No walkies for me!
I expect forest fire smoke in Yellowknife, but not this far south.

2026-07-07 01:28:32 UTC

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@nprofile…emk6 I save out-takes. On occasion, they reappear

2026-07-03 11:58:03 UTC

#ScribesAndMakers 7/3. We have some new people in the community. Re/Introduce yourself and tell us about your creative work.
Hi, I'm Dave.
I was inspired to come back to writing by a neighbour at the cottage, and have sold my second non-fiction book, to appear later this year. My first was back in 1999, https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/samba/book/
A nerd-friend then teased me into learning to write dialog, by writing biography about my early life and that of my friends.
This year he has me writing short stories, starting with https://www.freedomfiction.com/2026/06/coyotes-by-david-collier-brown/
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/116/855/916/750/220/769/original/0909ffcf66d13ac7.jpg

2026-06-24 11:59:58 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub #WritingCommunity
24th Jun 2026. Must you know the ending before you write the first line?
In non-fiction, yes, because I'm actively building toward something.
In biography, I discover it.
In fiction, partially. The characters know where they want to be, but don't always get to the place they told me about.

2026-06-10 12:06:10 UTC

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@nprofile…p9kg
You ask "Is all the rain attracting more birds than usual?"
I think it compresses the good times for birds looking for bugs, and humans looking for birds

2026-05-30 01:22:45 UTC

I just re-watched "Once More With Feeling" from Buffy season six: it still brings tears to my eyes.
I joke she's great literature, This actually is, a operatic tragedy set to music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_More,_with_Feeling_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer)
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/116/660/891/909/953/659/original/dacaa260f52b9881.jpg

2026-05-06 13:00:17 UTC

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@nprofile…mn64 I mitigated it by
1) using the commute to read, listen to podcasts and write. Everything non-work I need to do by myself.
2) getting up at 6 and beating the rush, then in mid-afternoon, taking the subway back home, to complete my day's working hours from home.
My company did not allow WFH, but all my meetings were on zoom, so no-one cared that I was in one office in the mornings and another in the afternoon. Not even my manager: he liked having someone in early, to triage stuff that came in overnight and have meetings with our Berlin office.

2026-04-22 12:11:38 UTC

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@nprofile…p9kg I love the checklist: stealing!

2026-03-25 21:24:50 UTC

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@nprofile…3j0x
For folks who aren't following happenings in the Anglican Church in the UK,
Dame Sarah Mullally was enthroned today as first female Archbishop of Canterbury

2026-03-20 10:56:34 UTC

From Fair Vote Canada:
In The Globe and Mail, Andrew Coyne argues minority governments are better suited to governing in a crisis because they require negotiation and cooperation.
He’s right. Many of Canada’s “majority” governments are elected with less than 40% of the vote, yet hold total power.
That’s not real majority rule.
Minority governments show what’s possible when parties have to work together. Proportional representation would make that collaboration the norm, not the exception.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-minority-government-crisis-carney/

2026-03-02 20:57:01 UTC

Danger, Danger, Will Robinson (:-))
As I mentioned before, some of the folks who provided anti-Carney ads in the last election also provided anti-Polyviere ads.
Turns out one of them is a well-know American...
See https://www.thefarce.org/america-needs-to-prepare-for-elon-musk-like-hes-a-state-sponsored-cyber-attack/ which narrowly addresses the campaign in the US.
"Let me walk you through what it actually did, because the details would repulse a society with anything like a healthy gag reflex, and because they reveal the one thing Musk actually believes in: his power to loot America dry, a position that puts him in exact sync with the man he spent more than any individual in the history of the planet to elect.
Muslim voters in Michigan saw pro-Israel ads praising Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing Israel’s military. Jewish voters in Pennsylvania, targeted by the same operation, saw ads claiming Harris wanted to cut off U.S. arms to Israel. Young liberals got headlines about how Harris had sold out the progressive movement. Working-class white men in the Midwest were warned she’d impose race-based hiring quotas. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats were coming for their menthol cigarettes.
Every one of those messages, totally contradictory and engineered around each target’s specific fears and identities, came from the same organization, routed through a dark-money structure designed to hide that fact. 404 Media documented the Snapchat ad buys in granular detail: same PAC, same campaign, opposite messages, sorted by ZIP code, with Musk as the obscured original donor behind a dark-money nonprofit. In information security, this is called spoofing."

2026-02-07 11:44:04 UTC

For Canadians: a petition calling for a parliamentary investigation into foreign (American) interference in our country.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details...… See more

2025-12-21 14:23:09 UTC

From the Toronto Ornithological Club
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/115/758/002/645/313/086/original/1cdcaa996be4a8eb.jpg

2025-12-10 18:24:59 UTC

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@nprofile…t03n @nprofile…afhh In particular, there are about the same percentage of trans people and Somalis in the US as there were Jews in postwar Germany

2025-11-23 13:52:44 UTC

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@nprofile…2slu Niggle: I'd say the workers fled the US, rather than left voluntarily.

2025-04-25 11:01:37 UTC

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@nprofile…48vs Niggle: GDP per capita is like profit per worker: it's a measure of _automation_, not prosperity

2025-04-05 12:56:15 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq When I was younger, we used to drive past the Canadian headquarters, in Hamilton

2025-03-24 17:48:44 UTC

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@nprofile…jtx7 @nprofile…qz4x
For people who just brushed over the "copraphagically": Nothing can survive on its own waste products.

2025-03-20 13:35:05 UTC

Ok, actual zombie disease wasn't on my expected -evils list
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/20/chronic-wasting-disease-spread-zombie-deer-global-us-aoe
Courtesy of @nprofile…pam3
A new worry for Canada and Mexico: chronic wasting disease epidemic in deer populations jumping to humans. And I thought bird flu was bad.

2025-03-19 18:39:36 UTC

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@nprofile…6m2n Does it make a nice hierarchy, like the ISO 8-layer model?? That one isn't actually true, but it is a good engineering approximation of the arpanet 3-layer model*.
One layer is the window manager, then the terminal app, then the shell, and then the application.
[* M.A. Padlipsky, The Elements of Networking Style, Chapter 5, A Perspective on the ARPANET Reference Mode, https://archive.org/details/elementsofnetwor00padl]

2025-03-16 16:31:02 UTC

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@nprofile…dc6s We might need a "trip-wire" force to detect US covert incursions.
At that point, as a NATO member, all members come to our aid. Which would be ironic, you understand: we'd be asking the US for troops to fight against a US invasion (:-))

2025-03-16 16:24:00 UTC

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@nprofile…dc6s With respect, we have troops to _use_ them. They get bored sitting at home (:-))

2025-03-16 16:11:33 UTC

If there is a cease-fire in Ukraine, then Canada could really help.
We invented a form of peacekeeping back in 1956, when we put Canadian troops between an Anglo-French force and an Egyptian one on the Suez Canal. If one of them attacked, they'd have to fight the Canadians _and_ whoever was on the other side.
They wouldn't get to wear the later blue helmets, though, as the US would veto a UN peacekeeping effort.
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/172/982/283/091/087/original/fbefbf578569477d.jpeg

2025-03-15 20:49:28 UTC

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@nprofile…uxj9
The map is available at https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/technocracy-inc-technate-of-america-1940/

2025-03-13 17:06:40 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 As always, _seek legal advice_.

2024-12-23 16:27:22 UTC

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@nprofile…pam3 If you're trying to fight back at a large organisation or an unresponsive government, it's wise to have a "bad cop" as well as a "good cop". For example, Stephen Harper had an attack dog, Pierre Poilievre and a good dog, Hugh Segall, and used them both
If the split is between good and bad cop, encourage it!

2024-12-12 16:11:42 UTC

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@nprofile…pam3
Understood, but I'm hoping a group in a more litigious country might start a class action, even if I can't join it myself.

2024-12-12 14:16:25 UTC

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@nprofile…pam3
Bah, humbug!
If I set "do not track", I'm serving notice that companies claiming I have consented to their tracking are lying.
I've made this point to the Canadian government, in a reply to a request for comments on regulation.
It doesn't have to be honoured to "work" quite nicely. (I also use Privacy Badger).

2024-12-07 18:04:09 UTC

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@nprofile…pam3 Solved problem in computer science: providing parental controls in phones
Unsolved problem: getting <expletive deleted/> sites to honour it. Criminal charges sound about right (;-))

2024-11-27 20:37:26 UTC

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@nprofile…6m2n I don't know if this helps, but gnu provides stdbuf(1). which can make things unbuffered, linebuffered or set the buffer size.

2024-09-10 11:15:27 UTC

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@npub15zu…s7lx Years ago we faced this problem for something called the "world wide web". The answer was to do it at the client end, with parental controls. They still exist, they're still used, but they aren't well-maintained

2024-06-27 21:58:48 UTC

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@npub178r…qekt Alas, very much not a gift link: it lets you sign in for free, but won't show you the article