Bruce Davie

Computer scientist/engineer/author/runner/cyclist. Former SF resident reunited with the world's finest coffee town. Co-founder/publisher at Systems Approach, LLC. Co-author of "Computer Networks: A Systems Approach" among other computing books.
Occasional contributor to The Register.
Searchable.
Header photo: Melbourne city skyline seen through the trees from Yarra Bend.
#nobridge

website: https://www.systemsapproach.org/
newsletter: https://systemsapproach.org/newsletter
GitHub: https://github.com/drbruced12
Tech Writing: https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Systems%20Approach

Last Notes

2026-08-23 00:40:57 UTC

The Australian national cross country championships were held yesterday in Ballarat, and I took part in the masters (old people) division. Epic conditions on a muddy course with some challenging obstacles. I was very pleased with my run and came away with the M60 age-group win. #running #strava
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2026-06-25 23:03:50 UTC

This is a good piece from @npub15xv…0jms on how to use language to push back on “AI” (or “probabilistic automation” as she suggests) and stop anthropomorphising the synthetic text extruders.
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/

2026-06-21 07:53:58 UTC

My wife went swimming in Footscray this morning so I had her drop me off by the pool and then I ran home along the Maribyrnong river and up the Stockyard trail, back through Royal Park to the inner North. Brilliant day for a run and a nice change of scenery. #melbourne #running
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2026-05-27 09:09:10 UTC

Entertaining and well-reasoned piece from @npub1fdr…lvhs on the stupidity and futility of age verification https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/19/shes-dead-of-course/#consensus-hallucination

2026-04-06 21:57:49 UTC

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Woke up around sunrise the next day and walked to the saddle between Fainters North and South. After a beautiful sunrise, and a rainbow, the rain arrived so we returned to camp for a damp breakfast and packed up for return trip. No detour via Jaithmathang on the return, saving a few hours. A lot of the walk was in drizzle but it cleared by the end. Mt. Feathertop and the Razorback in the middle picture (with just visible rainbow). 3/n
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2026-04-06 21:47:27 UTC

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We had lunch on the first day at the summit of Mt. Jaithmathang (1852m) and then followed a set of GPS waypoints along the ridge to avoid backtracking. Without doubt the hardest bush bash I’ve ever done. Took about 3 hours to cover 4km. Certainly longer that the backtracking option but at least we earned our dinner. Rewarded with the most fantastic campsite with panoramic views at 1800m on the slopes of the Fainters. Amazing golden hour and sunset. #bushwalking #hiking #sunset 2/n
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2026-04-06 21:34:34 UTC

I spent the last two days hiking with @npub1zlg…rfa9 across the Bogong high plains from Cope Hut to the Fainters. Day 1 started with perfect weather as we followed the Australian Alps walking track for the first 10km. #hiking #bushwalking #Bogong 1/n
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2026-03-25 20:28:19 UTC

Never mind panic-buying petrol, I’m going to panic-buy an EV

2025-12-01 21:00:57 UTC

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I researched this for long enough to give up and go to mesh wifi. My nominal 1G system was getting 100Mbps and this seems typical. There seems to have been a lot more investment in making mesh wifi work well. Still I don’t think you’ll get up to 10G without running cable. (Because I am old I am still amazed that 10G can be achieved over anything other than fibre.)

2025-09-01 04:44:11 UTC

Seems like a good day to revisit this post about privacy-preserving age verification. (tl;dr -> you can't have it) https://www.techdirt.com/2025/08/19/privacy%E2%80%91preserving-age-verification-falls-apart-on-contact-with-reality/

2025-05-30 21:12:07 UTC

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I would think it is quite feasible. Paging @npub1hyn…0yth (who set up a peertube instance that I use).

2025-04-14 08:36:04 UTC

I wanted a nice graph to show just how decentralized the Fediverse is, so I built this one from latest data at instances.social. It's actually a lot more decentralized than last time I looked (in 2022); the top 30 instances now house 85% of the users. In 2022 it was about 95% of users on the top 5 instances. #fediverse #data
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2025-02-13 05:33:34 UTC

I'm re-establishing myself on Peertube, so here is a talk I gave at the University of Edinburgh as part of the 60th anniversary of Computer Science and AI celebrations. My talk on "60 Years of Networking" has quite a bit to say about the importance of the #fediverse and decentralization.
https://peertube.roundpond.net/w/isYGkZHuKpRYXNX67Ucyd5
Talk Abstract:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/60-years-of-computer-science-and-ai/60-years-of-computer-science-and-ai-events/academic-and-industry/distinguished-lecture-bruce-davie

2025-02-10 01:56:36 UTC

Getting in on the #SuperbOwl action with a photo from Margaret River, WA, 2016
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2024-12-19 02:26:24 UTC

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this is really frustrating. I wrote a thing about the inconsistencies a few weeks back https://systemsapproach.org/2024/10/14/can-passkeys-replace-passwords/