mastodon 4.6.8retro... GO! Tech focused, sci-fi reading, air and space nerd. Privacy proponent. You get the picture.
-- Posts deleted after some indeterminant time period --
Former tech broadcaster and pr wonk in the video games biz ...and now I'm not :)
Affinity for the '80s. I must be old.
And things I've started saving for future generations at: https://archive.org/details/@bgrier
Reading: OpenAI’s safety pledges in the wake of Tumbler Ridge aren’t AI regulation — they’re surveillance
"The entire apparatus being constructed (internal threat identification, flagging, direct RCMP referral) is oriented toward monitoring what people say to AI, not toward how AI systems are designed, trained or constrained in their responses. "
One of the joys of #tax season -- getting to choose which #Retro #Calculator to use. Though I owned a #Sharp #Elsimate back in the day (I was the nerd in high school), all were acquired more recently. I loved the aesthetic of the #TexasInstruments #Datamath (I cleaned/rebuilt the battery compartment), and the #Canon 8-T was a must have (SEXAGESIMAL CALCULATOR) for the time calculation functions. These things were GOLD back when I worked in #TV #broadcasting and had to work out segment times for TV programs, etc.
Edit: Forgot, for the Datamath, also had to design and #3dPrint the name badge as the original was lost before I acquired it. Neat exercise that, fun with miniature paint too!
It's been 12 or so years since I've seriously played #GuildWars2 -- wow, the game is even more fun than I remember! Our gaming group started with the original #Guildwars after spending a lot of time playing Baldur's Gate online. Getting back into #GW2 is so comfortable. No pressure, #SlowGaming (if you want). And it's free to play the original story (lots of content there for free).
We've got a lot of story to catch up on -- looking forward to it.
Fun to be getting back to a project I've not touched in 5 months. Yes, it's a text-based interactive adventure / RPG based on the Classic #Traveller ruleset.
Big goal is it'll support user-designed story-modules and have a module editor etc... but that's down the road. First I have to get enough basic interaction, RPG structure, and 'stuff' in so that it'll at least be interesting.
#InteractiveFiction #RPG #TravellerRPG #TextAdventure #Python
Listening to some seasonal tunes - for Canada today anyway.
#Canada #Music #VinceGuaraldi #CharlieBrown #Vinyl #Snoopy #Soundtrack
Quite enjoying watching The Orville. Dismissed it when it was in first run - wasn't in the mood for it - and am I glad I waited.
Time has shown it's a very good SF series that's an obvious homage to all the Trek. But. What I didn't really expect was the amazing musical score! This is a TV show and it's scored like a movie!
I've caught myself chuckling at musical quotes here and there, the obvious one early in season one that was a wink to V'ger from ST:TMP.
I've read that the soundtrack albums are available, so must go hunt them down.
#TheOrville #StarTrek #SciFi #Music #Soundtrack #FilmScore #NowWatching
I’ve always wanted a simple 'Now Playing' display for music coming off my PLEX server. It took a bit of thinking, but once I wrapped my head around running a tiny web app on an old Pi inside my home network, the whole idea just jelled.
There’s something about giving older gear a new, modern purpose. In this case: an old iPad paired with a Pi 3B+.
After some grunt-work getting the layout looking decent on both desktop and that ageing iPad, this project is “good enough.” Yup, I could still futz around with it (some images crop a bit weird), but honestly? It works, and that’s a win.
#NowPlaying #Music #HomeLab #RaspberryPi #DIY #Plex #RetroTech #dollyparton
The other day I got into a conversation with a family member about the Amazon DNS outage, and how DNS works. And that progressed the conversation into data sovereignty in Canada. Who controls your internet’s “phone book” matters—for your privacy and for our national digital infrastructure. Lots to dig into there for sure.
We did cover enough stuff that I thought it worthwhile putting it into a blog post on how and why switching to Canadian DNS Servers are a quick and easy way to take more control over your online footprint
Domestic DNS: Defending Your Data and Digital Privacy
https://bradgrier.com/2025/10/24/domestic-dns-defending-your-data-and-digital-privacy/
#Canada #IT #Technology #DNS #ElbowsUp #Privacy
Edit: to fix link to post
Cold brew
Simple recipe, which is good because it's only day 2 of this year and it looks like I'll need a lot of this to get through it.
For the record:
- 1 litre of water
- 1 cup of coarse-ground coffee
- 1 day of brewing on the countertop.
Reading: ChatGPT Won't Let You Type Until Cloudflare Reads Your React State. I Decrypted the Program That Does It.
Cloudflare and ChatGPT getting together to check for bot traffic AND user behaviour. The researcher's core point is that the scope of data collection here goes well beyond "are you a human." It's building a persistent, cross-session profile of your hardware, location, and behavior.
Another conversation turns into a post... I detect a trend here....
The pragmatist’s guide to avoiding digital serfdom
It’s not your imagination. The tools we used to love are getting worse. They call it “platform evolution.” We call it digital serfdom.
The cycle is predictable: attract users with a great service, lock them in, then squeeze them for every drop of data and cash. Cory Doctorow calls it #enshittification.
But we don’t just have to complain. We can leave.
This post is the result of some notes and a conversation - a simple framework for deciding what’s worth controlling, 3 questions to ask any service, and a big collection of #FOSS alternatives to the walled gardens.
Read the post, boost if you find it useful, and let’s start taking back our data.
https://bradgrier.com/2025/11/05/the-pragmatists-guide-to-avoiding-digital-serfdom/
🎵 Now Spinning: Nazareth – Razamanaz (1973)
1973 – Canada
Vinyl
LP, Album
Gatefold
A&M Records – SP-4396
Doing some catch-up on some records I picked up over the summer. The Nazareth album is in amazing shape and sounds awesome! I forgot how good they were.
The K-Tel isn't bad, about what you'd expect trying to jam 22 tracks onto a single disk. And the 'other' 24 Million hits special thing is really a 'tribute' album from around the same time recorded by sound-alike musicians. A double album, that 'sounded' good, but overall, it was ok.
I'm still getting used to the ADC 1700 turntable too... it was a garage sale find from a few years ago that I cleaned up/fixed up. Works great, but different from my previous table.
But Nazareth... wow. 💿✨
#NowSpinning #Nazareth #Razamanaz #HardRock #Vinyl #Music #turntable
Low key - one of the coolest things that fixes a minor annoyance I've found this week -- the MacOS update to 26 (Tahoe) moved the screen brightness and volume indicators to the upper right of the display - where system notifications appear. That's the annoyance. Took me two days to figure it out as I also have a menu bar manager (Ice) that it conflicted with.
Must have made sense in the design shop, but not here. Why move something that has worked well and has conditioned long-time mac users (it's been in the original place for over 20 years) to look for it in the lower-midle of the screen? It's friendly, vanishes quickly, and gives immediate reinforcement as to what's happening without forcing the user to visually break from what they're doing to look at the smaller thing in the upper right.
VolumeHUD gives it back, and the brightness indicator too. Slightly updated styling to fit in with MacOS26, but otherwise like finding your favourite sweater just as a winter storm sets in.
Kudos to Danny Stewart for developing it.
volumeHUD: Bring back the pre-Tahoe macOS volume and brightness HUDs
It's that time of year again...
Between the festivities and the downtime, I'm tackling my annual #DigitalDeclutter. This year, I'm adding a new step: wiping my AI chat history. More details over at the blog post:
https://bradgrier.com/2025/12/26/winter-break-data-cleanup-and-setting-up-the-new-year/
Took Google’s new agentic coder, Antigravity, for a spin. It looks like a Cursor clone, but the real deal is its deep tie-in to the Google Cloud.
I was kinda impressed by the difference between its workflow and Google’s other AI cat, Jules.
Though being a Goog product, the normal concern about code privacy remains. My first look is up.
#AI #DevTools #Google #Antigravity #Coding #CursorAI #Python
Jinkies! Anthropic accidentally exposes Claude Code source code • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/anthropic_claude_code_source_code/