Brian Dear

Author of "The Friendly Orange Glow" tech history book (Pantheon, 2017) https://amzn.to/2ol9Lu6

In #NewMexico. Producer-arranger-musician, Confusion Boats. Working on new #writing project.

Before: Founder of tech startups incl Coconut, Flatworks, Eventful, Nettle. Also stints at MP3•com, Eazel, eBay, Real.

Online since 1979.

#EVs #climate #books #techhistory #history #science #nonfiction #Design #UX #UI #CX #product #Music #electronic #bass #keyboards #Movies #cinema #Hawaii

Music: Confusion Boats: http://confusionboats.bandcamp.com
Book: THE FRIENDLY ORANGE GLOW: https://amzn.to/2ol9Lu6
Blog: http://brianstorms.com
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/brianstorms_/

Public Key

npub1p2h7j28gajy7jqwc4rj36449gyzmvlgpzyjntssq3y446yx7szjsktj7r2

NIP-05 Address

brianstorms_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsq4tlf9r5wez0fq8v23ega26j5zpdk05q3zff4cgqgj26azr0gpfgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsc40dqv

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

relay.nostr.band

Author Public Key

npub1p2h7j28gajy7jqwc4rj36449gyzmvlgpzyjntssq3y446yx7szjsktj7r2

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Published at

2026-04-13T09:34:57Z

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Last Notes

2025-09-27 13:59:08 UTC

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Here in #SantaFe #NewMexico there was (an albeit small, short-lived) effort to demand that musicians be paid for their performances around town, especially at businesses like bars and restaurants. (Many venues don’t pay anything, expecting musicians to subsist on tips and that old standby, “exposure.” We told the venues, people can DIE from exposure.)
The effort failed, sadly, because the musicians themselves couldn’t be bothered and were fine working for nothing. 🤷‍♂️
#music

2025-09-23 19:05:22 UTC

Remember kids, Tylenol is a gateway drug. That’s very bad. Just say NO to Tylenol!
Tylenol —> Dammitol —> Fukitol ☠️

2025-07-13 01:49:49 UTC

@npub18ty…0edt
Two things about BRING HER BACK:
1. Any filmmaking team which makes such a film have seriously sick and twisted minds, and i’m making a point to never see any future films made by that specific team.
2. It might start out as horror genre but it disintegrates into insane, brutal, graphic depictions of child abuse/killing. My impressions of A24 are forever marred. Will never trust them again.
#movies

2025-06-15 15:45:16 UTC

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Malicious compliance, in other words.

2025-05-09 15:36:55 UTC

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You love hiking and nature? Then go clean up the mess of glass, metal, electronics, plastic, sheet metal, aluminum, and all sorts of other particulates, now polluting the ground where that stinking old tank just drove over and crushed an electric vehicle just to provide a brief, amusing dopamine rush to a bunch of social media idiots sitting around doomscrolling looking for another opportunity at tribal membership validation.

2025-04-30 21:00:01 UTC

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Whoo-hoo!!!!!!!
A gen-u-ine humuhumunukunukuapua'a!
Mahalo!

2025-04-29 13:44:04 UTC

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Great pic.
Any chance you do requests?
I could really use a great picture of a humuhumunukunukuapua’a right about now if you have one, thnx! 😎
#humuhumunukunukuapuaa #hawaii

2025-04-08 19:10:23 UTC

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Prediction: within N days, a small additional piece of news will come out from the oil industry PR people to say “oh by the way that spill? yeah well it was way way bigger than initially reported ok thnx bye”
Standard operating procedure with spills it seems

2025-02-26 15:37:13 UTC

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That does it.
My next band name is Convict Tang.

2025-02-13 14:31:26 UTC

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If the Gulf of Mexico must be renamed, I wholeheartedly support the campaign to rename it “Authors Against Book Bans.”
#books
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/997/057/541/980/439/original/811466d6192b6ded.jpeg

2025-01-15 01:30:50 UTC

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These are not Republicans.

2025-01-13 16:49:43 UTC

What exactly would a person be trying to communicate to the public by mounting such an absurd accessory to their vehicle?
Only message that comes to mind is the one that starts with ‘ass’ and ends with ‘hole.’ 🤷‍♂️
#SantaFe #NewMexico #exhaust
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/822/065/987/689/229/original/dafacac40c81c828.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/822/066/562/351/830/original/2e0603b6a6fa34d0.jpeg

2025-01-02 16:03:56 UTC

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I seem to recall there are statistics showing that a staggering percentage of American police officers have committed or are committing domestic violence, that it’s a well-known problem that, of course, the police don’t like to talk about and are probably failing to address.

2024-12-12 00:08:15 UTC

Wow…. end of an era.
Dr. Donald L. Bitzer, creator of the PLATO system, and co-inventor of many key technologies like the AC gas-plasma flat-screen display, passed away yesterday at 90. Don was the main person I wrote about in my book THE FRIENDLY ORANGE GLOW.
No words. RIP, Don.
#plato #computerhistory #techhistory #retrocomputing #bitzer
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/636/935/652/163/042/original/d52f42945d235b81.jpeg

2024-11-18 13:57:06 UTC

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One wonders if Gabriel Allon is doing the restoration?

2024-11-06 12:37:49 UTC

“We finally, really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/436/043/603/488/063/original/94e0e3f6c2fa2648.jpeg

2024-11-04 14:56:13 UTC

#NewMexico’s #weather radar always gets to me. They installed it at a tiny airfield west of Albuquerque, and part of its beam path collides with the 10,678-ft Sandia Mountain. The mountain stops the beam. The result is a pizza-slice-like chunk of southern and central Santa Fe County has no weather radar. See if you can find it in the picture. Hint: like a straight line of shadow fifty miles long.
NWS could probably fix it but probably won’t.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/425/256/898/940/092/original/7d305942f3ac0aef.jpeg

2024-10-30 19:35:16 UTC

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RULE: Wherever and whenever the media say “AI” replace with “AI companies”

2024-10-22 22:11:01 UTC

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beat ya to it 😉
https://mastodon.social/@brianstorms/113353092976101644

2024-09-27 20:13:09 UTC

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To help train the AIs no doubt

2024-09-24 20:08:33 UTC

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But *is* it “even better”?
In the 2010s on social media we saw the rise of cancel culture, where people were made pariahs for somethingorother, whether or not it was fair or even true.
In the 2020s with the growth of new social networking platforms, the new thing is cancelling *functionality* rather than people. By far (imho) the biggest cancellation is #Mastodon’s #search capability, rendering the very idea of finding content largely moot. Like pre-crime: it’s pre-censorship.

2024-09-13 03:05:27 UTC

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@npub1psa…j5uh is great and I’m glad they’re getting recognition.

2024-09-11 14:41:14 UTC

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We skipped the Comprehension Age which should always come first so people are trained to effectively observe, analyze, evaluate, verify, question, challenge, organize, absorb, and share Information.

2024-08-31 14:58:35 UTC

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My ONLY complaint about the #film is, oh, let’s see, how about the inaudibility of the MOST IMPORTANT SPOKEN LINE IN THE ENTIRE FILM, delivered by the Matt character when he was speaking to the Sam character during the pivotal campfire scene.
It was hard to hear!
Either the actor mumbled it, or the microphone placement was bad, or both, or something relating to the Matt character turning to his right to deliver the line, but I couldn’t quite make it out! I got the gist of it but…. aaarrgghh

2024-08-30 22:28:24 UTC

GOOD ONE, the #film, is good.
Very good.
Basically a great movie, great script, great directing, great cast (especially Lily Collias--future superstar no doubt), gorgeous cinematography, the story, the setting, the pacing, the editing, the whole package: it's good.
Bravo to writer/director India Donaldson!
#goodone #movie #movies
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/053/320/277/599/489/original/e730b0baaf8cdfd3.png

2024-08-29 13:58:08 UTC

Oh just another day in lawless #SantaFe #NewMexico
(See anything wrong with this picture?)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/045/658/202/142/147/original/22bd7570637a84a3.jpeg

2024-08-12 16:54:52 UTC

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Social media tends to be done right -- when the scale is small. This has been the case since PLATO and The WELL.
It's once you add scale, then the MBAs come in, and wanna grow everything to numbers in the billions, and the pressure is on to do so. The motivations change. The vibe changes. The people change. The rules change. In the end, you get crap.
I suspect it will certainly happen to Threads.

2024-08-10 16:21:50 UTC

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cool… these days I think customer experience is in a rut, and these days I am far more obsessed with the success or failure of the *customer* determining/defining the experience.
‘User’ as a term is getting more and more quaint and outdated as companies’ products and services and whole business models use their tentacles to wrap around and hold onto more and more aspects of our lives (and bodies!).

2024-08-10 00:21:04 UTC

Some 15 years ago the tech company I founded and built from scratch had grown to offer meaningful value to customers, had over 20 million users, quarterly revenues in the millions, was profitable, and no debt. And it had a valuation that was a tiny nano-fraction of Trump’s $5 billion money-losing complete scam.
Wall Street is rotten to its core.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/09/trump-media-loss-quarter/

2024-08-09 14:37:05 UTC

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typo in the https

2024-08-08 13:19:47 UTC

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Gilligan’s Space Station

2024-08-02 13:18:40 UTC

Cloud-based, expertly-managed WordPress Creator instance with unrestricted bandwidth, global edge caching, high-burst capacity, Web application firewall (WAF), global CDN with 28+ locations, high-frequency CPUs, automated datacenter failover, isolated site infrastructure, and
malware detection & removal
vs
24-year-old MovableType PERL code running a couple blogs on a tiny Linux box
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/892/622/075/111/236/original/5983959e16a30d39.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/892/622/716/065/206/original/339c6288182738c5.jpeg

2024-08-01 05:15:42 UTC

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Wait, Toyota? The most die-hard anti-climate pro-oil/gas legacy automaker on the planet, the company that could have wiped out Tesla before it even got going, but has absolutely refused for years to be serious about EVs, or the climate crisis, and still isn’t—about either? That Toyota?
Enjoy your new exhaust pipe.

2024-07-09 20:41:35 UTC

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One of my fave Beatles songs, off of Abbey Road… and only today do I learn it was about railways 😉
Ahhhhh
Here come the sun kinks
Here come the sun kinks
All those freight trains delayed
Passengers are waylaid
Here come the sun kinks

2024-07-07 00:28:24 UTC

Just curious:
WHO thought it was a good idea to call antifascists "antifa" instead of, you know, "anti-fascist"? Was the full word just too hard to spell? Why didn't it sink in what the ramifications were, that by using this weird neologism "antifa" you gave the fascists a big break by not cornering them with being *against* those against fascism?
My guess: a fascist came up with the term, knowing the anti-fascists would go, duh, okay, sure let's just use that, less letters anyway.
🤷‍♂️

2024-06-20 17:32:15 UTC

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As a user I don't care how search functionality is implemented on the back end. I search, and as a user I get nothing, or very little. All I get is the confidence that Mastodon didn't find what I *know* is out there. And that's because of the policy decisions that were built right into the design and architecture, right into the DNA of Mastodon, decisions which essentially guarantee a disappointing search experience for users, regardless of how beautiful the code is.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/650/129/372/154/949/original/bfcd3f9b27cd5274.png

2024-06-20 17:16:18 UTC

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Oh, anything? Everything? Like, for example, I see something in the fast-moving river, and ten minutes later I think, I shoulda clicked on that link, and I try to search for it but no, it be gone, gone, gone, down the river and over the digital waterfall.
Search is always the single most consistent, most predictable, disappointment in Mastodon. In fact its lack may be the only disappointment in the overall Mastodon experience since I joined in 2017.
I wish it were not so.

2024-06-20 16:19:36 UTC

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And that is why Mastodon is stuck at 15 million accounts, only a fraction of which are active in any meaningful sense.
The lack of search functionality, blocked by a purist ideology held by another fraction of the user population, may be elegant (in the nerdy Linux sense) but it is an architectural form of pre-crime censorship and control, which has had clear and obvious effects on the “community” and on these so-called “conversations,” turning Mastodon into a fast-moving river.

2024-06-14 16:02:22 UTC

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More lazy tech journalism. Let’s not actually do any investigating, rather, let’s just speculate and call it news.

2024-06-14 12:05:00 UTC

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Nah, ingest seems apt to describe a machine the size of several football fields that requires the power-equivalent a nuclear power station, whose purpose is to vacuum up, on a mass scale, not one book, not one newspaper, not one magazine, not one social media post, not one movie, not one image, not one tv show, not one audio recording, but all of them. To “learn” all culture, poorly, on an incomprehensible scale. To learn so we think we don’t have to. Doubleplus ungood imho.

2024-06-14 04:07:38 UTC

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So, if someone ELSE illegally puts, say, a copyrighted book online for free and Apple’s bots come across it and “ingest” it, that’s fair game? Yeah, I don’t think so.
This whole thing is one epic, gigantic heist, I tell you. Biggest heist in history. Trillions of $ are up for grabs and big tech wants it all.
And what is this big heist all about this time? Nothing leas than all knowledge. All culture. All civilization. Get #AI to ingest it all, sit back and then mo-net-ize. 💰💰💰

2024-06-11 23:51:35 UTC

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My next band name is Glue For Pizza.

2024-05-31 16:30:39 UTC

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All one need know about these Verge advertorials
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/536/651/903/926/946/original/5209432c40c7c729.jpeg

2024-05-24 18:08:11 UTC

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That does it.
My next band name is UDM 14.

2024-05-06 20:28:22 UTC

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Oil and gas industry, you mean. Do you really think Republicans are behind this? 🙄

2024-05-02 03:31:39 UTC

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I’ve been a Netflix customer for 22 long years. I miss their DVDs and Blu-rays. I will never see an ad on Netflix, and the closer they get to mandatory ads with a paid subscription (you’d have to be insane imho), the sooner I get to quitting their service. Ball is in your court Netflix. Whatcha gonna do.