DragonFly BSD Digest

Some good long reads.

• Claude is listening.  Linked to note there’s no standard in how long a company keeps your data.
• Strandbeest evolution 2025.  I am glad this has kept happening.
• Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again.  (lost the source, sorry)
• Containers and giving up on expecting good software installation practices.
• The Space Sim’s Last Hurrah.
• Running a PDP-8 from 1965.  (video, via)
• Colossus: The Missing Manual.  (via)
• ACM has gone open access.  This is a significant leap from a major publisher.
• Related: the most comprehensive technical journal bibliography I’ve ever seen.  (both via)
• Apple 2 Black Friday sales.  (via)

No theme though a bit dark.

• The only existing copy of UNIX v4.  (via)
• readtape, for Magnetic tape data recovery in software.  Related.
• The Internet of Things That Don’t Work.  Surely I’ve linked to this before?
• The Baby and the Black Box, about ‘Steve’ Shirley, who died earlier this year.  (via)
• User Specific Runit Supervisor.  Not BSD-specific but interesting detail.  (via)
• Always check that your bug report wasn’t solved a hundred-plus years ago.
• What was the Dark Age of Comic Books?
• Moving From Windows To FreeBSD As The Linux Chaos Alternative.
• Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology.  (via)
• how to use the internet again: a curriculum.  (via)

Hey, I made my averaging-once-yearly commit!

• The Questing Beast Appendix N.  I like the idea of “personal” Appendix Ns.
• Phrack is still publishing.  (via)
• PagedOut, tech articles with a one-page max.  (also via)
• Winners of the 2025 IFComp.  (via)
• One of Pascal’s original calculating machines from 1642 is up for sale.  (via)
• AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System.  Seeing the inside of Brian Kernighan’s office is sorta neat.  (video, via)
• Drawing an ASCII TIE fighter for post?quantum cryptography.
• Robot Phone Home…Or Else.
• Cursed Knowledge.  (via)

Doing my best to clean out old to-post items, so some of these sources are weeks old – but I hope new to you.

• Overview of alic and Differences from C.  (via)
• Introducing TCP-in-UDP solution.  That seems weird.  (via)
• How 100MB Ethernet came to exist.
• Project MadHat, building a CPU from the ground up.  (via)
• Paper Apps Labyrinth.  Single player notebook game.  (via)
• Same place, Pencil Dice.
• A Retrospective Survey of 2024/2025 Open Source Supply Chain Compromises.  (via)
• Random Demonic Incursion Generator Test Case.
• A coffee chat in links.
• OpenSSH and Post-Quantum Cryptography.  Now a default warning.

I think I find these link collections most satisfying when I have can point at history, opinion, and “oddity” links all at the same time.

• PalaeoGames.  “Scientifically accurate content for your palaeontology-themed tabletop role playing game”.  Dungeons and Dragons Dinosaurs.  (via)
• The power we use and the power we give.  (via)
• Related: Meta’s Cyber Necrocide.  (via)
• Open Source is one person.  (via)  Insert XKCD cartoon here; you know which one.
• Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa, YouTube.  (via)
• Aseprite, a pixel art / sprite animation tool.  (via)
• 16 Pixel Dungeon, a game.  (via)
• Unix Co-Creator Brian Kernighan on Rust, Distros and NixOS.  (via)
• Discuss.systems: Discussion of computer systems research & practice.
• Previous link comes from Rob Ricci’s Are We Decentralized Yet?
• ded, a variant on ed(1).  (via)
• Which means I have to bring up Ed Mastery, the book.
• The Fortean Times is still running!  It is crazy.  (via)