DragonFly BSD Digest – A running description of activity related to DragonFly BSD.

2025/03/302025/03/26

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/30

No overriding theme this week, though several trends did start to crystallize.

FediMeteo: How a Tiny €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service for Thousands. I like the low-resources aspect. (via)
The HTML Review issue 3 and The HTML Review issue 4. Linked for the rotating table of contents / doorways table of contents; it’s neat. (via)
this page is under construction. Read to the end for more links. (via)
The Graphing Calculator Story, (via)
“A calculator app? Anyone could make that.” (via)
Manage UPS on FreeBSD. Linked cause it mentions how to turn off the beep.
BSDCan 2025 registration is open.
NarraScope registration is open too.
The cleanest VAX you’ll ever see,
Bolt Action, WWII minature gaming I’ve not seen before.
A USB interface to the “Mother of All Demos” keyset. Borrowing one of Englebart’s original chorded keysets is the startling thing here.

2025/03/232025/03/19

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/23

A lessons learned week.

Computer Science the Fun Way, a Humble Bundle. (via)
Fight On! issue 16 is out. (via)
FreeBSD and KDE Plasma generations. I think the right answer on versioning there.
Patrick Collision’s bookshelf. (via)
Framework 13 AMD Setup with FreeBSD. I could use a new laptop; this x220 is getting long in the tooth.
Silicon Valley’s thing about Great Men, a followup on the previous source.
Owning your own space and content is important.
Make yourself less valuable to tech companies. The sheer number of things you can turn off that are just extractive data about you is a sort of wake-up call. (via)
BBC Micro emulation directly in the browser. (via)
If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling. And leave extra cable length when you pull; everyone gets to learn this the hard way.

2025/03/162025/03/06

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/16

Done early!

Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook. For pre-order, and excerpts are available. I think this is a unique book; catch the limited print while you can. (via)
Vim Spellcheck Cheat Sheet.
NetBSD on Raspberry Pi!
State of virtualizing the BSDs on Apple Silicon.
From ACS to Altair: The Rise of the Hobby Computer.
Walter Bright’s Classic Empire, Empire Deluxe, and original author Walter Bright. (incidentally, original available as a port/pkg/port)
Standalone Digital Scratch Instrument.
Debugging aids for pf firewall rules [on FreeBSD]. For reference.
Free MWL excerpts/books. (via)
If you’re going to GDC, there’s a Roguelike Celebration meetup on the 18th.
UNIX advertisements. (via) From that page:

2025/03/092025/02/24

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/09

The remainder of my tab cleanout from last week.

Blocko – Lego TC LOGO interface for Apple II. (via)
The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR is Dead… I never knew these details.
Good Movies as Old Books. The URL does not lie. (via)
Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass | Clip | Quay Brothers. (Youtube, via)
FreeBSD 13.5 Overcomes UFS Y2038 Problem To Push It Out To Year 2106. The first actual Y2038 fix I’ve heard of.
If you believe in “Artificial Intelligence”, take five minutes to ask it about stuff you know well.
Gamer Deep Lore, Exhibit #5. Star Fleet Battles. The format is similar to much-less-complicated Silent Death.
Brick your phone, on purpose. (via)
Captured Innovation: Technology Monopoly Response to Transformational Development. “Disruption” no longer applies to the large Internet companies. (via)
Possibly the earliest runnable version of Unix?

Your unrelated link of the week: My Six-Point Plan To Help You Stop Living Mindfully And Enter A Constant State of “Living Sleep”. Ha ha ha wait.

2025/03/022025/02/22

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/02

I had to get some of my tabs closed, so here’s a dump of some of them. Still have 30 to get through.

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of ProVUE at MacWorld Expo! Rare to see software that started on a FatMac, still going. (via)
Auto-Download Your Kindle Books Before February 26th Deadline. Makes the alternatives look better.
The Perfect Pi Pico Portable Computer which led me to the more accessible DevTerm.
Related: the Ink Console. Read all the way through for more story.
The hardest working font in Manhattan. If you think that article’s in-depth, you should read the author’s book, Shift Happens – which I am halfway through.
Post-Quantum Cryptography in February 2025. Short version: start preferring AES now and deprecate ECDSA.
The Pocket Computer Museum. (via)
Analog vs. Digital? Nah. PC vs. Hardware. (via)

2025/02/252025/02/22

Building a custom live DragonFly image

I’ve mentioned it before, but custom live images are possible. Related: mkisofs(8) is no longer needed to build.

2025/02/232025/02/14

Lazy Reading for 2025/02/23

Some deeper reads.

(mac)OStalgia. Mac OS 9 versions of software; accurate to the end. (via)
The Mythology Index. (via)
DIA Tools. (via)
A Tiny Computer With A 3D Printed QWERTY Keyboard.
PDP-11 computer system UNIX System file system.
The History of S.u.S.E. Something I knew of but did not know.
New Rust, Old Drama. Open source burnout is not new.
This Week in Self-Hosted, via the previous link. A curated, updated list of self-hosted apps? This makes me happy.
“ALGNOSTIC”, “MAILIVORE”.
UNIX Magic poster annotations. (via)
How to add a directory to your PATH. Not as straightforward as assumed.
I never got the memo on “copyover servers”.

2025/02/162025/02/11

Lazy Reading for 2025/02/16

I almost maintain a theme all the way today.

The origin and unexpected evolution of the word “mainframe”. 2 words.
I Don’t Have Spotify. (via)
Electromechanical computer from 1948 and hydromechanical computer, videos. (via)
My stupid noise journey. I have done similar.
Ambient computer research. (via)
Stealth Macintosh Portable Case Mod. (via)
Found at previous link: Macintosh Plus Exploded View shirt.
The Internet Can’t Discover.
Comics That Resemble The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan Album Cover. Swipes swipes swipes.
A Closer Look at the Tanmatsu. My recurring fantasy of doing everything at a terminal somehow.
Sorta related: Some Terminal Frustrations.

Your unrelated violent claymation fantasy movie link of the week: The Dead Need No Chairs.

2025/02/092025/02/01

Lazy Reading for 2025/02/09

I have some interesting art projects to point at, here.

Programming Quotes. (via)
The CRPG Renaissance, Part 1: Fallout. I didn’t know about the GURPS link.
The first perfect computer. (via)
Recommended File Formats for Digital Preservation. (via)
My electric toothbrush was acting up, so I tried to reboot it.
Also “I tried to adjust the time on my alarm clock. I failed.“
Insert “I will pay extra to NOT have a computer in my fridge” meme here.
The glory of the A4 paper size. Sorry about the link location though. (via)
Hyper-Kinetic. “I have a pen plotter robot called Stephen”. (also via)
Data Viz Project. (via)
Amiga Hardcore. (also via)
Then were the horsehoofs broken by the means of their pransings. Online reviews are a marketing tool, not a quality reference.
Solid State Watch. Art project, but also definitely waterproof.

2025/02/022025/01/27

Lazy Reading for 2025/02/02

Got all the types this week.

Semi Social / Streaming hardware test session for NYCBUG, this Wednesday.
2025 IGF nominees, quick takes.
Five Centuries of Board Games.
Plan 9 inspired programs. (via)
The Monospace Web. Looks nice. (via)
ELIZA followup. Hopefully you get the joke.
Dragonsweeper. (via)
The PC is Dead: It’s Time to Make Computing Personal Again.
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy.
The truth about proprietary protocols.
Which leads me to Pixelfed and Loops.
Or, y’know, Tumblr.
FACT 2025, which has a great speaker lineup. (via)
The expanded Raiding the 20th Century turns twenty. “all copyright-infringement”.
Narcissystem.
Beginning Framework.
Up Rye Zine.

2025/01/262025/01/14

Lazy Reading for 2025/01/26

Done quite early, but it cleared my tabs.

A Retrospective on the Source Code Control System. SCCS, summarized by the guy who wrote it, 50 years later. (via)
Coding font comparison, the game. (via)
The new Public Domain Image Archive.
“/bin/sh: the biggest Unix security loophole“. A more fun read than the format would lead you to believe. (via)
The Visible Zorker. This is quite a gem.
Can you complete the Oregon Trail if you wait at a river for 14272 years: A study. (via)
What’s involved in getting a “modern” terminal setup? (via)
a grep that doesn’t stuck. Not a typo.
A tale from the time_t mines:
Using tcpdump to see only incoming or outgoing traffic.
What a FreeBSD kernel message about your bridge means.

Your unrelated music of the week: Tenebre Rosso Sangue by KEYGEN CHURCH.

2025/01/192025/01/14

Lazy Reading for 2025/01/19

Quirky, just like I want it.

Why is editing PDFs so prevalent?
A Suitably Bizarre Start of the Year 2025.
Naming Quarters. I think fortnights and sennights are underutilized timeframes, incidentally.
pkgsrc-2024Q4 is out.
Tellico, collection management software. (via)
Some of the original BeOS icons reimagined in Blender. (via)
Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets. (via)
The next leap second is at least a year away.
Copyright-free images. A vast amount of images available.

Your unrelated music link of the week: Where to Start With Tempa, The Label That Invented Dubstep.

2025/01/122025/01/09

Lazy Reading for 2025/01/12

Nice mix this week.

Traveller Reading.
Your Comics Will Love You Back! (via)
The Ghosts in the Machine. Don’t use Spotify. Cancel your account, if you have one. Nothing else will cause change. (via multiple)
My Favorite Weird Little Apps. (via)
Field Companions. (via)
In an unconfigured Vim, I want to do ‘:set paste’ right away. Reminder to self; muscle memory won’t change to accommodate anything else.
How Multi-User Dungeons Taught Me To Code. Having a goal makes it much easier to learn to code. (via)
Generative AI is for the idea guys. The ratio of idea to implementation at every place I’ve ever worked is like 1000:1.
Y2K, again. It’ll be a problem 13, 25, and 75 years from now. Don’t forget GPS week number rollover while considering fundamental date problems.
Public Domain Day 2025. The Dashiell Hammett books are good if you have not read them yet.
Happy Public Domain Day 2025. Same topic, but it has specific links to good stuff.

NYC*BUG Wednesday: QEMU Virtualization

This Wednesday, Jim Brown presents on QEMU at NYCBUG’s monthly meeting. Go, if you are near, but RSVP first so you can get in. It should be streamed too.

2025/01/052025/01/04

Lazy Reading for 2025/01/05

Happy new year! I have some history gems in here – not archival material but people that made history, speaking again, now.

A TI-99 programmer resurfaces. (via Paul Ivanov, thanks)
Fall 2024 FreeBSD Summit – The History of the BSD Daemon. The original artist, Phil Foglio, is still making excellent comics. (video, via)
Technical Marvels, Part 9: Program-Controlled Musical Picture Clocks. Novel to me. (via)
Developing a public-interest training commons of books. (via)
Not BSDTalk, but talk(1) on BSD. Follow the thread.
Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository. I remember reading this but not linking this. (via this long thread)
An oral history of AutoDesk. (via)
What an Atari workstation might have looked like.
Apropos for the new year: BSDCan 2025 call for papers.
MNT laptops are neat, but they also do… earrings? (via)
Research of RAM data remanence times. (via)
Public Domain Day at the Internet Archive.
And at the Public Domain Review.
QEMU Virtualization on BSDs, Jim Brown, in 3 days. RSVP needed if you are going, which I recommend.

2025/01/032024/12/27

Mail(1) and resizing

This is going to seem minor, but it’s been annoying for a zillion years, and now it’s fixed: mail(1) now reflows text properly after a screen resize.

2024/12/312024/12/27

Encrypted disk users needed

If you use TrueCrypt / tcplay, dm-crypt, or /dev/crypto on DragonFly, Michael Neumann wants to know.

2024/12/292024/12/26

Lazy Reading for 2024/12/29

Cleared half my tabs and none of my inbox… I think I’ll get started on next week’s Lazy Reading right now.

Every Single Noise In The World. (via)
Domain Naming. (also via)
A Guide to Commodore PETs. I love the shape.
Frequently asked questions about signal handling in C.
Half-Life on the Digital Antiquarian.
LinkedIn to Hell. (via)
At Dawn We Ate Sugar Smacks: Wargaming Newbies Tackle the Monster of Monsters. A horrifying person writing a funny essay. (via)
UFO50. (via)
Anime Mechanics. (via)
Starting with Classic Traveller.
Smartphone Runs Home Server.
Ridding my home network of IP addresses. Personal complaint: Github gists: better than social media for public documents, but not much. (via)

2024/12/222024/12/18

Lazy Reading for 2024/12/22

Terminal thoughts this week.

Century-Scale Storage. “The RAMAC data is thermodynamically stable for longer than the expected lifetime of the universe,” (via)
“Rules” that terminal programs follow. (via)
Text-based tools I’m using on my FreeBSD laptop.
Related: chawan, a TUI-based web browser. (via)
Sort of related empty musing: could Ladybird have a text mode?
Resurrection, Journal of the Computer Conservation Society. Yay a flowchart! (also via)
The “simple” 38 step journey to getting an RFC.
TRMNL, a sorta-standalone e-ink display. (via)
Anti-Schmutz Phone Port Plug. I use a needle which is probably a bad idea.
RFC 35140: The Do-Not-Stab flag in the HTTP Header. (via)

2024/12/152024/12/13

Lazy Reading for 2024/12/15

I could use a recommendation for a good, cheap registrar to use for domain names; I use gandi and the price has been creeping up. Any suggestions?

Next NYCBUG: QEMU Virtualization on BSDs, Jim Brown, 2025-01-08. QEMU is far more influential than I expected.
For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website. (via)
The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2023).
A physical save button.
Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (1978) vs Spanner (2012). (via)
SCCS roach motel. A pretty exhaustive description of SCCS and the weave format.
Creating a Typeface: Humanist Computer.
Public domain works done for NASA. (via previous)
The Biggest Shell Programs in the World. You want to look and also look away. (via)