Justin Sherrill – Page 2 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2024/08/252024/08/20

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/25

Links are all over the map, but I mostly cleared my tab backlog.

Random sightings of UNIX in odd places. Also Vim. (mostly via)
Related: the classic not-UNIX page.
A note to myself about using traceroute to check for port reachability. Includes BSD comparisons.
Level Titles: Fighters and Thieves. Linked cause I like the title “Filcher”.
Gotta Block ’em All. AI scrapers are the new port scanners.
Remote Desktop using RDP and VNC.
FreeBSD Software Picks July 2024, a video. (via)
Fictional Brands Archive. (via)
Diagrams without context. (also via)
The Cremaster Cycle is on the Internet Archive. Warning: art film, crazy. (via)

2024/08/182024/08/13

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/18

Odd hardware week.

Repository Statistics. That’s way more package repos than I expected. (via)
The bizarre secrets I found investigating corrupt Winamp skins. (via)
A short history of the 909 in 16 songs. (via)
DMARC Vendors. (via)
Sign up to support the Interim Computer Museum.
… because you can actually use the exhibits.
Technical Marvels, Part 5: Chess Automatons.
asciiker, a game that is vaguely roguelike but also 3D – right-click and rotate. (via)
When does The Phantom Tollbooth take place?
minuteman missile communications.
Sensorwatch, put a tiny computer in your Casio wristwatch. (via)
Michael W. Lucas’s next book might be It’s Always DNS.
Indirectly related, Full-featured email server running OpenBSD
E-ink digit clock.
Replacing postfix with dma + auth, easy.
Betrayal is the Internet’s business model.
New Brothers Quay film on the way. No trailer, darnit. (via)
“Weird Al” Yankovic – Polkamania! I am pretty sure it starts with a Cyriak animation. (via)

2024/08/112024/08/07

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/11

Oddities this week.

Join the Interim Computer Museum. (via)
containerization moves the learning period from “before deployment” to “during outages” I’m quoting a quote of a quote there.
public.work, visually search public domain images. (via)
And if you like that, read The mining of the public domain, an excellent analysis of public.work.
A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Beholders. Avery D&D-specific monster.
defrag98.com. Never a good screen to see. (via)
EuroBSDCon 2024 will be September 19-22 in Dublin.
Leap smears, a proposal. “My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that this scheme would work for about half a millennium”
Iconography of the X Window System: The Boot Stipple. (via)
Visualizing Sound and Graphic Traces, both are.na channels. (via)
What the Microsoft Outage Reveals. Read it for the software engineering joke. (via)
Back to BASIC. (also via)
The Adler Archive of Underground Comix. (via)
Putting your phone to sleep with a pillow. (via)

Your unrelated music videos for the day: DRASS – Reaperman. Taking advantage of AI image generation’s inaccuracy, though you bet is more disturbing. (via)

2024/08/042024/08/04

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/04

FINALLY cleaned out my inbox.

NYCBUG Aug 7: Brian Callahan “Once again, I’ve done something no one asked for”
(added after I published this) “Constructing Your Own Linux and FreeBSD Packages” at GoLUG August 7. Watch both.
Beyond All Reason on OpenBSD, a video. (via)
Hypercard Simulator. (via)
Stephen King’s The Mist, 80’s text adventure.
OpenBSD Workstation for the People.
the contemporary carphone.
Pretty pictures, bootable floppy disks, and the first Canon Cat demo. I find the Canon Cat interesting in a “what if…” sort of way.
Barbarian Prince – Ultimate Edition. Solitaire D&D.
How MetaFilter works.
Unigram-X newsletters, early commercial UNIX history. (Scroll down)
“in BLISS we don’t solve problems, we ELUDOM.“
What’s neater than e-ink? Ferrofluid.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess, free version. (via)

2024/07/282024/07/17

Lazy Reading for 2024/07/28

I am attempting to clear my link backlog but not succeeding.

Deconstructing the Role-Playing Video Game. (via)
From boiling lead and black art. Veers into UNIX history at the end. (via)
A Look Back at StripWare.
Escaping the software tar pit: model clashes and how to avoid them. (via)
The Programmer Productivity Myth.
Plan 9 ported to SPARC over a few days.
More engineering case studies to dive into.
You can see when Great Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar by typing ‘cal 9 1752’. Just cause time is messy, it’s different for other countries.
Also, time goes faster on the moon. That’s not a figure of speech.
Video of Michael W. Lucas’s recent presentation on Run Your Own Mail Server at NYCBUG.
State of Text Rendering 2024. (via)
Esquire’s 75 best sci-fi books of all time. Feels clickbaity, but a good list for finding books you may not have read yet. (via)

2024/07/212024/07/12

Lazy Reading for 2024/07/21

I wanted to clear all the newsletters items I’ve saved, so you are getting links until my inbox no longer paginates.

Just Use Postgres for Everything. (via)
When web search failed me for Postgres.
The Future of MySQL is Postgres. (target from previous link)
From Cloud Chaos to FreeBSD Efficiency. Or any BSD. (via)
Layers and Gateways, a historical view. Railways vs networks.
The workstation you wanted in 1990, in your pocket.
Paul Ceruzzi has a Substack.
pkgsrc-2024Q2 is out.
X Window System at 40. (via)
Some TENEX history.
Why shitty robots are the antidote of perfectionism, a video. Her store has neat stuff.
Scifiinterfaces.com. I linked to this in 2013 but it’s still going. (reminded via)
Largest old computer I’ve seen a person keep yet. (via)
Tiny TV 2. (via)
UNLICENSED: Bootlegging As Creative Practice, a book. (via)
One Page Dungeon Reviews. (via)

2024/07/142024/07/11

Lazy Reading for 2024/07/14

Almost all links from saved emails instead of RSS, for once.

The history of Alt+number sequences, and why Alt+9731 sometimes gives you a heart and sometimes a snowman.
Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm. (via)
Entering text in the terminal is complicated. (via)
PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights. (via)
A Mini Monitor for a Pi. (via)
July 19th: Will Wright interviews Chaim Gingold, author of “Building
SimCity”. Note the reversal.
It’s Easy. But Is It Easy Enough? Not necessarily advocating this.
What You Get After Running an SSH Honeypot for 30 Days. (via)
Culinary Bibliographic Metadata. The standards for library info look to me like a good example of a standard that evolved based on users, not commercial influence. (via)
Related: Working with ACSM Files on Linux.
BSDCan 2024 on video. Set aside time for watching these. (via)

2024/07/072024/07/05

Lazy Reading for 2024/07/07

I got quote-happy this week.

Ladybird Browser Initiative. (via several places)
Related to the previous link: Mozilla is an advertising company now and Mozilla’s Original Sin.
The new Fantasy Steampunk Storybundle, with orcs! Unrelated to MWL’s about-to-come-out tech book that you should order, or his next book.
Related: Next NYC*BUG: July 10th The State of Email, By: Michael W. Lucas. Note that you should RSVP so you can get access.
I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again. “Consider the fact that most companies are unable to successfully develop and deploy the simplest of CRUD applications on time and under budget.” (via everywhere)
Schotter, part 1 and part 2. “Sometimes it’s fun to pick a rabbit hole and follow it all the way down.” (via)
Donkey Kong: A Record of Struggle. (via)
The time smart quotes prevented the entire Office division from committing code. “Just another example of I HAVE NO TOOLS BECAUSE I’VE DESTROYED MY TOOLS WITH MY TOOLS.”
Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets. I am pretty sure you are carrying something similar to this in your pocket right now.
A potpourri of cool-looking scripts. Scripts as in typeface.
1/25-Scale Cray C90 Wristwatch. “my wristwatch runs a full n-body simulation of Jupiter and 63 of its moons.” (via)
The best version of an Apple Watch. (via)
Chernobyl power plant as table lamp. I am OK with linking to this cause I already bought mine. (via I lost it, sorry)

2024/06/292024/06/30

Lazy Reading for 2024/06/30

I was not able to get this done early like the last few posts, but there’s still a good range here.

Can You Make It Bigger? – A Journey In Building Arcade Cabinets. (via)
Via previous story, the Picade.
The 84 Series. On point for current topics and period stylings. (via)
Bat Hauntings on Apple VR. This, then, is the future. (via)
3D Printing My Teeth. (via)
valve.computer. Hardcore analog. (via I lost it, sorry)
Schotter – Georg Nees – Part 1. (via)
The Old Computer Challenge v4 (Olympics edition)
Try out a NetBSD system in 20 seconds (amd64 & amr64).
Things to Make and Do.

2024/06/232024/06/19

Lazy Reading for 2024/06/23

I have a weird schedule this week but I think I came up with sufficient links.

Artifacting. Understanding JPEG encoding will incidentally help understanding MPEG.
Technical Marvels, the start, plus the Lebombo and Ishango Bones. An ongoing series, so I’m interested on what they do with the Antikythera Device. (via)
diff turns 50. (via)
Micropolis, Simcity recreated in-browser and in-progress by one of the original developers. (via)
Random Demonic Incursion Generator. (via)
MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5. (via I lost it, sorry)
Spreadsheet Assassins. Almost my entire IT expense budget at my main job is “Monthly fees”. (via)
Mathematical Art by Henry Segerman.
Adding a USB Port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the Hard Way).

2024/06/162024/06/14

Lazy Reading for 2024/06/16

Text tools this week.

CommonMark, a Markdown specification.
LyX, a TeX editor. (this and previous from this thread.)
nvi command summaries. Follow the thread.
BSD User Group Düsseldorf Juli 2024.
Programming Prayer: The Woven Book of Hours (1886–87).
XScreenSaver 6.09 out now.
Greatest Comics Of All Time as Chosen by 45 Writers and Artists. (via)
Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers. (via many)
EuroBSDCon is in September.
ASCII-Silhouettify. (via)

Music of the week: The Deep Ark, 8 hours of 90s electronica. (via)

2024/06/092024/06/08

Lazy Reading for 2024/06/09

Technical reading is the accidental theme.

Refurb Weekend: Canon Cat. This is a far more capable machine than I ever knew about.
Terminal Text Effects. Much showier than I expected. (via)
Losing Sight of Creators. Ad-blockers aren’t the answer; finding ways to support creators without ads is.
City in a Bottle. Via multiple places.
Replacing my OPNsense gateway hardware by a Protectli appliance.
Classic Computer Brochures. (via)
Clip art. A higher quality collection than you’d expect. (also via)
A UNIX Primer. (via)
Mike Karel’s final presentation.
Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine. About simulation in general, not just the one game series. (via)
Running XVNC through inetd. Might be useful to you.
Multiple vi reference charts. (via multiple posts)

The Kickstarter for Michael W. Lucas’s Run Your Own Mail Server book is ending later today. It’s been so successful that he’s been adding copies of his other books as rewards for every backer – which means if you buy this book at any tier, you get (at last count) 7 more books. It’s a good deal, but you have only this afternoon to get it.

2024/06/05

NYCBUG tonight

NYCBUG is meeting tonight at a changed location. There’s going to be discussion of the just-finished BSDCan plus talk about membership growth and handling streaming events.

2024/06/022024/05/27

Lazy Reading for 2024/06/02

This week, extended commentary on the links.

Unscalable, Hand-Crafted Lists of Links. “Even today, thirty years after Jerry and David, I still visit bookmarked webpages that maintain human-curated lists of links.” You can guess my opinion of that.
Higher Intellect, a huge repository of documents of the sort you’d find squirreled away on the Internet in the late 90’s. There’s a PHRACK section, for instance, or nice copies of US WW2 posters.. (via)
Defeating Mouse Lint. Mechanical mice only existed for a specific period in time, and probably never will again.
The Tomb of Horrors. I had heard of this ‘impossible’ D&D module but never actually tried it.
how-to.computer. This is the 2020s versions of old homesteading guides. Can you self-host too much? I think not. (via)
LaTeX for Complete Novices. Nobody ever seems excited about LaTeX but people always report “I did a ton of work with it without issue”. (via)
The Most Interesting Uninteresting Thing. There’s some great quotable bits in this but my favorite is “The main change in this particular round is I can’t remember a time we had so many people showing their whole and entire ass by saying “I can’t wait to fire ______ because this MAKESHITUP.BAT file is producing reasonably full sentences”. “
The Space Quest II Master Disk Blunder. Even if it was a blunder, the effects would have been limited by the lack of consumer Internet. (via)
LibreOffice Substitutes. Something here to try for everyone.
Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet. I haven’t read it yet, but I find the idea of software platforms that doesn’t exist to disintermediate users and extract revenue intriguing.
Two important things: the longest domain name I’ve seen yet, and the Kickstarter for Run Your Own Mailserver, an important technical book and also because SMTP is becoming hard to do at any scale other than “huge”. (via)
I signed up for the aforementioned Kickstarter as should you; note there’s a Signed Useless EBook edition. Don’t buy it, just be entertained by the concept.