Lazy Reading – Page 25 – DragonFly BSD Digest

secho: “a hypothetical FSF-style implementation of echo“. Spot-on. (via)
IPv6 excuses. (also via)
Have any of you switched to Bash on Windows? It worries me in a subtle way that bash is the only necessary part of UNIX-like systems for some people.
The Bargain That Revived Bell Labs. The Eero Saarinen-designed building where Unix was invented, I think. I like what’s being done with it. (via)
WTF IS OPERATIONS? #SERVERLESS. Also part two. Points out that moving operational items to cloud services doesn’t get rid of operational functions. (via)
The History of Mac Gaming. (via)
Common Lisp: The Untold Story. (via)
Harvey OS – A Fresh Take on Plan 9. (via)

2016/05/292016/05/27

Lazy Reading for 2016/05/29

What are people using for a web framework these days? I was messing with Fat Free Framework, and there seems to be about a zillion options, for many languages, these days.

Reverse Engineering A Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel. (via)
Is it worth learning vim?
Security through lying.
Pre-ASCII ASCII art. (via)
XScreenSaver 5.35. Interesting history description too.
The Many Uses of Net-SNMP and Extending Net-SNMP. (via)
Shadow leaks.
Swiss – Unix in a Box for Windows and Minoca OS. Busybox for Windows. (via)
Your Occasional Reminder to Use Plain Text Whenever Possible. (via)
Pico Processes. AKA, Microsoft reinvents jails or maybe vkernels, except with more code names for the concepts. I see this over and over again. (via)
John Blankenbaker and the Story of the KENBAK-1. (via)
Whither Plan 9? History and motivation. (via)

Your unrelated comics link of the week: The Digital Comics Museum.

2016/05/222016/05/20

Lazy Reading for 2015/05/22

A nice wide range of topics, again!

Bletchley Park computers. (via)
LITCAVE – one-man recreations of cc, vi, troff, x, and so on. (via)
50 Shades of Open. My pet peeve is when it’s used for a API to a closed source service. (via)
Browsix – A Unix-Like Operating System for the Browser. (via)
Clicky keyboard links.
Unix on a…. ti-83+? (via)
file considered harmful
Pointer Overflow Checking.
Keynotes from OSCON in Austin 2016.
More details on hardware time protocols than you may ever have thought of.
Dear Mommy Blogger. Some of that applies to this blog, too. I get some stupid offers for essentially paid articles here, and I avoid them. If I’m selling something, it’s cause it’s good BSD-related material or because I know the person. (via)
Programming the ENIAC: an example of why computer history is hard. (via)
Ask HN: What is an open-source alternative to Google Home?

2016/05/152016/05/13

Lazy Reading for 2016/05/15

I have some links I meant to post weeks ago, so lots of variety this week.

Termux. Turn your phone effectively into a VT100.
The Independent Discovery of TCP/IP, By Ants. (via)
The void left by the parallel port. Well, I don’t miss it. (via)
The invisible language of trains boats and planes. (via)
Teaching C. Lots of good links to follow there.
SDF Plan 9 boot camp. Here’s your chance to try Plan 9. Or maybe not yet. (via)
Oh dear, we’ve all been made redundant…
Remote serial consoles.
Will the NSA Finally Build Its Superconducting Spy Computer? Mostly about cryogenic computing. (via)
Remotely Interested, a podcast. Interesting guests.
Shiva Ayyadurai Wants My Emails (via)
It sounds like NTPsec is to NTP like LibreSSL is to OpenSSL.
How browsers render emoji. (via)
Curio. The “modern demoscene”. (via)
this week in astounding defaults.
Submarine Cable Map. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: The GLOG. The Goblin Laws of Gaming, a homebrew RPG. I love just reading the rules on these sorts of things.

2016/05/082016/05/05

Lazy Reading for 2016/05/08

Network tools and analysis is the accidental topic this week.

More open-source network management tools.
How do ISPs and modems actually obtain the right signal off of a phone/cable/optical fiber/whatever line? A layer-1 overview. (via)
A damp discussion of network queuing. (via)
How To Make Fossils Productive Again. (via)
Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence.
SSH for fun and profit. (via)
CV of Failures. I like the last one. (via)
Go best practices, six years in. (via)
PocketCHIP, hardware for PICO-8. (via)
Typewriter.
Circuit Classics — Sneak Peek!
An update on SSH protocol 1. Dead in a year, that’s the update. (via)
How difficult is the GVG-AI competition?
Deflecting it old school. From here.

Your unrelated tea link of the week: British tea consumption has been going down. (via) I like the additional charts about biscuits and cake, complementary to tea. Which reminds me: Welsh cakes are so good that the first time I made them, I was angry that I hadn’t tried them years ago.

2016/05/012016/04/29

Lazy Reading for 2016/05/01

Cinco De Mayo is coming up.

Why I run my business like an open source project. The contractors I use at work that take this approach are much easier to work with. (via)
Detecting the use of “curl | bash” server side. Even more evidence of what a bad idea that strategy can be. (via)
Developer Certificate of Origin versus Contributor License Agreements. Boring, but I understand the reasoning. (also via)
Creating Magnetic Disk Storage at IBM. (via)
The Sad History of the Microsoft Posix Subsystem. Displaced by Winbuntu. (via)
What happened to _why.
Email Isn’t The Thing You’re Bad At. I see so many people with this problem. (via)
Baby UNIX.
Dyson’s Maps & Cartography. Hand-drawn D&D maps. (via)
Related: The Dice You Never Knew You Needed. Buy here. (via)
5 Magical Beasts And How To Replace Them With A Shell Script.
GEOS, an operating system I never really knew about.
when i wore a younger fool’s cap. GitHub uber alles.
O Reader! My Reader. I’ve gotten used to tt-rss.

Your unrelated link of the week: What was the weirdest 911 call ever received? (via)

2016/04/242016/04/22

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/24

This week filled up fast, despite me having an exam to take in the middle of it.

Site Reliability Engineering, the book and the notes on the book. (via)
Related: O’Reilly has a significant discount right now on the ebook version.
How to recover lost files added to Git but not committed.
How to make a minimalist stereo with an old phone and a $20 amp. This works with an old BSD machine too.
Fun, distracting websites for down-time.
THE 64 – Computer and Handheld Console. In a keyboard, and in a handheld.
Classic Programmer Paintings. (via)
What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups. (via)
A Crypt-Crawling Tactical Roguelike: Ananias. Plays in browser.
There is no cloud. I need one of those. (via)
A Notable Omission. Related to the previous link. Also, there’s going to be some panicked selling over the next few weeks, I bet. (via)
Curing Our Slack Addiction. An old business rule: Increase communication, people ask questions instead of making decisions. Increase available data, people make decisions instead of asking questions. (via)
TEXT-MODE, ASCII/ANSI images. (via)
Why is there a screen that says “It is now safe to turn off your computer”?
The story behind NetHack’s first update since 2003. (via)
ZALGO RLY.
Next generation UNIX shell. Never improve, just reinvent! See also: CADT.(via)
Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man Month, free to read. One of the better books ever written about software development or even just knowledge projects. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: HOW TO OPERATE YOUR FROG. (via)

2016/04/172016/04/15

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/17

I’m studying for a test next week, so the amount of random clicking-around that I’ve been able to do has been limited.

Write Opinionated Workarounds.
Devs Answer: What are the best comments left in your code? (via)
restart the void: bot-generated apocalyptic error messages. (via, via)
Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book. (via)
Vim 8.0 is coming. (via)
The Internet of things you inherit or leave behind. (via)
Parametric, Open source, 3D modelling – in your browser. (via)
not smart is not stupid. “As the old adage goes, if there’s a feature, it’s going to break.”
Here’s What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe. (via)
Some phone history via NANOG.
The Vintage Computer Festival East XI is finishing up right now. (via)
The story of the “battleshort“. (via)

Your off-topic pen link of the week: Remember I asked once about decent fountain pens that were not expensive? I found one, and it’s great.

2016/04/102016/04/09

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/10

I’ve finally used up my Lazy Reading links backlog!

Hand-crafted containers. A good explanation of how containers are set up, and a certain sense of deja vu for anyone familiar with BSD jails. (via)
Punctuation in Novels. I like seeing the conversion of data from text to image. (also via)
Overclocking an old IBM 701. The butterfly keyboard model. (via)
Accurate CRT Simulation. (via)
RS-232 for Commodore PET and Dialing a BBS Over WiFi. (via)
tmux2html: “Render full tmux windows or individual panes as HTML.” (via)
MobaXterm – all-in-one SSH/X client. Anyone use this vs. PuTTY?
Documentation is for the weak.
A Brief History of ClarisWorks. Back when office packages were actually light. (via)
Dwarf Fortress’ creator on how he’s 42% towards simulating existence. (via)
What Infrastructure Should Learn from NPM JavaScript Debacle. “Don’t execute programs directly from the Internet” should not be a hard lesson to learn. (via)
Debian ships very outdated packages. It frustrates upstream creators. The response from most people misses the point, but the maintainer at least has a sane response. (via and via)
Ubuntu on Windows. I think it’s less “Let’s use Linux” and more “Apple’s UNIX tools get everyone to buy Macbooks, let’s try that.” It unfortunately does not do anything (yet?) with process control or user authorization or other things you would actually need. Related: GNU/kWindows. (via).

Your sort-of off-topic link of the week: Michael W. Lucas’s fiction is, for a short time, part of a larger book bundle which is available for less than the price of buying it all individually. Buy now if you want a deal/lots of fiction to read.

2016/04/032016/04/04

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/03

This I all built up over the past two weeks, so plenty to read here.

How To Write Unmaintainable Code. (via)
An implementation of Sublime’s PlainTasks plugin for Vim.
Dotfile Management and Documentation with Org-Mode. Equal time provision. (via)
@Play 85: A Talk with Digital Eel, Makers of the Infinite Space Games.
Digital Nature, a summary of world-building software starting with Bryce.
How to Write a Roguelike in 15 Steps. Not linkbait – a real, in-depth procedure. (via)
Generating and Populating Caves. I like the map images. (via)
The Imitation Game, about Alan Turing (sample). Here’s historical audio to go with it.
Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust. UNIX gets reinvented on a regular basis. Also related. (via)
Maintain Separate GitHub accounts. I’ve seen people bit by this just with email. (via)
Technical jargon failure modes.
Did you ever play Myst?
Instagram hates the Internet. Noted in article: people leaving Twitter for Instagram. I see that trend.

2016/03/272016/03/26

Lazy Reading for 2016/03/27

This is actually overflow completely from previous weeks. I am not sure how I am ending up so far ahead on these but not the Saturday BSD items. As long as it shows up on the expected day, I suppose it works out.

Tcpdump is amazing. (via)
A Collection of Dice Problems. PDF format. (via)
Sending email in 1984. Video. (via)
Copperhead, a Life spaceship, which is a new concept to me. (via)
The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games. (via)
Digging a Little Deeper: Dwarf Fortress, Fantasy Tropes, and World Building. (via)
Open source tax credits. That would have saved me some money in recent years.
Can we save the open web? (via)
insane chown posse (via)
Preparing for Production of The Essential Guide To Electronics in Shenzhen. Seeing the physical process is neat.
SQLite with a Fine-Toothed Comb
Open-access CACM articles. This will keep you busy for a while.
Nerd Fonts.
Orgmode for Sublime Text 2 and 3. (via)

Your kinda-unrelated item for the week: Butterfly Stomp, Michael W. Lucas’s free short story. He writes fiction when he’s not writing BSD books.

2016/03/202016/03/16

Lazy Reading for 2016/03/20

I’m sort of proud of how wide a range of topics are covered this week.

Domain Name Scams Are Alive And Well, Thank You. I’ve been seeing that scam since… 2007? Less disruptive than wire transfer spearphishing, which appears more common, recently.
Frameworks don’t make much sense.
The 7drl (7-day roguelike) Challenge just completed. (via)
Universal Install Script.
What was system administration like in the 1990s and earlier?
EigenCoder: Programming Stereotypes. Beards vs. programming language. Really! (via)
X11fs – X window virtual filesystem. (via)
Let’s Read the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual. Exactly what it sounds like. Fun and/or nostalgic. (via)
Why Compatibility And Support Don’t Justify $1000 Optics. (via)
glittering.blue. The source link has how it was constructed, and its life through reposting.
Exhibit: The Entropy Archives. The “public randomness beacon” from NIST. (via)
The Deep History of Your Apps. A good history of the Alto, NeXTSTEP, and so on up to the modern app store. (via)

2016/03/132016/03/10

Lazy Reading for 2016/03/13

I had too many links for this as early as Tuesday.

A perspective on the state of the SSLiverse as of early 2016. (via the author on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
In defense of Unix. (via)
The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Science. (via)
SIGGRAPH 2016 – Computer Animation Festival Submissions. (via)
An interactive and audio history of interactive fiction. This can eat some hours. (via)
A Configuration Management Rosetta Stone. 1 program, 4 systems. (via)
An explanation of database indexes. Using PostgreSQL, but probably near-universal. (also via)
I knew but I didn’t really know there were so many named maneuvers in chess, and here’s a whole lot of visualization of them. (via)
Mr. Fart’s Favorite Colors: “you take it for granted that someone, somewhere is breaking everything he possibly can” (via)
Announcing SQL Server on Linux. It was this, or losing relevancy within 5 years. (via)
A Robot That Has Fun at Telemarketers’ Expense. Similar to Lenny. (via)
Is group chat making you sweat? A good point on attention as a limited resource. (via)
@Play 84: The Rescue of Meta-Zelda. Randomized Roguelike Legend of Zelda is a somewhat crazy, exciting concept to me.
There’s a third game in the Infinite Space series out – Sea of Stars. The first game is one of the best space-theme roguelikes out there.

Your unrelated video link of the week: Rotoscoped Horse. Taken from the old Muybridge photos. (via)

2016/03/062016/03/04

Lazy Reading for 2016/03/06

All over the map this week.

VT100 Terminal Art: old text-based animations you can run in your terminal. (via)
Free security advice. Generally correct, and not so in-depth you can’t hand it to most anyone. (via)
A project to resurrect Unix on the PDP-7 from a scan of original assembly code. (via)
Refurbishing A 1927 Switchboard. I like the way very old electronics smell, strange as that may seem. (via)
Y2K Futurism, or what people thought the future would look like 1996-2002. (via)
NexDock, or a phone/laptop dock device. This is getting pretty close to the ‘seamless’ device version I have in my head. (via)
The Five Stages of NoSQL. (via)
GNU complexity 1.5. Someone run this on a BSD. (via)
The past and future are here. It’s just not evenly distributed (yet). (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: teasmades, 50% off with the code ‘MOTHERSDAY2016’ until March 9th. Given the difference in US – UK voltage, I don’t know if this would be a good investment for me, but I’d sure like to have one.

2016/02/282016/02/24

Lazy Reading for 2016/02/28

UNIX tools are this week’s unintentional theme.

The many load averages of Unix(es). (via)
So you want to write a package manager. (via)
Headshot: A visual history of first-person shooters. (via)
Tolkien Ipsum. (via)
Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions. (via)
The Weird Global Appeal of Heavy Metal. Insert comment about stuffy old newspaper here. (via)
“Newton fax modems as packing material“
The Ephemeral Software Collection.
Are there any nice Unix shells newer than fish?
An Empirical Study of the Reliability of UNIX Utilities. (1989, via)
What was the first terminal command that really wowed you?
Do Artists Need Websites? This is why businesses only on Facebook bother me. (via)
How I Vim. (also via)

Your unrelated robot link of the week: Every new Boston Dynamics robot is creepier than the last.

2016/02/212016/02/19

Lazy Reading for 2016/02/21

I earn the roguelike tag this week.

“I built Space invaders into Dwarf Fortress.” Featuring the Almighty Dwarven Calculator. (via)
Free Lovecraft stories. (via)
Imagining your future projects is holding you back. Talking about fiction, but this applies to open source work too. (via)
Happy 25th, Webcam!
@Play 83: HyperRogue
Mac System 1.0 (via)
ASCII cows. (via)
The website of Bob Bemer, the Father of ASCII. COBOL, too? (via)
Bell Labs in the 1960s. Note how many women were there. Rementioning. (Thanks, BSD32x)
The scarcity of college graduates with FOSS experience. The license isn’t the important part where students learn; it’s the workflow: coordinating with others, source control, discussion channels, etc. That’s what isn’t taught enough. (via)
“Here’s a quant fact: the online space is measurably dumber than it was two years ago.“
Wired Style: A Linguist Explains Vintage Internet Slang. (via)
The Lonely Dungeon, the random RPG rulebook generator linked last week, now has random illustrations to go with it. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: The Voynich Manuscript and Codex Serahinianus, in PDF form. Ignore the “never-cracked ancient mystery” bit about the Voynich Manuscript, but it’s still interesting to look at.

2016/02/142016/02/12

Lazy Reading for 2016/02/14

Rapid topic shifts this week.

Planning for Disaster. Speed over correctness is all the rage, but also programming inconsequential websites is also all the rage.
The Lonely Dungeon. Markov-style classic RPG generation, it sounds like.
The book is out! “@Play: Exploring Roguelike Games”
The Museum of Endangered Sounds. (via)
Today in Dialup Visualization News.
Sound Blaster history.
Systemd and Where We Want to Take the Basic Linux Userspace in 2016. (via)
Usborne 1980s computer programming books for kids become free downloads. (via)
Internet Archive Does Windows. With many options. (via)
Filter all ICMP and watch the world burn. (via)
Old British Pathé industrial production films. (via)

Your unrelated tea link of the week: Cuppa Thugs.