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Lazy Reading for 2010/08/12
A light list this week, but I’ve been on an island in Canada the past week.  I can’t see much except water from there.
  • Part of the reason I started this Digest was to document things that would otherwise remain buried on mailing lists.  So I feel there’s a parallel between this and reporting on police scanners – not the same content, but the same intent.
  • The Esoteric Whodunit.  Read this article and think of the last time you were explaining something computer-related to someone, and had to change what you said in order to make it more comprehensible.
  • SSD Cache Accelerators work.  This is not news to anyone who has used swapcache(8), which does just what these hardware products do – in software, free.  Here’s where you can pat yourself on the back for being a DragonFly user.  (via)
  • Desktop 2.0 and the future of the networked operating system.  This somewhat wandering article assumes having everything go online is a good thing.

Your unrelated link of the week: The Counting Song.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/08/05

I seem to include a vi/vim tip every week.  It’s not on purpose, or at least it wasn’t until now.

Your unrelated link of the week: a thorough investigation of the history of the ‘long s’ character, via.  If that’s too cerebral for you, try this video of a man making turkeys gobble, which made me laugh and laugh.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/07/29

I may be on the road as you read this, so I’m trying to pre-pack this Lazy Reading entry.  I also pre-apologize for any lack of posts from me.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack.  UK readers may already be familiar with this artist.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/07/22

Remember my crazy theory from two weeks ago?  Haha!  It doesn’t actually prove my idea because it’s a one-time charge, but I feel vindicated.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/07/15

It’s a short week this week, but that’s OK.  The last few weeks have been a deluge of links.

Your unrelated link of the week: Crane Recursion.  (via)

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Lazy Reading for 2012/07/08

I think there’s a chance we’re about to see Microsoft start to slip downhill, in a way that may only be apparent a year from now if it continues.  The company’s been a big moneymaker for years, but news items like the recent writedowns and my personal experience that they’re outsourcing license compliance checking makes me think that the rise of tablets and smartphones is cutting into their Windows/Office revenues like nothing ever has before.

It’s a guess, and it’s not likely that I’m right.  If I am, it’s a seismic shift.  Enough armchair theory!  Here’s the links:

Your unrelated comics link of the week: The Whole Story.  A comics collection, sort of  like the ‘humble indie bundles’ for games, where if you pay a bit more, you get even more comics.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/07/01

It’s summer, and I’m too warm.  I’m whiny but still making with the links:

Your unrelated link of the day: The Kleptones are great, and this collection of the music that influenced Paul Simon’s Graceland is a wonderful find.  A happier album I’ve never heard.  I feel nostalgic for the days when you had to actually search for music.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/06/17

I have such a surplus of links these days that I started this Lazy Reading two weeks ago.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Elfquest, every issue ever.  The dialogue is cheesy but the original art is fun, in a way that grabbed me when I read it at 10 years of age.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/06/10

I got to use the ‘roguelike’ tag again this week, which always makes me happy.  Surprisingly, it’s not about… that roguelike.

Your unrelated link of the week: I happen to work at a salt mining operation, which leads to some unique problems (more).  Mining in the US is regulated by MSHA, which has been cracking down since the Upper Big Branch incident. MSHA issues  ‘fatalgrams‘ every time a miner dies.  MSHA also shows up on site as soon as possible, which means they are there taking pictures within a few minutes, with equipment still running.  It’s essentially crime scene photos, and a little worrying; many of the deaths are of people around my age with similar experience.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/06/03

So many links this week I’m already working on next week’s entry.  Enjoy!

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Make Good Art.  (via)  The comic version of Neil Gaiman’s recent commencement speech, cause comics are more fun than video.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/05/27

Let’s get right down to it:

  • Hey, Nmap 6 is out.  It’s one of those always-useful tools, similar to wireshark.
  • Biculturalism, a fair assessment.  (via)  The generalizations are a little extreme (1 Unix-based author who Got Religion, vs. a diffused Windows developer stereotype) but still has value.
  • A Git Horror Story.  (via)  Not a true story, but useful for describing how git commits can be GPG-signed.
  • A recent Google Doodle, a playable Moog synthesizer, done for Bob Moog’s birthday.  The Moog Music site has instructions.  I happened to notice they’re using FreeBSD as the server – cool!  Maybe it’s just the hosting org?  Anyway, I link to it because Bob Moog’s cousin was for a while my father’s employer.
  • “Google is transitive, whereas Facebook is reflexive.”  (via)  This sums up the practical difference between Google and Facebook rather well.
  • I did not know this existed: OpenBSD Network Shell.  (via)  Interface like a Cisco-ish router, internals are OpenBSD.
  • There’s been recent news articles about how programmers over 35 tend to not get hired.  Here’s one of the reasons: younger programmers discount the value of their own time.  Anything where all the benefits (cheaper labor, more products) accrue to the company, and all the costs go to the employee (time lost, extra work) is not a good idea in the long run.
  • “Now I’ve met the other DragonFly BSD user, too.”  That’s two more than I expected for any given project, really.
  • Undeadly.org has an extensive interview/article about OpenSMTPd.  It’s OpenBSD’s implementation of a SMTP daemon, which is something I haven’t heard much about before.  Compare with DragonFly’s much-smaller-in-scope dma.
  • Van Jacobsen Saved the Internet.  Or just fixed a timing bug.  Depends on whether you listen to Wired or to him.  The interesting part is that he had to build the tools to troubleshoot the problem.
  • Here’s something I don’t think anyone’s noticed yet: Microsoft is responsible for half of Google’s DMCA notices last month.  My employer recently was audited by Microsoft (technically by Accenture contractors for Microsoft) for license compliance.  My Dell sales representative, when I asked him for a list of what Microsoft-licensed OEM devices we had bought, said many of his customers were asking for the same thing.  He joked that Microsoft was trying to improve its profitability numbers for the quarter.  Given that they are trying to push to Windows 8, that might just be true, and they are trying to enforce their way to it, not sell their way to it.

Your unrelated link of the week: MAD GOD, the film.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/05/20

There’s been so much activity this week in DragonFly that I’m having a hard time keeping up.  There’s always time for Lazy Reading, though.

Your unrelated link of the week: Captain Forever.  A game. Mentioned most recently on Verge, but read Rock, Paper, Shotgun for context.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/05/13

I’m starting to pack these full enough that I might have to go biweekly.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Wizzywig.  A self-contained comic about the early days of phone phreaking and hacking, written and drawn by Ed Piskor.   The first two chapters are available as a PDF.  Read and if you like it, order the whole thing.  Also: Steve and Steve.  If you know your history, you’ll get the cartoon.

Ed Piskor is currently cartooning the origin of hip-hop at BoingBoing; it’s a good read.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/05/06

Drowning in links this week.  Is that so bad?  No.

Your unrelated links of the week: Turntablism.  I was talking about assembled music last week, and this is a whole area to itself.  Watch Kid Koala turn a few seconds of trumpet playing into an entire blues progression.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/04/29

I go a bit beyond presenting links and comment on them too, this week.  Not too much!  Enjoy.

Your unrelated link of the week.  Youtube Poop.  As far as I can tell, ‘Youtube Poop’ are glitched videos made from Youtube content but with segments repeated, frames modified, or new sentences constructed from reassembling the frames.  Sometimes noisy, sometimes rude.  Also, an art form that can only exist now, and never really before.  Reminds me of the old Fensler Films, or that odd series out of Japan.  I find the idea of assembling new rhythms and music out of non-musical items fascinating, but I would, wouldn’t I?

(Turn your volume down before trying some of those links.)

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Lazy Reading for 2012/04/22

Enjoy!

Your unrelated link of the week: One Thing Well.  The BSD tag might be the most useful.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/04/15

It’s a good week when I can start collecting new Lazy Reading material right after posting the previous week’s summary.

Your unrelated link of the week: Quigley’s Cabinet Followups.  There’s about a bazillion links there to follow about weird history.

 

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Lazy Reading for 2012/04/08

The links are all over the map this week, which is fine.  Enjoy!

Your unrelated link of the week: memepool.  It’s seen some activity lately.  It was a blog before there were blogs, and I was part of it.

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Lazy Reading for 2012/04/01

This would be the right time for an April Fools joke…  but no.  It’s so common it’s hard to come up with something that won’t make people roll their eyes.

Your unrelated link of the day: a Space Shuttle launch from the point of view of the booster rocket. (via)  Remember when humanity had reusable spaceships?

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Lazy Reading for 2012/03/25

This is the week of in-depth items to look at.  I hope you have some time set aside…  Also, I’m doing something a little different; since Lazy Reading articles are built up over the week, I’m scheduling it for early Sunday (EST) so that you can read it in your bathrobe, drinking an astonishingly large amount of tea.  Or at least that’s what I’ll be doing.

  • Apparently there’s a Russian version of BSD Magazine, with a special Russian-only article.  Anyone who can read it willing to tell me what it’s about?
  • Did you know BSD also stands for something bike-related?
  • 70 Roguelikes!  The 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, just completed, has 70 games out as a result.  This will keep you busy, and there’s a very good writeup on several of the games to help you pick from the options.
  • 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop.  (via)  I link it because almost everyone, sooner or later, has used it or has used a program with a very similar tool layout.  Though I suppose you could argue it all comes from MacPaint, designed by Susan Kare, who happens to have also originated Clarus the dogcow.  Moof!
  • Man, Apple used to really have a sense of humor, too.  Maybe they still do.  Companies still do funny things (caution, autoplay video), but it seems to be done with the company’s marketing image in mind these days.  Also, get your ball out of my yard you darn kids etc.
  • Michael Lucas is teaching a SSH class at BSDCan 2012.
  • Lucas also has also disclosed numbers on his recent self-publishing venture.  I love seeing numbers like this because self-publishing discussion usually brings a whole lot of biases to the table, and people come down on one side or another because of what they want it to be, not because of what it is.  (Like discussions of the music industry, piracy, and software.)  This is just the plain numbers.  Also, Absolute OpenBSD, second edition, is definitely his next book.
  • Still on ssh, This Undeadly article talks about using OpenBSD, make, and ssh to speed up research.
  • 20 iconic tech sounds bound for extinction. (via)  Something in there will make you feel nostalgic.  I like the 8mm film noise.
  • Speaking of noise, here’s Famous Sounds, mostly electronically generated or sampled.  (via)  I guarantee some of these will be instantly familiar even though you won’t have heard the original song.

Your unrelated link of the week: Traitor.  (via)  It’s a Flash space shootemup game.   But dragonflies show up in one part!  (to shoot.)