Alert reader Nick pointed out that Mastodon posts to bsd.network for the Digest weren’t happening automatically. The plugin was disabled and I don’t have a reason as to why. I just turned it back on and we’ll see if this post comes through.
It’s a fun links week!
- Decker, a modern tool enough like Hypercard to make me notice. (via)
- Dinos That Drive, a new book illustrated by the guy who brought you Behold! The Dinosaurs!
- Be More Party Cannon.
- Hardcore IndieWeb. (via)
- Describing the early Internet was surprisingly easy.
- The Cybernetics Digital Library. (via)
- I Did Not Kill Stanley Lieber: How to draw (with 9front). Sometimes the tutorial is the point, not the skill being taught. (via)
- email encryption. I have worked at least a little with every protocol mentioned and it was always, always painful.
Tiny computer mini-theme.
- A Minimal Syntax For Quantum Text, the methods used to generate the different-every-printing novel Subcutanean. The book itself has been linked here before. (via)
- Li’l Factory AB, a tiny fiction publisher. (via)
- Asterism Books, another oddities publisher. (via)
- The Virtual OS Museum, emulated computer setups, pre-prepared as Linux VM images. (via)
- Declassified Space Invaders. (via)
- The Book Handling Agency.
- Using the Xteink X4, a minimalist e-reader. I am finding all these Xteink links through Bubbles.
- Sneakerweb. (via)
- Don’t Panic Cyberdeck. A full BOM is included. (via)
- LisaFPGA: the Apple Lisa computer implemented inside an FPGA. (via)
- VapourDeck, DOS games in a handheld.
Your music links of the week: Before Angine and King Gizzard there was Harry Partch which led me to this 1950 film showing some of Partch’s huge instruments, and here they still are. Related: The Warped, Wondrous World of Microtonal Jazz on Bandcamp.
There’s some rabbit holes here.
- Next NYCBUG meeting: it’s a social meeting (no guest speaker), August 5th.
- The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 1: SimEverything. Everyone’s played at least one Sim game in their lifetime, correct?
- Weird Side Projects. (via)
- Diane Lindo, stop motion animations. (also via)
- A terminal version of Obsidian. Different from the official CLI.
- MNT June 2026 Update. Notes that OpenBSD runs on the Pocket Reform.
- Fish Shell.
- A pocket computer history museum.
- Ditch your Alexa.
- Cutting the cord to the cloud.
- LibriVox, free public domain audiobooks.
- “If you never saw the words Game Over, did you really do it all?” Linked for the animation showing an IBM 1401 console in action.
Some of these will keep you busy a long time.
- Why I Like Small Keyboards. Linked for the keyboard picture; smallest split I’ve ever seen.
- Erwin Wurm: One Minute Artworks. Found via this post – read to the end for the connection, and watch the video while you are at it.
- Difficult, Important, Succeeding?
- OpenRA. I thought I had linked to this before, and I had, but it was 8 years ago. (reminded it exists via)
- Bringing Swift To The Apple II.
- Working around dragons with the Lemote Yeeloong laptop and OpenBSD.
- Garbage for humans. This is one of the incentives for gopher if you think about it. (via)
- IIgs The Future. Linked cause it reminded me about the old Apple game The Bilestoad.
- It Always Amazes Us. Animation Obsessive’s current list of things they like.
This is entirely overflow links from last week, pre-posted.
- Cyberdeck Meetup Notes. (via) I wish Iffy Books was closer; those are some fun events on the calendar.
- Painting with Light.
- The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows. I was finding wholesale copies of this Digest back in I think 2008 or so.
- Using Claude Code to Personalise the Xteink X4. Adding to some previous links about this device. (via)
- And also this: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader.
- Also probably related: I don’t need it (and neither do you).
- Gmail Thinks I’m Stupid, So I Left. (also via)
- Please, Just Stop Ruining “10 PRINT”. Seriously.
- Connect FreeBSD to OpenBSD using WireGuard.
- The Starlog 50.
I should maybe create a Thinkpad category.
- NYCBUG’s having a social meetup on July 1st; stories about BSDCan will be told, I’m sure.
- When Dystopian Sci-Fi Ruled the Cola Wars. This seems like a named aesthetic. (via)
- Building a serial and VGA “everything console”. Linked cause the author is using one of the IBM keyboards I always wanted.
- Key, In Sight. The keyboard in the center of this also looks like one of those same keyboards. Marcin says it’s a Shinobi, which I’ve wanted to get before.
- ‘Vim’ has many faces.
- Aeonic Nebular Character Generator, for a game jam for games that do not exist.
- Powering up a module from the IBM 604. Linked for the computer styling that says “forties”.
- That new Commodore phone is running Sailfish.
- pkgsrc-2026Q2 is out.
- The freebsd-update(8) Screensaver.
- FreeBSD 15 on a Laptop. Linked for the Thinkpad-specific parts.
- The Goldilocks Principle in Fantasy Strategy.
Some of these links are more… mainstream?
- I Left Port 22 Open on the Internet for 54 Days. (via)
- Taken. (also via)
- Feynman’s formula on trying new restaurant foods.
- The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech. Yeah, clickbait, but accurate. (via)
- How NASA Built Artemis II’s Fault-Tolerant Computer. (via)
- 21st Century Nightmares: Dark Animations. Movies to watch, mostly stopmotion. (via)
- Detecting and removing dangerous secrets on dev workstations before Shai-Hulud does.
- Kentucky’s Bourbon problem. Read to the end.
- SCIFICORRIDORARCHIVE. (via)
- The Kaiser and a “Mediocre Man” Theory of History. (via)
- I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline. I am doing something similar but not as drastic. (via)
I found a stash of saved emails/links that I don’t think I ever posted, so they’re mixed in here.
- FreeBSD sh for MacOS.
- Biggest DynaTAC ever.
- 3D.City. (via)
- Dice Soup. (via The Glatisant. Lots of other links in that source.)
- The best secondary prompt string possible.
- A hat on your calculator. (via)
- Related: modern versions of HP calculators. (via)
- Video for NYC*BUG Nov 2025: The Once and Future COBOL, by James Lowden.
- Games for Freaks, a game magazine.
- the totalisator.
- Daniel Temkin – FORTY-FOUR ESOLANGS, The Art of Esoteric Code, a book review.
- Some games that happen to be all about music.
- I don’t know how to describe this. (via)
I’m posting this now cause it’s timely: there’s a remote-only FreeBSD presentation at SLUUG so everyone can watch.
I get to break out the Apple ][ category again!
- Vibe Coding a $20k /year Enterprise Logistics Platform. We are returning to the era of custom internal software. This I sort of like?
- my favorite independent stop-motion movies. I saw Blood Tea and Red String years ago; it was a wonderful if strange experience.
- Those old modem upgrades. I had a similar experience; starting at perhaps 2400 baud? 9600? and working up.
- Key, in sight. (via)
- AI errno(2) values.
- How and why I jailbroke my Kindle. I am curious about calibre integration. (via)
- An Apple ][+ compatible laptop. I would really love to have this, despite it being a complete folly. (via)
- It’s time to talk about my writerdeck. But then again, maybe a command line is all you need? (via)
- Planescape: Torment, Part 1: From the Tabletop…
- “Why pay for an orchestra when your computer can do it all?”
- “the moat will keep getting filled“.
- Microcosm Industries, simulation toys. (via)
Because of Circumstances, I didn’t post earlier about this – but there is a stream to watch right now at the NYCBUG website for tonight’s “OpenBSD Security Mitigations” presentation with Brian Callahan.
No theme, just links.
- Let’s find out how to get predictable IPv6 addresses assigned to OpenBSD VMs. Linked in part just for the IPv6 details.
- Fractions in HTML. Linked to remember it for next time I need to write a fraction, though not here. WordPress will eat the HTML entities when saving.
- DinoCon 2026 schedule. I won’t make it, but it sounds fun.
- The vi Family. (via)
- rsstrogen/CLAUDE.md. (via)
- Your Dinner Got Worse on Purpose. (via)
- Actually, just go look at the most recent Things entry. Too many good links to cherry-pick.
- Obsidian Ecosystem Overhaul Announced.
- OpenSMTPd instead of exim.
- Orion PDA. I can think of remote locations where this would be useful.
- Three Things about Data. “Gather less of it” is a surprisingly practical rule.
Is anyone reading this a Home Assistant user and if so, how do you like it?
- Building my own Vi text editor in BASIC. (via)
- Monitor your devices with LibreNMS on FreeBSD.
- Adventures in Code. (via)
- Related: Russ Cox on regex. (via)
- Vibing a wardriving visualizer. Linked for the wifi mapping.
- The 2FA app that tells you when you get `314159`. I wish I had thought of this, cause I am entertained by the same coincidences. (via)
- Very manual bootstrapping.
- Markdown Ate The World. A useful document history. (via)
- curl to /dev/sda. A fun idea, not a good idea. (also via)
- LibreOffice and the art of overreacting. Remember: pay, always pay, for what you like using, even if it’s not required. It makes a huge difference. (via)
- INIT HELLO: A New Apple II Conference.
There’s some fun stuff here if you have the time to dig.
- Moppetry. Muppets plus D&D. (via)
- Using A VT-100 Today. That reminds me, I have a VT-320 in the basement that I need to hook up.
- NetHack 5.0.0: Release Notes. (via)
- And you can run it on your Atari. (via)
- THEC64 Handheld. (via)
- Claude saved me hours of link cleanup. Boil the oceans to replicate:%s/http:/https:/g. (via)
- Ellanew.com posts tagged “obsidian”. Linked for me to go through later.
- Incidentally, bubbles.town is turning out great for link discovery. I also even see my own self linked which is quite heartening.
- How I Discover New Blogs, and Why I Still Like the Internet, both related. Get a RSS reader if you haven’t already and follow their tips. (via)
- The one change that worked: I swapped doomscrolling for reading comic books. (via)
- “these messages “pee in the pool” of internet communication“. Relevant in a week where I’ve sent (and received, thank you!) multiple ‘hey you don’t know me but I like your blog’ messages with real people.
- “It’s the best articulation I’ve seen yet for a blanket ban on LLM-assisted contributions“.
Your unrelated music link of the week: Angine de Poitrine, Vol II.
Reminder: NYCBUG‘s next event is in two days. It’s “The Design of Unix Shell” with Stephen Bourne. You should go; it’s a chance to talk directly with the author of foundational software.
Update: apparently the slides for this talk have been ready for 48 years or so.
Nostalgia might be creeping in here.
- “Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay.” Pseudo-ASCII design tools.
- Old-School Essentials Online Rules Reference.
- Root Loops, cereal-themed terminal colors. (via this discussion of tmux config, via)
- “Don’t eat your seed corn”, about homogenization of ideas.
- Who Is That Knocking At My (SSH) Door? Incidentally a fabulous domain name on that link.
- The implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol, RFC1149, 25 years later.
- A list of list of alternative service providers. (via)
- Open web vs AI: what can W3C do? A lot, as it turns out…
- HyperCard on the Macintosh. A retrospective of a fantastic tool.
- ‘Slimline’ Commodore 64C Ultimate: BASIC Beige. This is going to be really exciting for anyone with a liking of Commodore hardware.
- The GPS III Rollout Is Almost Complete, But What Is It? A nice summary of what will be nearly invisible to everyone… if it goes well.
Your unrelated subscription item of the week: The Cacao Barista Snail Mail Club. I’ve been running a small chocolate manufacturing company for several years now and I’ve tasted a lot of chocolate from many sources. Map Chocolate is some of the best.
Several of these links were discovered via bubbles.town, including a min e-ink hardware trend you’ll notice below.
- The Utah teapot in tandem with the recent Unix V4 tape discovery. (via)
- Roguelike Celebration 2026 Call for Proposals. Look at previous years to see the topics.
- The Adventure Shell, your shell prompt as text adventure. (via)
- Apple History in Prototypes. (via)
- Knight Rider 2025. (via)
- An Ode to bzip. Linked for the compression algorithm descriptions. (via)
- Open Source Has a Bot Problem. Prompt injection to help classify AI patches. (via)
- Strawberry Music Player, linked cause I read somewhere it filled the same niche as Winamp. I tried it – and yep, it scratches that itch very well.
- Crosspoint Reader for the XTEInk X4.
- Related: XTEInk X4 notes, including moving Markdown files to it.
- Also related: A local epub eBook server for my xteink.
- Lovecraft Investigations Season 5 – Official Crowdfund Trailer. Posted cause I enjoyed all the previous seasons and I’ve been reading the author’s blog for some time. It’s a story structured as if it was a real podcast which makes it remarkably immersive.
- A few thoughts on the AYN Thor. Linked cause small hardware is always fun.
The DragonFly site has a recently-updated page describing how DPorts is assembled and the process to contribute.
It does need the criterion for when it’s ready to release – either a number of working ports, or certain key ports buildable, or a combination of the two. Something like “Chrome, Apache, nginx, MariaDB, Postgres, and X11 build, and over 75% of packages in general are successful, with less than a 10% decrease in buildable packages from the last dports release”. I just made that up, so it’s not an actual threshold. But it could be?
Several conferences are linked here; check your calendar accordingly.
- The BSDCan 2026 Schedule is up, plus some other event details.
- pcc lives again, with details.
- Silvio Lorusso: Serif Populism, Hyperpolitics and the Diminishing Returns of Graphic Design Culture. (via)
- A dictionary of demons. Not daemons. (also via)
- Roguelike Conference 2026 is in October.
- SSH escape sequences. Social media posts are the worst way to archive information, of course. (via)
- Charcuterie: A visual explorer for Unicode. (via)
- The Western Electric 500 phone. I have one of these phones; it is … iconic? I don’t have the right word.
- I Connected a Desktop Phone to a FreeBSD Server, so Now I Can Call It. Related to the previous link; I’ve set up a Model 500 via an ATA in a similar fashion, though it needed some voltage fiddling to get the mechanical ringer to ring. (via)
- 2026 Hugo Award finalists. Use as a “to-read/view” list.
- Cybersecurity Looks Like Proof of Work Now. I like the idea that there’s an incentive to debug / secure more open source projects, though that can cut both ways. (via)
- A love letter to cassette futurism. (via)