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

2026/03/152026/03/11

Lazy Reading for 2026/03/15

My backlog is close to clear.

An Oral History of UNIX. (via)
How old are README files? Probably the 1970s, possibly earlier. Found in a thread that ends with this.
The scariest bootloader code. (via)
Self-Hosted Software Names You’re Probably Mispronouncing.
Build your own Obsolescence Guaranteed PiDP-11/70.
Does it hurt to go to space?
The E-Typer.
Lightning on demand is back. Anything involving SRL is great.
Modifying the already-modifiable Framework computer keys.
Artefact, a single player TTRPG that will look great to you if you remember the old Special Artifacts table III.E listing in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide. (via)
Composting Mobile Phones. Linked both for the subject and for the thorough setup. (via)
OverTheWire: Wargames. Security exercises / games via SSH. (via)

Your unrelated music link of the week: Class of ’86: Unsung Classics From The Year Thrash Broke.

2026/03/10

Another backup story

Every few years, something happens and Hammer’s snapshotting saves me. Last week, this host had a power outage and MySQL managed to mangle the WordPress database for this site. Fixing it needed only:

cd /var/hammer
cd var/[date of last good snapshot]/db/mysql
cpdup -VV -v . /var/db/mysql

I am writing this down in part because I am sure I’ll need it again in a few years.

2026/03/082026/02/26

Lazy Reading for 2026/03/08

whee

BSDCan registration is open. 5 tutorial sessions this year!
Print and fold your own mini-comic. (via)
Actually Existing Solarpunk. (via)
finally we have created the silver bullet. Brooks’ Law rules.
bsd.rd breakdown. I always like looking at emergency repair tools in non-emergency situations.
A.I. Isn’t People and Can AI Prompt Us to Ask New Questions? Two essays on LLMs, not in opposition to each other.
Diomidis Spinellis’ video talk about integrating the newly rediscovered V4 UNIX into his UNIX history repo. Note the first commit in that repo is 57 years ago.
How much it costs to run OpenBenches. Extrapolate to any other independent website that isn’t a store. (via)
No leap second needed this year.
Physical Phones. (via)

2026/03/012026/02/24

Lazy Reading for 2026/03/01

No theme!

Weird Code Injection Techniques on FreeBSD is the next NYCBUG meeting, 3 days from now. Go, if you are near.
On pressing the space bar for the cabinet.
The state of Linux music players in 2026. A subset of that is BSD music players of course. (via)
ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering. (via)
The Dunking Decree. (via)
Bending ePaper To Our Will with Custom LUTs. E-paper ‘pixels’ are not binary on/off.
This is magic. Good comments from Youtube, a rarity.
The original vi is a product of its time (and its time has passed) and Undo in Vi and its successors, and my views on the mess. The important thing to me is the note that vi exists as a specification, not just different software variations.
Sorta related: Design Deconstruction, Vim as video editor.
Things that are not backup solutions.
All Your Base, slight remaster.

2026/02/222026/02/20

Lazy Reading for 2026/02/22

Clearing as many open tabs as possible.

The Day the telnet Died. (via)
Reports of Telnet’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated. (via)
Offpunk 3.0 (via)
How I Scrobble.
Ultima IX. Falling out of where I was familiar with the games.
Penrose, diagram creation with text. (via)
Related: Penrose Tiling, in case you weren’t familiar with it.
Freakpages, sorta like what I do here. (via)
The Squarp Hapax, linked because of the name. (via, via)
The Decision Before the Work.
The consoles of UEFI, serial and otherwise, and their discontents.
Exploring Docker containers on FreeBSD.
Windows 11 Update. (via)

2026/02/152026/02/04

Lazy Reading for 2026/02/15

One link is very modern, the others are not.

Places to Telnet. This should keep you busy for a bit. (via)
The Visible Zorker Project (and Patreon).
Meshtastic and Meshcore, which I am seeing more often.
Tcl: The Most Underrated, But The Most Productive Programming Language. (via)
A short list of good games.
The Home Computer Hybrids: Atari, TI, and the FCC.
Top 20 Newsgroups. USENET is still active. (via)
Entries in the 2026 Public Domain Day Film Contest, using 1930 material that just became available.
Running and administrating a 2.11 BSD system.
TOPS-10 Survival Guide, to get an idea of what it’s like without having to run it.

2026/02/082026/01/29

Lazy Reading for 2026/02/08

I’m only complainy with some of these links.

Your Search Button Powers my Smart Home.
Typeframe PS-85, which I’ve linked before, but now you can get the plans. (via)
Good Web Search. Google searches and even searching within my own Gmail account have become unreliable.
What should I use to make a website?
Clicks Power Keyboard. And Clicks Communicator. (via) ReTreo, I’d call it.
Odd SYN attack, parts one and two.
Favourite well-made apps and sites summary from the person behind Shift Happens. Too many good links to pick out.
The two subtypes of one sort of package managers, the “program manager”. People always want to merge them.
Time Machine inside a FreeBSD jail. Layers inside layers. (via)
I’m back to building my own digital music collection.

2026/02/012026/01/24

Lazy Reading for 2026/02/01

This Lazy Reading is a little bit stuck at the turn of the century.

Time dependent: NYCBUG’s having a get-together on February 4th, Tuesday. Go if you are near. There will be stickers?

Web Archiving at the Library After 25 Years. Library of Congress, that is.
CODEPUNS.
DJ Q-Bert’s DOOM BOX.
Hypermind, The High-Availability Solution to a Problem That Doesn’t Exist. (via)
Tone Glow 200: Negativland. If ever there was a group that could talk about copyright… (via)
The UNIX Magic poster annotation. (via)
USB Bus, not what you think, a video. (via)
XScreenSaver 6.14 with 18 new savers.
Jam Like It’s The 1980s With A Mini-IBM PC. This is the boringest mini-recreation.
C.A.F.E., visual Home Automation editor. (via)
How I’m still not using GUIs: A guide to the terminal. (via)
200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop. Seeing other people’s loader.conf is always interesting.

Your unrelated music link of the week: PLAGUE MUSIC by KAVARI. I like the music; I don’t enjoy the video.

2026/01/252026/01/24

Lazy Reading for 2026/01/25

A couple off-the-beaten-track items.

The Rise of Computer Games, Part II: Digitizing Nerddom. (see previous in series)
Narrascope, happening in June in Albany, NY. It sounds like there will be games and experiences to try, not just discussion. (via)
I sell onions on the Internet. I thought for sure I had linked this before. (via)
The Caligra C100. (also via)
“Do something productive with your 10,000 hours people.” I am only qualified to run around a restricted area and be worried, going by my gameplay hours.
Discord IPO, again. Notes on self-hosting chat, as a transition and fallback for the inevitable enshittification of Discord.
Thinking About Thinking.
SystemSix.
How the past models the future. Linked for the page x-ray comparison images.
Eat This Newsletter. His podcast is soothing.
Jan Švankmajer Day. Lots of animated gifs if you aren’t familar with his work. (via)
The original BSD proposal. (via)

Your unrelated comics art link of the week: Jack Kirby Heroes & Humanity exhibition.

2026/01/182026/01/05

Lazy Reading for 2026/01/18

I am linking to the Public Domain stuff “late”, seeing as how we’re 3 weeks into the new year. It’s good forever though.

The Dream of the Universal Library.
Related to the previous link: Public Domain Day 2026.
Also related: ImageS Magazine. The man who put them together died a few years ago; pick up any you can find now because a collection like this won’t happen again.
Dead Archivist Society. A worry I have too.
Corporate Breakfast, a Kickstarter.
The Market for Lemons, about web frameworks. (via)
Eighteen Years of Greytrapping – Is the Weirdness Finally Paying Off? (via)
How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner. (via)
@YouAreCarrying, an Infocom inventory bot. (via)

2026/01/112025/12/28

Lazy Reading for 2026/01/11