March 2026 – DragonFly BSD Digest

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.