March 2026 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2026/03/292026/03/26

Lazy Reading for 2026/03/29

Posted at the right time.

Arabesque, discussion of Unix tool usage.
Troika Dungeon Stocking, for items in a megadungeon.
Goblin Farmer, in early access.
CHM Live | Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking Different, recorded.
Here’s a good anecdote from that presentation about why you had to drop the Lisa to make it work. (via)
Blogs Are Back, a free RSS reader that runs locally in your browser. If you aren’t using a RSS reader yet, get started here. (via)
OpenBSD Stories. I’ve linked before, but it’s been updated. (reminded via)
Assorted less(1) tips. (via)
The reason to type “sync; sync”.
The Social Smolnet. Another email-as-underlying-protocol setup. See Eddie link from last week.

2026/03/25

Michael W. Lucas at NYCBUG, April 1

Michael W. Lucas is speaking at NYCBUG’s next meeting, April 1st, a week from now. “What’s Changed Since The Last Time I Came this Way – a talk that was supposed to be about OpenZFS.” Go, if you are near, and watch the livestream if you are not.

2026/03/222026/03/20

Lazy Reading for 2026/03/22

Accidentally pre-published early, so you might have briefly seen these already. I write links into a post as I see them, so it builds over the course of the week. Or weeks, if I have enough items to post ahead.

Every layer of review makes you 10x slower. Network effects run both directions!
Vibe coding toward the incident horizon. Always up for a Mickens-style column.
Speaking of which: I did not expect this from a tenured Harvard professor.
Or this.
Similar: The Shaw Brothers Youtube channel. Lots of violence. Surely you know about the 36th Chamber? (via)
How to Stop Jumping Ship. (via)
d20 Gameable Ideas from a 12th-Century Travelogue. (also via)
Simple sabotage of agents.
The Web is bearable with RSS. Also some links to start with, with some excellent tips. (via)
If you aren’t using an RSS reader, you should; it’s great.
Eddie, email as scaffolding. (via)
Timeframe, a very sophisticated signboard. (via)

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.