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.
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)
Happy birthday me!
- Another Type 30 Display Reproduction At 36% Scale.
- Corners of the Internet Database. Set some time aside for this. (via)
- Obsidian merchandise is surprisingly nice. (via)
- Reflections from TPAC 2025.
- AI contributes code on GitHub. Time, not code generation, is the scarcest resource for open source. AI patching does not help.
- Framing and World of Warcraft’s Rest System. (via)
- XSscreensaver 6.13 is out, a minor update.
- The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition.
- Inside the Great Firewall Part 3: Geopolitical and Societal Ramifications. (via)
- The best tape dispenser I’ve ever seen.
NYCBUG’s holiday party / lightning talks event is tonight. If you can’t make it, it’ll be streamed on the website and available on IRC.
Note that the recorded stream from the last event, The Once and Future COBOL, is available on YouTube and PeerTube. I heard the speaker, James K. Lowden, talk about FreeTDS years ago and enjoyed it too.
I meant to link this months ago: if you run DragonFly intermittently in a virtual machine, and it’s not left on overnight, it’ll never get around to automatic cleanup of the Hammer volumes. You could then run out of space. The fix is manually running the cleanup process.
That’s two days from now, on 11/5: James Lowden will be talking about COBOL and the gcobol in GCC, which is in part his fault. This should be good. RSVP and go, if you are near. Stream if you are not.
Update: here’s the video:
Youtube: https://youtube.com/
nvi2, which is what you get in DragonFly when you type “vi”, has been updated to version 2.2.2. The nvi2 README gives a little history of how many years this has been around. Close to 50? A family tree would be interesting.
Related: turning on vim mode in Obsidian gets you this entertaining dialog:
Shouldn’t it be “vi mode”? Oh hey, look, an esoteric definition argument, just what you came to the Internet for.
Not tokens of agreed value, but specifically, crypto(4) and crypto(9). Michael Neumann doesn’t see a use for them any more, so speak up if you need them.
Are you encrypting your disk in DragonFly? If you are using dm_target_crypt, the ‘ng’ version is now the default. You may want to change your loader.conf.
I missed this some time ago, but: you may see errors about certctl(8) when upgrading your packages. It’s not necessary, yet.
6.4.1, a bugfix upgrade to 6.4, is ready to download. The commit log from 6.4.0 to 6.4.1 is available if you want the details.
I’ve mentioned it before, but custom live images are possible. Related: mkisofs(8) is no longer needed to build.
This Wednesday, Jim Brown presents on QEMU at NYCBUG’s monthly meeting. Go, if you are near, but RSVP first so you can get in. It should be streamed too.
Unofficial theme: synthesizers!
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- How to Build a Chess Engine and Fail. (via)
- cablesoft. Finally, a ‘computers are bad’ story where I experienced (some of) the history described.
- Jon Makes Beats. Seeing synthesizers and samplers in use. (via)
- More synthesizer stuff: the Orchid. (via)
- Even more: Music Thing Modular Workshop System. (via)
- Using (only) a Linux terminal for my personal computing in 2024.
- more tales of the unscreenshotable.
- AI-powered Self Service Checkouts.
- Why pipes sometimes get “stuck”: buffering. (via)
- Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web. (via)
- Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground. Tabletop RPG history. (via)
- A Margaret Hamilton’s worth of printed code. (via)
- What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. (also via)
Your video experience of the week: Hundreds of Beavers. This was played in a theater in my town months ago and I missed it. I should have gone to see it on the big screen, but here it is on YouTube. (via)
A ‘first try’ document for DragonFly.
George Rosamond is presenting on the 20th anniversary of I think the longest-lived BUG, NYCBUG, tonight. Go if you are near (and RSVP so they can let you in), but it’s also going to be streamed.
It’s for COBUG, and details are available here.
Yao Ge has created a new DragonFly mirror in Nanjing, China. It’s on the mirrors page too.