The cheapest possible DragonFly

With everyone buying tablets lately, the low end of computers is getting pretty low-cost indeed.  Creating single-purpose computers is possible, and I was thinking of doing that to create a Go-testing system.  (Though probably not necessary for me.)  It got me to thinking, though…

How low-cost a system could run DragonFly?  The master-slave and low system requirements of Hammer lead to some interesting possibilities.  There’s no Arduino equivalent for DragonFly because there’s no DragonFly on ARM, despite all my wishing.  DragonFly has been run on Soekris systems before, and might work on a PCEngines ALIX board.  Ebay, my basement, or Craigslist are options too, but not as fun.  Who has suggestions?

OpenBSD and electricity

The OpenBSD Project (Foundation?) needs to pay a large electrical bill for their hosting location.  I had mentioned this in a weekend BSD report just before the end of 2013, but the problem is still there and deserves a special mention.  It’s possible to contribute directly, or to the I-assume-nonprofit-so-tax-deductible-for-many-people OpenBSD Foundation.  You can set up a low but reoccurring Paypal payment for the Foundation, which would be probably unnoticeable for you but very helpful for the organization.

Even if you aren’t booting OpenBSD on anything, you’re using a technology that came out of that project – OpenSSH, pf, your dhcpclient, etc; or using 3rd-party software that received fixes from OpenBSD work.  Putting dollars towards this software development is one of the more effective things you can do with your money to help open source.

 

Lazy Reading for 2014/01/12

There’s a lot this week, so let’s get started:

Git Reference.  Not that there isn’t a lot of other documentation out there, but much of what you find is people asking specific questions rather than explanations of procedure.  (via)

Movie Code.  At least most of these are using legit code, even if it’s often the wrong application.  It’s been worse.  (See ‘state of the art video’ item)  (via)

Unix: 14 things to do or stop doing in 2014.  These tips are actually useful and contain no buzzwords.

TrewGrip, another item in my quest for interesting keyboards I don’t use.

4043 bytes to recreate a mid-80s IBM PC.  There are less bytes of data in the program than there were transistors in the CPU that it emulates.  It can run MS Flight Simulator.  It was for the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, which should surprise you not at all.  (via)

The World’s Most Pimped-Out ZX81.  I don’t think it can run Doom, though.

The Unix Shell’s Humble If.  For once, an article that doesn’t just pretend bash is the only shell that exists.  (via)

Unix Shell RPG Tutorial.  It’s exactly what that combination of words means.  (via)

Scientists tell their favorite jokes.

Best programmer jokes, found here where there’s more.

I find these animations slightly hypnotizing.  (via)

Technology used to suck even when it was cutting-edge, and we’ll still feel that way in the future.  (via)

How did we end up with a centralized Internet?

Software in 2014.  The summary is: server side is great, client is not.  (via)

Able to be turn on, and that is it.  Sci-fi movies ignore where technology comes from.

True Nuke Puke Story.  My mine coworkers once did something similar to a copier repairman; got him so worried about going underground that he had a panic attack when he had to step on the hoist.  We had to get a new repairman.

Your unrelated link of the week: BIG ENDING FACES!  (via)

In Other BSDs for 2014/01/11

Running late putting this together…  Back to bullets!