BSD – DragonFly BSD Digest

~~The long-planned next meeting of NYCBUG is tomorrow~~. If you are going and have a Framework laptop, please bring it for testing HDMI. I assume it’s related to ongoing support work.

Meeting is canceled cause no presenter available.

2025/08/032025/08/02

Lazy Reading for 2025/08/03

I hope at least a few of the ideas this week are enjoyably novel to you.

The original computer mouse. (third link)
The Fundamental Failure-Mode Theorem: Systems lie about their proper functioning. That first paragraph should be required reading.
The Hype is the Product. (via)
Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech. Managing knowledge workers is not a new idea but tech companies want to think it is. (from previous link)
Curate your own newspaper with RSS. (via)
Classic CDE (Common Desktop Environment) coming to OpenBSD. See the CDE wiki for some screenshots; surely you’ve seen it before.
The Poetics and Power of Small Language Models.
Vibe code is legacy code. (via)
TRMNL X. I preordered.
Projects can’t be divorced from the people involved in them. The “Nazi Bar” idea sort of in reverse.

2025/07/202025/07/12

Lazy Reading for 2025/07/20

I preassembled this list of links over time, so some of them have probably changed. For the “I’m sorry…” link, that just means more material.

Precision Clock Mk IV. Not kidding about the precision part. (via)
Calibre News. An excellent complement to RSS.
TMG, or Transmogrifier, a compiler for PDP-7. Not what I first thought. (via)
Mark V. Shaney, really an early LLM. (via) Plus, this followup.
Single-function devices in the world of the everything machine. I was in the same regional blizzard mentioned.
I’m sorry I’ve written a joke.
tmux cheat sheet. (also via)
The Webcomic List. This re-acquainted me with some comics I haven’t seen in years. (via I lost track, sorry)
Why Some Satellites Use NetBSD? (indirectly via)
can an email go 500 miles in 2025? A nice sequel of sorts to the 500-mile email.
The A2DVI gives the Apple II DVI and HDMI output.
Towards a Complete List of Excellent Medieval/Fantasy Combat Scenes.

2025/07/132025/07/12

Lazy Reading for 2025/07/13

Some of these links are relevant to my personal history. (dinosaurs, mining)

forbidden secrets of ancient X11 scaling technology revealed.
The untold story of the Carnegie Diplodocus. (via)
Mining And Refining: Drilling And Blasting.
The Historical Tech Tree. (via)
watch(1) utility added to -current. Does what it sounds like.
XScreenSaver 6.12. More Wayland changes.
Switching From Desktop Linux To FreeBSD.
The Wild Wild Web.
AI-operated vending machines and business process innovation (sorry). A decent analysis, though I feel like too many LLM examples are for avoiding feedback, when you want the opposite.
Which leads me to Paul Pangaro’s Cybernetics page.
New zine: The Secret Rules of the Terminal.
FreeBSD 14.3 on FrankenPad T25. Linked for the FrankenPad.
Some notes on X terminals in their heyday.
Yes, The Book of PF, 4th Edition Is Coming Soon. Preorders are open.

Your unrelated music of the week: Chali 2na x Cut Chemist – Melt Like Plastic. (via)

2025/06/222025/06/17

Lazy Reading for 2025/06/22

I’m on the road as I type this – though I’ll be back by the time it’s posted – and so the links are without much comment.

The Best Interfaces We Never Built.
The 80s were shit. (via)
Memory Banks.
Malleable Software. (via)
Lightweight C compilers.
Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux.
A year of funded FreeBSD.
Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74. Few people realize how much of the modern software world came right from what he did. (via)
So you should read Memories of Lisa for the details. (via)
Unveiling the EndBOX: A NetBSD-based embedded box for EndBASIC.
BoxyBSD. (via)
Look for the UNIX license plate.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: What’s the best comic I’ve ever read? Lynda Barry is a master of the form. (via)

2025/05/182025/05/08

Lazy Reading for 2025/05/18

Dumbness or perhaps stupidity, today’s mini theme.

WebSysctl is Now Live! I like the idea of this, though it would be nicer to have it accessible on the machine where you need it. (via)
The GAFA Stack. Read section 3.
8 Bits & Still Brewin’.
Mute when Locked. (via)
Web Archives and Web Archiving – Introduction for Scholars and Students. You will need this, or at least wish you knew it better at some point. (PDF, via)
At one point, “..” did not exist.
Setting Up Anubis on FreeBSD via Implement Anubis to give the bots a harder time.
The amount of bot traffic has increased significantly, I assume to find content for AI, and ignoring robots.txt – and copyright. I don’t think people realize the scale of this. It’s causing a denial of service attack in server resources and developer time.
Related, see comments here for some mod_security blocking alternatives.
Post-Quantum Cryptography on NetBSD.
Make Stupid Things. (via)
The Wadsworth Constant, learned about in #5 here.
Dumbware, self-hosted solutions. I like this except for the dockering. (via)

Your unrelated audio of the week: Squarepusher’s Ultravisitor, remastered.

2025/05/122025/05/06

FreeBSD Laptop Desktop Working Group + DJ-BSD redux at NYCBUG

May 14th, NYCBUG has Charlie Li presenting on the FreeBSD Laptop-Desktop Working Group, and DJ BSD? Anyway, go if you are near (but RSVP so they let you in!), and watch the stream if you are not.

2025/05/112025/05/02

Lazy Reading for 2025/05/11

Oddball link collection.

Best dishwasher ever but it gets better.
Open Source Commercial Synthesisers You Will Love. Well, I like the form factor.
windows experience goes to 11. Linked for my own benefit.
Introducing an OpenBSD LLDP daemon and Introducing bpflogd(8). OpenBSD is sort of becoming a SDR, which I don’t mean negatively.
GhostBSD: From Usability to Struggle and Renewal linked cause I didn’t know the history.
Yet Another Provider Survey – see some places report running hosted BSD systems with ease by following the thread. Here’s the very nice to have final summary.
XScreenSaver 6.10 is out. There’s something Ouroboros-y about having a Klondike screensaver.
The appeal of keyboard launchers for (Unix) desktops.
checking the wifi. Most people would parse ifconfig output, but not ted.
I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server. (via)
Think Twice Dice.

Unrelated link of the week: sign up for the Dobbstown Mirror. Getting something that is both real and also crazy in the mail is always nice.

2025/05/092025/05/07

Get your own pf lesson

Peter N. M. Hansteen runs a pf tutorial most years at BSDCan, and this year’s BSDCan is no different. He’s prepping now, so if you ask a good question, you’ll get taught the answer.