BSD – DragonFly BSD Digest

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.

2025/05/042025/05/02

Lazy Reading for 2025/05/04

Some BSD-specific links mixed in.

Future of Arts, Culture & Technology Symposium videos. Scroll right. (via)
What The Internet Did To Garfield, a video. (via, via)
RDAP is replacing WHOIS. (via)
The Flywheel Spin Top.
Netnews: The Origin Story. USENET, or nntp, if you prefer. (PDF, via)
The NetBSD General Meeting is coming up on the 17th.
A 55-year example of Moore’s Law.
Hacker Laws. (via)
TRMNL, which I might have linked to before, but two different people have told me they got it and love it recently.
diff-jfk, a use I didn’t expect for diff. (Thanks, Paul)
NumFOCUS concerns. “Linux Foundation: Voltron of Bureaucracy” is a funny section title. (also thanks, Paul)
The History of Solaris. “UNIX is plural.” (PDF, via)
The modern OpenBSD home router. (via)
tinypod, turning an Apple Watch into an iPod. (via)

Your unrelated music video of the week: DRASS – Nucleation Point. Makes me think I need to start making my phone less useful. (via)

2025/04/132025/04/08

Lazy Reading for 2025/04/13

Mini bot/brute force attacks theme.

The New Control Society. A very long essay. (via)
Do Not Comply With the Terms of Service. I don’t necessarily agree with the arguments but the links at the end are useful. (via)
Dormitorium: The Film Décors of the Quay Brothers.
A different approach to blocking bad webbots by IP address
and A deeper dive into mapping web requests via ASN, not by IP address
and then Notes on blocking spam by filtering on ASN.
Chunking attacks on Tarsnap (and others).
A summary of my bot defence systems.
Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face.
And that leads to: iocane. (via)
Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 2025. (via)
KDE Plasma 6 on FreeBSD on Framework 13.
FediMeteo.
Designing A Portable Mac Mini. A fatmac is what it looks like to me.

2025/03/302025/03/26

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/30

No overriding theme this week, though several trends did start to crystallize.

FediMeteo: How a Tiny €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service for Thousands. I like the low-resources aspect. (via)
The HTML Review issue 3 and The HTML Review issue 4. Linked for the rotating table of contents / doorways table of contents; it’s neat. (via)
this page is under construction. Read to the end for more links. (via)
The Graphing Calculator Story, (via)
“A calculator app? Anyone could make that.” (via)
Manage UPS on FreeBSD. Linked cause it mentions how to turn off the beep.
BSDCan 2025 registration is open.
NarraScope registration is open too.
The cleanest VAX you’ll ever see,
Bolt Action, WWII minature gaming I’ve not seen before.
A USB interface to the “Mother of All Demos” keyset. Borrowing one of Englebart’s original chorded keysets is the startling thing here.

2025/03/232025/03/19

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/23

A lessons learned week.

Computer Science the Fun Way, a Humble Bundle. (via)
Fight On! issue 16 is out. (via)
FreeBSD and KDE Plasma generations. I think the right answer on versioning there.
Patrick Collision’s bookshelf. (via)
Framework 13 AMD Setup with FreeBSD. I could use a new laptop; this x220 is getting long in the tooth.
Silicon Valley’s thing about Great Men, a followup on the previous source.
Owning your own space and content is important.
Make yourself less valuable to tech companies. The sheer number of things you can turn off that are just extractive data about you is a sort of wake-up call. (via)
BBC Micro emulation directly in the browser. (via)
If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling. And leave extra cable length when you pull; everyone gets to learn this the hard way.

2025/03/162025/03/06

Lazy Reading for 2025/03/16

Done early!

Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook. For pre-order, and excerpts are available. I think this is a unique book; catch the limited print while you can. (via)
Vim Spellcheck Cheat Sheet.
NetBSD on Raspberry Pi!
State of virtualizing the BSDs on Apple Silicon.
From ACS to Altair: The Rise of the Hobby Computer.
Walter Bright’s Classic Empire, Empire Deluxe, and original author Walter Bright. (incidentally, original available as a port/pkg/port)
Standalone Digital Scratch Instrument.
Debugging aids for pf firewall rules [on FreeBSD]. For reference.
Free MWL excerpts/books. (via)
If you’re going to GDC, there’s a Roguelike Celebration meetup on the 18th.
UNIX advertisements. (via) From that page:

2025/01/07

NYC*BUG Wednesday: QEMU Virtualization

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.

2025/01/052025/01/04

Lazy Reading for 2025/01/05

Happy new year! I have some history gems in here – not archival material but people that made history, speaking again, now.

A TI-99 programmer resurfaces. (via Paul Ivanov, thanks)
Fall 2024 FreeBSD Summit – The History of the BSD Daemon. The original artist, Phil Foglio, is still making excellent comics. (video, via)
Technical Marvels, Part 9: Program-Controlled Musical Picture Clocks. Novel to me. (via)
Developing a public-interest training commons of books. (via)
Not BSDTalk, but talk(1) on BSD. Follow the thread.
Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository. I remember reading this but not linking this. (via this long thread)
An oral history of AutoDesk. (via)
What an Atari workstation might have looked like.
Apropos for the new year: BSDCan 2025 call for papers.
MNT laptops are neat, but they also do… earrings? (via)
Research of RAM data remanence times. (via)
Public Domain Day at the Internet Archive.
And at the Public Domain Review.
QEMU Virtualization on BSDs, Jim Brown, in 3 days. RSVP needed if you are going, which I recommend.

2024/12/152024/12/13

Lazy Reading for 2024/12/15

I could use a recommendation for a good, cheap registrar to use for domain names; I use gandi and the price has been creeping up. Any suggestions?

Next NYCBUG: QEMU Virtualization on BSDs, Jim Brown, 2025-01-08. QEMU is far more influential than I expected.
For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website. (via)
The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2023).
A physical save button.
Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (1978) vs Spanner (2012). (via)
SCCS roach motel. A pretty exhaustive description of SCCS and the weave format.
Creating a Typeface: Humanist Computer.
Public domain works done for NASA. (via previous)
The Biggest Shell Programs in the World. You want to look and also look away. (via)

2024/11/242024/11/17

Lazy Reading for 2024/11/24

Links are from a wide range of sources this week; it’s often a good idea to follow the (via) tags to find even more.

NYCBUG meets 12/4 at the usual time, for lightning talks.
Maximizing Time For Reading. (via)
Half-Life 2 20th anniversary. Documentaries like this are sort of about the game but also an inside track on software development case studies. (See also Psychodyssey)
Asterogue. (via)
Procedural text and tabletop roleplaying. Speaking of roguelikes…
The missing text focused programming environment. Makes me think of Smalltalk.
IMG_0416. (via)
MyNoise. (via)
CW&T, a design studio. (via)
Keep It Simple Tools. (via)

This week’s music: Thank You, Dream Girl. (via)

2024/11/06

QEMU on BSDs, tonight

NYCBUG is having a streaming-only event at 6:45 PM eastern tonight, with Jim Brown presenting on QEMU. Go, if you are near a computer. Also join IRC on #nycbug on Libera, too.

2024/11/032024/10/27

Lazy Reading for 2024/11/03

I don’t have a good link for the SDF item; their mailing list doesn’t appear to have a public archive, or I haven’t found it. SSH will get you there faster anyway.

DragonFly: git: rtld – do not allow both dynamic DTV index and static TLS offset. Useful if p5-DBD-mysql is failing for you.
inetd and daemons, a 4 part series.
Moving my FreeBSD laptop to a Thinkpad X1 Carbon G6. Linked cause I just handled a newer X1 recently; might replace my ancient x220. More links in article.
You can now play WUMPUS and OREGON TRAIL on the sigma-9 instance at sdf.org.
Technical Marvels, Part 8: Historical Surveying Instruments. (via)
Next NYC*BUG: 2024-11-06 @ 17:45 EST “Life with a FreeBSD Laptop” by Brian Reynolds. RSVP if you are going, so you can get in the facility.
What Are The Civilian Applications?
Building a game with the Real Engine. A heck of a lot of work but the results will be unique. (via)
revealing the fediverse’s gifts. (via)
Paper types ranked by likelihood of paper cuts.
Iconic consoles of the IBM System/360 mainframes, 55 years old.
Broughlike.

2024/10/202024/10/18

Lazy Reading for 2024/10/20

BSD mini-theme.

Histories of the Greater West. Charts! Graphs! Excellent use of character encoding!
Cabinet of curiosities: A bunch of cryptographic protocol oddities. (via)
Trebuchet for sale. (via)
The Future Looking Back At Us: Joanne McNeil on Cyberpunk. (via)
The uConsole, as recommended by you! Specifically this.
Filtered for time and false memory. Conspiracy theory, but fun.
Open-AMP: My OpenBSD Alternative to Devilbox/XAMPP.
EuroBSDcon 2024 in Dublin, Ireland: some notes after the conference.
OpenBSD Webzine 18.
Roguelike Celebration 2024 is happening now. See the merch and the Steam sale,
Plasma6 and FreeBSD 14. Probably applies somewhat to other BSDs.
Commoning. I opened 7 more tabs following up on what I read in that article, so it must be useful.
3rd Annual International Crisp Sandwich Day, this week on the 25th.

2024/09/30

NYC*BUG Oct 2: EuroBSDCon Recap/BSD Fund

Next NYCBUG meeting is Wednesday night, and you need to RSVP if you’re going to be there in person. It sounds like there’s going to be a nice roundup of EuroBSDCon experiences and also the video … team? squad? support.

2024/09/152024/09/13

Lazy Reading for 2024/09/15

A bit more… artsy? this week.

Coding Together on the Apple II+. Mostly I just like the site design. (via)
Introducing MNT Reform Next. Might replace my ancient, indestructible X220.
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison.
DOOM on a volumetric display.
“Run Your Own Mail Server” Auction for BSD Conference AV Team. Closes today!
A new BSD made out of old BSDs. (via)
Every Single Company’s Website Right Now. Also 2000s Business Names. (both via)
The Moral Economy of the Shire. (via)
‘Images Heard And A Music Seen’: A Conversation With The Brothers Quay. (via)

Your unrelated music link of the week: DJ Krush – Strictly Turntablized.

2024/08/112024/08/07

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/11

Oddities this week.

Join the Interim Computer Museum. (via)
containerization moves the learning period from “before deployment” to “during outages” I’m quoting a quote of a quote there.
public.work, visually search public domain images. (via)
And if you like that, read The mining of the public domain, an excellent analysis of public.work.
A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Beholders. Avery D&D-specific monster.
defrag98.com. Never a good screen to see. (via)
EuroBSDCon 2024 will be September 19-22 in Dublin.
Leap smears, a proposal. “My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that this scheme would work for about half a millennium”
Iconography of the X Window System: The Boot Stipple. (via)
Visualizing Sound and Graphic Traces, both are.na channels. (via)
What the Microsoft Outage Reveals. Read it for the software engineering joke. (via)
Back to BASIC. (also via)
The Adler Archive of Underground Comix. (via)
Putting your phone to sleep with a pillow. (via)

Your unrelated music videos for the day: DRASS – Reaperman. Taking advantage of AI image generation’s inaccuracy, though you bet is more disturbing. (via)