Lazy Reading – Page 35 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2012/04/082012/04/07

Lazy Reading for 2012/04/08

The links are all over the map this week, which is fine. Enjoy!

This makes me laugh every time. (via)
Etsy has an astonishingly good internal development practice. And open source code? (via)
For contrast, Facebook’s release engineering process. (via I lost it, sorry) Not as interesting but I can’t tell why.
Mosh, a program designed for the persistence of screen but differently. (via) Dunno if it builds on DragonFly, but it looks neat.
I’m getting more paranoid as I get older. Things like this Javascript ad injection on hotel wi-fi may be a reason. (via)
“I just ran emacs. LOL!“
0x10c, a sci-fi game set in the future with spaceships running a 16-bit CPU. That you can program.
I wish I could write here with the same mix of loathing and excitement found in this comics review. Warning: mildly… gonzo?
The journey from user to contributor, a NYCBUG talk in mp3 form. (via)
I’ve mentioned RetroBSD before, but here’s an example of it being installed on a Duinomite board. 2.11 BSD on a super-cheap, super-small Arduino-style board! (via) I don’t know what I’d do with it, but I want one. It even has keyboard and VGA ports.
At some point, this CPU database will be handy. (via)
A new, slow form of brute force ssh attack. (via) What I find interesting here is not so much the new attack itself, but Peter Hansteen’s careful gathering and analysis of data around it.

Your unrelated link of the week: memepool. It’s seen some activity lately. It was a blog before there were blogs, and I was part of it.

2012/04/012012/03/31

Lazy Reading for 2012/04/01

This would be the right time for an April Fools joke… but no. It’s so common it’s hard to come up with something that won’t make people roll their eyes.

Here’s an Ultimate SSH Hacks article that isn’t actually that ultimate, or hacky. However, I found it via this Slashdot article that had a comment with this nifty trick for having a single-file Unix-portable ssh link.
Design Disease. (via) I can sympathize. If you can’t tell what he’s objecting to in the pictures, consider yourself lucky. There’s probably a similar symptom that makes people collect old computer equipment, which I daresay a few readers are vulnerable to.
Legit, Git workflow for humans. Slightly more sensical syntax for git, as far as I can tell. (via)
Michael Lucas is dedicated to writing. Really dedicated.
Also, Michael Lucas and The Value of Tech Books. He’s very right about man pages; they’re great and also not great.
How DNS Changer was taken down and victims redirected. (via) I link to it because Paul Vixie, the author, also wrote the cron program you’re running right now. Really, look at the end of the man page.
Look at what’s happened to DuckDuckGo’s traffic stats! (via) I’ve linked to the search engine before, and I know there’s at least a few readers who like it.
“Let’s kill all proprietary drivers for good” (PDF, via several places) It makes me happy that it talks about drivers and acknowledges the existence of BSD. Driver unification would be great, though it really needs someone solidly behind it as with any project.
“The problem is compounded by the way Linux has grown over the years into an ungainly edifice, built upon thousands of individual packages of computer code that have been stapled together.”

Your unrelated link of the day: a Space Shuttle launch from the point of view of the booster rocket. (via) Remember when humanity had reusable spaceships?

2012/03/252012/03/24

Lazy Reading for 2012/03/25

This is the week of in-depth items to look at. I hope you have some time set aside… Also, I’m doing something a little different; since Lazy Reading articles are built up over the week, I’m scheduling it for early Sunday (EST) so that you can read it in your bathrobe, drinking an astonishingly large amount of tea. Or at least that’s what I’ll be doing.

Apparently there’s a Russian version of BSD Magazine, with a special Russian-only article. Anyone who can read it willing to tell me what it’s about?
Did you know BSD also stands for something bike-related?
70 Roguelikes! The 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, just completed, has 70 games out as a result. This will keep you busy, and there’s a very good writeup on several of the games to help you pick from the options.
20 Years of Adobe Photoshop. (via) I link it because almost everyone, sooner or later, has used it or has used a program with a very similar tool layout. Though I suppose you could argue it all comes from MacPaint, designed by Susan Kare, who happens to have also originated Clarus the dogcow. Moof!
Man, Apple used to really have a sense of humor, too. Maybe they still do. Companies still do funny things (caution, autoplay video), but it seems to be done with the company’s marketing image in mind these days. Also, get your ball out of my yard you darn kids etc.
Michael Lucas is teaching a SSH class at BSDCan 2012.
Lucas also has also disclosed numbers on his recent self-publishing venture. I love seeing numbers like this because self-publishing discussion usually brings a whole lot of biases to the table, and people come down on one side or another because of what they want it to be, not because of what it is. (Like discussions of the music industry, piracy, and software.) This is just the plain numbers. Also, Absolute OpenBSD, second edition, is definitely his next book.
Still on ssh, This Undeadly article talks about using OpenBSD, make, and ssh to speed up research.
20 iconic tech sounds bound for extinction. (via) Something in there will make you feel nostalgic. I like the 8mm film noise.
Speaking of noise, here’s Famous Sounds, mostly electronically generated or sampled. (via) I guarantee some of these will be instantly familiar even though you won’t have heard the original song.

Your unrelated link of the week: Traitor. (via) It’s a Flash space shootemup game. But dragonflies show up in one part! (to shoot.)

2012/03/182012/03/18

Lazy Reading for 2012/03/18

I’m making sure I post this Lazy Reading on the right day. A nice full week’s worth of stuff.

Bandwidth used when loading different web pages. (via) The largest one is also the most surprising.
Do you have an IBM x3550? Turn ACPI off.
The recent TCL presentation at NYCBUG is available in audio form.
Did you want to know a lot of detail on how to do journaled soft updates in UFS? You want detail, you got it. (via, via) (Is that a repeat link? I don’t think so…)
This is totally useful if you’re using ssh from a Windows machine.
SSH is used as a noun and a verb, I just realized. No link, it’s just me noticing verbification.
BSDCan 2012 registration is open. (via Michael Lucas’s Twitter feed) Conventions are awesome. You should go.
Michael Lucas talks about book promotion with his recent book. There’s a graph, so it’s automatically great.
Speaking of books, Modern Perl: The Book is free to download in PDF form.
A story about _why. (via) I’m not so interested in his identity, but in what he did to get people to program.
My git habits. (Not mine; that’s just the title.) Speaking of learning, I’ve always thought the next steps past learning the basics of anything is to then see how experienced people approach it, idiomatically.
Why Juniper Gives Back to the FreeBSD Community. I link to this because I like what they are doing, and also because in a perfect world I would rather have a BSD-ish interface on my networking equipment than fiddle with IOS. Oh well.
Bunnie Huang always builds neat stuff. This time it’s a Geiger counter. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: Neo Scavenger. (via) It’s a game, in Flash, and in beta. If you like postapocalyptic survival, it may be for you.

2012/03/112012/03/12

Lazy Reading for 2012/03/11

This is the week where I remember to actually write introductory text. I also didn’t think I was going to have anything good this week, but The Internet came through for me at the last minute. Thanks, Internet! It’s also the week where I mis-schedule this post for Friday, temporarily.

You may not need to Build Command Line Tools in Style, but I like the way the slides in this presentation … slide.
This is another version of the “my computer should be free” argument. (via) The argument has been made before, though this version is slightly less antic.
It’s always neat to see notes from someone trying DragonFly for the first time. Desktop and video editing… that’s going to be a hard road, though.
Unix == ZZ Top. (via)
Where vi came from. The original terminal had arrows on the HJKL keys.
An in-depth explanation of HTTPS Everywhere.
Dungeon creation using a dungeon! Next: recursive dragons, I just know it. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today!

2012/03/042012/03/03

Lazy Reading for 2012/03/04

Whee!

“Entropy is a programming langauge where data decays as the program runs. ” (via) It was used to write Drunk Eliza, a form of the famous Eliza program that uses Rogerian-therapy-style interaction. That led me to find Esolang, the esoteric programming languages wiki. You will be amused/horrified, perhaps simultaneously, by some of the languages described there. (Did I link to Esolang before? I recall something like that but can’t find it…)
Here’s someone asking for an implementation of DragonFly’s swapcache, for Postgres. The response, quite correctly, is “No.” I can’t imagine how painful it would be to support a database-specific disk caching system across multiple platforms, on top of whatever each platform did on its own. (Thanks, Jan Lentfer)
Surrealist humor mixed with typographical humor.
SSH Mastery is now available on Amazon, in hardcopy form.
Cat vs. Router.
Armenia has abolished summer time. It’s just a time zone update, but I like the phrase.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Friends With Boys. The whole comic is available online starting with the first page here and going on for about 200 more. The full comic is only going to be online for a few days – hopefully enough for people to see it – and then you have to buy it. (There will still be a preview.) It’s a good story.

2012/02/192012/02/21

Lazy Reading for 2012/02/19

Apparently this is a good week for Lazy Reading links, cause I have lots! If you have any specific suggestions of where to find more links, I’d welcome them. I’m sure there’s more people to follow that come up with tidbits like these…

Coding Tricks of Game Developers. A mix of genuine techniques and deadline near-misses. (via)
Insane Calculations In Bash. Ostensibly, it describes all the work required to convert number series to “sparks” (inline UTF-8-based graphs) using bash. What it really shows is how far down the paths of madness shell programming can take you.
From the same person, It Came From The Hold Space, a description of how crappy things could be pre-1990 or so when, say, sed was the most capable tool you had. Read the presentation description first. Bonus: the presentation explains a non-acronym source for the name “grep”.
Hey, I’ve seen that logo before. (via Koston on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
Mounting files from the web. (via luxh, same place)
Here’s a Google Summer of Code success story that made me feel good just for having participated.
“If a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t have an option which enables it to be easily played by a moderately inebriated person who isn’t good at math, it is a failure.“
Hey, Window Maker finally got updated. (via) It was always my favorite window manager.
Michael Lucas published his sales numbers so far for SSH Mastery. (reviewed by me here, totally worth buying) The interesting takeaway for me was that despite the reach of Amazon, Smashwords was more profitable – and I like the variety of Smashwords’ DRM-free formats more.
I’m linking to this mention of open source operating system cost estimates mostly cause I like the phrase “Debian for the most part is a package repository.“
Hey, that’s cute. (Make sure your terminal is wider than 80 columns to see it.)

Your unrelated link of the week: Cyriak. An animator in the UK; I like the rhythmic repetition in his (occasionally disturbing) animations.

As I mentioned last week, DragonFly developer Venkatesh Srinivas is collecting pledges for his crazy-long bike ride, raising funds for cancer patient support. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my mother died from cancer in a long, agonizing process some years ago. The support system funded by these pledges would have helped us tremendously. Please donate a few dollars to ease someone else’s burden.

2012/02/122012/02/12

Lazy Reading for 2012/02/12

Hey, it’s snowing here! Finally.

I remember when fractal zooming would bring a desktop computer to its knees. Now, you can do it in a web browser. (via) This exists as a standalone application (x11/XaoS) too.
I see content from here get splogged, from time to time, and I think that’s what’s happening here. Someone throws “BSD” into a content generator, with ads slapped on top of it? Honestly, I’m not sure what it is. (via)
Hammer 2 work is starting, as noted earlier this week. Let’s see some details on a similar filesystem project, btrfs. (via)
You should quit Facebook because privacy etc. you’ve heard it from me before. The arguments are getting more thorough, though.
Here’s an article from independent game developer Jeff Vogel about serving a niche with your independent work. I like his writing, plus if you squint your eyes and sorta look at that article’s point sideways, you could construe it as relevant for BSD.
For fun, spot the two things I mention/link to here frequently, in this somewhat hypey article about Tumblr. (via)
An Economist article about shifting from computer to computer. I read that and realized the one computer constant for me isn’t my desktop – it’s “~”.
If you ever played games on the Amiga, you may want to watch this movie. It’s clips from a lot of Amiga games. By a lot, I mean an hour and a half of footage total. There were some really advanced games for the time there. (via)

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Shut Up About Cats. The rest of that site’s good too.

Also! On a related link, Venkatesh Srinivas, one of the DragonFly developers, is participating in a bike ride to raise cash for the Ulman Cancer Fund. If you’d like to pledge some money, he’ll feel better as he cycles a ridiculous 4,000 miles across the US.

2012/02/052012/02/04

Lazy Reading for 2012/02/05

It’s like early spring here in the northeast US. Which would be fine if it was actually spring. I miss snow.

An explanation of the classic UNIX hierarchy. (via thesjg on EFNet #dragonflybsd) I’m behind any explanation that uses the phrase “accretion disk” to describe an organization.
Hipster BSD. If this doesn’t make sense to you, it’s based on this.
Would you like to have DNSSEC upgrading explained to you?
Hooray for Unicode! (via)
What Commons Do We Wish For? I was, briefly, technically, an AOL employee after the Time Warner merger in 2000. I didn’t like the notion of working for a walled garden then, and I think that’s why Facebook and other companies irk me now. Anyway, read that article for a good explanation of why that feeling is important.

Your unrelated link of the week: Top Shelf 2.0. A small comics publisher that has put much of their comics online to read. Their stuff on paper is worth buying too, as I have been doing for a while now.

2012/01/292012/01/27

Lazy reading for 2012/01/29

This is the week of the funny, apparently.

I’ve linked to this site before, but not this specific feature: History of UNIX manpages. Part of the formatting that makes up man pages dates back to 1964! ‘roff’ comes from RUNOFF, the original markup! This is the perfect mix of history, nerditry, and language for me.
Hubert Feyrer says there should be BSD Certification training material. I agree.
That’s the spiffiest TWM I’ve ever seen, and it’s on DragonFly. Found at the same place: Bash.
Hey, Michael Lucas is planning for his next book!
Developer error HTTP status codes. (via) What’s the geekiest joke I can still find funny?
I like it when computers look like serious computers. (via luxh on #dragonflybsd)

Your totally unrelated video link of the week: The Necronomicon. Pitch perfect.

2012/01/222012/01/22

Lazy Reading for 2012/01/22

I even have some comedy in here this week.

Here’s some interesting ideas on improving the standard terminal window. (via)
Hey, a Windows Phone application that aggregates BSD news! Including this one, I think. No way to test it because Windows Phones are rarer than hen’s teeth.
This article about Bruce Perens has some good quotes in it – especially the Mark Shuttleworth one. (via)
I think these computers all predate the integrated circuit. (via)
How Google Code Search Worked. (via)
The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing. (via) I don’t think the numbers used are accurate, but the trend is correct: a lot more people are computing through devices that are “walled gardens”, where they can’t install what they want.
The App Store Guide – Take Two. It boils down to: Curated information on what programs to run is very useful. Someone could do this with pkgsrc or ports, easily. pkgsrc.se is sorta there, but not really with any sort of authorial voice.
Variable typing can be surprisingly funny. (via) The final punchline is great but may not make sense unless you’ve seen where it comes from.
Network jokes are the bestest jokes. (via)

Your unrelated comics link for the week: Tom Neely‘s Doppelganger. Page 11 is my favoritest.

Another unrelated thing: David Shao, are you out there? Can you get on IRC (EFNet #dragonflybsd) and help some people out with GEM/KMS questions? Nobody’s been able to find you.

2012/01/152012/01/15

Lazy Reading for 2012/01/15

Getting back into the rhythm, here…

Jeff Vogel, who is a funny and smart guy, wrote this article, essentially about crowdsourcing. It’s another way of saying “bikeshed“. Plus: D&D!
Michael Lucas, sometimes BSD author, has a new fiction collection out. He’s working on a SSH book too.
Hey, AsiaBSDCon is coming up in March, BSDCan in May. I don’t know about EuroBSDCon or NYCBSDCon, though. Plan ahead!
Did you know there’s a bsd.org? Very old-school: here’s a list of commands, get going.
GNU Tar doesn’t have a man page. (via) Weird. I didn’t verify that, but I’m not sure how to.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: there’s a Freddy, and a dragonfly, but it’s not DragonFly BSD. It’s still fun though.

2012/01/082012/01/08

Lazy reading for 2012/01/08

I said posting would be more regular now that the holiday’s over, didn’t I? I lied.

Here’s a useful idea: a server that allows (Linux) systems with encrypted file systems to boot unattended. I’m not sure how that doesn’t defeat the concept, but actually reading the documentation may help with that. (via, via)
While on the topic, the EFF says “Encrypt your disk!“. (via)
The Commodore 64 is 30 years old, for those readers of a certain age who may have had one… I was a Apple ][ kid. (via)
Aw, thanks.
“What deduplicating file system should I use?” Well, I can think of an answer.

Your unrelated link for the day: The Restart Page. (via) Make your browser full-screen when trying any of them.

2012/01/012012/01/02

Lazy Reading for 2012/01/01

Happy new year! Regular posting should resume soon now that my holidays are over.

I like the line, “Please note that BSD manpages are usually better as compare to Linux” [sic] found on this odd page of where to find documentation.
Hey, this encryption of DNS requests is a good idea. Then again, so is DNSSEC. I’ve done neither.
Stop using GoDaddy, if you can. There’s plenty of reasons, other than support for SOPA.
There’s got to be at least one reader who gets this joke.
If you don’t mind digging through all the comments in this Slashdot article about building a desktop environment, there’s some neat descriptions of different window managers and so on.
A mild brain teaser to start the year: a regular expression to find prime numbers.
This is a nice description of just what the Archive Team does. (via)
The Coming War on General Purpose Computing. Sometimes the stuff on BoingBoing gives me the same irritated feeling as sensationalistic Wired articles, but this one is good to read if you happen to be working on your own operating system. Also, the similar thing with APIs.
This “best tech writing of 2011” summary on Verge (via) led me to this excellent article: “The Web Is a Customer Service Medium“. There’s lots more reading in that summary.
I’ve seen this mentioned before, but now it’s with a graph so it’s better! On the continuing decline of the GPL.
OK, I admit graphs are not always a good idea. (via )
Trivium, from which I yoinked that last link, also has an blog from its author, Chris Neukirchen. It’s not updated often but there’s some entertaining sysadmin tidbits on there, such as going all-ed, or zsh tips, or Why I use the MIT license.

Your completely unrelated link of the day: Tiny Legs of Fire. (video) Worth it for the origin of Beardslap.

(Sorry about the giant text block. This isn’t as readable as I’d like.)

2011/12/182011/12/17

Lazy Reading for 2011/12/18

The links are sheer entertainment this week. No strong options or anything, not even about that U.S. legislative mess called SOPA.

I greatly enjoyed this history of personal computer mishaps and blunders. Of course, nothing like any of that has ever happened to me. Ever. Ever ever ever.
Nintendo Entertainment System stories. (a comic) Also familiar to anyone of a particular age.
This is good advice about env(1) – use it.
“Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos“, a video via matthiasr on EFNet #dragonflybsd.
“What’s the strangest language feature you’ve ever encountered?” (via) Some of these are mind-boggling. I’ve also never seen APL before, yeesh.
My Year in Roguelikes. I think a few of the games mentioned are in pkgsrc.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Basic Instructions. Well, not totally unrelated, since BSD author Michael Lucas’s tweet about it reminded me. I’ve got the first book; I need to get the second and third.

2011/12/112011/12/11

Lazy Reading for 12/11/11

Last week was low on links, but this week is great! I hope you have some time set aside.

This article “The Strange Birth and Long Life of UNIX” has a picture of a PDP-11. I don’t know if I ever actually saw one and knew it before. (via)
Also from the same place: Window Managers Bloodlines.
Anecdotal, but probably true. (via luxh on EFNet #dragonfly)
nginx is the new cool and unpronounceable web server these days, apparently. Michael Lucas covers how to transition static Apache sites over to it.
This PDF showing slides from the recent NYCBUG presentation by Ike Levy, titled “Inappropriate Cloud Use”, is entertaining, and makes a good point. Cloud computing is cheap on a per month basis, but since it’s a reoccurring cost, it can cost a surprisingly large amount in the long run. (via)
Hey, a patch for DragonFly (and other BSD) support in Google’s leveldb.
“Don’t Be a Free User” (via) The last paragraph is the best.
An expanded grep and diff. ‘grep’ and ‘diff’ have been present for so long, and people understand what they do, generally, that new tools get named after them just because the concept is ingrained in people’s minds. Note that I said “generally”, as regular expressions can be difficult. (via)
A lot of people don’t realize how they infringe on copyright. This writeup describes something I’ve seen for years: people think a disclaimer that effectively says “I’m infringing but I’m doing it with the best of intentions” makes a difference. It doesn’t.
So this is what that Xerox Star GUI interface looked like. You know, the ‘first’ desktop GUI. (via) Also, there was some advanced stuff in 1968.
I like this indicator light setup. (also via luxh on EFNet #dragonflybsd) There’s some other interesting old computer stuff at that site too. I wish there still were computers like these.
While we’re talking about old things with a certain feel to them, why not Battersea Power Station? Here’s some pictures. (via)

Your unrelated link of the day: Since we’re talking about old things and environments, why not look at some pictures of my workplace?

2011/12/042011/12/04

Lazy Reading for 2011/12/04

Another week, another linkpile.

Here’s some old software. I’ve got something older sitting on my shelf here, though.
A patch to DragonFly, taken from OpenBSD, submitted by Loganaden Velvindron and committed by Venkatesh Srinivas. The patch isn’t that exciting, but it makes me feel cool to namedrop non-Americanized names. If only I could pronounce them!
Speaking of which, there isn’t always a lot of comments on this Digest (which is good; a long series of comments on the Internet tend to be the result of trolling or inanity.), but the recent strlen() story led to some juicy details.
Man, I wish this NoteSlate device existed. There’s the BoogieBoard, but it’s not quite the same.

I’ll make up for my relatively low number of links by asking a question: Where do you go for your end of year gift giving? Where do you wish people would go to buy you gifts? I’m looking for suggestions for a gift guide.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Gun Show. This one and that one are my favorites.

2011/11/272011/11/25

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/27

Happy (post) Turkey Day for the U.S. readers! A light link week this week.

Facebook is bad for the Internet. ‘Gaslighting’ is a new term to me. As that article points out, I can’t even put my posts to the Digest onto Facebook in any sort of automated way. Facebook suggests that of course I’d love to retype them all by hand. That’s not realistic. Facebook doesn’t want any sort of useful external link to be visible to their customers. Customers isn’t actually the right word; the customers are the advertisers. What would be a better word for the users? Crop?
“the internet is above and beyond all else a resentment machine.” It’s a very long essay that points out people are confusing brand identity with personal identity. (via)
You know what would be good? More conversations about games on BSD, cause it could use some attention. Oh hey there you go.
A Dragonfly lamp (via Julian Gehtdichgarnichtsan)

Your unrelated link of the week: Animals Talking In All Caps. It is what it says it is.

2011/11/202011/11/18

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/20

Hey, the date’s sorta palindromic! Sorta.

“Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors” – a video description of the physical parts of the Internet. Remember when MAE-East or MAE-West would have a bad day and half the Internet felt it? Really, half. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. (via)
Google has a verbatim search mode now, for those of you who regret the loss of ‘+’ as a required search term designator. (via and also sort of via) There’s always alternatives.
“The expr program is a real piece of crap.” Laser-focused complaining about a small program that’s had 4 decades to improve, and hasn’t.
“Mechanics for Pure Aesthetics” The videos are interesting, and I’m linking to this because so much of what I post here and deal with is focused computer work. Everything is a tool, with a purpose, and a result that you expect. This idea of machinery or even software having a purpose other than result generation is underexplored. There’s lots of tools to create art, but there’s little that is art itself. Even with that general lack, we still get excited when the edge of some sort of aesthetic appeal nudges its way into the materials we use. You could argue that Apple’s success (for instance) comes from being the one company that consistently thinks about what a product is, instead of what it does.
If you use fastcgi, you may need the patch that this blog post talks about. Also, apache-mpm-prefork is the better choice for Apache on DragonFly.
“DragonFly mug shot“

Your random comic link of the day: Calamity of Challenge. Also here. And here. If this artist’s way of drawing grabs you like it grabs me, he has pages and commissions for sale.

2011/11/132011/11/13

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/13

I’m going for more verbose linking. Because my opinion layered over a bunch of linkblogging is just what you wanted on a weekend, isn’t it? If not – too late!

NYCBUG posts audio of their regular presentations, and I’m linking to this one by James K. Lowden, titled “Free Database Systems: What They Should Be, And Why You Should Care“. He was one of the more colorful speakers at NYCBSDCon 2010, so this should be good.
It’s Slashdot, so whatever, but this “In Favor of FreeBSD On the Desktop” linked story had a few good comments – BSD hasn’t done enough to differentiate itself from Linux. “BSD: In Need of a Narrative“. Or perhaps, “Who cares if it’s clang or it’s gcc – what do you build with it?“
I read this essay about social networks (via), and the last paragraph is an excellent summation. Read it, then cancel your Facebook/Google Plus/whatever accounts.
Xv6 is a modern version of Sixth Edition UNIX, used at MIT for teaching operating system design. (via) The source is available via git, and as a numbered PDF. The book for the class should make interesting reading. Oh, you can see the class details, too.
FOSDEM 2012 in Brussels, February 5th, 09:00 – 17:00: “Open Source Game Dev”. Get on the mailing list if this interests you. Microsoft operating systems still rule the market for games, really, even indie work, so it’s neat to see something that is both open source and game oriented. There will be BSD “devrooms” there, too.
If you are looking for a particular Unicode character (and there’s lots to choose from), Shapecatcher lets you draw what you are looking for and looks for matches. (via) I’ve needed that here a few times for people’s names, and it’s fun just to see what comes up from a random scribble.

Your unrelated link of the week: The New Shelton Wet/Dry. Titles, content, and images are all picked from unrelated sources, but it forms an oddly compelling digest of multiple topics. Slightly NSFW, sometimes.