Category: UNIXish

Last anything for the year!  I packed in as much reading material as I could.

• “Bits, in this case, are actual physical objects.”  About the newest MAME.
• piu-piu-SH, a horizontally-scrolling shooter for the console.  (via)
• Reviving the Apple 410 Color Plotter.  (via)
• Print Color PDF Apple II Print Shop Christmas Cards.  (via)  The microm8 idea sounds interesting overall.
• Computer latency: 1977-2017.  Maybe I need an Apple][ category?
• winss, a process-supervision init system for Windows based on s6, an init system designed for Unixish systems.  (via)
• Repairing a 1960s mainframe: Fixing the IBM 1401’s core memory and power supply.  Nice pictures!  (via)
• The 2018 internet resolution everyone should have: Bring back your browser bar.  (via)
• The Hardest Computer Game of All Time.  (via)
• The text adventures of 1991.
• The little ssh that (sometimes) couldn’t.  (via)
• About the Use of Dot-Slash in Commands.  (also via)
• The Wayland Zombie Apocalypse is Near.  Linked mostly cause I didn’t know Samsung kept an open source blog.  (also via)
• Evil Coding Incantations.  Mentions the wat presentation, which I have linked here before, but if you haven’t seen it…  (also via)

I’m throwing in some end-of-year lists cause now’s the time for it.

• The Best Bandcamp Metal albums of 2017.  #1 on the list, Power Trip, is my new favorite band.
• Polygon’s 50 best videogames of 2017.  Some not-what-you-would-expect games in there.  (via)
• AF_UNIX comes to Windows.  (via multiple sources)
• The Comprehensive List of Window Managers for Unix.  (via)
• Uncle Miod’s Machineroom.  (via a comment in the previous source)
• XScreenSaver 5.38.  Note that the Android release is now a manual download.
• Repairing a 1960s-era IBM keypunch.  (via)
• The Quest for a Desktop email client.  (via multiple)
• ScummVM 2.0 released.  (via)
• Ron Mueck’s Giant Skulls.  I’ve linked to this artist before.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 2: MUD.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 3: The Persistent Multiplayer CRPG.
• Vim: My Shiniest Gems  (via)
• How to Setup a Unix News Server (1999).  Nostalgia, at this point.  (via)
• Squinting at ASCII.
• Oops.  (via)

Lots and lots this week!

• Creating a Christmas card on a vintage IBM 1401 mainframe.  (via)
• TIC-80: a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.  (via)
• FPGA-Based Disk Controller for Apple II.  (via)
• 52 weeks of Unix Newsletter.  You too can subscribe.  (via)
• Neural Network on a Commodore 64 (1987).  (via)
• Pancake – a CLI/Emacs web/gopher/file browser.  Linked really because of the gopher mention.  (via)
• File crash consistency and filesystems are hard.
• Computers suck: episode 17787 of 31279.
• What media/pop culture “easter eggs” are format-specific?  (via
• The Internet Archive.  Neat hardware!
• Debugging an evil Go runtime bug.  (via)
• Use pax.  Already installed!  (also via)
• Stuff the kids know and stuff they don’t.
• Internet protocols are changing.  A good summary of what’s coming/here.  (via)
• An epic treatise on scheduling, bug tracking, and triage.

 

Accidental theme this week: the 1990s.

• Normalization of deviance in software: how broken practices become standard.  Matches every place I’ve ever worked.  (via
• The Advent of Void.  I wish someone would do this with BSD packages.  (via)
• wiby, a 90s-only search engine.  (via)
• What Have We Learned from the PDP-11?  (via)
• VPN recommendations.
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 1: Strategy and Simulation.  You will surely have heard of some of these games, even if you never encountered them.
• 90s CD-ROM games.
• The man with a DiscMan.  More 90s.

Your unrelated photo of the week: untitled.

 

Thinkpad theme, I guess.

• More shell, less egg.  (via)
• Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming.  (via)
• What’s behind the Linux umask?  Well, UNIX umask.
• Another ThinkPad Retro sighting.  No Thinklight?  Well, maybe it’s backlit.
• Thinkpad X62. (via)
• “HTML email, was that your fault?”
• Vim Hates You.  (via)
• The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page!  (via)
• X and NeWS history.  “As the guy who single-handedly prevented X from becoming an ANSI standard…”(also via)

 

 

I finally used up my overflow links.

• Dusty Decks: Preserving historic software.  (via)
• Moore’s Law, from Rodney Brooks and from ACM.  (via)
• All you need to know about Unix environment variables.
• A Unix Person’s Guide to PowerShell.  (via)
• Nodes of Yesod: ZX Spectrum Next – developer blog episode 2.
• Steve Jackson’s Ogre rumbles onto PC in October.  Linked solely because I found the original asymmetric board game fascinating.  And never played it.
• Getting an Amiga 1000 Online.  (via)
• How to Hand Letter Like an Architect.  I took several technical drawing classes … 20 years ago?  It still affects my handwriting.
• Debugging DNS.  (via)
• Best option for modern X server on Windows?
• books chapter nine
• Carry a Little More to Waste a Little Less.  Good advice, but get a folding utensil set; it’s much easier to deal with.
• The HERE IS key.  (via)

Your odd video link of the week: what if the Doctor Who theme was composed by John Carpenter, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, or Tangerine Dream?  (via)

Apparently this is the week where I comment about my links.

• The Internet of Things – A disaster for no good reason.  Comparison of old smoke detectors vs. new.  You may already have an inkling of the outcome.(via)
• Powershell 6.0 Roadmap.  Interesting because it’s both Microsoft admitting people want a shell, and it’s Microsoft committing to creating a cross-platform shell.
• RFC8200: A revision of IPv6.  (via)
• 50 days of postmarketOS.  (via)
• The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2017.  Jetbrains-customer specific, probably, but: note how many developers don’t use version control or issue trackers.  It seems like those would be the most elemental tools?  (via)
• DOS Game System Project.  Real hardware, not emulated.
• AmigaOne X5000 review: The beloved Amiga meets 2017.  (via)
• This 10-Pound Keyboard From The 1980s Is Making A Comeback.   The urge for buckling-spring keyboards hits the mainstream.  (via)
• Linguistics and Programming Languages.  (via)
• Unix-like personal webpage.  I like the scanline effect.  (via)
• moving to https.
• Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage your life?
• What is a fantasy map?  A scholarly article at the British Library.  (via)
• Fantasy Cities, a Javascript city map generator.  (also via)
• Do people write insane code with multiple overlapping side effects with a straight face?
• Kingsway, a mix of a Win95 desktop and a fantasy roguelike.  (via)

Your unrelated animated GIF of the week: I find this …  Inspirational?  Hilarious?

 

There’s some meaningful links buried in here, among the trivia.

• Undefined Behavior in 2017.
• Unix’s mysterious && and ||.
• Almost one and a half billion seconds since 1970.
• The 555 chip storage ottoman.  (via)
• Avery’s laws[1] of wifi reliability.  (via)
• 48-Year-Old Multics operating system resurrected.  (via)
• Why I Hate Slack and You Should Too.  (via)
• Big Fucking TV can’t find the Fucking Shit Router.  (via)
• XScreenSaver 5.37 is out.  XScreenSaver makes for some fun live backgrounds in Android, I found.
• The Emacs Operating System.  (via)
• Block-breaking game in vim 8.0.  (via)
• Old school PC fonts.  (via)
• A rift in the NTP world.  (via)
• Roland McGrath bows out as glibc maintainer.  30 years is a long time.  (via)
• Hyperproductive development.  (via)
• The earliest known versions of Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler.  (via)

 

 

The weather’s nice, so the links are light.  Well, they were, then I got some reading done, and now we have a good-size list.

• Rule #1: Interop is all that matters.  This is what gave us the Internet, really.  (via)
• Nethogs, the tool.
• SIGGRAPH 2017 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer.  See what will appear in movies and triple-A games a year from now.  (via)
• The Restoration of Early Unix Artifacts.  (via)
• The Computer Cook Book.  (via)
• Internet Histories, a n in-depth examination of exactly that.  First issue.   The introduction has a great Tim Berners-Lee quote.  (via)
• Please insert next floppy.
• Many pet rabbits will die in Second Life on Saturday.  As the source link says, “At least nobody will ever make real food depend on the cloud, right?”
• Modern OS/2 released.  (via)
• The Unix Webserver.  Interesting to see as a concept, but not necessarily a good idea as implemented.  (via)
• A list of “highly-specific one-person’s-passion” websites.  One of my favorite things to see on the Internet.  (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: Roads & Kingdoms Breakfast.  Food and a story every weekday.