Notices by Tim Chase (gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

@rootwyrm @david_chisnall

Add to that the delight of

Are you over 18 today? No
[next day] Are you over 18 today? yes

Surprise, they have your DOB. 😑

@vasilis asks¹, so here:

I want a web that is accessible.

I want the web that works without issue in a terminal browser like lynx(1) or a light-weight browser like @dillo, a web that doesn't require 1GB (or even 1MB) of RAM just to display 25KB of actual content.

I want a web that doesn't run random, untrusted code on my machine.

I want a web that doesn't try and track my every movement and click across every site.

I want a web that doesn't require cookie banners on every site.

I want a web that doesn't have popups.

I want a web that doesn't beg for me to sign up for mailing lists.

I want a web that I can mark up semantically and instruct my browser how to style in my own fonts/colors that *I* find most readable.

I want a web that I can deploy on a low-end hosting box for $1/month² that doesn't require cloud-fronting services, CDNs, complex deployments, dozens of frameworks, and a complex build process.

I want a web that doesn't try to shove AI down my throat—whether useless slop content, or pounding on my poor server to scrape what I've created.

I want a web that is simple enough that a single developer could write a new/novel browser.

I want a web that connects people instead of companies inserting themselves between people to extract profit.

I want a web that is passionately crafted with love, not for capitalist motives.

Instead we somehow have [gestures around vaguely]

⸻
¹ https://social.vasilis.nl/@vasilis/116096206093641328

² https://lowendbox.com/blog/1-vps-1-usd-vps-per-month/

@cedx @hi

FreeBSD's fetch is definitely the tiniest of the HTTP clients on my systems:

gunnos@freebsd$ ls -sh1 `which wget fetch curl`
21 /usr/bin/fetch
217 /usr/local/bin/curl
373 /usr/local/bin/wget

gumnos@openbsd$ ls -sh1 `which wget ftp curl`
292 /usr/bin/ftp
704 /usr/local/bin/curl
1216 /usr/local/bin/wget

So 157KB is smaller than the other non-fetch HTTP tools, but the omit the 7.384 GB of disk-space required by Node.js+modules 😆

I learned recently that Didier Spaier, maintainer of the blind-friendly Slint distribution based on Slackware, passed away. May he rest in peace, and may his loved ones find comfort in the memory of all the good he did for the B/VI community.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1056384/

@mwl

Bond: "Do you expect me to awk?"

Goldfinger: "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to vi. There is nothing you can awk to me about that I don't already know."

@soatok @drscriptt

Boring? Tell us more!

@xenotar

Hah, my first computer (rather than my parents' computers I'd used up to that point) was a 486DX/100 that ran (at various junctures) DOS+Win31, Win95 (borrowed), OS/2 (borrowed), Slackware, and RedHat. Good hardware for its time in '95, but I can see how cryptography might burden such a machine 😆

Today in #FreeSoftwareAdvent it's the venerable ssh(1)/sshd(8)

While I grew up in an age where telnet(1) was my only option, the ssh folks made it a pretty drop-in replacement for the sorts of things I did with telnet, so switching was easy.

With the exception of when I'm rebooting or our ISP is having issues, I almost always have at least one SSH connection open and likely more than one connection to other hosts. Even in the "security" of our LAN in the house, I still SSH between machines rather than use unencrypted connections for transfer.

I love being able to run things remotely and use them locally, such as

$ ssh me@remote dmesg | xsel -ib

to put the remote machine's dmesg output on my system clipboard or

$ tar czvf - /path/to/data | ssh me@remote 'cd /destination/path ; tar xzf -'

to transfer a directory tree to a remote machine.

It generally has sensible defaults, allows me to force key-based authentication rather than username+password auth.

It allows me to limit $DAYJOB customers to SFTP-only access within their designated chroot directories, insulating them from each other.

I use it to tunnel into work and forward my RDP VM's screen so I can access it locally with rdesktop(1)

So many delightful little uses.

Definitely worth reading @mwl's SSH book to learn more: https://mwl.io/archives/3126

Though a bit niche, my #FreeSoftwareAdvent today is ed(1). As the goofball behind @ed1conf, I certainly play it up, but I certainly use it more than the average Unix/BSD/Linux user.

A while ago I wrote up list of reasons¹ why one might use ed, and some are more obscure/improbable reasons (though I've encountered all of them in that post), there are a couple of those that drive me back to ed regularly:

• I can still see the output of previous commands on the screen while I edit, where a full-screen editor would obscure that output that I need to incorporate in my edit

• it's just darn fast for a quick edit, changing a variable name or adding/removing an entry in a list, etc. No startup costs for a honkin' huge $VISUAL with dozens of plugins and language-server processes and GUI rendering

• very usable on low-bandwith/high-latency connections like I sometimes get when I remote into machines (less of a problem now, but I still experience sessions where I'll SSH in, invoke ed, make the change, write & quit, and exit the shell, in a couple seconds, while the screen repaints things oh-so-slowly

• and most importantly, there's quality geek-cred for using it in front of others 😆

⸻
¹ https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/why-ed1/

Parents, please check your kids' candy this Hallowe'en. I just found systemd inside one of their chocolates.

My beloved brought home an aloe plant a while back and its care has fallen to me. So I decided to name it "Guvnah". That way I can say "Aloe Guvnah" in a horrible British accent and get a quality eye-roll from my sweetheart every time I water it. 😆

Dumb #Vim trick: I knew that I wanted to jump about ¾ of the way into my file, but didn't want to page down a whole lot from the top of the document, nor did I want to jump to the bottom and page up a bunch.

Vim lets you type a number and the "%" to jump to a particular percentage line of the file. So to jump to my target, I typed

75%

and bang, landed within a couple lines of my desired destination. To learn more:

:help N%

@nixCraft Sounds like a good opportunity to Run Your Own Mail Server 😉

https://mwl.link/run-your-own-mail-server.html

#ryoms

@mcepl

The qualifications for running your own mailserver is not negligible, but it's also well documented in such a way that most competent geeks with a few bucks for a domain-name and VPS could get the fundamentals up and running in a weekend.

A discussion particularly apropos of reading @whitequark's recent thread¹ that crossed my feed, detailing adventures in busting the "setting up a mailserver is hard" myth.

⸻
¹ https://mastodon.social/@whitequark/115298019560025791

I don't comprehend businesses entrusting their entire online presence to the big social-media companies.

Yes, I drove past your new restaurant today and would love to learn more! But you don't have an actual web-page for basic things like menu, hours, pricing, or contact info? Like the sort of thing you could obtain for <$10/year on a cheap hosting service?

Sure, I suppose I'll open your Instagram page in a Private Browsing window. Oh, wait, IG will only show me 2–3 screenfuls of posts before requiring me to log in? We'll just close the window instead.

I suppose I could try your Facebook page instead in a different Private Browsing window. Hmm, a whole 2 pages of past posts before it requires me to log in to view more. *closes window*

Sorry, I was interested, but not *that* interested. Here's wishing your new business the best of luck… 😕

@MarkHoltom

This is my favorite that kinda takes the opposite tack

Today in POSIX fun courtesy of the remind(1) mailing-list (slightly modified for broader understandability):

⸻
[There's] no way to know if you use a valid time zone name. That's because the POSIX API for setting a timezone is (I kid you not...):

/* why use "UTC" when you can be in the Banana timezone*/
const char* zone_name = "banana";
setenv("TZ", zone_name, 1);
tzset();

and tzset() returns void...there's no possible error return from tzset()...not even errno. This is not one of POSIX's shining moments.
⸻

🍌

@mwl

"Which Greek letter are you? Take this quiz to find out!"

At first I figured I'd be an Omega because I'm kinda round and usually come in last.

Then I figured my enjoyment of desserts might designate me as Pi(e)

But then I felt a bit sheepish when I realized that my soft & warm nature and being kinda dumb made it inevitable…I'm a lamb, duh!

#λ

@mmu_man

While not 100% what you're asking, if you go to Preferences → General, and turn on "Always ask you where to save files" it gives you a file dialog which will warn you if you try to save with the same filename. Because you're apparently like me and will download the same file multiple times without realizing 🤪

And I don't really need "school_calendar_2025-2026 (4).pdf" because I've already downloaded it 4 other times 😑

@mozilla

@dabeaz Reminds me of one of my favorite D&D-related exchanges on :birdsite: