Notices by Tim Chase (gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe), page 2

@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:

A quick pen sketch on a scrap of paper consisting of a person on a motorcycle shooting guns, surrounded by phrases like "Windows Sux!1 Resist mediocrity! Install FreeBSD" Below the whole thing is a second scrap of paper on which is scribbled "VAT"

@libreleah

@xhr

in case it's useful, you can also toggle boolean options within less(1) so if you want to toggle case-sensitive searching, you can type

-i

or if you you want to toggle line-wrap

-S

or squeezing blank lines

-s

or search highlighting

-G
-g

etc. No need to quit and restart it just to toggle an option you forgot.

Feeling particularly thankful for the recent addition of --csv in One True Awk. What would have been 10–15min of dinking around to deal with quoted strings/values/columns? Instead, it took under a second to change -F, to --csv and done.

@mwl

Meanwhile…

FreeBSD: You need a processor, preferably something made in the last two decades with 1GB of RAM (although more is better)

OpenBSD: You need a processor, preferably made sometime since the turn of the century and maybe 256MB of RAM (although more is better)

NetBSD: You've got a dead badger you found on the roadside and have attached it to a dodgy 220V power-source? Sure, we'll run on that.

@etchedpixels

it's all those modern dead badgers and the NDAs required to access the firmware. But if you happen to have a vintage dead-badger, you're good to go… 😛

@davepolaschek

Indeed, for a brief season I ran Minix1 or Minix2 on my parents' 286 and it was magic. Real multitasking, even if the whole thing was a bit spartan and frequently hit swap due to the meager 640k of RAM. Would totally love to revisit that with what I know now, decades later.

@etchedpixels

HTML itself isn't so bad and (when written properly/semantically) completely usable in a text-mode browser like lynx(1), It's mostly the JavaScript (and to a much lesser degree the CSS) that ruins it. Cookies (especially 3rd-party) were also a pretty bad idea.

@Razemix @neil

@jpmens

That's horrible coding style. It should be

… | sudo sh

😉

ooh, new dark pattern I discovered today.

Stuck with MS Teams at $DAYJOB, I continue to hold onto the thick-client instead of succumbing to the heavy-weight web client.

Just about every time I switch to the app after a couple hours of not using it, it pops up a "This is unsupported" interruption with a link to learn more, HUGE, colorful "Try it on the web" button, and a smaller light "continue using this antiquated unsupported piece of junk" type button.

As if that wasn't bad enough, as dark patterns go, when you tab through the controls, focus lands on the "more information" link and on the "try it on the web" button, but the "continue using this" simply won't focus with the keyboard. You HAVE to reach for the mouse to click the "continue using this"

Have I mentioned how much I loathe using MS products, and Teams in particular?

apropos of nothing, this crossed my feed just now

Wishing a happy 5.25 day to all who celebrate!

@neil

I misread that as "NNTP server" and thought, that's news to me…

Opened @feld's post¹ on using OpenSMTPD as a backup MX and had kinda waited to read it, expecting a long detailed post. But it was less than a 3-minute read because configuration was so simple/clean. 👍

⸻
¹ https://blog.feld.me/posts/2025/05/backup-mx-with-opensmtpd/

Me: huh, I don't remember logging out of my session on the kids' #OpenBSD laptop…oh, right, I did a `doas sysupgrade`, it did the upgrade, rebooted into 7.7, and returned uneventfully to the login screen without requiring any additional intervention or thought.

There's something wonderful about an upgrade-process so boring that you can accidentally forget you did it.

@annika

Which OS? I find that having a Compose key on my X-based systems (BSDs and Linuxen)

setxkbmap -option compose:caps

turns my caps-lock key into a Compose key, letting me enter similar sequences of characters in *any* X app (including gvim or vim in a terminal). So

«compose»a' → á
«compose»n~ → ñ

and going a bit meta there,

«compose»<< → «
«compose»>> → »
«compose»-> → →

You can even define your own in ~/.XCompose ☺

@lanodan

I have indeed used

$ miscreant.prog | cat

or

$ cat | miscreant.prog

(or both) to lie to programs that behave poorly when isatty() returns true. I shouldn't have to, and the `TERM=dumb miscreant.prog` sometimes does the job.

For just color aspects, some progs respect `$NO_COLOR` (https://no-color.org/) which might be enough.

But yes, staaahp it with the unbidden progress-bars and twirlers and whatever.

@cks

@mwl