Notices by Julia Evans (b0rk@social.jvns.ca)

If you want to get "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" (or any other zine!) and you're in a country with a weaker currency than the US (India, Brazil, etc), there's a discount to make the zines more affordable. You can see it in action here:

https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal/

If you're in a country this applies to, you should see something like this:

The reason this zine is called "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is that I learned more useful things while writing this zine than when writing any other zine, even though I've been using the terminal every day for 20 years.

It really left me feeling like the terminal is full of hidden secrets -- because "the terminal" is made up of so many different pieces, there's no single terminal manual you can read!

Here's the table of contents (which as a bonus shows the components of the terminal!)

we've already sold 1000 copies of The Secret Rules of the Terminal since it came out on Tuesday!

so to celebrate I'm giving away 1000 copies to anyone who can't afford to buy one. You can use code BUYONEGIVEONE at checkout to get a free PDF copy if $12 USD is a lot for you.

https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal

delighted to announce that my new zine "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is out today!!

You can get it for $12 USD here: https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal

it's happening! "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is coming out tomorrow!

here's the table of contents:

here's the final version of the "redirects cheat sheet" draft I posted a while back!

("The Secret Rules of the Terminal is finished! 95 beta readers have read it! the copy editor is done! technical review is done! the illustrator has made the cover! It's going to be out on *****Tuesday June 24*****")

this is a nice post on strace (I didn't know that strace had a --stack-traces option!) https://rrampage.github.io/2025/06/13/strace-tips-for-better-debugging/

Using `make` to compile C programs (for non-C-programmers) https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/06/10/how-to-compile-a-c-program/

related to this `make` post I've been very vaguely thinking of writing a "things that are useful to know about C even if you're never going to write a C program in your life" zine because I feel like I get a surprising amount of mileage out of understanding C at a very basic level even though I have never really written a C or C++ program and do not plan to

but I have to actually get the terminal zine published before I start thinking about whether I want to do that or not

something a friend said to me a little while back that stuck with me was that the Unix programming environment kind of assumes on some level that you're a C programmer, like a lot of the tools were written by and for C programmers and so it's sometimes useful to "think like a C programmer" to try to understand why things were built the way they were

@mcc what’s an RSS app? i definitely use and love RSS but only for blogs and newsletters, I don’t really want everything to be RSS

making a list of tricks for making static sites (just HTML/CSS/JS) that do cool or useful things

so far I have:

- store all the state in the URL
- use localStorage for state
- make a client for an API that supports cross-origin requests (like the mastodon API)
- load a bunch of data from a static JSON file

some things I've seen but haven't done myself:

- use github as your data storage (like what Decap CMS does)
- use SQLite from a static website with no backend

@endrift hmm do you think it would be possible for the shell to open the file *after* the program starts?

I think I have finally managed to articulate this very fundamental but slightly counterintuitive fact about how shell redirection works

i enjoy this flowchart explaining how bash decides whether to use .bashrc or .bash_profile https://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup-scripts.html, mostly because it makes me understand better why I could never understand how the 2 config files worked when I used bash

contributed a feature to the iTerm Color Schemes library yesterday to make the colorschemes work with any terminal emulator that supports the OSC 4 escape codes for setting the terminal's color palette (including GNOME Terminal, I believe the Linux console, and a bunch of others) https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes/?tab=readme-ov-file#generic-color-schemes

basically it means that you can download a short script (like this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes/refs/heads/master/generic/Solarized%20Dark%20-%20Patched.sh and when you run it it'll print out some escape codes that update your terminal colours

copy and paste in the terminal

terminal programs have a lot of hidden rules

how terminal colours work

TIL you can configure ssh to only allow a client to run 1 specific command https://dan.langille.org/2025/04/17/using-ssh-authorized-keys-to-decide-what-the-incoming-connection-can-do/