The other bit is that, having just released an Absolute OpenBSD update, his Absolute FreeBSD book will not see an update… until the FreeBSD installer gets more coherent.

(If you manage DNS in any fashion, buy DNSSEC Mastery.)

• For the Bitcoin enthusasts: ‘…when my wife refuses to bring him cake on our sofa, he calls it a “denial-of-service attack”’ (via)
• Make It So, coverage of computer interfaces from movies.  I always thought that was what Enlightenment was trying to achieve: the Interface From The Future.  (via several places)
• Same computer interface topic, but from anime movies.  It would be nice if this became something people actively worked on, instead of Bitcoin selling and Facebook monetizing.  (via)
• Flat icons/monochromatic icons seem to be another microtrend.  This is probably because few people do small dimensional icons well.  My favorite was always the BeOS set.
• On benchmarks.  It says what you should already know, but I like the Phoronix/MD5 benchmarking joke.  (via EFNet #dragonflybsd)
• This article titled “The Meme Hustler” draws a finer line than I’ve seen before between “open source” and “free software”.    The author, Evgeny Morozov, seems to also have a hate-on for Tim O’Reilly.  See some reviews of a recent Morozov book for a counterpoint, of sorts.
• Spacewar championship, 1972, in Rolling Stone.  Exactly two years before I was born!   At this point, finding things older than me makes me a bit happy.  There’s a picture of a Dynabook in there, photographed by Annie Liebowitz.  It’s entertaining to read this 40-year-old story and see how well it predicts the future.  I’m also sort of amazed it exists, in Rolling Stone.  More Spacewar links here.
• Meet the Web’s Operating System: HTTP.  ”Because HTTP is ultimately the one social contract on the web that, amidst a million other debates over standards, rules, policies, and behavior, we have collectively agreed to trust.”  (via)
• Ancient computers in use today.  I’ve linked to a story about that IBM 402 before,  but the following pages about VAX and Apple ][e systems are new.  Well, new to read, certainly not new hardware.  (via)
• Yahoo Chat!  A Eulogy.  The spray of forbidden words is an entertaining acknowledgement message.  (via)
• The $12 Gongkai Phone.  Bunnie Huang breakdowns are always fun, and he’s describing a strange sort of open source that isn’t through license.  (via)
• The FreeBSD Foundation is looking to hit a million dollars donated this year, which seems quite possible given last year’s performance.  Donate if you can; their activities help the whole BSD community.
• A Complete History of Breakout.  It’s not actually complete, but that’s OK.  It includes Steve Jobs being a jerk and Steve Wozniak being very clever, which is their traditional roles.  (via)
• Ack 2.0 is out.  It’s a very useful utility; I’d like to see more standalone utilities created this way.
• Space Claw, Flickr via BBS.  You’ll need telnet.   (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: Shady Characters, a typography/history blog I’ve linked to before, has a book out.  If you liked those links, you know what to do next.

For the confused, ‘foreign’ means any disk hooked to a RAID controller that isn’t part of a configuration the RAID device already knows about.  A replacement disk, or more worryingly, a good disk gone bad/unrecognizable.  (I’ve had both.)

Here’s a trivia question – what’s the oldest Unix utility, and what’s the oldest code still in use?  I don’t know the answer.

As an aside, I always thought patch was one of Larry Wall’s unsung successes, and I’m entertained by any program that has “Hmm…” as one of its official outputs.

The OpenBSD ‘Papers’ page has some videos listed to match the OpenBSD-related presentations from EuroBSDCon 2012.

Not only does NetBSD support the BeagleBoard, but Michael Lorenz is committing from it.

FreeBSD has brought in a new version of bmake and jemalloc.  I’ve seen a number of other commits recently attributed to ‘NetApp’, which is good to see.  Also, preliminary USB support for boot loaders.

PC-BSD is looking to use pkgng, the same binary package manager used in John Marino’s DPorts.  It’s proving quite popular.

• Outgrow.me, a list of successfully funded Kickstarter and IndieGoGo projects.  There’s some neat technology doodads in there.  And a zillion hipster iPhone tripods.
• Remember when you could find program source code printed in magazines, for you to type in?  Here’s an interesting story about that.  (via)
• Some good news: despite the completely hostile (and wrong) story on Slashdot, the FreeBSD Foundation has exceeded their pledge goals for the year by a wide margin.
• A very early pre-Internet story about packets.  (via)
• Relational shell programming.  (via)
• History of the Microwriter.  I remember seeing a version of this called the Twiddler.   (also via)
• How to Host a Dungeon.  Follow some of the links at the bottom.  (also also via)
• Early Apple computer designs.  I link not because it’s Apple but because it’s very much 1980s industrial design, which is both wonderful and awful.  (via)

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Marlo Meekins’ Tumblr.   Her lettering is refreshingly expressive.  That may sounds strange to single out, but so many people place words as an set block of text rather than as part of a graphic layout.

smbios.bios.reldate="12/04/2006"
smbios.bios.vendor="Dell Inc. "
smbios.bios.version="2.1.0 "

This may seem minor, but this can be very helpful when dealing with hardware you aren’t physically able to access.

(What does OpenBSD use for make?)

(This is shaping up to be a much bigger release than I anticipated!)

I’m saying that unironically!  It really is an interesting document to read, for historical and general knowledge.  I am a nerd.