Amitai Schleier
@schmonz@schmonz.com
If your business makes software, I might be good for your business.
NetBSD turns 33 this Sunday! 🚩
To celebrate 33 years of clean code, portability, and zero bloat, Challenging the rest of the fediverse to help hit this year's funding goals.
Also do drop a screenshot of your uptime, uname -a, or a pic of the weirdest hardware you've got running NetBSD right now. (RockPro64 NPF routers or Pi's hooked up to retro CRTs highly encouraged).
Throw some money at the developers keeping the real UNIX alive:
https://www.netbsd.org/donations/
#NetBSD #UNIX #RetroComputing #OpenSource #runbsd #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #Linux
@jaypatelani my VPS running NetBSD 10.1. Has WireGuard tunnels to 4 locations with full mesh BGP dynamic routing over the tunnels. BGP runs in GRE. Exposes a haproxy load balancer and reverse proxy for my internal Nextcloud, Firefly3, Frigate.
Has been rock solid apart of a strange OSPF (frr) issue where I can't establish session through GRE tunnel. There's some awkward GRE handling in NetBSD which I can't pinpoint.
All the best to NetBSD!
@bkrawczyk niceee 
boosted@jaypatelani @bkrawczyk
No discussion about NetBSD would be complete without including the legendary hardware compatibility. Here is one such example from a @bsdcan from 2019: https://youtu.be/e7cJ7v2lYdE
Happy 33rd B-Day to a fantastic OS. Also, @netbsd will have a Dev Summit at BSDCan 2026 in Ottawa.
boosted@jaypatelani Pix of the iconic NetBSD toaster are harder to find now than years ago but archive dot org has some.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190205161158/http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ja/gallery/in-Action/
Edit: a screenshot of mine is in there too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190205161158im_/http://www.jp.netbsd.org/gallery/in-Action/jamesSpath-drillbit1-small.gif
@jspath55 Are you saying we should put the picture on NetBSD.org/gallery/?
@bentsukun eh, not my pic necessarily. It may be there somewhere but the toaster was the cool thing.
@jspath55 @bentsukun tbh a lot of people are understandably tired of hearing toaster jokes for 20 years.
boosted@netbsd @bentsukun Greybeards like me (started on 386BSD) know that tale well, but it's still funny to me, and maybe unknown to the younger ones.
boosted@jaypatelani Nice! This is mine box there the #NetBSD is running. Basically, this is just a main part of the cashier (without the display). CPU: Intel Atom N2800, 4 Gb of RAM.
boosted@jaypatelani None of my truly weird systems are online at the moment, so how about an early '90s HP X Terminal logged into a Rock64?
@jaypatelani Here's my Acorn RiscPC booting #NetBSD 8.3. The computer is from 1994 so almost the same age as NetBSD itself.
Also quick plug, if you want to hear more about this history, come to my talk at @bsdcan this June #BSDCan
our advice is that if youre ever behind an office supply truck you better drive carefully because if boxes start falling out and you swerve around they might give you a ticket for
tacks
evasion
1. Make full use of my particular set of skills
AND (this is a big and)
2. Have their results be appreciated.
Here’s what I’ll see when I occasionally go to the office.
@schmonz recently shared a photo of the view from his new job, looking over the New York skyline.
Well, my new job is the heart of #Edinburgh’s New Town, famous for its Georgian architecture, views south to the Old Town and the castle, and north to the firth, and the hills of Fife.
Behold, the view from my office:
@BarneyDellar @schmonz oh no that’s terrible.
My 16yo made (and invented!) this! #origami
@narthur That is sincerely beautiful and seeing it made my morning. Thank you!
Back in the early 90s I worked for a CAD company here in Cambridge. One of the ladies who worked with us was known as our Geometry Wizardess. In addition to being a mathematical bad ass and a really skilled hand at LISP, she enjoyed folding complex geometric origami constructions like this as a hobby.
She'd just walk into your office (We all had OFFICES. With a VIEW and actual DOORS that CLOSED back then! What a different world!) and hand you some delightfully complex paper construction with a smile.
It was magical.
@feoh my son does that at school - he’s well known for just passing things like this out, here and there.
I’ll pass your message along :)
Its replacement: a 1968 Baldwin Model R Artist Series my parents found for an even better bargain. Thanks, new friend, for all the music to come.
I’m so proud! In math class, the teacher told the kids they could have notes for the exam on one side of a single piece of paper. My 16yo twisted and taped his paper into a Möbius strip!
Apparently the teacher was dumbfounded… and then allowed it!
(I mean, how could he not? It was *math* class!)
@narthur
Ich bin der arme König Salomo.
—Möbius
https://bitbucket.org/tatzelbrumm/i_am_poor_king_solomon/src/master/
[h/t @quinn ]
@narthur In college, when my eyesight was much better than now, a teacher let us have a cheat sheat - one side of a Letter-sized piece of paper.
I went to the copy shop and photocopied bits of the book at like 20%, then did some cutting and taping, fit everything onto one piece of paper, and brought that. Always look for the loopholes!
@narthur Sorry, Can you show photographic evidence of the paper. I'm skeptical this can be done with a standard sheet of paper.
@melliott heh - I got to thinking of that after I posted this, too. Apparently the rule was “half sheet” and my son actually cut the half sheet in half again (and taped it), to make one very long and thin length.
It’s been over three months since I went to the gym. Between starting a new job, commute times, holidays, and winter, I haven’t mustered the willpower. But today I’m back, and I’ve lost a ton of progress.
But I’d forgotten how good it feels. I think it was a mistake to led that feeling fade from my memory.
@navi But seriously, getting to the point where you actually sent the thing is something to be proud of, it's definitely an accomplishment in itself. No matter what the reactions are.
(& Medtner!)
The Leading Technical Change Seminar is *back*.
6 Attendees
4 2-hour Sessions
1 topic
Real Change In The Real World
April 6,7, 9 & 10, 1-3pm EST
LTC is a true seminar, led by me. Each attendee brings their own change challenges, and we tackle them all, as a group.
An alumnus writes: "A masterclass in leading without authority. Intensely practical and focused on outcomes, you leave with a toolkit that you can start applying immediately."
Grab your seat today!
https://www.geepawhill.org/courses/leading-technical-change/
I've been a participant in this course, and I HIGHLY recommend. Geepaw is such a wise person, with a unique perspective. It's a privilege to be coached by him. Get a ticket while you can.
@schmonz happy new year!
What are all the cool kids use today to have an e-mail with their own domain name, but without using Google Workspaces? I haven't done that in so long.
Edit: I settled on mailbox.org for now. The setup using my own domain was as easy as I expected.
@afilina I'm using mailbox.org for all my domains: https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/
@afilina Not sure whether I'm a cool kid, but I have several domains on mailbox.org and it works fine. (AMA if you want)
@afilina Loser-kid answer: I use the included-free email in my trashy Dreamhost account.
Forward all to a gmail address in Dreamhost, then set up “Send As" in Gmail and "Alternate Email" in Google Profile, so that Google treats it as an alias in pretty much every way.
Not always blazing fast, but does the job and has been low-to-no-maintenance over the years.
Obviously that's if you just want "free workspaces”. I used to use it as an actual POP account too.
@afilina been a Fastmail customer for many years. Zero complaints. TBH I’d use Google except for I can’t have Google Workspace and also has family YouTube premium, etc etc. that’s what led me to Fastmail.
@afilina I'm certainly not cool and probably do not qualify as a kid, but I've always been running my own mx server. Still doing so.
But we also have a mailbox.org account.
Not sure I'd recommend runnig everything youraelf if yoy haven't done so before these days but there are quite few ready to rock email OSS bundles, even with containers ;-) and admin ui
@afilina I've continued running my own mail server (for like 20 years now), with postfix and dovecot.
@afilina I currently point my DNS MX records at Apple iCloud, but you can point them wherever you want really.
I have two options:
- my favorite: https://proton.me/
- good alternative: https://www.infomaniak.com/en
both are excellent in regards of service, support, performance, innovation AND PRIVACY
(both are hosted in Switzerland)
@afilina I ran on qmailToaster for the longest time, then Zimbra open source and recently migrated to dockerized Mailcow. Really happy about it
@afilina I know you’ve already made your choice, so this is a bit late: I switched from Google Workspace to Fastmail in 2022 and I’ve enjoyed using it so far.
I blogged about migrating my MX (email) from self-hosted #Qmail, with Gmail as the front-end, to @fastmail: https://www.rainskit.com/blog/migrating-from-qmail-and-gmail-to-fastmail/
Many #yaks were shaved in this adventure, and I'm much less visible to Google, now!
The post is long, mostly because I needed to eulogize the end of 25 years of email self-hosting. But it might be interesting to some of you. And it might be helpful if you are on Qmail and want to stop self hosting.
Booted 8’s ISO without any special grub flags. (On this box, whoa.) Easy repair.
These were my final big questions. I now trust this system with my data. Blog post soon.
1. Get fastfetch and all of its dependencies building on Mac OS 10.9 #MavericksForever
2. Include pkgsrc in the package report
That’s your clue: refactor first.
(Special case of the general KFB wisdom “First make the change easy, then make the easy change.”)
Hit up your network before applying. If you’re reading this, I’m in your network.
I've updated my binary package repository for PowerPC Mac OS X. New and updated packages for curl, git, python 3.10, apache, nginx, openssh, rsync, yt-dlp, vim, zsh, tmux, and many more.
But if a supposed #ExtremeProgramming expert doesn’t grok this, such remarkably deep failure of understanding indicates ignorance AND profound obstinacy.
Here's my setup: https://schmonz.com/2025/11/12/small-macs/
(Writing... muscles... loosening.)
I blogged about the system we have used for years to teach our #kids about saving #money: https://www.rainskit.com/blog/kids_money/
I've been very happy with it, and maybe this system will be useful for you, too!
History