Technology Writings
Documenting things that may have been good to know 20 years ago.™
Mostly this is about computers or moreso software and in particular unix software of a decidedly OpenBSD slant. Or, old man yells at Linux cloud. I mean, what is up with those Linux frankensteins not installing ed(1), and then linking vi to the ClunkMaster3000 that is nano, or once you get vim installed the terminal looks like a unicorn's ass was rubbed all over it? Yes, I disable colors by default.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/old/EOLstory.txt
Some of us never got the memo that IRC died. None of the purported replacements look in any way compelling, though. Acid test: does the source for the client software compile on OpenBSD, and run in a terminal? Discord scores an impressive zero of three. I did try Discord in a browser, and it sort of works, but the modern bloatbrowser isn't my cup of tea, nor is the Discord interface, and then there's data logging and centralization issues.
On the plus side, it's been a few years since I've had to support RedHat, or even Linux. Systemd was a success in that it drove people who do not like it away from Linux.
Shell "$variables"
In the POSIX shell, an unquoted $variable actually means something like glob(split $IFS, $variable)), surprise!, which can lead to all sorts of problems, such as security errors.
gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/zoerhoff/20241029.txt
Instead, if you write for a POSIX shell, by default quote the "$variable" to prevent this auto-split and auto-glob.
Weird Terminology
That Modern Web
https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/01/27/whatsapp-and-the-domestication-of-users/