⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

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I shouldn’t have to say this, but please don’t post direct links to the elementary OS ISO, especially on release day. This is my only form of income and I really don’t make a lot of it. I want to keep making elementary OS as my job, but when you bypass our pay-what-you-can ask it cuts directly into the revenue I rely on to pay rent and buy food. The vast majority of people already pay nothing when they download. Please don’t take away the biggest opportunity I have for folks to support my work

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Video!

https://exquisite.tube/w/qoHtHzpNXncHwrfqpx31tF

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This is a mobile phone video of the reading of a UNIX V4 magnetic tape at the Computer History Museum. Video originally by Jon Duerig, the people primarily responsible for the tape restoration are Al Kossow and Len Shustek
»

@LillyHerself All it takes is ONE TIME needing something, remembering that you saved that thing, being able to find it, and having it actually work, to be doomed to a lifetime of saving every "perfectly good" thing you don't need any more.

It’s that time again! 🎄✨ All my music on Bandcamp is FREE to download for a limited time 🎁 If you like retro vibes, grab my albums & singles in .WAV .FLAC .MP3 .SID and enjoy some tunes 👾🎶 (And if you know someone who’d dig it, just pass it on!)

👉 https://lukhash.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for all the support this year and have a great festive season! 🎅❤️

Twenty years ago today we released X11R7, completing over a year of effort to split up the X Window System monolithic source tree into separate modules for each library, program, driver, etc. and to build it all with the GNU autotools instead of Imake. While we’ve recombined a few modules since (xorgproto instead of individual modules for each protocol definition) and are moving from the autotools to meson now, overall it wasvery successful and made it easier for us to maintain the packages we’ve kept going and to retire those we chose to let go.

https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2005-December/011616.html

Airplane with incapacitated pilot lands safely thanks to emergency autoland system:

https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reported-safe/?utm_source=newsletter-88&utm_medium=mastodon

I haven't listened to the attached LiveATC recording, but there is one if you are curious how an air traffic controller would mix emergency automated traffic with normal human-piloted traffic.

@joomy

I once read a story about the people writing the software for the NASA Apollo missions. There was a functionary in charge of weight accounting, who came to them and asked how much the software would weigh.

They told him it weighted nothing, but the functionary had heard *that* one before and insisted—everything had to be accounted down to the last ounce. He demanded to see it.

They showed him a stack of punched cards, and he was triumphant. “You see,” he said smugly, “it doesn't weigh only ‘nothing’!”

“No, you misunderstand,” they replied. “The cards aren't going on the spacecraft. Only the holes.”

the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:

Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.

The "UNIX v4 tape" running in simh PDP11 emu on IRIX:

Here's the document release you were waiting for today!

The UNIX V4 tape!

https://archive.org/details/utah_unix_v4_raw

Credits:

* Jay Lepreau for holding on to this tape
* Aleksander Maricq for finding it
* Jon Duerig for driving it to the Computer History Museum
* Thalia Archibald for doing a huge amount of research into the tape, its history, and file formats, and the upload
* Al Kossow for the tape-reading equipment and doing the actual read
* Len Shustek for the lab where the read was done and the software used to decode it

#retrocomputing

We have the binary image of the tape, link going up soon

Someone living here:

New Providence Wharf,
London, E14 9PB

Has started to place orders and is using my gmail for their contact, so I'm getting all their order confirmation.

I don't live in the UK and my bank cards aren't being accessed and I see anyone accessing my gmail account either.

It makes no sense.

The attempt to read the UNIX V4 tape is underway!

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein reported the results of switching:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/

and:
https://cybernews.com/news/schleswig-holstein-germany-microsoft-open-source/

and a statement from Schleswig-Holstein:
https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/_startseite/Artikel2025/IV/251204_cds_digitale_souveraenitaet

--> They invested 9 million Euro to save 15 million Euro per year.

This week:
The Danish Road Traffic Authority is the first agency to pilot SIA Open, a government-wide project by the Danish Gov. IT Agency designed to replace Microsoft services with open source.
https://itsfoss.com/news/denmark-road-traffic-authority-ditches-microsoft/
4/5
#OpenSource

This week's net.wars, "Slop", marks iRobot's bankruptcy and sale; wonders why, if generative AI is so great it has to be forced on us; and deplores the CBP plan to demand an unrealistic amount of "high-value data" as part of the price of visiting the US: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/12/19/slop/ #NetWars #privacy #robots

"The Expanse" turns 10 this week. Find out what other shows are celebrating milestone anniversaries in Hotchka's TV by the Decade!

https://hotchka.com/tv-by-the-decade-380

#Hotchka #TVByTheDecade #TheExpanse #Entertainment #Television #TV #Streaming