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Why I Love FreeBSD - IT Notes:

Which is one of the reasons why every time I attend a BSD conference, I come home even more in love with the project: the vibe of the community, the dedication of the developers, the presence of a Foundation that is strong and effective without being domineering or self-important - which, compared to the foundations of other major Open Source projects, makes it genuinely remarkable. Faces that have been part of this project for over twenty years, and still light up the moment they find their friends and start talking about what they've been working on. That positivity is contagious - and it flows directly into the code, the project, the vision for what comes next. Because that's the heart of it. FreeBSD has always been an operating system written by humans, for humans: built to serve and to be useful, with a consistency, documentation, pragmatism, and craftsmanship that most other projects - particularly mainstream Linux distributions - simply don't have.

I too have been a fan of FreeBSD, and its cousin OpenBSD, for a long time. When I got my start in the tech industry back in the very early 2000's (after a few years working in radio communications and encryption in the Navy), one of the first things we did was start building web servers, firewalls, and proxies out of OpenBSD and FreeBSD. It was far more difficult to do back then, and we used to beg our boss, the Senior Chief, to let us use Linux. He wisely refused and insisted we learn the system from the ground up. I owe my career to those early decisions and the obsession it sparked in me to know the machine as much as I could from the inside out.

Unfortunately, Linux won the popularity contest, so it's Linux that runs every major cloud provider and service in the world. Linux is amazing, don't get me wrong, but it'll never hold the place in my heart that FreeBSD does.

In fact, one of the things that drew me to the Mac was knowing that underneath that beautiful and functional UI was a FreeBSD Unix core. So… maybe BSD did win the popularity contest after all.

I still day dream about leaving the cloud and running a datacenter again, with the host OS of every server is FreeBSD, and the guests are all running either in bhyve or hosted in jails. It'd be reliable, functional, and secure. Beautiful.

New ways to learn math and science in ChatGPT | OpenAI:

Shot:

In early testing, college and high school age students said the interactive experience helped them better understand how variables relate to one another. Parents said it gave them a more dynamic way to walk through problems alongside their children. Educators said tools like this could help students understand how concepts work, instead of simply memorizing formulas.

Chaser:

Altman said, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter,”

Sam Altman Says Intelligence Will Be a Utility, and He’s Just the Man to Collect the Bills

Putting computers in schools to begin with wasn't a great idea. Putting computers with AI into our schools is a disaster.

Daring Fireball: 'Grief and the AI Split':

Orchard’s fine essay examines a philosophical divide within the ranks of talented, considerate craftsperson developers. The divide that I’m talking about has been present ever since the demand for programmers exploded, but AI code generation tooling is turning it into an expansive gulf. The best programmers are more clearly the best than ever before. The worst programmers have gone from laying a few turds a day to spewing veritable mountains of hot steaming stinky shit, while beaming with pride at their increased productivity.

Productivity and craftsmanship aside, there are still lots, and lots of ethical, moral, and environmental issues with our current iteration of AI. The companies shoving down our throats providing AI aren't making money, and there's research ongoing showing that skills atrophy when using AI. I can see the argument that it depends on how you use it, but even in my own limited use when considering a problem I can feel the pull to go to AI first instead of digging in myself. That's not a pull I want to feel.

‘50 Years of Thinking Different’ — Curb Cuts:

As a lifelong disabled person and longtime Apple fan, never mind an objective technology journalist, improved lives obviously resonates deeply with me.

Apple’s accessibility efforts is an exemplar of its “make the world better” ethos.

Credit where due.

AI Slop: A Slack API Rate Limiting Disaster – code.dblock.org | tech blog:

For now, human oversight of A.I. assistants remains critical.

More and more I’m seeing reasons to avoid AI.

Michael Stipe Took The Stage | Stephen Clark (sgclark.com):

Last night at Brooklyn Steel, a concert venue in the Williamsburg section of the NYC borough, Michael Stipe – former lead singer of R.E.M. (one of my favorite bands) – took the stage with Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy to sing “These Days” and “The Great Beyond”. This was the first time he has sung these songs on stage in about 18 years. I happened to be at this show with friends – all of us hoping this would happen. The show itself was fantastic. Having Michael Stipe make a cameo took it to another level. I took a video of the performance from the back of the room that I would have posted, but I then found the above video on YouTube that was far better than mine.

What a gift.

How to start a record collection • Buttondown:

I tried to talk everyone out of buying vinyl not too long ago. It’s expensive. It’s a pain in the ass if you move. It takes up way too much space in your home. It warps in the heat. You’ll forget you already have something and buy it multiple times. People write about it when they’re trying to avoid writing about all the terrible things happening in the world. Worst of all, it introduces terrible people into your life: audiophiles. We covered all of these things. And yet, you did it anyway.

Congrats. I’m sorry.

Well, as long as you already bought all the equipment, it’d be a sin to see it going unused, so let’s go buy some records.

Pretty much the only thing I personally like on this list is Madonna’s Like a Prayer, and even that’s a stretch. I should probably post my own top ten albums, I always enjoy reading other folks' list and reasoning. Like he says, musical taste is very subjective.

Daring Fireball: Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo:

And the PC world should take note. One of my briefings today included a side-by-side comparison between a MacBook Neo and an HP 14-inch laptop “in the same price category”. It was something like this one, with an Intel Core 5 chip, which costs $550. The HP’s screen sucks (very dim, way lower resolution), the speakers suck, the keyboard sucks, and the trackpad sucks. It’s a thick, heavy, plasticky piece of junk. I didn’t put my nose to it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it smells bad.

Damn, John… tell me how you really feel!

I think he's right about this new MacBook Neo, Apple is going to sell boatloads of these, and my bet is that they'll get great reviews.

Have We Forgotten How to Design?:

It is ironic, isn’t it? The premise of Waymo is to automate moving a human being on a road, but in reality, it cannot function without a human being’s intervention. I don’t even want this technology to begin with. I think it’s dangerous and reckless and unethical. But I can’t help but laugh at this “solution” because it reminds me of how scooter companies need to redistribute the scooters around a city when they all end up consolidated in a single spot.

If only they thought of ways to move people collectively instead of the vehicles.

Like a train.

Chart: US to overwhelmingly build clean power in 2026 | Canary Media:

This year, solar will provide 51% of the new utility-scale electricity capacity slated to come online, batteries will deliver 28%, and wind will add 14%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Fossil gas, one of the polluting fuels most supported by the Trump administration, makes up only 7% of that new capacity. Coal, the other polluting fuel favored by the White House, does not appear in the ranks of power plants under construction.

The current madness of American politics is just a season, an unfortunate one that will soon pass.