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This is why I love tech from that era.
Write bytes to a parallel port and stuff happens. If it’s just ASCII bytes, then it will print ASCII text. Even the simplest programs can use a printer this way.
With a little bit of ESC/P, you can print images and other fancy stuff. That’s what I did this morning – never worked with ESC/P before, now I can print images. It’s not that hard.
Hayes-compatible modems are similar: Write some AT commands to the serial port and the modem does things. This isn’t even arcane knowledge, it’s explained in the printed manual.
Maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses here, but I think with all this old stuff, *you get useful results very quickly* and the manuals are usually actually helpful. It’s so much easier to get started and to use this hardware to the full extent. Much less complexity than what we have today, not a ton of libraries and dependencies and SDKs and cloud services and what not.
https://movq.de/v/4bd16cb3c7/tux1.jpg
https://movq.de/v/4bd16cb3c7/tux2.jpg
This is why I love tech from that era.
Write bytes to a parallel port and stuff happens. If it’s just ASCII bytes, then it will print ASCII text. Even the simplest programs can use a printer this way.
With a little bit of ESC/P, you can print images and other fancy stuff. That’s what I did this morning – never worked with ESC/P before, now I can print images. It’s not that hard.
Hayes-compatible modems are similar: Write some AT commands to the serial port and the modem does things. This isn’t even arcane knowledge, it’s explained in the printed manual.
Maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses here, but I think with all this old stuff, *you get useful results very quickly* and the manuals are usually actually helpful. It’s so much easier to get started and to use this hardware to the full extent. Much less complexity than what we have today, not a ton of libraries and dependencies and SDKs and cloud services and what not.
https://movq.de/v/4bd16cb3c7/tux1.jpg
https://movq.de/v/4bd16cb3c7/tux2.jpg
I’ve been doing this for so lang that I’ve unlearned how to do this.
I’ve been doing this for so lang that I’ve unlearned how to do this.
@lyse Aww, yeah. 😍 (Reminds me, I haven’t paid attention to the sunset in quite a while …)
@lyse Aww, yeah. 😍 (Reminds me, I haven’t paid attention to the sunset in quite a while …)
@lyse When/if I can pull it off, there _will_ be videos! 😅
I never used hardcopy terminals, either. We did have a dotmatrix printer, but that was just used as a regular printer.
Inkjets, I don’t know. They were pretty fascinating and cool when they came out. A lot faster than dotmatrix and obviously quiter. They never gave me much trouble, actually. But I switched to a laser printer long before crap like DRM’ed ink cartridges became a thing.
@lyse When/if I can pull it off, there _will_ be videos! 😅
I never used hardcopy terminals, either. We did have a dotmatrix printer, but that was just used as a regular printer.
Inkjets, I don’t know. They were pretty fascinating and cool when they came out. A lot faster than dotmatrix and obviously quiter. They never gave me much trouble, actually. But I switched to a laser printer long before crap like DRM’ed ink cartridges became a thing.
Here’s an interesting thought/angle on this topic:
gemini://gemini.conman.org/boston/2025/08/21.1
> A further check showed that all the network blocks are owned by one organization—Tencent [4]. I'm seriously thinking that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) encourage this with maybe the hope of externalizing the cost of the Great Firewall [5] to the rest of the world.
Here’s an interesting thought/angle on this topic:
gemini://gemini.conman.org/boston/2025/08/21.1
> A further check showed that all the network blocks are owned by one organization—Tencent [4]. I'm seriously thinking that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) encourage this with maybe the hope of externalizing the cost of the Great Firewall [5] to the rest of the world.
The GPG signatures of my software tarballs have been wrong for *years* (because I’ve been using rsync wrong, funny enough, it wasn’t a GPG issue) and nobody ever noticed. (They still are wrong at the moment, because I haven’t pushed the fix, yet.)
This confirms that this is just a total waste of time. Nobody ever checks this. Maybe this matters if you’re a distro, but why even bother as a single person …
The GPG signatures of my software tarballs have been wrong for *years* (because I’ve been using rsync wrong, funny enough, it wasn’t a GPG issue) and nobody ever noticed. (They still are wrong at the moment, because I haven’t pushed the fix, yet.)
This confirms that this is just a total waste of time. Nobody ever checks this. Maybe this matters if you’re a distro, but why even bother as a single person …
@thecanine Wow. I’m not an artist in any way, but I have tried to make icons for programs or fonts every now and then. Making something that is still recognizable at so few pixels is *hard*. Hats off!
@thecanine Wow. I’m not an artist in any way, but I have tried to make icons for programs or fonts every now and then. Making something that is still recognizable at so few pixels is *hard*. Hats off!
@lyse Well, now that is pretty impressive. Upcycling ftw.
@lyse Well, now that is pretty impressive. Upcycling ftw.
@lyse Oh dear. 🙈 So glad that WfH is a thing now. Imagine how utterly annoying it would be if they expected you to still come in despite this …
@lyse Oh dear. 🙈 So glad that WfH is a thing now. Imagine how utterly annoying it would be if they expected you to still come in despite this …
Another wave of tens of thousands of hints by the same bot on the same file:
https://movq.de/v/61f8d39d2f/s.png
There’s probably a simple explanation for this: Maybe this bot was written with “AI” and it’s simply complete garbage.
This isn’t a serious threat for my low-profile website – yet. Can’t wait for this to get worse …
Another wave of tens of thousands of hints by the same bot on the same file:
https://movq.de/v/61f8d39d2f/s.png
There’s probably a simple explanation for this: Maybe this bot was written with “AI” and it’s simply complete garbage.
This isn’t a serious threat for my low-profile website – yet. Can’t wait for this to get worse …
@bender curl -s gopher://… does that for you.
@bender curl -s gopher://… does that for you.
@prologic They would know how to do that, but the issue was anything else, like switching workspaces or opening a terminal window or any window at all. 😅
@prologic They would know how to do that, but the issue was anything else, like switching workspaces or opening a terminal window or any window at all. 😅
We did an experiment at work today: Do I even need to lock my laptop when I’m gone or is nobody able to use it anyway?
It went as expected. 🤣
We did an experiment at work today: Do I even need to lock my laptop when I’m gone or is nobody able to use it anyway?
It went as expected. 🤣
@prologic I’m so tired of this. (That’s the goal. They want to wear people down.)
@prologic I’m so tired of this. (That’s the goal. They want to wear people down.)
@kat If you’re willing to ignore that it’s proprietary software, then Windows used to be pretty good. Like, 25 years ago. After Windows 2000 (or maybe XP) it went downhill fast. Kind of makes me sad, actually. 😂
@kat If you’re willing to ignore that it’s proprietary software, then Windows used to be pretty good. Like, 25 years ago. After Windows 2000 (or maybe XP) it went downhill fast. Kind of makes me sad, actually. 😂
@kat Oh no. 😨 Backups! We need more backups!
@kat Oh no. 😨 Backups! We need more backups!
You can explicitly use colors in manpages. I saw this in the apt manpage of Ubuntu recently, which, for some reason, uses blue text in one place:
https://movq.de/v/de5ab72016/s.png
Makes little sense to me. I’m glad that most manpages don’t do this. I wouldn’t want unicorn vomit all over the place.
Using colors can be done using the low level commands \m and \M:
.TH foo_program 3
\m[blue]I'm blue\m[], da ba dee.
\m[red]\M[yellow]I'm red on yellow.\m[]\M[]
This is quite horrible.
https://movq.de/v/394282ec75/s.png
You can explicitly use colors in manpages. I saw this in the apt manpage of Ubuntu recently, which, for some reason, uses blue text in one place:
https://movq.de/v/de5ab72016/s.png
Makes little sense to me. I’m glad that most manpages don’t do this. I wouldn’t want unicorn vomit all over the place.
Using colors can be done using the low level commands \m and \M:
.TH foo_program 3
\m[blue]I'm blue\m[], da ba dee.
\m[red]\M[yellow]I'm red on yellow.\m[]\M[]
This is quite horrible.
https://movq.de/v/394282ec75/s.png
Spiders are the only web developers that enjoy finding bugs.
Spiders are the only web developers that enjoy finding bugs.
@eldersnake Yeah, it’s really the last thing we need. I’d love to see X11 getting more attention – but not like this …
@eldersnake Yeah, it’s really the last thing we need. I’d love to see X11 getting more attention – but not like this …
@bender This should be a core feature, no configuration required. 🤔
@bender This should be a core feature, no configuration required. 🤔
@kat On the one hand, all these programs have a very long history) and the technology behind manpages is actually very powerful – you can use it to write books:
https://www.troff.org/pubs.html
I have two books from that list, for example “The UNIX programming environment”:
https://movq.de/v/c3dab75c97/upe.jpg
It’s a bit older, of course, but it looks and feels like a normal book, and it uses the same tech as manpages – which I think is really cool. 😎
It’s comparable to LaTeX (just harder/different to use) but *much* faster than LaTeX. You can also do stuff like render manpages as a PDF (man -Tpdf cp >cp.pdf) or as an HTML file (man -Thtml cp >cp.html). I think I once made slides for a talk this way.
On the other hand, traditional manpages (i.e., ones that are not written in mandoc) do not use semantic markup. They literally say, “this text is bold, that text over here is italics”, and so on.
So when you run man foo, it has no other choice but to show it in black, white, bold, underline – showing it in color would be wrong, because that’s not what the source code of that manpage says.
Colorizing them is a hack, to be honest. You’re not meant to do this. (The devs actually broke this by accident recently. They themselves aren’t really aware that people use colors.)
*If* mandoc and semantic markup was more commonly used, I think it would be easier to convince the devs to add proper customizable colors.
@kat On the one hand, all these programs have a very long history) and the technology behind manpages is actually very powerful – you can use it to write books:
https://www.troff.org/pubs.html
I have two books from that list, for example “The UNIX programming environment”:
https://movq.de/v/c3dab75c97/upe.jpg
It’s a bit older, of course, but it looks and feels like a normal book, and it uses the same tech as manpages – which I think is really cool. 😎
It’s comparable to LaTeX (just harder/different to use) but *much* faster than LaTeX. You can also do stuff like render manpages as a PDF (man -Tpdf cp >cp.pdf) or as an HTML file (man -Thtml cp >cp.html). I think I once made slides for a talk this way.
On the other hand, traditional manpages (i.e., ones that are not written in mandoc) do not use semantic markup. They literally say, “this text is bold, that text over here is italics”, and so on.
So when you run man foo, it has no other choice but to show it in black, white, bold, underline – showing it in color would be wrong, because that’s not what the source code of that manpage says.
Colorizing them is a hack, to be honest. You’re not meant to do this. (The devs actually broke this by accident recently. They themselves aren’t really aware that people use colors.)
*If* mandoc and semantic markup was more commonly used, I think it would be easier to convince the devs to add proper customizable colors.
@lyse @kat Colorized manpages have been a thing for a very long time:
https://movq.de/v/81219d7f7a/s.png
Problem is, hardly anybody knows this, because you configure this by … drumroll … overwriting TERMCAP entries of less in your ~/.bashrc:
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[38;5;3m' # Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' # End Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[4;38;5;6m' # Underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' # End Underline
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1 # Needed since groff 1.23=
@lyse @kat Colorized manpages have been a thing for a very long time:
https://movq.de/v/81219d7f7a/s.png
Problem is, hardly anybody knows this, because you configure this by … drumroll … overwriting TERMCAP entries of less in your ~/.bashrc:
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[38;5;3m' # Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' # End Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[4;38;5;6m' # Underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' # End Underline
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1 # Needed since groff 1.23=
@kat I still haven’t tried it. 🤐 Some day, perhaps …
@kat I still haven’t tried it. 🤐 Some day, perhaps …
In 1996, they came up with the X11 “SECURITY” extension:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4w548u/what_is_up_with_the_x11_security_extension/
This is what could have (eventually) solved the security issues that we’re currently seeing with X11. Those issues are cited as one of the reasons for switching to Wayland.
That extension never took off. The person on reddit wonders why – I think it’s simple: Containers and sandboxes weren’t a thing in 1996. It hardly mattered if X11 was “insecure”. If you could run an X11 client, you probably already had access to the machine and could just do all kinds of other nasty things.
*Today*, sandboxing is a thing. *Today*, this matters.
I’ve heard so many times that “X11 is beyond fixable, it’s hopeless.” I don’t believe that. I believe that these problems are solveable with X11 and some devs have said “yeah, we could have kept working on it”. It’s that people don’t *want* to do it:
> Why not extend the X server?
>
> Because for the first time we have a realistic chance of not having to do that.
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html
I’m not in a position to judge the devs. Maybe the X.Org code really is so bad that you want to run away, screaming in horror. I don’t know.
But all this was a choice. I don’t buy the argument that we never would have gotten rid of things like core fonts.
All the toolkits and programs had to be ported to Wayland. A huge, still unfinished effort. If that was an acceptable thing to do, then it would have been acceptable to make an “X12” that keeps all the good things about X11, remains compatible where feasible, eliminates the problems, and requires some clients to be adjusted. (You could have still made “X11X12” like “XWayland” for actual legacy programs.)
In 1996, they came up with the X11 “SECURITY” extension:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4w548u/what_is_up_with_the_x11_security_extension/
This is what could have (eventually) solved the security issues that we’re currently seeing with X11. Those issues are cited as one of the reasons for switching to Wayland.
That extension never took off. The person on reddit wonders why – I think it’s simple: Containers and sandboxes weren’t a thing in 1996. It hardly mattered if X11 was “insecure”. If you could run an X11 client, you probably already had access to the machine and could just do all kinds of other nasty things.
*Today*, sandboxing is a thing. *Today*, this matters.
I’ve heard so many times that “X11 is beyond fixable, it’s hopeless.” I don’t believe that. I believe that these problems are solveable with X11 and some devs have said “yeah, we could have kept working on it”. It’s that people don’t *want* to do it:
> Why not extend the X server?
>
> Because for the first time we have a realistic chance of not having to do that.
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html
I’m not in a position to judge the devs. Maybe the X.Org code really is so bad that you want to run away, screaming in horror. I don’t know.
But all this was a choice. I don’t buy the argument that we never would have gotten rid of things like core fonts.
All the toolkits and programs had to be ported to Wayland. A huge, still unfinished effort. If that was an acceptable thing to do, then it would have been acceptable to make an “X12” that keeps all the good things about X11, remains compatible where feasible, eliminates the problems, and requires some clients to be adjusted. (You could have still made “X11X12” like “XWayland” for actual legacy programs.)
I wasn’t really aware until recently that programs can’t choose their own window’s position on Wayland. This is very weird to me, because this was not an issue on X11 to begin with: X11 programs can request a certain position and size, but the X11 WM ultimately decides if that request is being honored or not. And users can configure that.
But apparently, this whole thing is a heated debate in the Wayland world. 🤔
I wasn’t really aware until recently that programs can’t choose their own window’s position on Wayland. This is very weird to me, because this was not an issue on X11 to begin with: X11 programs can request a certain position and size, but the X11 WM ultimately decides if that request is being honored or not. And users can configure that.
But apparently, this whole thing is a heated debate in the Wayland world. 🤔
This is just the universe telling me to reduce my screen time.
This is just the universe telling me to reduce my screen time.
@lyse To be fair, I did first notice this a while ago. But no monitor I ever had showed burn-ins like this (be it TFT or CRT), so I didn’t know that I *should have* sent it back. And then it got worse over time and now I see ghost images after 20-30 minutes. :(
@lyse To be fair, I did first notice this a while ago. But no monitor I ever had showed burn-ins like this (be it TFT or CRT), so I didn’t know that I *should have* sent it back. And then it got worse over time and now I see ghost images after 20-30 minutes. :(
@kat Ooooooohhhhh, nice 😲
@kat Ooooooohhhhh, nice 😲
Really, it won’t be long until I give the world the finger and move everything behind Gopher or Gemini. It’ll be a while until the bots find me there.
Really, it won’t be long until I give the world the finger and move everything behind Gopher or Gemini. It’ll be a while until the bots find me there.
@prologic I’d expect a custom build like that to cost at least 50'000€ here in Europe. *Used* campers with 100'000 - 200'000 km already on their clock are 20-40k€, apparently. 😆
@prologic I’d expect a custom build like that to cost at least 50'000€ here in Europe. *Used* campers with 100'000 - 200'000 km already on their clock are 20-40k€, apparently. 😆
@lyse Looks like it. 🤔 Didn’t dig deeper into this, just uninstalled it. 🥴
@lyse Looks like it. 🤔 Didn’t dig deeper into this, just uninstalled it. 🥴