Tag Archives: Tech

Unix V4 Update

Posted on 2025-12-24 by jcs

A month and a half ago, I wrote about the discovery of an original Unix V4 tape in a storeroom at the University of Utah. V4 was special because it was the first version of Unix to be largely written … Continue reading →

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The New Warp Drive; Same As The Old Warp Drive

Posted on 2025-12-21 by jcs

Today’s subject is a little outside of Irreal’s usual fare but as I said in my first post, Irreal is about, among other things, anything that excites my geek sensibilities. This definitely excites my geek sensibilities. The subject, as you … Continue reading →

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Screenshots

Posted on 2025-12-08 by jcs

Here’s a bit of a palate cleaner to ease you into Monday. Back in 2002, Anders Jensen-Urstad wrote to several prominent hackers and asked them for a screenshot of their desktop. You can see most of them here from when … Continue reading →

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Destroying Value Wherever They Go

Posted on 2025-11-20 by jcs

As I’ve said many times, management is a necessary part of any successful business, especially any large business. After all, someone has to set the goals, make all the mundane decisions, and do all the politics that would bore an … Continue reading →

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Burst-driven Development

Posted on 2025-11-17 by jcs

Most serious Emacs users are familiar with Bozhidar Batsov. He’s a blogger and the developer/maintainer of several OSS and Emacs projects such as RuboCop, CIDER, Projectile, nREPL, and many others. And, of course, he has a full time job. That … Continue reading →

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Unix v4

Posted on 2025-11-11 by jcs

The Unix story is well known to most software nerds but lessor known is the story of Unix v4. To many, it’s just another in the long line of Bell Lab’s Computing Sciences Research Center’s Unix releases but it turns … Continue reading →

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Thompson’s Reflections on Trusting Trust revisited

Posted on 2025-10-27 by jcs

As Irreal oldtimers know, My absolute favorite Computer Science paper is Ken Thompson’s Reflections on Trusting Trust. It is truly a thing of beauty. This is a beauty that should be appreciated in stages. In the first stage, we’re introduced … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: AWS Is Down, I Can’t Sleep

Posted on 2025-10-24 by jcs

Farce comes to the Internet. All right, farce comes to the Internet again. With the failure of AWS this week, many, many services were interrupted, including my Spanish learning app. It was annoying but, after all, you can always practice … Continue reading →

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Mistakes Startups Make

Posted on 2025-10-22 by jcs

Over at Reddit, MeirDavid has a truly terrifying post on why startups fail. He presents himself as a troubleshooter and his post is based on common problems startups in extremis experience. Like everything on the Internet these days, it’s hard … Continue reading →

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Librephone

Posted on 2025-10-17 by jcs

I just saw this announcement about the Librephone from the FSF. The idea is to provide a replacement for the Android smartphone operating system that would be free and open and not vacuum up everything you do with your phone … Continue reading →

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