22 June 2026
unix
freebsd
bsd
history
The third and last Monday on what Unix is, at the
source. The fifty-seven-year arc reduces to four small
moments: a discarded PDP-7 at Bell Labs (1969), a
licence into universities, Berkeley's line (1977), and
a lawsuit that freed it (1994). In 1991 free Unix
arrived twice: Berkeley's Net/2, from which came FreeBSD
and NetBSD, and, separately, Torvalds' kernel. The BSDs
are Unix by descent; Linux a unixoid by resemblance.
Still running, everywhere. Unix Universe ⊣ What
Unix Is, 3 of 3.
21 June 2026
philosophy
sovereignty
hardware
risc-v
The last Sunday on European software sovereignty
reaches the floor beneath the other two. Below the
OS sit the system firmware, the management firmware
(Intel ME, AMD PSP) and the microcode, signed in
silicon, refusing what the maker did not sign. ARM is
SoftBank-owned; RISC-V is open, yet governed from
Switzerland. Europe's most complex chip, SiPearl's
Rhea1, rents ARM cores and is fabbed in Taiwan. You
can fork the code, not the chip. IT Philosophy
⊣ European Software Sovereignty, 3 of 3.
19 June 2026
security
supply-chain
npm
freebsd
A dormant npm key, never revoked, republished 144
Mastra packages in 88 minutes on 17 June, slipping
in easy-day-js, a typosquat of dayjs whose
postinstall hook stole browser data, wallets and SSH
keys. There is no CVE; only osv-scanner saw it.
Miasma and Shai-Hulud told the same story on npm and
PyPI the same month. The BSD and Rust answer is three
gates: pkg_add verifies before it acts, postinstall
acts before anything is verified. Security Review
⊣ Standalone.
17 June 2026
javascript
htmx
webperf
architecture
"The count is the cost of features," runs the
standard reading. It is honest in form and, on the
evidence, not true. The median 2025 page ships 697
KB of JavaScript; the lightest tenth ships 87 KB and
works. HTMX gives reactivity in 14 KB, the HTMX
team's fixi in barely one; one such study, declared
plainly, is mine. Wikipedia, GOV.UK, Cloudflare and
Netflix all do the work for less. The count is a
choice, not a price the architecture forces. Lean
Software ⊣ How We Got Here, 2 of 18.
15 June 2026
unix
posix
freebsd
linux
Unix is not a vibe. It is a registration. The word
turns out to be four things at once: a lineage you
inherit (the BSD family, Unix by blood), a
certificate you buy (macOS, AIX, z/OS, HP-UX), a
resemblance you build (Linux, QNX, BeOS), and a
trademark that keeps its distance. z/OS is certified
UNIX and is not a Unix: the certificate attests you
speak Unix, not that you are one. Unix Universe
⊣ What Unix Is, 2 of 3.
