Plan 9: An exercise in futility

It is my right to exercise my futility wherever, whenever, and with whoever I please

Some ideas about Plan 9:

It's like the uncanny valley of UNIX

Cool, but useless

Can you sum up plan 9 in layman's terms? It does everything Unix does only less reliably - Ken Thompson

If you cannot imagine a use for a computer that does not involve a web browser, Plan 9 may not be for you - 9front FQA

#d/0:28: null list in concatenation

History and description

The boys at bell labs decide UNIX wasn't good enough so they decided to build something better: a distributed multiuser operating system composed of many machines. Many of the same ideas behind UNIX were pushed to absurd extremes. The idea that "everything is a file" is made blatantly apparent to everyone and sometimes, in my opinion, can feel 'overly-abstracted'. Additionally, the concept of private namespaces makes the concept of virtual filesystems seem like 'baby's first filesystem abstraction'.

Just like UNIX, 9 started as a research operating system. Both are enjoyed by hobbyists, both are interesting ways of using a computer, both have a lot of fun in store. But the systems do diverge in one major aspect: UNIX is mainstream and 9 is still a research operating system. Plan 9 is currently distributed under the MIT license.

"What is plan 9?", Taken directly from intro(1):

Plan 9 is a distributed computing environment assembled from separate machines acting as terminals, CPU servers, and file servers. A user works at a terminal, running a window system on a raster display. Some windows are connected to CPU servers; the intent is that heavy computing should be done in those windows but it is also possible to compute on the terminal. A separate file server provides file storage for terminals and CPU servers alike.

In practice, modern 9 users just run all of these services on a single machine because maintaining many machines to achieve a single usable 'operating system' is unnecessary; the 9 user finds himself scared and alone without enough users (1 is rarely enough) to justify building a distributed environment.

Use cases

Intended: distributed multiuser network (ie not mainframe), later embedded since UNIX was too bad to be stopped

Actual: Acting like a UNIX hipster, pretending that 9 is anything other than vaporware, imagining that you are gaining social credit by posting screenshots of abandonware on internet forums. See also: Operating System Tourism

9 in the wild

Unicode is now a plague

rfork

9p

leveraged by microsoft to discourage end users from actually running GNU+Linux as St Ignucius intended

QEMU's VirtFS

various window managers for UNIX, written by people who like the ideas behind 9 but not enough to actually run 9

"cool idea, I'm adding it to Linux"

private namespaces

union directories

see: docker

Design

The goal of 9 was to build a distributed operating system that expands upon Unixy ideas, not to build something that's backwards compatible. "We want to improve UNIX" is mutually exclusive to "we want to port UNIX to this wacky new kernel". UNIX programs (and behemoths like FireFox) are difficult^impossible to port to 9 because of this design decision.

Distributed operating systems

Since 9 was design

MUD

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A MUD ( originally Multi-User Dungeon, with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain), is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-User_Dungeon

TinTin++, aka tt++, is a free MUD client for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. The Windows port named WinTin++ (using the PuTTY derived mintty terminal) is available for those who do not use Cygwin (A Linux/Unix emulator for Windows) and runs on Windows Xp, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Besides MUDs, TinTin++ also works well with MUSH, Rogue, BBS, and Linux servers.

http://tintin.sourceforge.net/

Ancient Anguish

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancient Anguish, abbreviated AA, is a fantasy-themed MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. Founded in 1991 by Balz "Zor" Meierhans and Olivier "Drake" Maquelin, it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is free to play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Anguish

How I've recorded episodes:

iPhone 7 with Apple earbuds

Zoom H1 Handy Recorder

Sennheiser MB Pro 2 with Solocast

Google Pixel 3 with the Dolby On app

What is the compressor, and how to use it.

What is the EQ, and how to use it.

Environment, noise and reverberation

Warming up, breathing

Episodes referenced here:

hpr3625 :: Shell Tips and Snippets - Collaborative Effort hosted by Carl

hpr3496 :: How I record HPR Episodes

hpr1342 :: Power Tool Drag Racing! hosted by MrGadgets

All the information in this show is just what I have learned and what I think. Let us know if you have learned other things by recording your own show!

Hacker Public Radio New Years Eve Show 2021 - 2022

Part 3

WebRTC with RPi Zero - resolution of the ribbon cable camera could be better.

Tried without success: uv4l (h264) https://www.linux-projects.org

Raspberry Pi Zero

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero/

ESP 32 Camera

https://makeradvisor.com/esp32-camera-cam-boards-review-comparison/

CHDK - Canon Hack Development Kit

https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK

uStreamer (mjpg stream) https://github.com/pikvm/ustreamer

PiKrellCam (mjpeg stream) https://billw2.github.io/pikrellcam/pikrellcam.html

to forward H264 instead of mjpeg

WebRTC-streamer https://github.com/mpromonet/webrtc-streamer

WebRTC streamer (RWS) https://github.com/kclyu/rpi-webrtc-streamer

CET Germany and 45 more Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Algiers

Moss talks about investing with Robin Hood

https://robinhood.com/us/en/

Robin Hood Controversy With Game Stop

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/gamestop-robinhood-hearing.html

FOSS North

https://foss-north.se/

The Grahm Norton Show

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006xnzc

Stephen Colbert

https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/

Jon Stewart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Stewart

Highest Point in the Netherlands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaalserberg

Seinfeld TV Show

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098904/

Big Bang Theory

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898266/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory

Joe Talks Installing Linux on Tablets

ASUS Transformer Line - where Joe started his journey with installing Linux on tablets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Transformer

Dell Tablets

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/handhelds-tablet-pcs/ac/4327

https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/corporate/secure/en/Documents/dell-venue-11pro-brochure.pdf

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/dell-venue-11i-pro/overview

My gEeeky Experiment blog posts:

Part 1: https://claudiomiranda.wordpress.com/2020/01/04/my-geeeky-experiment-part-1/

Part 2: https://claudiomiranda.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/my-geeeky-experiment-part-2/

Part 3: https://claudiomiranda.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/my-geeeky-experiment-part-3/

My gEeeky Experiment HPR Episodes:

Part 1: https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=3383

Part 2: https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=3418

Part 3: https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=3527

Blog post about my Evoo laptop (and then some): https://claudiomiranda.wordpress.com/2022/06/20/a-new-beastie-and-an-old-slacker/

We continue our look at the planning process as we discard one plan due to Covid-19 and turn to a different plan. And we introduce an RV-specific planning tool called RV Trip Wizard.

Links:

https://www.rvtripwizard.com/app

https://www.palain.com/travel/changing-plans/

Milestones in my Journey

Studied Windows office and played online games

Electronics

Programming with Scratch

Studied Javascript with Khan Academy

Used Processing

Learned Arduino and robotics

Programmed with Visual Studio Code

Learned Git

Learned Windows Batch, VBS, registry, and others

Introduction to Linux and disks with Tails

Installation of Linux mint

Installation of Debian

Learned Apt, sudo, and other commands

Discovered the Raspberry Pi

Learned ssh, vnc, servers and networking with the Raspberry Pi

Received a Thinkpad laptop and installed on it Bodhi Linux, Linux Lite and Alpine Linux

Learned about erasure, recovery and encryption of data

Learned more about Linux (Screen, network configuration, emacs, programming in C)

Discovered Nethack and Open Adventure console games

Studied hacking and pentesting

Helped a company with its computers and learned from it guys

Introduction to Python and BSD

In this episode Martin and Chris host John Hawley of kernel.org fame. The

discussion centers around Python, the royal British family and other FLOSS

topics such as some break-away colonies like the US, version control systems,

wireless wikis and containers. Never mind Python. Did I mention Python? :-)

And perhaps VMware. Ever wondered why early versions of git just gobbled up

your main memory? You may or may not find the answer in this episode. Or its

outtakes...

Links:

The Linux kernel: https://kernel.org

The wireless subsystem: https://wireless.kernel.org

git: https://git-scm.com

Linux kernel VCS before git: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/git-origin-story

xkcd on git: https://xkcd.com/1597

Guido @ Microsoft: https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/1326932991566700549

Episode on The Halloween Documents: https://linuxinlaws.eu/archive.html#S01

TIOBE index: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index

PhotonOS: https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/html/3.0/Introduction.html

BusyBox: https://www.busybox.net

Python Software Foundation: https://www.python.org/psf

Google Summier of Code: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com

trace-cruncher: https://github.com/vmware/trace-cruncher

Zero Dark Thirty: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Command Line Heroes: https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/about

Hacker Public Radio New Years Eve Show 2021 - 2022

Part 2

Massachusetts MCAS Tests

https://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/

A Level Test mention -

http://www.gostudyuk.com/a-levels-and-equivalents/

COVID-19: quarantine, masks, vaccination, testing, etc.

Michael Mina @michaelmina_lab

https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab

West Virginia & Kentucky Accents

https://www.dialectsarchive.com/west-virginia

https://www.dialectsarchive.com/kentucky

Netminer talks about being a security guard & Security Guard tools of the trade

Detex Clock

https://www.watchmanclocks.com/productdetails.aspx?ProductID=56

Mag light flashlight

https://maglite.com/

Ohio Linux Fest

https://olfconference.org/

Not Curses

https://notcurses.com/notcurses.3.html

Sixel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel

The Book Of Boba Fett

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13668894/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Boba_Fett

Under The Helmet : The Legacy of Boba Fett

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15715890/

Mordancy talks about Mark from Command Line Magic

Command Line Magic Homepage - http://www.climagic.org/

Command Line Magic Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/climagic/videos

Command Line Magic Twitter - https://twitter.com/climagic

Command Line Magic Mastadon - https://mastodon.social/@climagic

Mordancy also suggests

https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse

https://explainshell.com/

More Website Suggestions

Regex Crossword is a crossword puzzle game, where the crossword clues are defined using regular expressions

https://regexcrossword.com

Learn VIM while playing a game

https://vim-adventures.com/

Tennesee Valley Authority

https://www.tva.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

West Virginia Coal Mines

https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/maps/interactive-map-coal-mines-west-virginia

Nuclear Power Plants in the USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

In this episode, I talk about getting in to the field of cybersecurity or moving up in the field. I also talk about how keyboards could keep malware from going Boom on your system.

Links:

Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/try-this-one-weird-trick-russian-hackers-hate/

Fake VM Sandbox artifacts - not talked about in this episode

https://github.com/NavyTitanium/Fake-Sandbox-Artifacts

Has your password been involved in a breach?

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Realtime Global Cyber Attack Map

https://threatmap.checkpoint.com/