Readeck is a self-hosted open source read-it-later webapplication.

Readeck calls itself "Your Own Content Hub".

Save the story, cut the clutter

Readeck helps you keep all that web content you’ll want to revisit in an hour, tomorrow, or in 20 years.

Readeck uses the slogan "Save the story, cut the clutter".

Which is totally true.

When you save an URL in Readeck, it is cleared of bloat. When you open a saved URL you get to see it like in the reader-mode of your browser.

As the original URL is also stored, you can always open the original page.

Easy to read

Using Readeck have changed the way I read longer web pages like essays or information dense wep pages. I read those either in eww (the web browser built in Emacs) or in Readeck. Saving pages in Readeck is very convenient.

Readeck shows every saved page in the same kind of markup, the same font and so on. This makes web pages much easier to read.

Sometimes web pages are hard to read because of a fancy color scheme, font, font size and so on. When I run into such a web page --and still want to read its contents-- I save the page in Readeck, read it there, and decide to keep it in Readeck or delete it again.

No ads and other bloat

Readeck removes all the clutter, including menu's and ads, and gives you a no nonsense version of the original web page.

Tags

You can add as much tags as you want to every saved page.

The main menu allows you to list the pages with a certain tag.

This is a very helpful when doing research. Just tag all the relevant pages over time when you save them, and later go through them in one go.

Highlighting and annotation

Highlight certain parts of a saved web page, optionally add a comment.

There are a number of colors to choose, so you can create your own organization. Yellow highlights for this, magenta highlights for that, and so on.

Open all your highlights including the comments, ordered by date.

Full text search

Searching in Readeck is full text search. It searches in the content of the saved web pages, as well as in your annotations.

This is very valuable option.

Export to epub

You can export a single page or a collection of pages to epub.

Great to read f.e., when traveling using public transportation, or reading outside in garden.

Workflow

Many web pages use Javascript and don't open in eww, and saving pages in Readeck is very convenient. Saving pages Readeck has taken over my previous workflow.

When I read a web page in eww and want to save it, I hit & (shift-F7) to open it in Librewolf, and from there save it in Readeck.

From previous experiences with bookmarking tools I have learned not to overwhelm myself with a large number of bookmarks.

When I do research I search for relevant web pages, do a quick triage and save the promising pages. After having collected a number of pages, I go through them, highlighting and annotating in Readeck and making notes in my note taking system.

When I have consumed all the information, I remove the pages from Readeck.

Currently I have about 60 pages in my Reaceck.

Easy to install

Readeck is available for FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS and even, if you must, for windows.

It is easy to install. I use it with NGINX as reverse proxy.

Quickly becomes a favorite tool

I started using Readeck about 3 months ago, and it has become one of my favorite tools.

Give it a try!

Non-fiction

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)

• 704 pages
• 5 stars

There is no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. A very small percentage of its population do control the fates of almost everyone else, and they are doing it in an increasingly disastrous fashion.

How did we find ourselves stuck in just one form of social reality, and how did relations based ultimately on violence and domination come to be normalized within it?

In search for the origins of social inequality, the authors take us on a journey through human history. Based on modern insights and new evidence, they shatter many beliefs about past human societies on the different continents.

The book is around 700 pages. Every chapter ends with a list of references, and the book ends in a 63-page biography.

Montaigne by Stefan Zweig (1941)

• 128 pages - 5 stars

Zweig wrote this biography before his death. According to the introduction, it was not finished. F.e., some chapters don't have a title.

Zweig emphasizes in this short book Montaigne's fight to stay free, to live life as he wanted, not how others thought one should live.

Short but good.

Fiction

Momo by Michael Ende (1974)

• 240 pages
• 5 stars

Momo is a little child with a gift for listening. Men in gray infiltrate the city and sell the idea of time saving to the inhabitants. They are told that their saved time is deposited at the Timesavings Bank and will be returned with interest. This has a very bad effect and Momo tries to to stop them.

A charming and marvelous book and absolute a must-read.

Short stories

Asleep in Armageddon by Rad Bradbury (1948)

Short story about a spaceman marooned on a planetoid.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/asleep-in-armageddon

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

The joy of maintenance

In this essay, But she's a girl... writes about the joy of running your own blog and doing the maintenance work actually by your self. Not being puppeteered by some LLM, but solving the problems on your own.

A wonderful must-read, even if you don't run your own blog.

https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/the-joy-of-maintenance/

"I'm Not Dead Yet!" Reverse Polish Notation Calculators You Can Still Buy

Mainly mention this page here for the photo's :)

It brings back many memories.

At the time I really would be helped with a Reverse Polish Notation Calculator (around 1976), I didn't have the money, and bought a Texas Instruments SR-50A instead.

Many years later, I finally bought a HP-10C, and got my first RPN calculator. The HP-10C has the same style as the HP- 12C shown in this webpage. It was more for still wanting a RPN calculator than really needing one.

I still have the HP calculator laying around in a drawer, with the batteries removed, to prevent damage by leakage. But nowadays I just use `dc on my FreeBSD laptop, which is a command line RPN calculator.

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/02/im-not-dead-yet-reverse-polish-notation-calculators-you-can-still-buy/

Why you should try living without free will for two weeks

A great essay by Tara-Lyn Camilleri, an evolutionary biologist.

Many people assume we have a free will. There could be fear behind this assumption: without free will, what is the point? Yet scientists see that our behavior emerges from factors like genetics, development, stress, trauma, resources, norms and history.

Looking at events from the perspective that people have full free will, or from the perspective that people don't, completely changes your judgment. It changes the kind of questions you ask.

This essay proposes to live without free will for two weeks, and see how and what changes.

https://psyche.co/ideas/why-you-should-try-living-without-free-will-for-two-weeks

My last six months at Evernote, after Bending Spoons took over

Testimony of how enshittification destroyed a once popular product.

A wonderful recap by Alex.

https://alexkras.com/my-last-six-months-at-evernote-after-bending-spoons-took-over/

From Git to Fossil

Lucio describes how to migrate from Git to Fossil.

Lucio states that the motivation comes from the fact that Git wants to make Rust mandatory. The blog post gives several reasons why that is not a positive development.

Some stuff to think about, and a helpful description how to migrate.

https://lucio.albenga.es/web-en/posts/2025/from-git-to-fossil.html

Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?

Communication should not be controlled by a single company.

In this post, Daniel Gultsch describes that when it comes to instant messages, there are only two features people actually care about: reliable message delivery and the ability to reach their friends.

It is the latter part constitutes the problem: the so-called network-effect. When all your friends are on Signal, and you are on a different platform, you're basically out of the group.

The best thing we can do to beat the network effect, is increasing the visibility.

One of the things Daniel proposes, is to put a "share via XMPP" link on your blog posts. Just look below :)

https://gultsch.de/posts/how-do-we-gain-traction/

The AI extinction narrative is winning out

In this essay, Brian Merchant explains how the AI extinction narrative strategy is aimed at maximizing profits and a path-way to self-regulation.

“I invented the term artificial intelligence,” the Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy said in 1973, “and I invented it because we had to do something when we were trying to get money for a summer study in 1956.”

The narrative helps the companies to be seen as a significant investor value. The timing is no coincidence, the companies are on the brink of holding IPOs that will make their executives unfathomably rich.

The narrative also helps to let the industry write their own regulations, audits, safety standards, and so on. This way they can set their own terms and raise a barrier to new entries into this market.

By slowing the pace, they can stop racing against each other and milk more money out of the current products.

It's all about the money.

Also Brain explains how workers can beat the tech oligarch.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-the-stories-about-all-powerful

Your Body Of Work Thinks Back At You

This blogpost from cedric with some lovely photographs is interesting from several viewpoints.

• The first is, how people can have different hobbies.
• The second is, that doing something long enough, and it gives unexpected insights.
• The third is, how our world is getting more hostile.

https://photoni.st/index.php/2026/09/25/your-body-of-work-thinks-back-at-you/

When you have a number of old ZFS snapshots to destroy, it can be useful to see if you can delete a complete range.

A range of snapshots can be destroyed with a single command.

This is what the man page says:

An inclusive range of snapshots may be specified by separating the first and last snapshots with a percent sign. The first and/or last snapshots may be left blank, in which case the filesystem's oldest or newest snapshot will be implied.

This requires some careful reading.

When omitting the begin or end of the range, it comes down to this:

• zfs destroy zroot/path/to/set@%snap will destroy all snapshots from the oldest to and including zroot/path/to/set@snap
• zfs destroy zroot/path/to/set@snap% will destroy all snapshots starting from zroot/path/to/set@snap to and including the newest

Destroy old snapshosts

When you want to destroy all older snapshots of a data set and only keep the newer ones, just pick the newest snapshot you don't want to keep,
say zroot/path/to/set@2026-09-01.

Now add a percent sign before the snapname (the part after the @): zroot/path/to/set@%2026-09-01

This will destroy all the snapshots older than this one and also this one.

Check before destroying

Be careful, and first check that your command does indeed what you want.

For this, use the -n and -v flags:

zfs destroy -nv zroot/path/to/set@%2026-09-01

zfs will report what snapshots will be destroyed if you omit the -n flag.

Better safe than sorry!

Fiction

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011)

• 374 pages
• 5 stars

Dystopian science fiction story about a virtual reality world, called OASIS. In his will, the creator has left the ownership of OASIS as well as his fortune to the winner of a conquest. This power and this amount of money leads to a fight between good and evil.

After reading the book I discovered it was also turned into a movie, and watched the trailer. If you haven't seen the movie and the trailer, better first read the book. From the trailer I expect that the book is much better. Even watching the trailer takes a way your change to build your own vision of the main characters.

Short stories

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury (1950)

Short story about a house that stands intact in an area that has otherwise been obliterated by a nuclear bomb.

The title was from a poem from 1918 during World War I.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/there-will-come-soft-rains.pdf

The Nothing Equation by Tom Godwin (1957)

Scary short story about lonlyless in space.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/the-nothing-equation

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

Re-Noted: 3 Lessons on Writing from Joan Didion's Notes

A wonderful piece by Jillian Hess.

Jillian takes us on a tour discovering the workflow of Joan Didion.

https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/re-noted-3-lessons-on-writing-from

Taste Is All That's Left

A must-read essay by raf about the damage AI does and its impact.

https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left

Climate: Two Hypotheses, Two Futures

An easy to read explanation of the effects of the emission of greenhouse gases.

No speculations, just physics and chemistry. Highly recommended must-read.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/29/800091113/community/climate-two-hypotheses-two-futures/

The Last Collapse

A very thorough essay by Sarah about why after the collapse a reset to even a bronze age or iron age kind of life is not an option.

What the end actually looks like, and why humanity can never rebuild.

Depressing indeed, but we can't hide from the facts. Another highly recommended must-read.

https://www.collapse2050.com/the-last-collapse/

what to do with a retro computer

In this great blog post, mavica explains the problems that rise from the lack of availability of older software.

Very recognizable.

https://maple.pet/blog/what-to-do-with-a-retro-computer

Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

There is something fascinating about the fact that XMPP has developers in its community who are younger than the protocol itself.

Treating digital communication as true infrastructure can only be achieved by adopting and mandating open standards.

A changing geopolitical situation and the realization that Big Tech holds too much power lead us to seek out and develop alternatives. But what if the alternative has been right under our noses for over 25 years?

https://gultsch.de/posts/25-years-of-digital-independence/

Two Providers, a Stubborn Plateau and a Very Long Tail: Email in the Tranco Top-1M

The internet society reports on research done on MX-records

Some outcomes:

• Google and Microsoft now process 38% of all email.
• Self-hosting is in decline, currently at 22%
• Only 47% of domains with DMARC, enforces it

Or, in other words, Google (22%) and Microsoft (17%) process a big chunk of the world's email traffic. This chunk is only growing.

Many domains have adopted DMARC, but less than half actually enforces it. The promise of DMARC is to end email-spoofing. It is really bad that the enforcing level is so low.

Email is the most important step in the journey towards digital sovereignty. Not only are most email messages unencrypted and therefor spilling all your secrets, but when your email is in the walled garden of either Google or Microsoft, it is impossible to escape their walled gardens.

There are many smaller email hosting companies in Europe, there is no need to put your communication in the hands in these two evil and unethical US empires.

https://pulse.internetsociety.org/en/blog/2026/08/two-providers-a-stubborn-plateau-and-a-very-long-tail-email-in-the-tranco-top-1m/

Stanislaw Lem foretold the current LLM mania in 1964

This blogpost from Nibble Stew about the novel "The Cyberiad" written by Stanislaw Lem in 1964. This novel contains a story that is remarkable close to the current LLM-events.

https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2026/08/stanisaw-lem-foretold-current-llm-mania.html

Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer

Nice post about the core memory in the 1980 Spacelab computer. With photos.

Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer

https://www.righto.com/2026/08/spacelab-core-memory.html

Is this really a good reason to triple datacentre capacity in Europe?

Capitalism at its best.

The European strategy to regain its perceived competitiveness seems to be based on a a blog post from a commercial real estate firm. The more people invest in data centers real estate, the more money they make.

https://rtl.chrisadams.me.uk/2026/07/is-this-really-a-good-reason-to-triple-datacentre-capacity-in-europe/

After upgrading from Chicken Scheme 5 to Chicken Scheme 6 I am now developing jugulans on Chicken Scheme 6.

This required only a minor change.

jugulans is a text mode mind map application. With it you can build mind maps in the terminal.

                                              /- new child
                                              |
                 /- creating nodes -----------|- new sibling
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- new parent
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- moving nodes -------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
jugulans   ------|
                 |                            /- delete a node
                 |- deleting nodes -----------|
                 |                            \- delete a subtree
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- navigation ---------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
                 \- Hide and show subtree ---- and more

See also the first post about jugulans.

Emacs VC

Emacs VC is the built-in Emacs version control interface.

It is very capable, and its use is intuitive.

Emacs VC can be used with practically all version control systems. I have used it frequently with RCS and CVS.

No need for Magit

For my typical use of Git, VC offers all I need, and I have stopped installing and using Magit.

The default key bindings of VC all start with C-x v

For example, to commit changes, use C-x v v, and push them with C-x v P.

VC and Git branches

Creating a Git branch with VC

To create a new branch, use C-x v b c

This will prompt for the name of the new branch and ask for the start-point of the branch.

Switching between branches

To switch to a different branch, use C-x v b s.

This will prompt for the name of the branch, you can use completion to select a branch.

Merge

To merge merge changes from another branch in the current, use C-x v m.

This will prompt for the name of the branch, you can use completion to select a branch.

Push and pull

To push to the upstream branch, use C-x v P

To pull from the upstream branch, use C-x v +.

Change log of another branch

To view the change log of another branch, use C-x v b l.

This gives a Git blame like overview of changes of the current fileset.

Overview and commit changes

Display the VC directory byffer with C-x v d.

This is a very useful buffer, and offers convenience like Magit.

It shows the Git status of the current directory and gives a menu to:

• View diffs
• Revert, delete, ignore and commit changes
• Mark and unmark
• Push marked

Try these also

C-x v h (vc-region-history) to view the changes made in the active region.

C-x v O (vc-log-outgoing) to view the changes to be pushed to upstream.

C-x v I (vc-log-incoming) to view the changed to be pulled from upstream.

There is more

All above is of course very well documented in the excellent documentation.

Just try it your self!

VC is built-in, no need to install anything, and worthwhile to explore.

Jugulans is a text mode mind map application.

It lets the user build a mind map using just the keyboard, and save it in org-mode format.

                                              /- new child
                                              |
                 /- creating nodes -----------|- new sibling
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- new parent
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- moving nodes -------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
jugulans   ------|
                 |                            /- delete a node
                 |- deleting nodes -----------|
                 |                            \- delete a subtree
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- navigation ---------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
                 \- Hide and show subtree ---- and more

Maps can also be build and/or shown in tree-mode:

jugulans
|--creating nodes
|   |--new child
|   |--new sibling
|   `--new parent
|--moving nodes
|   |--up
|   |--down
|   |--left
|   `--right
|--deleting nodes
|   |--delete a node
|   `--delete a subtree
|--navigation
|   |--up
|   |--down
|   |--left
|   `--right
`--Hide and show subtree
    `--and more

Minimalistic

jugulans has a minimalist design.

• TUI: Jugulans is a text mode application.
• Single-key key bindings: no mouse, just the keyboard.
• Limited feature set

For people accustomed to HJKL-keybindings, the user interface is intuitive.

Designed to disturb your flow as less as possible.

Mind maps are, in my opinion, a tool to support your thinking, and not so much a tool for communication. They should hinder you a less as possible. A minimalistic approach is therefor the best, with only a small set of features, and using just single-key commands.

Saves in org-mode format

jugulans saves the mind map in org-mode format.

This way you can use the application to develop the outline for f.e., an article or essay.

Features

• Create nodes: create a child node, create a sibling node, create a new parent node.
• Move nodes: move nodes up and down in the list of siblings, move a node left or right to promote or demote a node.
• Freely move nodes: mark a node, navigate through the mind map and move the marked node (including its childnodes) to the desired location.
• Delete nodes: delete a single node, or delete a complete subtree
• Hide or show: a single key press toggles between collapse/uncollapse, to hide or show the subtree.
• Rename: rename a node; to rename the mind map simply rename the root-node.
• Create or open existing: create a new mind map, or open an earlier saved mind map.
• Navigate Move around from node to node, or jump from any node to the root-node, and back.
• Search Use search to quickly jump to any node.
• Map mode: Toggle between mindmap-mode and tree-mode.

Jump

Jump to the root-node with the a key. The node from where the jump takes place is stored. Jump back to this node with the A key.

This node is remembered until the next jump to the root-node. So you can jump any time back to that node with A, until you jump from another node to the root-node.

Search

Jump to any node. Use the / key to enter search mode.

Enter a string of a few characters (minimal 2). jugulans will find the nodes with the string in their label, and jump to the first.

Jump to the other matching labels with n and N.

The list of matching records will be remembered until the next search command.

Scroll and pan

The user can scroll up or down, and pan left or right. The system automatically scrolls and pans to keep the active node visible.

Redraw

The user can any time request a redraw of the screen. When the system performs this action, it also updates its notion of the terminal size. Use this if you have resized your terminal window.

Mapname

Enter the name of the map you want to make or edit after the command:

jugulans <mymap>

This also works to edit a previous saved mind map.

In that case you can also enter the full file name:

jugulans <mymap.tmm>

To rename the map, rename the root node.

The quickest way is to jump to the rood node with a and change its label with r.

After this, save the map with s. It will be saved to a file matching the new map name.

Key bindings

An overview of the key bindings can be called up at any time with ?. Press q to close the overview and return to the map.

Fun to develop

jugulans is developed by a human, coded using GNU Emacs on a laptop running FreeBSD without any use of AI.

Building jugulans was my first project in Chicken Scheme. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

Ready to run executable

Chicken Scheme supports compiling to stand alone executables, which can be run on systems without Chicken Scheme.

The stand alone executables can be downloaded from the release page on Codeberg.org

Have fun mind mapping!

Updates

2026-08-27:

This web page is updated to match with version 1.0.3.

This month I read some though provoking books, a nice science fiction book, and had a lot of fun reading several essays and short stories.

The authors of both the books "A Darwinian Survival Guide" and "To Have or to Be?" work from the viewpoint that human life as we know it is seriously threatened, and advocate a societal change as the only solution. They understand that this change can only be brought bottom up, from the grassroots level.

Sometimes the mind works in mysterious ways. My mind associated a piece I read on the internet with the wonderful essay "Street Haunting" by Virginia Woolf, about buying a pencil. I don't know what triggered this association. Anyway,I re-read this essay again, came into the mood, and started reading more essays.

Non-fiction books

A Darwinian Survival Guide, Hope for the Twenty-First Century by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta (2024)

• 360 pages
• 5 stars

Climate change is altering human surroundings forever. It threatens the survival of technological humans. The biosphere will not collapse, but society will.

This book looks at options to regain a certain level of technological achievements as quickly as possible after the collapse, with lessons learned from studying evolutionary principles.

To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm (1976)

• 216 pages
• 5 stars

In this book the author introduces the terms "having mode" and "being mode' and shows that Western society is mostly based on "having mode", resulting in egotism, selfishness, and greed.

A society based on having mode generates leaders who value personal success more highly than social responsibility. It is no longer shocking when political leaders and business executives make decisions that seem to be to their personal advantage, but at the same time are harmful and dangerous to the community.

The author recognizes threats to the survival of human life as we know it, because of the arms race of nuciear and biological weapans and the need of endless growth.

Being aware of these threats and the fact that living in being mode is the way towards personal happyness, the author proposes societal changes.

This book contains a ton of statements worth quoting. I can't show them all, so I picked one:

Each political party exploits the voters by persuading them that it represents the true values of humanism. Yet behind all political parties are only two camps: those who care and those who don't care.

Fiction

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)

• 220 pages
• 4 stars

In a typical small English village the quiet piece is disturbed by an extraordinary event. Nice story, a little less exciting than I remember the well-known book from this author, "The Day of the Triffids". Good read non the less.

Essays

"Street Haunting: a London Adventure" by Virginia Woolf (1927)

• 8 pages
• 5 stars

Virginia Woolf has written a number of lovely essays. Street Haunting is my favorite, and the one I keep coming back to.

In this essay, Virginia uses the need to buy a pencil to let us experience the world through as she did.

I re-read it again this month, and enjoyed it as much as ever. This really is a comfort read to me.

You can find it on Project Gutenberg Australia

"The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard (1996)

• 13 pages
• 5 stars

This essay is what is called "creative non-fiction". Which means that it is non-fiction disguised as a fictional story. Don't worry about it, just read it.

Is is sad and heartbreaking, and a very well done masterpiece.

It is published by the New Yorker. Open with a Javacript-free browser to read it without an account.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter

"Total Eclipse" by Annie Dillard (1982)

• 8 pages
• 5 stars

In 1979 Annie and her husband drove five hours to see the total eclipse of the sun. It was an overwhelming experience, bringing up primal emotions.

A great essay.

This essay is published in the book "Teaching a Stone to Talk", a bundle of essays by Annie Dillard

You can find the essay here:

https://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/readings/dillard_eclipse.pdf

On Self-Respect by Joan Didion (1961)

• 3 pages
• 5 stars

This essay from Joan Didion is best read slowly. Like most of Didion's essays it is an excellent read with a wonderful depth.

https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961

Short stories

The Feeling Of Power by Isaac Asimov (1958)

• 6 pages
• 4 stars

Short story about the dependency on computers.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

A century of brilliant books

The blog "Stuck in a Book" made a list of book recommendations. The list contains a book for every year of the 20th century.

There are many book lists, of course. This one is on an indepent blog, is an awesome piece of work, with many surprising entries that are are new to me. Also there are only a few books in the list that I have already read.

https://www.stuckinabook.com/a-century-of-brilliant-books/

The Last People Who Know How It Works

You only ever know the things you can lose to.

Wonderful blogpost by Cyrus Lopez about the dying acquaintance with tech. We are the last people who knew a machine the only way a machine was ever really known: by having it be difficult. And we are also the last people who will know that anything is gone.

https://unix.foo/posts/last-people-who-know-how-it-works/

Juneau Something? Emacs Teaches You How to Fish!

The June 2025 edition of the Emacs Carnaval had many wonderful entries! I picked this one to mention here.

In his entry, Charlie Holland shows the autodiscovery powers of Emacs. Most Emacs users will know at least a part of the commands Charlie showcases here, but there are always more to learn.

https://www.chiply.dev/post-june-emacs-carnival

I bought a Sony Walkman

82MHz wrote a lovely essay about buying a Sony Walkman.

And also a tape!

https://82mhz.net/posts/2026/07/i-bought-a-sony-walkman/

The Cloud-City Logistics Hub: Why Our Future Starts on Venus, Not Mars

Strangely enough, Venus is easier to mine than Mars.

This post goes into why Venus is a good candidate, and how mining could affect the economy. And of course about the international tensions that comes with that.

It reads like a good news post, and maybe it is. I only wonder if this will keep the "unlimited growth" doctrine alive, something that we should get rid of as soon as possible, IMHO.

https://archives.virebent.art/en/the-cloud-city-logistics-hub-why-our-future-starts-on-venus-not-mars/

Hate "The Algorithm?" RSS Is One of the Tools You’ve Been Looking For

Great essay by Thorin Klosowski published by the EFF.

“The algorithm” is shorthand for the ways the tech giants control what we see and when we see it.

In the age of enshittification, there is a push to reclaim our feeds and networks.

The good news is that RSS can help you take back control.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/hate-algorithm-rss-one-tools-youve-been-looking

Open Bookcases

An short essay by Robert Benchley written in 1920.

This essay shows the first signs of enshittification of the market of bookcases.

Read it here:

https://hex.ooo/library/open_bookcases.html

The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

The Z80 was a major player in its hayday.

I have worked on a Nixdorf Quattro powered by Z80's, using a terminal that was also powered by Z80's, owned a ZX81 on which I learned programming in assembler, and probably have used systems not knowing they were powered by the Z80.

https://goliath32.com/blog/z80.html

Fix Your Analog Life First

An essay by Katherine Martinko about a more balanced relationship with our devices.

It is import to reduce screen time and get off one’s phone — but first think about what is supposed to replace it.

We need more practice and less consumption in our lives. But reducing consumption does not automatically lead to practice; it must be actively sought, and that requires conscious choice, persistence, and stubborn adherence to routine.

Unfortunately, not a smol-web post, but a substack publication, but worth reading.

https://katherinemartinko.substack.com/p/fix-your-analog-life-first

Switch from Guile Scheme to Chicken Scheme

Lately have been dabbling in Guile Scheme. Guile Scheme is very fast and since is it the main development environment for Guix, its popularity is rising.

I tried Chicken Scheme because it can create a stand-alone executable. This means that once compiled, it can run on systems where Chicken Scheme is not installed. Maybe this can be done too with Guile Scheme, but I haven't discovered a way to do that.

Chicken Scheme compiles your code into an executable, no need to jump though hoops to do that.

Chicken Scheme is fun

Although my experience with Chicken Scheme is limited and I have been working with it for only a few weeks now, I have come to like it very much.

Chicken Scheme is Scheme, and Scheme, like Lisp, is a wonderful language to work in.

Because Chicken compiles to an executable, even during prototyping you immediately try out things on the command line.

It is easy to create small personal applications. Whatever you build, you can run it on all your machines. I have a mixed environment, mostly FreeBSD and some Linux virtual machines. So for the Linux VM's I have installed Chicken on one of them, and recompile the application there, and it can be deployed on the other Linux VM's by just scp-ing it.

csm makes it very easy to split up your project into multiple files. No hassle, just make each file a module and import the module in the other files where needed.

Once you have build a nice application, it is easy to distribute, just share the stand alone executable.

Not fast

When I did some work with Guile Scheme, I was impressed by how fast it is. Guile Scheme as far as I know uses threading.

Compared to Guile, I think Chicken Scheme is not that fast, but I haven't done any benchmarks and because I am not a Scheme expert or a programming expert, this is just an opinion and you should take this with a grain of salt.

This month I decided to not finish a book after reading the first 100 pages, so I just finished a single book.

The warm weather and outdoor activities resulted in less screen time, but still ran into some fine web pages!

Fiction

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (2002)

• 116 pages
• 4 stars

A novella telling the story of the lonely life of Robert Grainer, who was born at the end of the nineteenth century.

Good but sad story, short, fine writing.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

Contentful and the limits of "Buy European"

Contentful is a German company, Contentful GmbH, registered in Berlin.

For over a decade it has been a flagship European software company. If the acquisition closes, it becomes part of Salesforce, an US corporation, subject to US law.

This exposes a hard truth: even when a vendor is European today, there is no guarantee it will still be European tomorrow.

Only open source software can garantue digital sovereignty!

http://dri.es/contentful-and-the-limits-of-buy-european

ASCII Art Tutorial

Some people can work magic with ASCII Art!

A wonderful tutorial, and very recommended, even if you won't ever create ASCII art.

https://arielmartinperez.com/pages/2026asciiarttutorial.html

The Last Quiet Thing

The things we use in our daily lives have quietly changed. After the purchase, they constantly require your attention. The meaning of owning has changed.

We started living in an acosystem of objects that never stop asking.

A great piece that opens a new perspective. A must-read!

https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Guile, while running a program, can listen to a port for a REPL client, like a Swank server on SBCL.

Here's how to connect from Geiser to a running Guile script.

Start the Guile shell-script

This is how to start a Guile script:

#!/usr/local/bin/guile3 \
-e main --listen -s
!#
(use-modules (...))
...

Note the the first line starts with #! and third starts with !#.

The first line contains the name of the Guile executable and the path to it. This example is from FreeBSD.

Guile listens default to port 37146.

Connect Geiser to the port

In Emacs, run:

M-x geiser-connect

This will prompt of a host, with localhost as default, and a port with 37146 as default.

This gives a REPL in the running Guile script.

Have fun!

The Enhanced Motif Window Manager (EMWM) is a fork of the Motif Window Manager with fixes and enhancements. This brings the wonderful look of Motif to the X11 desktop.

Virtual workspaces

EMWM version 2.0 offers virtual workspaces. The FreeBSD packages contain EMWM version 1.3. To get virtual workspaces it is better not to install the FreeBSD package, and to compile EMWM from source from (fastestcode.org]https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html).

Compilation of EMWM on FreeBSD is quick and easy. Just download the tarball, and run make.

Stow

I prefer to install self compiled software with GNU stow.

In the Makefile.FreeBSD change the PREFIX to /usr/local/stow/emwm, and create this directory and including the sub-directory bin:

mkdir -p /usr/local/stow/emwm/bin

Then run make and make install.

Do this for both emwm-src-2.0.tar.xz and emwm-utils-src-2.0.tar.xz.

Next, go to /usr/local/stow and issue the command:

stow emwm

(If you want to, you could make a different sub-directory for each tarball, like /usr/local/stow/emwm and /usr/local/stow/emwm-utils.)

Edit .xinitrc

Comment out any window managers in the ~/.xinitrc file (or ~/.xsession file) and add the following line as last line:

exec xmsession

Now, when you run startx from the command line. EMWM will start, with xmtoolbox, a nice utility-toolbox in the upper left hand corner.

Multiple workspaces

EMWM defaults to four workspaces. If you want a different number, add a line to your ~/.Xresources:

Emwm*workspaceCount: 6

The mxtoolbox window will show a button for each workspace.

mxtoolbox configuration

To configure the mxtoolbox:

Copy the file toolboxrc from the emwm-utils-src-tarball to ~/.toolboxrc and edit this file.

Non-fiction

The End of Everything by Katie Mack (2020)

• 226 pages
• 5 stars

We know that the universe started with the Big Bang, and that it currently is expanding. But will this go on forever, or is the universe destined to end, and if so, will there be a new Big Bang?

The writer, a theoretical cosmologist, gives an easy to read overview of the current scientific understanding on the future of the universe.

During this tour we encounter subjects like dark matter and dark energy, the Cosmic Microwave Background, measuring the expansion rate, get an explanation about the equilibrium of forces that keep the stars together, the Highs field, and much more. We learn about the different models for the end, like the Big Cruch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, and the Vacuum Decay.

Interesting read, never boring, highly recommended!

Fiction

• The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

• 352 pages

• 5 stars

This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago.

During this re-read I discovered that my memory of it is distorted by the movie directed by Peter Jackson, which I have seen a few times.

It was good to re-read the book again.

Short story

The Last Martian by Raymond Van Houten (1942)

• 24 pages
• 4 stars

A short science fiction story about an unexpected visitor arriving at an outpost. Nice read.

Gutenberg book 62097

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

A Splash of Courage

A lovely blog post from Brian the Goldfish, the Third.

It is a quick read, just above 300 words. Enjoy it!

https://brianthegoldfish.blog/a-splash-of-courage/

3 ways to think and talk like a philosopher

A "Big Think" publication written by by Jonny Thomson.

Jonny shows in this essay three ways to think like a philosopher.

https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/3-ways-to-think-and-talk-like-a-philosopher/

The Real Story Behind "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Ted Gioia talks in this essay about the history of the wonderful book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" written by Robert Pirsig. The book was first published in 1974, but carries the atmosphere from the sixties.

"Zen and the art ..." is one of my favorite books, and Ted's essay brings it into a new perspective.

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-real-story-behind-zen-and-the

The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born

Baldur Bjarnason explains in this essay how the globalized tech industry can only exist because of the protectionism and policy uniformity imposed by the US on its techopolistic hegemony.

Because of Trump, the US no longer has the power or influence it once did, with major implications for the US-controlled globalized market.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

Beneath the Linux surface: the UNIX legacy, a lively ecology

A brilliant essay published on the Unix Social Club.

An inventory that shows that a Linux system bundles a lot of free software, that developed on and originally for different operating systems.

FOSS is a ecosystem that keeps on thriving, innovating and evolving, but only because of the people maintaining and developing it.

Informative, and also fun to read!

https://club.unix.rocks/commentary/under-linux/

Gnutella Explanation - A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

A nicely written essay on Gnutella, the once very popular file sharing protocol.

This is a thorough piece of work, easy and fun to read.

Interesting quote:

Managing disk space, directories, backups, and downloaded files was still a palatable and acceptable activity for even casual computer users of the era.

https://rickcarlino.com/notes/p2p/gnutella-explanation.html

How to run awkiawki using slogcgi and NGNINX

Awkiawki is a wiki written in awk.

slowcgi is a server which implements the FastCGI Protocol to execute CGI scripts. slowcgi is a simple server that translates FastCGI requests to the CGI protocol. It executes the requested CGI script and translates its output back to the FastCGI protocol.

slowcgi is on FreeBSD available as package.

I run this from /home/www.

Configuring slowcgi

Add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf:

slowcgi_enable="YES"
slowcgi_flags="-p /home/www -s /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock"

Start slowcgi. It will open a socket in /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock.

Chroot

Slowcgi lets the scripts run in a chroot directory. Make sure the needed executables (like mawk for awkiawki) are in a path within the chroot directory, and that all the needed libraries are there too.

Configuring NGINX to use slowcgi

server {
   listen 80;
   server_name wiki.example.com;

   root "/home/www/";

   location /cgi-bin/ {
      index index.cgi;
      fastcgi_pass unix:/home/www/run/slowcgi.sock;
      fastcgi_index index.cgi;
      include fastcgi_params;
      fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD  $request_method;
      fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.cgi)(/.+)$;
      fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
      fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME "/cgi-bin/wiki/index.cgi";
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
   }
}

We set a fastcgi_pass to the socket.

The fastcgi_split_path_info fetches the path_info from the request URL.

Debugging

It helps to manually start slowcgi with the -v flag:

slowcgi -d -v -p /home/www/ -s /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock

When everything is fine, start slowcgi normally.

Non-fiction

Vintage Didion by Joan Didion (2004)

• 200 pages
• 3 stars

A collection of previously published essays focussed on US politics. The essays date from different periods. There are also three chapters from her book "Miami" in it.

Usually I like to read Didion, but several parts of this collection were boring.

Short-stories

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (1956)

• 9 pages
• 5 stars

A short story with a somewhat predictable end. Good read though.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

We Built It With Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How.

Our world is under threat of complexity. To understand a system it must fit into our heads. When we delegate the complexity before understanding we loose something fundamental.

Start asking basic questions and make sure you can answer them.

https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227

What It's Like To Be A Worm

Does an insect possesses consciousness? Is an earth worm sentient? When it comes to non-human animals, views about which creatures are sentient diverge.

An remarkable survey of current scientific research.

https://www.asimov.press/p/sentience

Social Media is the Opposite of Social Life

Social media was meant to facilitate social life, but social media doesn’t really allow you to interact with people.

https://www.raptitude.com/2026/04/social-media-is-the-opposite-of-social-life/

The six second hug

We have fallen prey to the curse of instrumentalisation.

What makes life worth living? We have to go back to the basic question of why anything has value.

https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everything-a-means-to-an-end

The IndieWeb is Wonderfully Dionysian

A writing in praise of the human web. We need more personal websites and blogs.

https://brennan.day/the-indieweb-is-wonderfully-dionysian/

All Aggregators Are Equal but Some Aggregators Are More Equal Than Others

Bubbles is a new, brilliant, blog aggregator.

Bubbles combines the power of RSS feeds with the power of voting. Of course there is lobste.rs, but that has a focus on technical publications.

Non-tech blogs

Hacker News and Lobste.rs have community voting figured out, but non-tech content gets drowned by the tech majority.

Bubbles aims to (also) promote non-tech content.

RSS and voting

Bubbles monitors thousands of independent, personal blogs via RSS. Every post starts equal. Peoples votes decide what rises.

Everybody can vote, but you need some Fediverse account for that.

As a result, truly interesting posts bubble up.

Categories

Bubbles offers about a dozen of categories to choose from.

Select the categories of your interest to get a more focused list of smol web publications.

Explore the smol web

There are tons of great independently made personal websites out there. Blogs, digital gardens, and what not.

The enshitification of the search engines makes these website undiscoverable. There is no money in it, so they will only show you AI-slop and other SEO-infested garbage.

Ignore their search results, take back the web, and start exploring the smol web!

Reach out

I discovered Bubbles through the LinkDump on 82Mhz.net.

When you have a website, consider doing something similar. Set up a Blogroll, create a links page, or be creative and create something new.

Whatever you do to let other smol websites be discovered helps! Only together we can keep the smol web alive.

Use an RSS feed reader

Don’t let a billionaire’s algorithm control what you read. No matter how you explore the smol web, when you have discovered an interesting blog, personal website or other kind of smol web instance, add it to your RSS feed reader!

Show your appreciation

Whenever you read a piece on a smol web website, give the creator some feed-back. Just a simple email showing your appreciation can make a big difference!

Recoll is a full text search application. Recoll is based on the very capable Xapian search engine library.

The FreeBSD package comes with a ton of dependencies, which is great for use on your desktop, but can be a bit of overkill for non-graphical systems.

Minimal install

The idea is to install with as minimal dependencies as possible and start working with that. Later we can always add more.

Install dependencies

Although we install Recoll from source, we install the dependencies as FreeBSD package.

To make it easy to copy the install to other systems, we make use of GNU stow, so we install that too.

pkg install libX11 libxslt pkgconf stow xapian-core

Prepare installation directory

mkdir -p /usr/local/stow/recoll

Download source files

Version 1.37.5 is unfortunately the last version with autotools build, so we fetch that:

fetch https://www.recoll.org/recoll-1.37.5.tar.gz

Configure and build

./configure \
    --enable-idxthreads \
    --disable-qtgui \
    --enable-recollq \
    --disable-python-module \
    --without-aspell \
    --disable-python-aspell \
    --disable-python-chm  \
    --prefix=/usr/local/stow/recoll

make
make install

Install

cd /usr/local/stow
stow recoll

Configuration files

To test our install, we create a simple configuration file ~/.recoll/recoll.conf:

followLinks = 1

topdirs = /usr/local/share/man \
  /usr/local/share/info

This configuration file aims to index the system documentation files.

For this, we also need a mimemap file ~/.recoll/mimemap:

.0p = text/x-man
.1 = text/x-man
.3 = text/x-man
.7 = text/x-man
.8 = text/x-man

This is for the standard man pages, if you have more directories under /usr/local/share/man/ add those extensions too.

Install helper applications

In order to make sense of the files, Xapian needs some helper programs.

Our system documentation consists of man pages and info files, so we need the helper applications for those two:

pkg install groff texinfo

For some reason, we need to make the indexer understand that "python3" is in fact pyhton3.11.

We can create an alias (depending on your shell), or otherwise create a symlink:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/python3.11 /usr/local/bin/python3

Create index

Next, create or update the index:

recollindex

Start searching

After our man pages are indexed, we can search for text:

recollq -q 'expansion'

recollq -A 'expansion escape sequences textdomain'

Of course, we don't get the nicely formatted output as with the graphical Recoll desktop application.

Kudos

Thanks to Sergey Matveev for help with the configuration!

Below are the two books I finished reading this month.

Fiction

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

• 423 pages
• 5 stars

This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago.

I also have seen the movie directed by Peter Jackson several times.

During reading the book I discovered that my memory of it is tainted by watching the movie. I wasn't aware of much deviation of it, but the movie does indeed differ. The movie is more spectacular.

It was good to re-read the book again, and have planned to also re-read the other two books from the trilogy this year.

Short stories

Short Fiction by Andre Norton (1953)

• 61 pages
• 4 stars

This bundles contains 3 short stories:

• People of the Crater" (1947)
• The Gifts of Asti (1948)
• All Cats Are Gray" (1953)

The stories are somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, and a nice read.

I read the Standard Ebooks version

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

It is easier to get appreciation for creating a complex solution than for creating a simple solution. This causes a lot of problems.

https://terriblesoftware.org/2026/03/03/nobody-gets-promoted-for-simplicity/

The View From RSS

What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds.

https://www.carolinecrampton.com/the-view-from-rss/

Consciousness without counterpart: Identity beyond representation

An interesting essay about thoughts, consciousness and identity.

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/consciousness-without-counterpart-identity-beyond-representation/reading/

"This Is Not The Computer For You"

Another example of how restrictions promote creativity and ingenuity.

https://samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-computer-for-you/

See The Computers That Powered The Voyager Space Program

Not so much something to read, but something to watch: a wonderful video tour of the NASA JPL building 230, that was made in the '80s.

https://hackaday.com/2026/03/30/see-the-computers-that-powered-the-voyager-space-program/

Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions

Philip Kaludercic has started the Emacs carnival on the subject Mistakes and Misconceptions. Here's my contribution.

Vim to Emacs

In 2021 I switched to Emacs after using Vim for more than 20 years.

I was thinking about learning Lisp and Forth, and somehow I had the notion that programming in these languages is better supported in Emacs. Also, I had discovered that extensions like rec-mode and ledger-mode offer much more than the Vim plugins for the GNU recutils and ledger-cli.

And than there is the lure of org-mode.

In the past I had tried Viper-mode a few times, but never was happy with it. So I toke the plunge and started trying to learn using Emacs with the default keybindings.

Misconception: Vanilla keys are impossible to learn

For many years, the O'Reilly book "Learning GNU Emacs" from 1996 sat on my bookshelves, and each time I opened it up, I was completely overwhelmed by the Emacs keybindings.

My misconceptions:

• I had the impression that typing the keychords would result in your fingers getting tangled.
• There are so many keybindings, and unlike Vi, they are all combinations of several keys, so I assumed I'd never master them.

The man-page of mg, the micro-emacs that comes with the OpenBSD installer, has a nice compact list of the keybindings. Guessing the priority, I sorted this list by what I expected to be their relative importance, and dedicated a full weekend practicing the first few keybindings. In the week following this weekend, I transferred my task list that was in Taskwarrior to org-mode, and started using Emacs during my day-time job, gradually learning more keybindings.

In hindsight, my ideas were wrong. In the beginning the keychords are weird, but I have never had my fingers in a knot :) And giving it some effort and time, the muscle memory rapidly adopts the keychords.

My ~/.xinitrc maps the CapsLock key as Control key, and I have never experienced the so-called Emacs-pinky.

Misconception: Dired can be ignored

I prefer working on the command line and on Linux and BSD have never used a file manager. With one exception: in the nineties I used Midnight Commander to upload complete directory-trees over FTP.

Just like Midnight Commander, Dired, the Emacs file manager, can be used with the keyboard, no need to use the mouse.

In the beginning I didn't look into Dired. Only after using Emacs for some time, I discovered that Dired is very useful and now I am gradually incorporating it in my workflow.

I still have to dive deeper in it. Of course it can be used just like any file manager, like renaming files and moving files from one directory to another. The real power of Dired is, based on my limited knowledge and experience, in the integration with the rest of Emacs.

Misconception: Underestimating the impact of using Emacs

Moving from Vim to Emacs, I had the notion of replacing one editor with another. I couldn't be more wrong.

Stealthy--like a ninja in the night--Emacs creeps into your life and gradually takes over everything. The integration of so many functionality make Emacs a wonderful desktop environment.

The advantages of this is that it makes everything much easier, everything has the same user interface, and it all works the same on any platform. From window manager to IDE, Emacs can do it all.

This is a small anthology of my use of Emacs:

• Email: Emacs Gnus
• Usenet reader: Gnus
• RSS feed reader: Elfeed (next to following feeds with the brilliant Gwene.org RSS to NNTP gateway)
• IRC: Emacs rcirc IRC-client
• Reading webpages: Emacs eww
• Reading Gopher and Gemini pages: Elpher
• Note taking system: Denote
• Common Lisp REPL: SLIME: The Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs
• Scheme REPL: Geiser
• PDF viewer: Emacs works fine as a PDF-viewer, and bookmark pages with the standard Emacs bookmarking functionality
• Shell: Most of the time the build-in shell Eshell is fine for me.

This is not a complete list. F.e, I write magazine articles in org-mode, and when ready, using the org-mode export functionality, export the article to ODT-format. And before my retirement, I wrote reports and policies in org-mode and exported these to LaTeX.

0rg-mode supports simple calculations in tables. The calculations to fill out my three-monthly VAT tax return from are in org-mode, automatically extracting the numbers from the ledger-journal using ledger-cli. My yearly financial statements are also compiled in a few org-mode tables.

I have used the Emacs X Window Manager but after a while went back to the old faithful ratpoison window manager. I think this is faster than EXWM, but have never done any real measuring.

Misconception: Emacs Lisp is not a general language

While learning Emacs and starting to use Emacs Lisp (also called Elisp) I discovered that Emacs Lisp is a very capable language.

The many different packages that are available for Emacs proof this.

I have build a static website generator in Elisp, and an application to generate my invoices and the ledger entries, and much more.

My mistake

In the post "Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions", Philip asks us to mention our mistakes. Of course I have made many, f.e., in the beginning is setting up your configuration not easy.

My biggest mistake however, is not making the switch much sooner.

Emacs is a powerful environment

The development of Emacs began in 1984. Using Lisp for its development was a brilliant choice. Emacs Lisp is very capable and has a low threshold. This empowers its many different users.

Emacs has evolved over more than 40 years by endless user contributions. Because these are daily users solving real problems, the result is a very powerful and versatile environment that can be used for a plethora of tasks. Nothing comes even close to it.

Here is a small post about deploying a Matrix server in the homelab.

The goal is a Matrix server running on a FreeBSD jail that can be used from the web browser on your desktop.

It is a quick-and-dirty configuration, to get you started.

This setup is for testing purposes. The server will not be exposed to the internet and it will not federate with the Matrix network.

The setup contains three parts:

• the Conduit Matrix server
• the Cinny web Matrix client
• NGINX as reverse proxy

Domain names

First, create in your local DNS server two subdomain names, one for Conduit and one for Cinny, f.e., matrix.example.com and cinny.example.com, both pointing to the ip-address of the jail.

Certificates

Create certificates for the two domains.

If you haven't setup a local CA, do that first, for example using mkcert.

Place the certificate files in /etc/ssl/certs/ in the jail.

Conduit

Conduit advertises itself as a simple, fast and reliable matrix server.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

Copy the file /usr/local/etc/conduit.toml.sample to /usr/local/etc/conduit.toml and edit this file:

Servername

This is the subdomain of your Conduitserver.

servername = "matrix.example.com"

Registration token

New users can register with this token.

registration_token = "very-secret"

Allow federation

We won't expose our server to the internet. Federation will not be required and we will not allow it.

allow_federation = false

Cinny

Cinny is yet another Matrix client. It runs as a web application. You access it with your web browser.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

The package manager installs Cinny in /usr/local/www/cinny.

In this directory, copy the file config.json.example to config.json and edit it:

homeserverList

Delete all entries in the homeserverList and insert the subdomain of your Conduit server.

"homeserverList": [
  "matrix.example.com"
],

featuredCommunities

Probably you can delete a lot here. I only cleaned the list "servers":

"servers": ["matrix.example.com"]

NGINX

NGINX is a very great web server.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

Here we use it as a reverse proxy.

In the file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf add two blocks for the virtual servers:

server {
    listen *:443 ssl;
    server_name matrix.example.com;
    client_max_body_size 1G;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/matrix.example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/certs/matrix.example.com.key;
    location / {
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6167;
    }
}

server {
    listen *:443 ssl;
    server_name cinny.example.com;
    client_max_body_size 1G;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cindy.example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/certs/cindy.example.com.key;
    location / {
       root /usr/local/www/cinny;
       index index.html;
    }
}

Allow the daemons to run

In /etc/rc.conf add two lines to allow the daemons to run.

conduit_enable="YES"
nginx_enable="YES"

Start or restart the Conduit and the NGINX daemons.

Create a few accounts

Open cinny.example.com in your web browser.

Register as new account. Choose your server (matrix.example.com), and provide a user name and a password. Insert the registration token from the Conduit configuration (above this is mentioned as "very-secret") in the field below the two password fields.

Repeat, to get a few accounts to play with.

Have fun playing with Matrix in you homelab!