Passing fancies #19

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I finished two books, both by favorite authors of mine.  The first was The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan who is probably best known for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore which is my favorite of his books.  The Suitcase Clone ties in most directly to another strangely fascinating book of his called Sourdough, which is about a weirdly sentient sourdough starter.  Robin's books feature inventive blends of fantasy, technology, and food or wine.

The second book I finished this week was a graphic novel called The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman.  Like the best graphic novels, the award winning The Sandman series features lots of interesting and sometimes obscure references which makes me glad that I'm able to read them on my iPad since that makes it easy to research the many references which sometimes take me on side journeys.  It inspired a streaming series which we enjoyed watching.  Another graphic novel I love which is similarly reference-laden is Watchmen by Alan Moore.  It also inspired a movie and a streaming series, both of which I enjoyed immensely.

Music

For a while, we had a Peacock streaming account and while we did, one of the programs we enjoyed was We Are Lady Parts which is about a punk band formed of Muslim women.  It managed to be funny, touching, and thought provoking.  Somehow this week I found a link to a song performed in the show called Bashir With the Good Beard which is funny as well as catchy.

Youtube recommended a cover of the AC/DC song Thunderstruck by a band called The Rock Orchestra which was really interesting.  I still prefer the AC/DC version but sometimes covers can be enjoyable on their own.  Youtube's recommendations are sometimes eerily accurate at predicting content I might enjoy.

Television/Movies

This week we finished watching the award winning streaming series The Bear.  The final season featured so many challenges for the people working in the restaurant that we could hardly wait to see how it turned out.  The finale wrapped up things nicely.

Something I read reminded me of the movie Highlander and it turns out that my wife had never seen it so we watched it although I don't think my wife enjoyed it as much as I did.  It's an entertaining fantasy but features some questionable accents, most notably from Christopher Lambert whose French accent often shines through his intermittent attempts at a Scottish accent and Sean Connery who doesn't attempt an accent to match his character Ramirez (aka the Spaniard) much like his performance as a Russian sub commander in The Hunt for Red October.

The first episode of the third season of Silo was released on Apple TV and we enjoyed continuing the story in this very compelling series.  Silo was based on Hugh Howey's Silo book series which starts with the book Wool.  I found the books fascinating.

Links

Have you ever wondered what F1 race drivers choose for transportation when off the racetrack?  Here's a set of photos which shows some of their daily drivers.  My favorite is Landon Norris' E-Type Jaguar shown in the last picture.  I think E-type Jag's are the most beautiful sports car ever made although I prefer the hardtop to convertibles.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-a-peek-at-the-f1-drivers-parking-lot-in-silverstone

The Voyager 1 space probe is nearing the impressive distance of 1 light day from Earth.  The fact that it's still operating nearly 50 years after its launch in 1977 is evidence for my belief that NASA is responsible for some of the finest engineering ever done by humans.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/

I share the concern which the author of this blog post expresses about being overwhelmed by the tendency of smart devices to chip away at our ability to concentrate deeply.  I disable almost all notifications and avoid smart appliances in our house.  My ability to stay focused while creating system software is something I value far more than the minor conveniences offered by smart devices.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

I found  this article about programmers needing to meditate interesting.  The author is involved with building AI infrastructure which I believe is largely responsible for much of the stress which programmers face these days.  I'm avoiding AI wherever possible because of the toll it takes on our ability to deeply focus by getting into the flow state.  It's rare for me to be able to achieve flow state on my days in the office due to having too many distractions.  While working from home, it's much easier for me to concentrate deeply enough to hit that mystical state.
https://jacob.gold/posts/programmers-need-to-start-meditating-now/

Apparently birds in Ukraine are making use of fiber optic cables when building nests.  This is weird because while it undoubtedly creates more durable nests, it's also a sad reminder of drones being used to cause destruction.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/07/fiber-optic-materials-in-ukranian-birds.html

Here's an interesting and somewhat sad article by a travel writer who met her hero, Anthony Bourdain, and how those interactions affected her.  I feel a bit sorry for people who feel compelled to constantly search for new and exciting experiences because they seldom seem to enjoy having achieved something.
https://cailey.substack.com/p/i-wanted-to-be-anthony-bourdainuntil

The news that scientists have managed to create a living cell from scratch if nothing short of amazing.  It's also a bit disturbing since chirality can affect how molecules interact with living tissue so it may be possible to intentionally create harmful mirror molecules.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6157418679944799691/2587135840302117398 

I was surprised to read that honeybees choose individual routes to foraging locations.  Bees seem more complex than most people think.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00084-9

While I enjoyed a good argument when I was younger, I find I no longer want to waste the energy and time necessary to prove I'm right about something.  Given people's tendency to ignore documented facts and hold on to misinformation, it's not worth the effort.  It's easier to walk away from argumentative people and go do something I enjoy instead.
https://wangcong.org/2026-06-30-why-i-stopped-arguing-with-people.html

One of the best things about being near retirement is I no longer need to worry about having to endure another technical interview.  The majority of interviews I've been subjected to have been absurd and unpleasant.  A couple have been bad enough that I've extracted myself early by telling them I was no longer interested in their company.  The looks on the face of the interviewers when they realized they would be denied further opportunities to torture me were priceless.  It reminds me of the time an interviewer told me I had more experience than they expected and asked my age.  I responded that I thought it might be illegal to ask that question which turned his smug look into a worried one.
https://nelson.cloud/what-i-actually-want-to-say-in-tech-interviews/

Apparently laughter was key to humans developing the vocal control required for speech.
https://thedebrief.org/new-research-suggests-human-laughter-may-hold-a-15-million-year-old-secret/

This article about keeping historical events in perspective states that humans are really bad at doing so.  The example is that Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire which I wouldn't have thought was true.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-older-than-aztec-empire-other-facts-will-change-your-perspective-history-1529607/

Our ability to see things does not work the way most people believe it does.  Human eyes perform motions called saccades, rapid movements which do scanning of objects which the visual cortex helps combine into a complete picture.  I first read about this in Jeff Hawkins' books On Intelligence and A Thousand Brains, both of which are well worth reading.
https://ishan.co/no-way/

Older tech workers are retiring (voluntary or involuntary) in larger numbers than usual.  At some point, I think this might catch up with companies similar to the way Ford was forced to rehire 350 veteran engineers to help fix the problems caused by their attempt to let AI do most of the work.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/

Raspberry Pi 5 as a development machine

 

This morning I replaced a noisy cooling fan on my Raspberry Pi 5.  The replacement fan cost a reasonable $10 with free shipping and only took me about 10 minutes to replace.  Only a small screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers were required for the job.  The fan noise had been most noticeable when it booted up as the firmware runs a fan check.  It will be nice not to have to endure that any longer.

One of the small ARM based embedded systems which I build firmware and software for at work uses the same Linux Debian Bookworm 64-bit release as I have running on the Pi which makes building code much easier.  The cross compile environment we had been using on Intel based Ubuntu servers took much longer to build our application software.  Plus having a Unix like environment readily available automatically makes me so much more productive.

It's so easy to install software packages on the Pi and there's such a wide variety of software available that I can use the Pi for almost any task I need to accomplish.  It's become my second favorite development machine of my lengthy career, marginally behind a Sun Workstation I used in the early 1990s.

This machine was affordable when I built it two years ago but AI's endless thirst for computing hardware has driven the price of memory and flash storage devices up a lot.  I think duplicating this machine at today's prices would be close to twice the $200 this originally cost to build. 

 

Editors I've been fond of at some point

I've used a number of editors for programming during my nearly 50 years in the computer industry.  Once I discovered vi in 1990, it or some variation of it has remained been my primary editor.  The learning curve for vi is steep but once you spend enough time with it to become productive, it's really hard to justify the effort required to learn another editor.  Vi has always been extensible thanks to its ability to define key mappings which gave it macro capability.  I'm still using a few vi macros which I created in 1990.  These include simplified syntax for marking, copying, deleting, and pasting portions of text, both within a single file or between files.  Once I started using Linux, I discovered Vim which has remained my editor of choice ever since.  The builtin color syntax highlighting makes code more readable for me.  I really love its ability to split and resize windows.  And my fingers remember the commands so well that I rarely need to think about how to do anything.

The first programming editor I liked was IBM's Personal Editor 2, aka PE2, which was only available for MS-DOS.  I used PE2 in the 1980s while working at General Electric and continued using it for about 6 years.  One feature I really liked was its ability to operate on columns of text.  Once a column or multiple columns were marked, the text could be replaced, have its case toggled, copied, or moved.  That capability seemed unique until I figured out that WordStar for DOS had a column mode as well.  Until we discovered that capability of WordStar while I was working at the Washington Navy Year, my colleagues would occasionally bring me a file on floppy disk to have me perform some column magic on it.  Recently I was surprised to read that a number of authors are still using WordStar for DOS.  I understand why they choose to continue using WordStar since it performed well, had a great feature set, and never crashed for me.  A bonus for me was a few other programs like Borland's Turbo Pascal used the WordStar command set.  The company which made WordStar created a new version called WordStar 2000 which had a number of interesting features but ultimately failed because it couldn't read files created by the older versions of WordStar.

I also used Brief for a while after I got my first Mac.  I chose it because it ran on multiple OSes/machines.  That didn't last since Brief was a bit expensive and most companies I've worked for have been unwilling to spend money on tools for software engineers.  I also tried Emacs but it was so feature rich that the executable size was too big for most personal computers of the time.  In contrast, I think the first vi clone I used on an IBM PC was only about 40K and fit easily on even the smallest floppy disks.

So I continue to prefer using Vim.  Most of the time I prefer the GUI version which is sometime referred to as GVim or MacVim.  It allows me to resize the Windows which makes it easy to tailor my workflow to how many windows I need access to at the time.  GVim supports X11 which gives me the ability to log into a Linux system via ssh and display the editor window on the Windows laptop I'm forced to use at work by running VcXsrv (a version of the X11 server compiled with Visual-C for better Windows compatibility. At home, I can do the same thing by running the Mac version of X-11 server.

 

link dump #16

I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.

We live on former farmland which gives us some lovely views of the sky.  Here's a particularly nice sunset from a few days ago.

 

My second job in the computer industry was as a field engineer at a company which maintained systems built around the DEC PDP-11.  During the 7 weeks of training, I found that I loved the instruction set of the DEC PDP-11.  At other jobs, I discovered the Motorola 680x0 series of CPUs which had a very similar instruction set.  Both machines have orthogonal instruction sets.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most-influential-minicomputer-of-all-time/

I was surprised to read that Apple AirPods may cause cardiovascular implantable devices such as pacemakers to malfunction.  Apparently AirPods create a magnetic field strong enough to affect pacemakers and other implantable devices.
https://www.engadget.com/2193554/airpods-pacemakers-magnet-interference/

Stronger magnets are also harmful to other types of electronic devices.  Since I've been working with computers for so long that I keep my devices away from magnets primarily out of habit.  Apparently there's good reason to do so with some types of devices.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/21/magnets-are-bad-for-hardware-again/

I enjoy watching Rick and Morty because their humorous takes on science and science fiction make me laugh.  One of their episodes features a lightsaber which was dropped with the point down and which proceeded to burrow its way through the Earth.
https://laughingsquid.com/dropping-light-saber-vertically/

I've been finding the growing number of terms which end with "maxxing" such as "sleepmaxxing" annoying.  I'm glad to see others feel the same way.  I ignore the output of influencers but it becomes hard to do when it gets embraced by popular culture.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/just-be-normal-about-st

I've been a fan of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books since high school 50+ years ago.  That caused me to find the fact that a newly discovered species of cricket has been named after the Balrog amusing.
https://thedebrief.org/you-shall-not-pass-scientists-identify-new-balrog-cricket-species-in-greek-island-tunnel/

I'm not at all surprised that listening to music promotes mental health.   I find listening to music while I'm working helps me to achieve a deeper level of concentration particularly when audio distractions are present.  It only works that way if the music is something I'm quite familiar with.  I also watch videos of live musical performances regularly.
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/is-there-a-link-between-listening-to-music-and-mental-health.html

In modern military conflicts, GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming increasingly common.  It's also being used as a form of economic warfare since it's so disruptive.
https://boingboing.net/2016/08/04/spoofing-gps-is-surprisingly-e.html

I've long felt that most technical interviews are a terrible way of choosing talented engineers.  Bad technical interviews are something I'm happy that I'll never face again since I'm so close to retirement. 
https://fagnerbrack.com/technical-interviews-reject-the-wrong-engineers-a8e78ca04b2e?gi=46f57f353ef1 

There's a new proposed theory for how the objects commonly known as black holes form.  I'm not sure I can get used to the term gravastar.
https://thedebrief.org/black-holes-arent-real-astronomers-propose-elusive-formation-mechanism-for-gravastar-alternative-that-is-easier-to-accept/

link dump #14

I follow a lot of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.  For example today while taking the dog outside over my lunch break, looking up treated me to this interesting halo around the sun.  Apparently it's caused by ice crystals interacting with the sun's rays.

Ronny Chieng, who you might know from The Daily Show or movies, gave one of the more amusing commencement speeches I've seen recently.  It was better received than the speech Eric Schmidt gave where he got booed for his comments about AI.  There have been a number of other recent commencement speakers telling graduates that they'll have a hard time finding employment thanks to so many CEO's obsession with AI.  I think that shows how out of touch these speakers, often members of upper management of various companies, are with their workers or potential employees.
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard

Apparently some of the Tesla staff members charged with reviewing video footage of their "Full Self Driving" feature in order to improve its performance don't trust Tesla's self driving technology.  I can't say I blame them.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/why-teslas-ai-trainers-dont-trust-its-self-driving-tech-or-its-safety-stats-2026-05-28/

I love cool cars so I found this story about how hot rodders are using 3-D printing to help build parts for their cars interesting.  I've heard people are doing the same thing to restore old computers.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/old-school-hot-rodders-are-using-high-tech-3d-scanners-to-make-custom-parts

This proposed Lego kit for building a model of the CROCUS reactor looks very cool.  The instructions and parts are already available if you'd like to build it yourself.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/e235fbd0-8ab8-4575-bd1c-37a25625f118

I found this article about the history of Digital Research's DR DOS interesting.  I used DR DOS in the late late 1980s when it was first released.  I even submitted a bug report to Digital Research when I found a program which didn't behave properly under DR DOS.  The bug was caused by a system call which behaved differently than the same system call on MS-DOS did when passed a string containing wildcards instead of an actual filename.  I even included a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program to work around the bug.
https://dfarq.homeip.net/dr-dos-revenge-of-cp-m/

This article about how people discovered someone they knew was super intelligent was interesting.  I used to work for a boss down at the Washington Navy Yard who would type long assembly language source files on the old CRT terminals we were stuck with on mainframes back in the late 1980s.  You could even ask him questions while he was typing and he would answer you with only a minor slowdown in his typing.  After typing these long programs, he would use the assemble and run option and his programs worked.  I was amazed that he could remember variable names he had used several pages of source code ago.  He was also amazingly effective with his explanations.  He's start out explaining at his level of understanding and if he saw you weren't understanding him, he'd adjust his explanation until you understood him and did it so you didn't feel insulted by the simpler explanation.
https://pleated-jeans.com/2026/05/22/people-share-the-moment-they-knew-they-were-in-the-presence-of-a-truly-massive-intellect/

Some of you may have build kits from Heathkit in the past.  I built two computer kits, an H-89 which ran CP/M and an H-151 which ran MS-DOS.  I also built one of their dot matrix printer kits.  Here's a video tour of their factory back in the day.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/15/inside-the-heathkit-factory/

I found the news that plants react to anesthetics in a similar fashion to humans both fascinating and a little disturbing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11586303/

If you've never seen the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, it's definitely worth watching.  It focuses on the early days of personal computing which sounds as if it would be boring but this show manages to keep it entertaining.  The title refers to the mythical HCF op code which causes the CPU to catch fire.
https://unstack.io/halt-and-catch-fire

Reading about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching it the couple times I've seen it.  I think I may be due to watch it again.
https://yusufaytas.com/why-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-is-a-masterpiece

If you've heard this story which Kurt Vonnegut told a few times, it illustrates why I like him so much as an author.  I think I would have enjoyed meeting him as well.  His books will both entertain you and lead you in directions you would have never expected when you started reading it.
https://chrisglass.com/2024/11/01/kurt-vonnegut-buys-an-envleope/ 

Before I became a father, I would have been skeptical about how much the experience changes someone.  When I held my daughter for the first time, it completely changed me.  Those changes were for the better although I would have doubted that a few years before.
https://www.sciencealert.com/fatherhood-dramatically-rewires-your-brain-scans-reveal

I've managed to clear out some of my backlog of interesting links with this link dump.  I hope you find something in here to inform or entertain you. 

A favorite beer

Tonight I'm celebrating the end of the work week with a Firestone Walker Paraboloid.  This beer isn't readily available on the east coast so I have to order it directly from Firestone Walker in California.  This brewer was founded by a couple guys with experience in wine making.  They make some amazing beers with all the complexity of a fine wine.

Sipping on the Paraboloid made me remember the first time I had its little brother, a beer called Parabola, about 11 years ago at a restaurant in Leesburg called Leesburg Public House.  LPH had been opened by a friend and quickly became one of our favorite weekly happy hour venues.  I had been reading about this legendary beer for a few years but had never seen it available nearby.  Jay, one of the servers at LPH, was very knowledgeable about craft beer and had a few connections in the beer world.  He was able to get a few highly rated beers such as Parabola to sell at the restaurant.

When we arrived at LPH that night, Jay told us that they had just received the Parabola.  I managed to convince Dave, a friend I had worked with at 5 different companies, to split a bottle with me.  Jay brought us the Parabola and served it with the flourish fitting such a special beer as you can see in the photo below.  Dave loved the beer as much as I did but he never let me forget that it was me who got him hooked on more expensive beers.  Each year when it was released we'd compare notes on where to find it in nearby stores.

 

This rambling train of thought caused me to remember that it's almost the 1 year anniversary of my buddy Dave's untimely death.  It would be difficult to express how much I miss him.  One of the things I miss most about Dave is how we both enjoyed talking about low level programming.  If he were still around I'd be telling him about the pointer math I had to do in a C program today.   I was doing that to solve the problem of a device at work occasionally misplacing its timestamp from the usual location at the start of a buffer to somewhere in the middle of the buffer.  Knowing where the timestamp ended up could provide clues about what's causing the problem.  This timestamp takes the form of a 64-bit integer.  This wouldn't normally be a problem to find that given the fact that the upper 16 bits of the timestamp contain an easily identifiable value but on ARM CPUs, 64-int integers are stored in little endian format.  So having found the correct 16 bits somewhere within the buffer, it was necessary to back up by 6 bytes to get the entire timestamp before the timestamp could be displayed in all its glory.  Pointer math is always fun.

Well, my celebratory beer is nearly gone now and that low level programming tired me out.  I think I'll sign off for now. 

 

 

link dump #13

 

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my entire list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a lot of topics interesting.

It's difficult for experts to fully explain the innate knowledge which makes them so good in their fields.  Experience can be impossible to pass long when trying to create new experts.  I think this may make it impossible to train AI systems to replace experts.
https://cekrem.github.io/posts/the-tacit-dimension/

I'm generally not keen on AI use but if you can hide prompts to force LinkedIn recruiter bots to entertain you with their unwanted spam, it seems like a win to me.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/linkedin-recruitment-spam-becomes-olde-english-prose-after-user-hides-ai-prompt-injection-in-bio-bots-also-also-manipulated-to-address-user-as-my-lord

When I first switched from Windows PCs to Macs 25 years ago, I found that I loved Mac OS X.  It reminded me of the software environment I enjoyed on the Sun 3/80 Workstation I had on my desk while working at Sprint International (the division which developed the computer networking hardware and software for Sprint's packet switching network) in 1990.  That Sun was the machine which caused me to love Unix.  The combination of Unix, X Windows, and that fast Sun hardware was the most productive environment for software development I had seen at that time and I still have fond memories of it.  Lately Apple's software seems much buggier than it used to which frustrates me at time.  It's reassuring to see that I'm not the only one who has noticed this steady decline in software quality.
https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/05/18/1320

Someone has created an animated version of Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night and I found it entertaining to interact with various parts of the painting.
https://stillnight.joshua-garcia.com/

A study has found that playing the didgeridoo can help counteract the daytime sleepiness caused by sleep apnea.  I can't imagine many offices would be open to this type of therapy to treat affected employees.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1360393/

Finally there's  evidence for why the T-Rex had such tiny arms.  Sometimes evolution plays cruel tricks...
https://nautil.us/we-finally-have-the-answer-for-t-rexs-tiny-arms-1280997

There's no way I would agree to join a mission commanded by a billionaire rather than a fully trained astronaut/pilot.  Making an insane amount of money doesn't imply the ability to solve problems in stressful situations like a long space flight.  I'm curious to see how the radiation affects humans on this longer mission as it will be hard to shield the crew capsule adequately.  Shielding materials are heavy and extra weight is always hard to justify.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-taps-crypto-billionaire-to-lead-first-crewed-mission-to-mars-2000762451

The Super El Niño predicted to form by winter could have devastating effects on both the world economy as well as our ability to keep the world's population fed.
https://respublicamgz.substack.com/p/a-super-el-nino-is-coming-the-last

It strikes me as horribly inefficient to have unique terms for groups of birds of different species.  Things like this make the English language both rich and difficult to master.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/04/brian-wildsmith-birds-company-terms/

link dump #11

 

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead I think collecting them in a blog post is a friendlier way to pass links along.

In case you're curious about why I'm posting on my blog more often recently, it's because I'm counting down to starting my retirement.  According to my spreadsheet, today I'm down to 158 more days of work.

I have fond memories of playing some of the old Infocom games.  There's a new web based version of Zork which actually shows you the code which is running as you play the game.  That appeals to both the techie and gamer in me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom

NASA has shut down an instrument on the 49 year old Voyager 1 probe to extend its mission even longer.  This adds more evidence for my opinion that NASA does some of the finest engineering ever done.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260504023835.htm

There's a new theory about a possible way to cut travel time to Mars.  This will be critical for continued missions.
https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/i-was-not-looking-for-this-scientist-accidentally-finds-shortcut-to-mars-that-could-slash-travel-time-in-half

This new brake by wire system sounds interesting but I'll avoid cars which feature it until it has much more testing.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-first-modern-car-without-hydraulic-brakes-is-headed-to-production

Richard Dawkins is being mocked for his questioning of whether LLM systems such as Claude pass all current tests for consciousness.  Since a few people working on AI systems have made similar claims, it seems ridiculous to mock a well respected scientist who has no special expertise in the subject.  Since these systems have been trained on massive amounts of output from talented authors, it doesn't surprise me that they can string together sentences which sound convincing.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/richard-dawkins-and-the-claude-delusion

If you got the idea that I'm an AI skeptic, you'd be right.  Here's one of the many reasons I avoid them at every opportunity.  I wonder whether the engineer who was working with the AI agent which did this got reprimanded or fired.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/ai-agent-deletes-company-s-entire-database-in-seconds/ar-AA21UbLU 

Even though I have strong doubts about whether we'll create actual conscious machine models anytime soon, I do believe that octopuses are intelligent despite having brains which are very different from ours.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01302-4

Denis Leary has long been one of my favorite comedians and he seems to be a great human being as well.  I know he's been doing fund raising for firefighters since he starred in Rescue Me and he's managed to step up the support through this innovative plan.
https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/denis-learys-crazy-idea-puts-civilians-fdny-training-132625577

I'm happy to hear that there are more bookstores now than there were six years ago.  Literate people would probably help prevent many of the problems we currently have.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/27/052242/america-now-has-70-more-bookstores-than-in-2020-says-bookshoporg-founder

The mention of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle is initially what caught my eye about this story but it's interesting on its own merit.  Who knew there were 20 crystalline forms of ice?
https://boingboing.net/2026/04/29/scientists-found-ice-with-a-304-molecule-repeating-pattern.html

Hopefully you don't drive one of these cars with soy-based wiring since they attract rodents which can lead to expensive repairs.
https://www.box-kat.com/blogs/box-kat-blog/full-list-of-cars-with-soy-based-wiring-2025-update

link dump #10

 

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead I think collecting them in a blog post is a friendlier way to pass links along.

A fair number of chefs seem to like American cheese for its ability to melt smoothly on burgers.  I'd much rather have a cheese with more flavor such as a medium sharp cheddar even though it's not as attractive when it melts.  Swiss and Blue cheese are also better choices for me than American cheese.
https://www.seriouseats.com/whats-really-in-american-cheese

One of the books I'm currently reading is Alas Babylon.  I've been on a post-apocalyptic kick lately, having recently finished Earth Abides, which like Alas Babylon, I probably hadn't read in 40 years or more. I've also enjoyed The Postman and On the Beach (my personal favorite in this sub-genre).
https://grubstreethack.wordpress.com/2019/12/07/book-review-alas-babylon/

I just read about a company called Elite Obsolete Electronics which is upgrading classic Apple iPods with modern storage devices and better batteries.  I've got a first generation iPod Classic with the click wheel which I've considered doing an upgrade like this but the fact that it has a Firewire interface raises the complexity of synchronizing music to the device.  There's  also the issue of trying to convince Apple Music to sync to such an old device.  Given those issues, I'm probably better off going with a Tangara which is a crowd funded device created with all modern technology.

It makes me sad to read about technology like Stinger missiles which we've forgotten how to produce.  I fear AI is just making this worse.  It's cool that they were able to call engineers in their 70s to come back to teach younger engineers how.  Since I'm retiring early next year, I'm hoping there's no reason that some company tries to lure me back to the workforce.  I always thought the year 2038 date problem would be the reason I'd get pressured, but it looks like there might be more reasons than that.

Drunk engineers often have good advice.  I don't agree with all of it but there are some gems in this list.
https://luminousmen.substack.com/p/drunk-post-things-ive-learned-as

I worry about young people who are losing the powers of concentration required to watch a movie or read a book.  I wonder how many people still want to watch a longer classic movie like Lawrence of Arabia (one of my favorites).
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/01/attention-span-problems-viewing-movies.html

The idea of starting a country where crocs and reply-all emails are banned appeals to me in a strange sort of way,  I also like their idea of selling titles for people to boost their LinkedIn profiles.  In case you can't tell, I'm definitely not a fan of LinkedIn
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260330-slowjamastan-the-worlds-newest-nation-youve-never-heard-of

Often it's hard to people's minds but no one should have to suffer like the doctor who helped proved that washing hands could save lives.
https://boingboing.net/2026/04/07/the-doctor-who-proved-handwashing-saves-lives-was-locked-in-an-asylum-for-it.html

Even though I've got no where to put it, I kind of want this Lego Star Trek TNG Bridge.
https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-256838/Menapian/star-trek-tng-enterprise-d-bridge-diorama/#details

If LED lights can damage paintings, I wonder what effect they have on people?
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2013/01/04/led_bulbs_can_damagepaintings-1-1518123/

link dump #8

 

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead I think collecting them in a blog post is a friendlier way to pass links along.

Here's an interesting look at how NASA engineered a fault-tolerant computer for the Artemis II mission.  It is able to handle bit flips due to cosmic rays which apparently aren't uncommon in space travel.
https://cacm.acm.org/news/how-nasa-built-artemis-iis-fault-tolerant-computer/

I'm an avid follower of space technology and was interested to hear that a new memory device which could withstand the exceptionally high temperatures on Venus has been invented.  I wonder whether a CPU to function in such a hostile environment can be created and whether there's a way to connect them.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-computer-chip-could-finally-withstand-the-hellscape-of-venus

Apparently rich techies are paying to get on a waiting list to have their brains digitized.  The process is 100% fatal.  There seems to be a ridiculous leap of faith required to take advantage of this technology.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/science/5809555/sam-altman-nectome-brain-computer/

This essay echoes many of my feelings about using Apple devices these days.  I still like their hardware but their software continues evolving in ways I don't find particularly useful and occasionally I find myself wondering what the hell they're thinking customers want.
https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/04/12/1330

Physicists have managed to entangle two helium atoms which has interesting possibilities.
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/quantum-physics/really-really-weird-physicists-entangle-two-moving-atoms-for-the-first-time-validating-spooky-quantum-theory

NASA has a Daily Moon Guide which might be useful.
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/daily-moon-guide/

This poll which indicates that print books still dominate American reading habits surprised me.  The convenience of e-books and e-audiobooks had made print books a last resort for me.  I only use them for books not available in electronic form.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans-still-opt-for-print-books-over-digital-or-audio-versions-few-are-in-book-clubs/ 

For a while, Scotland seemed to dominate original thinking.  It's amazing how many fields they excelled at - economics, engineering, medicine, etc.
https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-why-scotland-succeeded

I've read a number of books about the early days of hacking which included phone phreaking but I don't recall reading about a blind hacker who called himself "Joybubbles".  Apparently his exploits inspired other phone hackers.
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/joybubbles-documentary-rachael-morrison-interview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

link dump #7

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead I think collecting them in a blog post is a friendlier way to pass links along.

Given the fact that Microsoft is warning people that their CoPilot AI assistant is for entertainment purposes only and should not be trusted, this study showing people blindly trust AI results is disturbing.  I believe the results from this study since so many people fall for phishing emails which contain painfully obvious errors.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/study-do-what-chatgpt-tells-us

Speaking of absurd beliefs, apparently some people think that blood banks maintain separate supplies from donors who have never been vaccinated.  I've been donating blood for over 50 years and have seen no evidence that separate blood supplies exist.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/more-people-requesting-unvaccinated-blood-themselves-or-their-children

This article about the memory devices used in the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) also contains detailed descriptions of other memory devices used during that time which were considered.  I remember these older technologies since I'm older than dirt.
https://2earth.github.io/website/20260304.html

I'm not surprised that repeated clonings from different generations of the same line of cloned mice has caused problems.  Entropy is a cruel mistress.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a70861443/scientists-cloned-a-mouse-for-58-generations-the-results-were-catastrophic/

Recently a magnetic tape containing source code for UNIX v4 was discovered.  I found the procedure used to extract the data from that old tape fascinating.  Stories about magnetic tape make me nostalgic for large computer rooms.  A row of tape drives constantly seeking and reading is a visual indication of a busy computer.  Tape drives were always my favorite peripheral devices to maintain.
https://irreal.org/blog/?p=13661

I'm not sure I would trust any Internet connection sufficiently to try using it to install directly from it to an SD card to boot Linux.  That being said, the technique is quite interesting.
https://astrid.tech/2026/03/24/0/curl-to-dev-sda/

Here's an account of the role which the Parkes Observatory in Australia played in monitoring the Apollo 11 mission.
https://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/

Too often people focus on negative stereotypes of people on the autism spectrum while ignoring their creativity and other gifts.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/positively-different/202601/what-the-world-got-wrong-about-autistic-people

It makes me happy to know that John Fogerty has regained control over his music catalog.  His songs are in many of my favorite playlists I have on my phone.  This NPR Tiny Desk Concert shows what I love about his music.
https://laughingsquid.com/john-fogerty-npr-tiny-desk/ 

link dump #5

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without having to visit my list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead I think collecting them in a blog post is a friendlier way to pass links along.

For a while, Turbo Pascal was my favorite programming language.  The IDE it used was fast and made me more productive than other compilers available in the mid 1980s by showing me the cause of any compilation errors immediately.  This web page shows how small it was which seems weird in an age of phone applications are quite large.  It was also much, much faster than other compilers of that time.
https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html

Somone has used AI to disassemble Turbo Pascal to better understand how it achieved such a small size.
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/20/turbo-pascal/

Apparently it can dangerous to fill your SSD devices too full.  I knew this was the case on some of the low level flash memory devices used on embedded systems but thought SSD controllers would be able to handle this more gracefully.
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-never-fill-ssd-past-80-and-you-shouldnt-either/

This research into how fireflies stay in sync is fascinating.  I wonder whether this is similar to how starling murmurations work?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/the-science-of-how-fireflies-stay-in-sync/

MIT has a study which suggests that the use of AI may lead to cognitive decline.  This rings true to me.  I know anytime I've had a break from programming, it's hard to jump back in and be nearly as productive as I am when I do it regularly.  The same thing happens to software developers who move into management and completely leave programming behind.  An extreme case of this was a CEO at a small company where I used to work.  He liked to ingratiate himself to engineers by telling us about having started out as an ALGOL programmer.  From his performance as a CEO, it was not obvious he had ever possessed any technical skills.
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artificial-intelligence-use-reprograms-the-brain-leading-to-cognitive-decline/ 

A number of bloggers are bemoaning the changes heralded by widespread use of AI in software development.  I'm glad I'll be retiring before management tries to force me to use it.  Programming and debugging are like solving puzzles for me and I'd hate to give that up.
https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/ 

link dump #4

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without visiting a lot of favorite blogs which haven't been updated.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead collecting them in a blog post seems like a friendlier way to pass links along.

I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan again a few nights ago.  I had forgotten that they used old maintenance panels from a GE-635 mainframe computer to serve as controls for one of the Enterprise's systems.  I recognize panels from Honeywell and GE computers since I serviced both as a field engineer nearly 50 years ago.  It's not uncommon to see old maintenance panels used in this capacity since they usually have lots of lights and switches.  Here's a few other movies and TV shows which have used parts of the GE-635.
https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=427 

Apparently RAM kits are now being sold with one real RAM stick and a fake one due to the RAM shortage created by AI datacenters.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/fake-ram-bundled-with-real-ram-to-create-a-performance-illusion-for-amd-users-1-1-value-pack-offers-desperate-psychological-relief-as-the-memory-shortage-worsens

Here's an interesting article about how how Lego goes about creating a new set.
https://www.theverge.com/c/23991049/lego-ideas-polaroid-onestep-behind-the-scenes-price

This article about how snakes manage to get up to 70% of their body length into the air is interesting but I found the picture a bit disturbing.
https://nautil.us/heres-how-snakes-defy-gravity-to-stand-up-1278914 

Scientists have figured out how to revive frozen mouse brains.  This might be a step towards allowing longer spaceflights.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00756-w

Iranian physicists have estimated that technological civilizations probably only last 5,000 years at most.  This could explain why we haven't encountered aliens yet.
https://boingboing.net/2026/03/03/iranian-physicists-estimate-advanced-civilizations-last-5000-years-or-less.html

Swiss watchmakers continue fighting back against accurate clocks from Japan.  It's got to be hard competing against both cheap accurate models and smart watches like the Apple Watch which can offer more features.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/watch-men/

This article about how taxing the use of AI can be on users' brains makes me glad that I'll be retiring before being forced to use it at work.
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/ai-brain-fry-artificial-intelligence-b2934903.html

C versus C++

Last week at work, I was helping a colleague with some low level code.  That's because I'm the firmware guy responsible for the bootloader, OS, device drivers, and other low level code.  I wrote a couple functions for him to access capabilities he needed to use.  Since I've been writing C for over 40 years, I write in the classic (or perhaps archaic) style of the first edition of the K&R book.  This involves always returning an integer value (where appropriate) to indicate success or failure and using pointers to return any values which need to be returned.  The next day, he asked if I could help him figure out why it was crashing.  It turns out he didn't understand pointers very well.  To be fair, this engineer is much better at C++ than I am and pointers are a kind of a holdover from the days when C was more like a portable assembly language.  He's also a top notch signal processing engineer.  I ended up fixing his code to access my functions for him because my explanation of pointers didn't click with him.

About 6 months ago I had experienced something similar with another younger engineer.  To be fair, what I call the younger engineers in my group are mostly in their 40s and are all extremely competent.  Anyway, I had written a device driver for him to control the 2 LEDs we have on one of our devices.  Since I come from the days when storage was precious, I had compressed the parameter to control both LEDs and their blink rate (if not solid on or off) into a single 32-bit word.  Doing so involved bit shifting and masking which is second nature to me as I had been trained in simplifying Boolean expressions many years ago.  Engineer #2 didn't understand this code and wanted to reverse it to read what state the LEDs were currently in.  Our company has been pushing an internal version of GPT so he gave it my code and asked for code to reverse my operations to compress all that information into a single word.  It crashed his GPT session and which apparently took several days to clear up.

I think both problems stem from the fact that C++ is heavily object oriented but manages to fool old-timers like me into thinking it's just a fancier version of C.  The problem is being slowly solved as more of the greybeards like me end up retiring which I'm most definitely looking forward to.

link dump #3

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without visiting a lot of favorite blogs which haven't been updated.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead collecting them in a blog post seems like a friendlier way to pass links along.

Nathan Fillion has been dropping hints lately which make are making fans suspect that some type of Firefly sequel might be in the works.  If I had the power to bring back a single show, it would definitely be Firefly.
https://www.ign.com/articles/nathan-fillion-is-getting-firefly-fans-all-sorts-of-excited-over-20-years-after-the-show-was-canceled 

I find a lot of anti-AI sentiment among techies and artistic types in various places.  I've lost the link, but I recently saw a CTO complaining that he got the axe because his company was replacing some executives with AI.  There's a company I definitely wouldn't want to work for or to reply upon as a customer.  I'm lucky because I'm very close to retirement with more than enough work to keep me busy until I pull the ripcord.  I feel sorry for younger engineers who have to deal with the instability AI is causing.
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/you-dont-have-to/

NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) just managed to nudge a binary asteroid system.  There may be hope if we manage to detect a killer asteroid early enough to launch a mission.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/nasas-dart-mission-shifted-the-orbits-of-two-asteroids/

The news that younger males are clinging harder to outdated gender roles than older generations do depresses me.  One can only hope that they alienate partners before managing to reproduce.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/gen-z-men-baby-boomers-wives-should-obey-husbands

Videos of launching small cars via trebuchet are entertaining but I really wish they has stuck to launching Yugos or other worthless cars.  A classic Austin Mini seems too valuable to waste this way.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2117130/watch-cars-launched-by-trebuchet/

link dump #2

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which allows me to find a lot of interesting web pages.  I hate to send them via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead collecting them in a blog post seems like a friendlier way to pass links along.

When I was a kid, my favorite cartoon by far was The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which started airing as repeats when I was 7 years old.  I found it refreshing because unlike other cartoons of the time, it never talked down to kids.  I knew some of the humor escaped me but that made me love it all the more.  Thanks to the more sophisticated humor, I continue to love it even now.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-bullwinkle-taught-kids-sophisticated-political-satire-180964803/

Who knew that deaths due to car crashes spike around the release of pop albums?  Seeing the way some people drive on my 40 mile commute, it doesn't surprise me as much as it should.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/pop_album_fatal_car_accidents/

I've enjoyed Jason Lee's acting in Kevin Smith's movies as well as My Name is Earl.  Here's an interesting interview with him which he was not happy with.  I can see his point since it appears the interviewer misrepresented what type of questions would be asked.
https://defector.com/a-complimentary-profile-of-jason-lee-that-was-surprisingly-difficult-to-publish 

Cory Doctorow gave a speech 15 years ago about the coming war on general computation which looks increasingly plausible given what AI companies have been doing lately.  If you enjoy realistic near future SciFi which is both entertaining and a bit frightening in its likely accuracy, check out his website craphound.com.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation

I was surprised to read that tire pressure sensors have enough range to be considered a privacy risk.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/27/tire-pressure-sensors-are-a-huge-privacy-risk.html

An asteroid passed pretty close to Earth and apparently we didn't see it until it had already passed by.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/24/an-asteroid-passed-428-km-from-earth-and-no-one-saw-it-coming.html

A computer formed of chips containing 800k human neurons has been taught to play Doom.  I find this disturbing on a lot of levels.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/26/living-human-brain-cells-are-now-playing-doom.html

This article about the steady loss of deep knowledge is something which worries me.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

Computing setup, software focused

Windows

My company gives software/firmware developers a very capable Windows laptop.  It's got 32 cores, 64 GB of memory, and a 500 GB SSD to which I was able to add another 2 TB SSD.  There are a couple downsides to this machine -- it's kind of heavy and the corporate IT team has this laptop very locked down.  All software installed on it must be on the approved software list which I understand.  It makes it harder to use my corporate laptop as a good development environment though.  I compensate by using Linux machines for the actual development work and relegating the Windows machine to acting as a terminal plus using it for web browsing and corporate communications tasks such as email, Teams, and Slack.  I was able to install VMware which allows me to use the laptop to run Ubuntu Linux VMs which are used for occasional software builds and to host some FPGA development tools to program the firmware I develop onto the embedded hardware it targets.

• Vim - I've been using Vi/Vim as my editor of choice since I took a job which gave me a Sun workstation on my desk.  I've got friends who love various editors such as Emacs, Visual Studio, Notepad+, Atom, and a few others.  I've occasionally experimented with other editors but it's really hard to overcome the muscle memory which comes from using Vi for 35 years.  The benefit is I'm still using a few macros I created that long ago.  I prefer GVim, the GUI version of Vim for its ability to resize windows.
• Putty - I've got Putty profiles for all the Linux machines which I connect to regularly.  Each includes X11 forwarding which gives me the ability to launch X11 apps on any of the Linux hosts I access.  I know that Wayland is more modern but most of the Linux machines I'm accessing run old enough versions of Linux to make Wayland too much trouble to try to use.  Putty supports both SCP and serial connections, making it a handy way to connect to serial console ports.
• WinScp -  This is a great little network file transfer program which supports the SFTP and SCP protocols.  I often use one Linux host to build my software and another to install it so being able to easily transfer files is a necessity.
• VcXsrv -  Since so many of the tools I use require an X11 connection, I need to run a X11 server on Windows.  I actually petitioned our IT group to add this to the approved software list.  It can be a little buggy at times but getting free software approved is always much easier than asking for commercial software be added to the budget.
• TeraTerm -  Believe it or not, sometimes I need to transfer files to an embedded machine which only offers a serial connection.  TeraTerm supports ZMODEM transfers which makes exchanging binary files much easier in that case.
• Kdiff3 -  Capable free GUI file/directory comparison tool and one of the few allowed on my work laptop.
• Microsoft Outlook - Outlook seems to work adequately for basic email and scheduling needs.  It has a terrible search feature which makes it difficult for me to find past emails I need to reference.
• Microsoft Teams - I have never cared for Teams but it's a necessity to allow me to join meetings while working from home.
• Slack - Most of the time this is okay but it's very quirky.  It's a necessity to allow easy connections to people while I'm working from home. 
• Google Chrome - It's the browser chosen by our corporate IT team.  I guess it's a necessity since it's captured the majority of the browser market but I must admit that I've never really cared for its UI. 
• Windows Calculator -  Having a calculator capable of hexadecimal and binary operation is a necessity at times.

 Linux

All of the embedded devices I work with run some version of Linux.  Some actually have multiple copies running on different CPUs.

• Vim - Vim comes preinstalled on all the Linux machines I need to access.  I do often still install Gvim to make it easier to edit files over an X11 connection.
• Putty - I manually install Putty on Linux machines.  It makes it easy to connect to devices on the Linux machine which use a serial port.  It's also handy to do that via an X11 connection.
• GNU Screen - Screen makes it very easy to maintain a persistent connection to a machine which is necessary as some of the firmware builds take over an hour and network hiccups used to kill the build before it was done.  Screen allows me to reconnect after the network issue and see the build continuing as if no interruption had occurred.
• Exuberant Ctags - I've been using ctags to make navigation through unfamiliar code easier for 30+ years now.
• Ack - Ack allows me to do a recursive search for files which contain some string and to limit that search to source files or some other category such as Bitbake files.  I use the ack executable which is implemented as a single perl module which makes it trivially easy to install on Linux machines.  I know there are faster source search tools available but this one is easy to use and works well for me.
• Kdiff3 -  Capable free GUI file/directory comparison tool.
• xxd -  Sometimes I need to examine binary files and this tool is readily available on Linux machines.  It can also help transfer binary files in a pinch by converting a file to its hexadecimal ASCII equivalent, transferring it, and using xxd to convert it back to binary.
• bash - I rely on the bash shell along with awk, sed, grep, find, and other standard GNU Linux tools for the vast majority of my scripting and interactive use needs.  I rely heavily upon bash scripts to help automate much of my development process.

Apps for both Mac & iOS

Here are the apps I run on both the Mac and iOS.

• Music - Sometimes I like to have background music playing to help mask out distracting sounds while I'm working from home.  I have a few playlists which work well for this purpose.  I buy most of my music in MP3 form from Amazon or Bandcamp and import the MP3 files into the Music app.
• Apple Mail -  It's free on Apple devices and does a reasonably good job of keeping my mail accounts in sync between my Mac and my phone.
• Apple Numbers -  Even though this is a spreadsheet, it can also function as a lightweight database app.  I use it to keep track of audio books and e-books I own and which I've read.  I have quite a few of these lightweight databases.  I used to use a great database app called Bento made by FileMaker which had versions for Mac and iOS.  It was discontinued in 2013 and I haven't found a replacement I like better than Numbers although I do occasional search still. 
• Google Calendar - I like it because it seems to be the most flexible in scheduling recurring events.  For example, you can choose the 3rd Saturday of each month or the 21st day of each month.
• Microsoft To Do -  A reasonably good cross platform to do app.

Mac 

My old Intel Mac Mini is getting long in the tooth but still manages to support some of my work and all of my personal computing needs.  Here are some of the apps I run on it.

• ChronoSync -  I've been using ChronoSync for backups for quite a while now and I've very happy with it.
• Little Snitch - I insist on running a top notch firewall program and Little Snitch fills the bill nicely.
• GnuCash - Since I pay most bills electronically, GnuCash lets me keep track of my checking account easily.  I really like its ability to change the sorting from ascending to descending dates since that makes it much easier to compare with my bank's statements.
• Waterfox browser -  I've always liked the Firefox browser for how easily its UI can be customized and for the rich set up plugins which allow safer browsing.  Firefox lost me as a user when they started on their quest to shove AI in every aspect of the browser.  Waterfox is a reasonable fork of Firefox which does not include the unwanted AI features.  I use this for all my general purpose browsing.  I also use the Chrome, Safari, and Vivaldi browsers each for a special purpose.  It limits having to worry about whether cookies from financial or social media accounts are being seen by other websites.
• Vim - The command line version of Vim comes preinstalled on Mac machines.  I still install MacVim to make it easier to edit files and to be able resize windows.

iOS

I use the cheapest iPhone available whenever I need to replace my phone as my personal device.  I've got iOS software I depend upon to make life easier.

• iTunes Remote - This allows me to easily select the playlist from the Mac's Music app.  I used to also use it for pausing music when I had an incoming call but now I rely upon an Anavi Macropad 10 for that purpose which allows me to pause songs without fumbling to bring up an app on my phone.
• PCalc -  Having a calculator capable of hexadecimal and binary operation is a necessity at times and I'm not always near my Windows laptop.
• Overcast - This is my favorite podcast app.  It has the best UI of any iOS app I can think of.
• Audible - Listening to audio books keeps me sane when commuting to work or in warmer weather when I'm doing 3-4 hours of yard work. 
• Libby - App which makes it easy to borrow library books.  Mostly e-books but they also have audiobooks.
• Hoopla -  App which makes it easy to borrow library books.  This seems to have more audiobooks and graphic novels than Libby does.  They also let you borrow and stream digital movies and tv content.
• Two factor authentication apps -  I enable two factor authentication for any website which supports it and apps such as Authy, Google Authenticator, and others make that possible.