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Apple Journals & Day One | Matt MullenwegImportant Takeaways:Apple announced its own Journal app at WWDC, which competes with Automattic's product, Day One.Day One has a few advantages over Apple's Journal app. One of them is the upcoming feature of Shared Journals, which allows fully end-to-end encrypted shared private journals with friends and family.Another advantage of Day One is its cross-platform availability. Unlike Apple's Journal app, which is limited to Apple devices, Day One works on all Apple devices, Android devices, and the web.Link: Original ArticleA Place of One's Own, in Noho – Automattic DesignImportant Takeaways:Automattic has a unique office space in Noho, New York, which is described as a “magic space” with unobstructed views of lower Manhattan.The office design is inspired by the aesthetics of jazz clubs and features collections of mid-century vintage furniture, art and design books, and original art pieces.The office is designed to be a practical and elastic canvas for diverse uses, and it reflects the rich aesthetics of Automattic's multiple creative tools.The office space is not just for work; it also serves as a socializing and connecting space for Automattic employees.Link: Original ArticleLinking to Supporting Orgs – Make WordPress.orgImportant Takeaways:The post discusses the need for a dedicated page on WordPress.org to link to independent organizations that support WordPress's mission of democratizing publishing.These organizations are not officially part of WordPress but offer valuable resources and opportunities to get involved.The proposed structure for such a page includes an introduction, organization categories, organization listings, updates and announcements, and contact information.The organizations should align with the mission of WordPress, adhere to a code of conduct, and actively contribute to the WordPress community or the broader mission of democratizing publishing.A vetting process is suggested for adding organizations to this page, including initial screening, detailed review, contacting the organization, decision to list, and periodic review.Link: Original ArticleWordPress Accessibility Day Gains Nonprofit Status Through Partnership with Knowbility – WordPress Accessibility DayImportant Takeaways:WordPress Accessibility Day, a virtual 24-hour conference focused on accessibility best practices for WordPress websites, has gained 501(c)(3) nonprofit status through a partnership with Knowbility.The event was initially started in 2020 by the WordPress core Accessibility Team and was revived in 2022 by Amber Hinds and Joe Dolson as an independent event.The 2022 event was a success, with 11 organizers, 1604 attendees, and 20 volunteers from 52 countries. After all event expenses were paid, WordPress Accessibility Day donated $2,000 to Knowbility.The partnership with Knowbility allows WordPress Accessibility Day to gain nonprofit status, making donations tax-deductible in the United States. It also provides access to Knowbility's accessible online event planning resources.The 2023 event will be held from 10:00 AM CDT (3:00 PM UTC) on Wednesday, September 27th, until 10:00 AM CDT (3:00 PM UTC) on Thursday, September 28th. The event will be live captioned and have sign language interpreters.Link: Original ArticleOne Equity Partners acquires cloud services provider Liquid Web and forms new holding company, CloudOne DigitalImportant Takeaways:One Equity Partners (OEP) has completed the acquisition of Liquid Web, a provider of managed cloud services, forming a new platform known as CloudOne Digital.The senior leadership team of Liquid Web will transition to expanded roles in the new, larger CloudOne platform with Jim Geiger as CEO, Carrie Wheeler as COO, and Joe Oesterling as CTO.Liquid Web, founded in 1997, operates 10 global data centers with more than 500,000 sites under management. With its brand acquisitions, CloudOne Digital will serve over 187,000 clients worldwide.CloudOne Digital will offer a broad portfolio of cloud products that meet the needs of web-dependent small and mid-sized businesses, cloud servers for developers and businesses with highly persistent, compute-intensive workloads, and managed private cloud for mid-market businesses that require enterprise-grade infrastructure and solutions.OEP plans an aggressive expansion strategy for CloudOne Digital, aiming to combine and integrate complementary businesses in the multi-cloud infrastructure segment.Link: Original ArticleWordCampers Demand Changes to Q&A Format – WP TavernImportant Takeaways:WordCamp attendees are calling for changes to the Q&A format at live events, citing issues with attendees abusing the format for self-promotion or not asking relevant questions.WordPress Core Committer Felix Arntz suggested that questions taking longer than a minute should be asked informally at a later opportunity.Arntz proposed several ideas to improve the Q&A format, including submitting questions to a central platform for upvoting, discarding lengthy questions, and providing mandatory training for emcees on handling problematic Q&A situations.He also suggested making Q&A optional, depending on the speaker's preference, to create a more inclusive environment for speakers.The feedback received on Arntz's Twitter thread was largely positive, with other attendees offering their own suggestions for improving the Q&A format.Link: Original ArticleNew Filter Controls: Discover “Commercial” and “Community” in the Theme and Plugin Directory – Make WordPress.orgImportant Takeaways:New categorizations were introduced in the Theme and Plugin Directory in late 2022 to enhance the browsing experience. These filters categorize plugins/themes as “Commercial” and “Community.”The “Commercial” filter allows users to discover themes and plugins developed by professional companies and individuals who offer their products for a fee. These premium options often come with dedicated support, advanced features, and customization options.The “Community” filter showcases themes and plugins created by the WordPress community. These products are often developed by passionate individuals who share their work for free or follow an open-source philosophy.The introduction of these filter controls is part of an ongoing effort to improve the browsing experience and refine the visual aspects of the Theme and Plugin Directory as part of the site redesign.Users are encouraged to provide feedback on these updates and try out the new filter controls.Link: Original ArticleThe Power of Community: A WordCamp Europe Sponsorship StoryImportant Takeaways:Barn2 Plugins sponsored WordCamp Europe (WCEU) for the first time in June 2023. The experience was described as a great opportunity for networking, brand exposure, and team bonding.The company spent a total of €13,256 on the event, including sponsorship costs, travel and accommodation, team t-shirts, WordCamp tickets, and other related expenses.The sponsorship booth was a key part of their presence at the event. They created a quiz for attendees, with winners receiving premium swag items. The quiz was a success, with 145 participants.The team also produced a video showcasing some of their most popular plugins, which was displayed at their booth.The author, Katie Keith, highlighted the difficulty in calculating the return on investment (ROI) for sponsoring a WordCamp. However, she emphasized the intangible benefits, such as increased brand awareness, networking opportunities, and team building.Link: Original ArticleSustainability Team • Supporting Organizations • Commercial & Community Themes & Plugins • Pattern Curation – Post StatusImportant Takeaways:The WordPress Sustainability Team has been established with the main objective of embedding sustainable practices into the WordPress community and its processes, focusing on ensuring longevity socially, economically, and environmentally.Several organizations exist to support the work of WordPress, such as The WP Community Collective and HeroPress. A proposal has been made to display such supporting organizations.Filters have been introduced for Themes and Plugins to distinguish between Commercial and Community efforts. The Patterns Directory is considering using filters for displaying all patterns associated with a theme.The post also includes a roundup of other WordPress news, including updates on WordPress 6.3 and 6.4, WP-CLI releases, community events, core updates, design updates, and more.Link: Original Article ★ Support this podcast ★

Jordan Koene, PreVisible CEO and Co-Founder, discusses podcast SEO. Unlike Apple and Spotify, Google has been a laggard when it comes to the podcast landscape. While it's evident that podcasts aren't likely to be prioritized immediately, there could potentially come a time when podcasts are monetized through the Youtube app. Today, Jordan talks about whether podcast SEO is actually a thing. Show NotesConnect With: Jordan Koene: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jay Miner was born in 1932 in Arizona. He got his Bachelor of Science at the University of California at Berkeley and helped design calculators that used the fancy new MOS chips where he cut his teeth doing microprocessor design, which put him working on the MOS 6500 series chips. Atari decided to use those in the VCS gaming console and so he ended up going to work for Atari. Things were fine under Bushnell but once he was off to do Chuck E Cheese and Time-Warner was running Atari things started to change. There he worked on chip designs that would go into the Atari 400 and 800 computers, which were finally released in 1979. But by then, Miner was gone after he couldn't get in step with the direction Atari was taking. So he floated around for a hot minute doing chip design for other companies until Larry Kaplan called. Kaplan had been at Atari and founded Activision in 1979. He had half a dozen games under his belt by then, but was ready for something different by 1982. He and Doug Neubauer saw the Nintendo NES was still using the MOS 6502 core, although now a Ricoh 2A03. They knew they could do better. Miner's company didn't want in on it, so they struck out on their own. Together they started a company called Hi-Toro, which they quickly renamed to Amiga. They originally wanted to build a new game console based on the Motorola 68000 chips, which were falling in price. They'd seen what Apple could do with the MOS 6502 chips and what Tandy did with the Z-80. These new chips were faster and had more options. Everyone knew Apple was working on the Lisa using the chips and they were slowly coming down in price. They pulled in $6 million in funding and started to build a game console, codenamed Lorraine. But to get cash flow, they worked on joysticks and various input devices for other gaming platforms. But development was expensive and they were burning through cash. So they went to Atari and signed a contract to give them exclusive access to the chips they were creating. And of course, then came the video game crash of 1983. Amazing timing. That created a shakeup around the industry. Jack Tramiel was out at Commodore, the company he founded originally to create calculators at the dawn of MOS chip technology. And Tramiel bought Atari from Time Warner. The console they were supposed to give Atari wasn't done yet. Meanwhile Tramiel had cut most of the Atari team and was bringing in his trusted people from Commodore, so seeing they'd have to contend with a titan like Tramiel, the team at Amiga went looking for investors. That's when Commodore bought Amiga to become their new technical team and next thing you know, Tramiel sues Commodore and that drags on from 1983 to 1987. Meanwhile, the nerds worked away. And by CES of 1984 they were able to show off the power of the graphics with a complex animation of a ball spinning and bouncing and shadows rendered on the ball. Even if the OS wasn't quite done yet, there was a buzz. By 1985, they announced The Amiga from Commodore - what we now know as the Amiga 1000. The computer was prone to crash, they had very little marketing behind them, but they were getting sales into the high thousands per month. Not only was Amiga competing with the rest of the computer industry, but they were competing with the PET and VIC-20, which Commodore was still selling. So they finally killed off those lines and created a strategy where they would produce a high end machine and a low end machine. These would become the Amiga 2000 and 500. Then the Amiga 3000 and 500 Plus, and finally the 4000 and 1200 lines. The original chips evolved into the ECS then AGA chipsets but after selling nearly 5,000,000 machines, they just couldn't keep up with missteps from Commodore after Irving Gould outside yet another CEO. But those Amiga machines. They were powerful and some of the first machines that could truly crunch the graphics and audio. And those higher end markets responded with tooling built specifically for the Amiga. Artists like Andy Warhol flocked to the platform. We got LightWave used on shows like Max Headroom. I can still remember that Money For Nothing video from Dire Straits. And who could forget Dev. The graphics might not have aged well but they were cutting edge at the time. When I toured colleges in that era, nearly every art department had a lab of Amigas doing amazing things. And while artists like Calvin Harris might have started out on an Amiga, many slowly moved to the Mac over the ensuing years. Commodore had emerged from a race to the bottom in price and bought themselves a few years in the wake of Jack Tramiel's exit. But the platform wars were raging with Microsoft DOS and then Windows rising out of the ashes of the IBM PC and IBM-compatible clone makers were standardizing. Yet Amiga stuck with the Motorola chips, even as Apple was first in line to buy them from the assembly line. Amiga had designed many of their own chips and couldn't compete with the clone makers at the lower end of the market or the Mac at the higher end. Nor the specialty systems running variants of Unix that were also on the rise. And while the platform had promised to sell a lot of games, the sales were a fourth or less of the other platforms and so game makers slowly stopped porting to the Amiga. They even tried to build early set-top machines, with the CDTV model, which they thought would help them merge the coming set-top television control and the game market using CD-based games. They saw MPEG coming but just couldn't cash in on the market. We were entering into an era of computing where it was becoming clear that the platform that could attract the most software titles would be the most popular, despite the great chipsets. The operating system had started slow. Amiga had a preemptive multitasking kernel and the first version looked like a DOS windowing screen when it showed up iii 1985. Unlike the Mac or Windows 1 it had a blue background with oranges interspersed. It wasn't awesome but it did the trick for a bit. But Workbench 2 was released for the Amiga 3000. They didn't have a lot of APIs so developers were often having to write their own tools where other operating systems gave them APIs. It was far more object-oriented than many of its competitors at the time though, and even gave support for multiple languages and hypertext schemes and browsers. Workbench 3 came in 1992, along with the A4000. There were some spiffy updates but by then there were less and less people working on the project. And the tech debt piled up. Like a lack of memory protection in the Exec kernel meant any old task could crash the operating system. By then, Miner was long gone. He again clashed with management at the company he founded, which had been purchased. Without the technical geniuses around, as happens with many companies when the founders move on, they seemed almost listless. They famously only built features people asked for. Unlike Apple, who guided the industry. Miner passed away in 1994. Less than two years later, Commodore went bankrupt in 1996. The Amiga brand was bought and sold to a number of organizations but nothing more ever became of them. Having defeated Amiga, the Tramiel family sold off Atari in 1996 as well. The age of game consoles by American firms would be over until Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001. IBM had pivoted out of computers and the web, which had been created in 1989 was on the way in full force by then. The era of hacking computers together was officially over.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Warren Buffett is the 90 year old, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Considered by a few to be somewhat of an anachronism. Berkshire Hathaway is his chief investment vehicle. It is by market value the 6th largest company on the exchange, worth an astounding $450 billion dollars currently. But the makeup and structure of Berkshire is a radical departure from the other high tech companies which surround it at the top of the stock market. Unlike Apple or Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway is not involved in technology. And Buffett himself does not considered technology to be field that he has any expertise in. In fact it seems that he takes special joy in avoiding technology at all. Only within the last couple of years did Buffett finally invest in Apple Computer. And there is even some doubt whether that was Buffett's idea or one of his investment manager's. Buffett is old school. Of that there can be no doubt.

Today we're going to talk through the history of the Commodore. That history starts with Idek Trzmiel, who would become Jack Tramiel when he immigrated to the United States. Tramiel was an Auschwitz survivor and Like many immigrants throughout history, he was a hard worker. He would buy a small office repair company in the Bronx with money he saved up driving taxis in New York and got a loan to help by the company through the US Army. He wanted a name that reflected the military that had rescued him from the camp so he picked Commodore and incorporated the company in Toronto. He would import Czeck typewriters through Toronto and assemble them, moving to adding machines when lower-cost Japanese typewriters started to enter the market. By 1962, Commodore got big enough to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Those adding machines would soon be called calculators when they went from electromechanical devices to digital, with Commodore making a bundle off the Minuteman calculators. Tramiel and Commodore investor Irving Gould flew to Japan to see how to better compete with manufacturers in the market. They got their chips to build the calculators from MOS Technology and the MOS 6502 chip took off quickly becoming one of the most popular chips in early computing. When Texas Instruments, who designed the chips, entered the calculator market, everyone knew calculators were a dead end. The Altair had been released in 1975. But it used the Intel chips. Tramiel would get a loan to buy MOS for $3 million dollars and it would become the Commodore Semiconductor Group. The PC revolution was on the way and this is where Chuck Peddle, who came to Commodore from the acquisition comes in. Seeing the 6502 chips that MOS started building in 1975 and the 6507 that had been used in the Atari 2600, Pebble pushed to start building computers. Commodore had gotten to 60 million in revenues but the Japanese exports of calculators and typewriters left them needing a new product. Pebble proposed they build a computer and developed one called the Commodore PET. Starting at $800, the PET would come with a MOS 6502 chip - the same chip that shipped in the Apple I that year. It came with an integrated keyboard and monitor. And Commodore BASIC in a ROM. And as with many in that era, a cassette deck to load data in and save it. Commodore was now a real personal computer company. And one of the first. Along with the TRS-80, or Trash 80 and Apple when the Apple II was released they would be known as the Trinity of Personal Computers. By 1980 they would be a top 3 company in the market, which was growing rapidly. Unlike Apple, they didn't focus on great products or software and share was dropping. So in 1981 they would release the VIC-20. This machine came with Commodore BASIC 2.0, still used a 6502 chip. But by now prices had dropped to a level where the computer could sell for $299. The PET would be a computer integrated into a keyboard so you brought your own monitor, which could be composite, similar to what shipped in the Apple IIc. And it would be marked in retail outlets, like K-Mart where it was the first computer to be sold. They would outsource the development of the VICModem and did deals with the Source, CompuServe, and others to give out free services to get people connected to the fledgeling internet. The market was getting big. Over 800 software titles were available. Today you can use VICE, a VIC-20 emulator, to use many of them! But the list of vendors they were competing with would grow, including the Apple II, The TRS-80, and the Atari 800. They would sell over a million in that first year, but a new competitor emerged in the Commodore 64. Initially referred to as the VIC-40, the Commodore 64 showed up in 1982 and would start at around $600 and came with the improved 6510 or 8500 MOS chip and the 64k of ram that gave it its name. It is easily one of the most recognizable computer names in history. IT could double as a video game console. Sales were initially slow as software developers caught up to the new chips - and they kinda' had to work through some early problems with units failing. They still sold millions and millions by the mid 1980s. But they would need to go into a price war with Texas Instruments, Atari, and other big names of the time. Commodore would win that war but lost Tramiel along the way. He quit after disagreements with Gould, who brought in a former executive from a steel company with no experience in computers. Ironically, Tramel bought Atari after he left. A number of models would come out over the next few years with the Commodore MAX, Communicator 64, the SX-64, the C128, the Commodore 64 Game System, the 65, which was killed off by Irving Gould in 1991. And by 1993, Gould had mismanaged the company. But Commodore would buy Amiga for $25 million in 1984. They wouldn't rescue the company with a 32 bit computer. After the Mac and the IBM came along in 1984 and after the downward pressures that had been put on prices, Commodore never fully recovered. Yes, they released systems. Like the Amiga 500 and ST, but they were never as dominant and couldn't shake the low priced image for later Amiga models like one of the best machines made for its time, the Amiga 1000. Or the 2000s to compete with the Mac or with entries in the PC clone market to compete with the deluge of vendors that did that. They even tried a MicrosoftBASIC interpreter and their own Amiga Unix System V Release variant. But, ultimately by 1994 the company would go into bankruptcy with surviving subsidiaries going through that demise that happens where you end up with your intellectual property somehow being held by Gateway computers. More on them in a later episode. I do think the story here is a great one. A person manages to survive Auschwitz, move to the United States, and build a publicly traded empire that is easily one of the most recognizable names in computing. That survival and perseverance should be applauded. Tramiel would run Atari until he sold it in the mid-90s and would cofound the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was a hard negotiator and a competent business person. Today, in tech we say that competing on price is a race to the bottom. He had to live that. But he and his exceptional team at Commodore certainly deserve our thanks, for helping to truly democratize computing, putting low-cost single board machines on the shelves at Toys-R-Us and K-mart and giving me exposure to BASIC at a young age. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky you listen to these stories. Have a great day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMD2nF7meDI.

OpenBSD on Microsoft Surface Go, FreeBSD Foundation August Update, What’s taking so long with Project Trident, pkgsrc config file versioning, and MacOS remnants in ZFS code. ##Headlines OpenBSD on the Microsoft Surface Go For some reason I like small laptops and the constraints they place on me (as long as they’re still usable). I used a Dell Mini 9 for a long time back in the netbook days and was recently using an 11" MacBook Air as my primary development machine for many years. Recently Microsoft announced a smaller, cheaper version of its Surface tablets called Surface Go which piqued my interest. Hardware The Surface Go is available in two hardware configurations: one with 4Gb of RAM and a 64Gb eMMC, and another with 8Gb of RAM with a 128Gb NVMe SSD. (I went with the latter.) Both ship with an Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y processor which is not very fast, but it’s certainly usable. The tablet measures 9.65" across, 6.9" tall, and 0.3" thick. Its 10" diagonal 3:2 touchscreen is covered with Gorilla Glass and has a resolution of 1800x1200. The bezel is quite large, especially for such a small screen, but it makes sense on a device that is meant to be held, to avoid accidental screen touches. The keyboard and touchpad are located on a separate, removable slab called the Surface Go Signature Type Cover which is sold separately. I opted for the “cobalt blue” cover which has a soft, cloth-like alcantara material. The cover attaches magnetically along the bottom edge of the device and presents USB-attached keyboard and touchpad devices. When the cover is folded up against the screen, it sends an ACPI sleep signal and is held to the screen magnetically. During normal use, the cover can be positioned flat on a surface or slightly raised up about 3/4" near the screen for better ergonomics. When using the device as a tablet, the cover can be rotated behind the screen which causes it to automatically stop sending keyboard and touchpad events until it is rotated back around. The keyboard has a decent amount of key travel and a good layout, with Home/End/Page Up/Page Down being accessible via Fn+Left/Right/Up/Down but also dedicated Home/End/Page Up/Page Down keys on the F9-F12 keys which I find quite useful since the keyboard layout is somewhat small. By default, the F1-F12 keys do not send F1-F12 key codes and Fn must be used, either held down temporarily or Fn pressed by itself to enable Fn-lock which annoyingly keeps the bright Fn LED illuminated. The keys are backlit with three levels of adjustment, handled by the keyboard itself with the F7 key. The touchpad on the Type Cover is a Windows Precision Touchpad connected via USB HID. It has a decent click feel but when the cover is angled up instead of flat on a surface, it sounds a bit hollow and cheap. Surface Go Pen The touchscreen is powered by an Elantech chip connected via HID-over-i2c, which also supports pen input. A Surface Pen digitizer is available separately from Microsoft and comes in the same colors as the Type Covers. The pen works without any pairing necessary, though the top button on it works over Bluetooth so it requires pairing to use. Either way, the pen requires an AAAA battery inside it to operate. The Surface Pen can attach magnetically to the left side of the screen when not in use. A kickstand can swing out behind the display to use the tablet in a laptop form factor, which can adjust to any angle up to about 170 degrees. The kickstand stays firmly in place wherever it is positioned, which also means it requires a bit of force to pull it out when initially placing the Surface Go on a desk. Along the top of the display are a power button and physical volume rocker buttons. Along the right side are the 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C port, power port, and microSD card slot located behind the kickstand. Charging can be done via USB-C or the dedicated charge port, which accommodates a magnetically-attached, thin barrel similar to Apple’s first generation MagSafe adapter. The charging cable has a white LED that glows when connected, which is kind of annoying since it’s near the mid-line of the screen rather than down by the keyboard. Unlike Apple’s MagSafe, the indicator light does not indicate whether the battery is charged or not. The barrel charger plug can be placed up or down, but in either direction I find it puts an awkward strain on the power cable coming out of it due to the vertical position of the port. Wireless connectivity is provided by a Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac chip which also provides Bluetooth connectivity. Most of the sensors on the device such as the gyroscope and ambient light sensor are connected behind an Intel Sensor Hub PCI device, which provides some power savings as the host CPU doesn’t have to poll the sensors all the time. Firmware The Surface Go’s BIOS/firmware menu can be entered by holding down the Volume Up button, then pressing and releasing the Power button, and releasing Volume Up when the menu appears. Secure Boot as well as various hardware components can be disabled in this menu. Boot order can also be adjusted. A temporary boot menu can be brought up the same way but using Volume Down instead. ###FreeBSD Foundation Update, August 2018 MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dear FreeBSD Community Member, It’s been a busy summer for the Foundation. From traveling around the globe spreading the word about FreeBSD to bringing on new team members to improve the Project’s Continuous Integration work, we’re very excited about what we’ve accomplished. Take a minute to check out the latest updates within our Foundation sponsored projects; read more about our advocacy efforts in Bangladesh and community building in Cambridge; don’t miss upcoming Travel Grant deadlines, and new Developer Summits; and be sure to find out how your support will ensure our progress continues into 2019. We can’t do this without you! Happy reading!! Deb August 2018 Development Projects Update Fundraising Update: Supporting the Project August 2018 Release Engineering Update BSDCam 2018 Recap October 2018 FreeBSD Developer Summit Call for Participation SANOG32 and COSCUP 2018 Recap MeetBSD 2018 Travel Grant Application Deadline: September 7 ##News Roundup Project Trident: What’s taking so long? What is taking so long? The short answer is that it’s complicated. Project Trident is quite literally a test of the new TrueOS build system. As expected, there have been quite a few bugs, undocumented features, and other optional bits that we discovered we needed that were not initially present. All of these things have to be addressed and retested in a constant back and forth process. While Ken and JT are both experienced developers, neither has done this kind of release engineering before. JT has done some release engineering back in his Linux days, but the TrueOS and FreeBSD build system is very different. Both Ken and JT are learning a completely new way of building a FreeBSD/TrueOS distribution. Please keep in mind that no one has used this new TrueOS build system before, so Ken and JT want to not only provide a good Trident release, but also provide a model or template for other potential TrueOS distributions too! Where are we now? Through perseverance, trial and error, and a lot of head-scratching we have reached the point of having successful builds. It took a while to get there, but now we are simply working out a few bugs with the new installer that Ken wrote as well as finding and fixing all the new Xorg configuration options which recently landed in FreeBSD. We also found that a number of services have been removed or replaced between TrueOS 18.03 and 18.06 so we are needing to adjust what we consider the “base” services for the desktop. All of these issues are being resolved and we are continually rebuilding and pulling in new patches from TrueOS as soon as they are committed. In the meantime we have made an early BETA release of Trident available to the users in our Telegram Channel for those who want to help out in testing these early versions. Do you foresee any other delays? At the moment we are doing many iterations of testing and tweaking the install ISO and package configurations in order to ensure that all the critical functionality works out-of-box (networking, sound, video, basic apps, etc). While we do not foresee any other major delays, sometimes things happen that our outside of our control. For an example, one of the recent delays that hit recently was completely unexpected: we had a hard drive failure on our build server. Up until recently, The aptly named “Poseidon” build server was running a Micron m500dc drive, but that drive is now constantly reporting errors. Despite ordering a replacement Western Digital Blue SSD several weeks ago, we just received it this past week. The drive is now installed with the builder back to full functionality, but we did lose many precious days with the delay. The build server for Project Trident is very similar to the one that JT donated to the TrueOS project. JT had another DL580 G7, so he donated one to the Trident Project for their build server. Poseidon also has 256GB RAM (64 x 4GB sticks) which is a smidge higher than what the TrueOS builder has. Since we are talking about hardware, we probably should address another question we get often, “What Hardware are the devs testing on?” So let’s go ahead and answer that one now. Developer Hardware JT: His main test box is a custom-built Intel i7 7700K system running 32GB RAM, dual Intel Optane 900P drives, and an Nvidia 1070 GTX with four 4K Acer Monitors. He also uses a Lenovo x250 ThinkPad alongside a desk full of x230t and x220 ThinkPads. One of which he gave away at SouthEast LinuxFest this year, which you can read about here. However it’s not done there, being a complete hardware hoarder, JT also tests on several Intel NUCs and his second laptop a Fujitsu t904, not to mention a Plethora of HP DL580 servers, a DL980 server, and a stack of BL485c, BL460c, and BL490c Blades in his HP c7000 and c3000 Bladecenter chassis. (Maybe it’s time for an intervention for his hardware collecting habits) Ken: For a laptop, he primarily uses a 3rd generation X1 Carbon, but also has an old Eee PC T101MT Netbook (dual core 1GHz, 2GB of memory) which he uses for verifying how well Trident works on low-end hardware. As far as workstations go, his office computer is an Intel i7 with an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960 running three 4K monitors and he has a couple other custom-built workstations (1 AMD, 1 Intel+NVIDIA) at his home. Generally he assembled random workstations based on hardware that was given to him or that he could acquire cheap. Tim: is using a third gen X1 Carbon and a custom built desktop with an Intel Core i5-4440 CPU, 16 GiB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti, and a RealTek 8168 / 8111 network card. Rod: Rod uses… No one knows what Rod uses, It’s kinda like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Roll Tootsie-Pop… the world may just never know. ###NetBSD GSoC: pkgsrc config file versioning A series of reports from the course of the summer on this Google Summer of Code project The goal of the project is to integrate with a VCS (Version Control System) to make managing local changes to config files for packages easier GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, Part 1 Packages may install code (both machine executable code and interpreted programs), documentation and manual pages, source headers, shared libraries and other resources such as graphic elements, sounds, fonts, document templates, translations and configuration files, or a combination of them. Configuration files are usually the means through which the behaviour of software without a user interface is specified. This covers parts of the operating systems, network daemons and programs in general that don’t come with an interactive graphical or textual interface as the principal mean for setting options. System wide configuration for operating system software tends to be kept under /etc, while configuration for software installed via pkgsrc ends up under LOCALBASE/etc (e.g., /usr/pkg/etc). Software packaged as part of pkgsrc provides example configuration files, if any, which usually get extracted to LOCALBASE/share/examples/PKGBASE/. Don’t worry: automatic merging is disabled by default, set $VCSAUTOMERGE to enable it. In order to avoid breakage, installed configuration is backed up first in the VCS, separating user-modified files from files that have been already automatically merged in the past, in order to allow the administrator to easily restore the last manually edited file in case of breakage. VCS functionality only applies to configuration files, not to rc.d scripts, and only if the environment variable $NOVCS is unset. The version control system to be used as a backend can be set through $VCS. It default to RCS, the Revision Control System, which works only locally and doesn’t support atomic transactions. Other backends such as CVS are supported and more will come; these, being used at the explicit request of the administrator, need to be already installed and placed in a directory part of $PATH. GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 2: remote repositories (git and CVS) pkgsrc is now able to deploy configuration from packages being installed from a remote, site-specific vcs repository. User modified files are always tracked even if automerge functionality is not enabled, and a new tool, pkgconftrack(1), exists to manually store user changes made outside of package upgrade time. Version Control software is executed as the same user running pkgadd or make install, unless the user is “root”. In this case, a separate, unprivileged user, pkgvcsconf, gets created with its own home directory and a working login shell (but no password). The home directory is not strictly necessary, it exists to facilitate migrations betweens repositories and vcs changes; it also serves to store keys used to access remote repositories. Using git instead of rcs is simply done by setting VCS=git in pkginstall.conf GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 3: remote repositories (SVN and Mercurial) GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 4: configuration deployment, pkgtools and future improvements Support for configuration tracking is in scripts, pkginstall scripts, that get built into binary packages and are run by pkgadd upon installation. The idea behind the proposal suggested that users of the new feature should be able to store revisions of their installed configuration files, and of package-provided default, both in local or remote repositories. With this capability in place, it doesn’t take much to make the scripts “pull” configuration from a VCS repository at installation time. That’s what setting VCSCONFPULL=yes in pkginstall.conf after having enabled VCSTRACKCONF does: You are free to use official, third party prebuilt packages that have no customization in them, enable these options, and point pkgsrc to a private conf repository. If it contains custom configuration for the software you are installing, an attempt will be made to use it and install it on your system. If it fails, pkginstall will fall back to using the defaults that come inside the package. RC scripts are always deployed from the binary package, if existing and PKGRCDSCRIPTS=yes in pkginstall.conf or the environment. This will be part of packages, not a separate solution like configuration management tools. It doesn’t support running scripts on the target system to customize the installation, it doesn’t come with its domain-specific language, it won’t run as a daemon or require remote logins to work. It’s quite limited in scope, but you can define a ROLE for your system in pkginstall.conf or in the environment, and pkgsrc will look for configuration you or your organization crafted for such a role (e.g., public, standalone webserver vs reverse proxy or node in a database cluster) ###A little bit of the one-time MacOS version still lingers in ZFS Once upon a time, Apple came very close to releasing ZFS as part of MacOS. Apple did this work in its own copy of the ZFS source base (as far as I know), but the people in Sun knew about it and it turns out that even today there is one little lingering sign of this hoped-for and perhaps prepared-for ZFS port in the ZFS source code. Well, sort of, because it’s not quite in code. Lurking in the function that reads ZFS directories to turn (ZFS) directory entries into the filesystem independent format that the kernel wants is the following comment: objnum = ZFSDIRENTOBJ(zap.zafirstinteger); / MacOS X can extract the object type here such as: * uint8t type = ZFSDIRENTTYPE(zap.zafirstinteger); */ Specifically, this is in zfsreaddir in zfsvnops.c . ZFS maintains file type information in directories. This information can’t be used on Solaris (and thus Illumos), where the overall kernel doesn’t have this in its filesystem independent directory entry format, but it could have been on MacOS (‘Darwin’), because MacOS is among the Unixes that support d_type. The comment itself dates all the way back to this 2007 commit, which includes the change ‘reserve bits in directory entry for file type’, which created the whole setup for this. I don’t know if this file type support was added specifically to help out Apple’s MacOS X port of ZFS, but it’s certainly possible, and in 2007 it seems likely that this port was at least on the minds of ZFS developers. It’s interesting but understandable that FreeBSD didn’t seem to have influenced them in the same way, at least as far as comments in the source code go; this file type support is equally useful for FreeBSD, and the FreeBSD ZFS port dates to 2007 too (per this announcement). Regardless of the exact reason that ZFS picked up maintaining file type information in directory entries, it’s quite useful for people on both FreeBSD and Linux that it does so. File type information is useful for any number of things and ZFS filesystems can (and do) provide this information on those Unixes, which helps make ZFS feel like a truly first class filesystem, one that supports all of the expected general system features. ##Beastie Bits Mac-like FreeBSD Laptop Syncthing on FreeBSD New ZFS Boot Environments Tool My system’s time was so wrong, that even ntpd didn’t work OpenSSH 7.8/7.8p1 (2018-08-24) EuroBSD (Sept 20-23rd) registration Early Bird Period is coming to an end MeetBSD (Oct 18-20th) is coming up fast, hurry up and register! AsiaBSDcon 2019 Dates ##Feedback/Questions Will - Kudos and a Question Peter - Fanless Computers Ron - ZFS disk clone or replace or something Bostjan - ZFS Record Size Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

NEWS/Quick-Takes: Amazon has YouTube envy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/amazon-wants-twitch-to-be-a-youtube-competitor?mod=djemCMOToday Theme Park Announcements: Canada’s Wonderland Six Flags Magic Mountain Carowinds Scary Farm Skullcandy creates live concert series as part of content marketing push “Consumers today, young consumers are very savvy, and they’re very savvy about paid influencers. Obviously, we’re a commercial entity, and of course we want to sell headphones, but we want the music to be pure,” Klodnicki said. Of course, Skullcandy can — and does — retarget attendees and viewers with more commercial advertisements after the fact. Skullcandy spends the majority of its marketing budget on digital ads. Unlike Apple and Bose, it doesn’t buy TV or print ads.” https://digiday.com/marketing/skullcandy-creates-live-concert-series-part-content-marketing-push/ Secrets of the Wicker Man at Alton Towers revealed “Filmed over several months, the documentary follows the team as they complete construction of Wicker Man, a family thrill-ride with a huge sculpture at its heart that appears to burst into flames as the ride rushes through it. As the resort was preparing to open the attraction to the public, senior members of the Alton Towers team revealed to the documentary how important the success of the £16 million ride is, as they strive to rebuild trust with visitors following the incident on The Smiler in 2015 which saw two young women, Leah Washington and Vicky Balch, lose a leg.” https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/burton/alton-towers-channel-4-wicker-1882935 Main Topic: Upcharging How can you charge your guests more and make them feel like they are getting a much better value than guests spending less? How can you create that value? Airbnb Story: What does an 10 star experience look like? https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted/ Wrap-Up: Free Subscription to Seasonal Entertainment Source: http://seasonalentertainmentsource.com Visit MarketingYourAttraction.com for blog posts and an archive of past episodes. Subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.

NEWS/Quick-Takes:Amazon has YouTube envy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/amazon-wants-twitch-to-be-a-youtube-competitor?mod=djemCMOToday Theme Park Announcements:Canada’s WonderlandSix Flags Magic MountainCarowindsScary FarmSkullcandy creates live concert series as part of content marketing push“Consumers today, young consumers are very savvy, and they’re very savvy about paid influencers. Obviously, we’re a commercial entity, and of course we want to sell headphones, but we want the music to be pure,” Klodnicki said. Of course, Skullcandy can — and does — retarget attendees and viewers with more commercial advertisements after the fact. Skullcandy spends the majority of its marketing budget on digital ads. Unlike Apple and Bose, it doesn’t buy TV or print ads.”https://digiday.com/marketing/skullcandy-creates-live-concert-series-part-content-marketing-push/Secrets of the Wicker Man at Alton Towers revealed“Filmed over several months, the documentary follows the team as they complete construction of Wicker Man, a family thrill-ride with a huge sculpture at its heart that appears to burst into flames as the ride rushes through it. As the resort was preparing to open the attraction to the public, senior members of the Alton Towers team revealed to the documentary how important the success of the £16 million ride is, as they strive to rebuild trust with visitors following the incident on The Smiler in 2015 which saw two young women, Leah Washington and Vicky Balch, lose a leg.”https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/burton/alton-towers-channel-4-wicker-1882935 Main Topic:UpchargingHow can you charge your guests more and make them feel like they are getting a much better value than guests spending less? How can you create that value?Airbnb Story: What does an 10 star experience look like?https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted/Wrap-Up:Free Subscription to Seasonal Entertainment Source: http://seasonalentertainmentsource.com Visit MarketingYourAttraction.com for blog posts and an archive of past episodes.Subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.