Earlier this year, I was trying to get actual daily work done on HP-UX 11.11 (11i v1) running on HP’s last and greatest PA-RISC workstation, the HP c8000. After weeks of frustration caused first by outdated software no longer working properly with the modern web, and then by modern software no longer compiling on HP-UX 11.11, I decided to play the ace up my sleeve: NetBSD’s pkgsrc has support for HP-UX. Sadly, HP-UX is obviously not a main platform or even a point of interest for pkgsrc developers – as it should be, nobody uses this combination – so various incompatibilities and more modern requirements had snuck into pkgsrc, and I couldn’t get it to bootstrap. I made some minor progress here and there with the help of people far smarter than I, but in the end I just lacked the skills to progress any further.

This story will make it to OSNews in a more complete form, I promise.

Anyway, in May of this year, it seems Brian Robert Callahan was working on a very similar problem: getting pkgsrc to work properly on IBM’s AIX.

The state of packages on AIX genuinely surprises me. IBM hosts a repository of open source software for AIX. But it seems pretty sparse compared to what you could get with pkgsrc. Another website offering AIX packages seems quite old. I think pkgsrc would be a great way to bring modern packages to AIX.

I am not the first to think this. There are AIX 7.2 pkgsrc packages available at this repository, however all the packages are compiled as 32-bit RISC System/6000 objects. I would greatly prefer to have everything be 64-bit XCOFF objects, as we could do more with 64-bit programs. There also aren’t too many packages in that repository, so I think starting fresh is in our best interest.

As we shall see, this was not as straightforward as I would have hoped.

↫ Brian Robert Callahan

Reading through his journey getting pkgsrc to work properly on AIX, I can’t help but feel a bit better about myself not being to get it to work on HP-UX 11.11. Callahan was working with AIX 7.2 TL4, which was released in November 2019 and still actively supported by IBM on a maintained architecture, while I was working with HP-UX 11.11 (or 11i v1), which last got some updates in and around 2005, running on an architecture that’s well dead and buried. Looking at what Callahan still had to figure out and do, it’s not surprising someone with my lack of skill in this area couldn’t get it working.

I’m still hoping someone far smarter than I stumbles upon a HP c8000 and dives into getting pkgsrc to work on HP-UX, because I feel pkgsrc could turn an otherwise incredibly powerful HP c8000 from a strictly retro machine into something borderline usable in the modern world. HP-UX is much harder to virtualise – if it’s even possible at all – so real hardware is probably going to be required. The NetBSD people on Mastodon suggested I could possibly give remote access to my machine so someone could dive into this, which is something I’ll keep under consideration.

The history of Android applications on Windows is convoluted, with various failed and cancelled attempts by Microsoft to allow Windows users to run Android applications behind us. Now that these attempts are well dead and buried, Microsoft is going at it from a different perspective: what if you could continue where you left off on your Android phone, right on your Windows machine, but without having to run an Android applications on Windows?

We are beginning to gradually roll out the ability to seamlessly resume using your favorite apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channels. To start with, you will be able to resume or continue listening to your favorite Spotify tracks and episodes right from where you left off on the Spotify app on your Android phone.

First, start listening to one of your favorite songs or episodes in the Spotify app on your Android phone. On your PC (running the latest Insider Preview builds in the Dev or Beta Channels) a ‘Resume alert’ will appear on your taskbar. When you click on that alert, Spotify’s desktop app will open and the same track will now continue playing on your PC.

↫ Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc

So basically, the Spotify application on Windows will know where you left off on the Spotify application on Android, and resume playback. This is table-stakes for most services, and it doesn’t seem like it would warrant such a big announcement from Microsoft, and while I don’t use Spotify, I assume it was already built into the service anyway. It seems all Microsoft is doing is providing a nice little notification to expose that functionality a little bit more clearly, but it also explains that you need to manually link your device and the Spotify Android application to the Windows PC and Spotify Windows application, which seems like a lot of manual steps.

Does this mean every application developer needs to opt into this and add this feature, thereby making it dead on arrival? Well, yes, you’ll need to add support on both sides of the equation, which I can guarantee you very few developers will do. Not only does this feature require you to already have a Windows version of your application – which, statistically, you don’t – it also requires you to do the work yourself, and manually apply to Microsoft to even gain access to the required APIs and SDKs. The odds of this feature making it beyond a few very big names Microsoft can give money to is slim.

The most unlikely subsystem of contention is definitely the init system used by Linux, with most popular distributions opting for systemd, while a vocal minority prefers to use something else. Neither of these two groups are wrong or right, as we live in a free world and different people have different needs and desires. Personally, I don’t think there’s a more utterly pointless and meaningless debate than this, and people who make the init system they use their entire personality more often than not come across as really, really sad.

It’s a tool; use the one you like and move on with life.

A brand new init system was recently released by Leah Neukirchen, who among a ton of other things, contributes to Void Linux. It’s called nitro, and it’s a “tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux”, and it also can be used on FreeBSD supervised by FreeBSD’s init. There’s some overlap with runit here, so Neukirchen published a blog post detailing the differences between the two, which should help in getting a better understanding of what makes nitro stand apart. While both use a directory of services managed by small scripts, nitro seems to opt for a more contained, monolithic approach, as it keeps everything in a single process.

On top of that, Nitro contains some new features runit doesn’t have. The focus seems to be on integrating a few capabilities that on runit require hacks, but on nitro are just built-in, like “support for one-shot ‘services’, i.e. running scripts on up/down without a process to supervise (e.g. persist audio volume, keep RNG state)”, running service directories multiple times, and more. Nitro also maintains its runtime state in RAM and provides an IPC service to query it, meaning it can be run on read-only filesystems without special configuration.

There’s a lot more information in Neukirchen’s blog post, including a look at some of the current limitations of Nitro. I highly suggest reading it, and perhaps we will see nitro as another valid alternative to the popular systemd.

It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of companies’ generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever. Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that this bubble may have swelled about as large as it can go. Surely, there will be no wider repercussions for normal people if and when Nvidia, currently propping up the market like a load-bearing matchstick, finally runs out of fake companies to sell chips to. But getting in under the wire, before we’re all bartering gas in the desert and people who can read become the priestly caste, is Microsoft, with the single most “Who asked for this?” application of AI I’ve seen yet: They’re jamming it into Excel.

↫ Barry Petchesky at Defector

I’m going to skip over the mounting and palpable uneasiness that the cracks in the “AI” bubble are starting to form, and go right to that thing about Excel. Quite possible one of the most successful applications of all time, and the backbone of countless small, medium, and even large business, it started out as a Mac program to supplant Microsoft’s MultiPlan, which was being clobbered in the market by Lotus 1-2-3. It wasn’t until version 2.0 that it came to Intel, as an application that contained a Windows runtime. It was a port of Excel 2.0 for the Mac.

Anyway, it took a few years, but Excel took over the market, and I don’t think any other spreadsheet program has ever even remotely threatened its market dominance ever since. Well, not until Google Sheets arrived on the scene – it’s hard to find any useful numbers, but it seems Google Sheets is insanely popular in all kinds of sectors, at least according to Statista. They claim Google’s online office suite has a 49% market share, with Microsoft Office sitting at 29%. I have no idea how that translates into the usage shares of Google Sheets versus Microsoft Excel, but it’s a sign of the times, regardless.

One of the things you’d expect a spreadsheet to do is calculate numbers and tabulate data, and to do so accurately. The core competency of a computer is to compute, do stuff with numbers, and we’d flip out collective shit if our computers failed to do such basic arithmetic. So, what if I told you that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to add “AI” to Excel, and as such, has to add a disclaimer that this means Excel may not do basic arithmetic correctly?

COPILOT uses AI and can give incorrect responses.

To ensure reliability and to use it responsibly, avoid using COPILOT for:

• Numerical calculations: Use native Excel formulas (e.g., SUM, AVERAGE, IF) for any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility.
• Responses that require context other than the ranges provided: The COPILOT function only has access to the prompt and context provided to or referenced by the function. It does not have access to other data from your workbook, data from other files or enterprise information.
• Lookups based on data in your workbook: Use XLOOKUP to look up data based on a table or range.
• Tasks with legal, regulatory or compliance implications: Avoid using AI-generated outputs for financial reporting, legal documents, or other high-stakes scenarios.
• Recent or real-time data: The function is non-deterministic and may return different results on recalculation. Currently, the model’s knowledge is limited to information before June 2024.

↫ Microsoft’s Excel COPILOT FUNCTION support document

Look, we can all disagree on the use of “AI”, where it makes sense, where it doesn’t, if it even does anything useful, and so on, but I would assume – for the world’s sake – that we can at least agree that using “AI” in an application used to do very important calculations for a lot of business is a really, really dumb idea? Is the person doing the bookkeeping in Excel at Windmill Restaurant, in Spearville, Kansas, properly aware of the limitations of “AI”, or are they not following technology that closely, and as such only hear the marketing and hype?

A spreadsheet should give accurate outcomes based on the input given by humans. The moment you let a confabulator loose on your spreadsheet, it ceases being a tool that can be used for anything even remotely serious. The fact that Microsoft is adding this nonsense to Excel and letting it loose on the unsuspecting public at large is absolutely wild to me, and I can assure you it’s going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. Microsoft, of course, will be able to point at the disclaimer buried in some random support document and absolve itself of any and all responsibility.

I’d like to point out that Lotus 1-2-3 probably still runs on Windows 11, for no reason at all.

There’s a ton of “cloud operating systems” out there, which basically are really fancy websites that try to look and feel like an operating system. There’s obviously a ton of skill and artistry involved in making these, but I always ignore them because they’re not really operating systems. And let’s be honest here – how many people are interested in booting their PC, loading their operating system, logging in, starting their browser, and logging into a website to see a JavaScript desktop that’s slower and more cumbersome than what they are already using to power their browser anyway?

Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t have any interesting ideas or other aspects worth talking about. Take OS Yamato for instance; yes, it’s one of those cloud operating systems, this time aimed at your mobile device, but it has something interesting that stood out to me. The system is partly ephemeral, and objects that haven’t been altered or opened in a year will simply be deleted from the system.

Each data object (note, photo, contact…) includes a lastOpenedAt timestamp. After 330 days, it shows a [wilting flower] icon — a sign of digital wilting. After 365 days, it’s automatically deleted.

↫ OS Yamato GitHub page

The project definitely sounds more like an art installation than something anybody is supposed to seriously use in their day-to-day lives, and seems to ask the question: just how important are all those digital scraps you collect over the years, really? If you haven’t bothered to open something in a year, is it really worth saving? For instance, from the moment I started my translation career in 2011 up until I quit in 2024, I saved every single translation I ever made, neatly organized in folders, properly backed up to multiple locations. I still have this archive, still make sure it’s safe, but I never actually use it for anything, never open a single one of the files, I honestly don’t even really care that much about it.

So why am I still wasting so much energy in keeping it around?

That seems to be the question OS Yamato poses, and there’s something to be said for being less anal about which digital scraps we keep around, and why. It hasn’t convinced me – yet – to delete my translation archive or perform any other pruning, but it did plant a seed.

Markdown – or, more accurately, incompatible variants of Markdown – is everywhere, but that doesn’t mean everybody likes it. It’s the lowest common denominator of light markup languages, with a lot of well-documented issues, and Karl Voit decided to write a long and detailed article about the Markdown’s shortcomings.

Just to make sure we’re on the same page here: I do not want to take away awesome workflows that are made possible by using an LML like Markdown. I just want to mention that the very same kind of workflows are possible by using a better designed LML.

Unfortunately, some issues mentioned here do seem very subtle and minor. However, their consequences are not. With LMLs getting more and more popular and gaining wider use in tools, we really should make sure that our LML choice is a really good one. Personal feelings aside.

↫ Karl Voit

Voit clearly has a preference for a specific alternative LML, but that doesn’t mean the points they make in the article are any less valid. The world of Markdown is chaotic, with a seemingly endless number of varieties and dialects, perfectly illustrated by the Markdown Monster. To make matters worse, the Markdown syntax is quite ambiguous, further complicating how you’re supposed to write it, and how tools are supposed to process it. The end result is that documents you write in Markdown today might be difficult to process decades from now, which isn’t exactly conducive to its intended function.

Voit mentions more issues, but this is the main gist.

There’s one major issue – at least for me – that Voit doesn’t go into, and that’s a problem I have with any of these simple markup languages I’ve tried: their syntaxes rely on some of the most annoying and cumbersome characters to type. There’s a lot of weird keyboard clawing you need to do to enter the characters required by the syntax, and it just makes for an uncomfortable typing experience for me. I wish someone would design one of these syntaxes with typability in mind, making sure to only use characters that are easy to type. While this probably imposes some pretty hefty restrictions during the design of such a syntax, I think it can make for a much more elegant typing experience.

As a result, I do not use Markdown or any of its alternatives.

Google is managing to achieve what Microsoft couldn’t: killing the open web. The efforts of tech giants to gain control of and enclose the commons for extractive purposes have been clear to anyone who has been following the history of the Internet for at least the last decade, and the adopted strategies are varied in technique as they are in success, from Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE) to monopolization and lock-in.

What I want to talk about in this article is the war Google has been waging on XML for over a decade, why it matters that they’ve finally encroached themselves enough to get what they want, and what we can do to fight this.

↫ Oblomov (I can’t discern the author’s preferred name)

Google’s quest to destroy the open web – or at the very least, aggressively contain it – is not new, and we’re all aware of it. Since Google makes most of its money from online advertising, what the company really wants is a sanitised, corporate web that is deeply centralised around as few big players as possible. The smaller the number of players that have an actual influence on web, the better – it’s much easier for Google to find common ground with other megacorps like Apple or Microsoft than with smaller players, open source projects, and individuals who actually care about the openness of the web.

One of Google’s primary points of attack is XML and everything related to it, like RSS, XMLT, and so on. If you use RSS, you’re not loading web pages and thus not seeing Google’s ads. If you use XSLT to transform an RSS feed into a browsable website, you’re again not seeing any ads. Effectively, anything that we can use to avoid online advertising is a direct threat to Google’s bottom line, and thus you can be certain Google will try to remove, break, or otherwise cripple it in some way.

The most recent example is yet another attempt by Google to kill XSLT. XSLT, or Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, is a language which allows you to transform any XML document – like an RSS feed – into other formats, like HTML, plaintext, and tons more. Google has been trying to kill XSLT for over a decade, but it’s such an unpopular move that they had to back down the first time they proposed its removal.

They’re proposing it again, and the feedback has been just as negative.

And we finally get to these days. Just as RSS feeds are making a comeback and users are starting to grow skeptic of the corporate silos, Google makes another run to kill XSLT, this time using the WHATWG as a sock puppet. Particularly of note, the corresponding Chromium issue was created before the WHATWG Github issue. It is thus to no one’s surprise that the overwhelmingly negative reactions to the issue, the detailed explanations about why XSLT is important, how instead of removing it browsers should move to more recent versions of the standard, and even the indications of existing better and more secure libraries to base such new implementations on, every counterpoint to the removal have gone completely ignored.

[…]

In the end, the WHATWG was forced to close down comments to the Github issue to stop the flood of negative feedback, so that the Googler could move on to the next step: commencing the process of formalizing the dismissal of XSLT.

↫ Oblomov (I can’t discern the author’s preferred name)

At this point in time, there’s really no more web standards as we idealise them in our head. It’s effectively just Google, and perhaps Apple, deciding what is a web “standard” and what isn’t, their decisions guided not by what’s best for a healthy and thriving open web, but by what’s best for their respective bottom lines. The reason the web looks and feels like ass now is not because we wanted it to be so, but because Google and the other technology giants made it so. Everyone is just playing by their rules because otherwise, you won’t show up in Google Search or your site won’t work properly in mobile Safari.

This very detailed article and the recent renewed interest in XSLT – thanks for letting everyone know, Google! – has me wondering if OSNews should use XSLT to create a pretty version of our RSS feed that will render nicely even in browsers without any RSS support. It doesn’t seem too difficult, so I’ll see if I can find someone to figure this out (I lack the skills, obviously). We’ve already removed our ads, and I think our RSS feed is full-article already anyway, so why not have a minimal version of OSNews you could browse to in your browser that’s based on our RSS feed and XSLT?

If you’re interested in developing for and programming on MS-DOS and other variants of the venerable operating system, SuperIlu has collected the various tools and applications they use and like for this very task. In case you’re wondering who SuperIlu is – they are the developer of things like DOStodon, a Mastodon client for DOS, DOjS, and much more.

This is my short list of interesting resources for MS-DOS development. This is neither meant to be unbiased nor exhaustive, it is just a list of software/tools I know and/or use. The focus is on free and open source software.

↫ SuperIlu at GitHub

None of the items on the list are abandonware, so there’s no risk of relying on things that are no longer being developed. With most of the items also being free and open source software, you can further be assured you’re safe from the odd rugpull. If you’re into DOS development, this is a treasure trove.

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One of the most hated “features” of Windows is its update system – it’s slow, error-prone, and most annoyingly of all, tends to interrupt users at the worst possible times. This last issue is apparently so common it’s basically a recognisable meme, among both tech enthusiasts as well as regular users. The root cause of the problem is that because Microsoft wants to force users to install updates, you can only postpone them for a short while, after which Windows will install updates, even if you’re about to start a presentation.

Microsoft is now bringing this approach to the Microsoft Store. Up until now, the Microsoft Store allowed you to install updates whenever you pleased, but that’s no longer the case. Just like Windows Update, you now only have the option to postpone application updates for a short while, after which they will be installed. There’s no registry hack to turn this off or revert back to the old behaviour.

Be advised in case you’re using applications from the Microsoft Store for anything critical that starting soon, they will just update in the middle of whatever you’re doing. Splendid.

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We all know the earlier versions of Windows NT were available not only for x86, but also for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC (and there were unreleased ports to SPARC and Clipper). While we have the operating systems archived and available, applications properly compiled for the non-x86 versions of Windows NT can be a bit harder to come by. For instance, while Microsoft Word for MIPS and Alpha have been available for a while, we apparently never had a copy of Microsoft Word for PowerPC archived.

Until now. Antoni Sawicki was pointed to an eBay auction for a copy of Microsoft Office Standard 4.2, and the photographed box clearly said it contained version for x86, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC. He decided to buy it, and it did, indeed, contain the PowerPC version of Microsoft Word. Of course, he made this version of Office available online for posterity.

An excellent find, and good to see we have people willing to spend money just to ensure software isn’t lost to time.

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It’s weekend, you might be visiting friends or relatives, and perhaps some of them are curious about switching away from Windows or macOS to Linux. There’s countless guides out there about this very topic, but to help you along a bit and cut through the avalanche of “AI” and SEO slop, here’s a true beginners’ guide to desktop Linux written by KDE developer Akseli Lahtinen, second most famous developer out of Finland after Linus Torvalds.

There has been quite a surge in interest towards desktop Linux lately. The userbase, atleast according to some metrics, seems to be climbing.

I realised today that it’s been 4 years for me since I did the switch. I have gathered some know-how that maybe a complete newbie could find useful. I also try to untangle some jargon I’ve learned: It may not be exactly technically correct, but this is meant for a more regular user anyway.

↫ Akseli Lahtinen

This won’t be particularly interesting for most people who read a site like OSNews, but it’s a great roundup for newcomers in your circle.

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Ever wanted to know everything about a specific 8×19 font Intel used for the POST and BIOS screens on its motherboards? OS/2 Museum’s Michal Necasek has you covered.

The obvious remaining question is, who came up with 8×19 fonts for BIOS use? Was it really Intel? Or was it someone else? Note that the Intel boards were used by many OEMs (including but not limited to AST, Dell, Gateway, HP, Micron, Packard Bell) so just because an OEM system uses an 8×19 font doesn’t mean there isn’t Intel behind it.

↫ Michal Necasek

Great weekend reading, as always, from Necasek.

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An internal Meta Platforms document detailing policies on chatbot behavior has permitted the company’s artificial intelligence creations to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” generate false medical information and help users argue that Black people are “dumber than white people.”

These and other findings emerge from a Reuters review of the Meta document, which discusses the standards that guide its generative AI assistant, Meta AI, and chatbots available on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, the company’s social-media platforms.

↫ Jeff Horwitz at Reuters

The only way one can describe the examples of allowed behaviour towards minors is absolutely fucked up. If I’d find any person talking to my kids like Facebook and Zuckerberg apparently think it’s okay to talk to children, I’d be calling the police to file a report. I know I shouldn’t be surprised considering it’s Facebook and Zuckerberg, a company with a history of knowingly inciting violence and genocide and a founder who created his website to creep on women, but the lows to which this company and its founder are willing to go are just so unimaginable to even people with just a modicum of morality, I just can’t wrap my brain around it.

The treatment of people of colour isn’t any better. Facebook will happily argue for you that black people are dumber than white people without so much as batting an eye. Again, none of this should be surprising considering it’s Facebook, but add to it the fact that “AI” is the endgame for totalitarians, and it all makes even more sense. These tools are explicitly designed to generate totalitarian propaganda, because they’re trained on totalitarian propaganda, i.e., most of the internet. The examples of “AI” being fascist and racist are legion, and considering the people creating them – Zuckerberg, Altman, Musk, and so on – all have clear fascist and totalitarian tendencies or simply are overtly fascist, we, again, shouldn’t be surprised.

Totalitarians hate artists and intellectuals, because artists and intellectuals are the ones who tend to not fall for their bullshit. That’s why one of the first steps taken by any totalitarian regime is curtailing the arts and sciences, from Pol Pot to Mao, from Trump to Orban. Promoting “AI” as a replacement for exactly these groups in society – “AI” generating “art” to replace artists, “AI” doing “research” to replace actual scientists – fits within the totalitarian playbook like a perfectly fitted glove.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. This apparently also applies to “AI”.

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Hi, FAB 2025 is still happening in Prague and it has been a wonderful event. It’s been great to meet so many people from our community at home, in Czechia! But during my chats with the attendee’s, there was one topic which was emerging time and time again, and that is the state of open hardware. I cannot talk about all of the open hardware, but I can share experience from 3D printing. And it is not good! Open hardware in 3D printing is dead – you just don’t know it yet. This is an opinion piece, imagine we are talking about this topic over a cold Pilsner…

↫ Josef Prusa

What happens when the Chinese government lists 3D printing as an industry it wants to dominate? Well, an explosion in bogus patents and the death of tons of smaller, local brands, leaving only major players from China and perhaps one or two bigger non-Chinese brands. That’s the conclusion by Josef Prusa, founder of Prusa Research, a major 3D printer maker from Prague, Czechia. Prusa’s printers used to be entirely open source, but starting in 2023, this is no longer the case – ostensibly because being open source hardware meant that competitors were copying their work wholesale without contributing anything back, or worse, stealing their work entirely and keeping it all closed, despite the copyleft license in use.

Looking at the numbers, it seems clear that smaller companies will not be able to deal with the onslaught of bogus patents, as fighting patent infringement claims in court and getting patents invalidated, even if prior art exists in abundance, is prohibitively expensive and incredibly time-consuming. It’s a game of really expensive whack-a-mole against people with far deeper pockets than you.

Still, this whole thing does taste a bit sour considering Prusa’s abandonment of its open source roots and ideals. There’s a business to be run here, I understand that, but principles do matter, and if not even a company priding itself on producing open source hardware stands by its ideals, why should anyone else?