Linux Admins Wiggle Mice, Smash Keys to Appease RNG Gods
Ever wondered how Linux generates randomness? It's actually a carnival of chaos: kernel developers pull entropy from mouse wiggles, keyboard smashes, disk access timings, even network jitter. All this random human fidgeting feeds /dev/random and /dev/urandom, helping secure cryptographic keys and SSH sessions worldwide. Occasionally though, the system runs dry,...
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The Magic Numbers
Back in the dark ages, Unix hackers needed a quick, dirty way to identify executable files. Enter the "magic number"—a quirky numeric code embedded at the beginning of binaries. Why call it magic? Rumor has it Bell Labs devs joked the numbers were arbitrary black magic, voodoo conjured by programmers...
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The “yes” command: peak Unix sarcasm
Unix's most pointless yet hilarious command is probably yes. Its sole purpose: repeatedly output whatever you feed it (defaulting to "y") until you beg for mercy (usually via Ctrl-C). Why create something so absurd? Admins traditionally piped yes into stubborn, interactive commands to auto-answer prompts, or flood input buffers to...
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Plan 9 from Bell Labs: Unix’s rebellious, misunderstood sibling
In the '80s, Bell Labs researchers, bored and frustrated by Unix's limitations, built Plan 9—an OS embracing radical simplicity and purity. Filesystems? Networks? Devices? Everything became a file. No special cases, no shortcuts. Predictably, admins hated it: Plan 9 demanded you relearn everything, treating familiar tools as outdated relics. It...
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VT100 Terminal Codes: Ancient Escapes Still in Your Terminal
Your shiny modern terminal emulator speaks ancient VT100 escape sequences from 1978. Bold text, cursor movements, screen clearing—all inherited from decades-old DEC hardware. Today's admins battle cryptic ANSI codes for color prompts, curses apps, and SSH sessions, silently chanting incantations crafted when disco ruled the charts.
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Dennis Ritchie Has Retired
Unix once featured possibly the greatest—and creepiest—Easter egg of all time. In some early AT&T Unix versions, typing the username "dmr" (Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie's initials) at login triggered the message: "Dennis Ritchie has retired, please use another login." Even years after his death, this hidden joke occasionally resurfaced, prompting new...
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