Best of UNIX — October 2025

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   Article

   Yegor's Blog·28w

   Programmers, Don't Use Windows!

   Unix-based systems like macOS provide programmers with powerful abstractions—everything is a file, processes connect through pipelines, and command-line tools compose naturally. Windows evolved from DOS with GUI-centric design, lacking the unified file abstraction and shell pipeline philosophy that has proven effective since the 1970s. The command line exposes logic as text that can be automated, combined, and version-controlled, while GUI interactions remain ephemeral and non-composable.

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   Article

   Hacker News·28w

   Why /dev/null Is an ACID Compliant Database

   A humorous technical exploration demonstrating how /dev/null technically satisfies all ACID database properties: atomicity (writes are all-or-nothing), consistency (always remains empty), isolation (concurrent writes never conflict), and durability (maintains its empty state after crashes). The satirical piece highlights database concepts through an absurd but technically accurate lens, noting the only limitation is 0 bytes of storage.

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   Article

   The Register·31w

   IBM CEO apologized to techie who found rude error message

   A technician working for an IBM dealer in the late 1980s discovered an extremely profane error message hidden in IBM's AADU software while exploring it with Norton Utilities. After showing the discovery to his IBM contact, the situation escalated to IBM's CEO, who sent a formal apology letter. The technician never managed to trigger the error message despite multiple attempts, and wondered whether any IBM developers lost their jobs over the incident.

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