Nelson's Linkblog

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The fall of Icarus

Lovely photo of a skydiver silhouetted against the sun

2025-11-15 photography • photos • aviation • sun • astronomy

A Waymo driverless car killed a beloved cat in San Francisco. Remarkably thoughtful piece on the cultural impact and evaluation.

2025-11-15 sanfrancisco • driverlesscars • safety • cars • cats • waymo • robots • ethics

Packrafting The Darién Gap

Journal of a very ambitious man who paddled the Darién Gap in a little rubber raft

2025-11-14 dariengap • travel • panama • colombia

North Star House history

Local landmark has some very interesting connections to early 20th century women's history, including some early Lesbian novels

2025-11-14 women • history • grassvalley • nevadacounty • juliamorgan • northstarhouse

1980s online chat style

Interesting cultural observation that those of us who grew up with early social media tend to write at length and are now being mistaken for ChatGPT

2025-11-13 culture • history • 80s • socialmedia • bbs • internet • chatgpt

AI chatbot love

Interviews and descriptions of three people's intimate relationships with AIs.

2025-11-13 ai • llm • romance • psychology • loneliness • therapy

Hello old friend

A 2019 evergreen comic. Streaming services suck so much we're back to piracy.

2025-11-13 piracy • funny • tv • streaming

Gigantic jet TLE above Mexico

Remarkable photo from the space station showing an electrical jet striking Earth

2025-11-13 astronomy • photography • iss • photos • lightning • tle

Journey to the West (oral)

Chinese epic novel has quite rhythmic prose, link is to a fun short video performance

2025-11-12 china • literature • journeytothewest • Kuaibanshu • poetry • performance • bard

"The design of iPhone Pocket speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user, while keeping in mind that an Apple product is designed to be universal in aesthetic and versatile in use".

2025-11-12 apple • funny • fashion • endtimes • latestagecapitalism

Funny page about an obsolete technology being deprecated. I think this parody?

2025-11-12 xslt • via:jwz • google • chrome • xsl • funny • web • standards

Run LLM queries on a variety of different systems, with unified pricing and various options to choose how much you spend

2025-11-11 ai • llm • router • aggregator

The suave Frenchman from the Louvre heist photo turns out to be a 15 kid into dressing like a detective

2025-11-09 charming • france • louvre • cosplay • costume • teenager

Understand Chicago

More notes from living under siege

2025-11-08 politics • chicago • trump • ice • civilrights

A new open source Plex client, major change in that video watching ecosystem if this succeeds

2025-11-05 plex • video • movies • tv • client

Cuomo threatens NYC

Mayor candidate tweets that Trump will invade NYC if he doesn't win the election. Note: Trump endorsed Cuomo.

2025-11-04 trump • politics • uspol • mafia • cuomo • newyork • nyc • fascism

Tear gassing Chicago

Descriptions of what it's like when a small paramilitary group attacks an American city https://archive.is/TH12R

2025-11-03 chicago • politics • uspol • immigration • ice • fascism

The Residents - Commercial Album

Videos for many brilliant one minute songs

2025-11-02 residents • music • video • 80s

1970s electric music composition system by Xenakis

2025-11-02 music • electronical • synthesizer • xenakis

The Validation Machines

Raffi Krikorian on the danger of current AI deployment and how to reshape the technology to better support critical thinking

2025-10-31 ai • llm • society • capitalism • raffi • culture

Minecraft removing obfuscation

Some 15 years after first release, finally removing a silly barrier to the mod community

2025-10-29 minecraft • mods • java • programming • via:hackernews

ICE facial recognition abuse

Masked thugs are using a software app that supposedly identifies non-citizens.

2025-10-29 uspol • politics • ice • immigration • fascism • outrage

LoRA and other tuning options for LLMs

2025-10-26 opensource • llm • ai • machinelearning • lora • customization

Database extension to do vector searches, as for AI queries

2025-10-24 sqlite • database • vectors • ai • programming

Claude Code memory

Addon to the AI coding tool that helps it remember what it's done before

2025-10-23 claude • ai • rag • memory • programming

Cursed Knowledge

A set of hard-won tech lessons building an open source image hosting product

2025-10-22 tech • software • badtech • javascript • programming

No Kings Grass Valley

Photos from our local protest

2025-10-19 nokings • grassvalley • protest • politics • uspol

Pwning Kindle Web

Someone bothers to reverse engineer Amazon's Kindle web version

2025-10-17 drm • ebook • calibre • kindle • amazon

Nvidia DGX Spark

New AI hacking machine, ARM + 120GB Nvidia GPU. Sounds real nice

2025-10-16 ai • llm • nvidia • arm • hardware

Google Recovery Contacts

Another way to get access to a Google account: designate a trusted person as a contact who can vouch for you

2025-10-15 google • authentication • security • 2fa

London and Aberdeen

Postcard thoughts and images from my recent tourist trip

2025-10-15 travel • tourism • london • aberdeen • uk

Living in Grass Valley

Nice article about real estate and visiting my adopted hometown of Grass Valley (and nearby Nevada City)

2025-10-15 grassvalley • nevadacity • california • towns • realestate • travel

Train up your own small LLM for $100 of compute time.

2025-10-14 llm • ai • training

Seahorse emoji and LLMs

Details on a strange error in most LLMs about a non-existent emoji

2025-10-12 llm • ai • logits • seahorse • emoji

Sensitive essay about the complicated case of an author who was also a child predator but in a way that was accepted by many in his time

2025-10-11 pedophilia • sex • lgbt • normandouglas • literature • pederasty

Society of Mind

Harper Reed's company has been experimenting with having several AI agents talk to each other via blogs and social media. It seems to be engendering some interesting social intelligence

2025-10-01 agents • ai • llm • harperreed • societyofmind • intelligence • social • socialmedia

Someone figured out how to run arbitrary code in the game Super Mario Bros via control inputs. So here's a Tool Assisted run of him winning the game with a few minutes of music video in the middle

2025-09-29 funny • via:lobsters • games • hacking • tas • smb • nintendo • nes

War-ravaged Portland

Wholesome set of photos from Portlanders in response to Trump's bizarre attack on the city

2025-09-29 trump • politics • uspol • portland • pdx • stumptown

Normalizing Charlie Kirk

Thoughtful editorial on what it means that people venerate Charlie Kirk and ignore all the vile things he said and did

2025-09-28 politics • uspol • racism • charliekirk • whitesupremacy

Cracker Barrel bots

Last month's nontroversy was fueled by a coordinated propaganda campaign

2025-09-27 bots • crackerbarrel • socialmedia • propaganda

Peter Thiel eschatology

Tech leader is full-on bonkers, seeing the Antichrist's hand in efforts to fight climate change or regulate AI

2025-09-26 uspol • politics • thiel • batshitinsane • eschaton • antichrist • ai • climatechange

New AI service from email company Shortwave. It's a general AI that can do all sorts of basic tasks for you, particularly scheduling things

2025-09-26 ai • schedule • agent • shortwave • automation

Bundler belongs to the Ruby community

Response to the hostile takeover of core Ruby infrastructure

2025-09-25 ruby • bundler • andre • rubycentral

The DHH problem

More on why the Ruby community is such a mess: A prominent leader is an open white supremacist

2025-09-23 dhh • politics • ukpol • ruby • tirefire • racism • whitesupremacy

RubyGems takeover

More details on the ugly power move from DHH and Shopify to seize control of an open source platform

2025-09-23 ruby • drama • rubygems • packaging • dhh • shopify • sleaze • opensource

Raffi to Mozilla CTO

One of my oldest friends has taken a new role at Mozilla as their CTO

2025-09-22 raffi • mozilla • firefox • ai • cto • career

An app to get data out of Google's Health Connect into somewhere useful

2025-09-21 apps • health • fitness • tracking

Metafilter blocks Mississippi

New age verification law creates too much uncertainty so community site blocks the state

2025-09-21 politics • mississippi • metafilter • ageverification • censorship

Gen Alpha Slang

Funny language demonstration

2025-09-20 via:metafilter • language • linguistics • slang • genalpha • funny

A big Javascript app deliberately doesn't include many Javascript libraries to make their app safer, more resilient to bugs and attacks on third party software

2025-09-20 obsidian • safety • javascript • npm • supplychain

Goebbels Ends Careers

1939 article about an autocratic government ending comedians' careers because they mocked the Nazis

2025-09-20 politics • uspol • fascism • autocracy • jimmykimmel • freedom

Rainbow erasure (Houston)

LGBT landmark in my hometown removed and may not come back because of Federal anti-gay rules

2025-09-19 gay • lgbt • politics • uspol • crosswalk • dot

RubyGems destroyed

Political squabbles in the packaging ecosystem for a programming language, the result being Ruby Central did a hostile takeover of RubyGems

2025-09-19 ruby • politics • dhh • rubygems • rubycentral

Metrics for AAA and indie games

2025-09-16 via:waxy • games • budget • aaa • videogames

Obituary from a remarkable woman leading a software company in the 60s-90s

2025-09-15 women • feminism • software • tech

Hosting a website via SLIP on a tiny microcontroller from a drug delivery device

2025-09-15 hosting • arm • vape • hacking • slip • internet • funny

A list of modules you can use to patch Android apps using LSPosed / LSPatch

2025-09-14 android • hacking • apps • mods

A mod framework for Android system and apps. Patch stuff to work better without requiring root

2025-09-14 android • hacking • patches • mods

Account disasters

Problems logging in to various sites. The author is an expert in the involved technologies, having spent many years helping write the Chrome browser

2025-09-14 badtech • login • passwords • chrome

1945 propaganda from the US government to returning soldiers about the threat of growing fascism within in the United States

2025-09-12 politics • uspol • fascism • propaganda • army

ATProto tools for independent online communties

2025-09-11 socialmedia • bluesky • bsky • atproto • community • black

Epstein's Birthday Books

Some details of who else was pals with Epstein besides Trump. Nathan Myhrvold, Marvin Minsky, etc.

2025-09-10 rape • epstein • scandal • science • corruption

California humid heat

Weird weather pattern brings us really moist air

2025-09-09 california • weather • climate • monsoon • heat

Facebook video downloader

Chrome extension, this worked for me when every other method I know failed

2025-09-07 video • facebook • download • rip • chrome

Simon highlights some of the software he's written using AIs. I love how personal these are. Not a big product, just something he whipped up in a few minutes for his own use.

2025-09-07 ai • programming • tools • bespoke

Famous integrated circuit turned into a woven rug

2025-09-07 555 • navajo • rug • weaving • art • loom • chips

Android notification bug

This is affecting my phone: I just don't get sounds for notifications sometimes and have been missing messages. It's a bug and it may take Google six months to fix it

2025-09-05 android • bug • google • badtech • notifications • pixel

A modern Windows disk space analyzer: fast using NTFS index

2025-09-04 disk • ntfs • spacemonger • storage • management • du

Passkeys in current deployment

Interesting stories from the reality of passkeys. Particularly interested how non-technical people are getting autoenrolled with them.

2025-09-02 passkeys • authentication • login • identity

Minecraft Kowloon City

Fascinating urban experiment recreated in the game

2025-09-02 minecraft • kowlooncity • hongkong • games • modelling

Cormac McCarthy's library

Sensitive article about the famous author's home stuffed with 20,000 books

2025-09-01 via:metafilter • mccarthy • sfi • hoarder • literature

A reverse proxy for web services but specialized to a few specific home hosting things like Immich and Nextcloud

2025-09-01 proxy • security • internet • services • immich

GPT-5 prompting guide

Advice from OpenAI about how to induce better answers from their LLM

2025-08-31 programming • openai • chatgpt • promptengineering • ai • llm

Volvo software bugs

Article about the terrible state of Volvo's EV cars software. My C40 is very disappointing

2025-08-31 volvo • cars • engineering • quality • bugs • software • evs

The Windows open source screenshot tool finally got new releases after many years

2025-08-30 screenshot • windows • utility • ocr • capture

Spy vs Spy Apple ][

Classic videogame, innovative split screen multiplayer

2025-08-29 games • spyvsspy • apple • retrogaming

A new diet tracker / food journal, this one has the ability to log food by simply taking a photo of it

2025-08-28 food • macros • diet • cronometer • tracking • diary • apps • android

Typepad shutting down

One of the old school blog platforms, it'd been pretty moribund for the last few years and is now closing

2025-08-27 typepad • shutdown • blogs • anildash • sixapart • weblogs

The New Life chapter 1

NSFW, porny text. Newish gay novel, I quite enjoyed the writing in this first chapter.

2025-08-27 books • gay • lgbt • tomcrewe • porn • nsfw • sex • frottage

Bounce social media tool

New service to help move followers between Bluesky, Mastodon, and Pixelfed

2025-08-26 fediverse • bluesky • mastodon • socialmedia • friends • freedom

Sub-millisecond time

Detailed experiments of trying to push the limits of time synchronization on Linux on commodity hardware. <1ms is easy, 20-60ns may be a practical limit

2025-08-26 linux • ntp • ptp • time • synchronization

Software package manager like Python's uv, but for Ruby

2025-08-26 ruby • python • software • programming • uv

Grinding the Bay Bridge

Skydiver maneuvers parachute to let him grind the cable on top of the Bay Bridge

2025-08-26 awesome • redbull • stunt • skydiving • xtreeeem • sanfrancisco • baybridge

Android lockdown

Google is threatening to make it much harder to sideload apps outside their ecosystem

2025-08-25 google • android • lockdown • jailbreak • opensource

MetaFilter activity stats

Disheartening statistics from an older online social community

2025-08-24 metafilter • stats • growth • death • socialmedia • forum

Build Factorio factories with Lean code, compile to blueprints of belts and machines

2025-08-24 games • factorio • programming • batshitinsane • functional • lean

A new 64 bit number to use as constants

2025-08-22 funny • acab • 8647 • politics • uspol • trump • deadbeef • cafebabe

Peter Thiel lectures on The Antichrist

Takes one to know one

2025-08-22 thiel • christianity • politics • fascism • hate

Google AI energy

Detailed report on how much energy their AI systems use

2025-08-21 ai • energy • google • scaling • datacenter • llm

NCHS online archive

A nonprofit I've helped with a little has digitized records and put them online

2025-08-20 nevadacounty • nchs • archive • history • search • photos • california

Starlink stupidity

Musk trying to use the political influence he bought to undercut broadband expansion in favor of his useful but not sufficient alternative

2025-08-19 politics • starlink • spacex • elonmusk • corruption • broadband • fcc

SF Leather district

San Francisco has created a formal cultural district for Leather & LGBTQ culture

2025-08-19 leather • folsom • gay • lgbt • bdsm • kink • sanfrancisco

Android hackery: open source software that pairs with various fitness trackers, headphones, etc so you can use the devices without the vendor's software

2025-08-18 android • hacking • fitness • tracker • privacy • watch

"Private and Uncensored", I think the porn world uses this?

2025-08-18 ai • llm • porn • generator

auth-results@verifier.port25.com will reply to an email telling you if it was delivered and with details of SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.

2025-08-17 email • testing • smtp • spam • tools

check-auth@verifier.port25.com will reply to an email telling you if it was delivered and with details of SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.

2025-08-17 email • testing • smtp • spam • tools

New derogatory slang for AIs and bots online

2025-08-16 language • ai • culture • bots • spam

Facebook friends feed

Facebook has a feature to just show you posts from your friends

2025-08-15 facebook • friends • socialmedia • filter • ads

An app for running LLMs on iOS

2025-08-15 ai • llm • ios • apple • iphone • app

An Android app for running LLMs locally on your phone

2025-08-15 android • ai • llm • phone • app