Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog aboutarchivemastodonfeed
Darcelle XV
A half hour TV documentary about Portland's permanent drag show
2023-03-25 drag • darcelle • portland • history • lgbt
EV ranges
Electric cars ranked by maximum range
2023-03-25 cars • evs • range • battery
Rodney Brooks on GPT-*
AI professor reflects on the current AI trend
2023-03-24 ai • intelligence • mit • rodneybrooks • chatgpt
RIP Darcelle
Walter Cole, Portland's drag institution, has passed away at the age of 92
2023-03-24 obituary • darcelle • portland • drag • lgbt
Placemark Play
A free / no login version of Tom's amazing map editor
2023-03-23 maps • placemark • tmcw • editor • geojson
Twitter API Client
No need for API keys with this Python client
2023-03-22 twitter • python • scraping • api • code
Hurdy Gurdy / Kraftwerk
Amplified medieval drone string instrument shredding through Das Model
2023-03-22 funny • music • hurdygurdy • kraftwerk • foreveralone
ChatGPT shell suggestions
A little tool for creating little shell commands by using ChatGPT
2023-03-21 chatgpt • ai • programming • shell
Satellite balloon tracking
Planet's writeup of how they used their satellite imagery and AI to track the Chinese balloon
2023-03-21 raic • planet • satellite • aerial • imagery • balloon
PG&E vs new housing
Murderous power company is taking six months to install power, forcing new housing to stay empty
2023-03-21 pge • piggy • electricity • california • corruption
Starlink fake reviews
SpaceX is posting reviews which are the same text in different languages, attributed to different people
2023-03-20 starlink • fraud • falseadvertising • spacex
Automatic Chinese conversion
Wikipedia has one text for various versions of Chinese, including simplified vs. traditional. It translates between variants automatically based on user preferences
2023-03-20 language • chinese • wikipedia • translation • writing
DeSantis endorsing torture
Verified details of the Florida governor's time at Guantanamo, advising that force feeding is OK (it is not)
2023-03-20 torture • politics • desantis • florida • president • guantanamo • humanrights
Human Cell Atlas
A writeup of the ambitious global project to map every type of cell in the human body and what proteins they express
2023-03-19 science • biology • humancellatlas • histology
Broken EV chargers
Some data on the problem of broken public car charging infrastructure; something like 25% of chargers don't work
2023-03-19 ev • electriccar • charging • electrifyamerica • gasstation
Android old app deprecation
Google made a change end of January where old Android apps no longer will install even if they probably could run, claiming security concerns (Apple does this too)
2023-03-19 google • android • compatibility • apps • api
About Web Components
An overview of the latest HTML standard
2023-03-19 development • web • internet • react • javascript • components • html
aCropalypse
Android image editor doesn't correctly truncate the original file, which means in some cases the original image data can leak through
2023-03-18 badtech • security • crop • truncate • posix • open • android
Google / Samsung phone hack
Significant security hole; silent remote takeover of a phone based on a bug in the modems used by Google's flagship phones. There is no fix.
2023-03-17 security • badtech • hacking • phones • googlepixel • google • samsung
Fuxley
A bunch of image parodies of 60s-80s culture
2023-03-16 funny • parody • fuxley • nostalgia
Dennis Ritchie Thesis
The odd story of an important computer systems hacker and his finished-but-not-accepted doctoral thesis
2023-03-16 history • computing • unix • dmr • dennisritchie • harvard • phd
ntopng
A fancy network connection monitoring tool
2023-03-16 diagnostics • networking • linux • internet
Scene Optimizer
Samsung explains their tech for producing fake moon photos
2023-03-15 photos • photography • ai • samsung • moon • astrophotography
Modern Font Stacks
A quick reference for fonts you can use in CSS without downloading
2023-03-15 fonts • css • via:hackernews • design • web • html
Metaverse experience
Detailed, somewhat snarky summary of the social milieu of Facebook's virtual reality chat room
2023-03-15 vr • meta • facebook • oculus • oculusquest • games
GPT system card
Paper for the AI; appendices D, E, and F contain examples of the various offensive things it would say before it was trained not to say them
2023-03-15 ai • hatespeech • machinelearning • culture • ethics • openai • gpt4
Abortion access in the US
Subtle visualization of the impact of healthcare availability if various states ban abortion
2023-03-14 abortion • politics • visualization • maps • civilrights
Kottke at 25
One of the most influential of the old school webloggers
2023-03-14 weblogs • kottke • linkblogs • writing • web • internet • culture
Kouri-Vini
The Louisiana Creole language, a lot of French mixed with West African language.
2023-03-14 language • louisana • creole • french • music • zydeco • via:languagelog
Boxy SVG Editor
Supposedly good at producing clean SVG
2023-03-13 svg • editing • images • graphics
Resenting Ke Huy Quan
Complex piece about Asian American representation in cinema
2023-03-13 movies • films • racism • asian • stereotypes
PG&E gift cards
Bizarre, badly handled.. gift? relief program? ... from PG&E, randomly giving $200 to anyone who asked
2023-03-13 pge • piggy • nevadacounty • power • politics
Samsung fake moon photos
Camera app is enhancing photos with a static image of the moon
2023-03-13 samsung • photos • camera • moon • funny • astrophotography • ai
Vehicle-to-Grid challenges
History and current state of the failed effort to let your car power your home
2023-03-12 power • electricity • ev • battery • grid • solar
Nevada County snowstorm
Long, detailed article about the second major snowstorm in a year
2023-03-11 nevadacounty • snow • weather • california
Unbreaking The Bank
2009 narrative of what it's like when the FDIC takes over a failed bank
2023-03-10 via:waldo • banking • economics • finance • fdic • svb
DeSantis at Guantánamo
Details of the Florida governors' years at America's torture detention facility
2023-03-09 torture • guantanamo • gitmo • desantis • florida • politics • prison
Priest harassment
Catholic hate group buys location data from gay dating apps (via ad networks) and uses it to try to destroy the lives of gay priests
2023-03-09 gay • lgbt • privacy • location • catholic • priest • closet • badtech
Silvergate shutdown
A regulated US bank doing cryptocurrency garbage shuts down, but at least appears to be able to give its customers their money back
2023-03-09 cryptocurrency • scam • bank • silvergate • crypto
Miss Bouvèé
Drag queen working in Fort Lauderdale, really fun performer
2023-03-05 drag • gay • lgbt • wiltonmanors • fortlauderdale • music
Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX
Geriatric sitcom turned into a retro JRPG
2023-03-04 games • goldengirls • tv • jrpg • funny • indie
Car as house backup power
The state of bidirectional charging, using an electric vehicle to power your home. It's nowhere near as real as you'd like.
2023-03-02 cars • ev • home • power • backup • battery • ups
Helping Tweetbot and Twitterrific
If you subscribe to those apps you can do a kindness to the developers whose businesses were just destroyed
2023-03-02 twitter • thirdparty • apps • clients • refunds • tweetbot • twitterrific
Ron DeSantis, torturer
Details from a torture victim at Guantanamo
2023-03-01 politics • desantis • torture • guantanamo
AI copyright
US Copyright Office against AI-generated image copyrights
2023-02-23 ai • art • copyright • intellectualproperty • ip
Proud Boys vs story hour
Another fascist attack on parents taking their kids to listen to stories being read
2023-02-22 fascism • america • politics • proudboys • storyhour
Early net lingo
A timeline of network culture terms going back to the 1970s.
2023-02-22 slang • internet • culture • history • usenet • via:metafilter
Fox News perfidy
Inside the lie factory; Fox employees privately mocked Trump's conspiracy theories while spreading them to their viewers
2023-02-18 foxnews • fox • propaganda • trump • politics • news • journalism
Stripe equity problem
Employee's RSUs expire if the tech company doesn't go public, causing a lot of financial and tax drama. Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/8bCAp
2023-02-18 stripe • equity • rsu • option • tech • startup
GoDaddy multi-year hack
Sleazy hosting company has been infiltrated for 3+ years, spreading malware via customers' properties
2023-02-18 hacking • godaddy • badtech • sleaze • malware
Open source map stack
Free software replacements for stuff MapBox provides
2023-02-17 maps • via:hackernews • mapbox • opensource
Black American History
Video series of history recommended by a teacher friend
2023-02-17 history • black • africanamerican • america • usa
Nevada City Mardi Gras
An explanation of one of the great local public events we have in Grass Valley
2023-02-16 mardigras • nevadacity • grassvalley • nevadacounty • california • party • tradition
SondeHub Amateur
Site tracking amateur radio balloon releases
2023-02-16 balloons • radio • ham • science • windsaloft • maps
Lost pico balloon?
Amateur radio fans launch helium balloons with tiny radio payloads. One went missing right about where the US shot down an object
2023-02-16 balloons • radio • ham • windsaloft • politics
Election manipulation company
"Team Jorge" hacks and spams to sway elections all over the world, including the US
2023-02-15 politics • elections • fraud • socialmedia
Oliver Sacks' swim purchase
Famous writer talks about buying a house mid-way through swimming in the Bronx
2023-02-15 oliversacks • realestate • swimming • daddy • newyork
Squares in Squares
A collection of optimial square packing for small numbers of squares
2023-02-15 geometry • squares • packing • math
SmoothWAN
OpenWRT with Speedify integrated, so you can easily bond two separate ISP connections for one more reliable / faster link
2023-02-15 internet • starlink • bandwidth • openwrt • speedify • bonding
Pseudo-Kufic
Christian artists in the Middle Ages copied Arabic calligraphy but only as decoration, not meaningful writing
2023-02-15 art • middleages • kufic • calligraphy • via:metafilter
Musk's ranking change
Twitter's new owner told engineers at 2am to ensure his tweets got seen or they were fired. So they gave him a 1000x ranking boost
2023-02-15 elonmusk • twitter • ego • clown • shame
Z-Library returns
Elaborate hosting setup to avoid legal trouble
2023-02-13 zlibrary • books • ebooks • piracy
Sylvester
An appreciation of the disco star and queer icon
2023-02-13 queer • lgbt • sylvester • music • disco • cockettes • sanfrancisco
MRI gun death
Idiot keeps a concealed pistol near an MRI, it goes off and kills him
2023-02-13 guns • mri • stupidity • death
Space Invader
A profile of the Parisian street artist
2023-02-12 streetart • paris • invader • art • spaceinvader
Burning Man vs clean energy
Yearly "temporary" festival suing to block a geothermal plant
2023-02-12 globalwarming • climatechange • burningman • geothermal • nevada • gerlach
Bypass Paywalls Clean removed
Firefox extension for accessing websites was removed without explanation
2023-02-12 paywall • firefox • extension • appstore
Stewart and Jen's homes
Details on the $140M in properties the Internet startup couple have bought
2023-02-12 realestate • stewart • slack • jenrubio • away • wealth
ChatGPT lossiness
Excellent essay exploring the knowledge and correctness limits inherent in deep learning models
2023-02-10 chatgpt • ai • lossiness • scifi
Vertical pig farming
Awful photos of industrial pork production, 20+ story high rise buildings
2023-02-09 food • farming • pigs • china • dystopia
Security Envelope Patterns
Diverse patterns printed inside envelopes to keep their contents invisible
2023-02-09 via:metafilter • design • pattern • security • envelope • texture
0.1 + 0.2
A very deep and precise dive into the oddities of floating point math
2023-02-08 math • computers • floatingpoint • ieee
Chuck Csuri and D. P. Henry
Comments on two early generative artists. Including a wholesome perspective on NFTs
2023-02-07 art • generative • nft • algorithm • drawing
Shift Happens Kickstarter
Been waiting for this for years; Marcin's amazing book on the history of typewriters and keyboards is now on Kickstarter.
2023-02-07 marcinwichary • kickstarter • keyboard • typewriter • history • design
Jan 6 and Twitter
Original reporting on how Twitter helped Trump foment his coup, including details of special treatment that Twitter and Facebook gave him and his fellow plotters
2023-02-04 twitter • trump • politics • jan6 • coup • policy • facebook
Twitter and the Jan 6 coup
Details on how the Jan 6 report left out all their research on the role social media planned in trying to overthrow the US government.
2023-02-04 twitter • facebook • socialmedia • politics • jan6 • coup • policy
SleepHQ
A newish web app for tracking sleep apnea and CPAP data, sort of an OSCAR clone in your browser
2023-02-04 medical • sleepapnea • cpap • oscar • data
Ikeda's pies & orchard
A local paper profile of the much loved fruit stand / pie shop / hamburger place in Auburn on I-80.
2023-02-04 fruit • ikeda • pie • food
Face license plates
Washington DC's growing problem of folks hiding their car's identity
2023-02-03 cars • safety • traffic • dc • washingtondc • law
RIP fun Twitter bots
Some details on the good content we're losing thanks to Musk's capricious leadership
2023-02-03 twitter • bot • via:waxy • api • elonmusk
Last of Us gay appreciation
Lovely queer essay about the 3rd episode of the show
2023-02-02 gay • lgbt • lastofus • zombies • queer
WinCompose
An excellent, simple way to type characters outside your normal language set on Windows. Modeled after the old Unix compose key.
2023-02-02 unicode • emoji • typing • windows • software • internationalization • xcompose
Sniffies sex stats (NSFW)
Gay hookup app publishes some stats, giving the lie to there being no tops
2023-02-01 sex • gay • lgbt • sniffies • cruising • sleaze • nsfw
Ted Chiang at SFI
Sci-fi author takes a residency at the complex systems science institute.
2023-02-01 writing • scifi • chiang • sfi • complexity • cormac
Genshin Impact exploitation
Interviews with the victims of game gambling
2023-01-31 scam • genshinimpact • games • gacha • lootbox • exploitation • gambling
Helene An
A profile of the woman behind Thanh Long and its famous garlic noodles in San Francisco
2023-01-31 food • sanfrancisco • vietnamese • restaurant • garlicnoodles
Flent
Internet connection tester from the Bufferbloat folks; various tests nicely packaged
2023-01-26 internet • networking • bandwidth • latency • bufferbloat • performance
Carbon offset sham
Study on results from a major carbon offset company find their projects are useless or worse
2023-01-26 globalwarming • climate • scam • carbonoffset • greenwashing
Google ads antitrust
Long time coming, DoJ suing Google over its ads monopoly
2023-01-24 google • ads • monopoly • antitrust • politics
Mayor of Slow Sanchez
Neighbor who takes care of the somewhat pedestrianized street in Noe Valley
2023-01-24 slowstreets • sf • sanfrancisco • community • activism • sanchez
irtt: Isochronous Round-Trip Tester
A network tool for measuring connection latency with regular UDP packets
2023-01-24 internet • monitoring • latency • jitter • ping • networking
mozilla.org's 25th anniversary
Some memories of the good old days when "open source" was magic
2023-01-23 mozilla • netscape • jwz • opensource • firefox
EV across the Nullarbor
Driving a Polestar across the loneliest road in the world
2023-01-23 australia • ev • polestar • charging • travel • roadtrip
Harvey’s closes
Gay restaurant / bar that's a mainstay of the Castro closes
2023-01-23 harveys • sanfrancisco • gay • lgbt • harveymilk • restaurants
Huge Pages are a Good Idea
Linux boxes still use 4k memory pages even though 1GB of RAM for a process is now common. Bigger pages perform better but trigger bugs.
2023-01-22 memory • optimization • linux • via:hackernews • tlb
HC-Tree (sqlite)
Experimental high concurrency backend for sqlite, supports row level locking and multiple writers
2023-01-21 sqlite • scaling • database • concurrency
Wikipedia redesign
Detailed notes on changes at Wikipedia from one of the developers who created the new presentation
2023-01-21 wikipedia • web • development • javascript • design • frontend
Kerrygold butter ban
New York and California aren't allowing Kerrygold butter to be sold because of a new law requiring PFAS be labelled
2023-01-19 food • butter • kerrygold • california • regulation • pfas
Twitter API key workaround
Looks like Twitter's own API keys are available should your app's key have been blocked
2023-01-17 twitter • api
Inside Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” Twitter
A detailed, well written summary of the disaster so far at Twitter
2023-01-17 elonmusk • twitter • tirefire • debacle