Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog aboutarchivemastodonfeed
Death of Vine
Conflict with the content creators, not just bad Twitter management, doomed the video product
2023-09-28 vine • twitter • socialmedia • video • business
Philips CPAP malfeasance
Medical device manufacturer hid evidence of serious problems from the FDA
2023-09-27 cpap • sleepapnea • philips • medical • fraud
About Polygon Indexing
Comments on a new geospatial library with interesting indexing
2023-09-23 spatialite • gis • database • rtree • maps
CERN big data
Petabyte-scale storage; moving from InfluxDB to VictoriaMetrics
2023-09-21 database • timeseries • bigdata • cern • influxdb • rrd
Rod of Iron Ministries
Moonie offshoot cult literally worships with guns
2023-09-21 america • politics • guns • moonies • cult
Lego salmon butchery
Fun stop motion animation
2023-09-20 via:kottke • food • cooking • butchery • salmon • fish • lego • animation • stopmotion
Reno Air Race Fatalities
A list with links to more info of the exciting but dangerous airplane event
2023-09-18 reno • airraces • aviation • safety
Trust & Safety coercion
Documentation of the harassment of people working to make Internet products more safe
2023-09-18 yoelroth • twitter • politics • trump • elonmusk • moderation
Labor unions and EVs
Details of the auto strike and how it's related to shifting labor landscape for electric cars and their batteries
2023-09-16 labor • union • politics • evs • electrify • cars • uaw
Qian Xuesen 钱学森
Details of the life of a Chinese Manhattan project researcher, in the context of the Oppenheimer movie's release in China
2023-09-16 china • history • manhattanproject • qian • rockets • military
Roguelike Pac-Man
Fun ironic spin on game design
2023-09-16 via:waxy • games • pacman • roguelike • funny
Kenji's Quesbirria
Video of making the awesome newly-trendy Mexican food
2023-09-15 food • birria • quesabirria • barbacoa • kenji • cooking
Deuteronomy 24:14-15
A Biblical entreaty to pay people daily for their work
2023-09-15 labor • payroll • employment • laborlaw • bible • religion
Google Visitor Experience
Corporate office is building a welcome for tourists and visitors
2023-09-15 google • bayarea • mountainview • tourism
Digital dependence
Musing on how relying on Google Maps, Grindr, or ChatGPT means we lose human skills
2023-09-15 grindr • maps • navigation • chatgpt • culture • technology
Migrants in the Darien Gap
Harrowing story of hundreds of thousands of people transiting the most dangerous land in the Americas trying to get to the US
2023-09-15 immigration • politics • dariengap • colombia • migrants
OSM tile traffic
Visualization of a year's traffic at OpenStreetMap's tile servers
2023-09-14 osm • visualization • maps • traffic • vruba • paulnorman
TESCREAL
A briefing on various problematic futurist ideologies, including some forms of AI hucksterism
2023-09-14 transhumanism • politics • tirefire • culture • futurism • ai
2010 Internet utopia
Linking for the commentson the final book, Clay Shirky's "Cognitive Surplus". A quick look back back on 2010 techno-optimism from a bleak view in 2023.
2023-09-14 internet • culture • utopia • optimism
Hexadecimal clock
Visualization of the 2038 problem by casting 32 bit time as 4 hands, each with 8 bits of the current time.
2023-09-13 clocks • visualization • 2038 • time • unix • via:hackernews
Starlink revenue
$1.4B in 2022. Which is a lot but not what was hoped or needed.
2023-09-13 starlink • spacex • business • revenue
Heat pumps are efficient
New study finds heat pumps are more efficient than fossil fuel heaters, even in cold climates
2023-09-12 electrify • globalwarming • heating • efficiency • power • heatpump
18,000 year old NA artifacts
A find in Oregon may push back dates of the earliest humans in North America by a few thousand years
2023-09-12 archaeology • oregon • rimrockdraw • history
Musk and the Sacramento datacenter
Absolutely unhinged story of an unplanned move of servers. This ended up breaking a lot of Twitter, for months.
2023-09-12 twitter • ops • datacenter • elonmusk • devops • manic
Erica Astrella at EFF
Tech leader also known as Erica Joy has joined the board at EFF
2023-09-11 ericajoy • erica • eff • nonprofit • governance
C2 Wiki
The original wiki, dating to 1995, full of discussions and history
2023-09-11 wiki • history • programming • wikiwikiweb
Facial Recognition
A survey of the state of the art: putting names to faces is a solved problem but the big tech companies have withheld it from the public
2023-09-10 ai • privacy • facialrecognition • google • facebook • face
1Password recovery process
A reddit comment from a 1Password security team member about the security of their special process to get access to an account via recovery
2023-09-10 security • 2fa • password • 1password • socialengineering
Wyze camera disaster
Cloud hosted security product has a caching failure, shows people videos of other people's homes
2023-09-09 wyze • badtech • camera • privacy • cloud
Gay sex on screen
Interesting analysis of where we are with depictions of male/male sex on TV and film
2023-09-09 gay • lgbt • sex • censorship • heartstopper • tv • movies
AI Emojis
A little generative AI project
2023-09-08 via:waxy • emoji • slack • ai • generative • art • funny
Mullvad + Tailscale
Excellent networking tool adds an easy way to use Mullvad as a general VPN privacy
2023-09-07 tailscale • vpn • privacy • browser • internet
LLM visualization
Cool interactive look at what an LLM is doing, predicting the next words
2023-09-07 llm • ai • visualization • via:simonw
Flipper remote
A universal remote with the simplest set of buttons
2023-09-07 remote • av • adaptive • elderly • tv
Deadbeat Musk Twitter
A roundup of some of the lawsuits from companies whose bills Elon Musk refuses to pay
2023-09-07 twitter • elonmusk • musk • lawsuit • fraud
Atkinson Hyperlegible
A font designed for readability even with impaired vision
2023-09-06 fonts • disability • blind • reading • typeface • text • accessibility
Nisenan tribe complication
Native Americans from Nevada County have a complicated history including disagreements about who represents the tribe
2023-09-06 history • nevadacity • grassvalley • nevadacounty • nisenan • miwok • indian • nativeamerican
The Boy and the Heron
New Miyazaki film, I think the last. There's a trailer!
2023-09-06 movie • miyazaki • ghibli • animation • japan • studioghibli
Burning Man schadenfreude
Thoughtful essay talking mocking the elites who were suffering mud and discomfort at the desert party
2023-09-06 burningman • schadenfreude • elites • culture • politics
Hillshading with diagonal hatching
A plotter-friendly fill algorithm for terrain
2023-09-06 plotterart • plotter • hatching • maps
Postmarks
A new social bookmarking system, based on ActivityPub
2023-09-05 bookmark • linkblog • socialmedia • activitypub • fediverse • mastodon • delicious • pinboard
Paxton Impeachment
A briefing on the trial of Texas' corrupt attorney general
2023-09-05 politics • paxton • texas • impeachment • corruption
Nutrition data sources
Thoughtful list of specific information on food: calories, etc
2023-09-05 food • calories • database • dieting • usda • fda • nccdb
rclone
Sync various cloud storage systems on Linux command line. Includes a FUSE file system driver
2023-09-05 rsync • cloud • mount • fuse • linux • commandline • files
Reddit moderation concerns
Big purge of moderators after the protest results in changes in site quality
2023-09-04 reddit • moderation • content • mods • api • community
Australian indigenous language news
Some professional news samples in Kriol, Warlpiri, and Yolngu Matha
2023-09-04 australia • language • creole • pidgin • kriol • aboriginal • indigenous
FoodData Central
US government database of nutrition facts
2023-09-04 food • calories • dieting • nutrition • cooking
Climate Change Tracker
Excellent dashboard style visualization of key global metrics
2023-09-03 climatechange • science • globalwarming • via:hackernews • dashboard • visualization
3D Tenochtitlan
Renders of what is now Mexico City, in pre-Columbian times
2023-09-03 archaeology • mexico • cdmx • Tenochtitlan • history • aztec
Dynapad
Some folks are porting the seminal Pad++ zooming interface to modern systems.
2023-09-03 pad++ • pad • benbederson • jimhollan • research • hci • ui • zoomable
Truth Social SPAC woes
The IPO financing scam ran in to SEC trouble and has been delayed and delayed, another deadline is in a few days
2023-09-03 politics • trump • truthsocial • spac • scam • fraud • sec
What 3 Words is a Mess
A detailed analysis of the stupid rent-seeking map company's bad system.
2023-09-02 maps • what3words • badtech • geolocation • addresses
My swordswallowing accident
2008-era blog from a circus act performer. Link is to the story of the actual injury, there's a whole blog about learning the act, the medical recovery, etc
2023-09-02 circus • swordswallowing • via:metafilter • medical • esophagus
How the Race Was Won
A lovely bit of visualization made from a composite photograph
2023-09-02 photos • photography • race • composite • infovis • visualization
Dangerous Tesla
"Full self driving "autopilot" tries to kill an expert electric car reviewer
2023-09-01 tesla • fsd • autopilot • ai • robotcar • liability • danger
Houston election manipulation
Texas shut down the election office in its biggest city
2023-09-01 houston • votingrights • politics • texas • votersuppression
✨California Forever✨
Details on the tech investment in what may be a new city
2023-09-01 california • solanocounty • housing • city • urbanism • pipedream
Open source business licenses
Thoughtful piece on what open source means in a business context
2023-08-30 mapbox • opensource • licensing • hashicorp • businessmodel
location-guard
A browser extension for changing your geolocation
2023-08-30 chrome • firefox • extension • browser • privacy • geolocation • location
WebLLM
Run an AI in your browser with hardware acceleration
2023-08-30 llm • ai • webgl • llama2
Polynesian Stick Charts
Good photos and references for a type of ocean map
2023-08-30 maps • cartography • polynesia • navigation • ocean • pacifika
Google Solar API
New dataset to estimate solar power potential
2023-08-30 solar • electrify • google • maps • pv • solarpanels
Bing malware-like ads
New levels of marketing sleaze from Microsoft
2023-08-30 microsoft • bing • google • ads • windows
Combinatoric Art
Course syllabus for a form of generative art, exhaustively enumeration all geometric combinations of some rule system
2023-08-30 generative • art • geometry • sollewitt • golan
Same-Sex Moche Art
Scholarly article on the depiction of homosexual acts in Peruvian erotic art from 100-800 AD. (Full article is on sci-hub.)
2023-08-29 peru • moche • anthropology • sex • lgbt • gay • homosexual
Moche Erotic Pottery Vessels
NSFW, a collection of sexually explicit art from pre-Columbian Peru
2023-08-29 sex • nsfw • pottery • anthropology • peru • moche
Starlink dish firmware
Details from a dump of the satellite Internet terminal
2023-08-29 starlink • spacex • space • firmware • reverseengineer • satellite
UMich offline
Major American university takes itself off the Internet for a security concern
2023-08-28 internet • security • badtech • umich
Concrete Stamp
Lovely Swiss design
2023-08-28 stamps • switzerland • design • concrete
Cloudflare Starlink stats
Some details of the satellite ISP from a large website operator
2023-08-27 starlink • clouflare • internet • isp • stats • traffic
Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050
A plan for global warming
2023-08-26 funny • globalwarming • climatechange • satire
Wandrer GPS game
A game that rewards exploring new places
2023-08-25 games • gps • exercise • walking • bicycling • via:hackernews • maps
Flannery Associates
Investor syndicate wants to build a new town between Fairfield and Rio Vista
2023-08-25 realestate • bayarea • investment • finance • techbros • california
No javascript build
Reflections on HTMX developers on not using any Javascript build
2023-08-25 programming • javascript • typescript • build • development • browser
Factorio: Space Age
Long awaited DLC for the factory game is finally revealed. It's kind of the Space Exploration mod but made more accessible.
2023-08-25 games • factorio • mods
North Korean scifi
Non-dissident literature reifies the political control
2023-08-25 northkorea • dprk • politics • scifi • writing
Tasmota
Hacker firmware for ESP based devices common in Internet of Things small products
2023-08-23 automation • hacking • tuya • power • firmware
China's malaise
Long piece about the pessimistic national mood among China's young people. Lying flat, letting it rot.
2023-08-22 china • politics • culture • freedom • tangping • bailan
prettymapp
Makes beautiful maps from OSM data. A reimplementation of prettymap with speed and a webapp
2023-08-22 maps • via:hackernews • prettymap • cartography • webapp
NFT scam against artists
One of the most interesting features - perpetual fees to the original artist - has been dropped by all the major NFT markets.
2023-08-22 art • nft • scam • artist • royalty
Simple AVX-512 code
A nice demo of an easy SIMD calculation (Latin1 to UTF-8)
2023-08-21 via:hackernews • programming • simd • intel • avx512 • assembly
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule
Detailed profile of Musk, the global influence of his companies, and his own personal erratic behavior
2023-08-21 elonmusk • starlink • twitter • politics • culture • spacex • ukraine
Piripkura update
Recent details on the indigenous family living in the Amazonian rainforest and the Brazilian politics surrounding their home
2023-08-21 brazil • brasil • indigenous • politics • anthropology
Piripkura
Extraordinary documentary about the last members of an Amazon rainforest group living disconnected from modernity
2023-08-21 brasil • brazil • indian • indigenous • anthropology • movie • documentary
Catching up on LLMs
Simon Willison gave a talk / overview of recent AI work from a hands-on perspective
2023-08-19 ai • llm • learning • simonw
California hurricanes
A map of hurricanes and tropical storms that got to or near California
2023-08-18 weather • hurricane • california • pacific
CPUC / Cruise corruption
Cruise's former lawyer is now on the CPUC commission and voted to let Cruise experiment with its cars in San Francisco
2023-08-18 corruption • cruise • cpuc • sanfrancisco • selfdriving
GPT4All
Collection of code and data to make LLMs accessible to programmers
2023-08-18 llm • models • chatgpt • ai • programmign • code
LLaMa 2 license
Nice endorsement of open source. (Although the actual license has a couple of anticompetitive restrictions.)
2023-08-18 opensource • ai • llm • llama • facebook • microsoft • code
Bone apron
Gorgeous ritual object made of human bone
2023-08-18 via:reddit • bone • tibet • museum
TV dialogue audio
The sorry state of video production where you can't understand what the characters are saying. The solutions offered are not convincing.
2023-08-18 tv • audio • mixing • sound • dialogue
Murderous Gays
Reflection on reclaiming the entertainment stereotype of Bad Gays
2023-08-17 lgbt • gay • movies • villains • acting
LLM GPU Buying Guide
Advice for small local AI work. Buy an NVidia GPU with as much VRAM as you can find.
2023-08-17 ai • llm • programming • hardware • nvidia • gpu
Datasette Cloud
Simon Willison's data exploration tool now has a hosted version
2023-08-16 datasette • data • sqlite • database • simonw • cloud • hosting • datascience • journalism
LLM CLI tool
A very easy to use set of Python drivers for running AI models
2023-08-16 llm • ai • python
Trump Twitter subpoena
Details of what data was requested from Trump's Twitter account, including direct messages, location information, IP addresses, etc
2023-08-16 politics • trump • twitter • privacy • indictment
Storylets
A theory of the narrative structure of interactive games
2023-08-16 writing • games • stories • rpgs
Red, White & Royal Blue sex scene
NSFW, a clip of the sexiest of the scenes in the new gay romance movie. Not porn but definitely more explicitly anal sex than I've ever seen in mainstream entertainment.
2023-08-15 gay • lgbt • sex • redwhiteroyalblue • nsfw
Unicode simplified
Some basic rules for using Unicode in 2023 in the simple ordinary way. UTF-8 everywher!
2023-08-14 unicode • encoding • programming • utf8 • json
CO₂ vs GDP
Measurement of carbon impact and wealth of nations
2023-08-14 climatechange • co2 • carbon • gdp • economics • data