Nelson's Linkblog

about • archive • twitter • feed

The Netflix look

Details on cinematographic choices that make all Netflix shows look kinda samey

2022-08-17 netflix • video • tv • cinematography • colorgrading

19th century design public toilets in Berlin

2022-08-16 toilet • pissoir • berlin • history • bathroom • klo

Engineered wood as an alternative to steel and concrete

2022-08-14 construction • wood • sustainability • building • material • plywood

Movie of the Night

A website for recommending movies based on various criteria

2022-08-14 movies • ratings • netflix • recommendation

Australia's gay prison

Summary of a podcast that unearthed the story of a hideous prison that collected gay men and performed experiments on them

2022-08-12 australia • gay • lgbt • nsw • cooma • prison • history • 50s

Fox News fake photos

Prime time show airs a fake image, then tries to claim it was just a joke a day later

2022-08-12 foxnews • lies • propaganda • trump • tuckercarlson • kilmeade

Linux Magic SysRq

Low level kernel thing to force a reboot and other stuff from the keyboard or /proc

2022-08-11 linux • admin • reboot • panic • kernel • sysrq • sysadmin

CDC’s Daskalakis on Monkeypox

Frank interview with a gay doctor at CDC about public health, gay stigma, and prevention.

2022-08-11 monkeypox • disease • health • lgbt • gay • safesex • cdc • politics

Starlink loses FCC subsidy

FCC denies the $885M grant for rural broadband

2022-08-10 starlink • facebook • fcc • isp • internet • rdof • subsidy

Apple should fix texting

Aggressive but reasonable call to ask Apple to implement RCS, the cross-vendor text messaging standard

2022-08-10 apple • text • sms • mms • rcs • imessage • interoperability • antitrust • google • android

An alternative to IEEE floating point

2022-08-10 programming • numericalcomputation • floatingpoint • iee • ieee754 • math

The Rhine is dry

Major European river goes basically dry for the second time in 4 years

2022-08-10 rhine • river • germany • climatechange • shipping • cruiseship • barge

A prominent, probably gay couple in the early 1900s, died on the Titanic

2022-08-10 love • gay • lgbt • titanic • history • taft • roosevelt

Brooklyn Bar Menu

An autogenerated parody of hipster bar menus

2022-08-09 funny • brooklyn • restaurant • menu • parody • procgen

Amtrak Explorer

Excellent simple schematic view of America's passenger train system

2022-08-09 trains • visualization • maps • amtrak • travel • binx

Twitter privacy mess

System would let anyone see what Twitter account a phone number or email address belonged to

2022-08-09 tirefire • twitter • privacy • ftc

Authentic Mexican flavors like birria, mole, or tomatillo on a pizza crust

2022-08-09 food • cooking • mexican • pizza • syncreticism

Live streaming video with virtual avatars instead of a live camera; lightweight puppetry animates

2022-08-09 games • vtubing • vtuber • culture • twitch • youtube • japan • animation

PGP web of trust failure

In 2019 the PGP web of trust slid from irrelevance to outright technical failure

2022-08-09 pgp • crypto • cryptography • identity • security • badtech • gpg

PyPI signature status

Python package repository *still* doesn't have any cryptographic signature verification, but it is in progress

2022-08-09 python • security • pypi • pip • pep458 • software • programming

Trump vs his Generals

Details of how Trump's military advisors tried to resist his most insane impulses

2022-08-08 trump • politics • america • coup • military • generals • fascism

Starlink scanning

6 hours of a satellite dish tracking LEO satellites

2022-08-08 starlink • internet • satellite • space • isp

Minecraft world generation

Overview of the algorithms and context for the remarkable game

2022-08-08 games • minecraft • procgen • perlinnoise • via:amitp

Turn a Slack archive dump into a public website. Useful for liberating knowledge trapped in silos

2022-08-08 via:hackernews • slack • information • sharing • search

Presidio Tunnel Tops

New park in San Francisco is open

2022-08-08 sanfrancisco • presidio • park • recreation

We need to take away children

Book-length accounting of the Trump Administration's monstrous policy of separating children from their parents at the border

2022-08-08 politics • children • immigration • humanrights • crime • dhs • borderpatrol • fascism • trump • miller

Chinese vertical world map

Interesting projection

2022-08-08 china • maps • projections • via:reddit

Meta: feed update

New feed for my linkblog includes image previews. The old feed will still work but this is nicer. https://www.somebits.com/linkblog/index.atom

2022-08-07 linkblog • blog • rss • atom • feed • nelson

Facebook viral videos

Detailed story on a magician who has a new hustle making viral videos for Facebook, ones you've probably seen

2022-08-07 facebook • content • funny • magician • video • meme

The fox in Robin Hood

Clips and photos from the furry awakening of 1973

2022-08-07 robinhood • animation • art • furries • fox

An archive of 19th century newspaper ads from formerly enslaved people searching for their families

2022-08-07 slavery • history • archive • genealogy • database • newspaper

SF: no traffic enforcement

45 traffic officers, a total of 10 tickets a day written in the city

2022-08-06 sanfrancisc • police • corruption • traffic • safety • politics

AI and ancient languages

Efforts to use statistical machine learning to translate unreadable ancient scripts

2022-08-04 language • translation • ai • machinelearning • writing • archaeology

Monkeypox and gay fear

Excellent, emotionally complex essay about how monkeypox is affecting gay men traumatized by fear of disease, social stigma, and decades of the AIDS crisis

2022-08-03 monkeypox • gay • lgbt • aids • hiv • disease • tomstrong

Starlink data cap

ISP now trying a 250GB/month data cap in France

2022-08-03 starlink • france • internet • datacap • broadband • isp

Ookla open data

Fine grained info on average bandwidth per square on the globe

2022-08-03 data • bandwidth • ookla • speedtest • internet • maps

Max bandwidth map

Global map of maximum Internet speed from Ookla data

2022-08-03 via:lobsters • speed • internet • broadband • maps

Hospital prices

Site collects newly required medical billing data to compare costs of procedures at hospitals in SF, NY

2022-08-03 medical • hospital • america • healthcare • billing • price • via:reddit • data

Your data fits in RAM

A useful tool for estimating whether a data problem is easy or hard

2022-08-03 ram • performance • funny • via:hackernews

Caddy web server

Modern general purpose web server

2022-08-01 web • server • apache • nginx • internet • ssl • golang

Social Capital Atlas

Enormous new sociology study of friendships, wealth, and social mobility

2022-08-01 maps • socialcapital • sociology • facebook

watabou procgen

Page of various procedural generation experiments; caves, neighborhoods, cities

2022-08-01 games • procedural • procgen • city • roads • maps

My MPXXX Story (CW)

A friend details his awful experience of monkeypox. Content warning: graphic photos of skin lesions

2022-07-31 monkeypox • health • gay • lgbt • mpx • mpxxx • skin • disease

The famous queer magazine dating back to the 70s. Rural topics, radical faeries, thoughtful.

2022-07-31 gay • lgbt • rfd • radicalfaeries • rural • america • magazine

Russian fascism

Long, upsetting picture of the current state of Russian politics and society

2022-07-30 russia • fascism • politics • ukraine • war • putin

Map showing places where airplane navigation is reported unreliable around the globe

2022-07-30 gps • aviation • warfare • jamming • radio

Low power DC gizmos like LED lights, etc are very easy to build with a USB PD trigger module supplying power

2022-07-29 electricity • power • led • electronics • hacking • usb-pd

Better Call Saul titles

Season-by-season comparison of the gradual video degradation of the show's title cards (other videos for other episodes)

2022-07-29 tv • bettercallsaul • via:metafilter • video • vcr

Notability calculation

Details of how the notability map calculates people; ranking based on Wikipedia and Wikidata

2022-07-29 notability • socialscience • via:hackernews • wikipedia • metrics • maps

Notable people map

Most famous person on Wikipedia in a geographic region

2022-07-29 maps • wikipedia • culture • socialscience • via:hackernews

Indicating steep terrain by drawing short lines along the slope gradient, perpendicular to the countours

2022-07-28 maps • terrain • gis • hillshading • hachure

Tanaka contours

The technique of making shaded relief maps by simulating a light source projecting over the terrain

2022-07-28 maps • hillshading • terrain • contour • gis • tanaka

Dore Alley monkeypox safety

Public health suggestions for the yearly BDSM party

2022-07-27 monkeypox • lgbt • gay • bdsm • safesex • publichealth • dorealley

A new fast food item from France; tortilla, meat, cheese, fries. With North African cultural influence.

2022-07-27 food • france • wrap • taco • fastfood • junkfood • delicious

Evolution of ASL

Sign languages change rapidly with culture, technology. Particularly interesting is the space the signs take up gets smaller, maybe related to phone video chat

2022-07-27 language • asl • Deaf • signlanguage • linguistics • culture

Bay Area monkeypox

Data from wastewater analysis

2022-07-26 monkeypox • bayarea • health • sanfrancisco • disease • publichealth

Rep Thompson's hypocrisy

Republican congressman votes against gay marriage, then goes to his son's gay wedding three days later

2022-07-26 politics • lgbt • gay • hypocrisy • civilrights

Monkeypox vaccine snafu

Details of the bureaucratic disaster that has resulted in vaccines not being made available as a new disease gets hold

2022-07-26 vaccine • monkeypox • health • politics • publichealth

Hilarious food parody

2022-07-26 food • culture • appropriation • funny • hotdog

Gay Houston 1976

Excellent map of gay businesses in 70s Houston

2022-07-25 lgbt • gay • houston • forallmankind • history • 1970s

ERCOT dashboard

Neat fan-made presentation of the state of Texas' electricity grid

2022-07-25 texas • power • ercot • dashboard • iso • via:hackernews

Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)

New wireless standard; much lower latency worst cases, up to 40 Gbps (!) throughput

2022-07-24 wireless • wifi • 802.11be • via:reddit • networking

1400lbs of White House cheese

Gift to Andrew Jackson in 1835 turns into a strange public event

2022-07-23 funny • whitehouse • cheese • andrewjackson • history

SF V-J Day Riot

Drunk party turns ugly at the end of World War II

2022-07-23 history • riot • sanfrancisco • sf • vjday

Librarian on Dershowitz

World's stupidest "I've been cancelled" whine put into context by the stern librarian who has to deal with his bullshit

2022-07-22 dershowitz • library • marthasvineyard • cancelculture • trump

One-shot avatars

Using AI to turn a single headshot image into an animated avatar rigged for facial expression puppetry

2022-07-21 ai • avatar • portrait • animation

Monkeypox update

Notes from a disease researcher on what we know

2022-07-21 disease • monkeypox • gay • lgbt • msm

Dershowitz cancelled

Hilarious interview; the right wing lawyer does not seem to understand he's being mocked by the interviewer

2022-07-19 dershowitz • politics • trump • cancelculture • marthasvineyard • chillwick

Nova Launcher acquired

The best Android app launcher got bought by Branch, a surveillance company

2022-07-19 android • novalauncher • apps • launcher • privacy

Cincinnati chili

Details of the odd dish; turns out it's Greek/Macedonian in origin, not Tex-Mex chili at all

2022-07-19 chili • food • cincinnati • skylinechili

Intel microcode decrypter

Major advance; we can now see inside Intel's CPU design

2022-07-19 intel • via:hackernews • microcode • xucode • uops • hacking • optimization • cpu

Facebook hates URLs

Breaking links with encrypted tracking data

2022-07-19 facebook • url • web • privacy • ads • surveillance

Starlink -> Stinky

ISP changes the WiFi's default SSID possibly based on an Elon Musk joke, breaks customers networks

2022-07-18 starlink • isp • wisp • ssid • networking • badtech

East Pacific Islands

A map of geographical oddities: Galapagos, Revillagigedo, Cocos, and Clipperton

2022-07-18 islands • pacific • mexico • clipperton • galapagos • maps

Deliciously nasty article about an exclusive NFT club being built in the middle of a public park

2022-07-18 sanfrancisco • nft • crypto • salesforce • excess • corruption • irori

A very simple Javascript chart library

2022-07-18 programming • charts • visualization • simple • code

Houston near mass shooting

Misdemeanor and release, twice, for a man who looked to be moments away from massacring people at the Galleria

2022-07-17 houston • guns • redflag • politics • batshitinsane • texas

A Brazilian plant with similar numbing effects (but not spice) as Sichuan pepper

2022-07-15 food • brazil • via:hackernews • sichuanpepper • jamba • numbing • mala

Lawsuit againt PrEP

Same Republican brain trust that got us the Stasi Texas abortion law now trying to undermine HIV prevention. They literally want us dead.

2022-07-15 lgbt • gay • prep • aids • hiv • texas • hate • truvada

Baron's butcher profile

Story of the excellent local butcher in Noe Valley

2022-07-15 butcher • food • grocery • jewish • sanfrancisco • barons • noevalley • bayarea

Monkeypox update in California

Details of the growing spread of a transmissable disease. Still only 150 confirmed cases but it's troubling.

2022-07-14 monkeypox • smallpox • disease • california • gay • lgbt • health

The DALL·E 2 Prompt Book

Thoughtful survey of various text triggers for deep learning generative art

2022-07-14 dalle2 • dalle • ai • ml • machinelearning • gan • generative • art

Oregon Trail only it's the 1600 Islamic world and you are on your way to Mecca

2022-07-13 islam • history • mecca • hajj • via:hackernews • games • oregontrail

Unity and IronSource

Popular game engine company merges with an aggressive / scammy adware company

2022-07-13 unity • ironsource • ads • games • mobile • via:hackernews • malware

Stray introduction

New PS5 game, you play a stray cat exploring a city with a robot pal

2022-07-12 cats • games • stray • ps5 • playstation • meow

Zach Lieberman on his new collaborative NFT project. Beautiful art and helped me understand a creative possibility in NFTs that isn't a scam.

2022-07-12 nft • art • generative • medialab • code • lieberman • velitchkova

Nevada County recount

LA Times on a baffling recount that seems intended to undermine confidence in our elections

2022-07-11 recount • tedder • nevadacounty • politics • adona • elections

Uber whistleblower

The person behind the giant document leak was formerly in charge of European policy and expansion efforts

2022-07-11 uber • whistleblower • business • ethics • europe • traviskalanick

Texas electricity and cryptomining

Details of the bizarre alliance between energy producers and energy wasters

2022-07-11 texas • energy • grid • power • electricity • bitcoin • scam • ercot

Joel Kim Booster profile

Excellent profile of the Fire Island auteur

2022-07-11 gay • lgbt • asian • koreanamerican • film • movies • fireisland • yang • booster

Uber international corruption

Details of the Travis Kalanick era and all sorts of sleazy tactics

2022-07-10 uber • corruption • traviskalanick • politics • via:hackernews • tirefire

Cute little pheremone / agent simulator

2022-07-10 via:hackernews • artificiallife • ai • complexsystems • emergence • simulation

Technoblade appreciation

Detailed Metafilter comment about the accomplishments of the young Minecraft celebrity who passed away

2022-07-10 games • minecraft • technoblade • skyblock • hypixel

Tiny web monitoring

Lightweight approaches to making sure custom web services are working

2022-07-09 monitoring • web • programming • devops • uptime

GPT-3 explains code

Some interesting explorations into the machine learning text model and programming

2022-07-09 gpt3 • ai • machinelearning • code • via:lobsters

Irregular grids

Some basic generative art algorithms

2022-07-09 generative • art • programming • grid

Webapp for analyzing CPAP machine data; like OSCAR but in your browser

2022-07-09 sleep • sleepapnea • health • cpap • oscar • visualization

US dietary trends from 1800

Detailed historical dataset, some guesses how it's affected health

2022-07-08 diet • food • science • america • nutrition • health

Avatar hairstylist

Hilarious little TikTok

2022-07-08 avatar • movies • tiktok • funny

FCC vs Robocalls

Government singles out one company as the source of $8B scam calls, demands carriers stop routing their traffic immediately

2022-07-08 robocall • scam • fcc • carwarranty • spam