Nelson's Linkblog 2010-11

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Django without SQL

Python webapp framework Django has ported its persistence layer to work with Google's AppEngine Datastore and MongoDB, with Cassandra coming. This is a big deal.

2010-11-30 appengine • code • developers • django • nosql • python

Group plans a peer to peer domain name system that can't be shut down

2010-11-30 bittorrent • dns • internet • p2p

Replacement for the ancient, awful console UI in Windows

2010-11-30 cmd.exe • command.exe • console • goodtech • opensource • software • windows

Comments on JSON supplanting XML as the object goo

2010-11-30 html • javascript • json • technology • webservices • xml

3d fanfic movies

One guy working alone makes 3 hours of 3d movie for a fanfic Star Trek story

2010-11-30 animation • fanfic • movies • startrek

Swedish Internet host specializing in "international clients with special needs". Ie: political targets

2010-11-30 freespeech • hosting • internet • sweden

Twitter account of someone who directs DDOS attacks for political purposes

2010-11-30 badtech • ddos • internet • tcpip • wikileaks

Data from the attack suggests 2-4Gbps

2010-11-30 badtech • internet • network • tcpip • wikileaks

New government website for aviation weather. The UI is pretty good, looks actually modern!

2010-11-30 aviation • flying • noaa • nws • weather

WikiLeaks was leaked

NYTimes was not given an advance copy; they were gifted it by the Guardian

2010-11-30 guardian • journalism • news • nytimes • wikileaks

Classic Detroit Grand Pubahs. You can be the bun and I can be the burger, girl

2010-11-29 detroitgrandpubahs • electro • funny • music • sandwiches • wtf

Fun with ham radio

Nice overview of some things you can do with modern amateur radio

2010-11-29 amateur • gprs • ham • radio

Google TCP tweaks

Evidence that Google may be running outside TCP spec to make connections faster

2010-11-29 congestion • google • internet • speed • standards • tcpip

WikiLeaks release

NYT's roundup of what's in the latest bunch of leaked cables

2010-11-28 china • diplomacy • google • politics • wikileaks

What's up on aprs.fi

Singapore swimsuits

Is that an Islamic crescent moon or are you just happy to see me?

2010-11-28 funny • islam • penis • singapore • swimsuits

Great photo series from the extreme northern island

2010-11-28 frozen • norway • photography • photos • seedbank • svalbard • via:pb

Trolling for profit

Turns out you can get Google juice with any sort of link, whether positiev or negative

2010-11-28 eyeglasses • fraud • google • seo

Django in Vista

Great explanation of the hoops you jump through. Main thing is running as Admin to install.

2010-11-27 django • python • windows

Little utility script for extracting pieces from a JSON blob

2010-11-25 data • grep • json • python • unix

Mesoscale analysis

Nice combination of various weather forecasting data in a readable presentation

2010-11-25 aviation • flying • noaa • radar • weather • winds

Archive of prevailing winds all over the US

2010-11-25 aviation • climate • data • flying • visualization • weather • wind • windrose • winds

Fantastic little cartoon

2010-11-25 4chan • funny • troll

You can buy people's time to solve CAPTCHAs: $0.50 / 1000

2010-11-24 captcha • mechanicalturk • security • spam

Georgia Guidestones

Crazy modern day granite monument of mysterious origin

2010-11-24 arcadefire • conspiracy • eugenics • georgia • rosicrucians

Kirby's Epic Sound

Roundup of music samples from the latest Nintendo Kirby game

2010-11-24 games • kirby • music • nintendo • sound • wii

What Android is

Great explanation of the components in Google's phone OS

2010-11-24 android • dalvik • google • software

Firesheep explained

Good layman's explanation of how insecure the web is

2010-11-23 badtech • cookies • firesheep • http • security

Spike Jonze / The Suburbs

disturbing but excellent video

2010-11-23 arcadefire • music • spikejonze • via:kottke • war

Google App Engine regrets

It's a bit ranty, particularly the comments, but a useful discussion on the good and bad things about Google App Engine

2010-11-23 appengine • cloud • gae • google • hosting

Mod for the interesting but flawed procedural racing game

2010-11-23 fuel • games • mods

White House missiles

Image of a missile launcher on the roof next door to the White House

2010-11-23 aviation • missiles • security • whitehouse

Printing brick roads

Machine lays paved roads and walkways

2010-11-23 bricks • construction • dutch • holland • machinery • pavers

The Moon Museum

Anonymous engineer smuggled some tiny art aboard Apollo 12. Warhol contributed a scribbled penis.

2010-11-22 apollo • art • grumman • moon • via:metafilter • warhol

Great collection of portraits of Lee Harvey Oswald

2010-11-22 assassination • jfk • murder • oswald • photos • president

Glitch Alpha Trailer

New social game from some of the Flickr founders

2010-11-22 flickr • games • glitch • gne • stewart

Tuning Canabalt

great article about game design

2010-11-21 canabalt • gamedesign • games • iphone • tuning

Git branching model

advice on how to use Git to manage software

2010-11-21 coding • git • processing • software • vcs • versioncontrol

Boehner more equal

Incoming Speaker of the House whisked around the TSA security line

2010-11-19 airtravel • boehner • flying • politics • republicans • tsa

Crazily detailed story of a private investigator solving a rape case

2010-11-19 crime • detective • pi • via:kottke

Gear up landing

Ugly to watch this, such a dumb mistake

2010-11-18 accident • airplane • aviation • cessna • flying • gearup

Strange meta-humor about some crazy right wing complaints about NPR

2010-11-18 funny • npr • politics • twitter

the anti-social network

2010-11-18 4chan • facebook • moot • parody

Microloans gone bad

Turns out people want their loans paid back

2010-11-18 development • india • lending • microcredit • microloans • money

As always, Taiwan's finest news animation explains the story

2010-11-17 civilrights • funny • nma • privacy • tsa

jQuery-style XML manipulation in Python

2010-11-17 coding • jquery • python • xml

Javascript to efficiently work around same origin policy by using a variety of transport methods depending on the browser

2010-11-17 badtech • code • javascript • sameoriginpolicy • twitter • web

Eve CPU use over 1.5 years

Great graph of the overall health of the server application

2010-11-16 ccp • data • eve • eveonline • games • performance • statistics

Driving Lubumbashi to Kinshasa

Incredible travelogue of some Belgian tourists driving across Congo. Very long, but great photos and stories

2010-11-16 adventure • congo • drc • offroad • travel • via:metafilter

Facebook messaging criticism

A variety of challenges Facebook is facing in making their Google Wave competitor

2010-11-16 email • facebook • google • messaging • wave

Flickr / Twitter iPhone

Third party solution for posting photos from Twitter iPhone client to Flickr

2010-11-16 flickr • gdzla • integration • iphone • twitter

Free walking tours of San Francisco

2010-11-15 california • guides • sanfrancisco • tourism • travel

Great collection of photos

2010-11-15 hajj • islam • mecca • muslims • photography • photos

Detailed Turing test

Guy plays 2 poker hands / second. PokerStars investigates, and even with someone standing there watching him have a hard time being sure he's human

2010-11-15 batshitinsane • poker • turingtest • via:jwz

Javascript Treemaps that render as simple HTML boxes, not canvas/svg

2010-11-15 google • javascript • treemap • visualization

Chrome binary size

Evan publishes some details about figuring out why the Chrome binary is 28 megs

2010-11-15 chrome • google • optimization • software • treemaps

The Bay Citizen

A new journalism venture in the Bay Area, non-profit. They are syndicated in the New York Times

2010-11-15 bayarea • journalism • news • nytimes • sanfrancisco

A simple message

2010-11-15 benfranklin • civilrights • protest • security • tsa

Pornoscan profits

Profile of who's making money selling the new TSA scanners

2010-11-15 civilrights • corruption • government • privacy • security • terrorism • tsa

Stuxnet's purpose

Detailed analysis of what Stuxnet's sabotage payload actually does. Strongly looks like it's targeted at Iranian centerfuges

2010-11-13 badtech • cyberwarfare • iran • stuxnet • virus

A community's response when a loved member had a serious illness

2010-11-12 community • internet • mathowie • metafilter • twitter

Cute little space invader remix

2010-11-12 games • spaceinvaders

Foreclosure fraud

Taibbi digs deep into the terrible mortgage paperwork banks are trying to foreclose with

2010-11-12 economy • finance • fraud • mortgage

Long profile on the crazy Taiwanese outfit making hilarious animated news interpretations

2010-11-12 applenews • china • hongkong • news • nextmedia • nma • taiwan

Proxy filter for Twitter; strip out tweets you don't want to see

2010-11-11 chrome • proxy • spam • twitter

Simple ambient display; tweets are turned into bird chirps

2010-11-11 auralization • chirp • medialab • raffi • sound • twitter • visualization

Google's Islamic logo

Nutjobs think the Veteran's day logo is somehow an Islamic thing

2010-11-11 google • islam • muslims • prejudice

xkcd discloses the secret password for getting competent tech support

2010-11-11 callcenter • customers • service • support • techsupport • xkcd

Salvaging a PV-2D Harpoon

Mechanic crew finds an old warbird airplane, gets it flying again

2010-11-11 aviation • flying • harpoon • warbird

Rubicon cancelled

Bummer, this was a good show

2010-11-11 amc • cable • rubicon • television • tv

Porting Flickr to YUI3

Crazy detailed Javascript performance notes

2010-11-11 http • javascript • performance • web • yui

US-Sino Currency Rap Battle

NMA comes through again!

2010-11-11 china • currency • funny • g20 • nma • via:metafilter • video

Credit card thief

Portrait of Albert Gonzalez, a prolific fraudster

2010-11-10 creditcards • crime • hacking • shadowcrew

A whole website opposing the new TSA body imaging scnaners

2010-11-10 airtravel • civilrights • flying • privacy • tsa

Digger simulator 2011

There's a whole world of industrial simulation games I know nothing about

2010-11-10 bulldozer • digging • games • simulation • steamshovel

The longest night

Crazy, short story about folks flying a little airplane to Hawai'i and suffering an engine failure, at night, in a rain squall over the Pacific

2010-11-10 aviation • flying • pacificocean • rescue

LA mystery missile

No one is taking responsibility for an unscheduled missile launch just off the California coast

2010-11-09 airspace • california • military • missile

Waterboarding for dummies

Details of how the US tortured prisoners

2010-11-09 afghanistan • iraq • torture • via:metafilter • warcrimes • waterboarding

Chinese crab party

A bit of mild political dissidence in Chine

2010-11-09 aiweiwei • art • beijing • civilrights • humanrights • shanghai • via:metafilter

Facebook ephemera

Field notes about teenagers who use Facebook in an unusual way, not allowing persistent offline updates

2010-11-08 facebook • kids • privacy • social • teenagers

Stack Overflow copy

An entire website is mirroring Stack's content in a license-appropriate way

2010-11-08 copyright • creativecommons • stackexchange

5 torrent records

Largest, oldest, most popular torrent files ever

2010-11-07 bittorrent • p2p • stats • torrent • via:waxy

A new pot dispensary opened in San Francisco, with a fresh, clean approach to marketing

2010-11-06 drugs • marijuana • pot • sanfrancisco • thc

Red Dead Redemption: Far Away

Beautiful song that defines the middle of the game, pl us lots of good in-game footage

2010-11-06 games • music • rdr • reddead • rockstar • western

Wayland architecture

New display server, possibly to replace X in Ubuntu

2010-11-06 desktop • display • graphics • linux • ubuntu • x • xwindows

Kinect teardown

See what's inside Microsoft's new UI device

2010-11-05 hardware • kinect • microsoft • natal • userinterface • xbox

Map Projections

Nice overview of map projection algorithms

2010-11-04 cartography • maps • projects

open source code for simplifying geographic shapefiles

2010-11-04 code • gis • mapshaper • shapefiles • stamen

Top down MMO design

A direct explanation of how to game balance an online RPG

2010-11-04 design • gamebalance • games • mmos

HTTP cookie problems

Thoughtful piece on how a simple protocol went terribly wrong

2010-11-04 badtech • cookies • http • internet • security

This is the scripting language Google uses with MapReduce to do logfile analysis

2010-11-03 awk • google • mapreduce • perl • python • scripting • unix

Genderless baby

Funny spoof animation about Echinacea, who will be loved no matter what he or she turns out to be

2010-11-03 gay • gender • legos • lesbian • parody • transgendered • video

Kenyan homebuilt

Amazing looking plane built from scratch "after Internet research"

2010-11-03 africa • aviation • flying • kenya

Confessions of an Arch wizard

Notes from running an online game in 1991

2010-11-03 gamedesign • gamemaster • games • management • mmos

Luke Perry at DragonCon

2010-11-02 celebrities • dragoncon • lukeperry • via:metafilter

Life on the ISS

Fun piece about life in space

2010-11-02 iss • nasa • space • via:jwz

Downloadable audio tour guides for your iPhone

2010-11-01 guide • iphone • travel

Microsoft online losses

Jaw-dropping chart of how much money Microsoft is losing online. It's a shame, the world needs competition for Google

2010-11-01 bing • finances • google • microsoft • search