Nelson's Linkblog 2011-03

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Home theater PC

Notes from a hacker

2011-03-31 htpc • pc • tv • video

Minecraft rock star

Charming post from Notch, the Minecraft author, about getting a surprise private jet trip to a party

2011-03-30 fame • fun • minecraft • rockstar

Title fraud in NY

"Is it common to tip your title agent $150 when buying a house in New York?"

2011-03-29 fraud • housing • realestate • title

Map rendering software

2011-03-29 maps • osm

Open terrain map tiles

My StackExchange question about maps

2011-03-29 maps • osm • terrain • tiles

Cocoon - Grid-It

A little carrying thingy for lots of little gadgets

2011-03-28 aviation • bag • case • gadgets • storage

Rogers broke Warcraft

Canadian ISP's lousy P2P throttling filters also hampered low bandwidth Warcraft traffic

2011-03-28 badtech • games • isps • rogers • trafficshaping • warcraft • worldofwarcraft

Amazing little climbing game, like a modern Crazy Climber

2011-03-28 climbing • flash • games • rockclimbing

1ms latency systems

Systems talk on building a very low latency transactional system

2011-03-28 architecture • computation • design • performance • systems • trading

MapBlast LineDrive

A forgotten, beautiful visualization of driving directions

2011-03-28 directions • driving • linedrive • mapblast • maps • yahoo

Peanuts despair

Peanuts comic without the final panel is remarkably bleak

2011-03-28 3eanuts • cartoon • funny • peanuts • via:metafilter

Virginia Woolfe soundtrack

Who knew they made an LP of the dialog?

2011-03-28 elizabethtaylor • movies • richardburton

Mustard hypnosis

Captivating video of a machine capable of picking up sauces

2011-03-28 engineering • machines • robots • via:metafilter • video

Python JIT postmortem

Unladen Swallow project ended up fizzling out, but some good observations

2011-03-28 jit • jitc • llvm • performance • python

Minecraft texture pack that's very pink and girly

2011-03-28 art • games • gender • girly • minecraft

A manifesto from someone claiming to be behind the Comodo SSL certificate hack

2011-03-28 badtech • hacking • iran • security • ssl

Little tangible computer interface, looks kinda silly but kinda cool

2011-03-27 computers • games • hci • tangible • userinterface

The National Map

USGS now provides a slippy map

2011-03-27 data • government • maps • usgs

Mid-air gear repair

Wingwalker changes the tire on a plane

2011-03-26 aviation • flying • mechanic • stuntpilot • wingwalker

Fixing Google eng

Interesting list of problems in Google's engineering culture. I'd agree with about half of these.

2011-03-26 culture • engineering • google • management • systems

Git Community Book

2011-03-26 documentation • git • manual • scm • software

Wrapper script for git makes common github operations easier

2011-03-26 git • github • programming • scm • tools

More on the Bluetooth GPS for iOS

2011-03-25 aviation • bluetooth • gps • ios

new iOS Bluetooth GPS

Third choice of device: looks pretty good

2011-03-25 aviation • bluetooth • gps • ios • ipad • iphone

SSL CA survey 2010

Amazing bit of research into what's in the wild for SSL certificate authorities

2011-03-25 cas • certificates • security • ssl • x.509

A Javascript compiler / obfuscator; better than Google Closure and YUI?

2011-03-25 closure • compiler • javascript • programming • yui

EFF SSL Observatory

Data on the roots of the SSL web of trust

2011-03-25 civilrights • security • ssl • trust

Smutley the cat

AIDS education video

2011-03-25 aides • aids • animation • funny • sex • via:metafilter

Ark Music Factory

the machine behind the instant phenom video

2011-03-25 friday • industry • media • music • videos

Eve hardware upgrade

Performance notes from a recent systems upgrade: more RAM, CPU, etc = measured improvements

2011-03-24 eve • eveonline • games • hardware • mmos • optimization • systems

color.xxx pitch deck

Freakin' hysterical

2011-03-24 funny • hype • iphone • parody • socialmedia • software

Yet more Raffi+Gaga

2011-03-23 ladygaga • raffi • twitter

My buddy Raffi explained the Twitter code to Lady Gaga

2011-03-23 ladygaga • nerds • raffi • twitter

@DadNeedsADrink

Funny Twitter account

2011-03-23 fatherhood • funny • parenting • twitter

Garbage collection (1960)

First published description of garbage collection; look for the keyword "reclamation"

2011-03-23 computerscience • garbagecollection • gc • languages • lisp • programming

Eve dynamic BGP

Online game has some fancy technology to adjust BGP routes in real time for better user experience

2011-03-23 bgp • ccp • eve • eveonline • mmos • networks • optimization

Developer Support Handbook

From Pamela Fox, who did great dev support work at Google

2011-03-23 advocacy • developers • google • support

A font whose purpose is to draw bar charts and pie charts and stuff

2011-03-23 clever • fonts • hack • via:iamcal • visualization

Certificate authority compromised

Evidence that one of the important links in the chain of security for web browsers was compromised last month

2011-03-23 badtech • certificates • https • security • ssl

Elizabeth Taylor to Reagan on AIDS

What an amazing woman

2011-03-23 80s • activism • aids • elizabethtaylor • reagan

Metafilter vs. sex traffickers

Amazing story of an Internet community helping some young Russian women in a dangerous situation

2011-03-23 community • immigration • metafilter • prostitution • russia

snappy compression

A Google compression library: 2x bigger than gzip, but 10x faster

2011-03-22 code • compression • google • library • opensource • speed

Proof git was written for real programs who work in sometimes messy way

2011-03-22 branching • git • vc • versioncontrol

Google doodle patent twaddle

Google patents the idea of their doodles. In related news: global patent system is broken.

2011-03-22 absurd • badtech • google • patents

Game release dates

RPS calls for a single global release date, instead of the current three day European delay

2011-03-22 europe • games • marketing • release

Courses have instructors

Excited by the success of my friend's new startup providing online teaching with real live instruction

2011-03-22 courses • distancelearning • education • teaching

A headless WebKit for running Javascript

2011-03-22 browser • headless • software • testing • visualization

Child performance horror screwed down 35%

2011-03-22 awful • children • funny • music • via:metafilter

Wikipedia history map

Visualization of all the geotagged wikipedia articles with specific years in them

2011-03-22 history • map • visualization • wikipedia

Techncial weather forecasts done with nicer visualization than the usual government products

2011-03-21 forecast • weather

Etsy deployment

They push 20 code changes to their servers a day, here's part of how

2011-03-21 deployment • etsy • servers

Twitter datacenters

They just pulled off a big datacenter migration, a phenomenally complex task

2011-03-21 architecture • datacenter • hosting • scalability • twitter

Kyle Franklin interview

Airshow pilots and wingwalker had a crash and fire, interview with the victim

2011-03-21 accident • aviaton • flying • franklinsflyingcircus

Amazon Payments

Flexible Payments Service, a PayPal competitor

2011-03-20 amazon • creditcards • ecommerce • payments • paypal

Freedom to roam

The right to travel and forage private property is codified in much of Northern Europe

2011-03-20 civilrights • foraging • freedom • hiking • rights • roaming

Stop motion animation of many images of monuments

2011-03-20 paris • photography • via:metafilter • video

Fun and pretty puzzle game

2011-03-19 games • puzzles • spacechem • zachtronics

Takes screenshots of your Windows screens at regular intervals

2011-03-19 productivity • screenshot • software • timetracking

third party integration for VFRmap

2011-03-19 api • aviation • flying • maps

Color scheme designer

Helps you pick out a pleasing palette

2011-03-19 color • colortheory • design

notepad app for iPad, tries to be beautiful

2011-03-19 ios • ipad • notepad • notes

Microsoft on Rustock takedown

Sounds like an amazing bit of work they did

2011-03-18 badtech • botnet • microsoft • rustock • security

Details of a failure of Amazon's hosting infrastructure

2011-03-18 amazon • outage • reddit • reliability

PostgreSQL interface for Python, written purely in Python

2011-03-18 database • postgis • postgres • postgresql • python

PyPy compatibility

Things that don't work like cPython. The lack of refcounting seems like it will cause lots of confusing errors

2011-03-18 code • programming • pypy • python

PyPy in practice

Matt tries out PyPy; it works!

2011-03-18 jit • optimization • pypy • python

London Boys vs Autechre

2011-03-18 80s • autechre • funny • music • video

Tokyo park during an earthquake: cracks, water coming up through landfill

2011-03-18 earthquake • japan • tokyo • video

VCs never say No

Exchange about AirBnB: Fred Wilson's last comment is "We are still in the gathering data phase"

2011-03-18 airbnb • entrepreneurs • no • startups • vc • venturecapital

Gantz Graf dance

too short, but awesome little dance performance

2011-03-17 autechre • dance • glitch • music

RSA SecurID hacked by China?

RSA's two factor system is the target of a "Advanced Persistent Threat", which sounds like code for China to me

2011-03-17 badtech • china • hackers • hacks • rsa • securid • twofactor

Rustock Botnet offline

Coordinated takedown, but the zombies may yet re-find their master

2011-03-17 badtech • botnets • rustock • spam • virus

First person tsunami

Horrifying video of rising floodwaters; it just keeps coming and coming.

2011-03-16 earthquake • japan • tsunami • via:waxy • video

Details of the release of the CIA agent who killed two people in Pakistan

2011-03-16 cia • diplomacy • pakistan • spies • spycraft

VFR over the Rockies

List of various routes across the mountains

2011-03-16 aviation • flying • mountains • rockies

Metacritic: iOS

iPhone games become serious

2011-03-16 games • ios • ipad • iphone • reviews

Updates on benchmarks of the new Python VM. It's getting to production readiness!

2011-03-15 code • jit • optimization • python • speed

Flight sim history

Screenshots of old flight sims

2011-03-15 aviation • flight • games • simulators

Wives per GOP candidate

The party of family values is up and to the right!

2011-03-15 hypocrisy • marriage • politics • republicans

Who's That? Brooown!

New Das Racist video has some 16 bit videogaming goodness

2011-03-15 dasracist • games • music • retro

Twitter / OpenSource

They've put a lot of code online. Kestrel in particular is interesting.

2011-03-15 code • messagequeue • opensource • twitter

Urban water explorer

D3 driven visualization of quality of life and water consumption data. A bit hard to explore, but neat D3 demo.

2011-03-15 d3 • javascript • visualization • water • world

Render mathematical equations in HTML, via Javascript

2011-03-14 javascript • latex • math • tex • typesetting • via:metafilter

Single blade prop

Crazy propulsion for a motorglider

2011-03-13 aviation • planes • propeller

Bird aerobatics

Crazy video of birds doing mid-air somersaults

Tsunami in Santa Cruz

Close-up, detailed video of the waves hitting the harbour

2011-03-13 earthquake • santacruz • tsunami

Franklins' Flying Circus accident

Popular airshow performers have an engine failure during a flight, serious accident

2011-03-13 aerobatics • airshow • aviation • crash • franklinsflyingcircus • plane • wingwalker

Charlie Sheen / Ferris Bueller

Nice little performance

2011-03-13 charliesheen • ferrisbueller • movies • sheen

Python library for genetic algorithms. Nice slide presentation at PyCon

2011-03-12 gas • geneticalgorithms • optimization • programming • python

Fun performance of Tubular Bells by a bunch of women playing cool old synthesizers

2011-03-12 brooklyn • moog • music • organ • synthesizers • tubularbells

Collection of 4chan-style MSPaint comics, often about marijuana. Some NSFWish

2011-03-12 comics • funny • marijuana • mspaint • nsfw

iPad 2 Wi-Fi Teardown

What's inside and how it's built

2011-03-12 app • components • design • ipad • parts • teardown

Tsunami in SF Bay

great photo of a tidal wave

2011-03-11 earthquake • sanfrancisco • tidalwave • tsunami • weather

Here's what a tsunami looks like

2011-03-11 earthquake • ocean • tides • tsunami

GemCraft Labyrinth

Great Tower Defense game, been playing it a couple of weeks now

2011-03-11 games • gemcraft • towerdefense • via:metafilter

Mr. Rogers was awesome

We're missing this kind of sincerity in modern media

2011-03-10 emmys • fredrogers • mrrogers • television • tv • winning

Homebirth tragedy

Very sad story of a child dying because of a preventable infection. Turns out medical science has some value, who would have guessed?

2011-03-10 birth • death • homebirth • homeopathy • pregnancy • quacks • tragedy

YSlow for Chrome

Great tool just got tossed overboard from the burning ship that is Yahoo

2011-03-10 chrome • optimization • web

Company selling $300,000 / year in currency for the game Eve Online. Customer list was hacked.

2011-03-10 ccp • eve • eveonline • games • hacks • rmt

The passion gap

Nice reflection on why startups can be uniquely successful even with competition

2011-03-10 entrepreneurs • startups • success

$100 dedicated servers that use Xen on private hardware

2011-03-10 hosting • internet • servers • xen

Large e-commerce stores are vulnerable to scams

2011-03-10 apple • fraud • itunes • security

Google on Android malware

Official response to the mess in the Android store last week

2011-03-09 android • badtech • google • malware

Examples from the parallel Internet

2011-03-09 china • facebook • group • innovation • startups • twitter

Pinboard Crushing

Post-mortem of what happened to PinBoard the day they doubled their user count

2011-03-08 database • delicious • pinboard • scalability • yahoo

Timeline of web browsers

Great graphic of the family tree

2011-03-08 browsers • chrome • firefox • internet • mozilla • via:metafilter • web • webkit

Gay on the range

Collection of pulp gay novel covers

2011-03-08 1960s • gay • novels • pulp • via:metafilter

Happy Toy Machine

startup from a high school classmate; design and make custom toys

2011-03-08 custom • manufacture • play • toys

A different set of online weather reporting

2011-03-07 asos • aviation • awos • weather

List of online weather stations, they have a funky web UI

2011-03-07 aviation • awos • weather

Business that helps airplane owners manage their plane's maintenance

2011-03-07 aircraft • aviation • business • maintenance • planes

Enable Chrome speedups

GPU rendering and pre-rendering, not on by default

2011-03-07 acceleration • browser • chrome • google • gpu

Hysterically arch review of a terrible, but popular Parisian restaurant

2011-03-07 food • france • paris • restaurants • via:waxy

1900 infographics

amazing sociology data from students of WEB DuBois

2011-03-07 blackhistory • charts • dubois • graphics • infovis • via:waxy

State security office was seized during the protest, much evidence of brutality and spying

2011-03-07 civilrights • egypt • security

Like the Ballard novel; squatters in a 45 story skyscraper in Caracas

2011-03-06 ballard • highrise • jgballard • poverty • squatter • venezuela

AI Rock Paper Scissors

Simple learning Markov system, but it beats me!

2011-03-06 ai • games • rockpaperscissors • via:waxy

2011-03-06 fractals • graphics • via:mbostock • webgl

Why US broadband sucks

Head of my awesome ISP explains how the lack of fibre access maeks broadband suck

2011-03-06 broadband • competition • fcc • internet • isp • policy

Highlighting the 1000+ special rights that married people get under federal law

2011-03-05 civilrights • gay • government • marriage

Manning being held naked

Soldier accused of leaking the diplomatic cables is being denied clothing

2011-03-05 humanrights • manning • prison • wikileaks

yet another Javascript asynchronous loader. This is getting confusing

2011-03-04 asynchronous • javascript • optimization

Minecraft record factory

Incredible amount of complexity

2011-03-04 emergent • games • minecraft

Fact checking Jobs

Why would Apple feel the need to exaggerate their market dominance?

2011-03-04 apple • ios • ipad • stevejobs

Detailed profile of the Twitter and Square founder

2011-03-03 jack • jackdorsey • square • startups • twitter

Apparently the empty page is a complex special case

2011-03-03 aboutblank • badtech • browser • firefox • mozilla • via:diveintomark

Automattic Status

great public dashboard for WordPress and related services

2011-03-03 ddos • status • wordpress

16 years of Windows

Surprisingly engaging video of someone installing every version of Windows via upgrades. What's remarkable is how the old apps continue to work

2011-03-03 legacy • microsoft • windows

Android malware

The hazards of an open platform

2011-03-03 android • badtech • malware • rootkit • virus

Westboro Baptist photos

Photojournalist got access inside the church, interesting photos. Click Portfolio, then Westboro

2011-03-03 batshitinsane • gayrights • gays • photography • photos • westboro

Sony's war on hackers

Roundup of 10+ years of failed attempts to keep their products closed

2011-03-03 badtech • dmca • drm • hackers • sony

Urban downhill bike race

2011-03-03 bicycle • chile • danger • racing • via:metafilter

Beautiful Flash presentation of Baroque engraving techniques

2011-03-03 art • baroque • drawing • engraving • via:metafilter

X-Plane scenery map

places where enthusiasts have made scenery for the flight simulator

2011-03-03 aviation • flying • scenery • xplane

Shackleton in colour

Amazing photographs from the 1915 Antarctica expedition

2011-03-02 1915 • antarctica • exploration • photography • photos • shackleton • via:kottke

Javascript library to fake up a web browser environment while running headless in Rhino or the like

2011-03-02 browser • code • debugging • javascript

Engine out takeoff

Stupid pilot tricks

2011-03-02 batshitinsane • flying • gliding

Spacewar! HTML5

Classic game ported to run in Javascript, via a PDP-1 emulator

2011-03-02 games • html5 • javascript • spacewar

A reimagined children's book. Goodnight Shai-Hulud bursting out of the dune

2011-03-01 dune • goodnightmoon • parody • via:metafilter

Amazing photographs from an enormous pool of lava in the middle of a volcano

2011-03-01 geology • lava • magma • photography • photos • volcano

Javascript library to simplify web socket access

2011-03-01 code • html5 • javascript • library • websockets

Airplane sales 2010

Table of how many new airplanes were delivered in 2010

2011-03-01 airplanes • aviation • cessna • cirrus • market • piper

Sheen Family Circus

Instant remix of the crazy

2011-03-01 batshitinsane • charliesheen • crazy • familycircus • sheen • via:mathowie

Rumsfeld v. Rice

Crazy emails from a bad man

2011-03-01 bush • government • politics • rice • rumsfeld

Chainsaw birdcall

Insane video of an Australian Lyrebird imitating natural and artificial sounds

2011-03-01 birds • nature • song • via:metafilter

Social web browser: Looks like Google Chrome with Facebook woven through it

2011-03-01 browser • chrome • facebook • startup

It's bad to laugh at someone so clearly mentally ill, but boy this insanity is pretty epic

2011-03-01 actor • batshitinsane • charliesheen • crazy • drugs • sheen