Nelson's Linkblog 2011-04

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Royal wedding cake

Weird tradition of British monarchs mailing wedding cake slices

2011-04-30 cake • england • wedding

Sony's game network was hacked, all user data including passwords compromised.

2011-04-27 badtech • malware • security • games • sony

Wunderground has fire maps; they're great!

2011-04-26 fire • texas • marfa • flying • aviation • weather • wildfire

Open gay relationships

A serious, if limited attempt to study non-monogamy in gay couples

2011-04-25 relationships • sexuality • gay • sex

Simple bundled PDF downloads for free FAA data and documents

2011-04-25 aviation • flying • pdf • far • aim • afd • tp

Sony PSN outage theory

Claim that Sony's shut down their game network because folks figured out how to steal games via it

2011-04-25 sony • playstation • games • piracy

Startup Duo Security has really simple two factor authentication integration for OpenSSH

2011-04-25 ssh • openssh • security • twofactor

Travel philosophy

Interesting post from Justin halfway around the world; how to pick destinations when you have no particular plan

2011-04-25 travel • india • tourism

Great editorial calling for consumers to have a right to get their own data

2011-04-25 freedom • data • privacy

Guantanamo Docket

Visualization of the fate of all 772 prisoners we have information on

2011-04-25 guantanamo • prison • visualization • wikileaks

SmugMug vs. Amazon failure

Notes on how to use cloud services in a defensive way. Quick summary: add a lot of redundancy and complexity to your systems

2011-04-25 reliability • hosting • amazon

Guantanamo files

Many Wikileaks documents describe the structure and operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison

2011-04-25 civilrights • wikileaks • politics • afghanistan • guantanamo

Chinese Internet spying

Wikileaks article confirms the US knows the Chinese military is spying via the Internet

2011-04-24 badtech • internet • china • spying • wikileaks

Yanomamo heartbreak

Insane story of a US anthropologist marrying an Amazon tribal woman

2011-04-24 anthropology • marriage • culture • via:metafilter

EC2 vital service

"Life of our patients is at stake" in an Amazon Web Services forum post. Good lord.

2011-04-23 reliability • engineering • amazon • badtech

Eve time dialation

More MMO server architecture stuff; multi-tasking and time dialation

2011-04-22 optimization • eve • eveonline • games • mmos • realtime

Ronald McDonald shot

Not sure where this painting comes from, but I like it

2011-04-22 guns • violence • jackinthebox • mcdonalds • painting

Space Invader busted?

Rumour that the well known French street artist got picked up by LAPD

2011-04-21 la • losangeles • lapd • police • streetart • spaceinvader

Amazon's EC2 service is having trouble, causing problems for customers like Reddit, Foursquare, etc

2011-04-21 reddit • foursquare • amazon • ec2 • cloudcomputing

Ev's not an asshole

Nicely balanced, personal reflection from Matt Haughey about working with Evan Williams

2011-04-21 mathowie • evanwilliams • ev • twitter • odeo • investment • startups

Installable APRS tracker

2011-04-21 aprs • tracking • gps • hamradio

Working at Domino's

Metafilter comment from someone who makes pizza

2011-04-21 pizza • dominos • industrial • restaurant • food

Varanasi - Justinsomnia

Particularly good travelogue entry

2011-04-20 travel • justin • india • varanasi • photos

iPhone records where you've been. Being pitched as a security problem, but I think it's kinda cool

2011-04-20 security • iphone • privacy

nice pairing of photos and drawings made from the photos

2011-04-20 girls • cheesecake • pinups • via:metafilter

Naughty Nicholas Cage

Occasionally talented actor behaves poorly when drunk

2011-04-20 neworleans • drunks • nicholascage • actors

2011-04-17 music • automata • via:metafilter • flash

Game preview sausage

Intern explains how terrible games get gushing previews in the gaming press

2011-04-17 games • journalism • marketing

960 Grid System

Simple CSS layouts

2011-04-16 grids • css • layout • html

JavaScript Garden

Lots of nice notes on gotchas in the language

2011-04-16 javascript • programming

A new set of Python tools for cutting maps up into tiles via GDAL

2011-04-16 gdal • tiles • maps

Behind the poker bust?

Story about a payment processor who may have turned states' evidence against online poker

2011-04-15 poker • gambling • fraud • moneylaundering

Coreflood danger

FBI used the Coreflood servers to send shutdown messages to the zombies. That could backfire.

2011-04-15 badtech • coreflood • botnet • fbi • security

Coreflood takedown

FBI arranges the seizure of a botnet's command and control

2011-04-15 botnet • coreflood • badtech • fbi • lawenforcement • security

Historic phonemes

Provocative linguistics paper: analyzing phonemic diversity as a clue to language age and origin

2011-04-15 language • linguistics • historic

World Aero Club

Ride sharing website for pilots

2011-04-15 flying • aviation • maps

Emancipation Day

Washington DC holiday celebrating emancipation: it's on April 15 this year, which is why tax filing was delayed to April 18

2011-04-15 emancipation • history • slavery • taxes

Valve has people playing 13 indie games to get them to release Portal 2 early

2011-04-15 games • portal • valve

Cataclysm stats

Some graphs that show Warcraft activity in last year

2011-04-15 warcraft • stats • mmos • games • cataclysm

Migursky on NoGIS

Mike gave a great talk last week on a new software approach to geodata. Here's the talk in blog form.

2011-04-15 nogis • gis • mapping • software • hacking • stamen

Australia bush flying

Fun story about flying in backcountry Australia

2011-04-15 flying • aviation • australia

Super Meat Boy postmortem

2011-04-14 Games • postmortem

Google Docs data loss

sad story of Google losing some files for a paying customer

2011-04-14 outage • service • google

New SSH client for iOS. $5.

2011-04-14 via:waxy • ssh • iphone • ipad • ios

Great screen grab

2011-04-14 design • startrek • movie

HD: B-17 and B-25

Beautiful flying videos

2011-04-13 via:telstar • flying • warbirds • video • b17 • b25

greplin bloom filter

Everyone's favourite data structure has an open source implementation

2011-04-13 bloomfilter • ir • informationretrieval • textprocessing • lucene • opensource • code • grep

Legal child groping

We're now a country that debates whether it's appropriate to give six year old children intimate patdowns

2011-04-13 security • securitytheater • tsa • civilrights

Bioware and EA screw up their authentication servers. Once again, pirates get a better experience than legitimate customers.

2011-04-13 piracy • drm • badtech • ea • bioware • dragonage

Gmail security checklist

A practical guide to keeping your Google account secure

2011-04-13 google • security • malware • badtech • gmail

GPS track recorder for the iPhone

2011-04-13 iphone • ios • gps • tracker

This number seems grossly inflated, but I like the idea of anyone competing with google

2011-04-12 google • microsoft • bing • search

Lincecum in slow motion

Baseball pitching

2011-04-12 via:kottke • baseball • sports • pitching • slomo

A clear correlation between highway fatalities and Mexican lemon imports

2011-04-11 lemons • statistics • correlation • causation • funny • science

Google's HTTP replacement is now being used in production for some things, at least Gmail.

2011-04-11 google • http • spdy • protocol • performance

large page showing every unicode codepoint

2011-04-11 unicode • fonts • typography

Simple, clean terrain tiles

2011-04-11 acetate • maps

Yet another unusual writing system, invented by the king of Cameroon around 1900

2011-04-11 writing • language • unicode • cameroon

Introducing Unix

Charming video from the early 70s?

2011-04-11 Unix • Computing • Belllabs

simple video shows 45,000 characters

2011-04-10 unicode • i18n • typography

lego sniper rifle

with video of mechanism

2011-04-09 guns • lego • via:iamcal

Lovely gay couple

Sweet profile of a Toronto socialite couple

2011-04-09 Gay • Family • Love • Toronto • Canada

Online Identity

Ev breaks down different aspects of online identity

2011-04-08 identity • openid • facebook • twitter

Planned Parenthood activities

What the organization actually does

2011-04-08 politics • freedom • health • healthcare • budget • republicans

Hypoxia is no joke

Terrifying cockpit recording

2011-04-08 aircraft • aviation • flying • hypoxia • oxygen • atc • medical

projects page for Mike Bostock, genius Javascript hacker and visualization expert

2011-04-07 javascript • polymaps • protovis • d3 • coding • opensource • visualization

Eve: interview with The Mittani

Excellent interview with the head of Goonswarm, one of the most powerful alliances in Eve Online. "That’s why I play the game, really- to tear social groups apart."

2011-04-07 eve • eveonline • games • ccp • goonswarm • somethingawful • themittani

America, America VIII

Photography by Peter Granser

2011-04-07 art • photography • photos • america • petergranser

Facebook datacenter design

Nice to see this sort of innovative hardware setup going non-secret

2011-04-07 google • facebook • datacenter • hardware

he's mixing a few metaphors

2011-04-07 via:tumblr • starwars • darthvader • cosplay

Stupidest pilot ever

Painful recording of a jackass who decided to land on a beach in New York

2011-04-07 pilot • aviation • flying • stupid

Huckabee Whitewash

GOP presidential possibility destroyed records from his time as governor

2011-04-06 transparency • politics • corruption • huckabee • gop • republicans • president • election

Interesting numbers from the best iOS photo app

2011-04-06 camera • photo • iphone • ios • appstore

Verizon vs. ATTFail

Hard numbers on how awful AT&T's service is. 5% dropped call rate!

2011-04-05 att • attfail • verizon • iphone • cellular • mobile

Writing a PyPy interpreter

Simple example of using the PyPy infrastructuer to build a toy language

2011-04-05 languages • python • jit • compiler • optimization • via:mattc

Free iOS cached map app: 2 gigabytes!

2011-04-05 ios • iphone • ipad • maps • openstreetmap

P-51 Mustang rides

$975; it's not terrible

2011-04-05 flying • aviation • mustang • p51

Google Certificate Catalog

Google's been tracking SSL certificates and will give you data about them

2011-04-04 ssl • security • goodtech • google

I always think of this!

2011-04-04 flying • funny • iphone

Fantasy blueballer

NMA investigates the Song of Ice and Fire phenomenon

2011-04-04 fantasy • books • novels • nma • funny • iceandfire

UFO abducts aircraft

Event from Australia, 1978

2011-04-04 ufos • paranormal • aviation • flying • airplane • australia

Cannabis Culture

Hypnotic video of people passing joints at a wealthy party

2011-04-03 marijuana • drugs • party

Generic SQL injection attack seems to have infected hundreds of thousands of servers

2011-04-02 badtech • malware • lizamoon • virus • antivirus

Stalk people online via geotags in social media

2011-04-01 privacy • geotagging • geolocation • location

Module to add infix notation to long data processing

2011-04-01 python • code • syntax • clever • hack • software • via:joshua

Nice little joke from Google

2011-04-01 fonts • funny • helvetica • google • aprilfools

Sun n Fun damage

Huge storm hit a big airplane fly-in; lots of damage, really a mess

2011-04-01 airplanes • aviation • sunnfun • lakeland • klal • weather • storm • insurance