Nelson's Linkblog 2012-08

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Eric Fischer profile

Nice intro to Eric's map projects

2012-08-31 maps • cartography • infovis

Etsy datacenter

2012-08-31 etsy • hardware • devops • ops • datacenter

TF5-4523: The Mapmaking Process

1973 Army video about how they make maps

2012-08-31 maps • cartography • via:metafilter • usarmy • army

Being a party princess

What it's like to be the party princess at kids' birthday parties

2012-08-31 disney • princess • parties • via:metafilter

Twitter interest targeting

The ad platform grows

2012-08-30 twitter • advertising • ads

Wendy Schmidt profile

Unusually detailed info on Eric Schmidt's wife

2012-08-30 google • nantucket • ericschmidt • wendyschmidt

New British TV drafting off the success of Downton Abbey

2012-08-30 tv • television • england • stoppard

Just launched, iPhone app for improving your life

2012-08-29 habits • lifestyle • lift • obvious

Hacker outsider art; an OS that plays songs for God written by a schizophrenic engineer

2012-08-29 os • programming • schizophrenia • illness

A smartphone sex toy "for long distance couples"

2012-08-29 sex • vibrator • smartphone

Sina Weibo's 3rd birthday

Update on the enormous Chinese Twitter-like service

2012-08-29 twitter • china • weibo • startups

MongoDB aggregate

NoSQL system adds a query language

2012-08-29 nosql • mongo • sql

Some gossipy insight into the failure of an innovative games company

2012-08-29 via:metafilter • startups • onlive • perlman

Grim Meathook Future

Great little rant / essay about futurism

2012-08-27 futurism • future • technology • facism

Bay Area radiation survey

Helicopter flying low over the Bay Area this week

2012-08-27 sanfrancisco • bayarea • helicopter • radiation • dhs • nnsa

Patent jury nonsense

More info on the ridiculous jury decision in Apple v Samsung

2012-08-26 apple • samsung • patents • ip • jury

Hurricanes Since 1851

Lovely visualization / map; south pole centered projection

2012-08-26 maps • hurricanes • visualization • infovis

R2B: Return to Base

Korean Top Gunesque film, awesome dogfight between skyscrapers

2012-08-24 movies • aviation • topgun • korea

Northern cities vowel shift

How English pronunciation is changing radically in the northern US

2012-08-24 language • vowel • accents • via:metafilter • dialect • accent

Apple Configurator

Tool for managing collections of iPads, say for a school

2012-08-24 ipad • apple • management • ios

Blued: Chinese Grindr

Gay pickup app has a China-local version

2012-08-23 gay • china • grindr • blued

Gangam style (강남스타일)

Korean party rocking

2012-08-23 music • korea • lmfao • gangam

Global aviation charts

Amazing amount of work: worldwide aviation charts

2012-08-23 aviation • navigation • maps • skyvector • flying

Patent jury trials

The stupidity of IP law in the US, going to a civil jury

2012-08-23 patents • jurys • apple • samsung • ip

Facebook for iOS

Details on a high profile HTML -> native app conversion

2012-08-23 facebook • ios • iphone • apps

Broadband progress report map

Excellent map of US Internet access, using modern web techs

2012-08-23 mapbox • maps • broadband • fcc • data

Simple way to record sound playing on your Mac

2012-08-23 macos • mac • sound • recording

Catholic Church in America

Detailed insight into the Church's finances in the US

2012-08-22 economist • news • catholic • church • business • religion

Great set of network diagnostic tools from Hurricane Electric

2012-08-22 bgp • he.net • networking • internet • tcpip • diagnostic

Ghosts in the ROM

Finding dev team images hidden in the old Mac SE ROM

2012-08-22 mac • apple • easteregg • via:hackernews

Retina Web with cookies

Clever and simple

2012-08-22 retina • apache • javascript • web

Intellectual Ventures profile

Details on the patent troll company

2012-08-22 patents • freedom • myhrvold • intellectualventures • startups

Usain Bolt and Steroids

Story I linked earlier is false

2012-08-22 usainbolt • olympics • running • fabrication • news • journalism

Closed map Minecraft

excellent story of a social experiment, even if it's fiction

2012-08-21 games • minecraft • apocalypse • via:metafilter

Towards A Retina Web

Various options for multi-resolution graphics. This is all too complicated.

2012-08-21 web • html • retina • apple • design • graphics

Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple?

Very clearly argued case against IP maximalism

2012-08-21 innovation • patents • startups • apple • samsung • business

$0.01/GB/month for very high latency storage. Backups!

2012-08-21 backups • amazon • aws • storage • data

Oakland police radio stream

New system is P25 digital

2012-08-21 oakland • police • radio • p25

Cell towers vs police radios

How does this happen?

2012-08-21 policeradio • oakland • celltower • radio • wireless

Designer / programmer working at Stamen, also Meshu

2012-08-20 stamen • meshu • programmer • hacker • design • eyeo

Church of Robotron

A mythology for the classic game

2012-08-20 games • robotron • portland • kra

Teen sexting codes

Hilarious list for cluing in the parents

2012-08-20 language • teenagers • sex • funny

Django Python 3

How the big web framework is migrating

2012-08-19 django • python • webapp

Hackers doing geolocation the hard way

2012-08-19 radio • gnss-sdr • gps • hacking

Android SMS payment virus

Very nasty malware in China

2012-08-19 china • android • malware • badtech • sms • fraud

Localised JavaScript

Program in Javascript in your own spoken language

2012-08-19 via:hackernews • language • javascript • localization

iMessage security

Apple should document the protocol and encourage security testing

2012-08-19 via:hackernews • apple • imessage • security • sms • im

Black Eyed Peas video; interesting animation

2012-08-18 music • blackeyedpeas • bep • xoxoxo • animation • video

More Zynga ugliness

Lots of bad news compounded

2012-08-18 zynga • fraud • ipo • stock • games

Location accuracy

Yelp shares some data on wifi vs cell vs gps positioning

2012-08-17 gps • location • mobile • geo

Barebacking in gay porn

Excellent essay about the breaking of an AIDS taboo in the porn industry

2012-08-17 gay • aids • sex • via:metafilter • nsfw

This little image macro makes me ache

2012-08-15 mars • curiosityrover • sad • lonely

Thomas Caffall, murderer

Facebook of the killer at Texas A&M. He likes his guns.

2012-08-14 guns • murder • facebook • texas

Criminalizing Photography

NYTimes on the increasing effort to stop Americans from taking photos in public

2012-08-14 civilrights • photography • journalism • police

Intel CPU monitoring tool; shows current frequency, etc

2012-08-13 monitoring • intel • power • hardware

VisualEditor - MediaWiki

Amazing they're only starting on this now

2012-08-13 wikipedia • editing • richtext • html • javascript

Simple web service to convert a description of a projection to an EPSG number

2012-08-13 epsg • gis • projection • srid

Perseid + Sutro Tower

Space claw with meteor (/cc @burritojustice)

2012-08-13 spaceclaw • sutrotower • photo • sanfrancisco • perseids

Stripe in Tarsnap

A better option than PayPal

2012-08-13 payments • via:hackernews • creditcard • tarsnap • paypal

ASA martini standard

Last publication by the American Standards Association before being subsumed into ISO

2012-08-13 martini • cocktail • via:metafilter • funny

Amazon same-day delivery?

Analysis suggests Amazon is building warehouses in many states, near customers

2012-08-13 amazon • retail • delivery

A URL shortener that pays per click, to get ad views. Minecraft community uses this to make a few bucks off mods

2012-08-12 minecraft • ads • urlshortener • advertising

Javascript demo, also a really nice visualization of the sun's position over seasons

2012-08-12 astronomy • sun • javascript

Drought and Deluge in the Lower 48

Mike Bostock's first graphic for the NYTimes

2012-08-11 nytimes • graphics • d3 • journalism • drought • visualization

Is Usain Bolt on steroids?

Depressing claims that all athletes can and do dope

2012-08-11 doping • steroids • olympics • usainbolt

Twitter underground economy

Independent investigation into the market for buying followers on Twitter

2012-08-11 twitter • spam • scam • via:hackernews

250M web pages in 40 hours, $600

Nice writeup of using EC2 to do a massive web crawl

2012-08-11 via:hackernews • crawl • http • web • search

Ultrarich pay low taxes

A quarter of the top income earners in the US paid < 15% in taxes

2012-08-10 taxes • finance

A database of nude shots by male film actors

2012-08-10 nudity • gay • movies

Ohio vote suppression

Republicans move to make it harder to vote in a battleground state

2012-08-10 ohio • politics • election • civilrights • via:metafilter

IPO non-lockups

Zynga: "insiders were able to sell shares earlier than expected"

2012-08-10 ipo • investing • zynga • stock

Javascript with only ()[]{}!+

Exploiting goofy Javascript rules to bootstrap the whole language from 8 punctuation chars

2012-08-10 via:hackernews • javascript • funny • hack

Blizzard hacked

Fairly severe; user login details stolen

2012-08-09 blizzard • games • diablo • warcraft

Gauss malware details

What's inside the malware

2012-08-09 badtech • malware • israel • stuxnet • gauss • virus • us • lebanon

Another Stuxnet/Duqu/Flame type malware, this one aimed at stealing Lebanese bank logins

2012-08-09 lebanon • us • israel • stuxnet • malware • badtech • gauss • virus

Script to try to divine the structure of a JSON blob

2012-08-09 JSON • python • data

US drone pilots

Hard stats: Air Force currently has 1358 drone pilots

2012-08-09 aviation • flying • drones • airforce

Theodolite iPhone App

Interesting augmented reality app

2012-08-09 iphone • theodolite • gps • navigation

Jeff and Sanjay

Nice profile of two of Google's most brilliant systems engineers

2012-08-08 google • software • jeffdean • sanjayghemawat • engineers

A popular fast string hashing algorithm

2012-08-08 hashing • optimization • code

archive.org torrents

Details on how they're using BitTorrent

2012-08-08 torrent • bittorrent • archive.org • brewsterkhale

Wikipedia Redefined

An unsolicited redesign; looks great

2012-08-07 wikipedia • design

Multitouch history

Great roundup of HCI research

2012-08-07 hci • ui • ux • multitouch • apple • interface

1904 Olympics medalist in gymnastics; had a wooden leg

2012-08-07 olympics • 1904 • sports • handicapped • paralympics

Interesting: GPS transmits location over VHF up to 9 miles, for tracking

2012-08-07 gps • tracking • garmin • dogcollar

More on Mat Honan's hack

Details of what went wrong

2012-08-07 security • mathonan • hack

moot speaks on his unruly online community

2012-08-06 4chan • via:waxy

YouTube takes down NASA videos

Spurious copyright claims

2012-08-06 copyright • youtube • nasa • via:hackernews

Mars Curiosity tech details

Descriptions of the spacecraft and rover systems

2012-08-06 mars • space • nasa • via:metafilter • jpl • curiosity

NIST: identity ecosystem

US standards agency is working on an Internet authentication solution

2012-08-06 internet • identity • privacy • security • nist

Goodness, but that's obscene for a 1945 funny book

2012-08-06 via:zwicky • gay • comics • funny • entendre • sex

Watch Mars landing

Various options for video feeds

2012-08-05 mars • space • webcast • curiosity

Leaflet Map Template

Great little starter kit for web maps

2012-08-04 maps • javascript • leaflet

Morrowind Overhaul

Well managed modpack for the amazing old game

2012-08-04 morrowind • tes • games • elderscrolls

Mars Curiosity landing

Fantastically complex landing system

2012-08-04 mars • space • curiosity

Mat Honan hacked

Break one account, ruin someone's whole digital life

2012-08-04 hacking • badtech • mathonan • gizmodo • security • icloud • apple

Some Jews & The Gays

Amazing Gore Vidal essay, also almost incomprehensible 31 years later

2012-08-03 gorevidal • gays • gay

KickStarter to have a gay gamer convention in San Francisco

2012-08-03 gay • sanfrancisco • games

PDF Unlock for Mac

remove stupid editing restrictions

2012-08-03 pdf • mac • password • acrobat • unlock

High-frequency trading

Overview of the market impact

2012-08-03 trading • hft • markets • stocks

Nasdaq's FB IPO failure

Second-by-second charts of the failure of the market

2012-08-02 facebook • ipo • nasdaq • market • trading

XScreenSaver for iOS

jwz's legendary set of graphics hacks, on your phone

2012-08-02 iphone • ios • xscreensaver • jwz

Bug loses $10M / minute

Automated trading gone wrong

2012-08-02 bug • badtech • nasdaq • markets

Pinboard bug postmortem

Great detailed analysis of a typical webapp bug

2012-08-02 bugs • postmortem • coding