Nelson's Linkblog 2012-08

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Eric Fischer profile

Nice intro to Eric's map projects

2012-08-31 cartography • infovis • maps

Etsy datacenter

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

TF5-4523: The Mapmaking Process

1973 Army video about how they make maps

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

Being a party princess

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

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

Twitter interest targeting

The ad platform grows

2012-08-30 ads • advertising • twitter

Wendy Schmidt profile

Unusually detailed info on Eric Schmidt's wife

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

New British TV drafting off the success of Downton Abbey

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

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 illness • os • programming • schizophrenia

A smartphone sex toy "for long distance couples"

2012-08-29 sex • smartphone • vibrator

Sina Weibo's 3rd birthday

Update on the enormous Chinese Twitter-like service

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

MongoDB aggregate

NoSQL system adds a query language

2012-08-29 mongo • nosql • sql

Some gossipy insight into the failure of an innovative games company

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

Grim Meathook Future

Great little rant / essay about futurism

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

Bay Area radiation survey

Helicopter flying low over the Bay Area this week

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

Patent jury nonsense

More info on the ridiculous jury decision in Apple v Samsung

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

Hurricanes Since 1851

Lovely visualization / map; south pole centered projection

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

R2B: Return to Base

Korean Top Gunesque film, awesome dogfight between skyscrapers

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

Northern cities vowel shift

How English pronunciation is changing radically in the northern US

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

Apple Configurator

Tool for managing collections of iPads, say for a school

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

Blued: Chinese Grindr

Gay pickup app has a China-local version

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

Gangam style (강남스타일)

Korean party rocking

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

Global aviation charts

Amazing amount of work: worldwide aviation charts

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

Patent jury trials

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

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

Facebook for iOS

Details on a high profile HTML -> native app conversion

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

Broadband progress report map

Excellent map of US Internet access, using modern web techs

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

Simple way to record sound playing on your Mac

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

Catholic Church in America

Detailed insight into the Church's finances in the US

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

Great set of network diagnostic tools from Hurricane Electric

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

Ghosts in the ROM

Finding dev team images hidden in the old Mac SE ROM

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

Retina Web with cookies

Clever and simple

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

Intellectual Ventures profile

Details on the patent troll company

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

Usain Bolt and Steroids

Story I linked earlier is false

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

Closed map Minecraft

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

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

Towards A Retina Web

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

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

Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple?

Very clearly argued case against IP maximalism

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

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

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

Oakland police radio stream

New system is P25 digital

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

Cell towers vs police radios

How does this happen?

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

Designer / programmer working at Stamen, also Meshu

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

Church of Robotron

A mythology for the classic game

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

Teen sexting codes

Hilarious list for cluing in the parents

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

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 gnss-sdr • gps • hacking • radio

Android SMS payment virus

Very nasty malware in China

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

Localised JavaScript

Program in Javascript in your own spoken language

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

iMessage security

Apple should document the protocol and encourage security testing

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

Black Eyed Peas video; interesting animation

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

More Zynga ugliness

Lots of bad news compounded

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

Location accuracy

Yelp shares some data on wifi vs cell vs gps positioning

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

Barebacking in gay porn

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

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

This little image macro makes me ache

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

Thomas Caffall, murderer

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

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

Criminalizing Photography

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

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

Intel CPU monitoring tool; shows current frequency, etc

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

VisualEditor - MediaWiki

Amazing they're only starting on this now

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

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 perseids • photo • sanfrancisco • spaceclaw • sutrotower

Stripe in Tarsnap

A better option than PayPal

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

ASA martini standard

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

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

Amazon same-day delivery?

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

2012-08-13 amazon • delivery • retail

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 ads • advertising • minecraft • urlshortener

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

2012-08-12 astronomy • javascript • sun

Drought and Deluge in the Lower 48

Mike Bostock's first graphic for the NYTimes

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

Is Usain Bolt on steroids?

Depressing claims that all athletes can and do dope

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

Twitter underground economy

Independent investigation into the market for buying followers on Twitter

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

250M web pages in 40 hours, $600

Nice writeup of using EC2 to do a massive web crawl

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

Ultrarich pay low taxes

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

2012-08-10 finance • taxes

A database of nude shots by male film actors

2012-08-10 gay • movies • nudity

Ohio vote suppression

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

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

IPO non-lockups

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

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

Javascript with only ()[]{}!+

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

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

Blizzard hacked

Fairly severe; user login details stolen

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

Gauss malware details

What's inside the malware

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

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

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

Script to try to divine the structure of a JSON blob

2012-08-09 data • json • python

US drone pilots

Hard stats: Air Force currently has 1358 drone pilots

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

Theodolite iPhone App

Interesting augmented reality app

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

Jeff and Sanjay

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

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

A popular fast string hashing algorithm

2012-08-08 code • hashing • optimization

archive.org torrents

Details on how they're using BitTorrent

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

Wikipedia Redefined

An unsolicited redesign; looks great

2012-08-07 design • wikipedia

Multitouch history

Great roundup of HCI research

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

1904 Olympics medalist in gymnastics; had a wooden leg

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

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

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

More on Mat Honan's hack

Details of what went wrong

2012-08-07 hack • mathonan • security

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 • nasa • via:hackernews • youtube

Mars Curiosity tech details

Descriptions of the spacecraft and rover systems

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

NIST: identity ecosystem

US standards agency is working on an Internet authentication solution

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

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

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

Watch Mars landing

Various options for video feeds

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

Leaflet Map Template

Great little starter kit for web maps

2012-08-04 javascript • leaflet • maps

Morrowind Overhaul

Well managed modpack for the amazing old game

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

Mars Curiosity landing

Fantastically complex landing system

2012-08-04 curiosity • mars • space

Mat Honan hacked

Break one account, ruin someone's whole digital life

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

Some Jews & The Gays

Amazing Gore Vidal essay, also almost incomprehensible 31 years later

2012-08-03 gay • gays • gorevidal

KickStarter to have a gay gamer convention in San Francisco

2012-08-03 games • gay • sanfrancisco

PDF Unlock for Mac

remove stupid editing restrictions

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

High-frequency trading

Overview of the market impact

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

Nasdaq's FB IPO failure

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

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

XScreenSaver for iOS

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

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

Bug loses $10M / minute

Automated trading gone wrong

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

Pinboard bug postmortem

Great detailed analysis of a typical webapp bug

2012-08-02 bugs • coding • postmortem