Nelson's Linkblog 2013-07

about • archive • mastodon • feed

High Scores Alameda

Old school video game arcade opened in Alameda

2013-07-31 games • videogames • alameda

Visual design magazine featuring me! And @enf, @rachelbinx, @shashashasha, and others

2013-07-31 design • rivers • maps • meshu • enf • binx • shahwang

Twitter and synchrony

Interesting data on culture and time-of-day behavior

2013-07-31 twitter • stats • culture

Controlling the Beast

Profile of a pro LoL player who is learning not to be a toxic raging jerk

2013-07-31 community • lol • leagueoflegends • tribunal

Stack Exchange Data Explorer

Huge amount of data on the community site

2013-07-31 stackexchange • data • community • via:anildash

NSA hoovering up all Internet activity from many people in a massive database

2013-07-31 privacy • surveillance • nsa • snowden • civilrights

realtime use of Emoji on twitter

2013-07-30 emoji • twitter • trends • emoticons

Google Fibre: no servers

Amazingly lame broadband ToS

2013-07-30 google • broadband • freedom • netneutrality

Ken Rudolph short films

Nice catalog of the film work of a friend of mine

2013-07-30 kenru • film • movies

Hal Abelson's report on Aaron Swartz

Promised internal investigation into MIT's pursuit of charges against @aaronsw

2013-07-30 aaronsw • aaronswartz • mit

@NewspaperDickz

NSFW: childish, inappropriate drawings of penises on newspaper photos. (Also: hilarious)

2013-07-30 funny • nsfw • dicks • newspapers

Old Reader withdrawing

Amazing and bold statement; they can't handle the traffic and don't want it

2013-07-29 reader • rss • entrepreneurship

Internet’s war against creatives

Lovely editorial about the monsters in the gaming "community"

2013-07-29 games • philfish • fez • moderation

Pyongyang military review

Old school display of missiles, tanks, airplanes

2013-07-29 korea • northkorea • pyongyang • batshitinsane • military • stalinism

Subway river maps

Schematic maps of river systems

2013-07-29 maps • rivers

Classic Penny Arcade comic about bad behavior in online gaming

2013-07-28 games • community • anonymity • funny • shitcock

Chromecast root

Hardware is not particularly locked down

2013-07-28 via:hackernews • google • chrome • android • tv

Google as legal incubator

Various innovative lawyers who passed through Google

2013-07-28 google • legal • law • startups • amac

Javascript for sending to the new TV mirror gizmo

2013-07-27 chrome • javascript • api • airplay

Stripper in Williston

Poetic story about being a stripper in a North Dakota oil boomtown

2013-07-26 williston • northdakota • stripping • sexwork • via:metafilter

About geojson.io

Blog post explaining the cool new geo tool

2013-07-26 maps • geojson • json • validation

Amazing new geodata tool from @tmcw. Create, view, validate GeoJSON

2013-07-26 geojson • geography • validation • maps

Death of public key

Provocative argument that crypto measures don't work in face of government abuse

2013-07-25 surveillance • privacy • nsa • via:hackernews

Stellar DB postmortem

Great writeup of an ops problem and the friends who fixed it

2013-07-24 stellar • twitter • kottke • database • ops

Made with D3.js

Nice collection of particularly good visualizations

2013-07-24 d3js • javascript • visualization • infovis

Swole Acceptance

A subreddit for men who lift and have giant muscles

2013-07-24 fitness • muscles • batshitinsane • lifting

Resells OpenStreetmap data in conveniently packaged form

2013-07-24 osm • openstreetmap • maps • geodata

NSA wants SSL keys

Outrageous extension of surveillance powers

2013-07-24 prism • snowden • nsa • ssl • security • privacy • civilrights • surveillance

Nice summary of how the right code representation is better than architecture-specific assembly

2013-07-24 compilers • llvm • clang • ir • optimization • via:hackernews

F2P game ethics

Investigation into the coercive gambling-like business model of many contemporary games

2013-07-24 games • valve • teamfortress2 • via:metafilter • gambling • ethics

Mapping Millions of dots

Notes from @enf about how to make his beautiful not-exactly-heatmaps

2013-07-22 maps • visualization • infovis • heatmap • enf • mapbox

Erotic Cyrillic alphabet

NSFW: amusing erotic drawings

2013-07-21 1930s • via:boingboing • erotica • porn • cyrillic • russian

Paris From Above

Phenomenal aerial photo series on Bastille Day; Paris is usually closed to aircraft

2013-07-18 paris • france • photography • aerial • beautiful

Fruit Maturity Chart

Timeline of when fruits are ripe at a particular nursery

2013-07-18 fruit • groceries • via:metafilter

Propaganda leaflets (mildly NSFW)

2013-07-18 sex • propaganda • wwii • ww2 • psyops

The Drone That Killed My Grandson

A very personal take on America's anonymous, remote assassinations

2013-07-18 assassination • yemen • drone • politics • civilrights • terrorism

Tower controller has a bit of fun with Air Wisconsin

2013-07-17 flying • aviation • atc • funny

Surviving being senior (tech) management

Wise words from Kellan, Etsy's CTO

2013-07-17 etsy • management • engineering

Linus gets told

Kernel developer calls Linus on his bullshit being rude

2013-07-16 linus • linux • opensource • politics • girlswhocode

US roads (TopoJSON)

nice map inspired by Mike Bostock inspired by me

2013-07-16 maps • tiger • benfry • allstreets • roads • us

Simplifying GitHub licenses

GitHub finally makes it easy to put a proper license on published code

2013-07-16 github • licensing • opensource

javascript flame charts

Interesting profiling tool

2013-07-16 javascript • performance • chrome

Truly outrageous fake budget; assumes two jobs, no expenses

2013-07-16 money • budget • poverty • economics • america

NSA expansion pre-9/11

Illegal surveillance predates War on Terruh

2013-07-16 surveillance • nsa • civilrights

Not sure if brilliant or horrible

2013-07-15 via:metafilter • food • pbj • funny

Bounty artifacts in Dunedin

Strange little story of museum artifacts. Bonus: use of the word "pintle"

2013-07-14 bounty • history • museum • newzealand • pitcairn • mutiny

Interesting example of lying with maps

2013-07-12 maps • bruges • belgium

Google Glitch View

Streetview processing goes bad

2013-07-12 via:reddit • maps • google • glitch • streetview

Map label placement

Beautifully done OpenStreetmap cartography

2013-07-11 maps • labels

Harvard Classics .mobi

Kindle-friendly collection of a Great Books collection

2013-07-11 literature • culture • kindle • mobi • history • via:metafilter

Useful shim for opening terminal windows on a Mac

2013-07-11 alfred • ssh • terminal • workflow

Microsoft + NSA

Details on how a private company actively colluded in illegal espionage on its users

2013-07-11 microsoft • privacy • surveillance • nsa • prism • snowden

Why mobile web apps are slow

Nice explanation of hardware limitations

2013-07-11 webapps • mobile • ios • hardware • performance

Hardcore math site does beautiful WebGL graphics

2013-07-11 webgl • visualization • javascript

Field Papers v2

Awesome map project gets a refresh

2013-07-11 maps • stamen • migurski • fieldpapers • moma

CleanPowerSF Opt Out

San Francisco has some soft-headed power scheme, here's how to opt out of higher rates

2013-07-10 pge • power • sanfrancisco

Voynich Manuscript

Nice overview of the mysterious text

2013-07-10 voynich • books • apocrypha • crypto

Javascript / LocalStorage version of a round robin database, for browsers

2013-07-10 rrdtool • rrd • database • browsers • localstorage • javascript

Some really beautiful visualization work

2013-07-09 visualization • census • us • 1870 • maps

Building healthcare.gov

A new model for government websites

2013-07-09 mapbox • developmentseed • government • healthcare • via:hackernews

Google Google Apps Apps

Should be SF's next tourist promotion video

2013-07-08 drag • gay • funny • sanfrancisco

Twitter architecture

Analysis of a talk given by @raffi about how Twitter works

2013-07-08 performance • scalability • architecture • twitter

FBTiles map format

extension of MapBox tiles that allows chart margins to be displayed

2013-07-08 foreflight • maps • aviation • mbtiles • mapbox

Zombie Google Reader

Former Google engineer grabs all HTML, Javascript, etc and reanimated Google Reader

2013-07-08 google • reader • archive • xoogler

Cable tap agreement

How private companies aided NSA spying

2013-07-08 surveillance • nsa • civilrights • globalcrossing • gx

Bizarre aircraft

Various odd prototypes

2013-07-06 via:reddit • aviation • aircraft • airplanes

Nothing up my sleeve number

When a cryptographer needs to pick a random number but make it clear they didn't pick *that* random number

2013-07-06 crypto • math • security

Mike Bostock at Eyeo

D3 creator and NYT graphics guy talks at Eyeo Festival

2013-07-05 eyeo • design • d3js • d3 • mbostock • mikebostock • visualization

Berkeley DB license change

Oracle shuts down proprietary use of BDB in webapps

2013-07-05 oracle • database • license • agpl • sleepycat

Zen photon garden

2013-07-05 via:metafilter • art • light • demo • fun

1973 gay marriage

Sweet story of early political activism

2013-07-04 gay • marriage • equalrights • methodists

Even harder than it looks

2013-07-04 aviation • planes • u2 • u-2 • landing • military • funny • via:mbostock

USPS records all envelopes

Happy Independence Day! Do you feel safer, citizen?

2013-07-03 surveillance • privacy • usps • mail • via:hackernews • nsa • fbi

World of Rivers

National Geographic's map of all rivers, colored by flow volume

2013-07-03 rivers • maps • natgeo • nationalgeographic • hydrography

Bolivian president detained

Insanity over Snowden; unimagineable

2013-07-03 diplomacy • snowden • bolivia • politics • nsa

Internet Credit Union

archive.org is running a bank!

2013-07-02 banking • archiveorg • brewsterkahle • money • finance • via:metafilter

Detailed census treatments

2013-07-02 maps • poverty • unitedstates • usa • census

SF Bay Area as NY

2013-07-02 funny • sanfrancisco • newyork • culture • map

Chrome Page Load Time

Handy extension for showing how long a page takes to load

2013-07-02 chrome • performance

QuickMeme fraud

Details on the Reddit drama that led to a site being banned

2013-07-02 reddit • quickmeme • fraud • seo

Google: only 13% search

Interesting analysis of where Google dedicates real estate

2013-07-01 search • google • via:hackernews • ads

Measuring temperature in a kiln

2013-07-01 kiln • ceramics • temperature • metrics • via:metafilter

Interesting video + map presentation of a bike ride

2013-07-01 visualization • diary • travelog • journal • mapbox

Phone data visualized

Nice animation of what you can learn from mobile phone metadata records

2013-07-01 privacy • surveillance • metadata