Nelson's Linkblog 2013-07

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High Scores Alameda

Old school video game arcade opened in Alameda

2013-07-31 alameda • games • videogames

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

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

Twitter and synchrony

Interesting data on culture and time-of-day behavior

2013-07-31 culture • stats • twitter

Controlling the Beast

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

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

Stack Exchange Data Explorer

Huge amount of data on the community site

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

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

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

realtime use of Emoji on twitter

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

Google Fibre: no servers

Amazingly lame broadband ToS

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

Ken Rudolph short films

Nice catalog of the film work of a friend of mine

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

Old Reader withdrawing

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

2013-07-29 entrepreneurship • reader • rss

Internet’s war against creatives

Lovely editorial about the monsters in the gaming "community"

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

Pyongyang military review

Old school display of missiles, tanks, airplanes

2013-07-29 batshitinsane • korea • military • northkorea • pyongyang • 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 anonymity • community • funny • games • shitcock

Chromecast root

Hardware is not particularly locked down

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

Google as legal incubator

Various innovative lawyers who passed through Google

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

Javascript for sending to the new TV mirror gizmo

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

Stripper in Williston

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

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

About geojson.io

Blog post explaining the cool new geo tool

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

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

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

Death of public key

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

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

Stellar DB postmortem

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

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

Made with D3.js

Nice collection of particularly good visualizations

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

Swole Acceptance

A subreddit for men who lift and have giant muscles

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

Resells OpenStreetmap data in conveniently packaged form

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

NSA wants SSL keys

Outrageous extension of surveillance powers

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

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

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

F2P game ethics

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

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

Mapping Millions of dots

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

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

Erotic Cyrillic alphabet

NSFW: amusing erotic drawings

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

Paris From Above

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

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

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 propaganda • psyops • sex • ww2 • wwii

The Drone That Killed My Grandson

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

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

Tower controller has a bit of fun with Air Wisconsin

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

Surviving being senior (tech) management

Wise words from Kellan, Etsy's CTO

2013-07-17 engineering • etsy • management

Linus gets told

Kernel developer calls Linus on his bullshit being rude

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

US roads (TopoJSON)

nice map inspired by Mike Bostock inspired by me

2013-07-16 allstreets • benfry • maps • roads • tiger • 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 chrome • javascript • performance

Truly outrageous fake budget; assumes two jobs, no expenses

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

NSA expansion pre-9/11

Illegal surveillance predates War on Terruh

2013-07-16 civilrights • nsa • surveillance

Not sure if brilliant or horrible

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

Bounty artifacts in Dunedin

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

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

Interesting example of lying with maps

2013-07-12 belgium • bruges • maps

Google Glitch View

Streetview processing goes bad

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

Map label placement

Beautifully done OpenStreetmap cartography

2013-07-11 labels • maps

Harvard Classics .mobi

Kindle-friendly collection of a Great Books collection

2013-07-11 culture • history • kindle • literature • mobi • 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 • nsa • prism • privacy • snowden • surveillance

Why mobile web apps are slow

Nice explanation of hardware limitations

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

Hardcore math site does beautiful WebGL graphics

2013-07-11 javascript • visualization • webgl

Field Papers v2

Awesome map project gets a refresh

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

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 apocrypha • books • crypto • voynich

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

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

Some really beautiful visualization work

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

Building healthcare.gov

A new model for government websites

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

Google Google Apps Apps

Should be SF's next tourist promotion video

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

Twitter architecture

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

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

FBTiles map format

extension of MapBox tiles that allows chart margins to be displayed

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

Zombie Google Reader

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

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

Cable tap agreement

How private companies aided NSA spying

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

Bizarre aircraft

Various odd prototypes

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

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 d3 • d3js • design • eyeo • mbostock • mikebostock • visualization

Berkeley DB license change

Oracle shuts down proprietary use of BDB in webapps

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

Zen photon garden

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

1973 gay marriage

Sweet story of early political activism

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

Even harder than it looks

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

USPS records all envelopes

Happy Independence Day! Do you feel safer, citizen?

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

World of Rivers

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

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

Bolivian president detained

Insanity over Snowden; unimagineable

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

Internet Credit Union

archive.org is running a bank!

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

Detailed census treatments

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

SF Bay Area as NY

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

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 fraud • quickmeme • reddit • seo

Google: only 13% search

Interesting analysis of where Google dedicates real estate

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

Measuring temperature in a kiln

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

Interesting video + map presentation of a bike ride

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

Phone data visualized

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

2013-07-01 metadata • privacy • surveillance