Nelson's Linkblog 2014-08

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Hipparcos errors?

Dispute over distance to Pleiades calls into question our primary method of measuring stellar distance

2014-08-29 satellite • esa • distance • parallax • pleiades • hipparcos

Pornhub OS report

SFW. Includes interesting alternate pie-chart visualization technique

2014-08-29 pornhub • porn • survey • operatingsystem

New Stamen map work

New funding from Knight to update and improve Stamen's maps

2014-08-29 maps • stamen • design • osm

Internet device heatmap

Guy pings the whole Internet in 5 hours

2014-08-29 maps • via:Reddit • internet • shodan

csvkit is to tabular data what the standard Unix text processing suite (grep, sed, cut, sort) is to text

2014-08-28 via:Tinyapps • csv • text • unix • commandline

Details of new-gen web stylesheets

2014-08-28 css • web • programming

Hellraiser box supercut

Every scene featuring Lemarchand's Box

2014-08-28 hellraiser • horror • via:jwz

Racetrack playa solved

Mysterious moving rocks; turns out to be ice + wind

2014-08-28 geology • deathvalley • rocks • science

Posner on gay marriage

Delightful to see a formidable intellectual drop the knowledge

2014-08-28 law • posner • gay • lgbt • marriage

Comcast / Netflix shakedown

details of how Netflix got forced to pay Comcast

2014-08-28 comcast • netflix • netneutrality • monopoly

Ice bucket challenge critique

Careful articulation of what's kind of weird about the ALS charity stunt

2014-08-28 als • charity

Kowloon cross-section

Detailed side view of the old walled city

2014-08-28 kowloon • hongkong • walledcity • architecture • vertical • map

Death threats against game critique

Anita Sarkeesian having to deal with monstrous response to her very thoughtful critique of video game tropes

2014-08-27 games • feminism • sexism

feministfrequency

Great critique of women in video games, other pop culture

2014-08-27 games • feminism

Uber's dirty tactics

Aggressive attempts to undermine Lyft

2014-08-27 uber • lyft • evil • competition • business

Kreyos: Indiegogo scam?

$1.5M in crowd funding, problematic delivery

2014-08-26 indiegogo • kreyos • watch • scam • crowdfunding • kickstarter

Pink Martini drummer died

Great neo-lounge band, sadness

2014-08-26 music • pinkmartini • portland • pdx

On the Roofs: Hong Kong

Insane urban explorers, great high-up photographs

2014-08-26 hongkong • photography • photos • climbing • parkour

Do better than PGP

Thoughtful critique of the venerable crypography system

2014-08-25 crypto • security • pgp • gpg • via:metafilter

Rivers in Tableau

Mapping major rivers of the world using off the shelf tech

2014-08-25 maps • tableau • rivers

Android fragmentation

Various statistics about Android OS versions, devices

2014-08-25 android • market • mobile • ios

Nevada County gold mining

Or rather the lack of it; no one wants mines to reopen

2014-08-25 mining • california • environmentalism • nevadacounty • grassvalley

Guilty until proven innocent

One man's reflections on Ferguson

2014-08-25 ferguson • racism • america • race

Face projection

Slick real time face tracking / projection mapping demo reel

2014-08-25 graphics • via:waxy • mocap

French street artist Invader has made an iOS/Android game

2014-08-24 games • ios • android • spaceinvader • invader • streetart

Quick traffic graph from the SF Bay Area of tweets after the earthquake

2014-08-24 twitter • earthquake • bayarea • napa

Funiture music, 1959 recordings of innocuous background music

2014-08-24 music • furniture

US passport card RFID

Security is not well designed

2014-08-24 rfid • passport • security • badtech • privacy

Languages of Islamic World

Nice thematic map, by Dr. Michael Izady

2014-08-23 maps • islam • muslims • language • via:reddit

New library for making map vector tiles with MapNik

2014-08-22 mapnik • tiles • vector • maps

Great American Eclipse

Total eclipse for August 21, 2017

2014-08-22 via:kottke • eclipse • astronomy

Secret exploits

Anonymous messaging app is having a hard time maintaining anonymity

2014-08-22 secret • anonymity • badtech

DRIVE: The Aphromoo Story

Short profile of one of the top League of Legends pro players

2014-08-22 games • esports • via:reddit • clg • aphromoo

2014 XOXO Arcade

Crazy list of indie games to play in person

2014-08-21 games • xoxo • xoxofest • indie

OSM Chicago import

Ian Dees' talk on importing Chicago city data into OpenStreetMap

2014-08-21 osm • maps • chicago • import • data

OSM New York import

Detailed notes from importing addresses and building footprints in New York

2014-08-21 newyork • osm • maps • import • data • opendata

soc.motss recollection

Nice early history of gay stuff on the net

2014-08-21 usenet • soc.motss • motss • gay • lgbt

Software defined radios

Roundup of current hacker hardware

2014-08-20 sdr • radio • ham • hacking

Nokia Maps schism

Head map guy leaves Here, the map arm of the remnants of Nokia

2014-08-20 nokia • maps • here

Ferguson: locals vs. visitors

Tweet map from @enf

2014-08-20 maps • ericfischer • mapbox • ferguson • twitter

Defeating backscatter scans

One of TSA's full-body scanners is easily defeated

2014-08-20 security • tsa • securitytheater • backscatter

Portland food carts

2014-08-20 food • portland • foodcart • pdx

Wright Brothers photos

Great set of pictures from early flight

2014-08-20 flying • aviation • wrightbrothers • photos

Ebola in Liberia

Powerful photos

2014-08-20 photos • journalism • liberia • ebola • hospitals • disease

Clay Shirky's brutally honest description of the state of print journalism

2014-08-19 journalism • news • advertising • ads

US Segregation Scores

Measures of how segregated states and metros are. St. Louis has a high black/white segregation.

2014-08-19 ferguson • race • census • racism • stlouis • politics

St. Louis: A city divided

Excellent background on how we got to Ferguson

2014-08-19 race • stlouis • ferguson • politics • justice • racism

Ferguson police misconduct

The details of what the Ferguson cops are doing are just awful

2014-08-18 ferguson • justice • racism • police

Set your clock by inspecting SSL handshake data

2014-08-18 date • ssl • ntp

Normalized Ferguson tweetmap

Better visualization of interest in the Ferguson story

2014-08-18 ferguson • twitter • maps • via:flowingdata

Tom Jennings (1996)

Early Wired profile of a pioneering network guy

2014-08-18 homocore • internet • tlg • fidonet • tomjennings

Early BBS network, alternate to Usenet and Internet

2014-08-18 networks • fidonet • bbs • modem • tomjennings

512k BGP route impact

Some of the fallout from the routing debacle on the Internet

2014-08-18 internet • bgp • routing • cisco

A 512,000 BGP route limit is breaking the Internet

2014-08-18 internet • bgp • routing • bugs

Windows Store scams

A brief stroll through Microsoft's negligence

2014-08-18 windows • malware • scam • badtech • via:Reddit

A Unicode encoding that's like UTF-8 for plane 0, then some surrogate mess for stuff that are uncommon characters

2014-08-17 unicode • utf8 • badtech

1915 chart style guide

From the US Census department, guidelines for making data visualizations

2014-08-17 infovis • census • charts • graphics

Berkhamsted shaped like a penis

The map is funny because it looks like a penis

2014-08-16 funny • penis • maps

512K routes limit

Internet is breaking in various ways because of a static limit in BGP and Cisco routers

2014-08-15 cisco • badtech • internet • bgp

Open source Elite clone

2014-08-15 games • elite • space • opensource

Ferguson killing tweets

Someone livetweeted the police killing Michael Brown

2014-08-15 ferguson • twitter • michaelbrown

11th century Arab ruler, a woman in Yemen

2014-08-15 yemen • history • islam • women • arwa

Part 2 of Maciej Cegłowski's amazing travelogue in Yemen

2014-08-15 yemen • tourism

Self-assembling bots

"Kilobots", 1000 small mobile robots that swarm and self-assemble

2014-08-15 robots • swarming • emergence • harvard

Chrome extension to improve disclosure of "native advertising"

2014-08-14 ads • advertising • disclosure • chrome • extension

Standoff in Ferguson

Short NYT Video piece

2014-08-14 ferguson • nytimes • news • civilrights

Ferguson cops attacking a news crew

Video of tear gas being fired at Al Jazeera video crew, then the cops dismantling their camera setup

2014-08-14 journalism • freedom • ferguson • press

US paramilitary police

The dangers of giving police military weaponry

2014-08-14 guns • military • police • civilrights • ferguson

Python type annotations

Surprising proposal from Guido to add optional static types

2014-08-14 python • typing • programming • lint • code

NSA knocked Syria offline

2012 outage wasn't done by Syrian government; NSA hack team screwed up

2014-08-13 nsa • snowden • syria • civilrights • internet

Linux can't print on Tuesdays

Bizarre bug where OpenOffice files generated on Tuesdays won't print

2014-08-13 bugs • badtech • funny • ubuntu • linux

Skeletal animations

2014-08-12 gif • anatomy • skeleton • joint • xray

Fun experiment writing a simple TCP stack

2014-08-12 python • tcp • networking • hacking

FAA shuts down air space right over the neighborhood of St. Louis where the unarmed black kid got killed by cops

2014-08-12 faa • notam • ferguson • police

#IfTheyGunnedMeDown

Clever protest against media stereotyping of African-American men.

2014-08-12 twitter • images • stereotypes • race • ferguson

Let's build a browser engine!

Toy web browser being written in Rust

2014-08-12 rust • programming • mozilla • browser • via:metafilter

Hey Ash Whatcha Playin?

Funny video game commentary shorts

2014-08-11 games • parody • funny

US Digital Service

New government group will try to do better building web sites, etc

2014-08-11 heathcare • government • it • pahlka • mikey

QUIC test drive

Outdated, but results of playing with Google's UDP alternative for the web

2014-08-11 google • quic • spdy • http • network • performance

Ralph Wiggum appreciation

Moments defining one of the Simpsons' best characters

2014-08-11 simpsons • tv • via:metafilter

Cigarette fine securitization

Crazy financial engineering backfires for states that settled with tobacco companies

2014-08-11 finance • tobacco • cigarettes

Non-offending pedophiles

Young men who are pedophiles and want to not do horrible things.

2014-08-11 compulsion • pedophilia • sexuality • therapy

"utf8" isn't actually UTF8; you have to use "utf8mb4" to get beyond plane 0

2014-08-11 mysql • unicode • emoji • stupid • bug • badtech

Maps that don't explain the Middle East

Excellent antithesis of the crappy maps that get passed around

2014-08-09 maps • history • middleeast • via:metafilter

Slippy map video

New WebGL map stack lets you embed video

2014-08-08 video • maps • drones • aerial

Twitch CEO answers Reddit questions in the wake of very contentious content destruction

2014-08-07 twitch • video • copyright • youtube • games

Hilarious sound re-edit of fight scenes from Matrix Reloaded

2014-08-07 retro • games • matrix • movies • funny • via:metafilter

Stuck with passwords

Good high level overview of the problems with authentication

2014-08-07 authentication • passwords • openid • login • security

HTML5 8 bit color cycling

Old school game effect repurposed

2014-08-07 games • graphics • palette • html5 • hacks

Slack / Stewart Butterfield

Phenomenal long profile by @Mat Honan

2014-08-07 slack • flickr • stewart • tech • startups

Simple host file swapper for MacOS. Works in Mavericks

2014-08-06 macos • macs • hostfile • development

Twitch removing video archives

Along with the complete erasure of Justin, it's clear Twitch is preparing for something big

2014-08-06 twitch • google • archive • history • streaming • games

Mapbox GL for the Web

Mapbox publishes their new vector map client

2014-08-06 mapbox • webgl • maps • javascript

New creative programming environment inspired by Processing

2014-08-06 processing • software • design • javascript • art

At the Edge of the License

More on OpenStreetMap licensing. It's awfully complicated.

2014-08-06 osm • openstreetmap • odbl • license

New link aggregator / news site from linkblog master @waxpancake

2014-08-06 blog • twitter • news • aggregator • linkblog

Anatomy of a Pentakill

Second-by-second breakdown of a League of Legends play

2014-08-06 games • lol • leagueoflegends • pentakill

Saturn polar vortex

Lovely image of the hexagonal storm

2014-08-06 saturn • astronomy • astrophotography • space

Justin.tv shutdown

Very little notice

2014-08-06 justintv • twitch • video • streaming

"Uncontacted" tribes

Some hard reality about anthropology

2014-08-06 anthropology • amazon • humanity • culture

OSM community guidelines

Clarifications on the OpenStreetMap license, how the community views its application

2014-08-05 OSM • licenses • maps • odbl

Visualization glitch art

Accidental images that are interesting

2014-08-04 glitch • art • visualization • infovis

Google reported someone for child porn?

Houston police say Google tipped them off about a Gmail user with child porn

2014-08-04 surveillance • google • via:metafilter

Questioning monotheism

Why do we continue to program in monospace fonts?

2014-08-03 fonts • design • programming • monospace

Honoring the computer font of the 70s

2014-08-03 fonts • computers • ocr • design

Zachary Watson in hospital

Well known SF data visualizer in a bad accident

2014-08-02 sanfrancisco • stamen • exploratorium

Chromium command line switches

The browser has a lot of options; --app is particularly useful

2014-08-02 chrome • commandline

Daigo parry visualized

Amazing Street Fighter play from 2004 in infographic form

2014-08-02 infographic • games • streetfighter • daigo • shuli

Stellar funding

New currency company is using their new currency to pay for things. Pretty sketchy.

2014-08-01 bitcoin • stellar • currency • compensation

Concerns about AdBlock

Two competing ad blockers for Chrome; one claims the other is up to something shady

2014-08-01 badtech • opensource • adblock • chrome • extension