Nelson's Linkblog 2015-05

about • archive • mastodon • feed

SourceForge adds malware

Long-declining open source site now openly adding adware to free software

2015-05-31 badtech • malware • opensource • sourceforge • via:metafilter

Cobra Club NSFW

Really, NSFW: A computer game about photographing penises

2015-05-29 dick • funny • games • penis

Youtube alternative; very simple video sharing

2015-05-29 reddit • sports • video

Blockchain Android app bug

Stupid bad software causes $8100 to be mis-spent

2015-05-29 android • badtech • bitcoin • facepalm

Failed "ask me anything" Reddit threads.

2015-05-29 ama • iama • reddit

Creating a fake diet

Group pulls a prank with bad dietary science

2015-05-28 diet • fraud • nutrition • p-hacking • science

Federated approach to open aerial imagery

2015-05-28 hot • maps • openstreetmap • osm

Space Weird Thing

Bowie Space Oddity remade with only the 1000 most common words in English

2015-05-27 bowie • spaceoddity • upgoerfive • via:metafilter • xkcd

birdy Twitter API

New Python client for Twitter API

2015-05-27 api • python • twitter

Making Tanaka countours

Nice 3d map effect in open source tools

2015-05-27 countours • gis • maps • qgis

New console text editor with multiple cursors

2015-05-26 editor • sublimetext • via:onethingwell

dc4728449ac9905195f4bd612e1c215a

Some nonsense DRM thing Flickr tried to hide in Javascript

2015-05-26 badtech • drm • flickr • javascript

Federal surveillance airplanes

Spotters have found a bunch of planes loitering over US cities with no known purpose

2015-05-26 aviation • civilrights • fbi • nsa • surveillance

Everpix shutdown

Great story from 2013 of a failed photo sharing company

2015-05-25 companies • everpix • flickr • photos • startups

Mad Max / The Odyssey

Nice take on how the new movie subverts a trope as old as Homer's Odyssey

2015-05-25 homer • madmax • movies • odyssey

Random Internet culture slang; I love the detailed etymology research that Know Your Meme does

2015-05-25 4chan • culture • japanese • meme • otaku • slang

Chip Delany on Mad Max

A film review from the sci-fi author

2015-05-24 books • delany • madmax • movies

Greek debt timeline

What's due when; they may be defaulting in a couple of weeks

2015-05-24 economy • europe • finance • greece • imf

takena animation

A series of disturbing stop motion videos

2015-05-23 animation • movies

Family Research Council monster

Sex predator working with the anti-gay group

2015-05-22 civilrights • frc • lgbt

Tube steaks with the fixins

2015-05-22 food • hotdog • via:metafilter

Mad Max and amputees

Excellent personal appreciation of Furiosa's being an amputee in Mad Max

2015-05-22 amputees • disabilities • madmax • movies • via:metafilter

In every matter of principle, Uber takes the morally repugnant side

2015-05-22 ada • disabilities • ethics • uber

Whois Accuracy Program

Newish ICANN rule requires verifying domain ownership

2015-05-21 dns • icann • whois

Funny image of an angry Go player

2015-05-21 games • go • japan • tableflip

Big release, efficient map rendering on iOS and Android

2015-05-21 iphone • mapbox • maps • mobile

Turntable postmortem

Nice writeup of a failed social music startup

2015-05-21 music • sacca • startups • turntable

Mississippi ribbon map

Clever visualization

2015-05-21 maps • mississippi • rivers

Yet another cryptosystem weakened by government tampering

2015-05-20 badtech • dh • security • ssl

PayPal fined for credit product

Their invasive advertisements for credit cards turn out to also be deceptive

2015-05-20 fraud • paypal • regulation • via:hackernews

Yahoo failed tax dodge

IRS actually challenges an obvious tax scam

2015-05-20 alibaba • taxes • yahoo

AWS leap second plan

Some services are smearing the second over 24 hours, some are going to simply add it all at once

2015-05-19 amazon • aws • ntp • time

Chrome extension to download SVG graphics, as with D3

2015-05-18 chrome • d3js • extension • svg

UK election maps

Excellent roundup of various visualizations

2015-05-18 elections • maps • visualization

Export Cities: Skylines maps to OSM format

2015-05-17 cities • citiesskylines • games • maps

Take Hersh seriously

Excellent defense of Seymour Hersh's recent reporting on the assassination of Bin Laden

2015-05-17 binladen • hersh • journalism • reporting

4chan tripcodes

4chan has a way to post non-anonymously

2015-05-16 4chan • anonymity

Data on game popularity in Korean PC Bangs

2015-05-16 games • korea

Kanye Quest easter egg

Weird hidden part of Kanye Quest... cult recruiting tool?

2015-05-15 easteregg • games • kanye • kanyequest • via:waxy

LoL streamer stats

Twitch viewership of pro and popular amateur League of Legends players. 30,000 viewers for Bjergsen!

2015-05-15 games • leagueoflegends • lol • streaming • twitch

Google 2FA: 40M users?

Attempt to estimate how many people use Google's two factor authentication system

2015-05-15 2fa • google • security • tfa

US marriage map

Location, income, political affiliation all affect marriage rates

2015-05-15 data • demographics • maps • marriage • visualization

Reddit against harassment

More policy changes, towards making the community less awful

2015-05-14 community • harassment • moderation • reddit

Kerbal Space Program review

Excellent take on the amazing spaceflight game now that it's officially released

2015-05-14 games • ksp • nasa • space

New Galileoscopes

Decent $50 telescope has a new production run

2015-05-14 astronomy • space • telescope

Black Widow trailer

Finally, a superhero movie for girls!

2015-05-14 blackwidow • funny • marvel • movies • parody • snl

Prison rape failures

States dragging their feet at federally required reform

2015-05-14 gay • humanrights • lgbt • prison • rape • via:metafilter

Suspension BASE jump

Crazy man attaches parachute to flesh hooks

2015-05-14 batshitinsane • parachute • suspension

Amtrak train data

@enf happens to have been recording train speeds, has info on the recent fatal derailment

2015-05-14 amtrak • data • maps • trains

CLG Link rants for 8 pages after quitting his team. Interesting, but very scattered.

2015-05-14 clg • games • leagueoflegends • link • lol

Crumbling capsule tower

Experimental architecture from 1972 Tokyo is not aging well

2015-05-14 architecture • japan • tokyo • via:metafilter

Verizon security idiocy

Their webapp trusts your browser's claim of what its IP address is

2015-05-13 badtech • facepalm • internet • ip • ipaddress • security

World Without End

Profile of the ambitious procedural game No Man's Sky

2015-05-12 games • nomanssky • procedural

Spiral Internet now a CA utility

Small Nevada County ISP has a plan to bring fiber to the home in rural California

2015-05-12 broadband • california • internet • isp • spiralinternet

Flickr auto tags

A collision of machine learning and user desire

2015-05-11 flickr • metadata • privacy • tags

Googlebot runs Javascript

Evidence that Google's indexer is quite sophisticated at picking up dynamic content

2015-05-11 google • googlebot • javascript • search • seo

HTTP/2 for geeks

Readable slides quickly explaining the state of HTTP/2

2015-05-11 http • internet • networking • via:hackernews • web

Census Reporter

Nice UI for exploring US census data

2015-05-11 census • data • maps • us

The first microprocessor

Detailed history of the development of an inevitable technology

2015-05-11 computers • cpu • history • intel • microprocessor • mos • texasinstruments

Semantic analysis of text in Python

2015-05-11 python • semantics • text

Battle of Palmdale

Insane 1956 story of Navy pilots failing to shoot down a drone over California

2015-05-11 california • drones • facepalm • military • palmdale

Some of the economics of being a professional gamer

2015-05-11 esports • games • lol • salary • sports

Tesla Powerwall analysis

Skeptical take on Tesla's home battery product

2015-05-10 electricity • power • solar • tesla

2011 pro LoL history

The drama at the start of LoL eSports

2015-05-10 clg • esports • games • lol • tsm

A rethought Python unit testing library. No boilerplate, use the stock assert statement, etc

2015-05-10 python • testing • unittests

The Great & Beautiful Lost Kingdoms

Dalrymple on India's global influence 400-1200 AD

2015-05-10 buddhism • culture • hinduism • history • india • via:metafilter

History of federal law enforcement abuse, civil liberties

2015-05-09 civilliberties • eff • fbi • games • stevejackson

Energy visualization

Nice tool for showing electricity usage; works with Green Button, including PG&E

2015-05-08 conservation • energy • greenbutton • pge • visualization

PostgresSQL upsert

Single statement to insert or update data

2015-05-08 database • postgres • sql

The 4 maps of the world

Mapbox CEO lays out the 4 maps of the world: Google, Nokia, TomTom, and OSM. (I'd add Apple, maybe.)

2015-05-08 maps • openstreetmap • osm

Uber driver tricks

Ways to game the system; the passenger app provides useful info the driver app doesn't

2015-05-08 driving • hacking • taxi • uber

1957 Navy teletype network

2015-05-07 internet • maps • navy • network • teletype • via:reddit

1881 isochrone map

How long it took to travel from Europe

2015-05-07 1881 • isochrone • maps • travel

What Is A Super PAC?

A handy guide from The Onion

2015-05-07 corruption • funny • pacs • parody • politics • theonion

Ad Injection Economy

Details on ad malware infecting browsers

2015-05-06 ads • badtech • google • malware

Statement of a problematic community's core values

2015-05-06 community • moderation • reddit

discoveryd mess

Fine rant about some broken MacOS software

2015-05-05 broken • funny • macos • rant

Turns random audio on the Internet into a podcast feeds

2015-05-05 audio • podcasts • rss

European language map

Nice visualization using a lexical measure

2015-05-05 language • linguistics • maps • via:reddit • visualization

Verizon upsell tactics

Sales rep tries to mislead expert about bandwidth needs

2015-05-05 netflix • sales • scam • verizon • via:reddit

Selerity's Twitter report

How algorithms found and analyzed Twitter's earnings PDF in two seconds

2015-05-05 ai • algorithms • finance • nlp • twitter

Dragon Age art extracts

Art from the game Dragon Age: Inquisition. The very bottom (oldest posts) have some of the most beautiful stuff.

2015-05-04 art • dragonage • games

Corpus of Historical American English

400 million words in American usage, for download

2015-05-03 analysis • english • language • linguistics • text

Link Twitter replies to blog comments

2015-05-03 blogs • twitter • web

Encrypted lat/lon

Chinese maps use a deliberately distorted datum

2015-05-03 batshitinsane • china • maps

Dem Tull Pitcairn

Newspaper from tiny Pitcairn Island; the PDF downloads include samples of the local creole

2015-05-03 language • newspaper • pitcairn • via:metafilter

Butane hash oil

Modern marijuana industry manages to turn weed into something like crack

2015-05-02 hash • honeyoil • marijuana • wax

Smart TV malware

Webapps embedded in TV broadcasts are exploitable

2015-05-02 badtech • ddos • hdtv • malware • tv

Firefox deprecating HTTP

Very aggressive move for user security

2015-05-01 firefox • http • https • mozilla • security • ssl

Police assault prisoners with their police vans

2015-05-01 baltimore • brutality • civilrights • crime • police