Nelson's Linkblog 2015-12

about • archive • mastodon • feed

538 weird charts

Nice roundup of unusual visualizations

2015-12-31 538 • chart • datascience • via:metafilter • visualization

FTC on native advertising

Mild attempt to reign in deceptive ads

2015-12-31 ads • advertising • ftc • regulation • standards

Twitter outsourced Mac app

Well that's crazy; engineering team not building the desktop client

2015-12-31 blackpixel • mac • outsource • twitter

The Battle of Meme's Deep

Remarkably meta commentary on Internet culture. Also funny and dumb.

2015-12-31 funny • internetculture • mlg • parody • reddit • twitter

Comic Market crowd

Orderly queues at a Japanese convention

2015-12-30 convention • crowds • japan • via:reddit

RIP Ian Murdock

Debian founder, great software guy.

2015-12-30 debian • docker • ian • ianmurdock • suicide

Giant Ant animation reel

Ad production company; they just did a very nice ad for Slack

2015-12-30 advertising • animation • creative • giantant • slack

Do the math on your stock options

An engineer talking candidly about equity compensation

2015-12-30 equity • startups • stock • taxes

DVD screener leak

Pre-release DVDs for 40 films fell into the hides of a pirate group

2015-12-30 dvd • movies • piracy • screeners

Pirate Bay domains taken

Secondary hostnames were seized

2015-12-30 copyright • dns • piratebay

Hoder on social media evolution

Unique perspective on the death of blogs, the rise of Facebook and Twitter

2015-12-30 blogs • facebook • iran • socialmedia • twitter • via:metafilter

633 Squadron v Star Wars

Another film inspiration for the trench run scene

2015-12-29 movies • starwars

Señor Frog in Times Square

"compulsory hilarity, scheduled spontaneity, a scripted theater of the inane with random outbreaks of mediocre Tex-Mex"

2015-12-29 food • funny • newyork • restaurant • review • texmex

27 Americans killed in shootings Christmas Day

Note this doesn't include suicides

2015-12-29 america • gunculture • guns • murica • shooting

California snow pack

Depicts how much water we have in the Sierra

2015-12-29 drought • sierra • snow

Gallery of street art photos

2015-12-29 murals • oakland • photography • streetart • via:reddit

Star Wars vs. Dam Busters

Lucas was, um, heavily inspired by a 1950s war film

2015-12-29 movies • starwars

Krebs on PayPal

Security expert's PayPal account is hacked, attacker bypasses the TFA token by resetting the password

2015-12-28 paypal • security • tfa

Donny and Marie Star Wars

1977 musical revue, made with real production props. Phenomenal.

2015-12-28 funny • paullynde • star • wars

Star Wars discarded plot ideas

Details from pre-production, the malleability of the new Star Wars film story

2015-12-28 development • film • starwars

Native American sketch comedy group

2015-12-28 comedy • funny • indian • nativeamerican

Lynching postcards

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

2015-12-28 america • lynching • racism • south

Jack Dorsey's day

Details of how Jack juggles being CEO of two young public companies

2015-12-27 ceo • dorsey • jack • square • twitter

Karen Wickre's giving list

A very thoughtful collection of charities by @kvox

2015-12-27 charity • giving • kvox • philanthropy

Lasercut topo map

Nice home project

2015-12-27 gis • lasercut • maps • via:reddit

On Facebook, naturally, this video style seems perfectly suited for Facebook

2015-12-27 buzzfeed • cooking • facebook • foodblogs • recipe

A new micro-medium; short videos to demonstrate how to make items. A lot of these are branded "Buzzfeed Tasty"

2015-12-27 buzzfeed • cooking • medium • recipe

Non-Snowden leaks

Analysis of intelligence reporting not sourced to Snowden documents

2015-12-26 intelligence • journalism • snowden

Ember LoL salaries

League of Legends team discloses its players salaries. ~$80k for a year including bonuses

2015-12-25 esports • games • leagueoflegends • lol

Twitch economics

Game broadcasting; says a $5 subscriber nets the streamer $3

2015-12-25 ads • economics • games • lol • twitch

NYT on Hersh/bin Laden

Article about Hersh's huge story disputing the government's version of bin Laden's assassination

2015-12-24 binladen • government • hersh • journalism • pakistan • politics • truth

GGPO rollback netcode

A game programming technique for compensating for lag by doing predictions and rollbacks

2015-12-24 games • lag • netcode • networking • streetfighter

Top game streamers

Report of who had the most hours watched in the last month

2015-12-24 games • leagueoflegends • streaming • twitch

Vegas Review-Journal chaos

Journalists at paper Sheldon Adelson bought are fighting back on him corrupting the paper

2015-12-24 adelson • journalism • lasvegas • news • sheldon • vegas

Bring back Persona

On the importance of a proper authentication system for the Internet

2015-12-24 authentication • identity • mozilla • via:hackernews

Noam Chomsky's Assistant

A sweet essay humanizing a deep intellectual

2015-12-24 assistant • biography • chomsky • via:metafilter

Quaternary extinction event

North America used to have many more large mammals, including lions and camels

2015-12-24 extinction • history • science • species

1973 gay firebombing

Tragic attack on a gay bar and church in New Orleans

2015-12-24 1970s • gay • history • lgbt • murder • terrorism

A legendary Houston lawyer passes away

2015-12-24 houston • jamail • lawyer • torts

New Orleans accents

Fun footage from 1983 of the diversity of New Orleans dialects

2015-12-24 accent • english • language • neworleans

Middle class New Orleans

2015-12-24 accent • dialect • english • language • neworleans

Confederate heritage

Political context for the Confederate memorials in New Orleans

2015-12-24 confederacy • history • neworleans • racism • slavery • south

Open Guide to Equity Compensation

Explanation of stock options for startup engineers, etc

2015-12-23 engineering • equity • options • startups • stock

A reactionary counterculture on the Internet, connections to Trump's popularity

2015-12-23 4chan • counterculture • culture • internet • racism • trump

Netflix per-title encoding

Netflix is getting a bit smarter about its video encoding. (But why not go full VBR?)

2015-12-23 codec • encoding • netflix • quality • streaming

A minimal Linux for use with Docker

2015-12-23 alpine • docker • linux

A vey small Linux distro, good for VMs, Docker, embedded work...

2015-12-23 busybox • docker • linux • small

Python tool for easily visualizing data on maps. Works with Jupyter notebooks.

2015-12-23 leaflet • maps • notebook • python • visualization

Worthless startup stock

Downrounds and low acquisition prices make for screwed employees

2015-12-23 blackberry • equity • good • internet • startups • stock

Hilarious account of a bad idea for an LSD trip

2015-12-23 acid • drugs • funny • lsd • trump

Wireshark + SSL

Browsers have a way to record crypto session keys for Wireshark to use

2015-12-22 crypto • debugging • network • openssl • ssl • via:jmason • wireshark

The Great Republican Revolt

Sensible characterization of current US politics, particularly populism

2015-12-22 election • politics • populism • trump

eSports perspective

Interesting business take from a former LoL pro

2015-12-22 business • esports • games • lol • snoopeh

Directors' congratulations

Roundup of a nice Hollywood tradition of film directors honoring each others' successes

2015-12-22 collegiality • films • movies • variety

Emo Kylo Ren (SPOILERS)

Star Wars spoilers, hilarious parody Twitter

2015-12-22 funny • kyloren • starwars • via:metafilter

On the Juniper backdoor

More details on the Dual EC weakness

2015-12-22 backdoor • badtech • dualec • juniper

Dual EC backdoor

It looks like Juniper's crypto backdoor was deliberately planted, then exploited later

2015-12-22 badtech • crypto • dualec • nsa • via:metafilter

Miss Universe screwup

Wrong winner announced; the 360° turn Steve Harvey makes walking on stage is just amazing

2015-12-21 fuckup • funny • missuniverse • mistake • stupid

Feminist data visualization

Interesting set of possible new avenues for visualization

2015-12-21 feminism • infovis • visualization

DNSSEC name and shame!

List of major sites that do and don't support DNSSEC

2015-12-20 dns • dnssec • security

On anonymous sources

Dan Gillmor's righteous essay on why the NY Times reporting is so dangerously bad

2015-12-20 anonymous • journalism • nyt • nytimes

Juniper firewall disaster

Back door on the firewalls makes Juniper customers completely insecure

2015-12-19 badtech • juniper • security • via:metafilter

A deliberately impossible yet complete programming language

2015-12-18 encryption • funny • languages • programming

Contempt Culture

The problem with nerds disdaining technologies they don't like

2015-12-18 culture • gender • programming • via:metafilter

Riot Direct results

League of Legends doing its own Internet peering, results of latency

2015-12-18 games • internet • latency • lol • networking • riot

Folks working on programming Hearthstone bots, etc

2015-12-17 ai • games • hearthstone • machinelearning

Ingress / Pokémon Go

New location-based game from Google spinoff partnering with Nintendo

2015-12-17 games • ingress • pokemon • via:metafilter

Project to figure out airspace coordination for drones

2015-12-17 atc • aviation • drones • uav

ISS Choreography

Lovely diagrams showing the assembly of the space station

2015-12-16 iss • space • via:binx

New support for developers, also $80M in funding

2015-12-16 api • aunder • platform • slack • strategy

Hacking a self-driving car

One guy building his own autonomous car

2015-12-16 ai • cars • hacking • selfdriving

Jacob’s Ladder of coding

Interesting stuff at the start about learning to program in East Germany

2015-12-15 art • coding • programming

Poignant story of German Jews just as Nazis take to power

2015-12-15 germany • hanukkah • holocaust • jews • shoah

BBC tests China

Terrifying flight in a tiny aircraft over highly militarized disputed territory

2015-12-15 aviation • bbc • china • southchinasea • via:metafilter

LoL ping and win rate

Correlation between latency and winning the game

2015-12-15 games • latency • lol • ping

Phillips breaks third party lightbulbs

2015-12-15 badtech • drm • lightbulbs • phillips

Sandy Hook hoaxers

A harmful delusion

2015-12-14 awful • internet • sandyhook

A reinterpretation of the Star Wars films as terrorist recruitment

2015-12-14 funny • jedi • starwars • terrorism • via:hackernews

Reverse engineering Neko Atsume payoffs

2015-12-13 atsume • games • neko • nekoatsume

New Tom MacWright project providing very simple access to some base GeoJSON map data

2015-12-13 geojson • maps

Website design/hosting company that promises self-designing websites, no fiddling with templates

2015-12-13 design • hosting • web

Chinese Army / Get Lucky

Fan-made video of marching army set to Daft Punk

2015-12-13 army • china • daftpunk • music • via:reddit

Military processions

Mesmerizing video of Chinese army marching

2015-12-13 army • marching • via:reddit

Scott Adams blog post quotes on Dilbert cartoons

2015-12-13 comics • dilbert • funny • mra • scottadams • via:metafilter

Various vocal idiosyncrasies of Internet video performers

2015-12-13 culture • language • linguistics • via:metafilter • youtube

mathowie's dildos

Essay about the gun protest Matt's doing by Photoshopping dildos into politicians hands

2015-12-13 dildos • guns • mathowie • matthaughey • politics

"Carpet Bombing"

NYT on specifically why Ted Cruz' rhetoric is idiotic. (They don't cover the reprehensible part.)

2015-12-13 bombing • isis • military • politics • tedcruz

US mobile passport

American customs has an iPhone app for faster clearance

2015-12-13 customs • iphone • passport • travel • usarmy

Prismatic news shutdown

Algorithm news system doesn't succeed

2015-12-12 news • prismatic

Inside Deep Dreams

Nice insider Steven Levy piece

2015-12-12 deepdream • google • machinelearning • neuralnetworks

Uber stock ownership

Details of Uber's equity structure that enable it to remain private

2015-12-12 equity • ipo • sacca • stock • uber

gzip --rsyncable

Variant of compression that tries to be rsync-friendly

2015-12-12 bandwidth • compression • gzip • rsync

The real story behind a traditional Hanukkah food

2015-12-12 food • hanukkah • jewish • latkes

Symantec security drama

Symantec asked Google to stop trusting one of their certs

2015-12-11 certificates • google • ssl • symatec

Trump is not a facist

A more careful reading on Trump's politics

2015-12-11 facism • history • politics • trump

Grace Jones / Pee Wee Herman / Christmas

A remarkable performance

2015-12-11 christmas • gracejones • music • peeweeherman

Search the Internet of Things; used for security analysis

2015-12-11 badtech • hacking • internetofthings • network • security

Grid corrections

Skew between rectangular maps and spherical earth cause farms and roads to have odd shapes

2015-12-11 cartography • maps • survey • via:metafilter

Great 2001 Michael Lewis piece about stocok market manipulation

2015-12-10 finance • markets • sec • stocks

F-35 is cyberinsecure

DoD refuses to test F-35 program's security because the tests might break the program's security.

2015-12-10 airforce • badtech • cyberwar • f-35 • military • stupid

Fun visualizations of highway networks

2015-12-10 america • highway • maps • roads

Trump v Freedom

Awkward photo op

2015-12-09 eagle • funny • trump • via:reddit

Badalamenti on Twin Peaks

Lovely story from the composer about writing the music. Sampled by Nicolas Jaar in that awesome mix, too

2015-12-09 badalamenti • music • twinpeaks

Scalzi on Trump

Clear-eyed view on what Trump's success so far means for America

2015-12-09 america • politics • scalzi • trump

Quantum computing skepticism

Some counterbalance, not convinced though

2015-12-09 computing • dwave • google • quantum

Quantum computing works

The D-Wave machine seems to actually be doing something faster than classical computing

2015-12-09 annealing • computing • quantum • science • via:metafilter

Craig S. Wright on Cypherpunks

Candidate for being Satoshi Nakomoto was a participant in the important crypto mailing list

2015-12-08 bitcoin • cypherpunks • satoshi

Is this Satoshi Nakamoto

Plausible evidence it's Craig Steven Wright

2015-12-08 bitcoin • satoshi

Australian addresses open

Geocoding dataset to be made publicly available

2015-12-08 geocoding • openaddresses • opendata • openstreetmap

Modern product for publishing open data developed by a US government agency

2015-12-08 cfpb • data • opendata • qu • soda

LoL in Korea history

Detailed summary of the history of LoL esports in Korea

2015-12-07 korea • lol • ogn • riot • riotgames

Antone's Po' Boys

Classic Houston sandwich, sort of in the Creole tradition

2015-12-06 creole • food • poboy • poorboy • sandwich

American nativism

Hatred of Trump and other Republicans in historical context

2015-12-06 america • politics • racism • trump

Luke Kanies profile

Reedie / Puppet Labs founder

2015-12-06 oregon • puppet • puppetlabs • reed • technology

I was an Internet meme

Nice followup on various people who were in accidentally famous videos

2015-12-06 culture • meme • viral • youtube

Replacing Sawzall

Google replaces its internal log-analysis language with a Go library

2015-12-06 golang • google • mapreduce • robpike • sawmill • sawzall

US mass shootings stats

Various presentations of data

2015-12-04 america • guns • murder • unitedstates • via:reddit

MSNBC + CNN go insane

Break into shooting suspect's house, start filming their belongings

2015-12-04 batshitinsane • cnn • crime • ethics • jouranlism • msnbc

Chris Donavan shoes

Mini-documentary about an atypical fashion designer

2015-12-04 documentary • fashion • ironicsans • movie • shoes

Hoverboard origin

Interesting tale of Chinese manufacturing culture

2015-12-04 china • culture • hoverboard • toys • via:metafilter

Google Cloud Vision API

Google Photos AI stuff repackaged for use

2015-12-04 google • images • machinelearning • photos • vision

For 4.0, Mike looks to be breaking D3js into component libraries

2015-12-03 d3 • d3js • drawing • javascript • shapes

WYSIWYG Javascript editor

2015-12-03 code • editor • javascript • opensource • wysiwyg

Fallout 4 locations

Photo album of scenes from Boston in the game

2015-12-03 boston • fallout • fallout4 • games

Craven Airbnb statement

Runs hideous ad campaign in San Francisco, then disclaims responsibility

2015-12-02 airbnb • politics • sanfrancisco

Anil Dash on Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Thoughtful essay, not sure if I agree

2015-12-02 charity • foundation • zuckerberg

Zuckerberg philanthropy

Promises to give away 99% of his Facebook wealth; $45 billion

2015-12-01 charity • facebook • zuckerberg

Politics are getting tense

2015-12-01 gop • politics • republicans • trump

Agile Government Technology

Code for America gets California to try a better government procurement process

2015-12-01 cfa • codeforamerica • government • procurement

Avoiding any attempt to regulate their spying programs

2015-12-01 civilrights • nsa • politics • privacy • us • usa