Nelson's Linkblog 2017-04

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Apple curvature

Design detail; softer curves make for nicer aesthetics

2017-04-28 apple • design • curve • squircle

Mike Bostock's new interactive programming environment for Javascript visualizations

2017-04-28 javascript • programming • jupyter • notebook • ide

Fuck You, Computer

A nice little Swear Trek

2017-04-28 startrek • funny • meme • computer

Fyre Festival Fiasco

Expensive Bahamas music event collapses

2017-04-28 bahamas • funny • fraud • jarule • music • fiasco

Russian BGP hijack

Someone hijacked all Internet traffic for major financial service companies

2017-04-28 bgp • finance • security • badtech • russia • hijack • cyberwar

Silicon Valley 1982

Extraordinary fanciful map; almost none of this is still there

2017-04-27 maps • technology • siliconvalley

Kalanick and Wii Tennis

A throwaway bit of hagiography cannot be verified

2017-04-27 uber • kalanick • games • funny

Trump's pet neo-Nazi has a very dodgy PhD

2017-04-26 gorka • politics • trump • phd • fraud

Sacca bows out of VC

Sweet, personal essay

2017-04-26 investing • vc • sacca • sharktank • google

Now you're racing with portals

Nice video clip

2017-04-26 video • portal • games • racing • bicycle • via:reddit

Uber engineer suicide

Heartbreaking story

2017-04-25 uber • software • suicide • africanamericans

Visualizing data accounting both for density and variance

2017-04-25 bayesian • surprise • maps • visualization • statistics

Red Pill Republican

Rape culture meets state legislature

2017-04-25 politics • feminism • reddit • redpill • gop • republican

Partisan Gerrymandering

Data and visualizations

2017-04-24 politics • gerrymandering • redistricting • voting • votingrights

Armenian genocide document

Deep research turns up telegram

2017-04-24 genocide • armenia • turkey • humanrights

Scroll down; scammy sounding rideshare company doing a JOBS IPO

2017-04-24 yayyo • uber • funny • scam • investment • sec

Nevada County Peeps

Local community in the age of Facebook

2017-04-24 facebook • nevadacounty • grassvalley • community

Detailed article on decision to speak about Clinton, not Trump. Not sure I believe the conclusions.

2017-04-23 nytimes • politics • trump • clinton • comey • fbi • democracy

Kalanick profile

Lots of detail on the odious Uber founder

2017-04-23 uber • kalanick • startups

A Hundred Days of Trump

A realignment to reality and normalcy, should your head be spinning

2017-04-23 trump • politics • normal

Reflections on the cost of America's ignoring LGBT people

2017-04-23 gay • lgbt • jamesbeard • beard

Heroes of the Storm networking

Details on how the MOBA uses the Starcraft engine

2017-04-22 games • heroesofthestorm • hots • starcraft • rts • latency

Banana Blender Surprise

Remarkably good article about a band from some friends of mine in high school years ago

2017-04-22 music • sjs • stjohns • rccolamoonpie • bananablendersurprise • highschool

Chechnya anti-gay violence

2017-04-21 lgbt • chechnya • russia • civilrights • humanrights • gay

Monkeybrains Outage Map

Interesting map of the current SF power outage

2017-04-21 maps • power • pge • network • sanfrancisco

Hawaiian response to Sessions

Quotes from Senators on fire

2017-04-21 senator • politics • trump • sessions • hawaii • hawai'i

Fearmongering at Homeland Security

Strongly worded essay on the dangers of incendiary rhetoric

2017-04-21 nytimes • nyt • editorial • security • terrorism • politics • trump • dhs

Exploring Unicode-equivalents of base64 ASCII encoding

2017-04-21 encoding • ascii • twitter • unicode

256 byte C64 demo with great music

2017-04-21 commodore64 • c64 • music • demoscene • scene • via:metafilter • demo

Dumb proto-brownshirt movement

2017-04-21 trump • politics • antifa • facism • violence

Gerrymandering in the court

Great overview on redistricting and upcoming Supreme Court cases

2017-04-21 supremecourt • republicans • politics • redistricting • gerrymandering

Use iPhone camera to measure lag to 4ms

2017-04-20 latency • lag • iphone • games • via:ckline • tools • responsiveness • hci

Hawaii is a state

Sessions expresses confusion about how circuit courts work

2017-04-20 hawaii • politics • trump • sessions

Build a Better Monster

Maciej on Internet technology, politics, privacy. Very thoughtful

2017-04-20 politics • maciej • advertising • facebook • internet

MIT selling 8M IPv4 addresses

Rumor has it Amazon bought them for ~$100M

2017-04-20 amazon • mit • ipv4 • internet

Redistricting software

Some of the history behind Maptitude, etc

2017-04-20 maptitude • maps • redistricting • politics • gerrymandering

Canadian redistricting history

Brookings report on Canadian redistribution; content starts about halfway through

2017-04-19 canada • politics • redistricting • gerrymandering

Redistricting: something Canada does better

Editorial on how Canadian redistricting works in practice

2017-04-19 politics • canada • america • redistricting • gerrymandering

Canadian districting

Non-partisan process for defining electoral districts

2017-04-19 canada • politics • gerrymandering • districting

Erik Prince + Trump

More details on the mercenary boss' advice. Trump team has denied the connection.

2017-04-19 trump • politics • erikprince • blackwater • xe

2017-04-19 funny • photos • beans

Sierra Snowpack

2017 looking good for water. Also interesting survey technology /cc @vruba

2017-04-19 water • sierra • aso • drought • california

Excellent long form radio storytelling

2017-04-19 journalism • shittown • stown • alabama • gay • radio • podcast

Non-Private US land

Amateur map of federal, state, tribal, etc lands

2017-04-19 america • maps • blm

Looking Back at r/Place

Roundup of the Reddit April Fools experiment

2017-04-18 reddit • aprilfools • place • art • collaborative

RNC fundraising scandal

Gerrit Lansing lied about his involvement with Revv; Spicer repeated his lie

2017-04-18 rnc • gop • scandal • politics • fundraising

Maptitude for Redistricting

Software + data used to draw districts

2017-04-18 politics • gerrymandering • redistricting

Berkeley violence plan

More details on the stupid violent protest / rally / riot last weekend

2017-04-18 berkeley • protest • violence • trump • facism

Google Earth Web

A remarkable accomplishment of WebGL

2017-04-18 google • webgl • earth • maps

Steve Ballmer built a startup to collect data on US government budget

2017-04-18 politics • budget • ballmer • opendata • transparency

Living on Kerguelen

Comment + photos from a guy who worked IT on a remote island at 50S

2017-04-18 kergeuelen • antarctica • france • island • remote

North Carolina gerrymandering

Details from 2012 debates about district plan

2017-04-17 northcarolina • politics • election • districting • gerrymandering

Detroit election results

Official tabulation published as clip art

2017-04-17 election • politics • funny • openelections • detroit

Soviet doomsday device

Details on a nuclear deterrent

2017-04-17 sovietunion • russia • via:metafilter • nuclear • Armageddon • bomb • deadmansswitch

Inside MS08-067

Details of how Microsoft worked on one exploitable security hole

2017-04-17 microsoft • security • bugs • badtech • worm • malware

Berkeley violence details

Not a normal protest; facists and neo-Nazis

2017-04-16 protest • trump • politics • neonazi • violence

Kushner v Bannon

More insider gossip from the Trump White House

2017-04-16 trump • politics • gossip

Frankfurters vs. teen sex

A novel data visualization

2017-04-16 visualization • data • funny • sex • via:reddit

French railway map

Zoomable and easy to view

2017-04-16 maps • france • sncf • train • travel

European train search

2017-04-16 train • france • travel • europe

California vaccinations

New law requiring vaccinations is working

2017-04-16 california • health • vaccination • kids

Bureaucratic voice

Rhetorical devices used by organizations to avoid responsibility

2017-04-16 rhetoric • bureaucracy • journalism • communication

SNL Spicer parody

Sharp material on Spicer's Holocaust denial statements

2017-04-16 spicer • politics • trump • holocaust • funny

My dad is a conspiracy theorist

Personal essay on dealing with a father who believes right wing lunacy

2017-04-15 politics • trump • pizzagate • family

Spelunky documentary

Noclip hour long movie about the game. Attn @waxpancake

2017-04-15 games • spelunky • noclip • movies

Trump and 18F, USDS

Uncertain future for competent government IT

2017-04-15 government • politics • trump • usds • 18f • cfa

Aphyr uses this

2017-04-15 aphyr • ui • keyboard

Schools hitting children

Including photos of the special weapon used

2017-04-15 school • education • paddling • humanrights • children • kids

Text adventure as FUSE filesystem

2017-04-15 games • funny • fuse • via:hackernews

Is Trump At Mar-a-Lago?

Convenient single-serving site

2017-04-15 trump • politics

Space Trump protest

Group flies a tweet to 90,000 feet, posts a photo

2017-04-15 trump • politics • nasa • funny • protest • space

Shadow Brokers dump

More NSA hacking tools leaked

2017-04-14 nsa • hacking • badtech • shadowbrokers • politics

Old Lights and New Lights

Comparison of 2012 and 2016 Earth-at-night images

2017-04-14 maps • earth • light • electricity • india

Carter Page and Rosneft

Video of Page saying he met with Rosneft, later edited in Russia Today version

2017-04-12 propaganda • russia • politics • rosneft • trump • carterpage

Trump eating cake

Remarkable bit of Buzzfeed journalism

2017-04-12 buzzfeed • funny • trump • politics • syria

Chrome Extension to make it simpler to find full copies of scientific articles

2017-04-12 science • openscience • publishing • pdf • library

FISA vs Carter Page

Details of FBI investigation into Trump campaign member for Russia collusion

2017-04-12 russia • trump • politics • carterpage • fisa

Streaming jellyfish from the Monterey Aquarium

2017-04-11 jellyfish • monterey • aquarium • live • streaming

Rabois in Glen Park

VC wants to turn a house into a basketball gym

2017-04-11 glenpark • sanfrancisco • realestate • sf • rabois

amac's White House reflections

Deputy CTO for Obama talks about the job

2017-04-11 obama • amac • cto • politics

Opening a Titan II

Prying open the door of an abandoned missile silo

2017-04-11 funny • missile • water • silo • backhoe

Alabama voter suppression

Part of the sex scandal; governor and his mistress worked to deny Blacks voting rights

2017-04-11 race • politics • alabama • voterrights • votersuppression • voterid

Lucknow queer pride

LGBT parade in India

2017-04-11 gay • lgbt • india

Texas voter ID law racist

Struck down a second time after appeal

2017-04-10 texas • racism • voting • voterrights • voterid

Chechnya anti-gay abuses

Reports of prisons with concentration camp conditions

2017-04-10 russia • lgbt • chechnya • gayrights • humanrights

PSN download speeds

Details on Sony's CDN for PS4

2017-04-10 games • cdn • download • network • ps4 • sony

Thank You, Scott

More sharp SNL satire, against armchair activism

2017-04-09 funny • facebook • twitter • politics • satire • activism

Sharp satire from SNL

2017-04-09 snl • funny • satire

When Pixels Collide

A narrative of Reddit's /r/place experiment

2017-04-09 place • reddit • art • community • collaborative

NSA hacking tool leak

Shadow Brokers / Equation Group dump

2017-04-08 hacking • politics • trump • nsa

Kobach and voter fraud

Details of the nonsense Republicans are citing about voter fraud

2017-04-08 voterrights • voterfraud • kansas • politics • trump • voting

A program to configure Windows to show fewer ads and collect less data

2017-04-08 windows • microsoft • privacy • ads • adware • adblocker

Gossipy insider account of Trump's decision to launch missiles

2017-04-08 syria • politics • trump

A history of the second person plural pronoun in English and an impassioned defense of the best word for it

2017-04-08 english • yall • language

Intermediate level tutorial on using Pandas

2017-04-08 pandas • data • programming • python

Three part tutorial for Python's data processing library

2017-04-08 python • pandas • numpy • programming

USPS Eid stamps

Postage stamps with beautiful Arabic calligraphy

2017-04-08 usps • muslim • islam • arabic • eid • stamp • government

Poppy reacts to Kids react to Poppy

Bizarro Youtube star doubles down

2017-04-08 poppy • youtube • kidsreact • funny • culture

Cook Political Report

District-level data on partisanship in the US

2017-04-07 gerrymandering • election • politics • voting

Deeply Artificial Trees

Bob Ross gets the deep dream treatment

2017-04-07 psychedelic • art • machinelearning • ml • ai • deepdream

Google pay discrimination

Accusation they underpay women, Google refusing to give up requested data

2017-04-07 google • gender • women • feminism • tech • salary

Black History at Rice

Houston university only allowed Black students in 1963

2017-04-07 rice • college • university • racism • houston • texas

Kushner's omissions

Trump's senior advisor failed to disclose numerous foreign meetings, including with Russians

2017-04-07 russia • trump • politics • scandal • kushner

Brotli in practice

Newer compression algorithm makes files 20% smaller than gzip

2017-04-07 compression • gzip • web • optimization

Shenzhen innovation

Meanwhile, in China...

2017-04-07 china • innovation • startups • via:hackernews

The salt that movie theaters use for their popcorn

2017-04-07 popcorn • food • movietheater

Federated Learning

Google distributed a machine learning problem across millions of cell phones

2017-04-07 google • ml • machinelearning • gboard • android • federation

Government trying to force Twitter to give personal info on a user for protected political speech

2017-04-06 politics • twitter • dhs • freespeech

North Carolina 2014 precinct data

Migurski's continuing experiments with political data

2017-04-06 politics • data • northcarolina • gerrymandering • districting

Trump's media war

The "war" is phony, a sham for appearances

2017-04-06 trump • politics • media • journalism

Women in Soviet CS

Memories of learning computers in the Soviet Union in the 80s

2017-04-06 programming • computers • via:metafilter • russia • sovietunion • feminism

Hexing the technical interview

A novel approach to stupid tech interviews

2017-04-05 interview • funny • magic • aphyr

Disable Windows 10 ads

Several different places you have to disable ads

2017-04-05 windows • ads • shovelware • adware • windows10

Nope, Not Arabic

Collection of fake Arabic writing from clueless people

2017-04-05 arabic • language • writing • advertising • ads

Details of the cultures behind each part of Reddit's collaborative art project

2017-04-05 reddit • art • place • culture • via:waxy

Subresource integrity

Protect Javascript from CDNs by using a hash

2017-04-05 cdn • security • via:hackernews • javascript • browser

Google's machine learning hardware

Performance details on their neural network chips

2017-04-05 machinelearning • tpu • google • performance • hardware • ml

Truth, Politics and Power

New in-depth political podcast, very smart

2017-04-05 politics • podcast • radio • journalism

Central European University in Peril

Hungary's leader is trying to force the closure of a university in Budapest

2017-04-05 hungary • budapest • orban • politics • ceu • soros

Trump Kleptocracy Watch

Update on various forms of ethics conflicts

2017-04-05 trump • politics • ethics • money

Jeff Kaplan on Overwatch

New interview with Blizzard's fantastic spokesman for the game

2017-04-05 games • overwatch • jeffkaplan

Time series datastore used in the financial engineering world

2017-04-05 programming • database • timeseries • finance

Postgres extension for efficient time series data

2017-04-05 postgres • timeseries • database

How Democracy Ends

Interview about redistricting and voter suppression

2017-04-04 politics • voting • republicans • gop • gerrymandering

r/place retrospective

Commentary on Reddit's April Fool's toy

2017-04-04 reddit • place • community • internet

Gorka's fascism

Creepy endorsement of extreme right wing in Hungary

2017-04-04 gorka • trump • hungary • fascism • politics

/r/place timelapse

Reddit April Fool's toy had a fun evolution

2017-04-04 reddit • aprilfools • collaborative • /r/place • place

Prince + Trump + Russia

Mercenary company founder set up secret meetings

2017-04-04 trump • politics • russia • uae • prince • blackwater • erikprince

Greenland's Vikings

Summary of new scholarship on the disappearance of the westernmost European colony

2017-04-03 europe • norse • vikings • greenland • archaeology

Selk'nam painting (NSFW)

Body painting from a remote Chilean tribe, 1918. Non-sexual nudity.

2017-04-02 selknam • chile • tierradelfuego • painting • anthropology

Trump / Russia ties

Clear visualization with sources of various connections

2017-04-02 trump • politics • russia • treason

Short indictment of gross tech culture

2017-04-02 tech • siliconvalley • startups • internet • vc

German dialect differences

Fun maps of language

2017-04-01 maps • german • language

A data visualization spoof that actually made me laugh

2017-04-01 oregon • funny • polygon • visualization

websites that look like Windows installation screens

2017-04-01 funny • aprilfools • jokes • windows

Japanese convenience food

2017-04-01 japan • food

Trump and Facebook

Details of how a deceptive company scraped data on voters

2017-04-01 facebook • voting • politics • trump • privacy • via:reddit