Nelson's Linkblog 2017-04

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Apple curvature

Design detail; softer curves make for nicer aesthetics

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

Mike Bostock's new interactive programming environment for Javascript visualizations

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

Fuck You, Computer

A nice little Swear Trek

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

Fyre Festival Fiasco

Expensive Bahamas music event collapses

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

Russian BGP hijack

Someone hijacked all Internet traffic for major financial service companies

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

Silicon Valley 1982

Extraordinary fanciful map; almost none of this is still there

2017-04-27 maps • siliconvalley • technology

Kalanick and Wii Tennis

A throwaway bit of hagiography cannot be verified

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

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

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

Sacca bows out of VC

Sweet, personal essay

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

Now you're racing with portals

Nice video clip

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

Uber engineer suicide

Heartbreaking story

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

Visualizing data accounting both for density and variance

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

Red Pill Republican

Rape culture meets state legislature

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

Partisan Gerrymandering

Data and visualizations

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

Armenian genocide document

Deep research turns up telegram

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

Scroll down; scammy sounding rideshare company doing a JOBS IPO

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

Nevada County Peeps

Local community in the age of Facebook

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

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

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

Kalanick profile

Lots of detail on the odious Uber founder

2017-04-23 kalanick • startups • uber

A Hundred Days of Trump

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

2017-04-23 normal • politics • trump

Reflections on the cost of America's ignoring LGBT people

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

Heroes of the Storm networking

Details on how the MOBA uses the Starcraft engine

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

Banana Blender Surprise

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

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

Chechnya anti-gay violence

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

Monkeybrains Outage Map

Interesting map of the current SF power outage

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

Hawaiian response to Sessions

Quotes from Senators on fire

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

Fearmongering at Homeland Security

Strongly worded essay on the dangers of incendiary rhetoric

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

Exploring Unicode-equivalents of base64 ASCII encoding

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

256 byte C64 demo with great music

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

Dumb proto-brownshirt movement

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

Gerrymandering in the court

Great overview on redistricting and upcoming Supreme Court cases

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

Use iPhone camera to measure lag to 4ms

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

Hawaii is a state

Sessions expresses confusion about how circuit courts work

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

Build a Better Monster

Maciej on Internet technology, politics, privacy. Very thoughtful

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

MIT selling 8M IPv4 addresses

Rumor has it Amazon bought them for ~$100M

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

Redistricting software

Some of the history behind Maptitude, etc

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

Canadian redistricting history

Brookings report on Canadian redistribution; content starts about halfway through

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

Redistricting: something Canada does better

Editorial on how Canadian redistricting works in practice

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

Canadian districting

Non-partisan process for defining electoral districts

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

Erik Prince + Trump

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

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

2017-04-19 beans • funny • photos

Sierra Snowpack

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

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

Excellent long form radio storytelling

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

Non-Private US land

Amateur map of federal, state, tribal, etc lands

2017-04-19 america • blm • maps

Looking Back at r/Place

Roundup of the Reddit April Fools experiment

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

RNC fundraising scandal

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

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

Maptitude for Redistricting

Software + data used to draw districts

2017-04-18 gerrymandering • politics • redistricting

Berkeley violence plan

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

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

Google Earth Web

A remarkable accomplishment of WebGL

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

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

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

Living on Kerguelen

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

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

North Carolina gerrymandering

Details from 2012 debates about district plan

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

Detroit election results

Official tabulation published as clip art

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

Soviet doomsday device

Details on a nuclear deterrent

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

Inside MS08-067

Details of how Microsoft worked on one exploitable security hole

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

Berkeley violence details

Not a normal protest; facists and neo-Nazis

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

Kushner v Bannon

More insider gossip from the Trump White House

2017-04-16 gossip • politics • trump

Frankfurters vs. teen sex

A novel data visualization

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

French railway map

Zoomable and easy to view

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

European train search

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

California vaccinations

New law requiring vaccinations is working

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

Bureaucratic voice

Rhetorical devices used by organizations to avoid responsibility

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

SNL Spicer parody

Sharp material on Spicer's Holocaust denial statements

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

My dad is a conspiracy theorist

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

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

Spelunky documentary

Noclip hour long movie about the game. Attn @waxpancake

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

Trump and 18F, USDS

Uncertain future for competent government IT

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

Aphyr uses this

2017-04-15 aphyr • keyboard • ui

Schools hitting children

Including photos of the special weapon used

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

Text adventure as FUSE filesystem

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

Is Trump At Mar-a-Lago?

Convenient single-serving site

2017-04-15 politics • trump

Space Trump protest

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

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

Shadow Brokers dump

More NSA hacking tools leaked

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

Old Lights and New Lights

Comparison of 2012 and 2016 Earth-at-night images

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

Carter Page and Rosneft

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

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

Trump eating cake

Remarkable bit of Buzzfeed journalism

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

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

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

FISA vs Carter Page

Details of FBI investigation into Trump campaign member for Russia collusion

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

Streaming jellyfish from the Monterey Aquarium

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

Rabois in Glen Park

VC wants to turn a house into a basketball gym

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

amac's White House reflections

Deputy CTO for Obama talks about the job

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

Opening a Titan II

Prying open the door of an abandoned missile silo

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

Alabama voter suppression

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

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

Lucknow queer pride

LGBT parade in India

2017-04-11 gay • india • lgbt

Texas voter ID law racist

Struck down a second time after appeal

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

Chechnya anti-gay abuses

Reports of prisons with concentration camp conditions

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

PSN download speeds

Details on Sony's CDN for PS4

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

Thank You, Scott

More sharp SNL satire, against armchair activism

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

Sharp satire from SNL

2017-04-09 funny • satire • snl

When Pixels Collide

A narrative of Reddit's /r/place experiment

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

NSA hacking tool leak

Shadow Brokers / Equation Group dump

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

Kobach and voter fraud

Details of the nonsense Republicans are citing about voter fraud

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

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

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

Gossipy insider account of Trump's decision to launch missiles

2017-04-08 politics • syria • 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 • language • yall

Intermediate level tutorial on using Pandas

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

Three part tutorial for Python's data processing library

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

USPS Eid stamps

Postage stamps with beautiful Arabic calligraphy

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

Poppy reacts to Kids react to Poppy

Bizarro Youtube star doubles down

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

Cook Political Report

District-level data on partisanship in the US

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

Deeply Artificial Trees

Bob Ross gets the deep dream treatment

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

Google pay discrimination

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

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

Black History at Rice

Houston university only allowed Black students in 1963

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

Kushner's omissions

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

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

Brotli in practice

Newer compression algorithm makes files 20% smaller than gzip

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

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 food • movietheater • popcorn

Federated Learning

Google distributed a machine learning problem across millions of cell phones

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

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

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

North Carolina 2014 precinct data

Migurski's continuing experiments with political data

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

Trump's media war

The "war" is phony, a sham for appearances

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

Women in Soviet CS

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

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

Hexing the technical interview

A novel approach to stupid tech interviews

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

Disable Windows 10 ads

Several different places you have to disable ads

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

Nope, Not Arabic

Collection of fake Arabic writing from clueless people

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

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

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

Subresource integrity

Protect Javascript from CDNs by using a hash

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

Google's machine learning hardware

Performance details on their neural network chips

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

Truth, Politics and Power

New in-depth political podcast, very smart

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

Central European University in Peril

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

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

Trump Kleptocracy Watch

Update on various forms of ethics conflicts

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

Jeff Kaplan on Overwatch

New interview with Blizzard's fantastic spokesman for the game

2017-04-05 games • jeffkaplan • overwatch

Time series datastore used in the financial engineering world

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

Postgres extension for efficient time series data

2017-04-05 database • postgres • timeseries

How Democracy Ends

Interview about redistricting and voter suppression

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

r/place retrospective

Commentary on Reddit's April Fool's toy

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

Gorka's fascism

Creepy endorsement of extreme right wing in Hungary

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

/r/place timelapse

Reddit April Fool's toy had a fun evolution

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

Prince + Trump + Russia

Mercenary company founder set up secret meetings

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

Greenland's Vikings

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

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

Selk'nam painting (NSFW)

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

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

Trump / Russia ties

Clear visualization with sources of various connections

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

Short indictment of gross tech culture

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

German dialect differences

Fun maps of language

2017-04-01 german • language • maps

A data visualization spoof that actually made me laugh

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

websites that look like Windows installation screens

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

Japanese convenience food

2017-04-01 food • japan

Trump and Facebook

Details of how a deceptive company scraped data on voters

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