Nelson's Linkblog 2018-04

about • archive • mastodon • feed

Apple location protocol

Details from reverse engineering; would love to know more

2018-04-29 maps • apple • protocol • location • geolocation

Lynching memorial

The kind of history museum America needs, dealing with the horrors of slavery and racism in the US

2018-04-28 america • politics • slavery • justice • lynching

US political realignment

Heather Cox Richardson's argument that the US is seeing a major restructuring of its two party system

2018-04-28 politics • democrats • republicans

Summary of an attack on Amazon DNS and Internet infrastructure yesterday. BGP is a security disaster in slow motion

2018-04-25 security • bgp • networking • internet • badtech

Russian election system hacking in 2016

We know they probed 21 states because we only had monitoring in 21 states

2018-04-25 election • russia • politics

incel culture explained

Details on a particularly odious pocket of misogyny on the Internet

2018-04-25 misogyny • women • gender • feminism • incel • reddit • 4chan • murder • manosphere

First Family holding hand

This kind of political commentary is petty. OTOH this is really weird and remarkable.

2018-04-24 trump • politics • family • melania • hands

Gaia Data Release 2

Data on 1 billion stars in our galaxy

2018-04-24 space • gaia • astronomy • data • via:hackernews

Whole Internet map

Hilbert curves to map IPv4 addresses

2018-04-24 maps • internet • networking • hilbertcurve • via:hackernews

Yemen's odd and isolated island

2018-04-24 socotra • nature • photography • photos • travel

Karl Rove's kinky dad (NSFW)

Details on Louie Rove, his gay father, and his love of genital piercing

2018-04-21 kink • rove • lgbt • gay • piercing • bme • karlrove

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

2018-04-20 economics • metrics • optimization

ICE legal tactics

Various dodges ICE uses to avoid people's civil rights

2018-04-19 civilrights • ice • politics • immigration • police

Farmer reports outrageous behavior from immigration

2018-04-19 ICE • immigration • civilrights • politics

Steamed Hams with different animators

Remarkably good

2018-04-19 steamedhams • meme • funny • via:metafilter • animation • simpsons

Dymaxion sunset

jwz simulates sunrise and sunset on an unusual map projection

2018-04-19 maps • fuller • dymaxion • projection • sunset

Computing Pi in Javascript

Observable notebook; Javascript sure has come a long way

2018-04-18 javascript • programming • code • math • pi • webworkers • generators

Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico

Various shady business bros formed a blockchain thing in Puerto Rico

2018-04-18 tirefire • bitcoin • cryptocurrency • fraud • puertorico

Underscores in Python

Various ways the _ character is used in Python; some idiomatic, some built in

2018-04-18 python • programming • syntax • underscore

Californian taxes in 2018

Impact of the GOP/Trump tax plan; richer Californias get a significant tax hike

2018-04-18 california • taxes • politics • trump • gop • via:reddit

"Yelp for Noise"; crowdsourced measurements of noise at restaurants

2018-04-18 noise • sound • iphone • ios • app • restaurant • dining

Russia blocks AWS and Google Cloud

hamfisted attempt to stop Telegram

2018-04-18 telegram • privacy • google • amazon • aws • censorship • security

Papua New Guinea lodges

Luxury travel in an unlikely place

2018-04-17 travel • png • papua • tourism

Mexican Repatriation

American ethnic cleansing from the 1930s

2018-04-17 mexico • america • politics • immigration

PyPI postmortem

Failed rollout for the Python package hosting, nice writeup

2018-04-17 pypi • python • hosting • postmortem • cdn

Internet lightbulbs

How many cloud servers does it take to change a light bulb?

2018-04-17 lightbulb • internet • internetofshit • iot • philips • funny • automation

Beyoncé detail

An appreciation of how complex and deep her work is

2018-04-16 beyonce • depth • detail

Danakil Depression

Extreme desert environment with many colors in Ethiopia

2018-04-16 ethiopia • photography • photos • art

China recants gay Weibo ban

Rare about-face on public policy

2018-04-16 china • lgbt • gay • humanrights • weibo • censorship

OLPC retrospective

Utopian project to give laptops to kids in poor nations did not end well

2018-04-16 medialab • negroponte • olpc • education • laptop

Weibo bans the gays

Large social media in China tries a blanket ban on "homosexuality"

2018-04-15 gay • lgbt • homosexual • weibo • politics • china

Abstract paintings inspired by city grids

2018-04-15 maps • cities • via:kottke • via:migurski • painting • art

Michael Cohen mobster

Remarkable photos from the Daily Mail

2018-04-14 dailymail • photo • trump • politics • cohen

Twitter infrastructure incidents

Former engineers reminisce about various cack-ups

2018-04-13 twitter • infrastructure • engineering • internet • programming

Container ship markings

Notations used by tugs, dockworkers

2018-04-13 via:metafilter • shipping • containers

Tesla malfeasance

NTSB won't work with them after they aggressively published one-sided information about the driver/passenger their autopilot killed

2018-04-12 ntsb • tesla • selfdrivingcars • regulation • autopilot

Autechre: elseq et al

Interview with the electronic music duo; they have a new album / live thing coming out soon

2018-04-12 music • autechre • elseq • maxmsp • programming

Mapping Out Protocols

Randy Meech on achieving permanence in a tech company by focusing on protocols

2018-04-12 protocols • maps • mapzen • randymeech

Reddit and hate speech

Conflicting, poorly considered policies

2018-04-12 reddit • hatespeech • nazis • politics • freespeech

Stanford research on efficient video streaming

2018-04-12 salsify • dash • video • streaming • webrtc

Python package library migrating to a new system, Warehouse

2018-04-12 python • pypi • pip • software • security

ICE sexual abuse

Rape and sexual assault used as a tool of control

2018-04-11 ice • dhs • america • politics • immigration • rape • sexualabuse

Far Cry 5 has a terrible ending

Full of spoilers, a righteous rant

2018-04-11 farcry5 • games • farcry • ending • stupid • writing

Mythology about security…

Jim Gettys on the legacy of crypto export control laws and how the Internet today is still less secure

2018-04-11 security • crypto • politics • law • kerberos

Tech debt in LoL

Riot Games talks about League of Legends' code and technical debt

2018-04-11 deb • engineering • software • riotgames • games • riot • lol

Observable computation

Details on their topological sort to run computation in dependency order

2018-04-10 observable • toposort • topological • computing • notebook

Homophobia 2018

Excellent performance of the fear and second-guessing we do

2018-04-10 gay • lgbt • homophobia • glasgow • scotland • bbc

American Chopper explained

In which @mattyglesias gets some value from his liberal arts education

2018-04-10 americanchopper • meme • platonic • funny • culture

Short film of shapes found in aerial imagery

2018-04-10 art • maps • shapes

Cohen raid op/ed

Simple article explaining the new high stakes

2018-04-10 trump • politics • mueller • russia • fraud • cohen • sex

ACP, Southern food

An American spin on arroz con pollo that sounds like mediocrity

2018-04-10 food • south • mexican • cooking

Meteora, Greece

Crazy cliffside monasteries

2018-04-09 travel • greece • monastery • meteora

Open Precinct Data

A call for an organized effort to gather geodata for elections

2018-04-09 politics • america • opendata • precincts • gerrymandering

Boys and toxic masculinity

A reflection on how misogyny harms boys and men

2018-04-09 feminism • masculinity • culture • gender

Google Maps testing a globe projection

A/B testing a new map presentation

2018-04-08 maps • projections • google • googlemaps • globe • projection

A very early gay rights activist in the US, Society for Human Rights dates to the 1920s

2018-04-07 gay • lgbt • politics • history • civilrights • america

Molly Ringwold on John Hughes

Nuanced, complex discussion of rapey themes in Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, etc

2018-04-06 movies • johnhuges • mollyringwald • metoo • gender • harassment

RIP Twitter clients

Twitter API changes mean third party Twitter clients like Tweetbot will probably stop working

2018-04-06 twitter • tweetbot • api

Queering the Map

Collection of LGBT stories on a map

2018-04-06 maps • lgbt • queer • via:metafilter

NYT on the royal wedding

Fantastic interactive web article from the NYT team

2018-04-06 nytimes • art • web • funny • wedding • via:metafilter

Notebook computing

Nice article about the value of Jupyter and Mathematica notebooks for science

2018-04-05 science • publishing • jupyter • notebooks • mathematica • wolfram • via:metafilter

Interesting gaming data from Steam Spy

2018-04-05 steam • steamspy • games • china • via:metafilter

Article from last year claiming Alexander Vinnik stole most of MtGox's bitcoin

2018-04-04 bitcoin • theft • fraut • mtgox

MtGox Bitcoin AMA

Mark Karpelès answering questions with candor

2018-04-04 bitcoin • mtgox • fraud

Showing live social media activity on a map

2018-04-03 maps • snapchat • socialmedia

Axis Maps projects

Twitter thread of various projects by an innovative mapping group

2018-04-03 maps • axismaps • twitter

Grindr sharing HIV status

Sensitive data shared with third parties

2018-04-02 grindr • privacy • sex • lgbt • aids • hiv

Spotify's direct listing

Company taking an unusual method to go public

2018-04-02 spotify • ipo • wallstreet • finance

History of the first largely known public DNS server

2018-04-02 dns • level3 • bbn • networks • internet

DNS services compared

CloudFlare's new DNS service compared to Google, Quad9, others

2018-04-02 dns • cloudflare • google • via:hackernews

Archaeology vs Genomics

Survey of the changes in the study of humanity's past as DNA evidence becomes available

2018-04-01 science • archeology • archaeology • anthropology • dna • history • genomics • via:hackernews

Cloudflare launches a new public DNS service

2018-04-01 dns • cloudflare • internet