RIP Hector Xtravaganza

Key figure in New York drag ball culture

2018-12-31 drag • lgbt • newyork • nyc • obituary • queer

Tetris Guideline

Details of what makes a correct official Tetris game

2018-12-31 games • tetris

Gay in the 50s White House

Aid to president was gay, very detailed portrait of his emotional life

2018-12-31 gay • history • lgbt • politics • whitehouse

I Was A Cable Guy

Big Lesbian writes of her experiences with America

2018-12-30 america • cable • lgbt • service

Trump lie about military pay

Bizarrely claims a 10% raise after years of no raises. Neither assertion is true.

2018-12-29 journalism • lie • military • politics • raise • trump

Open Precinct Data

Working towards making more of the data of US democracy available to all

2018-12-27 elections • gerrymandering • maps • opendata • precincts

Wi-Fi 6 Explained

A good detailed technical overview of the late-2019 WiFi standard coming down the pipe. AKA 802.11ax

2018-12-26 802.11ax • network • via:reddit • wifi • wireless

CalPERS corruption?

Baffling strategy for the enormous California pension fund

2018-12-26 california • calpers • corruption • fraud • investment • politics

Felipe Gómez Alonzo

8 year old child in US immigration custody for a week died, apparently of an untreated illness

2018-12-26 atrocity • border • cbp • ice • immigration • politics • trump

'Us' Trailer

Jordan Peele's new horror movie

2018-12-25 film • jordanpeele • movies • trailer

Kevin Spacey Video Director Commentary

Really cold, subtle takedown of the disgraced actor

2018-12-25 cruel • funny • kevinspacey • metoo • movies

Crime in California

Complicated statistics connected to California's changes in sentencing and prison policies

2018-12-25 california • crime • politics • prison

Black Spies in Civil War

Important role played by servants in the Confederate White House

2018-12-25 civilwar • confederacy • history • slavery • spies

Pedophilia smear campaign

Details of how a deliberate right wing hoax becomes mainstream

2018-12-24 dailycaller • lgbt • politics • propaganda • queer

Dresden Stollen

Germany takes its fruitcake seriously

2018-12-23 christmas • dresden • food • fruitcake • germany • stollen

Slack apology

*This* is how a company apologizes for a screwup in a way that sounds humane

2018-12-22 apology • slack

Mercator Globe

The perfect gift for the map nerd in your life

2018-12-22 funny • globe • maps • mercator • projection

Contrapoints interview

Thoughtful dialog on American politics, Youtube radicalization, and the aesthetic century

2018-12-22 aesthetics • america • contrapoints • politics • youtube

Juul: $4B in cash payouts

Weird structure for an investment, paying off investors and employees

2018-12-21 addiction • cancer • children • cigarettes • investment • juul • nicotine

Bent iPads

Apple says a manufacturing flaw is "normal" and no problem

2018-12-20 apple • fraud • ipad • manufacturing

Harry Potter and the Secret Gay Love Story

Lovely essay about what it's like being a gay person reading a favorite book for any gay subtext

2018-12-19 closereading • gay • harrypotter • lgbt • reading

SF 1920s zoning

Early plan for much denser commercial /cc @enf @migurski. H igher resolution version at https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/8699860862/

2018-12-19 commercial • maps • sanfrancisco • walkable • zoning

Trump charity fraud

The sad denouement to one of the more petty grifts of the Trump family

2018-12-19 charity • crime • fraud • politics • trump

Facebook leaks everywhere

Private deals with other big companies circumvent user privacy settings

2018-12-19 amazon • facebook • privacy • twitter • youhavenoprivacy

Fake brand deals

Social media "influencers" shill things for free, no need to pay them

2018-12-18 ads • advertising • brands • influencers • instagram

Disinformation Report

Details of Russian propaganda from the Senate intelligence committee data

2018-12-18 ira • politics • propaganda • russia • trump

Monopoly Man AMA

Activist who has been trolling congressional hearings in costume

2018-12-18 lgbt • monpolyman • politics • trans • troll

Tim May's violent racism

An awful part of the cypherpunk

2018-12-18 crypto • cypherpunks • obituary • politics • racism • timmay

Donald Knuth

Nice profile of an excellent old-fashioned computer scientist

2018-12-18 algorithms • computers • computerscience • knuth

Azellia White

First female Black pilot in Texas, 1946. /cc @tysonweihs

2018-12-18 africanamerican • aviation • black • flying • houston • texas

Google Dragonfly malfeasance

Internal team stole user search data without proper notification (internally or externally)

2018-12-17 china • google • privacy • tirefire

Portland basketball posters

Beautiful game day posters

2018-12-17 basketball • design • portland • posters • trailblazers

LEO Internet satellites

Details on OneWeb and SpaceX's plans to launch thousands of satellites to provide data networks

2018-12-17 data • internet • leo • oneweb • space • spacex

Russian propaganda info

Details from data collected by the Senate intelligence committee

2018-12-17 facebook • politics • propaganda • russia • trump • twitter • youtube

Riot Games Must Be Better

Painful to read this several months later, after the author was fired and Riot has changed nothing

2018-12-16 games • leagueoflegends • lol • riotgames • sexism • tirefire

RIP Tim May

Influential cypherpunk writer passes away

2018-12-16 computing • crypto • cypherpunks • history • via:hackernews

Queer Zines

A fun small medium is still thriving

2018-12-16 culture • gay • lgbt • magazine • queer • zines

Star Wars propaganda

Excellent retro artwork

2018-12-15 movies • propaganda • starwars • via:boingboing

The Rise, Lean, and Fall of Sheryl Sandberg

Critical profile of Facebook's COO

2018-12-15 criticism • facebook • leanin • sheryl • sherylsandberg • tech

Tree ring visualization details

Specifics on how that beautiful visualization of immigration data was developed

2018-12-15 dendochronology • infovis • treerings • visualization

Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. immigration

Lovely visualization technique

2018-12-14 art • dataviz • immigration • visualization

100 largest islands

Very nicely rendered poster

2018-12-14 geography • islands • maps • via:reddit

Riot COO slap on the wrist

One of the chief executives involved in the cultural of sexual harassment gets a minor punishment

2018-12-14 games • harassment • leagueoflegends • riotgames • tirefire

Commons Clause

Open source projects are closing off their source by trying to be the exclusive provider of that software as a service

2018-12-14 business • code • commonsclause • license • opensource • redis

ICE acts with pure evil

ICE puts out a request for families to sponsor migrant children. Then turns around and arrests those families.

2018-12-14 evil • ice • immigration • politics • trump

H○LLA▲D T○NNEL

When decorations go wrong

2018-12-13 funny • newyork • typography

Robot impales worker

Remarkable photo of 10 foot long, half-inch thick metal rods violating the body of a human worker

2018-12-13 accident • china • industrial • photos • robot

Cookiebot

A commercial product for helping websites comply with the GDPR

2018-12-13 cookies • data • gdpr • privacy • web

San Francisco's ghost stations

Some details of SF's transit infrastructure

2018-12-12 marcin • muni • sanfrancisco • sf • transit • wichary

Ms. Berezin’s Data Secretary

The first computer word processor (the Redactron) was designed by a woman. This is her obituary.

2018-12-11 computing • history • obituary • women

German rail strike

It's not just the French train system that goes on strike

2018-12-11 diebahn • germany • labor • politics • strike • train

systemd root escalation

If your UID > MAX_INT you get to be root

2018-12-11 badtech • bug • security • systemd • unix

Google+ leaks 52M users' data

Another flaw in Google's failed social network leaks data explicitly marked as private

2018-12-11 badtech • google • google+ • googleplus • privacy

Google $MM ad mistake

Internal tool accidentally ran an ad that cost millions

2018-12-10 ads • bug • google

Jack's meditation

Twitter + Square CEO talks about a 10 day demanding meditation retreat

2018-12-09 jack • meditation • myanmar • square • twitter • vipassana

Black

An opinionated Python code formatter, to save you the trouble of worrying about formatting

2018-12-07 format • lint • programming • python

Goodbye, EdgeHTML

Forceful essay on the value of browser diversity

2018-12-06 browsers • chrome • edge • firefox • google • microsoft • mozilla • msie • standards • webkit

On a crypto cruise

Reporter embeds with a bunch of Bitcoin true believers

2018-12-06 bitcoin • cruise • cryptocurrency • culture

Kevin Hart's anti-gay comments

Oscars host is an asshole

2018-12-06 gay • kevinhart • lgbt • oscars • tv

Never use Quora

Nice essay on how awful the closed system is

2018-12-05 freedom • internet • quora

xonsh

Python and bash had a baby

2018-12-05 bash • programming • python • unix

Dirty-Poor and Ugly

"qiou", a popular memeish thing in China

2018-12-04 china • culture • qiou • weibo

Republican email hacked

NRCC had 4 email accounts breached, probably by a foreign power

2018-12-04 badtech • gop • nrcc • politics • republicans • russia • security

Just Cause 4 Easter Egg

Lovely homage to Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy; listen to the narrative

2018-12-04 games • gettingoverit • justcause4

FCC continues to hide

Continuing scandal of stolen identities around net neutrality comments

2018-12-04 ajitpai • corruption • fcc • politics

John Henry

Nice essay about the historical importance of the folklore song about a Black steel drivin' man

2018-12-04 africanamerican • black • folklore • johnhenry • labor • politics

More on NC electoral fraud

Very suspicious absentee ballots, and a convicted felon at the middle of the Republican campaign

2018-12-04 election • fraud • northcarolina • politics • votes

Jeff and Sanjay

Lovely profile of two of the best systems engineers I've ever known. Details on their unusual collaborative coding method.

2018-12-03 engineering • google • jeffandsanjay • pairprogramming

Tumblr porn crackdown

One of the most common sources of user-curated pornography is about to go away

2018-12-03 gay • lgbt • porn • tumblr

The Content Cycle

The way stupid jokes on the Internet become fodder for TV's culture wars

2018-12-03 culture • internet • memes • politics • stupid • via:metafilter

RSS to Mastodon

Service bridging RSS feeds and Mastodon, experimental / simple hack

2018-12-02 activitypub • mastodon • rss • syndication

Firecracker

An OS designed to launch in 125ms and 5MB. Runs under Linux KVM and crosvm.

2018-12-01 crosvm • kvm • linux • unikernel • unix • virtualization • vm