Nelson's Linkblog 2019-02

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Hyperscan regex parser

Detailed paper on the super-fast regex engine that uses SIMD instructions and clever algorithms

2019-02-28 algorithms • avx • intel • regex • regexp • simd • software

Facial tattoos in the US

A detailed documentation of a changing fashion

2019-02-28 culture • face • music • tattoos

1971 US gay marriage

Couple got a valid marriage license in 1971, no one noticed

2019-02-28 civilrights • gay • lgbt • marriage • politics

Editorial on how far the Republican party has slid in its defense of Trump

2019-02-28 corruption • ethics • politics • republicans • trump

Kids sexually abused at the border

Because of course they were, it's an entirely predictable outcome of the Republican policy of stealing children from their parents

2019-02-28 children • humanrights • immigrants • migrants • politics • rape

Super fast JSON parser makes use of AVX2 SIMD instructions

2019-02-26 avx2 • intel • json • optimization • performance • simd

Billy Porter's ball gown

Actor talks about his jaw-dropped tuxedo ball gown from the Oscars

2019-02-26 billyporter • fashion • feminism • gay • lgbt • oscars

2020 political propaganda

New tactics in the clandestine war for public opinion on social media

2019-02-24 botnets • politics • propaganda • russia • twitter

An emulation of the AWS Lambda computing environment, for testing and development

2019-02-24 aws • development • docker • lambda • serverless

Zuckerberg in Hawaii

Moving forward with controversial plan to buy land of uncertain title

2019-02-24 facebook • hawaii • realestate • zuckerberg

Swiss company that makes tube bending machine; pictures of examples

2019-02-24 freeforming • manufacturing • pipes • tubes

Freeform tube bending

Interesting tool lets you create pipes and tubes with complex shapes

2019-02-24 manufacturing • pipes • tubes

SF surveillance cameras

New map of some 2500 cameras around San Francisco

2019-02-23 crime • maps • police • privacy • sanfrancisco • surveillance • via:reddit

DiFi looking awful

Somehow manages to lose a debate with a bunch of 10 year olds

2019-02-23 california • children • difi • feinstein • greennewdeal • politics

Which founder are you?

Mat Honan as always with the insights

2019-02-22 buzzfeed • funny • mathonan • parody • tech

Stephen Wolfram's infrastructure

Incredibly detailed post by the eccentric computer scientist, some good tools in here. Also note the Lifestreams-like UI for searching old documents.

2019-02-22 computers • edc • environment • lifestreams • wolfram

Unclaimed Property

Easy index to finding money you might own in the US and Canada. I found significant $$ here just now, not a scam!

2019-02-22 legal • money • probate • property • unclaimed

CA marijuana revenue

2018's market off to a slow start, $345M in taxes ($1B was predicted)

2019-02-21 california • marijuana • politics • taxes • weed

Youtube and Pedophilia

Awful creepy people being awful on Youtube

2019-02-21 ads • google • pedophilia • youtube

Gay Heart Throbs #2

Remarkable 1979 comic

2019-02-20 comics • gay • history • lgbt

Arkansas Medicaid cruelty

You have to work to get Medicaid. And the website that you have to use to register your work hours is down for 10 hours a day

2019-02-20 arkansas • downtime • healthcare • medicaid • politics

NYTimes free for Californians

Anyone with a library card anywhere in the state gets a digital subscription

2019-02-20 california • journalism • newspaper • nytimes

The Making of Tupaia’s Map

A detailed new interpretation of the 1769 map of Polynesia, based on an understanding of traditional wayfinding

2019-02-20 anthropology • culture • history • maps • polynesia • tupaia

Tupaia / Cook map of Polynesia

1769 map produced by the collaboration of Polynesians and Europeans

2019-02-20 anthropology • europe • history • maps • polynesia

Read the Comments

NYT's Cooking section has a remarkably good reader notes section

2019-02-20 cooking • food • journalism • nyt • nytimes • via:metafilter

Trump obstruction

More details on Trump's various illegal and unethical attempts to disrupt the investigations into his crimes

2019-02-20 america • corruption • justice • politics • trump

Password managers insecure

If you have access to the system running the password agent, you can probably steal their passwords even if the manager is locked

2019-02-20 1password • badtech • dashlane • keepass • lastpass • passwords • security

1900 SF Chinatown

Photos of Chinatown from before the Earthquake

2019-02-19 1900 • chinatown • history • photos • sanfrancisco

European search engine has an open source web map service

2019-02-19 mapboxgl • mapping • maps • qwant

Medieval trade networks

Remarkable synthesis of research

2019-02-19 maps • medieval • trade • via:kottke

Preferential voting explained

An Australian comic

2019-02-19 australia • comic • funny • rankedchoice • via:metafilter • voting

Captain Marvel review bombed

Angry man-babies already flooding Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews, much like Black Panther

2019-02-19 feminism • movies • sexism • tirefire

Yosemite from Lick Observatory

See across the entire Central Valley

2019-02-19 california • mountains • photo • view • yosemite

Saarinen's classic airport terminal at JFK is being turned into a hotel

2019-02-18 saarinen • architecture • hotel • jfk • twa • twaterminal

Firefox about: pages

Various metadata URLs the browser supports

2019-02-18 about • firefox • web

European inland waterways

Remarkably detailed map of major navigable waterways

2019-02-17 boats • danube • europe • map • rhine • rhone • rivers • travel • via:reddit

WSL and floating point

long doubles don't work in the Linux-for-Windows environment. Simple workaround, should be fixed, but isn't.

2019-02-16 floatingpoint • linux • math • windows • wsl

Heroin on the SF bus

Depressing conversation where everyone agrees if you see someone smoking heroin on the bus in San Francisco, you should probably just ignore it

2019-02-16 drugs • heroin • qualityoflife • reddit • sanfrancisco

A modern recursive DNS resolver you can run on your own network

2019-02-16 dns • internet • linux • recursive • server

Survey of web sites shows ads use up a lot of resources. Google's two main ad systems each take 300ms and are ubiquitous

2019-02-16 adblocking • ads • google • tech • web

Paul Vixie has had enough

Famous old Unix expert goes on an anti-Google rant. He's not wrong.

2019-02-15 dns • funny • google • paulvixie • rant • via:hackernews • vixie

The Chinese Chinese Room

In China they call Searle's thought experiment "The Chinese Room"

2019-02-15 china • chinese • language • philosophy • searle

Streaming TV market share

Roku has the most streaming TV users in America

2019-02-15 appletv • cordcutter • market • roku • streaming • tv

Portland cops love Nazis

Alarmingly chummy text messages with Patriot Prayer

2019-02-15 antifa • nazis • patriotprayer • police • politics • portland

Safe Withdrawal Rates

A detailed analysis of how much you can spend based on a retirement nest egg. Not sure I agree with all of it, but it's a very thorough framework.

2019-02-14 finance • investment • money • retirement

Young journalists profile 1200 children who were killed by guns in the year since the Parkland shooting

2019-02-14 children • guns • journalism

Self driving car performance

Statistics on how often the car hands control off to the driver

2019-02-14 ai • automobile • cars • selfdriving • uber • waymo

Democrats voter database

Progress on a centralized data store for elections

2019-02-14 democrats • dnc • election • politics • voterfile

Emotional vocalizations

Creepy-but-cool webapp of non-linguistic sounds humans make to express emotions

2019-02-13 communication • emotion • language • via:metafilter

TV Signal Locator

Tool to estimate what digital TV signals are receivable at your house

2019-02-13 cable • hdtv • ota • tv

BBC cameraman attacked by MAGAist

At the El Paso Trump rally a Trump supporter violently attacked a BBC cameraman

2019-02-13 brownshirts • journalism • politics • trump • violence

A PC / CGA demo from 2015. Link to video, plus technical explanation of how it works

2019-02-12 demos • demoscene • dos • games • pc • scene • via:metafilter

Reddit: $0.30/user

Comparison of revenue per user for various Internet social media sites

2019-02-12 ads • advertising • reddit • socialmedia • twitter • valuation

Rice University's racist history

Student at Houston's best college unearths some of the virulently racist history of the intitution

2019-02-12 houston • racism • rice • university

Philadelphia machine politics

Corruption in unions and Democratic politicians

2019-02-10 corruption • philadelphia • politics • unions

Musée des Plans-Reliefs

French museum of models of buildings, etc for war planning

2019-02-09 architecture • france • maps • models • museums

European hate speec compliance

Internet companies like Twitter and Facebook are doing significantly better at removing hate speech: if it's flagged, that is

2019-02-09 europe • facebook • hatespeech • nazis • twitter

Cloud gaming service where it's mostly "your computer" but a high power gaming PC in a datacenter

2019-02-09 cloud • gaming • streaming

World religions map

Reddit post, very detailed rendering

2019-02-09 maps • reddit • religion • visualization

Circus of Books

Famous LA porn shop closes

2019-02-09 gay • history • lgbt • porn • queer

I love TikTok so much

Highlights from the video social media app that almost everyone forgot

2019-02-07 fun • periscope • socialmedia • tiktok • via:waxy • video • vine

Emergency supplies stored on uninhabited islands in the South Pacific for victims of shipwrecks

2019-02-07 castaway • history • newzealand • shipwreck

Cape Reinga Pōhutukawa tree

A lone tree on an uninhabited island in New Zealand has an important role in the Māori tradition of the afterlife

2019-02-07 māori • culture • legend • maori • newzealand

Gumroad, from VC to lifestyle

Amazingly personal and detailed article about a VC-backed business that didn't really work out, found a second life as a lifestyle business

2019-02-07 gumroad • kpcb • lifestyle • startups • vc • venturecapital

Trump willfull ignorance

Intelligence briefers are concerned enough to leak to the press

2019-02-05 intelligence • politics • trump

Interview with an important and complicated gay editor / writer

2019-02-05 gay • lgbt • queer • via:reddit

A video mirror where you watch yourself age to death

2019-02-04 aging • art • golan • golanlevin • machinelearning • video

Avast is malware

Anti-virus injects itself as a MITM of SSL connections to inspect traffic. Breaks everything.

2019-02-04 antivirus • avast • avg • badtech • firefox • malware

Someone sits down and plays almost every game in the franchise

2019-02-04 angrybirds • games • via:metafilter

Pre-contact languages in CONUS

Map of Indian languages, cultures, etc in the area now occupied by the contiguous 48 US states

2019-02-04 indians • languages • maps • nativeamericans • via:reddit

Permanently stealing migrant children

Trump administration arguing it can't reunite families because taking children from foster families would be disruptive

2019-02-04 children • immigration • politics • trump

Guidelines for making good conference badges

2019-02-04 badges • conferences • inclusion

Official Magical Pride

Disney's first official LGBT event

2019-02-03 disney • gay • lgbt

Paradise fire planning

Despite some efforts to plan for an evacuation, the reality was not nearly so good

2019-02-03 california • fire • grassvalley • nevadacounty • paradise • planning

Real time evacuation Planning Model

A tool you can use to plan evacuations from towns in emergencies

2019-02-03 california • cityplanning • emergency • gis • paradise • planning

SF cops destroyed evidence

Abuse case against police dropped because police destroyed evidence. Literally took a hammer to a laptop.

2019-02-02 california • corruption • jail • justice • police • politics • sanfrancisco

Article about the best red chile in New Mexico

2019-02-02 chile • chimayo • cooking • food • newmexico • spices

Genocide / climate change

So many people died after Europeans came to the New World that it had a major impact on global CO2 levels and temperature

2019-02-01 america • climate • columbus • genocide • globalwarming • newworld • population • science

JK Rowling: you were gay

Parody, and quite sharp. Be sure to read the bit about Harry learning to use his wand

2019-02-01 fantasy • funny • gay • harrypotter • jkrowling • lgbt • writing

Bassoon Tracker

Classic Amiga-era music tracker in Javascript

2019-02-01 audio • demoscene • javascript • music • sound • tracker • via:metafilter

A very simple time-setting NTP client, separate codebase from others I've seen

2019-02-01 busybox • linux • ntp • time • unix

"init" vs "service manager"

Some of the hairball of concepts included in systemd and other init systems in Linux

2019-02-01 init • linux • startup • systemd • unix

DNA for the FBI

Private DNA testing company gives FBI access to its customers' genetic data

2019-02-01 dna • fbi • police • privacy

Immigrant baby reunited

Child taken from her father a month ago, just now being given to her mother

2019-02-01 children • immigration • politics • trump