Nelson's Linkblog 2019-11

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Open source home automation

2019-11-30 automation • hacking • home • iot • smarthome

For when your shortwave radio is out of reach

2019-11-30 fun • hacks • nist • time • wwv

More Quadriga weirdness

Founders of a Canadian crypto company have a long history of fraud. One's death in India looks less plausible now.

2019-11-30 bitcoin • fraud • quadriga • scam

Allegations that NordVPN is working with a malware company to use unwitting people's computers as VPN endpoints

2019-11-29 badtech • network • nordvpn • oxynet • privacy • via:hackernews • vpn

50 best PC strategy games

An idiosyncratic list!

2019-11-29 games • pc • strategy

DDR home movies

415 hours of archival film from East Germany. Tragically bad user interface but lots of amazing video

2019-11-29 8mm • berlin • ddr • eastgermany • germany • history • video

Independence Day (Hawaii)

Today is the anniversary of Hawai'i being guaranteed its sovereignty in a treaty with Great Britain and France

2019-11-28 hawai'i • hawaii • history • sovereignty

Spencer's statement

Fired Navy Secretary writes his view of what happened with Trump intervening to protect a war criminal

2019-11-28 corruption • military • navy • politics • trump • warcrimes

Only out LGBT player the big American sports, nice photo of him with his boyfriend

2019-11-26 gay • happy • lgbt • nfl • ryanrussell • sports

Former Manhattan non-white neighborhood, wiped out by urban renewal to make room for Lincoln Center

2019-11-26 history • lincolncenter • manhattan • newyork • nyc • racism • urbanrenewal

Watchmen Recap, Episode 6

Excellent summary. Spoilers of course, also content warning for lots of anti-Black violence

2019-11-26 lynching • recap • tv • violence • watchmen

Broader impeachment context

A simple list of various forms of Trump corruption adjacent to the Ukraine bribery that no one is investigating

2019-11-26 bribery • corruption • politics • treason • trump • ukraine

Queer like Pete

An explanation of the type A-gay that Pete Buttigieg represents. It's legitimately queer, just different from what straight America is used to

2019-11-26 america • buttigieg • gay • identity • lgbt • politics

California DMV sells you out

They make about $1.50/Californian/year selling your DMV data to companies

2019-11-25 california • dmv • privacy

RIPE's last IPv4 addresses

The Internet is officially out of IPv4 space now. Or at least, everything's allocated and now it's a reseller's market.

2019-11-25 addresses • internet • ipv4 • ripe

Trump corrupts the Navy

A dangerous escalation in Trump's expanding circle of awful actions

2019-11-25 corruption • military • navy • politics • trump

Romanov costume ball

Photos from 1903 showing lavish Russian costumes at a party. (Modern colorization)

2019-11-25 costume • fashion • history • romanov • russia

Navy Sec'y Spencer's resignation

Eloquent, honorable letter of a military man resigning because his Commander in Chief keeps interfering to defend a war criminal

2019-11-25 america • military • navy • politics • spencer

City shoe repair

Old shoe shop in Santa Fe; also sells great red chile

2019-11-23 businesses • chile • history • newmexico • santafe • shoes

Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp

Enormous details about the Chinese (Guizhou) sauce

2019-11-23 chili • chilicrisp • food • guizhou • sauce

Latinx humor from San Antonio

2019-11-22 funny • latinx • sanantonio • tejas • texas

Immigrant culture in the US has a pirate radio like thing going using conference calls as the medium

2019-11-22 culture • hmong • radio • via:metafilter

Cybertruck precedents

Photos of various ridiculous concept cars from the 70s and 80s

2019-11-22 cars • cybertruck • design • funny

ICANN / .org corruption

Evidence from the sale and commercialization of the .org domain. Names Fadi Chehade at the middle of it.

2019-11-22 dns • domains • dotorg • icann • internet • registrar

Gossipy details about Adam Neumann

2019-11-22 adamneumann • business • cult • startup • tirefire • wework

Tim Cook <3 Donald Trump

New Trump promo / ad makes heavy use of images of Apple and its CEO.

2019-11-22 apple • cook • politics • timcook • trump

Privacy add-on that tries to block CDNs from tracking you by serving local copies of things instead

2019-11-21 ads • cdn • firefox • privacy

A more aggressive Privacy Badger. Doesn't just block stuff, it tries to make things expensive for tracking companies

2019-11-21 addon • ads • browser • firefox • privacy

Weasel collaborator

Zuckerberg and Thiel and their dinner with Donald Trump. So ashamed they kept it a secret

2019-11-21 collaborator • facebook • politics • thiel • trump • zuckerberg

Responses for loyal Nixonites

1973 Art Buchwald column about Watergate

2019-11-20 buchwald • funny • nixon • oped • politics • trump

Google Gets Social!

Brand new gaming product lets users fill in their profiles with long-dead IM platforms

2019-11-20 funny • google • incompetent • obsolete • social • stadia

Space Claw temporarily crippled

One talon removed for antenna upgrades.

2019-11-19 sanfrancisco • spaceclaw • sutrotower

Fallout 76 cannibals

Hilariously written article about player-created content

2019-11-19 cannibalism • fallout • funny • games

“Water” in European languages

Nice map and explanation of etymology

2019-11-18 etymology • language • maps • via:reddit • water

VR finger tracking

Valve index controllers track motion of all fingers. Folks are using them to talk in ASL in VRChat

2019-11-18 asl • deaf • games • valve • vr • vrchat

Start Your Own ISP

A practical guide to starting your own Internet Service Provider

2019-11-17 interenet • isp • networking

Some 12% of women are genetically capable of seeing more than the usual 3 base colors

2019-11-17 color • via:hackernews • vision

nss-tls: A DNS over HTTPS resolver for glibc

Use DNS over HTTPS in the standard way a Linux system would expect

2019-11-17 dns • dnsoverhttps • internet • linux • privacy • resolver

A 2020 contested election

Simple explication of a nightmare scenario where Trump loses the election but refuses to honor the vote

2019-11-17 2020 • america • civilwar • election • politics • trump

Sappho and her Friend

A subreddit devoted to humorous discussion of LGBT erasure

2019-11-17 funny • gay • lesbian • lgbt • reddit

Google Pixel 4 review

First deep, thoughtful negative review I've seen. Matches all the quick hot takes at launch; Google's phone just underwhelms.

2019-11-17 android • google • phone • pixel • pixel4 • smartphone

Google Search tweaking

Details on the various ways Google sculpts its search results

2019-11-16 ads • google • informationretrieval • ranking • search

Nine year old girl rocking the fuck out of her drum kit playing along with Nirvana

2019-11-16 awesome • drumming • music • nirvana

Trump pardons war criminals

Military men who committed murder pardoned

2019-11-16 murder • politics • trump • warcrime

More investigative reporting on the Vitamin E acetate that's killing some vape users. Traces the origin of a popular adulterant that's the culprit

2019-11-14 health • marijuana • thc • vaping

Ubiquiti acts shitty

Excellent networking hardware starts sending surveillance data from your network without your permission or any way to turn it off

2019-11-14 badtech • network • privacy • ubiquiti

Facebook camera spying

Evidence the iOS app turns the camera on while you're reading your feed

2019-11-12 badtech • camera • facebook • privacy • scandal • tirefire

Stephen Miller's white supremacy

A long list of emails demonstrating his hateful thought

2019-11-12 immigration • miller • nazi • politics • stephenmiller • trump

A new white supremacist group in America

2019-11-12 america • nazis • patriotfront • politics • via:metafilter

Painted Churches of the Texas Hill Country

Czech Catholics built some beautiful churches

2019-11-12 architecture • church • czech • history • texas

Naomi Wu on Metafilter

Famous tech reporter from China is in the middle of some stuff being done to her; she shows up on Metafilter to explain

2019-11-12 china • lgbt • metafilter • naomiwu • shenzen

Abar, The First Black Superman

1970s blaxploitation superhero movie. Possibly relevant to the new Watchmen show

2019-11-12 black • blaxploitation • movies • superman • watchmen

The white cat from the women-yelling-at-cat meme

2019-11-11 cats • culture • funny • memes

Transferring PC games

Instructions for all the different game launchers to let you copy a game's files to a new PC rather than re-download them

2019-11-10 bethesda • copy • download • epic • games • steam

Lovely photo essay on the evolution of the drag ball / house culture in NYC for LGBTQ / POC youth

2019-11-08 drag • gay • lgbt • photos

Optimizing C++ and Rust

Example of optimizing code for a modern CPU to take advantage of multiple cores, cache efficiency, SIMD, etc

2019-11-07 code • optimization • programming • simd

Alito and Kavanaugh are corrupt

Posing chummily with an anti-gay group who has submitted amicus briefs for cases that are currently before the court

2019-11-07 america • justice • lgbt • outrage • politics • supremecourt

Phantom text messages

Serious system glitch betrays that carriers are storing your SMS messages for _months_, then resending them spuriously

2019-11-07 badtech • cellphone • message • privacy • sms • text

Saudis plus Travis Kalanick

Massive sovereign wealth fund from the murderous nation funds sociopath to disrupt cooking. $400M series A in convertible debt.

2019-11-07 funding • saudis • startups • tirefire • tk • travis • traviskalanick

Remove the Mona Lisa

Provocative but on-point article about the stupidest problem at the Louvre. A museum full of excellent art and everyone goes to see one meh tiny portrait.

2019-11-07 art • louvre • monalisa • museum • paintings

Nevada County on power outages

Official letter details all the harm PG&E's outages have done to the local economy

2019-11-06 grassvalley • nevadacounty • pge • politics • psps

Linux performance over time

Analysis shows core functions slower or more variable than before, a combination of complexity and security mitigation

2019-11-06 benchmarks • linux • performance • systems

Command someone's Alexa with a laser from hundreds of feet away

2019-11-05 alexa • badtech • laser • privacy • siri • voice

De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina

Doña Angela's hit cooking show from Michoacan, as seen on NPR

2019-11-05 cooking • food • mexico • tv

A history of the key Internet protocol. Summary of Paul Vixie's talk: note he's an expert but biased historian

2019-11-05 dns • internet • privacy • vixie

Evidence some one individual using Tether manipulated Bitcoin price in 2017

2019-11-05 bitcoin • bitfinex • crypto • fraud • tether

Tether fraud, short explanation

Not as detailed as the Oct 29 article by another author, but a good readable summary

2019-11-05 bitcoin • bitfinex • crypto • scam • tether

This is the optical network terminal (aka fiber modem) my ISP gave me

2019-11-04 fiber • internet • network • sonic

Uighur Kristallnacht

Evidence of religious erasure in Western China

2019-11-04 china • genocide • muslim • religion • uighur

11,000 President Trump tweets

Detailed analysis. Over half his tweets are attacks.

2019-11-03 politics • trump • twitter

Build the Wall, for kids!

You have to indoctrinate children to be white supremacists, it doesn't just happen

2019-11-02 children • hatred • immigration • politics • whitehouse

Sleep Like The Dead

A mattress buying guide site that claims to be independent and not fraud

2019-11-02 mattress • shopping • sleep

Death Stranding review

Excellent writing by Heather Alexandra

2019-11-01 deathstranding • games • kojima

New-ish Linux performance monitoring, with CPU, IO, and Memory split into separate categories

2019-11-01 linux • loadaverage • performance • systems • top

Unusual VC fund is opening up to new investments

2019-11-01 indievc • investing • startups • vc

New Guinea singing dogs howl as a group

2019-11-01 animals • dogs • howling • music • newguinea