Nelson's Linkblog 2021-07

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Grindr response on outing

Thoughtful details on location privacy from Grindr's CEO in response to the homophobic journalists who destroyed a man's career for being gay

2021-07-31 catholic • gay • grindr • lgbt • location • privacy • tech

Pac-Man and porn (NSFW)

1982 article in a porn magazine is remarkably detailed about Pac-Man and its culture. Also contains some burlesqueish images of naked women.

2021-07-31 1980s • culture • games • pacman • porn • via:metafilter

Inter font family

Lovely simple sans-serif font, open source

2021-07-30 design • fonts • free • opensource • sansserif • typography • via:hackernews

Safari is killing the web

Detailed criticism of Apple's browser being underdeveloped

2021-07-30 apple • browser • safari • web • webkit

Trump's other coup attempt

Explicitly told the Justice Department to declare a corrupted election and "leave the rest to me"

2021-07-30 corruption • coup • democracy • election • politics • trump

Amanda Knox's words

Victim of a bad prosecution talks about the problems of being famous and yet without any power as other people appropriate and misrepresent her story

2021-07-30 amandaknox • celebrity • culture • identity • movies

Texas and slavery

One big motivator for the 1835 Texas Revolution was to reinstate slavery of Blacks; Mexico had outlawed it

2021-07-29 history • mexico • racism • revisionism • slavery • texas

Dyson Sphere designs

Youtube channel for someone who's making beautiful designs in the game Dyson Sphere Program

2021-07-29 dsp • dysonsphere • factorio • games

Criticize Simone Biles?

A handy flowchart of who is allowed to express their opinion

2021-07-29 black • culture • funny • gymnastics • simonebiles

Some statistics on changes in American behavior during Covid

2021-07-29 america • behavior • coronavirus • covid19 • work

Small airplanes still use leaded fuel; after many, many years a no lead alternative was finally approved

2021-07-28 100ll • aviation • environment • fuel • gami • planes

Grass Valley ransomware

Our little town paid money to crooks who stole city data

2021-07-28 badtech • california • grassvalley • it • ransomware • security

Trump promises wild protest

From Dec 2020, a reminder that the coup attempt was planned weeks in advance

2021-07-28 coup • insurrection • jan6 • politics • sedition • trump

Max Steiner for Congress

Democratic candidate running for CA-1 in 2022

2021-07-28 california • congress • maxsteiner • politics

A detailed article about the inhalant drug popular with gay men

2021-07-27 alkylnitrate • amylnitrate • drugs • gay • lgbt • poppers • via:metafilter

OneTrust Cookie Consent

A decent UI for user privacy management on websites

2021-07-27 cookies • development • gdpr • privacy • web

Firefox extension to color tabs based on the domain name of the site. Doesn't seem to change the window title though :-(

2021-07-27 colors • firefox • tabs • ui

Activision Blizzard harassment summary

Excellent overview of the explosion of criticism about Activision / Blizzard and their horrible culture of sexual harassment

2021-07-27 activision • blizzard • sexualharassment • tirefire • wow

Excellent aerial photo of astonishing city architecture. It's just as impressive from the ground.

2021-07-26 aerial • madrid • photos • plazamayor • spain

Lifecycle wind carbon

The full carbon cost of generating electricity with wind power

2021-07-26 carbon • electricity • emissions • generation • globalwarming • power • wind • windmill

Life-cycle carbon of cars

Detailed study very recently published

2021-07-26 carbon • cars • climatechange • emissions • manufacturing

Rewiring America

Saul Griffith's plan for fighting climate change by electrifying things now. He's working on an actual dead trees publication for October

2021-07-25 carbon • climatechange • electrification • electrify • saulgriffith

An important year in Hungary as Orban scapegoats and attacks LGBT Hungarians

2021-07-25 hungary • lgbt • orban • politics • pride

Pigeon seduction

People who train their pigeons to seduce, lure, and then steal other people's pigeons

2021-07-25 birds • funny • pigeons • scotland • sport

Twitter banned Sci-Hub

over a "counterfeit policy", apparently

2021-07-24 copyright • science • scihub • twitter

An example of a website that explains their terms of service in plain language

2021-07-24 language • legal • photos • usability

Benin City history

The grandeur of a pre-Colonial African state

2021-07-24 africa • benin • beninbronzes • british • colonialism • history • nigeria

A scientist in the 1910s-1920s who made enormous contributions to physics and math, without much reward

2021-07-24 abstractalgebra • jewish • math • noether • physics • science • women

Clubhouse data for sale

Stupid VC-beloved product leaks 3.8 billion phone numbers. (Or not, there is some skepticism.)

2021-07-24 clubhouse • data • privacy • security • vc

Juden Raus! game (CW)

A hideous board game from Nazi Germany making a lark of forcing Jews out of the country

2021-07-24 games • history • holocaust • jewish • jews • nazi • racism

AWS’s Egregious Egress

Cloudflare talks shit about Amazon's bandwidth pricing

2021-07-23 amazon • aws • bandwidth • cloud • cloudflare • hosting • pricing • via:hackernews

No athiests in foxholes

Anti-vax radio jerk gets serious Covid, is now a vaccine believer

2021-07-23 coronoavirus • covid19 • disease • hypocrisy • vaccination

Framework Laptop

A Windows/Linux laptop designed to be repairable

2021-07-23 hardware • laptops • linux • repairable • tinkerable • windows

Doodle Champion Island Games

Google invents a whole 16 bit Japanese RPG as an Olympics themed doodle

2021-07-23 16bit • doodle • games • google • jprg • sports

GPT-3 which generates tweets like yours

2021-07-23 generative • gpt3 • machinelearning • text • twitter

Political bubbles

Excellent personalized visualization of American political affiliation

2021-07-23 america • maps • politics • visualization

ECMA 4: flow charts

A 1960 standard for computing

2021-07-22 ecma • flowchart • history • programming • standards

Kavanaugh never investigated

No surprise but the supposed FBI vetting was a sham

2021-07-22 corruption • kavanaugh • politics • sexualharassment • supremecourt • tirefire • trump

Satellite kidnapping details

Much more detailed article about the CIA briefly stealing a Soviet satellite

2021-07-22 coldwar • espionage • satellite • soviet • space

Satellite kidnapping

Wacky Cold War story of the CIA briefly "borrowing" a Soviet satellite when it was being shipped from one city to another

2021-07-22 cia • coldwar • espionage • satellite • soviets • spies • via:metafilter

Burrill and ethics

A clearly written editorial against Catholic witch hunts

2021-07-21 burrill • catholic • gay • grindr • lgbt • politics

Covid: Trump vs blue states

Detailed report from July 2020 on how the Trump response to Covid was influenced by the idea that it was mostly killing Democrats

2021-07-21 coronavirus • corruption • covid • politics • trump

App data weaponization

A thoughtful article on the meaning of the homophobic attack on a gay man based on purchased location data from his phone

2021-07-21 catholic • gay • grindr • homophobia • lgbt • location • privacy • via:metafilter

Multics Security Evaluation

1974 Air Force report

2021-07-21 airforce • computing • history • multics • security • unix

Pornhub art project

Sort of hilarious; porn company makes short films re-enacting classical works of art. This link is SFW.

2021-07-21 art • museum • nsfw • porn • pornhub

Catholic gay witchhunt

Nasty homophobic Catholic publication buys location data, finds a church leader has been going to gay bars. So of course he resigns. Meanwhile, the Church continues to protect its leaders who sexually abused children.

2021-07-21 catholic • gay • homophobia • lgbt • location • privacy • via:metafilter

Sacred garment discussion

Mormon's unique undergarments now a topic of discussion about practicality and health. "It isn’t bringing me closer to Christ, it’s giving me U.T.I.s"

2021-07-21 feminism • lds • mormon • ritual • underwear

Source for displays with old fashioned electromagnetic elements that flip between white and black

2021-07-21 art • display • electronics • flip • flipdot • hardware

Flip digit display

Neat display of a liquid simulation

2021-07-21 art • display • flipdigit • simulation

Emoji similarity

A map of clusters of emoji used together

2021-07-20 emoji • meaning • signifier • twitter • visualization

This city does not exist

Use a GAN to create plausible Japanese municipal flags

2021-07-20 art • flags • gan • generative • japan • neuralnetworks

It rains, it pours

Map of where it rains and pours in the world

2021-07-20 earth • map • maps • rain • visualization • weather

Automattic buys Pocket Casts

Best podcast app bought by best weblog company. Cautiously optimistic

2021-07-16 acquisition • automattic • companies • pocketcasts • podcast • wordpress

M.2 screw alternatives

Various options for replacing the horrible screw that attaches an SSD to a motherboard

2021-07-16 computer • hardware • m.2 • motherboard • screw • ssd

Retrocomputing magazine; the folks behind The Print Shop Club

2021-07-16 apple • australia • computing • history • printshop • retrocomputing

Apple ][ print shop running in emulation in your browser with PDF output

2021-07-16 apple • design • graphics • pdf • printshop • retrocomputing

AI writing code

Excellent summary of research efforts that goes far beyond the recent GitHub announcement

2021-07-15 ai • code • gpt • machinelearning • ml • programming

Manu Cornet profile

Details on the talented cartoonist who recently left Google

2021-07-15 cartoons • funny • google • tech • twitter

Coup fears inside the White House

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs' comments on fearing Trump was going to stage a coup

2021-07-15 coup • military • milley • politics • trump

Twitter's failure to iterate on their product is a multi-year disastrous problem that starts at the top.

2021-07-14 business • clone • copy • fleets • socialmedia • twitter

Congratulations, San Francisco has a few thousand fewer reports of shit on the sidewalk or street than last year.

2021-07-14 poop • qualityoflife • sanfrancisco • sf • shit

Boys Will Be Boys

A little gay bit from a 1934 musical

2021-07-12 dancing • gay • lgbt • musical

Hating InDesign

Marcin Wichary on the difficulties of iterating a book design in InDesign

2021-07-12 books • indesign • layout • software • typography • via:waxy

93 meter free dive

Terrifying video of an astounding athlete

2021-07-12 diving • freediving • via:reddit • zharkova

Blue field entoptic phenomenon

You can see your own white blood cells when looking at a blue sky

2021-07-11 biology • eyes • optics • retina

Confederacy costs

A lot of these monuments to slavers and traitors are paid for with public funds

2021-07-11 america • confederacy • history • politics • slavery • welfare

A non-proprietary alternative to Google Authenticator and Authy

2021-07-11 2fa • authy • login • otp • password • security

A global map of indigenous peoples and their traditional lands

2021-07-10 america • history • indians • indigenous • maps • natives

Jello: JSON parser

Like jq for processing JSON data, but with a Python syntax

2021-07-10 json • linux • programming • python • shell • unix

jc: JSON Unix output

Tool to turn the free text output of various Unix tools into JSON

2021-07-10 json • linux • programming • shell • unix

Arrested for voting

Texas man's bail set at $100,000 because he voted while still on parole. No one told him that wasn't legal.

2021-07-10 politics • texas • voting • votingrights

Beddr sleep monitor

Sensor sticks to your forehead and measures blood oxygen, body position, etc

2021-07-10 medical • position • sensor • sleep • sleepapnea

America vs sex education

Infuriating story of a teacher being harassed out of a job at a private school by people with a twisted view of sexuality

2021-07-09 america • lgbt • sex • via:metafilter

Vaccine efficacy defined

A simple explanation of what reported efficacy numbers mean

2021-07-09 covid • covid19 • efficacy • statistics • vaccine

Oldschool PC Fonts

Another collection of retrocomputing fonts

2021-07-08 fonts • retrocomputing • typography

Huge collection of old bitmap fonts from various computers

2021-07-08 bitmap • fonts • retrocomputing • typography • via:hackernews

Goomics, Google comics

Collection of Google-oriented comics. I think these were originally for insiders only?

2021-07-08 funny • google • parody • tech

Subversive Joy of Lil Nas X

Fantastic profile of the rising queer music star, with excellent detail both on his history and locating his public sexuality and race in contemporary culture

2021-07-07 lgbt • lilnasx • music • profile • queer

Lil Nas X - Sonic Shit

Funny nerdy video from before the fame

2021-07-07 lilnasx • music • sega • sonic

California migration

Folks leaving LA and SF and moving to smaller semi-urban places in California

2021-07-06 california • demographics • migration

Starlink firmware

Folks taking apart the SpaceX Internet terminal

2021-07-06 firmware • hacking • spacex • starlink • teardown

UBC Visible Speech

Videos showing pronunciation of a bunch of IPA phonemes

2021-07-06 ipa • linguistics • phoneme • phonology • speech

Another Tesla victim

Autopilot encourages Tesla drivers to be unsafe

2021-07-06 autopilot • cars • liability • tesla • traffic

Nikole Hannah-Jones statement

Classy, poignant statement from the journalism professor about taking a job at Howard after racists associated with UNC tried to sabotage her career

2021-07-06 howard • journalism • nikolehannahjones • racism • unc

Socket activation

Appreciation of a technical trick to improve system boot time

2021-07-05 boot • init • linux • systemd • unix

Thin line flags

Americans of all stripes love their identity politics

2021-07-05 america • flags • identity • politics • thinblueline

Evan Martin moving on

At Google since 2004, just left for Figma

2021-07-05 career • engineer • evanmartin • google • livejournal • programming

Sci-Hub threats

Updates on the legal attacks on one of the most important achievements in scientific communication of the century

2021-07-04 copyright • elsevier • publishing • science • scihub

Covid-19 variants

Excellent, non-panic-inducing overview of Covid variants and what they mean

2021-07-04 coronavirus • covid19 • disease • epidemic • medicine • science • variants

Umurangi Generation review

Review of an indie photography game

2021-07-04 games • indie • maori • photography • review

C64 drive slowness

Accumulation of manufacturing errors and engineering mistakes is what made the C64 floppy drive so slow

2021-07-04 1541 • c64 • computers • history • speed

6502 illegal opcodes

Analysis of the pattern of microcode inside the 6502

2021-07-04 6502 • apple • hacking • microcode • programming

Freespin 1451tro

Classic C64 demo. Only without the C64, just the hard drive plugged directly into the monitor

2021-07-04 1541 • c64 • demo • demoscene • hardware • scene • via:metafilter

Dance performance

I have no idea what this but it's a fantastic video clip from a modern dance performance

2021-07-04 bdf2021 • dance • video

Coast Starlight closed

Fire near Mt Shasta closes the Union Pacific line Amtrak relies on

2021-07-04 amtrak • california • fire

McConnell's Jan 6 speech

In the teeth of a coup attempt the Republican Senate leader said reasonable things about voting and democracy. Shame his party has immediately turned its back on these principles.

2021-07-04 mcconnell • politics • republicans • voting • votingrights

A new subculture of literate young people with a sense of fashion

2021-07-03 criticism • critique • culture • darkacademica • literacy

Conjunto vs Norteño

A battle for Tejano music

2021-07-03 conjunto • music • norteno • norteño • tejano • texas

Alternative to React for building web apps; compiler does more work up front so the browser side is lighter

2021-07-02 framework • frontend • javascript • js • programming • react • svelte • web

Turboencabulator

A 1944 engineering breakthrough

2021-07-02 engineering • funny • parody

AWS Infinidash explained

Finally a clear short explanation of Amazon's newest cloud service

2021-07-02 amazon • architecture • aws • i8h • infinidash

Boy Scout settlement

$850M for decades of mishandling sexual abuse

2021-07-02 boyscouts • bsa • legal • scouts • settlement • sexualabuse

Nevada County's pandemic

One of a series of detailed interviews with healthcare providers in Nevada County, California and their experience of the pandemic

2021-07-02 california • covid • nevadacounty • pandemic • women

Target vs SF shoplifting

Store reduces opening hours because of theft and security problems

2021-07-02 sanfrancisco • shoplifting • target

Ships cats in hammocks

A photo series from the olden times

2021-07-02 cats • cute • hammocks • ships

Russiman considered

A 2015 overview of responses to a theory from 2003 that humans have been causing global warming for 8000 years now

2021-07-02 anthropology • architecture • climatechange • ruddiman

Climate change, 8000 years

Argument that human activity moved CO2 from 240ppm to 280ppm over the last 8000 years through agriculture

2021-07-02 anthropology • co2 • globalwarming • science

Frodo and Sam's romance

A close queer reading highlights the joy of finding ambiguities and sexual representation in texts

2021-07-02 fiction • lgbt • lotr • queer • tolkien

Arabian farming following a straight line along a road. Worth heading to 23.255361°, 53.801306° on Google Maps to look at the patterns nearby

2021-07-01 agriculture • farming • irrigation • oasis • uae

Jan 6 coup, in detail

NYTimes doing what the Republicans refuse, putting together an understanding of what Trump's mob did when attacking the US Capitol

2021-07-01 america • coup • insurrection • jan6 • politics • trump

CO2 sensor vs temperature

Some consumer CO2 sensors give wildly different results depending on ambient temperature

2021-07-01 airquality • calibration • co2 • ndir • sensor • temperature

Lit web components

A simple framework for building webapps that's not React

2021-07-01 css • framework • html • javascript • web • webapp

Open source fork of Mapbox GL JS. Hooray!

2021-07-01 cartography • free • javascript • mapbox • mapboxgljs • maps • mobile • opensource