Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog aboutarchivemastodonfeed
AdNauseam
An ad blocker that simulates clicks on all ads in an effort to poison the tracking data and disrupt advertising
2021-09-30 ads • privacy • adblocking • poison • browser • web • tootme
Location data market
A look at the sleazy business of companies buying and selling your personal location
2021-09-30 location • privacy • geolocation • phones • mobile • advertising • tootme
7 types of programming
A taxonomy of kinds of computer languages: Algol, Lisp, ML, Smalltalk, Prolog, Forth, and APL.
2021-09-30 programming • history • software • tootme
Amazon vs SpaceX
Amazon highlights 39 legal actions SpaceX has taken to bolster their market position.
2021-09-30 amazon • spacex • starlink • lawsuit • government • business
Airbreak CPAP
Jailbreaking CPAP machines to upgrade their software capabilities
2021-09-30 cpap • respirator • bipap • resmed • hacking • jailbreak • sleep • health • tootme
YouTube TV vs NBC
Excellent insider article on the mechanics of the streaming TV business
2021-09-29 tv • business • youtube • google • nbc • youtubetv • tootme
Ken Griffin alleged perjury
Claims of ugly self-dealing between Robinhood and Citadel
2021-09-29 kengriffin • perjury • fraud • robinhood • citaldel
Another Trump tell-all
Yet another collaborator from the inner circle decides to spill the beans on what a monster Trump is
2021-09-29 trump • politics • whitehouse • scandal • harassment
$23.7M Ethereum fee postmortem
Details on the screwy cryptotransaction; not intentional fraud this time but a Javascript type error
2021-09-29 javascript • cryptocurrency • crypto • bug • money • types
Haitian migrant photos
Excellent set of photographs of the group of Haitians recently coming through Del Rio, TX
2021-09-29 haiti • immigration • ins • politics • photography • photos
Eleven Madison Park review
Harsh but clever review of Humm's latest experiment with a vegan menu
2021-09-28 11madison • danielhumm • cooking • food • restaurant • newyork • tootme
Working in VR
Notes from someone using an Oculus Quest 50 hours a week
2021-09-28 via:hackernews • vr • oculus • virtualreality • tootme
Facebook Messenger spying
Company outsources spying on users' private messages to Accenture
2021-09-28 facebook • accenture • privacy • messaging • tirefire
littlejs
A small WebGL / Javascript 2d game engine
2021-09-27 games • programming • javascript • via:waxy • tootme • webgl
Trump's 2020 coup plans
An overview of what we've learned about Trump's attempts to destroy our democracy
2021-09-27 trump • politics • democracy • coup • 2020 • votingrights
OpenThings
Simple home automation controllers (sprinklers, garage door) based on open source and Raspberry Pi-like platforms
2021-09-27 hardware • opensource • sprinklers • irrigation • garage • garagedoor • tootme
Bitfinex squirrely fee
Odd Ethereum transaction included a $23.7M tip. Many possible explanations, a likely one is money laundering.
2021-09-27 fraud • bitfinex • moneylaundering • crypto • cryptocurrency • scam
ClearURLs
Browser extension to remove tracking garbage from URLs, including Google's search surveillance
2021-09-27 google • search • privacy • tracker • adblocker • tootme • firefox
Sci-Hub is essential
A nice essay explaining how the most important source of scientific information is partially unlicensed but absolutely vital
2021-09-27 scihub • science • copyright • publishing • tootme
Cooperative Overlap
A conversational style in which someone else starts talking before the first person is finished. Not to interrupt, but to augment.
2021-09-26 culture • conversation • linguistics • tootme
Facebook autopropaganda
Company starts using its massive influence to try to shape public opinion about itself.
2021-09-26 facebook • propaganda • pr • scandal
CAKE queueing
Details of what the current state of the art in bandwidth shaping is doing
2021-09-26 cake • queueing • router • congestion • internet • tcpip • tootme
Bitcoin electricity consumption
Energy wasted by the cryptocurrency. 11.6GW, or roughly the power used by 10 million American homes
2021-09-25 globalwarming • bitcoin • electricity • waste • crypto • cryptocurrency • tootme
Our constitutional crisis is already here
Long, carefully worded essay on how dangerous this moment in American democracy is.
2021-09-24 trump • politics • democracy • corruption • america • history • coup
SDF text rendering
Techniques for rendering crisp fonts in WebGL that work well even with small rotations and zooms
2021-09-22 webgl • fonts • typography • sdf • mapboxgl • tootme
Nevada County vote security
Our excellent Registrar of Voters explains why a "forensic audit" is not a good idea. Recall sore losers are asking for something expensive and absolutely unnecessary.
2021-09-22 voting • california • politics • votingrights • nevadacounty
Space Force insignia
Boy-men in the US military living out their TV fantasies with a new branch of the US military
2021-09-22 military • startrek • spaceforce • stupid • pence • via:metafilter
Hermain Cain Award
Mean spirited but pointedly ironic collection of people who were obnoxiously anti-vaccine on social media and then ended up dying of Covid.
2021-09-22 via:metafilter • covid • disease • irony • facebook
Tall el-Hammam's destruction
Evidence that a city in the Middle East was destroyed by a meteor around 1650 BC
2021-09-21 history • archaeology • meteor • via:hackernews • science • tootme
Willis Wonderland
Referenced in Demi Adejuyigbe's Sept 21 video this year, the site they filmed the video at
2021-09-21 earthwindandfire • DemiAdejuyigbe • music • sept21 • sep21 • tootme
Flying Ginsu
The US has an alternate to Hellfire missile warheads (the R9X) which pops out flying sword blades. No, really.
2021-09-21 drones • assassination • murder • hellfire • warfare • ninja
IP Blacklist Check
Simple test if your IP address is on any of a bunch of spam and abuse blacklists
2021-09-20 internet • vpn • blocking • ipaddress • blacklist • spam • tootme
Leather at Pride
A detailed historical explication
2021-09-18 lgbt • gay • pride • leather • bdsm • culture • tootme • history • aphyr
Facebook on switching costs
Detail from the FTC complaint about Facebook deliberately trying to keep users locked in
2021-09-18 facebook • lockin • antitrust • socialmedia • competition • switchingcost
Facebook troll farms in 2020
Pretty much all of the top "Christian" pages and most of the top African-American pages on Facebook were actually propaganda operations
2021-09-18 propaganda • politics • facebook • spam • influence • moderation • failure • tootme
watchmedo
Unix command line program to run something every time a file in a watched directory changes
2021-09-18 filesystem • events • python • programming • tootme
Masks: not for London Breed
SF's mayor ignores her own SF mask mandate
2021-09-17 masks • covid • sanfrancisco • hypocrisy • health • londonbreed
Fixing Time.deltaTime
A very detailed explanation of how smooth updates happen in a gaming engine
2021-09-17 games • fps • updates • programming • performance • jitter • tootme
There is no AIDS vaccine
Georgia Governor Kemp goes on and on about the history of the AIDS vaccine trying to make some point about Covid. It's all based on a fiction.
2021-09-17 ignorance • medicine • politics • georgia • kemp • aids • hiv • vaccine • covid
Bypass Paywalls Clean
Firefox extension that works for passing paywalls. There's a Chrome version but Google won't let you use it easily.
2021-09-17 paywalls • firefox • browser • news • tootme
The Facebook Files
The WSJ's series of deep investigative reporting on Facebook malfeasance
2021-09-17 facebook • wsj • reporting • journalism • tech • socialmedia
Facebook's evil 2
Link may let you bypass the WSJ paywall to read their excellent reporting on Facebook's awfulness
2021-09-17 facebook • wsj • paywall • slavery • murder • tirefire
Facebook's evil
Knew they had hit men and sex slavers doing business on Facebook, did nothing about it.
2021-09-17 tirefire • facebook • slavery • murder • monstrous • zuckerberg
PeopleLiveInCities
A subreddit for data visualizations that are really just population density maps
2021-09-16 maps • visualization • demographics • populationdensity • tootme
Insane CA election fraud claim
Larry Elder's campaign publishes a website claiming the election was rigged with "evidence" for an election that hasn't even been counted yet.
2021-09-13 politics • elections • larryelder • voterfraud • disinformation • lies • republicans • votingrights
Chevalier d'Éon
A genderqueer person from 18th century France, in high society and politics (and spycraft!). Was friendly with Ben Franklin.
2021-09-13 transgender • trans • queer • lgbt • history • france • tootme
Input: Fonts for Code
A set of coding fonts designed with contemporary principles. Explicitly supports proportional fonts
2021-09-12 fonts • coding • programming • vs.code • design • typography • tootme
Twenty Is Myth
Short, poetic reflection on what 9/11 has become in America
2021-09-12 america • history • newyork • politics • 9/11 • tootme • nyc
Elastic tabstops
Solve the spaces-vs-tabs debate by having tab mean "go to next cell in a table"
2021-09-12 layout • editors • tab • space • text • formatting • tootme
Color pickers
Demo of different color spaces, from someone who's created a couple of new options for color pickers
2021-09-12 color • hsv • hsluv • okhsv • design • visualization • tootme
JetPens
The go-to online source for ordering quality pens
2021-09-11 pens • plotter • drawing • art • tootme
Apple DHRG
Later models of the Apple //e supported a double high-res mode of 560x192
2021-09-11 apple • graphics • hires • dhrg • apple2 • retrocomputing • tootme
Defender source code
Assembly for the legendary 1984 video game. This guy has repos for many other classic games, too.
2021-09-11 via:Emsl • games • defender • jarvis • assembly • tootme
America and vaccine mandates
Some useful historical context on required vaccines, particularly from the smallpox era
2021-09-10 vaccine • america • covid • health • publichealth • smallpox • politics • tootme
Google underpays temps
Two years of Google ignoring labor law and underpaying temporary workers
2021-09-10 google • workers • pay • fraud • labor
CO2 and thinking
New study shows that even modest increases in CO2 (well below safety thresholds) are associated with a decline in cognitive performance
2021-09-10 co2 • pollution • freshair • circulation • hvac • cognitive • intelligence • science • tootme
Anti-Nazi activism on Wikipedia
Heroic editor removing Nazi fanboy garbage
2021-09-10 wikipedia • nazi • history • tirefire
Recology $36M settlement
More fallout from the ongoing corruption investigation in San Francisco
2021-09-09 sanfrancisco • corruption • recology • investigation • tootme
US political violence
A list of major political violence events in Washington DC. America likes to pretend it's always peaceful and civilized but the reality is not so tidy.
2021-09-09 politics • america • violence • jan6 • trump • sumner • civilwar
Ordnance Survey jigsaw puzzles
Make a customized puzzle from any UK map
2021-09-09 maps • uk • puzzles • jigsawpuzzle • ordnancesurvey • tootme
Black doctors on Covid
Great The Root article interviewing Fauci and two Black doctors about Covid and vaccines. "It's gonna be like Thanos in this motherfucker."
2021-09-08 covid • vaccine • health • black • codeswitching • tootme
Sila batteries
A new type of lithium-ion battery with a significantly more efficient chemistry
2021-09-08 batteries • power • storage • electrify • tootme • sila
Roguelite deck-builders
A history of a game genre
2021-09-08 games • slaythespire • monstertray • roguelike • ccg • tcg • tootme
SF trashcans
Our insane boondoggle of designing a new trashcan is tracked back to one center of San Francisco corruption, former DPW head Nuru.
2021-09-08 politics • trashcans • sf • sanfrancisco • nuru • corruption
Guardian goes anti-trans
Awful editorial decision to pull part of an interview of Judith Butler criticizing the TERF movement
2021-09-08 terf • transgender • guardian • lgbt • trans
Open Source Hardware community norms
A great explicit statement of the various social rules one open source community implicitly follows
2021-09-07 opensource • hardware • culture • community • ethos • tootme
color-wander license
2019 discussion of one artist's attempt to open source his code but prevent the *output* of the code from being used commercially
2021-09-07 art • license • nft • tootme • via:golan
Generative Fish apology
Quick and thoughtful reversal from the NFT that appropriated an artist's work. There's a deeper conversation that's needed here.
2021-09-07 nft • art • license • opensource • software • tootme
Minecraft on demand
Clever AWS tricks to run a Minecraft server on-demand by listening for DNS queries to spin up an instance
2021-09-07 minecraft • aws • serverless • games • tootme • cloud
Montero Baby Registry
Lil Nas X does some creative fundraising for charities around his new album
2021-09-07 music • montero • lilnasx • charity • lgbt • tootme
NFT steals artist's work
Some NFT scammer used Lingdong's open source generative art code to sell some crypto magic beans. The artist is very clear he does not want this use. But the code is MIT licensed so maybe they legally have the right. Big mess.
2021-09-07 nft • art • scam • opensource • lingdong • tootme
Mt. Rushmore + Trump
South Dakota governor commissioned a sculpture adding Trump
2021-09-06 rushmore • trump • politics • tacky • sculpture
Brewster Kahle profile
Nice article about the Internet Archive
2021-09-06 internet • archive • wais • kahle • brewster • library • tootme
US solar tax credit
Some history of the (currently) 26% tax credit homeowners get for installing solar
2021-09-05 solar • tax • incentive • globalwarming • tootme
NSA undermines Juniper
Details of how Juniper Networks got breached by a Chinese hacking groups. Turns out NSA demanded they use a sabotaged algorithm, then the Chinese attackers exploited the weakness.
2021-09-05 juniper • nsa • china • security • badtech
백종원의 요리비책 Paik's Cuisine
Korean cooking; well edited with English subtitles
2021-09-05 food • cooking • korean • jjigae • tootme
Redistricting 2022
538's take on showing the ongoing process of redistricting
2021-09-04 politics • gerrymandering • congress • redistricting • tootme
Redistrict 2020
One central place to track all the proposed congressional redistricting maps. Includes links to details, partisan scoring, etc
2021-09-04 reditsricting • gerrymandering • politics • planscore • data • tootme
Republican extremism
Excellent essay capturing how dangerous this political moment is given the Republicans' willingness to do seemingly anything to stay in minority rule.
2021-09-03 politics • republicans • filibuster • senate • coup • democracy
Reddit and Covid denialism
Some more details and "policy clarifications" around Reddit dealing with organized Covid disinformation
2021-09-02 covid • health • reddit • propaganda • moderation
McCarthy sedition
Republican leadership starts making baseless threats against companies for complying with a Congressional investigation. Why are they so intent on hiding what happened?
2021-09-02 republicans • coup • america • politics • sedition