Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog aboutarchivemastodonfeed
Hard Drive apologizes
Hilarious conclusion to the latest dumb Elon Musk thing
2022-05-31 parody • funny • elonmusk
Felt map tools
Startup making Google-Docs-for-maps officially launches
2022-05-31 maps • felt • migurski • visualization • startup • launch
Google monopoly billing
An end of an era; Android used to let users buy things inside apps without giving Google a 30% cut of the sale. No more. (Apple has always enforced its monopoly.)
2022-05-31 google • android • monopoly • antitrust • kindle • amazon • googleplay • playstore
VisiData
A terminal UI for inspecting large CSV files
2022-05-31 csv • via:metafilter • data • visualization • datavis
Rodney Brooks on cars
AI expert takes some rides in a self driving car
2022-05-30 cars • ai • mit • rodneybrooks • cruise • waymo • tootme
Laverne Cox Barbie
New doll modeled after the famous transgender actress
2022-05-30 lgbt • trans • transgender • lavernecox • dolls • toys • barbie
Queer Bratz
Popular Barbie alternative has a pair of dolls that are queer women protestors
2022-05-29 bratz • lgbt • gay • protest • toys
Viet-Cajun food
An episode of Ugly Delicious talks about Gulf Coast fusion cuisine.
2022-05-29 food • vietnamese • cajun • viejun • vietcajun • houston • neworleans • cooking
NanoBeam
Tiny little aluminum struts for building rigid structors; 5mm!
2022-05-29 aluminum • maker • prototyping • hardware
Early PC charting software
80s and early 90s chart making software, from the before-Excel era
2022-05-27 charts • graphics • datavis • via:flowingdata • history • computing
Chinese Textbook Drama
Criticism of art in a kid's textbook in China. Sorta funny, but also an interesting window into cultural obsessions in other countries
2022-05-27 china • textbook • art • funny • culture
Cindermedusae
Generative art of imaginary sea creatures
2022-05-27 jellyfish • art • generative • via:flowingdata
Texas hypocrisy
Passionate editorial about how Texas politics hurts children and then fails to protect them
2022-05-27 texas • politics • lgbt • transgender • uvalde • children
uBlock Origin and Firefox
Ways that Firefox is the most ad-blocker-friendly browser
2022-05-26 ads • adblocker • ublock • firefox • browser • internet • web
Uvalde / trans attack
False narrative the shooter was transgender spreads via 4chan, US congressmen
2022-05-26 transgender • politics • uvalde • smear • gosar • 4chan
Dune 1st edition map
Original release of Dune had an unusual map on the back cover
2022-05-25 maps • dune • scifi • books
DrawingBotV3
Software to take raster images and turn them into vector art that a plotter could draw
2022-05-25 art • generation • plotter • svg
DuckDuckGo + Microsoft
So-called privacy browser has an exception letting Microsoft track its users
2022-05-25 tracking • microsoft • ads • surveillance • browser
Heartstopper
Lovely new Netflix show that's a teen romance about two young men
2022-05-24 gay • lgbt • heartstopper • tv • netflix
Shireen Abu Akleh killing
Evidence that the Israeli military deliberately shot and killed a journalist
2022-05-24 israel • palestine • journalism • killing
Spindizzy
Classic 8 bit computer game, a Marble Madness derivative
2022-05-24 games • spindizzy • apple][ • apple2 • marblemadness • retrocomputing
DALL-E 2 variants
Haunting set of images generated by iterating through variations the AI dreamed up
2022-05-23 dalle2 • gan • art • ai • via:waxy • generative
Death Star trench truth
We've all had the wrong idea for the last 45 years.
2022-05-23 deathstar • starwars • movies • graphics • truth
RIP Miss.Tic
Excellent Parisian street artist has passed away
2022-05-23 streetart • graffiti • paris • france • misstic • obituary
Alex Jones' small penis
Dangerous right wing lunatic now has a penis size obsession
2022-05-23 alexjones • infowars • penis • batshitinsane
Southern Baptist sex abuse
Report commissioned by the religion finds an institutional pattern of protecting abusers
2022-05-23 religion • sexualabuse • baptist • southernbaptist • morality • tirefire
Sichuan flavor profiles
The official 23 different flavors of Sichuan food
2022-05-23 food • chinese • szechuan • sichuan • cooking • mala
Bad Hombres
Excellent album of Tejano music recorded by an old high school buddy of mine
2022-05-22 music • marfa • davidbeebe • primocarrasco • tejano
Jupytext
Automated text output of Jupyter notebooks so you can check just the code in to version control
2022-05-22 jupyter • programming • notebooks • python • git • versoncontrol
Switch from Shapefile
A well thought out list of problems with ESRI Shapefiles and various alternatives
2022-05-22 gis • shapefile • esri • geopackage • geojson • data • via:lobsters
Curl Impersonate
Version of the web download tool with SSL modified to be identical to major browsers
2022-05-21 curl • scraping • web • programming • tools • useragent • ssl
Daily Wire vs Heard
Ads bought to promote misogynistic media campaign
2022-05-21 heard • amberheard • sexism • misogyny • propaganda • facebook • johnnydepp
Haiti and the US
Detailed story on the occupation of Haiti by the US (in 1915, for decades) and the seizure of its gold reserves
2022-05-21 haiti • america • politics • history • colonialism • imperialism
Haiti's double debt
History of Haitian liberation punished by financial exploitation by France
2022-05-21 history • haiti • france • liberation • slavery • economics
Crypto insider trading
Total shock; unregulated market has people taking advantage of other people in a way that would be illegal if it had regulations.
2022-05-21 fraud • cryptocurrency • insidertrading • frontrunning • binance • scam
Homage to the Pixel
Spare generative art; AI picks colors based on word prompts
2022-05-21 color • generativeart • nft • medialab • tomwhite • gan • ai
Larry Ellison vs. election
Oracle head involved in effort to overthrow the 2020 election
2022-05-20 politics • ellison • oracle • coup • votingrights
Depp-Heard trial impact
How the ongoing spectacle of misogyny and abuse is, once again, moving the Overton window on horrible social behavior online
2022-05-20 sexism • misogyny • amberheard • johhnydepp • extremism • radicalization
f-strings for readable regex
Nice modern Python syntax for composing complex regular expressions
2022-05-20 python • programming • regex • via:reddit • fstrings
Thomas election tampering
Supreme Court Justice's wife directly tried to overthrow the election in Arizona
2022-05-20 politics • arizona • votingrights • supremecourt • thomas • coup
Michigan vote tampering
Republican politician accessed or tried to get access to vote counting machines
2022-05-20 votingrights • michigan • politics • fraud • elections
Paxton disclosure violation
One of the more petty forms of lawbreaking from Texas' attorney general, but still illegal
2022-05-19 fraud • corruption • texas • paxton • politics
Dark MAGA
The Trumpy right wing gets more explicitly violent and extremist
2022-05-19 maga • darkmaga • trump • politics • civilwar • coup • jan6
Rust: A Critical Retrospective
Famed hardware hacker Bunnie writes up his experience after writing 100k lines of Rust code for a kernel
2022-05-19 rust • programming • languages • kernel • hacking
Monkeypox and gay men
Early outbreaks seem to be spreading among men who have sex with men
2022-05-19 lgbt • gay • monkeypox • disease • health • nightmarememories
US census quality
Some data quantifying how flawed the mismanaged 2020 census was
2022-05-19 census • data • quality • politics • trump
a16z as pump and dump
Scathing review of a prominent VC fund's cryptocurrency marketing, accusing it of being financial fraud
2022-05-19 fraud • vc • a16z • cryptocurrency • scam • pmarca
Amber Heard backlash
Thoughtful editorial on the virulent spread of misogyny in the face of facts. (CW: domestic abuse.)
2022-05-19 misogyny • amberheard • johnnydepp • propaganda • abuse
Bros gay movie
Coming later this year, a sassy movie about gay life
2022-05-19 gay • lgbt • movies • bros
Glitch + Fastly
A step forward for the innovative development company
2022-05-19 glitch • fastly • internet • anildash • merger • tech • business
Stablegains fraud
A Y Combinator company lost its customers money during the Terra/Luna debacle
2022-05-19 fraud • stablegains • cryptocurrency • ust • terraluna • ycombinator
Tesla and ESG
Electric car company does poorly in Environmental, Social, and Governance rankings because of its history of worker abuse and bad policies
2022-05-18 tesla • elonmusk • esg • ranking • governance
American disinformation
Modest effort to help the US fight disinformation is derailed by American disinformation peddlers
2022-05-18 disinformation • politics • dhs • america • jankowicz • hate • propaganda
Logjam (NSFW)
A gay lumberjack game from Robert Yang. Perhaps more interesting to read about than play.
2022-05-18 games • robertyang • gay • lgbt • lumberjack
Dragonscale solar
An innovative solar panel technology Google is using on its new office roof
2022-05-17 google • solar • prism • solarpanel
Impossible Chimerical Colors
Fun optical illusion
2022-05-17 color • vision • chimericalcolors • cognitivescience • retina
MiamiCoin failure
Mayor of Miami marketed an official Miami city coin. Its' value is collapsing
2022-05-16 miami • cryptocurrency • money • scam • fraud • republicans • florida
Voting wars
Details on how the election in Georgia is basically a proxy for the GOP trying to undermine American elections
2022-05-16 votingrights • america • politics • elections • trump • fraud • coup
Google Maps vs Māori
5 years ago Google promised to fix voice pronunciation for names in New Zealand and collected data from volunteers. They've never delivered.
2022-05-16 maori • Māori • google • maps • texttospeech • voice
Heartstopper
Sweet gay teen drama TV
2022-05-15 netflix • gay • lgbt • heartstopper • romance • tv
Elden Ring survey
Interesting view of what people liked from the game
2022-05-15 eldenring • games • survey • via:reddit
Māori tech
Data sovereignty as a principle for doing speech recognition development and other tech projects at Te Hiku Media
2022-05-15 maoro • Māori • colonialism • mahelona • kiwifoo • ai • ethics
Gamer -> terrorist
Some cultural details of the Buffalo murderer's engagement with 4chan, Discord, etc
2022-05-15 games • tirefire • culture • hate • terrorism • racism • 4chan • 8chan • discord
El Salvador Bitcoin
Tracking a country's gambling on magic beans via the president's tweets
2022-05-15 elsalvador • bitcoin • fraud • politics • imf
Tether’s De-Pegging
Detailed data on some evidence that the Tether stablecoin is under sell pressure
2022-05-14 tether • stablecoin • usdt • fraud • bitfinex • markets
Vitiligo Barbie
New diversity of dolls, including one with the skin color variation vitiligo
2022-05-14 vitiligo • diversity • dolls • barbie • mattel
Game diversity space tool
Activision Blizzard releases a quantification of measuring character diversity. Well intentioned but maybe clumsy?
2022-05-13 diversity • blizzard • games • overwatch
Covid in North Korea
Yet another misery being visited on the victims of the DPRK
2022-05-13 northkorea • covid • health
About sqlite-utils
Nice writeup of a tool that will turn data in files into a sqlite database
2022-05-13 sqlite • csv • json • data • import • scraping
JSON Hero
A web based JSON viewer with support for decoding image blobs
2022-05-12 json • development • webapp • browser
Ford F-150 Lightning
A review from a drive
2022-05-11 ev • ford • truck • electriccar • review • cars
How Ben Got His Penis
Detailed article about phalloplasty, bottom surgery for FTM transmen (and others). Sympathetic and frank.
2022-05-11 lgbt • transgender • trans • ftm • phalloplasty • penis • medical
AP CS pseudocode
Tests for high school students include a bizarre pseudocode for problems
2022-05-09 pseudocode • programming • tests • ap • computerscience • code
RIP Heroku?
Plausible anonymous Hacker News comment says Salesforce is sunsetting Heroku
2022-05-09 heroku • salesforce • hosting • hackernews
Charles David Keeling
Climate scientist famous for confirming increasing CO2 levels
2022-05-08 co2 • globalwarming • science • climate • climatechange • keelingcurve • maunaloa
Mauna Loa CO2
Official consensus data for global CO2 levels, just hit a new record of 420ppm (average)
2022-05-08 globalwarming • climatechange • maunaloa • climate • co2 • apocalypse
TSM Reginald investigation
One of the big League of Legends team owners is in the middle of a scandal about being a giant jerk and bully
2022-05-08 tsm • reginald • lol • leagueoflegend • games • esports • bullying • doublelift
Biofrost comes out
League of Legends pro player comes out gay, sounds like he's had a hard time of it.
2022-05-08 biofrost • lol • leagueoflegends • games • lgbt • homophobia • gay
Crypto money laundering
Tornado Cash and Blender operate completely transparently as money laundering for, among other things, the North Korean hacking / theft group.
2022-05-07 northkorea • cryptocurrency • fraud • moneylaundering • crime • tumbler
Eid al-Fitr photos
Nice collection of folks in the Muslim world celebrating the end of Ramadan
2022-05-07 ramadan • islam • muslim • eid • eidalfitr • iftar • feast • celebration • photos
Wildbit acquisition
Privately held tech company that does Postmarc and DMARC gives 10% of proceeds to employees in an acquisition despite not having any obligation to.
2022-05-07 email • wildbit • postmark • dmarc • mailchimp • intuit • acquisition
Hometown Buffet
An unusual bit of food writing about going to a chain buffet restaurant in Van Nuys with her kids at 4pm before the divorced father takes them
2022-05-07 food • vannuys • la • divorce • family • hobu • helenrosner
Facebook ending location history
Facebook tracks your location. They'll no longer collect and show you that data. Sounds like they will still collect it for their advertising though.
2022-05-07 ads • facebook • location • privacy • maps
Texas v children
Goal is to stop educating some children in Texas. The cruelty is the point.
2022-05-06 texas • children • immigrants • education • hate • racism
Twitter’s Board Gave Up
A sharp read on the failure of Agarwal and Twitter's board to have any sort of conviction or plan
2022-05-02 jack • twitter • agarwal • elonmusk
California marijuana market
Big paper article about a collapse in the bulk market for weed growers
2022-05-01 economics • weed • marijuana • california
Mistaken paternity
Data on when one's father isn't who you think. It varies by culture.
2022-05-01 paternity • family • socialscience • research • data