Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog about • archive • mastodon • feed
Midjourney wins State Fair
Guy submits an AI-generated art piece to the Colorado State Fair, wins prize
2022-08-31 art • ai • generative • machinelearning • colorado • gan
Firefox temporary containers
An addon to create web browser tabs that have cookies but only temporarily, deleted after a short time
2022-08-31 firefox • extension • privacy • cookies • containers • isolation
End priviliged ports
A clear argument about why Linux shouldn't treat ports 0-1023 as special anymore
2022-08-31 security • badtech • linux • internet • programming • via:lobsters
ML image dataset
Details on what Stable Diffusion is and a search engine for a subset of the corpus
2022-08-30 ai • images • stablediffusion • gan • machinelearning • trainingset
Twitter vs porn $
A plan for subscriptions for adult content on Twitter ran into their inability to police content
2022-08-30 twitter • sex • onlyfans • porn • culture • safety • tirefire
Trump and QAnon
Trump is now directly quoting and amplifying QAnon conspiracy content
2022-08-30 trump • politics • batshitinsane • qanon • fascism
Linux syscall table
Big list of numbers for different architectures
2022-08-29 programming • linux • syscall • assembly
plotbitrate
A Python tool to graph the bitrate of a video file over time
2022-08-29 streaming • video • ffmpeg • python • graph • bitrate
Creative Commons on AI
Thoughtful copyright and licensing group's opinions on issues of copyright an AI art
2022-08-27 copyright • creativecommons • ai • art • gan • generative • licensing • cc
Opening the Pandora's Box of AI Art
Thoughtful essay on ethical risks associated with AI art
2022-08-27 art • ai • machinelearning • gan • copyright • ethics
Lexica
Search art generated with Stable Diffusion GAN
2022-08-27 art • via:waxy • generative • ai • gan
Peter Talisman
An idle game with interesting graphics, music, and a story
2022-08-27 games • idlegame • incrementalgame • glitch
Pay to stay jail
In California, convicts can pay to serve time in humane facilities or take their chances in county jail
2022-08-27 prison • california • jail • business • corruption
Twitter and MPX hate
Study of how Twitter failed to manage all the anti-gay hate speech associated with monkeypox
2022-08-26 twitter • tirefire • moderation • monkeypox • mpx • gay • lgbt • hate
Nat King Cole / Look Out for Love
Classic Jazz track with particularly clever wordplay in the lyrics
2022-08-24 music • natkingcole • jazz • rap • lyrics
Lean Web Club
Online courses, etc for vanilla Javascript, simpler web programming
2022-08-24 programming • web • javascript
SF Sewer Map
AMazing detailed map of every sewer pipe. When you zoom out you get a view of sewersheds (in blue)
2022-08-24 sewers • sf • sanfrancisco • via:jwz • maps • infrastructure
Black bodies
Lovely story about the actual way quantum mechanics was invented compared to the just-so story of modern education
2022-08-24 physics • robpike • history • planck • quantummechanics
Maya and drought
Summary of new scholarly research on the interplay of drought and politics in pre-Columbian Maya
2022-08-23 maya • history • archaeology • yucatan • mayapan • drought • climatechange
The Views From the Top
Collection of photos of buildings on top of rocky pinnacles
2022-08-20 architecture • tourism • photos • photography
Avocado Oil fraud
82% of American avocado oil is either spoiled or not actually avocado oil
2022-08-20 oil • scam • food • fraud • avocado • ucdavis
Heizer’s City
Excellent photo essay on a monumental new art earthwork
2022-08-20 art • earthwork • nevada • misanthropy
JWST and JavaScript
Scripting environment for the space telescope is based on a 2003 JavaScript implementation
2022-08-19 javascript • programming • jwst • space • nasa • via:hackernews
Email innovation timeline
A comprehensive history of email
2022-08-19 email • history • internet • via:metafilter • multics
Passphrase generator
Diceware-like passphrase generator with a reasonable word list
2022-08-18 security • passwords • passphrase • xkcd • diceware
Python monkeypatching
Example of modifying a library's code at runtime with patchy, a nice library for such hackery
2022-08-17 python • monkeypatch • code • requests • timeout • http
Security mitigation cost
10-25% performance cost for security measures to prevent side channel attacks like Spectre.
2022-08-17 linux • security • spectre • sidechannel • cpu • optimization
DALL·E copyright
An exploration of the IP law muddle of AI generated art
2022-08-17 copyright • art • ai • machinelearning • dalle • gan
The Netflix look
Details on cinematographic choices that make all Netflix shows look kinda samey
2022-08-17 netflix • video • tv • cinematography • colorgrading
Café Achteck
19th century design public toilets in Berlin
2022-08-16 toilet • pissoir • berlin • history • bathroom • klo
Mass timber
Engineered wood as an alternative to steel and concrete
2022-08-14 construction • wood • sustainability • building • material • plywood
Movie of the Night
A website for recommending movies based on various criteria
2022-08-14 movies • ratings • netflix • recommendation
Australia's gay prison
Summary of a podcast that unearthed the story of a hideous prison that collected gay men and performed experiments on them
2022-08-12 australia • gay • lgbt • nsw • cooma • prison • history • 50s
Fox News fake photos
Prime time show airs a fake image, then tries to claim it was just a joke a day later
2022-08-12 foxnews • lies • propaganda • trump • tuckercarlson • kilmeade
Linux Magic SysRq
Low level kernel thing to force a reboot and other stuff from the keyboard or /proc
2022-08-11 linux • admin • reboot • panic • kernel • sysrq • sysadmin
CDC’s Daskalakis on Monkeypox
Frank interview with a gay doctor at CDC about public health, gay stigma, and prevention.
2022-08-11 monkeypox • disease • health • lgbt • gay • safesex • cdc • politics
Starlink loses FCC subsidy
FCC denies the $885M grant for rural broadband
2022-08-10 starlink • facebook • fcc • isp • internet • rdof • subsidy
Apple should fix texting
Aggressive but reasonable call to ask Apple to implement RCS, the cross-vendor text messaging standard
2022-08-10 apple • text • sms • mms • rcs • imessage • interoperability • antitrust • google • android
Posit numbers
An alternative to IEEE floating point
2022-08-10 programming • numericalcomputation • floatingpoint • iee • ieee754 • math
The Rhine is dry
Major European river goes basically dry for the second time in 4 years
2022-08-10 rhine • river • germany • climatechange • shipping • cruiseship • barge
Millet + Butt
A prominent, probably gay couple in the early 1900s, died on the Titanic
2022-08-10 love • gay • lgbt • titanic • history • taft • roosevelt
Brooklyn Bar Menu
An autogenerated parody of hipster bar menus
2022-08-09 funny • brooklyn • restaurant • menu • parody • procgen
Amtrak Explorer
Excellent simple schematic view of America's passenger train system
2022-08-09 trains • visualization • maps • amtrak • travel • binx
Twitter privacy mess
System would let anyone see what Twitter account a phone number or email address belonged to
2022-08-09 tirefire • twitter • privacy • ftc
Mexican Pizza
Authentic Mexican flavors like birria, mole, or tomatillo on a pizza crust
2022-08-09 food • cooking • mexican • pizza • syncreticism
VTuber
Live streaming video with virtual avatars instead of a live camera; lightweight puppetry animates
2022-08-09 games • vtubing • vtuber • culture • twitch • youtube • japan • animation
PGP web of trust failure
In 2019 the PGP web of trust slid from irrelevance to outright technical failure
2022-08-09 pgp • crypto • cryptography • identity • security • badtech • gpg
PyPI signature status
Python package repository *still* doesn't have any cryptographic signature verification, but it is in progress
2022-08-09 python • security • pypi • pip • pep458 • software • programming
Trump vs his Generals
Details of how Trump's military advisors tried to resist his most insane impulses
2022-08-08 trump • politics • america • coup • military • generals • fascism
Starlink scanning
6 hours of a satellite dish tracking LEO satellites
2022-08-08 starlink • internet • satellite • space • isp
Minecraft world generation
Overview of the algorithms and context for the remarkable game
2022-08-08 games • minecraft • procgen • perlinnoise • via:amitp
Slack Saver
Turn a Slack archive dump into a public website. Useful for liberating knowledge trapped in silos
2022-08-08 via:hackernews • slack • information • sharing • search
Presidio Tunnel Tops
New park in San Francisco is open
2022-08-08 sanfrancisco • presidio • park • recreation
We need to take away children
Book-length accounting of the Trump Administration's monstrous policy of separating children from their parents at the border
2022-08-08 politics • children • immigration • humanrights • crime • dhs • borderpatrol • fascism • trump • miller
Chinese vertical world map
Interesting projection
2022-08-08 china • maps • projections • via:reddit
Meta: feed update
New feed for my linkblog includes image previews. The old feed will still work but this is nicer. https://www.somebits.com/linkblog/index.atom
2022-08-07 linkblog • blog • rss • atom • feed • nelson
Facebook viral videos
Detailed story on a magician who has a new hustle making viral videos for Facebook, ones you've probably seen
2022-08-07 facebook • content • funny • magician • video • meme
The fox in Robin Hood
Clips and photos from the furry awakening of 1973
2022-08-07 robinhood • animation • art • furries • fox
Last Seen
An archive of 19th century newspaper ads from formerly enslaved people searching for their families
2022-08-07 slavery • history • archive • genealogy • database • newspaper
SF: no traffic enforcement
45 traffic officers, a total of 10 tickets a day written in the city
2022-08-06 sanfrancisc • police • corruption • traffic • safety • politics
AI and ancient languages
Efforts to use statistical machine learning to translate unreadable ancient scripts
2022-08-04 language • translation • ai • machinelearning • writing • archaeology
Monkeypox and gay fear
Excellent, emotionally complex essay about how monkeypox is affecting gay men traumatized by fear of disease, social stigma, and decades of the AIDS crisis
2022-08-03 monkeypox • gay • lgbt • aids • hiv • disease • tomstrong
Starlink data cap
ISP now trying a 250GB/month data cap in France
2022-08-03 starlink • france • internet • datacap • broadband • isp
Ookla open data
Fine grained info on average bandwidth per square on the globe
2022-08-03 data • bandwidth • ookla • speedtest • internet • maps
Max bandwidth map
Global map of maximum Internet speed from Ookla data
2022-08-03 via:lobsters • speed • internet • broadband • maps
Hospital prices
Site collects newly required medical billing data to compare costs of procedures at hospitals in SF, NY
2022-08-03 medical • hospital • america • healthcare • billing • price • via:reddit • data
Your data fits in RAM
A useful tool for estimating whether a data problem is easy or hard
2022-08-03 ram • performance • funny • via:hackernews
Caddy web server
Modern general purpose web server
2022-08-01 web • server • apache • nginx • internet • ssl • golang
Social Capital Atlas
Enormous new sociology study of friendships, wealth, and social mobility
2022-08-01 maps • socialcapital • sociology • facebook
watabou procgen
Page of various procedural generation experiments; caves, neighborhoods, cities
2022-08-01 games • procedural • procgen • city • roads • maps