Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog about • archive • mastodon • feed
LED bulb database
Measurements of consumer bulbs for color correctness
2024-04-27 LED • lighting • bulbs • spectrum • home
Mastodon US corporation
Social media enterprise now has a US 501c3. They lost non-profit status in Germany for unknown reasons
2024-04-27 mastodon • socialmedia • nonprofit • fediverse
Passkeys: A Shattered Dream
Detailed article on why passkeys are not working well, mostly because of bad faith actions from Google and Apple
2024-04-26 Google • apple • security • passkeys • passwords • web • via:lobsters
Snipers v. Students
Both Ohio State University and Indiana University had snipers on the roof "just watching" during student protests
2024-04-26 fascism • protest • Gaza • university • snipers • violence • police
Sarah Kidder
Brief bio of the Grass Valley woman's time running the local railroad in the early 1900s
2024-04-25 women • railroad • history • grassvalley • nevadacounty • trains
Biden vs NYTimes
Detailed gossipy story about disagreements between the Biden Administration and the New York Times
2024-04-25 journalism • NYTimes • Biden • politics • uspol
Chinese keyboard security
Popular input methods send keystrokes unencrypted over the network
2024-04-25 security • china • Chinese • writing • keyboard • mobile • surveillance
TreeLink.us
A new local WISP in Nevada City. A bit pricy per gigabyte but could be a good option
2024-04-24 internet • nevadacity • grassvalley • wisp • fixedwireless • isp
SunPower big problems
Large US solar installer just stopped doing residential installs and laid off a huge portion of their employees
2024-04-24 sunpower • solar • us • electrify
Intel's new NPU
Analysis of a new type of CPU Intel is putting in processors, one intended for AI. It's not particularly fast but is very low power
2024-04-24 intel • npu • cpu • architecture • hardware • ai • inference
Awesome Balatro
A list of Mods and Tools for the game Balatro
2024-04-23 balatro • games • mods • hacking
Tracker Beeper
2022 experimental software having your computer makes noise every time it sends data to a surveillance company
2024-04-23 privacy • security • sonification • visualization • google
Android Biometrics
Authentication system includes levels like "weak" and "strong" and apps can accept only certain levels
2024-04-23 android • authentication • security • biometrics • apps • mobile
Balatro Immolate
An emulator for the game Balatro that rapidly searches for seeds with particular properties
2024-04-19 games • balatro • opencl • reversengineer • hacking
Turning Point voting fraud
Yet another MAGA group leader committing voting fraud
2024-04-19 fraud • votingfraud • politics • uspol • maga • arizona
Bicycles of World War II
Remarkable set of photos
2024-04-18 bicycle • history • ww2 • war • photos
AI-ese
Chatbots being trained on idiosyncratic English. Specific example: ChatGPT likes the word "delve" a whole lot more than American or British English speakers do.
2024-04-18 ai • chatgpt • africa • training • llm • chatbot
Butterick’s Practical Typography
Typography guidance for the modern computer era
2024-04-15 typography • fonts • formatting • text • publishing
Wicked Bible
A 17th century misprint results in infamy
2024-04-15 history • bible • funny • printing • starchamber
Normalization of Jan 6
Upsetting details on how Trump and the Republican establishment now act like the coup attempt on Jan 6 was noble and good
2024-04-13 uspol • politics • trump • fascism • coup • insurrection • jan6
Followgraph for Mastodon
Tool for finding people based on friends of friends
2024-04-13 mastodon • fediverse • socialmedia • via:waxy
South Yuba Canal
A surprising amount of Nevada County's water depends on a precarious, 150+ year old canal and its various wooden aqueducts, tunnels, etc. It's broken right now.
2024-04-13 nevadacounty • water • nid • california • irrigation
Waffle House order marking
The odd system of putting things on empty plates in the kitchen to indicate the details of an order
2024-04-12 food • fastfood • wafflehouse • semiotics • training
Boy Meets Boy Meets Boys’ Love
A reflection on gay romance stories
2024-04-10 lgbt • via:metafilter • gay • romance • writing • books
Termux
A Linux shell environment for Android
2024-04-10 linux • android • cli • terminal • hacking
Netflitwitter
The geniuses at Musk's version of Twitter are replacing all URLs ending in x.com with twitter.com, causing all sorts of hilarious breakage for words like "netflix".
2024-04-09 twitter • musk • engineering • stupidity
Nigeria’s Scrabble King
A specific form of expertise in English language in Nigeria
2024-04-09 via:mekka • nigeria • scrabble • games • english • language
Internet eclipse traffic
Cloudflare shows big drop in Internet usage during the eclipse
2024-04-09 eclipse • via:hackernews • data • internet • cloudflare
Electric rickshaws
A less formal form of transportation is being electrified by entrepreneurs in India
2024-04-09 via:hackernews • evs • tuktuk • rickshaw • india • electrify
Eclipse power dashboard
Detailed data on the effect of the eclipse on power generation
2024-04-08 power • electricity • solar • generation • eclipse • caiso
Windows terminal latency
It's 2024 and we're still waiting 66ms for keystrokes to show up on a tty
2024-04-08 latency • fps • terminal • tty • performance • windows
Grass Valley pasties
Short article on the traditional Cornish handpie that's still beloved in my little Gold Rush town
2024-04-08 food • pasties • cornish • history • culture • grassvalley
Django's left hand
Famous jazz guitarist had an injured left hand, couldn't use two of his fingers
2024-04-08 guitar • disability • django • music
Willie Nelson's guitar
Trigger, a famous and beat up old classical acoustic guitar he's been playing for 40+ years
2024-04-08 willienelson • music • trigger • guitar • instrument
LÖVE game engine
2D game engine for writing games in Lua. Balatro uses it.
2024-04-08 games • balatro • lua • engine • opensource
Redesigning Vikram
Duolingo redesigns a cartoon character to avoid harmful stereotypes
2024-04-06 stereotypes • sikh • design • cartoon
Balaji Srinivasan, clown
Ridiculous tech dude has a crazy, fascist fantasy for San Francisco
2024-04-04 politics • sanfrancisco • a16z • balajis • tech
Full-Source Bootstrap
Create a working Unix system in a reproducible way, starting from a 357 byte machine language program and building everything from source
2024-04-04 bootstrap • reproducibility • nix • guix • hex0 • security • programming
Cowboy Carter contextualized
A NYT op/ed juxtaposing political analysis and musical interpretation of Beyoncé's new album
2024-04-04 music • beyonce • country • politics
Best printer 2024
Hilarious 2024 update to The Verge's snarky metacommentary on SEO and Google spam
2024-04-03 funny • google • spam • seo • dannysullivan • theverge • printer
Cloud brightening
Details of an experiment spraying salt in the air to help avert the effects of global warming
2024-04-03 geoengineering • climatechange • globalwarming • solar • experiment
Let People Eat
Heartrending plea to allow World Central Kitchen to help avert the famine in Gaza
2024-04-03 politics • gaza • israel • joseandres • wck • charity • famine • starvation
Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’
Detailed analysis of the genres present in Beyoncé's 2022 album
2024-04-03 music • beyonce • genre • criticism • renaissance
Pride flag escalation
Reactions to a London flag that's added yet another chevron and five more stripes
2024-04-02 funny • lgbt • bisexual • visibility • pride
Israel kills World Central Kitchen workers
Famous global food aid charity, one of the very few able to bring food in to Gaza, was attacked by an Israeli airstrike. Seven are dead and WCK is pulling out of Gaza.
2024-04-02 gaza • politics • israel • wck • worldcentralkitchen • joseandres • famine • starvation
Tadka
Detailed notes on the Indian cooking technique
2024-04-01 cooking • food • indian • tadka
olduse.net
Read Usenet with a 40+ year time delay, to catch it in its heydey
2024-04-01 usenet • socialmedia • timedelay • experiment • history • nntp
Optimizing LLaMa
Second tech half is gold, the process of optimizing matrix multiplication on CPUs in a specific context
2024-04-01 ai • llm • llama • opensource • optimization • math • matrix