Nelson's Linkblog 2024-06

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--with-app-store-compliance

Python comes up with a horrible hack to optionally remove features from the programming language in order to satisfy Apple's opaque software review processes

2024-06-29 apple • appstore • hack • itms-services • python • security

r/longrangechaos

Examples of GFS weather model giving absurdly unlikely forecasts

2024-06-28 chaos • forecast • gfs • models • weather

factorio-server-manager

Software for managing the game server

2024-06-28 factorio • games • hosting • server

A modern(ish) computer built with vacuum tubes

2024-06-27 art • computer • electronics • retro • vacuumtube • via:hackernews

Arrow Collar Man

Classic homoerotic commercial art by J.C. Leyendecker

2024-06-27 leyendecker • arrow • art • gay • history • lgbt • shirts

ChromeOS Sommelier

A way to run X11 apps on a Chromebook using a guest Wayland compositor

2024-06-27 chromebook • chromeos • gui • linux • wayland • x11

One Million Checkboxes

Cute collaborative web game

2024-06-26 checkboxes • experiment • games • webapp

A new NTP implementation in Rust

2024-06-24 ntp • programming • rust • time • timekeeping

Montreal NFC chip

A teardown of a very tiny chip used in subway tickets

2024-06-24 chip • hardware • manufacturing • nfc • smartdust • subway • ticket

Tool to remove a bunch of ads from Windows 11

2024-06-24 ads • antitrust • microsoft • opensource • windows

AI models aren't open

Looking at what "open source AI model" actually means.

2024-06-24 ai • freesoftware • llm • opensource • osi • scam • software

In the 20s/30s in America where camp humor became a popular fad

2024-06-23 broadway • drag • gay • genderqueer • history • lgbt • pansycraze

Gay 80s comedians

Wonderful appreciation of Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor and what their camp humor meant

2024-06-23 acting • camp • comedy • gay • lgbt • queen

Facebook small claims

People are taking Facebook to small claims court because there's no customer support to resolve problems like lost accounts

2024-06-22 california • facebook • law • legal • smallclaims

Chinese science

Detailed overview of how China has become such a scientific research powerhouse

2024-06-21 china • politics • research • science

Classic role playing game originally from the 80s, very funny writing

2024-06-21 games • paranoia • parody • rpg • tabletop

Internet Archive is on fire

Company is being forced to destroy hundreds of thousands of books

2024-06-21 books • copyright • internetarchive • lawsuit • library

Chinese LLM price war

Startups in China are competing to offer the cheapest AI access

2024-06-20 ai • china • llm • pricewar • startup • tech

57 NY sandwiches

Excellent light article highlighting delicious food in New York

2024-06-20 food • newyork • sandwich

SQLite for servers

Tips for configuring SQLite for server work loads, including the BEGIN IMMEDIATE workaround

2024-06-19 database • performance • server • sqlite • webapp

Juneteenth and freedom

Juneteenth and the long struggle for meaningful freedom for Black people.

2024-06-19 africanamerican • america • black • civilwar • freedom • history • slavery • texas

A fancy word for mooning

2024-06-19 butt • english • flashing • greek • language • protest

Great Highway Park

A political plan to turn San Francisco's Pacific coastline into a proper park

2024-06-19 oceanbeach • park • sanfrancisco • sf

beets media organizer

Music library manager in Python

2024-06-18 beets • library • metadata • music • musicbrains • python

IAMA hacker of North Korea

Reddit thread where a Colombian-American who took down North Korea's Internet freely answers questions

2024-06-18 cyberwar • hack • hacking • northkorea • reddit • security

Ukraine has an LGBT pride event despite the war

2024-06-18 gay • kyiv • lgbt • pride • ukraine

Major new database of financial filings for PACs and other political non-profits

2024-06-18 elections • irs • pac • politics

A spreadsheet of a bunch of small form factor PC hardware

2024-06-18 gaming • hardware • minipc • pc

Simple explanation of using IPv6 for home admins who know IPv4

2024-06-17 firewall • internet • ipv4 • ipv6 • networking

How I use Obsidian

One engineer's configuration of the note taking app

2024-06-17 notes • obsidian • productivity • ui • writing

Adjective ordering

Linguistics review of research on the way multiple adjectives are ordered in human language

2024-06-16 adjectives • language • linguistics • ordering

Celebrity gay dads

Nice puff piece on gay celebrity fathers and their kids

2024-06-16 dads • family • fathersday • gay • lgbt

Drawing Machines

A catalog of various mechanical drawing aids

2024-06-16 art • drawing • history • plotter • via:metafilter

Micropolis WASM

Web browser work-in-progress of the original Sim City published by Don Hopkins, part of the original Maxis team

2024-06-15 browser • donhopkins • games • maxis • simcity • wasm

California aerial photographs

UCSB has an online database of historical aerial photos. Geotagged and on a map browser UI.

2024-06-15 aerial • california • framefinder • history • maps • photos • ucsb

"I was gay all my life"

Heartbreaking story of an 85 year old man who came out in his obituary

2024-06-15 comingout • gay • lgbt • military

David Beebe profile

Marfa, TX musician, barkeep, former Justice of the Peace has a radio show popular at Fort Stockton prison

2024-06-14 beebe • marfa • music • sjs • texas

Cross stitch map

Geology of Tennessee in embroidery

2024-06-14 crossstitch • embroidery • geology • maps • tennessee • textiles

US military anti-vax propaganda

US military ran a social media campaign in the Philippines claiming the Chinese COVID vaccine didn't work

2024-06-14 china • covid • philippines • politics • sinovac • trump • uspol • vaccine

ARM vs Qualcomm

There's a major licensing dispute at the core of the hardware Microsoft is hanging their new AI push on.

2024-06-13 arm • cpu • licensing • microsoft • nuvia • qualcomm • windows

AI and team building

Long essay on the theme that training junior engineers is a good investment of time because they learn: AI does not learn from you.

2024-06-12 ai • apprenticeship • culture • engineering • hiring • programming • training

Houston LGBT radio archive

Tapes of radio shows dating back to the 70s were saved, now digitally archived

2024-06-12 archive • gay • history • houston • kpft • lgbt • texas

Musk's SpaceX sex

More news of inappropriate relationships with employees, including punishing an employee who refused to have his babies. WSJ original article: https://archive.ph/QQxPE

2024-06-12 elonmusk • harassment • spacex • tirefire

SpaceX orbital bombardment

Company's launch vehicles are not burning up properly on re-entry, crashing all over the planet

2024-06-12 elonmusk • liability • space • spacejunk • spacex

Sculpture artists making large geometric forms with cutouts

2024-06-12 art • burningman • geometry • platonicsolids • sculpture

Accessible explanation of all the weird particle physics with neutrinos

2024-06-12 neutrinos • particles • physics • science • via:kottke

Orville Peck / PAPER

Interview and some not-very-explicit nude photos with the country musician

2024-06-11 interview • music • nsfw • orvillepeck • photos

Paywall bypassing

Simple list of various techniques to read paywalled web articles without paying

2024-06-11 archive • drm • journalism • news • paywall

nanoGPT spreadsheet

Visual programming for what's going on in modern neural networks

2024-06-11 ai • chatgpt • demo • llm • programming • spreadsheet • visuazliation

Clear article explaining a change in billing to include a flat $24/mo fee. Outcome is worst for existing solar customers

2024-06-11 corruption • electricity • pge • politics • power • rates • solar

Apple private cloud

Tech details on some interesting privacy tech for their AI deployment

2024-06-10 ai • apple • computing • encryption • privacy • verifiability

Kellan's linkblog

Yay, a new linkblog!

2024-06-09 blogs • bookmarks • kellan • linkblog • pinboard

Food carbon footprint

Beef is way worse than chicken or pork for global warming

2024-06-08 beef • co2 • farming • food • globalwarming • methane

Starlink maritime latency

Interesting unique data, measuring Internet speed from ships around the world

2024-06-08 internet • latency • leo • maps • starlink

Māori data storage

An experiment in indigenous sovereignty for cloud services

2024-06-08 māori • activism • cloud • datastorage • infrastructure • newzealand

The Making of the Stonewall Myth

Academic treatment of why US LGBT liberation marks Stonewall as the main precipitating event, including prior history

2024-06-08 commemoration • history • lgbt • newyork • pride • stonewall • via:aphyr

Queer Vexillology

A subreddit with 21,000 members discussing various forms of Pride flags

2024-06-06 flags • lgbt • pride • reddit • symbols

More Is Different

Classic Paul Anderson systems science paper from 1972 arguing for the value of synthesis and emergent behavior and how reductionism is not sufficient for science

2024-06-06 philosophy • reductionism • science • sfi • systems

2006-era term for different technologies for making websites update dynamically

2024-06-05 ajax • dynamic • html • javascript • webapp

Russian Starlink competitor

Company in Russia says they have inter-satellite laser links working. Still a long way to go to build out a constellation like SpaceX has.

2024-06-05 internet • isp • leo • russia • satellite • starlink

Original 8 color pride flag

The original LGBT flag also had hot pink and cyan blue stripes. Also each color has a meaning.

2024-06-05 flag • gilbertbaker • history • lgbt • pride

19th century made up slang for "leave in a hurry"

2024-06-05 english • history • language

Well written travel article about a place that's been hard to visit. Unfortunately it's also oppressive and dangerous and I still can't personally visit.

2024-06-05 civilrights • lgbt • politics • saudi • tourism • travel • women

Israeli propaganda

Yes, there are spambots on Twitter using AI to influence US politics

2024-06-05 chatgpt • israel • politics • propaganda • spam • twitter

Reddit user who presents themselves as an SF parking enforcer. Can't verify but looks plausible, including sharing information that looks non-public.

2024-06-04 dpt • metermaid • parking • politics • reddit • sanfrancisco

The Erik Prince group chat

What a bunch of right wing lunatics talk about in semi-private.

2024-06-04 america • erikprince • fascism • laralogan • politics • uspol

Proud Boys resurgent

Long, upsetting article about one of America's most successful fascist organizations

2024-06-04 fascism • nazis • politics • proudboys • trump • uspol

A very small Javascript library to identify text in 64 different written languages

2024-06-03 i18n • javascript • languages • nodejs • programming

Case for Covid lab leak

A thoughtful and well sourced article about possibilities of Covid being a lab leak. Archive link: https://archive.is/Da2LB

2024-06-03 china • covid • lableak • nytimes • politics

Lovely profile of San Francisco's beloved weed dealer, now going legit

2024-06-02 dolorespark • drugs • marijuana • sanfrancisco • sf • truffles

A new trend in selling private company shares to private investors without a public market

2024-06-02 ai • investment • money • scam • spv • vc

Atlanta water failure

One of America's great cities has no water downtown, probably won't for days

2024-06-01 america • atlanta • infrastructure • water

uBlock Origin Lite

Ad blocker's solution for Google turning the screws with Manifest v3. Seems to work but have some limitations

2024-06-01 adblocker • ads • browser • chrome • google • privacy • ublock • ublockorigin

iTerm2 ChatGPT plugin

AI feature that made people made was moved to an optional plugin

2024-06-01 ai • chatgpt • iterm2 • opensource • privacy

San Marco bridge pride

Florida's governor banned LGBT Pride lighting on the state's bridges, so residents did their own with flashlights

2024-06-01 acostabridge • florida • lgbt • politics • pride • protest • sanmarco