Nelson's Linkblog 2010-12

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The Blast Shack

Absolute must-read on WikiLeaks, the cypherpunks history

2010-12-30 wikileaks • assange • cypherpunks

aether,phlogiston

Google Books text analysis

2010-12-17 books • language • google

Open data of overhead images, like Google Earth

2010-12-17 maps • imagery • googleearth • googlemaps • opensource

Ghost cities of China

Overhead photos of empty overdevelopment

2010-12-16 china • via:metafilter • bubble • realestate • development

Interesting speculation on how the streaming video game startup could be a good match to Apple

2010-12-16 apple • onlive • business • streaming • acquisition

Web server technologies

Great writeup of all the techs a startup from a smart guy is using

2010-12-16 technology • opensource • software

Gay Vatican acrobats

A rare glimpse into the preference the Vatican has for homosexualist entertainment

2010-12-16 via:metafilter • gay • catholic • pope • vatican • acrobats

Foie gras production

Well written article about why foie gras isn't as hideous as you might initially think

2010-12-16 foiegras • food • ducks • farming • via:anildash

DHS seizing domain names

Customs is asking VeriSign to transfer domain names to them

2010-12-15 verisign • dns • dhs • ice • customs • via:waxy

BitTorrent snapshot

Data on what people use BitTorrent for

2010-12-15 via:waxy • piracy • movies • music • media • filesharing • bittorrent

Facebook friendships

Nice visualization

2010-12-14 facebook • visualization • data • socialmedia

10 powerful tweets

Nice roundup of places Twitter was influential

2010-12-14 twitter • news • journalism • 2010

Mailing list thread where Linus gives up on BitKeeper, writes his own VCS

2010-12-14 git • bitkeeper • vcs • scm • versioncontrol • linux

Chrome extension to disable third party cookie tracking

2010-12-13 google • facebook • privacy • security • chrome

Visualizing TCP

A simple time schematic of a TCP exchange

2010-12-13 tcp • internet • visualization

Gawker hack rundown

Details of what the hack is

2010-12-13 gawker • hack • badtech • security

The Gawker mess is bad

Rundown of various bad things that are going to come from the Gawker breach

2010-12-13 gawker • security • badtech

Gawker PW analysis

Gawker's user database got stolen, and lots of people are using weak passwords

2010-12-13 security • badtech • gawker • hackers

What are Cow Magnets?

Why, they help prevent Hardware Disease!

2010-12-13 via:metafilter • wtf • cows • farming

The largest IRC network, some 85,000 people. Gaming oriented.

2010-12-12 networks • irc • chat

freenode statistics

largest IRC network still has 65,000 users on it

2010-12-12 irc • users • statistics

An amusing image search

2010-12-12 4chan • images • macro

A column about geographic surveynig in various farflung countries. It's like a travel guide for geodesic nerds

2010-12-12 travel • geodesy • gis • geography • survey • datum

NOAA weather radio

Primarily marine oriented, but useful to aviation too

2010-12-12 weather • noaa • vhf

Apache mod_pagespeed

Google packaged a bunch of performance improvements for Apache into a loadable module

2010-12-11 apache • web • google • speed • http • optimization

Eve profiling pt 2

Optimizations that follow the profiling

2010-12-11 eve • games • optimization • eveonline • mmos • performance

Meeting Assange

Journalist's account of visiting WikiLeaks temporary headquarters in England

2010-12-11 wikileaks • england • assange

"it's not like your sole purpose is trying to insert your finger in their butt."

2010-12-11 wrestling • via:zawodny • batshitinsane • funny • analsex

Visual representation of the optimal strategy

2010-12-11 via:karl • xkcd • visualization • games • tictactoe

Lego Antikythera Mechanism

2010-12-11 legos • via:metafilter • antikythera • calculator • gears • technics

Generate unique passwords for every website with a single master password

2010-12-11 pwdhash • passwords • security

Telemetry profiler

Performance analysis tool for realtime games

2010-12-10 performance • optimization • games • realtime

Detailed real-time performance analysis of the online game, cool profiling tools

2010-12-10 realtime • games • eve • eveonline • ccp • mmos • optimization • profiling • performance • scalability

Javascript library to optimize loading of scripts. Does a bunch of other stuff, too

2010-12-10 javascript • optimization • internet • http

Patent troll kills pilot site

The best online flight planning site going offline because of a patent suit

2010-12-09 flying • pilot • patents • badtech • aviation • legal

About Wikileaks

Good factual summary

2010-12-09 wikileaks • journalism

An entire news blog about technological sex toys

2010-12-09 sex • dildos • teledildonics • userinterface • hci

Apache quits JCP

If you care about Java, this is big news. Then again, who cares about Java anymore?

2010-12-09 java • oracle • apache • freesoftware

XML as API is dying

FourSquare says "by dropping XML support, we’ve been able to make the server more responsive"

2010-12-09 apis • foursquare • xml • json • api • javascript

SMB bandage guide

Visual guide to all the hidden bandages in Super Meat Boy

2010-12-09 games • supermeatboy • smb • bandages • cheats

Super Meat Boy ad

Who knew this game goes back to the 1990s?

2010-12-09 supermeatboy • games • platformer • funny

Duo Security launch

Startup selling two factor authentication using a mobile phone

2010-12-09 security • twofactor • dugsong • monkey • goodtech

Now you're thinking with portals.

There's a hole in the sky through which things can fly

2010-12-09 portal • games • valve • halflife

List of Star Trek races

Wikipedia proves encyclopedic completeness is a virtue

2010-12-09 startrek • fiction • scifi

Anonymous operation

Some insight into the IRC group behind various acts of Internet vandalism

2010-12-09 4chan • anonymous • wikileaks • irc

real time database that Etsy uses for monitoring their servers

2010-12-09 etsy • graphite • rrd • rrdtool • graphs • database

Tracking every release

Great summary of how Etsy instruments their production systems. Every Internet company needs tools to do this. I'm available for hourly work :-)

2010-12-09 etsy • technology • production • graphite • instrumentation

Night at the Hip-Hopera breakdown

Kleptones' awesome mashup album now annotated

2010-12-09 music • kleptones • annotation • breakdown • mashup

Twitter: 1100 tweets/second

Great post about why #wikileaks is not an identified trend. Towards the end they drop that Twitter's handling 95M tweets / day. That's a lot of update broadcasts.

2010-12-09 twitter • scale • performance

Tor seeded WikiLeaks

Buried deep in the article is an interesting thing; Tor helped create the first WikiLeaks publication

2010-12-08 wikileaks • Tor • privacy • security

Actual attacks that use the fact that one Tor endpoint is non-anonymized

2010-12-08 Tor • privacy • security

EasyDNS is not EveryDNS

Wrong company gets blamed for Wikileaks cowardice. I made this mistake myself

2010-12-08 dns • wikileaks • confusion

Jason Goldman profile

Twitter VP steps down, great profile. Jason's a good friend of mine, he's very impressive

2010-12-08 twitter • goldman • jasongoldman

Sulfur mine at night

2010-12-08 photos • photography • sulfur • mining • indonesia

More web font rendering

Great notes about the challenge of cross-browser fonts

2010-12-08 fonts • typography • truetype • postscript • woff

NYTimes: Chrome

A fancy HTML5 user interface for the newspaper

2010-12-08 nytimes • chrome • html5 • javascript • journalism

Twitter not censoring WikiLeaks

Twitter's trends seem to favour new topics, WikiLeaks is constantly popular

2010-12-08 wikileaks • twitter • censorship

SF NIMBYs and cell towers

Part of why San Francisco's wireless infrastructure sucks is nutjobs who think wifi, microwave, and cell towers pose a health threat

2010-12-08 sanfrancisco • politics • attfail • wireless • health

What are Chrome Apps?

Docs on what it means to be a Google Chrome app

2010-12-08 google • chrome • javascript • store

food iPhone cases

From Japan, make your phone look like sushi, or fried deliciousness

2010-12-08 food • japan • iphone • case • funny

John Waters + Justin Bieber

Together at last!

2010-12-08 photos • celebrity

New Javascript JITC

Chrome's V8 Javascript engine gets an impressive improvement

2010-12-07 javascript • chrome • google • fast • speed • optimization • jitc • jit • goodtech

Charges against Assange

The most detailed review I've read of exactly what crimes Assange is charged with

2010-12-07 assange • wikileaks • sweden • scandal

Eve's character creator

Tech details of how CCP implemented the new "make a character" software. It's a bit weird, since you never see your character.

2010-12-07 eve • games • eveonline • ccp • characters

FarmVille for Dummies

2010-12-07 books • farmville • wtf

Deus Ex 3 teaser

Sarif Industries, a fancy flash site with details about the anticipated new game

2010-12-07 games • deusex

Assange's editorial

Wikileaks head writes an editorial for The Australian

2010-12-07 wikileaks • assange • news

Microsoft v. Google

ICOMP is Microsoft's semi-secret lobbying group trying to disrupt google

2010-12-07 microsoft • google • internet • icomp • legal • law • antitrust

US cyber command

The central coordinator of our cyberwarfare capability

2010-12-07 internet • security • cyberwarfare • badtech

Corpses on Everest

NSFW: photos of decomposing bodies left on Mt. Everest

2010-12-07 climbing • death • photos • photography • nepal • everest • mountains

Thunderstorm photos

Sean Heavey chases storms and photographs them

2010-12-06 weather • thunderstorms • stormchasing • photos • photography

Glonass launch failure

3 satellites in the Russian equivalent to GPS fail to make orbit

2010-12-06 russia • gps • glonass • launch • satellite • space • fail

World's #1 TV piracy group describes how they operate

2010-12-06 eztv • bittorrent • tv • television

Tim Bray on Wikileaks

Nicely expressed ambiguity

2010-12-06 wikileaks • politics • internet • freedom

Tron and Yori love scene

Deleted scene from the original movie

2010-12-06 tron • movies • cheese • sexytime

FBI provacateurs

FBI sends a nutjob "undercover" to foment jihad in a California mosque. It backfires.

2010-12-05 fbi • islam • muslim • civilrights • terrorism • stupid

Playing card blog

Obsessive reviews of playing cards for design and feel

2010-12-05 cards • playingcards • magic

presenting tilestache

A map server / caching system for complex cartography

2010-12-05 tilestache • mapping • mapnik • openstreetmap • python

Beatles crossing

Great photo just before the famous Abbey Road cover

2010-12-05 beatles • photos • photography • abberyroad

SOAP client library, looks lightweight

2010-12-03 soap • python • code • api • ws-i • xml • integration

Don't use EveryDNS

Abandoning a customer in the face of criticism and heavy traffic is no way to run a business

2010-12-03 wikileaks • security • dns

Popular free anti-virus breaks a bunch of PCs. Use Avast instead

2010-12-03 software • badtech • windows • antivirus • avg • avast

Google maps legibility

Detailed examination of why Google's maps are easier to read

2010-12-03 maps • design • infovis • labelling • via:metafilter

ADDS text weather

Aviation weather service is providing a new web service for weather data

2010-12-02 weather • adds • aviation • metar

Close the Washington Monument

fantastic essay by Schneier on security

2010-12-02 security • washington • securitytheater • fear

Javascript privacy leaks

Practical applications of various data leaks: lots of sites track what other sites you go to

2010-12-02 javascript • privacy • web • badtech • http

Archive of pornographic cartoon drawings on various unlikely topics like Warcraft, Futurama, Zelda, etc

2010-12-02 4chan • porn • cartoon • funny

Duck Duck Go blog

Blog by the founder of the new search engine UI

2010-12-01 google • search • tech • startups

Touring North Korea

travelog with lots of photos from an american

2010-12-01 northkorea • dprk • travelog • photos • photography

Photos from North Korea

Excellent collection of images of ordinary scenes from North Korea

2010-12-01 via:metafilter • photos • photography • northkorea • dprk

Xbox Indie uprising

A bunch of indie game developers are making a game release event together

2010-12-01 games • xbox • indie • xbla

UO rares were bugs

First big MMO had rare items that were actually a result of bugs in the code

2010-12-01 games • ultima • ultimaonline • bugs

How cablegate happened

The US stores classified material on central servers which a huge number of people have access to. Duh.

2010-12-01 security • wikileaks • cablegate • badtech • via:waxy

Wikileaks Cablegate Roundup

Andy does a great job summarizing the discussion

2010-12-01 wikileaks • security