Nelson's Linkblog 2011-02

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Getting to know Scala

Nice notes from someone just starting out in Scala

2011-02-28 scala • programming • java • netty

Various options for perpetual motion, infinite energy, and limitless locomotion

2011-02-28 physics • troll • funny • 4chan • via:kastang

Mike Bostock of Protovis and Polymaps fame has a new Javascript library. It's sort of like jQuery, but good at SVG too

2011-02-28 javascript • svg • jquery • protovis • polymaps

Crazy Libyan childhood

Interesting story of a son of a dissident growing up in a difficult way

2011-02-27 via:metafilter • libya • school

Fake Reed College

scam website copies from my alma mater

2011-02-27 reed • scam • via:metafilter • college • education

Canon Lens Work III

Amazing book on camera lens design; free for download!

2011-02-27 lenses • canon • photography • optics

Breast milk ice cream

As usual, NMA goes all the way and then some with their coverage

2011-02-26 nma • animation • breastmilk • food • icecream • wtf • funny

Taliban vs. tea party

A small kid's puzzle

2011-02-26 taliban • teaparty • politics • hate

My photo smiling back at me

Goofy story: Justin finds his own tourist photograph in a tourist brochure when he revisits the site seven years later

2011-02-26 photos • creativecommons • copyright • tourism

Simple tool for finding camera lenses with specific properties

2011-02-26 lenses • cameras • photography

Google, Facebook, and Twitter

Reflection on how various Internet companies are playing their role in the civil unrest sweeping the world

2011-02-25 google • twitter • facebook • revolution • civilliberties • freedom

Minter's new iPhone game. He's such a thoughtful game designer

2011-02-25 games • iphone • ios • minter • robotron

Identities (Google)

Nice post explaining the difference between anonymous and pseudonymonous

2011-02-25 identity • privacy • security • google

Google Recipe Search

Crazily specific Google search product

2011-02-25 google • cooking • food • recipes

Scraping The Daily

Andy breaks down how he built his unauthorized index of the iPad newspaper

2011-02-25 thedaily • news • journalism • ipad • hacking • http

Beautiful abstract maps of major river systems

2011-02-25 maps • rivers • design

GitHub architecture

2009 notes on building it to be fast

2011-02-25 git • github • performance • server • architecture • ssh • http

Activision patches

A bit of retrogamer nerd nostalgia

2011-02-24 games • activision • atari • 2600 • patch • reward

Crazy sexy party game

2011-02-24 wii • games • sex • funny

Clean. Simple. Wet.

2011-02-24 apple • parody • funny

Prime number density

The probably that X is prime is roughly 1/log x

2011-02-24 numbers • math • primes

Historical METAR data

Company sells a DVD of weather history going back to 1930

2011-02-24 metar • weather • forecast

Incomplete code for supporting iPhones, etc in Polymaps

2011-02-23 polymaps • ios • iphone • maps • software • javascript

Yahoo acquisition failures

Great writeup of a bunch of startups screwed by being bought by Yahoo. To be fair, Google has a similar body count, albeit with some successes too

2011-02-23 google • yahoo • startups • acquisition • flickr • delicious • mybloglog • upcoming

Hardware solution for using wireless sensors with an iPhone. Fitness apps, mostly.

2011-02-23 ant+ • sensors • wireless • iphone • hardware • temperature

Better way to find stuff for streaming on Netflix

2011-02-22 netflix • movies • interface • tv

Sarah Palin's Facebook sockpuppet, pathetically 'Liking" her own comments

2011-02-22 sarahpalin • politics • facebook

GNS 430W approaches

Detailed nerdy blog post about how to best use a Garmin GPS to fly an approach, avioding the vectors to final mess

2011-02-22 garmin • navigation • ifr • aviation

Americans killed by Somali pirates

Very unusual; the last thing the pirates want is dead hostages

2011-02-22 piracy • somalia • boating • yachting • murder

Making a first game

Nice, honest notes from someone who wrote and released his first game

2011-02-21 games • flash

New concurrency library in Python 3.2, seems well thought out

2011-02-21 concurrency • code • threads • python

A lovingly detailed history of punctuation in written text

2011-02-21 writing • text • punctuation • via:markpilgrim

Golden Gate Bridge

Awesome aerial photo

2011-02-21 photos • photography • california • ggb • goldengatebridge • aerial

Roku Channel Database

Some sort of semi-hidden Roku feature, extra channels

2011-02-20 roku • tv • television • streaming

SSH + Google two factor

Apparently the authentication software is open source and able to plug in to SSH

2011-02-19 twofactor • ssh • google • passwords • authentication • libpam

Amazing collection of historical data on weather

2011-02-19 weather • aviation • history • metar • data

Awesome drag queen

Nice photographer's story of getting to know a fearless drag queen

2011-02-19 cyonflare • drag • gay • dragqueen • newyork • photography

Background on San Francisco's unusual and unenforced 1.5% tax on employee stock options

2011-02-18 taxes • sanfrancisco • options • isos

NSA official goes on the record saying they didn't put a backdoor in DES. We do know they strengthened it against differential cryptanalysis, which at the time was only known inside NSA

2011-02-18 crypto • security • des • nsa • privacy • civilliberties

Astonishing image of two photos at minimum vertical separation

2011-02-18 rvsm • gps • aviation • photo • planes

Obama / Silicon Valley photo

Amazing photo of half the titans of the Internet dining with President Obama

2011-02-18 google • twitter • oracle • obama • photo • politics

Sunfire Thunderbird

Straight-up interview with a guy very in to new age spirituality

2011-02-18 gay • lakota • newage

Popsci article claiming it's natural to be up in the middle of the night

2011-02-18 sleep • science • insomnia

Appreciation for the guy who wrote the original Castle Wolfenstein game

2011-02-18 games • apple • microprose • muse • silaswarner • wolfenstein

A simple, small script for loading Javascript late to make pages appear faster

2011-02-18 optimization • javascript • code • lab.js

Former Google chef runs a business catering to startups

2011-02-17 startups • google • food • dining • twitter • square

Degraded web browser

2011-02-16 via:waxy • safari • webbrowser • 8bit

Dissertation Haiku

Spend 7 years and 300 pages, but really a haiku is all it takes

2011-02-16 via:waxy • research • funny • phd • students • haiku

Christian gene identified

Finally, an explanation of why some people are Christian

2011-02-16 genetics • gay • parody • funny • via:ian

Egypt Internet shutdown

Some details on how it happened

2011-02-16 internet • egypt • freedom • tcpip

Facebook data debacle

1.2M users' Facebook data released, not sufficiently anonymized

2011-02-15 facebook • research • privacy • data

Vintage surgical tools

Beautiful fine metalwork

2011-02-15 surgery • medicine • antiques

Yearly event where the evil space pirates make life miserable for carebear miners in Eve Online

2011-02-15 eveonline • games • ccp • pvp • mmos

For the Cat is King

2011-02-14 via:metafilter • cat • cherubs

Sanborn typography

Beautiful front plates from the fire insurance maps

2011-02-14 sanborn • insurance • sanbornmaps • typography • design

Interesting profile of what some ex-Facebook people are doing, and more generally about Silicon Valley startup culture

2011-02-14 google • facebook • paypal • startups • entrepreneurship

Zynga worth billions?

Rumour of $400 million in profit last year

2011-02-14 zynga • games • valuation • investment

Bouvet lifeboat

Wonderfully researched article about a mysterious lifeboat on a remote Southern Ocean island

2011-02-13 ocean • sea • bouvetisland • bouvet • mystery

Courgette binary diff

Google wrote a binary diff specific for Chrome updates; disassembles code to detect internal pointer changes

2011-02-13 google • chrome • courgette • diff • patch • bsdiff

Google Maps coordinates

Visual demo of various URL formats for slippy map tiles

2011-02-13 maps • slippymaps • google • tms • openstreetmap • bing • crs • coordinates • projection • visualization

Voynich dates 1404-1438

Someone finally carbon dated the mysterious manuscript

2011-02-12 voynich

Password Chernobyl

eHarmony, other companies have had their user databases compromised

2011-02-11 security • badtech • passwords • eharmony

Astonishingly honest memo from head of Nokia acknowledging their entire company is in peril

2011-02-11 mobile • nokia • google • apple • iphone • ceo • leadership

Adobe's failed handing of cross domain security results in security exploits in every major web framework

2011-02-10 csrf • flash • security • badtech • adobe

1970s robot dragonfly

Crazy bit of miniature spycraft

2011-02-09 spies • robots • uavs

#! URLs considered harmful

Fantastic writeup of why the new #! style that's popular with the Ajax kids is bad for the Web

2011-02-09 gawker • twitter • web • ajax

Interesting images of plan views of cities sorted

2011-02-09 cities • urban • maps • for:amitp

Kokogiak knocks one of the first posts out of the park

2011-02-09 egypt • journalism • photos • photography • kokogiak

Sony breaks own DMCA

Sony PR flack retweets a 160 bit number without knowing it's the key to his company's locks

2011-02-09 funny • twitter • sony • playstation • hacking

In Focus photoblog

The guy behind The Big Picture moved to the Atlantic, here's his new effort. Bigger pictures!

2011-02-09 photos • photography • news • journalism

Super Bowl tweets / second

Nice fine grained graph of Twitter activity during the game

2011-02-09 superbowl • twitter • statistics

Donate to a pirate!

Some guy who does game, audio, and video releases is asking for Paypal

2011-02-09 piracy • paypal • theft

AdSense for Maps

ads float on top of the map

2011-02-09 ads • maps • google

Copyrighted DCMA takedown

Someone tries to prevent Google from posting a DMCA takedown request by claiming the takedown is copyrighted

2011-02-08 oubouros • copyright • google • dmca • chillingeffects

Even simple dumb games can be improved

2011-02-08 solitaire • apple • iphone • games

iTunes setup difficulty

iPhone app developer notes how hard it is to set up a new iTunes account

2011-02-08 itunes • accounts • badtech • foreflight

RIP Tura Satana

She was truly awesome in Faster Pussycat

2011-02-06 russmeyer • movies • obituary • actors

Engine failure in IMC

Amazing recording of a pilot handling an engine failure in bad weather

2011-02-06 airplane • aviation • flying • imc • atc • emergency

Nice writeup of test flights of a completely autonomous aircraft

2011-02-06 flying • airplanes • ucav • uav • drone • x-47b

Antisocial software

Use Foursquare data to figure out how to avoid all the hipsters

2011-02-05 via:waxy • foursquare • data • location

Generate goofy diacritics over ASCII text

2011-02-05 text • ascii • 4chan • unicode

Danny Sullivan on Binggate

Evenhanded examination and opinion on Microsoft, Google, and search copying

2011-02-05 bing • google • search

Research tool for turning free text data into something tabular for analysis

2011-02-04 data • visualization • processing • via:metafilter • stanford • protovis

WebGL now in Chrome

3d rendering comes to the web browser

2011-02-04 chrome • google • webgl • 3d • graphics

timezone appreciation

Nice examples of erudition in the time zone database

2011-02-04 olson • timezone • time • unix

Timezone database future

The Timezone database maintainer is retiring; what happens to all the work he's done?

2011-02-04 timezones • time • internet • software • via:raffi

Matt Cutts on Binggate

Thoughtful commentary on the allegation that Bing is copying Google results

2011-02-04 search • google • bing • seo

Enjoy your geocentric universe

2011-02-04 astronomy • via:jwz • copernicus • tycho

Why Minecraft succeeds

Great insight into why this weird indie game has been a winner

2011-02-03 games • minecraft • marketing

The Daily: web version

Andy Baio supplies the missing home page for the new iPad newspaper

2011-02-03 ipad • news • murdoch • thedaily

Capable HTTP proxy for debugging code. Does SSL, simulates slow links, etc

2011-02-03 http • proxy • code • via:waxy • ssl • https • programming • debugging

Apple app store piracy

Some jerk is selling a game illegally on Apple's app store, claiming it's OK because the code is open source. The assets aren't.

2011-02-03 apple • games • piracy

Nice rundown of modern web server techs in use at Quora

2011-02-03 via:mcroydon • quora • software • python

State of the porn market

Summary of how Internet porn sites are doing

2011-02-02 porn • internet • sex • via:waxy

Games about games

Andy's big roundup of metagames

2011-02-01 games • gaming

Bing is Now Google

Evidence that Microsoft has been copying Google search results

2011-02-01 google • cheating • search • bing • microsoft

Egypt Google searches

Google maps shows the flatlining of Egypt's Internet

2011-02-01 egypt • internet • google • freedom