Nelson's Linkblog 2014-02

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Mt. Gox forensic accounting

Walking assets through the blockchain

2014-02-28 bitcoin • mtgox • fraud

DNS root key party

How the central keys to DNS are managed

2014-02-28 via:metafilter • security • priesthood • dns • icann

Inside Mt. Gox heist

Plausible reporting based on an anonymous inside source

2014-02-28 bitcoin • mtgox • fraud

Pando Media Booster is malware

Formerly skeezy bandwidth stealing app now is a browser hijack

2014-02-28 games • lol • leagueoflegends • malware • badtech • pando

Webcam chats stolen

Governments captured random people's webchat images for surveillance

2014-02-27 surveillance • civilrights • gchq • nsa • opticnerve • via:waxy

Chrome v33 optimizes sin(x)

Unintended consequences of changing floating point functions

2014-02-27 chrome • javascript • math • floatingpoint • d3js

Good advice for how to generate random numbers on Unix systems

2014-02-26 linux • unix • random • crypto • security

Our Comrade The Electron

Amazing talk by Maciej about technology and surveillance

2014-02-26 technology • surveillance • talk • webstock

IAmA: Crispin Glover

Unfiltered, apparently

2014-02-25 movies • crispinglover • reddit

Bitcoin Mining Rigs

Hilarious photo collection

2014-02-25 bitcoin • hardware • funny

Ban gays from NFL

DC lobbyist is drafting a bill

2014-02-25 gayrights • civilrights • nfl • gay

Kickstarted satellite finally deployed next week; I bought a bit of time on it

2014-02-24 kickstarter • skycube • satellite • space • southernskies

Linux backdoor 2003

Exploit code was inserted into Linux kernel; only caught because there were two source repositories

2014-02-24 linux • security • badtech • backdoor • bitkeeper

Experimental music on Children's TV

A Tumblr collection

2014-02-24 music • tumblr • via:metafilter

US News and World Report archives

Important journalist site burns down all articles from before 2007 because of incompetent web team

2014-02-24 archives • journalism • news

Whole Foods pseudoscience

Calling out the hypocrisy of mocking creationists while buying fake medicine at Whole Foods

2014-02-24 wholefoods • food • culture

Bellovin on goto fail

Analysis of Apple's bug

2014-02-24 apple • ssl • gotofail

Google search by image

Like TinEye; search for images based on visual similarity. Since 2011!

2014-02-23 google • search • images • tineye • via:spullara

Beautiful image from Cassini with the rings just a thin slice

2014-02-23 saturn • astronomy • cassini • via:vruba

Economist chart style

Brilliant dissection of a very effective visualization technique

2014-02-23 economist • theeconomist • visualization • charts • design

1865 miner's letter

Funny story about the hazards of wealth

2014-02-23 nevadacounty • grassvalley • miner • wealth • 1865

Short documentary film by David Lynch about a Paris print shop

2014-02-23 prints • davidlynch • paris

Civic procurement

Examples of why government websites suck

2014-02-23 codeforamerica • procurement • government

WhatsApp DMCA abuse

Company sent fraudulent takedown notices to GitHub

2014-02-22 whatsapp • facebook • dmca • copyright

Apple's SSL bug

Simple typo; bad thing is no code review nor testing caught it

2014-02-22 apple • bugs • testing • ssl • openssl

How I would have ended Bioshock

Interesting proposal for an alternate horror ending

2014-02-22 bioshock • games • bigdaddy

US behind in wireless data speeds, still

2014-02-21 wireless • lte • cellular

Clown college is in session at Apple

2014-02-21 badtech • ssl • security • ios

Brett Camper vector maps

Amazing WebGL 3d vector maps

2014-02-21 via:migurski • maps • opengl • osm • openstreetmap

WhatsApp Erlang talk

Interesting slides about scaling

2014-02-21 via:jm • erlang • whatsapp • programming • scaling

"Liquid Sky 2" is coming

Bonus amazing animated GIF

2014-02-20 liquidsky • movies • via:metafilter

Tim Bray leaving Google

Particularly effective communicator and developer moving on

2014-02-20 google • timbray

Ugly, simple graph about game trends

2014-02-20 games • king • candycrush • zynga • farmville • funny

WhatsApp founding

Details on Jan Koum and the origin of WhatsApp

2014-02-20 whatsapp • facebook • entrepreneurs • startups • business

Eve: True Stories

Events from Eve Online are being made into a comic book

2014-02-19 comics • eveonline • games • ccp • mmos

Music by floppy drive motors, vocals by Soft Cell

2014-02-19 taintedlove • softcell • music • funny • via:metafilter

FSF had to sue to enforce the GPL on Linksys routers

2014-02-19 gpl • licensing • fsf • cisco • freesoftware

Liberty in North Korea

Agency offering help to North Koreans who've escaped

2014-02-19 dprk • northkorea • humanrights • charity

Netflix/Comcast update

Details about the net neutrality battle (WSJ paywall)

2014-02-19 wsj • news • comcast • netflix • netneutrality • internet

Nice photo of very small satellites being launched off the back of the space station

2014-02-18 iss • nanosat • cubesat • nanoracks • space • satellite

Brian Krebs profile

Info on the well known security reporter

2014-02-18 security • badtech • krebs • krebsonsecurity

Linksys malware

Worm "The Moon" exploits remote management, which defaults to off

2014-02-17 linksys • badtech • themoon • worm

People occasionally danced themselves to death in 14th-17th c. Europe

2014-02-17 dance • mania • socialmania • europe • history • dancing

Chrome font bug

Google Chrome has had a seriously broken font problem for at least 9 months. Fixed soon, we hope.

2014-02-17 google • chrome • bugs • badtech

USGS map palette

Standard colors for USGS maps depicting types of rocks

2014-02-16 colors • maps • usgs

Flappy Bird MMO stats

Clever analysis of the silly game

2014-02-16 games • flappybird

Network link conditioner

MacOS software to throttle the machine's bandwidth usage, for testing and traffic shaping

2014-02-16 macos • bandwidth • development • testing • qos • shaping

Google offline maps

Hidden feature in the maps app lets you cache data

2014-02-15 maps • google • offline

Google+ is a success

The goal is collecting data on users, not being a useful social network

2014-02-15 google • googleplus • advertising • ads • surveillance

Decoding NatGeo digital images

Converting the files on the National Geographic archives into reasonable image files

2014-02-15 nationalgeographic • cng • images • magazine

NTP DDoS report

Details on how much traffic was generated

2014-02-14 ntp • ntpd • monlist • badtech • security • ddos • dos • cloudflare

Good Samaritan Backfire

Insane interaction with San Francisco police

2014-02-13 sfpd • sanfrancisco • 911 • police • civilrights

Cable consolidation

A timeline of the loss of competition in the US telecomm market

2014-02-13 cable • competition • antitrust • comcast

Optimizing twitter images

440x220 is native size, various tricks for making Twitter display images the way you want

2014-02-13 twitter • seo • graphics

30 year old satellite, incommunicado

Evocative story, we've lost the ability to talk to ICE/ISEE-3

2014-02-13 space • newaesthetic • satellite • vger

Imagus extension

Chrome extension to show linked images on hover, also image viewer improvements

2014-02-13 images • hoverzoom • chrome • extension

Before they pass away

Photographs of various peoples in traditional outfits

2014-02-13 costume • photography • culture

Evidence of another government malware weapon

2014-02-13 via:jnoxon • malware • badtech • careto • themask

Simple Open Data

Advice on how to publish data for reuse

2014-02-12 data • license • opendata • creativecommons

Sochi OSM history

Area for the Olympics was well mapped for years, not just a push for the event

2014-02-12 olympics • sochi • maps • osm

Luke and Leia had sex

Confirmation via film stills

2014-02-12 via:jemiah • funny • starwars

Toolkit for Computer-Aided Musicology

2014-02-11 music • python • programming

Sochi maps: Google v OSM

OpenStreetMap shines for Sochi

2014-02-11 maps • google • openstreetmap • osm

Top tweeted Olympics photos

Nice collage / data analysis

2014-02-11 olympics • twitter • photos • journalism

Google taking over Moffett

Unloved military / NASA airport to be fixed up, run by a Google subsidiary

2014-02-11 google • aviation • moffett • mountainview

Outrageous FBI coverup

Courageous woman fights the no-fly list, finally learns it was all a minor FBI mistake compounded by bullshit anti-terrorist excuses

2014-02-11 terrorism • fbi • civilrights

Location used for many porn films in Japan (SFW)

2014-02-11 japan • porn

RIP Leonard Knight

Artist of Salvation Mountain

2014-02-11 art • folkart • saltonsea • slabcity • salvationmountain

Yet another altcoin, this one tries to do useful computation instead of time wasting

2014-02-11 boinc • setiathome • bitcoin

Weakness in Bitcoin protocol leads to Mt. Gox losing money

2014-02-10 bitcoin • mtgox • badtech

right+GPS time zone

Alternate approach to handling leap seconds

2014-02-10 time • ntp • leapsecond

Hilarious article about some startup party thing

2014-02-10 funny • party • sanfrancisco • startups

Distressed baby mom

AOL employee's wife talks about how health insurance saved their baby's life

2014-02-09 aol • timarmstrong • healthcare • insurance

An entirely transparent Ponzi scheme

2014-02-09 ponzi • scam • bitcoin • funny

Snowden: wget -r

Details of how Snowden might have grabbed so many NSA documents. Complete lack of internal security or monitoring.

2014-02-09 snowden • civilrights • nsa • via:migurski

Beer bitterness chart

Numeric summary of how bitter various kinds of beer tend to be

2014-02-08 beer • ibu

Innovatio patent case

Cisco steps in to stop a patent shakedown

2014-02-08 patents • legal • cisco

Against hoppy beer

Nice article about the failing of American beer

2014-02-08 beer • hops • bitter • via:tbray

Tabula Rogeriana

More detail on the 12th century world map

2014-02-08 maps • history • 12thcentury

By Muhammad al-Idrisi

2014-02-08 maps • 12thcentury • history

Twitch analytics, alpha project showing what games people are watching

2014-02-08 games • twitch • analytics

Dolores Park economy

Shhh: there's various grey and black market merchants in the city park

2014-02-07 sanfrancisco • dolores • sf • marijuana

MtGox freezes accounts

The formerly largest Bitcoin exchange siezes everyone's money. Temporarily, they say.

2014-02-07 bitcoin • mtgox • fraud

Grammar of Doge

2014-02-07 via:amitp • grammar • doge • meme • funny

Coinbase fiasco

Bitcoin risks plus bad risk management design

2014-02-07 bitcoin • coinbase • fraud

Tim Armstrong saying things no CEO should, at least not out loud

2014-02-07 aol • internet • benefits • 401k • timarmstrong

US bus and Amtrak routes

2014-02-06 maps • transit • unitedstates • america

the hot new currency trend, bigger than Bitcoin

2014-02-05 bitcoin • money • funny • currency

New YouTube CEO

Susan Wojcicki takes over for Salar Kamangar. Some serious shuffling of the inner palace.

2014-02-05 google • youtube

Economics of mobile games

Interesting response to the handwringing about in app purchases

2014-02-04 games • market • mobile

Blomkamp Short Films

A handy list of YouTube videos

2014-02-04 Blomkamp • movies • scifi

Google mercator is non-conformal

For map nerds; the common web map projection is actually kind of a mess

2014-02-04 projections • google • epsg3857 • mercator • maps

Pornhub during Super Bowl

Broncos fans turned back to porn first

2014-02-04 porn • pornhub • funny • superbowl

Twitter: Jorn Barger?

Legendary OG blogger robotwisdom apparently pops up with a new Twitter account

2014-02-03 twitter • robotwisdom • blogging

Interesting mistake image from the Hubble Space Telescope

2014-02-03 hubble • space • telescope • glitch

FISA requests to Google

Finally some data on secret spying requests

2014-02-03 google • privacy • civilrights • fisa

Simple site for making chloropleths, etc from spreadsheets

2014-02-03 maps • chloropleth • visualization

Why Don't We Have Both?

One of the funnier meme GIFs

2014-02-02 gif • meme • tacos • funny

History of 'What Time Is the Super Bowl?'

Interesting account of silly SEO tricks

2014-02-02 google • seo • linkbait • superbowl

Asymmetric ax, looks like it could work.

2014-02-02 wood • finland • chopping • axe • woodsman

GTA V landscapes

Nice screenshot / photographic collection

2014-02-01 games • grandtheftauto • gtav • landscapes

C’est quoi cette folie du Super Bowl?

American football explained by a Paris news magazine

2014-02-01 football • paris • france

Yahoo building search?

Rumors of early projects

2014-02-01 yahoo • search • google • bing • microsoft

Guy spends 50 years drawing a fictional map

2014-02-01 maps • procedural • games

Dear America, I Saw You Naked

Amazing essay from a former TSA agent

2014-02-01 tsa • security • airport • via:metafilter