Nelson's Linkblog 2014-07

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CIA spied on the Senate

CIA Inspector General admits the CIA spied on legislators. This is dangerous.

2014-07-31 cia • spying • senate • feinstein • democracy

Chrome app wrapper

Like Fluid; a way to turn a website into a stand alone Mac application

2014-07-30 mac • chrome • application • macos

Kim Kardashian game review

Lovely bit of post-feminist game criticism

2014-07-30 games • feminism • kardashian

Radical feminism vs transgenderism

Even handed summary of a very divisive issue

2014-07-30 gender • politics • feminism • queer • trans • transgender

A stark visualization

2014-07-29 israel • gaza • visualization

Nokia map new design

Detailed analysis

2014-07-29 maps • nokia • here • microsoft • where

Nice D3 explanation

2014-07-29 d3js • d3 • markovchain • modeling

Thoughtful essay on the iOS app market maturing

2014-07-29 via:metafilter • overcast • marco • software • apps • apple • iphone • ios

Nice little brief interview, she's awesome

2014-07-29 actors • sarandon • woodyallen • drugs • movies

A procedural content thing, a game of sorts

2014-07-29 games • procedural

PG&E cozy with regulators

The ongoing debacle over California's failure to meaningfully regulate utilities

2014-07-29 pge • sanbruno • puc • corruption • california • politics

Geography of US debt

Detailed maps of consumer US debt

2014-07-29 debt • us • map

DIY multi-sundial

Nice little papercraft project for making an accurate timepiece

2014-07-29 sundial • time • via:metafilter • papercraft

Food for White Liberals

"what sex is for the Religious Right"

2014-07-29 politics • food • liberals

In case you want to write inscrutable functional code in Python

2014-07-28 Python • haskell • functional • programming • code

Eid al-Fitr 2014

Nice set of photos

2014-07-28 islam • muslims • ramadan • eid • eidalfitr • photos • photography

Gender gap in tech funding

Sexism in the VC and angel world

2014-07-28 investment • startup • gender • sexism

Age diversity in tech

The lack of data

2014-07-28 diversity • age • discrimination • startups

LMQ esports dispute

Top League of Legends team (in North America, but a Chinese team) has a bunch of shady business problems

2014-07-28 esports • lol • games • lmq

Google's augmented reality game now on iOS; advice for new players

2014-07-28 games • ingress • augmentedreality

Ramen crust pizza

When stoners run out of ingredients, they get creative

2014-07-28 pizza • ramen • funny

youtube-dl merge

Tool for downloading video can grab separate video and audio, then merge them

2014-07-26 youtube • download • ffmpeg • merge • video

anatomy of songs

A simple linear infographic

2014-07-26 music • funny • stereotypes • via:jwz • infographics

Rap Genius bro on Bitcoin

Disgraced former Genius guy has the Bitcoin religion

2014-07-26 bitcoin • bro • rapgenius • genius

Television designs

Nice graphic of the look of TV consoles since 1928

2014-07-26 television • design

6502 emulator detector

Cool hack from Mark Pilgrim, who's been scarce lately

2014-07-25 markpilgrim • diveintomark • hack • assembly • 6502 • apple

Google really buying Twitch

Still not official, but a strong journalistic source

2014-07-24 google • twitch • video

Hapax legomenon

Words that only occur once in some corpus

2014-07-24 language • writing • zipfslaw

80s Computer Hacking

A supercut of what computers looked like in movies.

2014-07-24 via:metafilter • hacking • supercut • films • 1980s

America's Flight 17

In 1988 the US shot down a civilian airliner by accident

2014-07-24 iran • iranair655 • ia655 • mh17 • aviation • military

Didga, skateboarding cat

It's a cat. Who skates.

2014-07-23 skateboards • cats • funny

purveyors of fine ramen (attn @marcprecipice)

2014-07-23 ramen • food • noodles

Twitter employee diversity

Welcome transparency, disappointing but predictable numbers

2014-07-23 diversity • twitter

Deaths in the Iliad

finally an infographic that isn't awful

2014-07-23 homer • iliad • classics • infographics

Benjamin Black (Amazon employee) claims partial credit for starting Amazon's cloud computing business

2014-07-23 amazon • ec2 • aws • cloud

Women on Metafilter making "posts by women" for the month of July

2014-07-22 women • gender • metafilter • feminism

Scarlett, Starcraft pro

One of the strongest players of Starcraft is a transgender woman

2014-07-22 gender • women • starcraft • transgender • games • esports

GIS library written in Javascript

2014-07-22 javascript • gis • maps • nodejs

Game dev sexual harassment

Ugly stories of experiences women in the games business have

2014-07-22 gender • games • harassment

Canvas fingerprinting

Yet another web tracking tool; using differences in browser rendering

2014-07-22 cookies • privacy • canvas • badtech

FCC's failure on broadband

2011 post about how FCC's policy created our existing monopoly broadband situation

2014-07-21 broadband • internet • fcc • policy

ScanLine Generator 3000

For reproducing the look of crappy old CRTs

2014-07-21 games • emulation • scanline • tv • crt • video

The secret of Minecraft

Lovely essay on the way you learn to play Minecraft

2014-07-21 games • minecraft • books • fandom • via:waxy

Some very smart ex-Googlers building an open source robust datastore

2014-07-21 spencerkimball • bendarnell • spanner • bigtable • google • software • database

Russian MH17 view

Conspiracy theories in Russian media

2014-07-21 russia • ukraine • mh17 • news • conspiracy

Software for downloading unlicensed TV and movies

2014-07-19 tv • movies • torrent • nzb • usenet

Popout for YouTube

Chrome extension to let you pop just the video out of a Youtube page

2014-07-18 youtube • chrome • extension • video

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Animated GIF of a tiny tumbling comet that we're about to land a probe on

2014-07-18 space • comets • rosetta • astronomy

Level 3 calls out Verizon

Significant Internet backbone provider explains how Verizon is lying about bandwidth

2014-07-17 netflix • verizon • netneutrality • level3 • internet

BUK anti-air missile

System rumored to have shot down MH17

2014-07-17 mh17 • malaysia • ukraine • missile • war

Kara Swisher profile

The respectable tech gossip journalist

2014-07-17 tech • journalism • swisher • allthingsd • recode

Website for the religious movement taking the (fictional) world by storm

2014-07-16 leftovers • tv • religion

Fancy unit testing for Python

2014-07-16 tests • python • programming • code

Hacker vs. League of Legends

Details of account thefts, DDOS attacks, etc

2014-07-15 games • lol • leagueoflegends • badtech

DashCon disaster

Fandom conference fails, hilarity ensues

2014-07-14 fandom • tumblr • via:metafilter • fail

Soccer in Côte d’Ivoire

An American's reflections on playing teenage street soccer in Côte d’Ivoire

2014-07-13 football • soccer • kwindla • worldcup

What is a Super Moon?

Science! Sensible details.

2014-07-12 moon • astronomy • supermoon

Dear white gays

Controversial op/ed calling out cultural appropriation

2014-07-12 race • gender • gay • black • via:metafilter

Ultima's ethics

The virtues, aspects, etc in the 80s computer games

2014-07-12 ultima • ethics • games

Ian Thorpe comes out

Famous Australian swimmer is gay

2014-07-12 gay • sports • swimming • thorpedo • ianthorpe

On selling social tech

Interesting analysis of how the Tinder co-founder was essential in early creation of the social system

2014-07-11 women • tech • tinder • community

Grindr remembers the holocaust

Gay personal ads featuring photos taken at the Berlin holocaust memorial

2014-07-11 gay • sex • berlin • holocaust

Buttcoin.org subverted

Popular Bitcoin critique site was bought by a mining rig company a few months ago

2014-07-11 bitcoin • funny • scam

$470k Kickstarter failure

Company fails to deliver its pre-sold hardware

2014-07-10 fraud • kickstarter • scam

CYNK market weirdness

Some non-existent company recently went from $20M to $5B in market value. No one knows why.

2014-07-10 market • scam • pumping

"Content" as product

The sleaziness of the current crop of fake Internet journalism

2014-07-10 journalism • writing • sleaze • ads

Presbyterians in Utah

America's own counter-reformation; 1870s Presbyterians moved to Utah to proselytize to Mormons

2014-07-10 religion • utah • history • lds • mormon • presbyterian

50 states in Lego

cute dioramas of stereotypes

2014-07-10 america • via:Reddit • lego • diorama

30 year old salvage spacecraft turns out to have no fuel, still will be useful for a few months

2014-07-10 space • isee3

Pinboard Turns Five

Hilarious as always, state of a small web service company. Great thoughts on burnout.

2014-07-10 funny • maciej • lifestylebusiness

Bad SSL certs spoof Google

Another example of incompetence or malice in the Internet's trust infrastructure

2014-07-09 ssl • badtech • google • security • india

Apple maps on the web

Totally unofficial, but handy map viewer

2014-07-08 maps • apple

ISEE-3 telemetry

Real time view of the satellite

2014-07-08 space • satellite • isee3

Criminalized HIV

Detailed story of one man in jail for not disclosing HIV status

2014-07-08 hiv • aids • race • gay • wrestling

CA planning insanity

The expensive, long delays introduced by environmental reviews on simple things like better bus service

2014-07-08 brt • california • sanfrancisco • bureaucracy • vanness • eir

Stripe and open source

Recognition of the startup contributing back

2014-07-08 stripe • opensource

Procedural Content Generation

A textbook for game design

2014-07-08 via:amitp • games • generative • procedural

How to play Street Fighter

Ridiculously detailed primer on fighting games

2014-07-08 games • via:metafilter • streetfighter

Virtual Economies

New academic book on game economies

2014-07-07 games • economics • mmos

Visiting Sana'a

Maciej Ceglowski goes to Yeme

2014-07-07 yemen • travel • sana

C9 Hai interview

Thoughtful take on the pressures of being a pro gamer

2014-07-07 games • leagueoflegends • cloud9 • c9 • hai

Decoder ring for the misleading language NSA uses

2014-07-07 nsa • spying • surveillance • civilrights • privacy • clapper

Justin Bieber update

Long but nuanced portrait of the child star growing up

2014-07-06 fame • bieber • music • via:metafilter

NSA illegal overview

Broad summary of what we've learned from Snowden, the breadth of NSA's spying on US citizens

2014-07-06 fourthamendment • civilrights • nsa • surveillance • snowden

Islands of Portland

Nice treatment of rising sea levels in Portland

2014-07-05 maps • portland • globalwarming • burritojustice

Top level domains; the list is getting big

2014-07-05 dns • domains • tlds • iana

Interesting constructs, some of which could be nice in D3

2014-07-04 d3js • svg • graphics

Estonia global digital ID

Country takes its pioneering national ID program international

2014-07-04 estonia • identity • oauth • openid • login • authentication • passwords

NSA / Wall Street

More revolving door, concerns about national secrets

2014-07-03 nsa • wallstreet • corruption • politics

Twitch is 10% of YouTube

As measured by bandwidth, Twitch accounts for 1.35% of Internet traffic

2014-07-02 twitch • streaming • video • bandwidth

open source data portal product

2014-07-02 opensource • data • opendata • gis

Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No

Hilarious video of an unlikely pitching performance

2014-07-02 acid • lsd • funny • baseball • nohitter • dockellis

Snowden / NSA revelations

Handy chart showing all the illegal activities

2014-07-01 nsa • civilrights • snowden • privacy