Nelson's Linkblog 2015-05

about • archive • mastodon • feed

SourceForge adds malware

Long-declining open source site now openly adding adware to free software

2015-05-31 malware • badtech • sourceforge • opensource • via:metafilter

Cobra Club NSFW

Really, NSFW: A computer game about photographing penises

2015-05-29 games • penis • dick • funny

Youtube alternative; very simple video sharing

2015-05-29 video • reddit • sports

Blockchain Android app bug

Stupid bad software causes $8100 to be mis-spent

2015-05-29 android • bitcoin • badtech • facepalm

Failed "ask me anything" Reddit threads.

2015-05-29 reddit • iama • ama

Creating a fake diet

Group pulls a prank with bad dietary science

2015-05-28 diet • nutrition • science • p-hacking • fraud

Federated approach to open aerial imagery

2015-05-28 maps • osm • openstreetmap • hot

Space Weird Thing

Bowie Space Oddity remade with only the 1000 most common words in English

2015-05-27 bowie • spaceoddity • xkcd • upgoerfive • via:metafilter

birdy Twitter API

New Python client for Twitter API

2015-05-27 twitter • python • api

Making Tanaka countours

Nice 3d map effect in open source tools

2015-05-27 maps • countours • qgis • gis

New console text editor with multiple cursors

2015-05-26 via:onethingwell • editor • sublimetext

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Some nonsense DRM thing Flickr tried to hide in Javascript

2015-05-26 flickr • javascript • drm • badtech

Federal surveillance airplanes

Spotters have found a bunch of planes loitering over US cities with no known purpose

2015-05-26 civilrights • fbi • nsa • surveillance • aviation

Everpix shutdown

Great story from 2013 of a failed photo sharing company

2015-05-25 photos • companies • startups • flickr • everpix

Mad Max / The Odyssey

Nice take on how the new movie subverts a trope as old as Homer's Odyssey

2015-05-25 madmax • movies • odyssey • homer

Random Internet culture slang; I love the detailed etymology research that Know Your Meme does

2015-05-25 meme • otaku • japanese • 4chan • culture • slang

Chip Delany on Mad Max

A film review from the sci-fi author

2015-05-24 books • movies • madmax • delany

Greek debt timeline

What's due when; they may be defaulting in a couple of weeks

2015-05-24 greece • finance • imf • europe • economy

takena animation

A series of disturbing stop motion videos

2015-05-23 movies • animation

Family Research Council monster

Sex predator working with the anti-gay group

2015-05-22 lgbt • civilrights • frc

Tube steaks with the fixins

2015-05-22 food • hotdog • via:metafilter

Mad Max and amputees

Excellent personal appreciation of Furiosa's being an amputee in Mad Max

2015-05-22 movies • madmax • disabilities • amputees • via:metafilter

In every matter of principle, Uber takes the morally repugnant side

2015-05-22 uber • ethics • ada • disabilities

Whois Accuracy Program

Newish ICANN rule requires verifying domain ownership

2015-05-21 dns • whois • icann

Funny image of an angry Go player

2015-05-21 japan • go • games • tableflip

Big release, efficient map rendering on iOS and Android

2015-05-21 mapbox • maps • mobile • iphone

Turntable postmortem

Nice writeup of a failed social music startup

2015-05-21 music • startups • turntable • sacca

Mississippi ribbon map

Clever visualization

2015-05-21 maps • rivers • mississippi

Yet another cryptosystem weakened by government tampering

2015-05-20 security • badtech • ssl • dh

PayPal fined for credit product

Their invasive advertisements for credit cards turn out to also be deceptive

2015-05-20 paypal • fraud • regulation • via:hackernews

Yahoo failed tax dodge

IRS actually challenges an obvious tax scam

2015-05-20 taxes • yahoo • alibaba

AWS leap second plan

Some services are smearing the second over 24 hours, some are going to simply add it all at once

2015-05-19 aws • amazon • time • ntp

Chrome extension to download SVG graphics, as with D3

2015-05-18 d3js • svg • chrome • extension

UK election maps

Excellent roundup of various visualizations

2015-05-18 maps • elections • visualization

Export Cities: Skylines maps to OSM format

2015-05-17 maps • games • cities • citiesskylines

Take Hersh seriously

Excellent defense of Seymour Hersh's recent reporting on the assassination of Bin Laden

2015-05-17 hersh • journalism • reporting • binladen

4chan tripcodes

4chan has a way to post non-anonymously

2015-05-16 4chan • anonymity

Data on game popularity in Korean PC Bangs

2015-05-16 games • korea

Kanye Quest easter egg

Weird hidden part of Kanye Quest... cult recruiting tool?

2015-05-15 games • kanye • via:waxy • kanyequest • easteregg

LoL streamer stats

Twitch viewership of pro and popular amateur League of Legends players. 30,000 viewers for Bjergsen!

2015-05-15 games • lol • leagueoflegends • twitch • streaming

Google 2FA: 40M users?

Attempt to estimate how many people use Google's two factor authentication system

2015-05-15 google • security • tfa • 2fa

US marriage map

Location, income, political affiliation all affect marriage rates

2015-05-15 data • maps • marriage • visualization • demographics

Reddit against harassment

More policy changes, towards making the community less awful

2015-05-14 reddit • harassment • community • moderation

Kerbal Space Program review

Excellent take on the amazing spaceflight game now that it's officially released

2015-05-14 games • ksp • space • nasa

New Galileoscopes

Decent $50 telescope has a new production run

2015-05-14 telescope • space • astronomy

Black Widow trailer

Finally, a superhero movie for girls!

2015-05-14 funny • parody • marvel • snl • blackwidow • movies

Prison rape failures

States dragging their feet at federally required reform

2015-05-14 humanrights • rape • prison • via:metafilter • gay • lgbt

Suspension BASE jump

Crazy man attaches parachute to flesh hooks

2015-05-14 batshitinsane • parachute • suspension

Amtrak train data

@enf happens to have been recording train speeds, has info on the recent fatal derailment

2015-05-14 amtrak • trains • data • maps

CLG Link rants for 8 pages after quitting his team. Interesting, but very scattered.

2015-05-14 games • clg • lol • leagueoflegends • link

Crumbling capsule tower

Experimental architecture from 1972 Tokyo is not aging well

2015-05-14 via:metafilter • japan • tokyo • architecture

Verizon security idiocy

Their webapp trusts your browser's claim of what its IP address is

2015-05-13 security • facepalm • badtech • ipaddress • ip • internet

World Without End

Profile of the ambitious procedural game No Man's Sky

2015-05-12 games • procedural • nomanssky

Spiral Internet now a CA utility

Small Nevada County ISP has a plan to bring fiber to the home in rural California

2015-05-12 california • internet • isp • broadband • spiralinternet

Flickr auto tags

A collision of machine learning and user desire

2015-05-11 flickr • privacy • tags • metadata

Googlebot runs Javascript

Evidence that Google's indexer is quite sophisticated at picking up dynamic content

2015-05-11 google • googlebot • search • javascript • seo

HTTP/2 for geeks

Readable slides quickly explaining the state of HTTP/2

2015-05-11 http • via:hackernews • internet • networking • web

Census Reporter

Nice UI for exploring US census data

2015-05-11 maps • data • us • census

The first microprocessor

Detailed history of the development of an inevitable technology

2015-05-11 computers • history • cpu • microprocessor • mos • intel • texasinstruments

Semantic analysis of text in Python

2015-05-11 text • python • semantics

Battle of Palmdale

Insane 1956 story of Navy pilots failing to shoot down a drone over California

2015-05-11 drones • military • palmdale • california • facepalm

Some of the economics of being a professional gamer

2015-05-11 lol • games • salary • sports • esports

Tesla Powerwall analysis

Skeptical take on Tesla's home battery product

2015-05-10 tesla • power • electricity • solar

2011 pro LoL history

The drama at the start of LoL eSports

2015-05-10 esports • lol • games • clg • tsm

A rethought Python unit testing library. No boilerplate, use the stock assert statement, etc

2015-05-10 python • testing • unittests

The Great & Beautiful Lost Kingdoms

Dalrymple on India's global influence 400-1200 AD

2015-05-10 india • history • via:metafilter • hinduism • buddhism • culture

History of federal law enforcement abuse, civil liberties

2015-05-09 games • stevejackson • fbi • eff • civilliberties

Energy visualization

Nice tool for showing electricity usage; works with Green Button, including PG&E

2015-05-08 pge • greenbutton • energy • conservation • visualization

PostgresSQL upsert

Single statement to insert or update data

2015-05-08 database • postgres • sql

The 4 maps of the world

Mapbox CEO lays out the 4 maps of the world: Google, Nokia, TomTom, and OSM. (I'd add Apple, maybe.)

2015-05-08 maps • osm • openstreetmap

Uber driver tricks

Ways to game the system; the passenger app provides useful info the driver app doesn't

2015-05-08 uber • hacking • driving • taxi

1957 Navy teletype network

2015-05-07 maps • via:reddit • navy • teletype • internet • network

1881 isochrone map

How long it took to travel from Europe

2015-05-07 travel • 1881 • maps • isochrone

What Is A Super PAC?

A handy guide from The Onion

2015-05-07 funny • parody • theonion • politics • pacs • corruption

Ad Injection Economy

Details on ad malware infecting browsers

2015-05-06 malware • badtech • ads • google

Statement of a problematic community's core values

2015-05-06 reddit • community • moderation

discoveryd mess

Fine rant about some broken MacOS software

2015-05-05 macos • rant • broken • funny

Turns random audio on the Internet into a podcast feeds

2015-05-05 audio • podcasts • rss

European language map

Nice visualization using a lexical measure

2015-05-05 language • linguistics • maps • visualization • via:reddit

Verizon upsell tactics

Sales rep tries to mislead expert about bandwidth needs

2015-05-05 netflix • verizon • sales • scam • via:reddit

Selerity's Twitter report

How algorithms found and analyzed Twitter's earnings PDF in two seconds

2015-05-05 ai • nlp • twitter • finance • algorithms

Dragon Age art extracts

Art from the game Dragon Age: Inquisition. The very bottom (oldest posts) have some of the most beautiful stuff.

2015-05-04 art • games • dragonage

Corpus of Historical American English

400 million words in American usage, for download

2015-05-03 text • analysis • english • language • linguistics

Link Twitter replies to blog comments

2015-05-03 twitter • blogs • web

Encrypted lat/lon

Chinese maps use a deliberately distorted datum

2015-05-03 maps • china • batshitinsane

Dem Tull Pitcairn

Newspaper from tiny Pitcairn Island; the PDF downloads include samples of the local creole

2015-05-03 language • pitcairn • newspaper • via:metafilter

Butane hash oil

Modern marijuana industry manages to turn weed into something like crack

2015-05-02 marijuana • hash • wax • honeyoil

Smart TV malware

Webapps embedded in TV broadcasts are exploitable

2015-05-02 badtech • malware • hdtv • tv • ddos

Firefox deprecating HTTP

Very aggressive move for user security

2015-05-01 firefox • mozilla • http • security • ssl • https

Police assault prisoners with their police vans

2015-05-01 police • brutality • civilrights • crime • baltimore