Nelson's Linkblog 2015-12

about • archive • mastodon • feed

538 weird charts

Nice roundup of unusual visualizations

2015-12-31 visualization • chart • 538 • via:metafilter • datascience

FTC on native advertising

Mild attempt to reign in deceptive ads

2015-12-31 advertising • ftc • regulation • standards • ads

Twitter outsourced Mac app

Well that's crazy; engineering team not building the desktop client

2015-12-31 twitter • mac • outsource • blackpixel

The Battle of Meme's Deep

Remarkably meta commentary on Internet culture. Also funny and dumb.

2015-12-31 mlg • funny • parody • twitter • reddit • internetculture

Comic Market crowd

Orderly queues at a Japanese convention

2015-12-30 crowds • japan • convention • via:reddit

RIP Ian Murdock

Debian founder, great software guy.

2015-12-30 docker • ian • debian • ianmurdock • suicide

Giant Ant animation reel

Ad production company; they just did a very nice ad for Slack

2015-12-30 advertising • creative • animation • giantant • slack

Do the math on your stock options

An engineer talking candidly about equity compensation

2015-12-30 stock • equity • taxes • startups

DVD screener leak

Pre-release DVDs for 40 films fell into the hides of a pirate group

2015-12-30 movies • piracy • dvd • screeners

Pirate Bay domains taken

Secondary hostnames were seized

2015-12-30 piratebay • dns • copyright

Hoder on social media evolution

Unique perspective on the death of blogs, the rise of Facebook and Twitter

2015-12-30 socialmedia • via:metafilter • iran • facebook • twitter • blogs

633 Squadron v Star Wars

Another film inspiration for the trench run scene

2015-12-29 starwars • movies

Señor Frog in Times Square

"compulsory hilarity, scheduled spontaneity, a scripted theater of the inane with random outbreaks of mediocre Tex-Mex"

2015-12-29 food • restaurant • review • funny • texmex • newyork

27 Americans killed in shootings Christmas Day

Note this doesn't include suicides

2015-12-29 guns • gunculture • america • murica • shooting

California snow pack

Depicts how much water we have in the Sierra

2015-12-29 sierra • snow • drought

Gallery of street art photos

2015-12-29 streetart • oakland • murals • via:reddit • photography

Star Wars vs. Dam Busters

Lucas was, um, heavily inspired by a 1950s war film

2015-12-29 movies • starwars

Krebs on PayPal

Security expert's PayPal account is hacked, attacker bypasses the TFA token by resetting the password

2015-12-28 paypal • security • tfa

Donny and Marie Star Wars

1977 musical revue, made with real production props. Phenomenal.

2015-12-28 star • wars • funny • paullynde

Star Wars discarded plot ideas

Details from pre-production, the malleability of the new Star Wars film story

2015-12-28 starwars • film • development

Native American sketch comedy group

2015-12-28 indian • nativeamerican • comedy • funny

Lynching postcards

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

2015-12-28 racism • lynching • south • america

Jack Dorsey's day

Details of how Jack juggles being CEO of two young public companies

2015-12-27 jack • twitter • square • dorsey • ceo

Karen Wickre's giving list

A very thoughtful collection of charities by @kvox

2015-12-27 charity • kvox • giving • philanthropy

Lasercut topo map

Nice home project

2015-12-27 maps • lasercut • gis • via:reddit

On Facebook, naturally, this video style seems perfectly suited for Facebook

2015-12-27 facebook • cooking • recipe • buzzfeed • foodblogs

A new micro-medium; short videos to demonstrate how to make items. A lot of these are branded "Buzzfeed Tasty"

2015-12-27 recipe • cooking • medium • buzzfeed

Non-Snowden leaks

Analysis of intelligence reporting not sourced to Snowden documents

2015-12-26 intelligence • journalism • snowden

Ember LoL salaries

League of Legends team discloses its players salaries. ~$80k for a year including bonuses

2015-12-25 games • esports • leagueoflegends • lol

Twitch economics

Game broadcasting; says a $5 subscriber nets the streamer $3

2015-12-25 twitch • games • economics • ads • lol

NYT on Hersh/bin Laden

Article about Hersh's huge story disputing the government's version of bin Laden's assassination

2015-12-24 politics • pakistan • binladen • hersh • government • truth • journalism

GGPO rollback netcode

A game programming technique for compensating for lag by doing predictions and rollbacks

2015-12-24 games • networking • streetfighter • netcode • lag

Top game streamers

Report of who had the most hours watched in the last month

2015-12-24 games • leagueoflegends • twitch • streaming

Vegas Review-Journal chaos

Journalists at paper Sheldon Adelson bought are fighting back on him corrupting the paper

2015-12-24 journalism • lasvegas • vegas • news • adelson • sheldon

Bring back Persona

On the importance of a proper authentication system for the Internet

2015-12-24 via:hackernews • identity • authentication • mozilla

Noam Chomsky's Assistant

A sweet essay humanizing a deep intellectual

2015-12-24 via:metafilter • chomsky • assistant • biography

Quaternary extinction event

North America used to have many more large mammals, including lions and camels

2015-12-24 extinction • history • species • science

1973 gay firebombing

Tragic attack on a gay bar and church in New Orleans

2015-12-24 gay • lgbt • history • murder • terrorism • 1970s

A legendary Houston lawyer passes away

2015-12-24 houston • jamail • lawyer • torts

New Orleans accents

Fun footage from 1983 of the diversity of New Orleans dialects

2015-12-24 language • accent • neworleans • english

Middle class New Orleans

2015-12-24 neworleans • accent • english • dialect • language

Confederate heritage

Political context for the Confederate memorials in New Orleans

2015-12-24 neworleans • confederacy • slavery • racism • south • history

Open Guide to Equity Compensation

Explanation of stock options for startup engineers, etc

2015-12-23 startups • equity • stock • options • engineering

A reactionary counterculture on the Internet, connections to Trump's popularity

2015-12-23 racism • 4chan • culture • internet • trump • counterculture

Netflix per-title encoding

Netflix is getting a bit smarter about its video encoding. (But why not go full VBR?)

2015-12-23 netflix • encoding • codec • quality • streaming

A minimal Linux for use with Docker

2015-12-23 docker • linux • alpine

A vey small Linux distro, good for VMs, Docker, embedded work...

2015-12-23 linux • busybox • docker • small

Python tool for easily visualizing data on maps. Works with Jupyter notebooks.

2015-12-23 notebook • visualization • maps • leaflet • python

Worthless startup stock

Downrounds and low acquisition prices make for screwed employees

2015-12-23 startups • stock • internet • equity • good • blackberry

Hilarious account of a bad idea for an LSD trip

2015-12-23 lsd • acid • funny • trump • drugs

Wireshark + SSL

Browsers have a way to record crypto session keys for Wireshark to use

2015-12-22 via:jmason • crypto • ssl • openssl • wireshark • network • debugging

The Great Republican Revolt

Sensible characterization of current US politics, particularly populism

2015-12-22 populism • politics • election • trump

eSports perspective

Interesting business take from a former LoL pro

2015-12-22 games • esports • business • snoopeh • lol

Directors' congratulations

Roundup of a nice Hollywood tradition of film directors honoring each others' successes

2015-12-22 movies • films • variety • collegiality

Emo Kylo Ren (SPOILERS)

Star Wars spoilers, hilarious parody Twitter

2015-12-22 starwars • kyloren • funny • via:metafilter

On the Juniper backdoor

More details on the Dual EC weakness

2015-12-22 dualec • juniper • backdoor • badtech

Dual EC backdoor

It looks like Juniper's crypto backdoor was deliberately planted, then exploited later

2015-12-22 dualec • crypto • badtech • nsa • via:metafilter

Miss Universe screwup

Wrong winner announced; the 360° turn Steve Harvey makes walking on stage is just amazing

2015-12-21 missuniverse • fuckup • funny • stupid • mistake

Feminist data visualization

Interesting set of possible new avenues for visualization

2015-12-21 visualization • infovis • feminism

DNSSEC name and shame!

List of major sites that do and don't support DNSSEC

2015-12-20 dnssec • security • dns

On anonymous sources

Dan Gillmor's righteous essay on why the NY Times reporting is so dangerously bad

2015-12-20 journalism • nytimes • nyt • anonymous

Juniper firewall disaster

Back door on the firewalls makes Juniper customers completely insecure

2015-12-19 juniper • security • badtech • via:metafilter

A deliberately impossible yet complete programming language

2015-12-18 programming • languages • encryption • funny

Contempt Culture

The problem with nerds disdaining technologies they don't like

2015-12-18 culture • programming • gender • via:metafilter

Riot Direct results

League of Legends doing its own Internet peering, results of latency

2015-12-18 latency • internet • lol • riot • games • networking

Folks working on programming Hearthstone bots, etc

2015-12-17 games • hearthstone • machinelearning • ai

Ingress / Pokémon Go

New location-based game from Google spinoff partnering with Nintendo

2015-12-17 games • via:metafilter • ingress • pokemon

Project to figure out airspace coordination for drones

2015-12-17 uav • drones • atc • aviation

ISS Choreography

Lovely diagrams showing the assembly of the space station

2015-12-16 ISS • space • via:binx

New support for developers, also $80M in funding

2015-12-16 slack • platform • api • strategy • aunder

Hacking a self-driving car

One guy building his own autonomous car

2015-12-16 ai • cars • selfdriving • hacking

Jacob’s Ladder of coding

Interesting stuff at the start about learning to program in East Germany

2015-12-15 programming • coding • art

Poignant story of German Jews just as Nazis take to power

2015-12-15 jews • shoah • holocaust • germany • hanukkah

BBC tests China

Terrifying flight in a tiny aircraft over highly militarized disputed territory

2015-12-15 china • bbc • via:metafilter • aviation • southchinasea

LoL ping and win rate

Correlation between latency and winning the game

2015-12-15 games • lol • latency • ping

Phillips breaks third party lightbulbs

2015-12-15 phillips • badtech • lightbulbs • drm

Sandy Hook hoaxers

A harmful delusion

2015-12-14 sandyhook • internet • awful

A reinterpretation of the Star Wars films as terrorist recruitment

2015-12-14 terrorism • funny • jedi • starwars • via:hackernews

Reverse engineering Neko Atsume payoffs

2015-12-13 games • neko • atsume • nekoatsume

New Tom MacWright project providing very simple access to some base GeoJSON map data

2015-12-13 maps • geojson

Website design/hosting company that promises self-designing websites, no fiddling with templates

2015-12-13 design • web • hosting

Chinese Army / Get Lucky

Fan-made video of marching army set to Daft Punk

2015-12-13 music • daftpunk • china • army • via:reddit

Military processions

Mesmerizing video of Chinese army marching

2015-12-13 via:reddit • army • marching

Scott Adams blog post quotes on Dilbert cartoons

2015-12-13 scottadams • dilbert • mra • funny • via:metafilter • comics

Various vocal idiosyncrasies of Internet video performers

2015-12-13 via:metafilter • linguistics • language • youtube • culture

mathowie's dildos

Essay about the gun protest Matt's doing by Photoshopping dildos into politicians hands

2015-12-13 guns • dildos • politics • mathowie • matthaughey

"Carpet Bombing"

NYT on specifically why Ted Cruz' rhetoric is idiotic. (They don't cover the reprehensible part.)

2015-12-13 tedcruz • military • bombing • isis • politics

US mobile passport

American customs has an iPhone app for faster clearance

2015-12-13 iphone • passport • customs • travel • usarmy

Prismatic news shutdown

Algorithm news system doesn't succeed

2015-12-12 prismatic • news

Inside Deep Dreams

Nice insider Steven Levy piece

2015-12-12 google • neuralnetworks • machinelearning • deepdream

Uber stock ownership

Details of Uber's equity structure that enable it to remain private

2015-12-12 stock • equity • uber • sacca • ipo

gzip --rsyncable

Variant of compression that tries to be rsync-friendly

2015-12-12 rsync • gzip • compression • bandwidth

The real story behind a traditional Hanukkah food

2015-12-12 food • jewish • hanukkah • latkes

Symantec security drama

Symantec asked Google to stop trusting one of their certs

2015-12-11 symatec • google • ssl • certificates

Trump is not a facist

A more careful reading on Trump's politics

2015-12-11 facism • history • politics • trump

Grace Jones / Pee Wee Herman / Christmas

A remarkable performance

2015-12-11 music • christmas • gracejones • peeweeherman

Search the Internet of Things; used for security analysis

2015-12-11 security • internetofthings • badtech • hacking • network

Grid corrections

Skew between rectangular maps and spherical earth cause farms and roads to have odd shapes

2015-12-11 maps • via:metafilter • survey • cartography

Great 2001 Michael Lewis piece about stocok market manipulation

2015-12-10 stocks • markets • sec • finance

F-35 is cyberinsecure

DoD refuses to test F-35 program's security because the tests might break the program's security.

2015-12-10 f-35 • badtech • cyberwar • military • airforce • stupid

Fun visualizations of highway networks

2015-12-10 roads • maps • america • highway

Trump v Freedom

Awkward photo op

2015-12-09 trump • funny • via:reddit • eagle

Badalamenti on Twin Peaks

Lovely story from the composer about writing the music. Sampled by Nicolas Jaar in that awesome mix, too

2015-12-09 music • twinpeaks • badalamenti

Scalzi on Trump

Clear-eyed view on what Trump's success so far means for America

2015-12-09 america • politics • trump • scalzi

Quantum computing skepticism

Some counterbalance, not convinced though

2015-12-09 google • dwave • quantum • computing

Quantum computing works

The D-Wave machine seems to actually be doing something faster than classical computing

2015-12-09 computing • quantum • via:metafilter • annealing • science

Craig S. Wright on Cypherpunks

Candidate for being Satoshi Nakomoto was a participant in the important crypto mailing list

2015-12-08 cypherpunks • bitcoin • satoshi

Is this Satoshi Nakamoto

Plausible evidence it's Craig Steven Wright

2015-12-08 bitcoin • satoshi

Australian addresses open

Geocoding dataset to be made publicly available

2015-12-08 opendata • openstreetmap • openaddresses • geocoding

Modern product for publishing open data developed by a US government agency

2015-12-08 opendata • data • cfpb • qu • soda

LoL in Korea history

Detailed summary of the history of LoL esports in Korea

2015-12-07 korea • riotgames • riot • lol • ogn

Antone's Po' Boys

Classic Houston sandwich, sort of in the Creole tradition

2015-12-06 food • sandwich • creole • poboy • poorboy

American nativism

Hatred of Trump and other Republicans in historical context

2015-12-06 america • politics • trump • racism

Luke Kanies profile

Reedie / Puppet Labs founder

2015-12-06 puppetlabs • puppet • reed • oregon • technology

I was an Internet meme

Nice followup on various people who were in accidentally famous videos

2015-12-06 youtube • meme • culture • viral

Replacing Sawzall

Google replaces its internal log-analysis language with a Go library

2015-12-06 golang • google • mapreduce • robpike • sawmill • sawzall

US mass shootings stats

Various presentations of data

2015-12-04 america • unitedstates • guns • murder • via:reddit

MSNBC + CNN go insane

Break into shooting suspect's house, start filming their belongings

2015-12-04 ethics • jouranlism • cnn • msnbc • crime • batshitinsane

Chris Donavan shoes

Mini-documentary about an atypical fashion designer

2015-12-04 fashion • shoes • ironicsans • movie • documentary

Hoverboard origin

Interesting tale of Chinese manufacturing culture

2015-12-04 hoverboard • culture • china • via:metafilter • toys

Google Cloud Vision API

Google Photos AI stuff repackaged for use

2015-12-04 photos • google • machinelearning • images • vision

For 4.0, Mike looks to be breaking D3js into component libraries

2015-12-03 d3js • d3 • javascript • shapes • drawing

WYSIWYG Javascript editor

2015-12-03 javascript • editor • wysiwyg • opensource • code

Fallout 4 locations

Photo album of scenes from Boston in the game

2015-12-03 boston • fallout • fallout4 • games

Craven Airbnb statement

Runs hideous ad campaign in San Francisco, then disclaims responsibility

2015-12-02 airbnb • politics • sanfrancisco

Anil Dash on Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Thoughtful essay, not sure if I agree

2015-12-02 charity • zuckerberg • foundation

Zuckerberg philanthropy

Promises to give away 99% of his Facebook wealth; $45 billion

2015-12-01 charity • facebook • zuckerberg

Politics are getting tense

2015-12-01 politics • trump • republicans • gop

Agile Government Technology

Code for America gets California to try a better government procurement process

2015-12-01 procurement • government • codeforamerica • cfa

Avoiding any attempt to regulate their spying programs

2015-12-01 us • nsa • privacy • civilrights • usa • politics