Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog aboutarchivemastodonfeed
Dr Alan Hart
Heartbreaking story of the bravery of a transgender doctor in the early 1900s in the US
2024-03-31 trans • transgender • lgbt • history • tdov
The 9/11 Court Case
Dispassionate description of the mockery of justice happening in Guantánamo Bay. Everyone involved is so tainted, whole careers wasted. Not to mention the torture.
2024-03-31 politics • guantanamo • 911 • justice • military • terrorism
AT&T breach statement
Company still clueless as to how 73 million customers of theirs had their data leaked. Also no explanation why it took them five years to disclose it and why they still no so little.
2024-03-30 att • security • badtech • hacking • privacy
Tailscale outage
Details on how a very capable networking company failed to renew their SSL certificates.
2024-03-30 ipv6 • tailscale • ssl • certificate • expiration • calendar
Tekken 8 Color Blind mode
Really unusual graphical presentation for a game, all monochrome with high contrast textures
2024-03-30 games • tekken • colorblind • adaptation • monochrome
libxz timeline
Details with references on what looks like an APT planting a backdoor deep in Debian Linux and other systems
2024-03-30 malware • apt • hacking • supplychain • linux
Wikipedia:Task Center
A front end to finding work that needs doing on Wikipedia
2024-03-29 wikipedia • editing • community • culture • work
Beyoncé’s Blackbird
The rich African American history of the Beatles song and how Beyoncé's recording brings it home
2024-03-29 music • beyonce • beatles • blackbird • civilrights
░L░I░N░K░I░N░B░I░O░
A popular form of spam on Musk Twitter. Provocative Neighbors pays spammers $3 or more per victim.
2024-03-28 spam • twitter • elonmusk • porn • via:waxy
Sagittarius A* image
First polarized image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy and why that's so interesting
2024-03-27 space • astronomy • blackhole • milkyway • radioastronomy
Manarchists
Biting critique of a certain kind of awful white guy
2024-03-27 sexism • activism • misogyny • protests • anarchist • applebaum
If Trump Wins
The Atlantic's full issue looking at plans for a second Trump presidency
2024-03-26 politics • uspol • trump • fascism • project2025
Practical Sous Vide
A technical book on the cooking method
2024-03-26 cooking • food • foodsafety • sousvide
Dali ship position
Click "track" for detailed path of the container ship that hit a bridge in Baltimore
2024-03-26 accident • shipping • ais • baltimore • dali • disaster • maps
PG&E water failures
Nevada County is facing a water shortage because our incompetent electric company is mismanaging their water systems. New evidence of neglected maintenance
2024-03-26 pge • nevadacounty • water • power • california
Fifth Circuit judge corruption
Judge in anti-abortion case ruled as his wife was collecting payments from the folks who brought the case to the court
2024-03-25 corruption • abortion • civilrights • politics
About Placemark.io
Forthright discussion of the difficulty in being sole owner of a small tech startup. Business, emotion, the whole muddle.
2024-03-25 startups • entrepreneur • tmcw • maps • gis • placemark
Geli Raubal
Hitler's niece, a young woman he controlled and possibly had a sexual relationship with. She met an early end by either suicide or murder.
2024-03-24 hitler • history • nazis • depravity • incest
Hitler's Enablers
Detailed writing of Hitler's rise to power and how it was enabled by scheming political men who were all outmaneuvered
2024-03-24 hitler • germany • history • trump • politics • nazis
Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco
1600 Aztec texts come to public display, having been preserved for centuries by a family
2024-03-24 aztec • history • archaeology • codex • via:hackernews
1870s gay bushrangers
Two Australian men who were a couple in a very rough time and place
2024-03-24 australia • history • lgbt • gay • bushranger • couple
mapml-viewer
Embedded web maps as an HTML component
2024-03-24 maps • html • webdev • leaflet • htmlcomponents
Strachey love letters
Interesting 1950s proto-AI, also an early example of queer computing
2024-03-23 gay • lgbt • queer • computing • ai • turing • strachey • via:simonw
ChatGPT for extended coding
Remarkable lengthy session getting an LLM to write C code, compile it as a sqlite extension, then test and use it from Python
2024-03-23 programming • llm • ai • simonw
Life Universe
Conway's Game of Life set up to emulate the Game of Life. Infinitely recursive. Click "Life Universe" link in the article to see it in action.
2024-03-23 via:hackernews • life • ca • cellularautomata • recursion
Awesome Selfhosted
A very long list of self-hosted apps and servers
2024-03-22 indie • selfhosting • internet • server • apps
Dream Quest
2014 deck building game that was genre-defining for deckbuilders and metaprogression
2024-03-22 games • deckbuilder • roguelike • roguelite
Roguelike vs. Roguelite
Cogent 2024 explanation for a couple of related game genres
2024-03-22 games • roguelike • roguelite • rogue • procgen
PG&E cuts our water
It's not just electricity; the incompetent company also has screwed up the water supply for Nevada County
2024-03-22 pge • nid • water • california • nevadacounty
USB / DC barrel cables
Cables to power things from USB that ordinarily require their own transformer
2024-03-21 usb • barrel • dc • electronics • power
Reddit content moderation
Overview of the positive social changes in the site in the last ten years
2024-03-21 reddit • moderation • content • socialmedia
Thermal Springs in the U.S.
Nice detailed map of locations of hot springs
2024-03-20 via:kottke • maps • hotsprings • hiking • america
GPS jamming map
Clever public map of where GPS is being interfered with
2024-03-20 gps • navigation • aviation • via:hackernews • war
Shrinking Salton Sea
Detailed plot of changing shoreline
2024-03-19 saltonsea • california • desert • environment • water
Balatro interview
Discussion with LocalThunk, the sole indie developer of the new breakout hit game. 1M copies sold so far, $15M revenue.
2024-03-19 games • balatro • roguelike • poker • indie
Reddit deceptive ads
Company very proud to make ads that look just like actual organic content
2024-03-17 ads • reddit • ftc • deception
Consent-o-Matic
An open source extension for autofilling privacy / cookie consent forms on many popular publishing platforms
2024-03-17 consent • cookie • gdpr • privacy • web • plugin • chrome
Atkinson Hyperlegible
A sans-serif font designed for legibility for people with limited vision
2024-03-17 adaptive • blind • font • typography • readability
Dating app enshittification
Details of how Tinder / Bumble / Hinge / Grindr etc are getting worse, in part as a monetization strategy
2024-03-16 dating • grindr • romance • sex • hookup • culture • enshittification
On Colorblindness
Long, carefully researched and argued essay about racial justice in America
2024-03-15 affirmativeaction • racialjustice • justice • america • black • slavery • reparations • politics
nanofont3x4
A legible ASCII font in a 3x3 bitmap matrix
2024-03-15 fonts • tiny • pixelart
Political email blocklist
EveryAction has a global blacklist that will help you avoid a lot of political email
2024-03-14 politics • spam • email • campaign
FNET/GridEye
Global scale monitoring of power grids. Click the map links, etc for interesting views
2024-03-14 infrastructure • power • electricity • grid • ac • alternatingcurrent
Facebook and Mercurial
Details on why Facebook doesn't use git. Partly performance, partly the culture of git development.
2024-03-13 mercurial • facebook • git • versioncontrol • programming • via:lobsters
Museo Larco
A collection of Mesoamerican pottery, maybe specifically Moche pots? Those are famous for their sexually explicit ones.
2024-03-13 archaeology • mesoamerican • moche • pots • sexpots
Daily AI
Framework for using LLMs with voice applications
2024-03-13 voice • ai • llm • daily • generative • chatbot • python
Billionaires are a policy failure
Thoughtful essay explicating just how weird it is to have an enormous amount of money and how it is bad for American society.
2024-03-13 finance • money • politics • taxes • america • inequality • wealth
Attacking Biden effigy
Fascism on display in Kansas City
2024-03-11 politics • fascism • biden
Chinese thoughts on EV brands
Interesting Reddit post from a Chinese person talking about how people see the various Chinese electric car brands
2024-03-11 cars • evs • electric • china
Musk's charity fraud
Collected billions in tax breaks, doesn't distribute the foundation money to worthy causes unless they benefit him and his businesses directly.
2024-03-10 fraud • charity • taxevasion • elonmusk • spacex
Venus figurines
Roundup of speculation on prehistoric feminine sculptures that span millenia
2024-03-10 via:hackernews • sculpture • history • archaeology • venus
1963 NYT on Overt Homosexuality
Ugly newspaper article but somewhat well researched and balanced for its time.
2024-03-09 gay • lgbt • history • nytimes • homosexuality • mattachine
Starlink Latency improvements
Brief technical notes on a significant service improvement I've noticed
2024-03-08 starlink • latency • isp • performance • bufferbloat • lag • ping
British Library postmortem
Details of the ransomware attack on the institution and the recovery. Really nice to see this level of detail in public.
2024-03-08 security • ransomware • malware • badtech • library • it • recovery
Training LLM at home
Clever work to make AI training possible on cheaper lower RAM video cards instead of specialized AI processors
2024-03-08 ai • training • lora • quantization • llm
Apple cuts off Epic
Highlighting the danger of a monopoly platform
2024-03-06 apple • epic • games • competition • antitrust
St. Piran's Day
Grass Valley celebrates its Cornish history by tossing pasties
2024-03-06 cornwall • cornish • california • grassvalley • stpiran • community
Aptos design
Details of Microsoft's process for their new default fonts
2024-03-06 via:lobsters • typography • fonts • microsoft • aptos • bierstadt
Autobiography of an Androgyne
1918 narrative of a transgender woman's life
2024-03-05 lgbt • history • trans • america • transgender
Twitter leaking IP address
Geniuses launch a new feature which lets any Twitter user see your IP address, a major privacy violation
2024-03-05 twitter • privacy • elonmusk
ambient.garden
"can a composition be organized in space rather than time?"
2024-03-04 generative • art • music • electronica • via:reddit
Voter suppression
Trump allies misapplying regulations to disenfranchise voters
2024-03-03 politics • trump • votingrights
Feeds All Around
Shows RSS feeds related to Mastodon users
2024-03-03 rss • feeds • socialmedia • mastodon • via:adactio
Bissextus
Leap Day is actually February 24, according to historical calendars
2024-03-03 calendar • via:jwz • leapyear • leapday
Observable Framework ideas
Simon Willison breaks down the innovations in Mike Bostock's new data science publishing system
2024-03-03 datascience • observable • visualization • infovis • javascript
REST reconsidered
A lament on how the distributed systems term REST has gotten watered down
2024-03-03 soap • rest • xmlrpc • rpc • http • webservices • api • programming
Avast fraud
Anti-virus software / malware has been selling browsing data for years and misleading customers
2024-03-03 avast • malware • privacy • scam • fraud • security
One billion rows in Go
Nice explication of optimization and profiling techniques
2024-03-03 golang • go • programming • optimization • parallelization • hashtables
Mastodon for Apple II
Now with video?!
2024-03-03 apple2 • appleii • mastodon • socialmedia • retrocomputing • hacking
DONOTREPLY.CARDS
A website for Dan Hon's brilliant "don't reply to my social media message in a dumb way" project
2024-03-02 funny • socialmedia • via:waxy • tirefire
Radio Squirrels
Photo essay on some folks keeping an old maritime radio station alive
2024-03-02 via:simonw • ham • radio • pointreyes • history • photos
Tumblr / Mullenweg analysis
A thoughtful commentary on the mess over at Tumblr lately centered on the CEO Matt Mullenweg responding to a complaint of anti-transgender bias
2024-03-02 tumblr • mullenweg • socialmedia • trustandsafety • moderation
NYC Trash
Excellent feature on the most baffling of American civic problems; a great city that leaves its garbage mounded on the sidewalks
2024-03-02 newyork • nyc • trash • sanitation • infrastructure
LGBTQ+ representation in games
Report on a GLAAD study showing 1 in 5 gamers are queer, then reflecting on the lack of representation in games
2024-03-01 games • gayming • lgbt • glaad • via:reddit