August 17, 2009
Pirate Bay backup archive available on Pirate Bay
— 21GB dump of 873,671 torrents on the site, packaged by a user concerned about the sale #
Ars Technica on how ICANN's fees killed domain tasting
— from 17 million withdrawn domains in June 2008 to only 58k last month (via) #
Offworld's gallery of vintage videogame factories
— imagining the real-life locations where Tetris's blocks and Sonic's gold rings were made #
Nieman Journalism Lab's series on the AP's online strategy
— asked about Associated Repress, the AP's lawyer said that I'm "wonderful" #
RECAP, Firefox extension open-sources public court records
— if you've ever dealt with PACER, you'll know how vital this is #
District 9 director Neill Blomkamp's short films and commercials
— don't miss TempBot and Tetra Vaal; District 9 is 95% positive so far #
NYT Mag cover story on the making of The Beatles: Rock Band
— great discussion of the difficulties and appeal of rhythm games (via) #
Second Skin, documentary about the real lives of MMO players
— looks great, only available free until the end of tomorrow (via) #
BackUpMy.net, online backup of blogs, tweets, mail, and photos
— yes, a cloud service that backs up your cloud services (via) #
How the Soduko Grab sudoku solver for iPhone works
— simple explanation of a practical use of computer vision #
Mike Sacks interviews Dan Clowes for McSweeney's
— including gossip about his foibles with the New York Times during Mister Wonderful (via) #
Joshua Schachter's A Tiny Thread, very simple Twitter conversations
— 208 lines of Python on Google App Engine #
Google opens up next-gen search infrastructure for testing
— try it out; seems speedy and seems to rank real-time results higher #
Facebook buys FriendFeed
— will it get sucked into the black hole, or help Facebook open up? Techcrunch says it's a talent acquisition #
Ars Technica on the worries of high-frequency algorithmic trading
— used for years, it's accelerated since the Wall Street crisis #
Tr.im shuts down, breaking millions of shortened links by year's end
— we were warned; someone should call Archive Team #
Reddit user compiles George Sodini's Internet traces
— includes his Google search history, revealed by exploiting his webmail account (via) #
Steam's Indie Games weekend sale
— curated by Braid's Jonathan Blow and World of Goo's Ron Carmel (via) #
Translation Party
— Japanese-English translations until reaching equilibrium; more examples: don't panic and don't covet (via) #
Sincerely, John Hughes
— touching story of his long relationship with a teenage fan turned pen pal #
1944 industrial film about making the Minneapolis Star-Journal
— delightful look at how the news was made; the Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy in January #
John Gruber on Apple's censorship of the NinjaWords dictionary app
— don't miss Phil Schiller's response which, while thoughtful, doesn't address the App Store's larger issues #
Your World of Text
— infinite canvas for collaborative, real-time text; scroll around, explore, and add something (via) #
The Smoking Gun unmasks creators of Pranknet, destructive phone hoax group
— lulz all around (via) #
Interview with Home of the Underdogs' creator, Sarinee Achavanuntakul
— talks about the ethics of abandonware, why she gave it up, and the current revival (via) #
Sticky Light, interact with lasers without a camera or projector
— someone needs to commercialize this, it looks like a wonderful toy (via) #
Eurogamer's feature on Tim Langdell's EDGE trademark trolling
— they interview both Langdell and Mobigames, quoting emails between the two (via) #
Delicious adds Twitter integration, new search tools
— if you don't like the new freshness, the old Fresh page is still around #