AdNauseam: Clicking Ads So You Don’t Have To

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As online advertising is becoming more automatic, universal and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating all ad-clicks universally and blindly on behalf of the target audience. Working in coordination with your ad blocker, AdNauseam quietly clicks every blocked ad, registering a visit on the ad networks databases. As the data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user profiling, targeting and surveillance becomes futile.

AdNauseam is a browser extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and tracking by advertising networks. Simultaneously, AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users’ discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas.

AdNauseam joins a broader class of software systems that attempt to serve ethical, political, and expressive ends. In light of the industry’s failure to achieve consensus on a Do Not Track standard, or to otherwise address the excesses of network tracking, AdNauseam allows individual users to take matters into their own hands, fighting back against unilateral surveillance. Taken in this light, the software follows an approach similar to that of TrackMeNot, employing obfuscation as a strategy to shift the balance of power between the trackers and the tracked. For further information on this approach, please see this paper.

Nearly Every USGS Topo Map Ever Made. For Free.

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been producing detailed topographic maps for more than 125 years. Today they are nearly all digitized and free to download through the USGS Map Store, an incredible treasure trove for both map junkies and casual hikers alike.

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A section of an 1893 USGS topo map for Mount Washington, downloaded for free from the USGS Map Store |

Locating your desired map is straightforward with the USGS Map Locator and Downloader, which allows you to zoom in or search for your area of interest. It then gets mildly confusing (though easy once you figure it out) to download the actual map.

To do so, find your desired location and select the type of map you wish to download (usually the 7.5-minute versions, which provide the most detail). An overlay grid appears, with each box labeled with the specific name of each map.

Next mark a point within your desired map by first selecting the button next to “Mark Points” and then clicking anywhere within the area of interest. This adds a reddish ‘paddle’ to the map. (If you searched by name, a paddle will automatically appear over the location.) Clicking on it then brings up a list of all the maps available for download for this location, from most recent to historic.

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Screenshot showing available topo maps for Mount Washington, New Hampshire, including historical maps dating back to the 1890s. |

One important thing to note is that, in general, the most recent topo maps listed are markedly different from their predecessors. Part of the new US Topo Series, these maps have been created as PDFs with geospatial extensions (GeoPDF), which gives you the ability to turn on and off different layers (contour lines, place names, water features, etc.) for viewing, depending on what information you are interested in. Unfortunately, however, trails are not currently included as one of these layers—a significant drawback for hiking.

Lastly, and one of the single-most useful online tools I’ve discovered in recent years, is the ability to overlay every USGS topo map on top of Google Earth, another free (and extremely powerful) tool to add to your trip planning quiver.

 “Equipped” is an AMC Outdoors blog, written by Matt Heid.

Nearly Every USGS Topo Map Ever Made (2014)

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Went hunting for topo maps again recently, and found an interface called TopoView which is so much better than the USGS store and anything else I’ve seen that it’s dumbfounding:

http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/viewer/

It has historical & regional maps as well as the topographical maps. It’s easy to browse. It has built-in support for pinning maps on Pinterest. Really.

Huge props to whatever unsung team at USGS pulled this together.

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I have mixed feelings about USGS topo maps these days. On the positive side, they are producing revisions much more frequently than in the past and they have made available high quality digital images of these maps for free.

The availability of high resolution image files is really nice if you have a big screen and a powerful computer handy, but not so nice if you are scouting for berries on logging roads in a pickup and need something that you can stuff in your pocket. The USGS stopped doing big lithographic print runs of their maps, and the new inkjet prints are garbage in comparison. Whenever I find a lithographic print of a quadrangle I am interested in, I buy two or three because I know I may not be able to find them in the future.

Also, the newer revisions (the ones including satellite images) seem like they get much less individual attention from the cartographers. Labels and symbols are less intuitively laid out. The difference between the new and old map styles is similar to the difference between musical scores generated by a computer and lightly edited by a copyist, and scores created by a master plate engraver.

I vastly prefer the maps from the 80’s and early 90’s.

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I worked for the USGS for a few years and learned a lot about this.

The old topo maps were compiled, drawn, and edited by hand, from primary sources. Look at an old topo and notice the different symbols for barns and houses, outline vs filled squares. They were able to mark those because a usgs employee went out in the field and checked each building. The result of this process were extremely accurate and detailed maps but it was very expensive. It took hundreds of person-hours for each map.

The new topos are produced from remote sensing data, mainly imagery and lidar, and are highly automated. They are worse in most ways(but quickly improving!) than the old maps but take much, much less person time, less than 10 minutes per map. This time is mostly spent verifying/cleaning the source data.

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Whenever I find a lithographic print of a quadrangle I am interested in, I buy two or three because I know I may not be able to find them in the future.

An opportunity for someone?

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When NatGeo was still making their Topo software, you could go to REI and printout fairly high-quality quadrangles of a region you were interested in for a few bucks. Not sure if they still do that. |

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Everything the USGS produces in the public domain. Have fun :) |

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This is interesting, now if only they had 3d topography maps.

I’m building a GPS tracker that I can take on hikes and will store coordinates and altitude to an SD card so I can generate 3d models of the path I take or overlay with 3d maps.

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The National Library of Scotland has a great online collection of old maps as well: http://maps.nls.uk/ - going back to 1500, with slippy maps, side by side views, all sorts. It’s not just Scotland, but the whole of the UK. A lot of them are georeferenced so you can easily flip through time and see how your local area changed.

Licensing isn’t as simple as USGS’s though.

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The amount of map data available for free these days is amazing. I remember saving up to buy those maps in high school. |

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As a history buff (mostly civil engineering based, roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads, etc.) I find these historic maps extremely useful. |

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I don’t know about you guys, but I find that old maps are just fascinating in terms of the history they represent. Perusing old maps and seeing how names of places have changed over time is something that always intrigues me.

Here’s an example: The closest intersection to where I grew up was the corner of Civietown Road, Shellpoint Road and Holden Beach Road. As long as I can remember, the whole area was always referred to as “Civietown” and there are a couple of stores right on the corner, and the fire station for Civietown Volunteer Fire Department. OK, boring enough, except I always wondered WTF “civietown” meant.

Then, one day, I got hold of some WWII era USGS maps and started poking around and noticed that in the 1940’s things were subtly different. The intersection we call “Civietown” now was called “Fulford” back then. Now that’s very common family name in the area, so that part isn’t terribly surprising. But curiously, “Civietown” was about two miles further away, at the intersection of Mt. Pisgah Road and Empire Road, and was spelled “Sivey Town”. Huh, what? And the area near the end of Shellpoint Road was named “Monogram” for no apparent reason.1

This stuff fascinates me. My grandmother can remember the Monogram business, but has no idea when exactly, or why, the name went away. And I haven’t found a good explanation yet for why “Sivey Town” became “Civietown” and relocated itself by two miles. I also still don’t know exactly what either “Sivey Town” or “Civietown” actually means. An older relative told me it has something to do with a kind of bean called a “Seve bean” that was farmed in the area, but I can’t really find much to back that up.2

So yeah… browse around old maps, who knows what kind of mystery you might stumble upon.

1: this post actually inspired me to take the time to download a “historical survey of unincorporated communities” that was put together a while back. There’s no definitive answer on how “Monogram” got its name, but there is some interesting history associated with it. http://www.brunswickcountync.gov/planning/files/2015/04/plan…

2: To the extent that it’s been researched, the “Seve Bean” story is widely acknowledged as a popular local legend, but that’s about the extent of it as far as I know. http://www.myreporter.com/2013/01/is-it-spelled-civietown-an…

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Fourier visualised | Hacker News

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JadeNB 28 days ago

I’m only seeing an image, with no explanation, and it took me a while to realise what it was showing; so, in case anyone else is puzzled by it, each image is the sum of the previous one with a new factor (indicated by the “wheels upon wheels”).

I think that the reconstruction of Homer Simpson’s face (which I think I originally saw thanks to OP ColinWright!) may be a more convincing demonstration of the power of Fourier transforms:  . There’s a Nautilus article about it, too: http://nautil.us/blog/the-math-trick-behind-mp3s-jpegs-and-h… (EDIT: and an HN post discussing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6683866 ).

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Vimwiki a great personal knowledgebase

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Last edited Tue Aug 7 21:04:03 2012

Structure your plain text notes with vim

Vimwiki the almost perfect note application

Vimwike is awsome!

Do you use vim? Then you will love Vimwiki!

Vi is a great editor because it gives so much power with only a few strokes on the keyboard.

Vim is an improved implementation of Vi with an enormous amount of enhancements.

Wiki’s are a great way to almost effortless structure notes.

Vimwiki combines the power of Vim with the great visionairy ideas of Wiki’s.

Vimwiki is a vim-script

Vimwiki is a vim-script. It is build for and on Vim. This means it will run on every thing that runs Vim. So you can use in on almost every computer that comes with a keyboard and a virtual terminal.

Plain text files

Vimwiki is build on Vim and produces plain text files. Your entire wiki consists of plain text files. Which is great.

You can use any revision control system you like to keep control of your wiki.

Generate parts of your wiki

Your wiki consists only of pure plain text files. So you can have any kind of program that outputs plain text to generate stuff to add to your wiki. If you e.g. want to import the output of some script to your wiki, there is really no reason not to do so :)

Build in export to html

Vimwiki comes with a build in tool to export your vimwiki to html. You can both export a single vimwiki page to html or your entire wiki. This provides an easy access to the contents of your wiki.

This also makes it easy to provide read-only access to your wiki or to make your wiki available for non-vim persons.

Build in diary function

With just a few keystrokes you create a diary entry with Vimwiki. Your diary is a pool of files, each with the date as filename.

You can extend the power of the diary by combining the Vimwiki plugin with the Calendar plugin.

The integration of Vimwiki with the Calendar plugin is perfect. If you have both Vimwiki and Calendar.vim installed then just hitting Enter on a day on your calendar will open a Vimwiki diary file for that day. How is that for planning your future actions?

Manage your todo lists with Vimwiki

Simplify your life and manage your todo lists from vimwiki.

Powerfull table editor

Just like org-mode of Emacs, Vimwiki comes with a build in powwerfull table editor. Check it out, it is awsome!

Almost perfect

Vimwiki could be perfect … if it had tags. Unfortunately this feature is not build into Vimwiki yet. The use of tags would be an incredible extension of Vimwiki.

So if you know how to write vim scripts here is a challenge for you!

Try it out and never look back

Just give Vimwiki a spin. It will take you about 5 minutes and you will be hooked. No more looking back, all your notes go into Vimwiki.

You don’t have to trust the cloud, your wiki is on your own system, protected by your preferred revision control system.

That same revision control system will make it possible to distribute your vimwiki to every system you want it too.

Take the plunge and let Vimwiki help you to organise your life!

Resources

Introducing Camus

by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos

Louis Germain

Germain was Camus’ primary school teacher who got him to go to high school (p. 24).

Communism

It never occurred to me that Tunisian Communists might have been associated with other maghrabian groups. (p. 30).

It’s also interesting that they switched from being anti-capitalist/anti-colonialist to being anti-fascist.

L’absurde

p. 39. “[Camus] doesn’t even miss or desire God.” More radical than I am.

L’étranger

“Meursault” == “mer” + “soleil”

Le Mythe de Sysyphe

The chapter on Kafka was published only after the war as an appendix because the Nazi censors wouldn’t have allowed a book about a Jewish writer to be published.

Camus insisted that he was not an existentialist.

Beauty

Quote (p. 92) that I don’t understand.

La Révolte

p. 121: “…If a slave says”no,” he does not so merely against his master, but for his master as well.”

p. 131. Interesting discussion of Camus’ use of the word “revolt” and how he uses it partly to signify moderation.

p. 134. Camus criticizes Hegel because he elevated history above actual people. Hegel made a religion from history.

p. 135. Problem of revolution: it leads to new tyranny.

p. 136. How the notion of revolt was criticized.

Albert Memmi (b. 1920)

It says he was Algerian! (p. 148).

Wikipedia, etc., say he was Tunisian.

L’Exil et le royaume

This is one of his last works!!

L’Hôte

Ambiguous word (p. 156).