Category: data
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Kittens, Pr0n, and Bad Juju in the Blockchain
Modern digital currency mostly seem to revolve around a construct called a blockchain, which – by design – is a (mostly![1]) append-only distributed database that is intended to keeps all the transactions for all time. Blockchains use strong cryptographic methods to ensure its integrity and fidelity, and is typically decentralized, meaning that the entire chain…
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The Dynamic and Depreciating Value of Computers
I wrote this while I was at my company Elemental, and was meant for engineers to implement, so despite some of the very specific language for implementation purposes it was never meant to be dogmatic. I love the idea of calculating value based on… not much. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I can say that…
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ITAR
Well, not really. Actually I.tar.gz. In the gzip’d tar there are 3 files; little IPMI/BMC configuration file sucker, a suggested set of security recommendations that could be checked, and an even smaller program to parse the first program’s output. Because… well, no good reason, actually, one is in python3 and the other in python2. I…
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3.66+ million can’t be wrong
So I got a CD in the mail with the WA state voter information; it has 3.66M active records (and something close to 5M total; they say something like 6.8M live in WA) on it, and is available for $7 from the WA secretary of state. There are 9 daniel farmers; nothing remarkable, but I’m…
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go .gov!
In 2009 the US government (thanks to Obama) did a remarkable thing by releasing a ton (perhaps a Library of Congress worth of tons) of data: http://explore.data.gov/ Much of the data is in CSV/JSON/XLS/etc formats. The Seattle gov has done similar local data efforts, much through the same underlying architecture: http://data.seattle.gov/ Socrata seems to be…