60 seconds is a pretty high polling frequency. I don't expect that this will be used too widely, but if everyone polled every 60s, it'd be a bandwidth nightmare.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 7:09 PM on July 15, 2008

I'm #2 on metatalk.metafilter.com.

Who's number 1?

I must destroy them and ascend to the throne
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 12:38 PM on June 20, 2008

this 'I.Q. test' is ridiculous, chrisamiller

I thought that much was obvious. I never let details stop me from proclaiming my magnificence, though.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 3:57 PM on June 20, 2008

If Alice is 10, Donatella is 20, Josh and Ted are both 5, and Andy is 10, how old is Natasha by the same system?

Natasha = 15

The formula is: number of syllables in the name * 5
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 2:02 AM on June 21, 2008

IMHO, pretty much everyone in the top 20% of every group on the site.

I'm #31 in metatalk, and I took the test exactly once, only ten questions. That puts me in the top 7%.

So that's one data point discounting your theory.


Also, I find the fact that people are getting their panties in a bunch over this hilarious.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 2:52 PM on June 22, 2008

Mine says 130 and i can't figure out how to stop meta screens from changing colors from like, april fools or something.

click "Make it stop" in the footer
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 10:03 PM on June 22, 2008

A

When the tags are smooshed together (as in B), it's harder to pick out what you're looking for.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 12:19 PM on June 18, 2008

Never put a design feature to a popular vote.

Well, on MeFi, it's either that, or listen to this same argument in a user-created thread the day after launch.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 6:57 PM on June 19, 2008

Can we add a filter for 'resolved' to the profile pages? As of right now, my most commonly used tag is 'resolved', which doesn't strike me as a particularly useful data point.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 12:53 PM on June 18, 2008

How common is that?

About as common (and welcome) as a day without a metatalk thread. Today was looking good . . .
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 5:03 PM on June 8, 2008

This is something I've seen time and again that I don't really get: why do some people who don't work for the site make such a big deal about the frequency of threads in MeTa?

Because probably 50% of them are either
a) stupid callouts that shouldn't be called out at all
b) stupid callouts that could easily be resolved with an email to a mod or by flagging and moving one
c) feature requests that have already been... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:15 PM on June 8, 2008

They don't have to always be negative call-outs. Sometimes they're just random questions, meet-up requests, mentions of MeFi elsewhere, and occasionally even positive call-outs.

And I welcome these whole-heartedly. Peruse through the archives though, and see what you find more of.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:18 PM on June 8, 2008

Agreed. Very nice.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 3:41 PM on June 4, 2008

I'm pretty sure they just planned on waiting a while for us to stop paying attention then resume their scummy business as usual.

Much like an elephant, MeFi never forgets.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 12:05 AM on April 23, 2008

neophyte mefite
asks for a pony request
"Naaaay", says mathowie
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 12:38 AM on April 11, 2008

My vote is for no.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 1:50 PM on April 7, 2008

A quick update:

I've been popping in to MyAsk once or twice a day, and I'm impressed with how many questions I've been missing on the green that interest me. It's doing a pretty fine job of pointing me in the right direction thus far. Good job, guys.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 1:00 PM on April 4, 2008

Just because the MyAsk interface is there, doesn't mean most people will use it. What you get, then, is still the same problem of crap questions cluttering up the front page.

I understand that you don't see these questions as crap, but I'm interested in helping people out, not watching nerd fights about comic books fall victim to Godwin's Law.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:53 AM on April 3, 2008

So, are we going to see similar things on the blue? Posts you might like?

Although the coolness of programming this kind of recommendation system would make me salivate, I'm not sure that removing the serendipity from the system is always a good thing (on the green or the blue).

My vote is to restrict it to askme, and to make sure that it's sort of tucked away, so that it's not the first thing people click on all the time.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 11:52 AM on March 12, 2008

Consider the tags, sure, but for real power, I'd use natural language parsing. Use the DB as a nice corpus of text and you can do all sorts of cool things.

Computational lingustics is lots of fun.

(obligatory link to xkcd)
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:49 PM on March 12, 2008

Flag it and move on. You're giving attention trolls what they want when you call them out.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 3:13 AM on March 7, 2008

Creepy? Why? Everything you write in this medium is more or less permanent, and probably can and will be traced back to you. Don't harbor any illusions about it.

Hell, it's pretty amusing (and a little flattering) that someone did a profile of him. For me, I can't say it would be a challenge, though. As I say in my profile:

I long ago gave up the pretense of web anonymity that many people cling to. To me, this is the natural corollary of all... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 3:47 AM on March 6, 2008

Well played, burnmp3s.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 4:18 AM on March 6, 2008

How do we talk about religion and morals while respecting all beliefs?

All beliefs are not equally deserving of respect. If someone says that the sky is green and gravity doesn't exist, those are clearly not beliefs that I feel obliged to agree with.

So why should I feel obliged to respect someone's belief that the earth is 6000 years old? Or that something that looks like bread, smells like bread, and tastes like bread is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:06 PM on February 28, 2008

Bug report: In firefox 2.0.012 on Ubuntu Linux, I get the highlighted text between italic brackets, but the username and link do not get added.

(also, consider using <em> brackets - standards compliance and all...)

also seconding the report that it doesn't work on the grey.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 11:51 PM on February 27, 2008

    It has now been

      __
    / _ \
   | | | |
   | | | |
   | |_| |
    \___/

   days since the last 
   stupid MeFi callout

Think Safety!
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 5:06 PM on February 25, 2008

Isn't this what Projects is for?
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 6:43 PM on February 12, 2008

No. It isn't a website. It is more like music. If you have a poem post it, not post a link to your site with 20 poems. On music the same people keep posting - which is a good thing

How hard is it to throw your poem up on a google pages website (or one of ten-bazillion other free web-posting sites)? Or to link to your flickr page for art?

I'll agree that the drawback of projects is that you can't get public feedback, as... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:49 PM on February 12, 2008

No matter what the outcome, the other side will call bullshit. If the plane takes off, the grounders will claim it wasn't moving fast enough. If the plane doesn't take off, the flyers will claim that the wrong type of plane was used, the runway was sub-optimal, etc.

This will not settle anything.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 4:00 PM on January 30, 2008

Note: these are huge.

You've obviously never worked with genomic data. A paltry couple hundred megs? Ha!
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 5:18 PM on January 22, 2008

The interesting thing about the Mr Rogers comment is that the two noticeable spikes in favoriting after the initial burst has worn off occur roughly 145 and 165 days (graph of Mr Rogers comment in days) after it was posted. Did sidebarring or podcasting really happen that long after the comment was made?

It was likely mentioned in another (metatalk?) thread. I've found some favorites that way. In fact, i just favorited robocop's post about... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 1:55 PM on January 23, 2008

My desk, with twice as many monitors as it usually has. On that particular day, I was using them all.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 11:29 PM on January 15, 2008

one variable is whether SCDB has a (non-best, and therefore "wrong") answer in the thread

Just because an answer isn't marked as the best answer doesn't mean it's incorrect.

An example:
"Where's a good place to eat in Houston?"

I say Goode Co., someone else says Demeris and gets marked best, because the poster plans on going there. Does that mean that my answer was... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:32 AM on January 12, 2008

Additional info - this has been happening for several weeks, so I don't think it's related to the new Music features.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:36 PM on January 8, 2008

Thanks, but the problem seems to be unrelated to flash. The direct MP3 download links suffer from the same problem. (either through firefox, or directly using wget)
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:57 PM on January 8, 2008

No dice - I tweaked my MTU settings and had no luck. Then I bypassed the router and went straight through the DSL modem, and still nothing changed - same symptoms.

I'm not convinced that it's an MTU issue, as those seem to result in a complete inability to reach MeFi, and that's not what I'm seeing. According to the modem's diagnostic page, it's using an MTU of 1492, which should be fine. Additionally, I can shoot pings with a size of 1492 to metafilter.com with no... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:41 PM on January 8, 2008

- Rumple, glad to hear it's not just me.

- I have ATT DSL. (et tu, Rumple?) Like I said, other sites work fine. MP3 blogs are great, youtube has no problems, etc.

- I'm out of town tonight, but I'll try the Givewell thread tomorrow and see if I have the same problem.

- Thanks for the suggestion, pb, but I'm not worried about resuming downloads (I can do that with wget). I was hoping to figure out what the underlying... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 5:00 PM on January 9, 2008

I'm not seeing the changes - am I missing something? There's no play counter and no popup link. Here's a screenshot (looks just like the old version).

I tried a reload and a shift+reload, but still have nothing new. This is using Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Ubuntu Linux. Adblock, greasemonkey, etc are all turned off.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 6:36 PM on January 2, 2008

Ah, I see now. That song hadn't been played yet, or something, so the playcount wasn't showing up.

Nice job.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:48 PM on January 2, 2008

pro·mis·cu·ous - characterized by or involving indiscriminate mingling or association, esp. having sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis.

Lots of sex with many partners. This is clearly the exact behavior that the poster was describing. The poster wasn't passing judgement on them, or calling them sluts. He was using an accurate term to describe a social phenomenon.

Hell, in science, we sometimes... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 9:04 AM on December 13, 2007

Even at 100% certainty, spending $50k to net a $1k payout is stupid.

A guaranteed 2% return is better than most checking accounts.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 7:28 AM on December 12, 2007

Sigh - never mind. I suppose I should have read the original post first.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 7:30 AM on December 12, 2007

You claimed that the conveyor belt would hold the plane in place.

Imagine that you're wearing rollerskates and standing on a treadmill. You can substitute rollerblades or a skateboard if you prefer, but I like to kick it old-school. Eight wheels on the floor - yeeaaaah.

Now, on top of your awesome high-top skates, you also find that you're wearing a jetpack. Think 'the Rocketeer', but about ten times cooler.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 11:08 AM on December 12, 2007

Grow up. In the real world, people have to do all sorts of things they don't like. In your moral calculus, you'd rather be dead than working in a call center. The people who work there obviously have not come to the same conclusions.

It's also hard to fault people for following the rules when their salary and chances for promotion are directly linked to it.

I'm so very sorry that it causes you so much pain to think of the poor beleaguered... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:05 AM on December 11, 2007

Holy crap. There's so much pain and suffering and abuse in that thread.

Either there are more people with fucked up childhoods than I thought, or something about the MeFi community seems to select for those with traumatic pasts.

(I suspect the latter, as the internet seems to be a refuge for the socially awkward and introverted)
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 4:30 PM on December 9, 2007

- Good point, LobsterMitten. I suppose I wouldn't really have a 'defining moment' story either, given my vanilla suburban childhood.

- I couldn't find the right words in my above post. I didn't mean to imply that everyone around here is socially awkward. I was trying to express that the internet offers a place where you can interact without stigma based on class, race, or past experiences. This is especially attractive to a certain demographic of people.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 6:06 PM on December 9, 2007

On the blue, I can replicate the button offset error by increasing the text size. (hit ctrl-+ a few times in firefox).

On askme, reducing the text size to something like 60% pushes the buttons over far enough to be underneath the box again.

I don't see anything strange in the HTML, so. . . *shrug*
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:24 PM on December 6, 2007

Oddly enough, the aforementioned text size doesn't affect button placement on MetaTalk.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 8:25 PM on December 6, 2007

Ok, width/floating issues should be fixed now for all browsers.

Looks good - thanks.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 2:04 PM on December 7, 2007

I seriously advocate configuring webservers to not serve any CSS or JS files to IE since it doesn't really know how to handle those languages properly. And, if withholding those parts would make any content on a site inaccessible, well, then it wasn't actually accessible to begin with.

Yes, alienating over half of your user base sounds like a great strategy. You don't have to like the people who visit your site, but in order to be successful, you have to not shit on them.
posted to MetaTalk by chrisamiller at 7:58 PM on December 6, 2007