Actually, I think the Metropolitain would be kind of cool- it's a neat little place, and like two blocks from my house. But I never seem to show up to these things, so I guess my opinion isn't really relevant. :)
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:17 AM on September 25, 2008

But to be fair, it's ridiculous sometimes the amount of sycophancy that goes on in this place. For example, I have jessamyn in my favorites, and hardly a day goes by without some comment or "answer" of hers getting best answer or heavily favorited, simply because she's jessamyn.

I mean, this comment got 43 favorites- yet it's got a blatant typo, and while the Metatalk post was lame her reply was pretty much mean-spirited and unhelpful. And a lot of times... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:37 PM on June 29, 2008

I'm fairly open ended, all things considered. I haven't been to a meetup in years- last/only one I went to was back when Jessamyn still lived in Seattle! :o
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:02 PM on March 17, 2008

jessamyn: I don't mean to fall back on the "it's just a website" canard too much but at the end of the day it's not global politics.This has nothing to do with anything, but I think you misused 'canard' there, which means a [usually deliberate] falsehood. Wouldn't "cliche" or something similar have been more appropriate?
0xFCAF: ...change your password to a fine GUID like {9ECE42E2-91A1-47C9-B9A8-04D1BB455BAA}. I will even provide you... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:01 PM on March 3, 2008

The 16th? Drats... I'll be in Vegas Dec 16-18, so I'm gonna miss this one too. I'm with hattifattener: the more the better.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 3:16 PM on December 12, 2007

null terminated: I always read "mathowie" as "math-owie" and picture someone saying "Math?? Owieeee!!!" while grabbing their head in pain after trying to do some mental calcuations.

I'm pretty sure that null terminated was being facetious, but I'm not actually sure that those people agreeing with him are... I think they're just not in on n.t.'s joke. Ahem...
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:45 AM on November 25, 2007

How much of the load is retrieving data for presentation/refreshes, and how much is actual writing (i.e., comments/posts and user stats such as last time visited, etc)? If most of the activity- in bandwidth, and in CPU- is read-only retrieval, couldn't we really extend the power of Metafilter by pushing that load out to a network of P2P web hosts?

Perhaps in lieu of a rewrite, a distributed architecture of volunteer proxying servers which cache via something akin to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:27 PM on August 15, 2007

Wait. That might not be a good idea. I don't want to mix up my porn and cortex.You've got your porn in my cortex! You've got your cortex in my porn! Mmmm, it's Cortex's pornybutter cups!


Firas: actually, yes, it will be more performant. Pish tosh! This is why this company can and does charge boatloads of cash for their services: the tcp connections, the data offloading of frequently requested information, etc all can free up the core... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:27 PM on August 15, 2007

flabdablet: We can try out hincandenza's idea right now.

Shame about the cookies.

That site doesn't work. I'm pretty sure my idea wasn't a non-functional site.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:03 PM on August 16, 2007

Dammit! I, too, was hoping that finally, someone would take out Dan friggin' Shaugnessy...
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 10:19 AM on July 23, 2007

cortex: neustile, I think the difference is a matter of intent and transparency. Bloglines (and other feed aggregators) are openly and clearly intended as such, and exist as a tool for users. HowU is pretty clearly scraping for fun and profit rather than aggregating to improve anyone's web experience.Okay, so now I feel I should play devil's advocate as well...

Isn't it worth noting that howu.info is including the link to the original post on... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:47 PM on July 18, 2007

cortex: What I think would most significantly make the site less chafing and lame is this: acknowledge and link back to source sites.

Did you not see that on every question page, it has "view original question" with a direct link back to the source site?
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:06 PM on July 18, 2007

What is the origin of the (NOT RACIST!) comment, for that matter? That wiki link by defenestration seems pretty out of date.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:01 PM on June 19, 2007

It's like a whole thread of Tom Swifties! This rules!

There is no joke I can make about my name without fear that jonmc will appear to call me a poseur
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:51 AM on June 20, 2007

Is this guy gonna be there? He kind of owes us all a big thanks. :)
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 6:58 PM on May 18, 2007

Even on a Saturday night, the Elysian will likely have the most seating without needing a reservation, so yeah- that makes sense, I'd say the Elysian makes the best sense: fairly central, large capacity, no reservations needed depending on when we arrive. It's kind of a default get-together spot on the Hill, too.

If they have it available: the Arch Wit is perhaps the finest beer I've ever had.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:08 AM on May 24, 2007

What, no pictures? What are us voyeuristic shut-ins supposed to do now?!
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:48 AM on June 11, 2007

Canoes? Duckies?! Jeez, doesn't anyone just drink anymore?!
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 6:22 PM on May 13, 2007

grouse: I have an Erdős–Bacon number of 6.

Sweet, and by posting in this thread I can now claim an Erdos-Bacon number of at most 8!
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:22 PM on April 19, 2007

Optimus Chyme: Nominees for most disgusting comment about this incident:See, personally, this was my favorite (emphasis my own):Gnostic Novelist: I'm not saying it isn't a tragedy, and my heart goes out to the family members, etc, I'm not talking about themIt's the "etc" that just reeks of sincerity- or wait, by sincerity I mean sociopathic tendencies, as in faking empathy by reciting a line that he knows you're supposed to say... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 3:14 PM on April 16, 2007

w-g p: TripMeOkay, that has to stick. AskMe was pretty fantastic, but TripMe is positively inspired. Hm.... I think for similar namey-goodness reasons, we need a Metafilter dating spin-off....

sonofslim: According to every bar employee I've discussed this with (lots), it's common to have an actual buyback policy handed down from the managementWow, I didn't know that practice had a name or was... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:41 AM on April 10, 2007

I was thinking more DateMe (and, along with shmegegge's idea, a raunchier one for people looking for one-night-stands, namely F***Me).
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:55 PM on April 10, 2007

Mothra fucker? That sounds awful!
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 10:49 AM on April 10, 2007

MPDSEA: The fact is, even attention that isn't "crude" can still be highly sexualized, and in many contexts many women find this completely unwanted. If a man approaches a woman in a professional context and expresses obvious, non-professional interest, the woman may quite justifiably feel degraded, since she can recognize that she is being viewed as a sexual person (object, even) in a context in which she is trying to project a professional person.I equate this to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:24 PM on April 7, 2007

drjimmy11: But it's relevant because movie stars are like attractive women in that they make a lot of people feel bitter, insecure and inferior, to the point where they'll make up any convoluted excuse to justify treating them shittily.
What the hell are you talking about?

If you want to be an actor, you can be an actor on the smallest stage. Ah, but that ego rears its head, doesn't it? If you want to be a RICH actor in internationally... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:19 AM on April 8, 2007

MPDSEA: If, on the other hand, you're saying that attractive women are obligated to accept more unwanted sexual advances due to the fact that they are attractive, then I strongly disagree.
And you would be wrong. Congrats! Again, the point is that more attractive people get more attention, and more sexual advances- wanted and unwanted. The price of knowing you can more easily find a mate, and the best mate you want (as sex columnist... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:37 AM on April 8, 2007

And after posting and seeing MPDSEA's latest armchair psychoanalysis declaring that I am, apparently, a rapist sexist misogynistic creep, I can principally say "I fucking hate your soul, dude". I am certainly trying to communicate, but you are apparently so hell-bent on posturing your post-feminist street cred, presumably in the hopes of bedding some Lillith fair type, you aren't even reading what I write.

I think if... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:51 AM on April 8, 2007

scody: This, of course, A) presumes that the only women who receive unwanted advances are those who look like models and movie stars, and B) they deserve said advances (even if they make women uncomfortable, angry, frightened, humiliated, etc.), because it's naturally the fair price to pay for magically getting to "mate" with anyone they like (a situation which automatically and necessarily flows from the aforementioned state of looking like a model or movie star).... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:02 AM on April 8, 2007

Actually, I think the classism is an important angle, which has been brought up in past discussions of this nature. Namely, that the stereotype is the blue-collar guy offering catcalls and wolf whistles, and with no concept of personal boundaries. It's telling that the stereotype as expressed in hypotheticals doesn't involve that "Handsome millionaire son of a political or economic dynasty who was hitting on me in a bar! How dare he?!?!" The idea that people get to live in a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:30 AM on April 8, 2007

myeviltwin: hincandenza: I respectfully suggest that you ask some actual women about the kinds of unwanted advances they typically encounter. You may be inclined to revise your theory afterward.Um, not likely. I'm still Venn diagramming "unwanted advances" as the circle containing the much smaller circle "advances that are creepy and probably legally actionable". At least CKmtl recognized that there is a semantic confusion here among some posters; my... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:07 PM on April 8, 2007

Okay, I still don't get the beret/explosives one, as I'm not sure what show is being referred to. Please to be explaining?

(My personal favorite was the 1142 answers to the MeFi - sold - to - media - conglomerate question. That's so... Meta!)
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 8:22 PM on April 1, 2007

Man, even I don't hate dios, and in my prime I could hate anyone. I was the Mozart of loathing! But I just don't have that piss and vinegar like I used to. *sigh* I hate growing old (tomorrow's my birthday).
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:33 PM on January 31, 2007

Sorry, it's just I'm very curious- were these all related to that Joe Francis thing? It seems odd to have so many threads deleted in such a short period of time, and no apparent corresponding MeTa thread(s) about them.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 6:52 PM on August 5, 2006

Heh- thanks. Apparently there were 18 wishy-washy non-posters in a two and a half hour period. :) I assume the script works by assuming there will always be a thread for number #N, and auto-inserting a "deleted thread" link for any missing numbers. But if you start posting in a way that allocates an ID from the DB, and then it gets rejected/discarded...

gotcha. Sorry for the churn, that'll teach me to grease my monkey (tm: blue_beetle).
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:04 PM on August 5, 2006

Curious, because I've done some work on high-availability hosting before... have you ever given consideration to hosting MeFi on more than one server? I know this is money out of pocket for you, especially if you expanded the foot print by a couple of servers and the colo costs along with it... but the reality is that no matter how good/bad an OS, etc, you ultimately have to scale out, not up- and it can be cheaper to get several low-end boxes to load balance than to have one beefy box on which... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:13 AM on March 23, 2006

Yes, but as an experiment... wouldn't it be interesting if you could create a trusted, widely distributed "P2P" website. I've built highly automated sites in multiple DCs, but there we could assume a trusted level of control over the servers, and didn't have to guard against someone hijacking an individual server and putting sniffers/mod-rewrites on it, or other methods of hacking the host.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:02 PM on March 23, 2006

Yeah, I was thinking of going but I'm going to chicken out. I only went to one of these things, way back in the day when I was a more active poster. I'd just feel awkward walking into a room and hanging out with people I'd never met...
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 4:23 PM on March 22, 2006

Bite me.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:58 PM on March 20, 2006

No, Gator, it's that Phelps hasn't wronged me personally. I'd like to see him go the same way I'd like to see Osama go- if I read in the paper tomorrow that Phelps had the snot kicked out of him by foot soldiers in the gay mafia, I'd actually smile a little- but I am not gay, nor has Phelps protested at a loved one's funeral, so I'm not going to be passionate about it. And forgetting even assassination of Phelps, hasn't he pissed off enough people that- scam or no scam- it's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 8:32 PM on March 20, 2006

languagehat: While this is true, I think you may be missing the point, which is that if people killed their oppressors as readily as they kill their wives (say), the world would be a very different (and less oppressive) place. It's precisely the instinct of submission that allows thugs to live and thrive, with only the distant possibility of a wacko (or Jodie Foster fan) to worry them.Fawk- what he said. Dang. Why can't I ever put things as simply and succintly as does... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 10:50 AM on March 21, 2006

When my mom came to visit some time ago this fall, I referred her to the baconmansion (dot com!), and she said it was quite wonderful, was only about $90/night I think, and is right off the #49 line just a little past broadway; it's walkable but a healthy distance, easier to busride. There are also plenty of places in downtown seattle of varying quality that will be a short #10/#11 busride right up to the Elysian.

I guess I'll show up, in all my furious, hincandescent... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 2:14 AM on March 11, 2006

Wow- I guess I won't show up, as my comment apparently killed this thread. :S
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 10:56 AM on March 12, 2006

Damn. Had a great, well-crafted response, but stupid firefox crashed on me arbitrarily (it's so buggy and unstable since the 1.5x release!). Long story short, this is a city, so you aren't going to find cheap hotels, at least not within any reasonable distance that's bus/walk-able. Your alternatives are B&B's, but at their cheapest on cap. hill that'll run you $80/night. Cheaper than that, then, are hostels, which often have private room options if... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:41 PM on March 12, 2006

Religious people are pretty much morons- what the hell is so wrong with them they didn't figure this out on their own? Seriously, the author of the linked article said it well on the very first page- why don't we have words for not believing in astrology or crystals or chakras? And why aren't all the crazies like konolia, with her "Y'all is going to hell, and that's my suffering victim/conquering hero fantasy, thank you very much!" schtick, properly labeled as... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:41 PM on December 11, 2005

I'd also note that the first person who pointed out the thread sucked- Ethereal Bligh- did so two minutes after the thread was posted. That suggests that either Ethereal Bligh == Evelyn Wood... or he knee-jerked the "it sucks" not based on the content of the link at all. And apparently a good deal of hipster MeFites jumped on that same bandwagon without reading the article either.

Which makes the defensive wording of the original poster... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:49 PM on December 11, 2005

Uh, Colloquial Collision? You might want to read this

There was a reason I put "either Ethereal Bligh == Evelyn Wood" in my comment.
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 5:54 PM on December 11, 2005

nTM, if he wants a posterboy for postmodern irony and detachment, he'll have to make a better choice than yours truly. I've ranted against that more than anyone else here.

His username reveals that he's a fan of David Foster Wallace. So am I, and I read the essay he cribbed most of his ideas from, too. He just picked a visible user name thinking everyone would salaam him with praise. Unfortunately, it also reveals him as a clueless opportunist with poor reading... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 11:46 PM on December 11, 2005

Man, I was really drunk yesterday. Whoo-wee!

Well, not really. But I'm hardly someone to praise- I'm fairly sure that the last 5 of years of growing older, and by leaps and bounds more cynical, about my country and my fellow human being, are driving me batshit crazy. Like, literally over the edge kind of mad... it's depressing, to say the least.

I don't dislike jonmc- I just have for whatever reasons taking in my head him as an example of what... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 12:39 AM on December 13, 2005

It totally doesn't matter, but I personally believe him- the most compelling part is the innocuous, normal behavior for weeks, then the sudden breakdown. Why are so many people eager to believe that someone is so conniving as to act normal for months, then suddenly explode in the most obvious way possible? If he were that crazy, I doubt he could keep it together on this site as long as he did.

And as noted, the IP difference could be easily tracked down. It should be... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 1:38 AM on January 7, 2005

Yahoo owns Overture and Inktomi, as of last/this year. MSN Search gets their results, both paid and unpaid, largely from Overture and Inktomi. MSN Search, like Yahoo, is trying to "beat" Google and has their own engine in development at beta.search.msn.com; Yahoo has revamped their search engine with a larger Index (which may now account for the difference: MSN may be getting a smaller index via Inktomi)

15KB-20KB per article, times 38,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hincandenza at 7:51 PM on December 31, 2004