The Redemption of Michael K. Williams
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 11:38 PM on August 25, 2012 (19 comments)

Even in the grips of the Great Recession, one industry's profits are bubbling up, pouring forth, and experiencing growth in market share, dollars spent, and profit: craft beer!
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 10:25 PM on August 22, 2012 (77 comments)

Ice Cubes - A Recipe. The comments offer many helpful tips.
posted to MetaFilter by Miko at 1:54 PM on August 22, 2012 (58 comments)

Guardian/Greenwald: US drones are coming back after initial attacks to target first-responder rescuers.
posted to MetaFilter by seanmpuckett at 12:19 PM on August 21, 2012 (134 comments)

"I make even my most ardent pro-choice friends and colleagues very uncomfortable when I explain why my mother should have aborted me."
posted to MetaFilter by John Cohen at 9:22 AM on August 15, 2012 (176 comments)

Released in 2004, Obsidian's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords ("KOTOR 2") was said to be a good game, crippled by the push to get it out in time for the 2004 holiday season. Beside the frequent bugs, a huge amount of story content was cut from the game, but remained on the discs. Now, three years after its inception, The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod has been completed. The goal? To get "the best possible chance to get the full experience Obsidian tried for when making the game." Rock Paper Shotgun has high hopes: "If you missed it the first time, you really should check it out. It’s ... Chris Avellone (who?) and co really going to town on Star Wars."
posted to MetaFilter by griphus at 8:45 AM on August 13, 2012 (59 comments)

This is powerful writing. "This isn't an essay or simply a woe-is-we narrative about how hard it is to be a black boy in America. This is a lame attempt at remembering the contours of slow death and life in America for one black American teenager under Central Mississippi skies. I wish I could get my Yoda on right now and surmise all this shit into a clean sociopolitical pull-quote that shows supreme knowledge and absolute emotional transformation, but I don't want to lie."—A piece by Kiese Laymon, an Associate Professor of English and co-director of Africana Studies at Vassar College.
posted to MetaFilter by Moody834 at 10:17 PM on July 28, 2012 (57 comments)

Amazon Yesterday Shipping
posted to MetaFilter by jacquilynne at 1:13 PM on July 18, 2012 (27 comments)

The Phi is a PCIe card which turns your computer into a software-defined radio which "could record FM radio and digital television signals, read RFID chips, track ship locations, or do radio astronomy. In principle it could perform all of these functions simultaneously." While the Phi isn't the first such device available for purchase, it is the first to target hobbyists and eventually consumers, but how will the FCC handle software-defined radio?
posted to MetaFilter by reductiondesign at 3:03 AM on July 8, 2012 (45 comments)

"Alex White, Professional Snitch: What do you do when the cops you work for are dirtier than you are?" Metafilter previously on Kathryn Johnston.
posted to MetaFilter by andoatnp at 9:07 PM on June 29, 2012 (13 comments)

"The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights." - Jimmy Carter
posted to MetaFilter by jeffburdges at 3:46 PM on June 25, 2012 (86 comments)

Unusual marketing technique: an inventor offered a demonstration of his custom-built speedboat design by speeding past security and crashing the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
posted to MetaFilter by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:41 PM on June 4, 2012 (19 comments)

Why Windows 8 Scares Me - and Should Scare You Too
posted to MetaFilter by Trurl at 6:42 PM on June 1, 2012 (308 comments)

Following a jury finding that Google had not infiringed upon Oracles patents, a development described as a near disaster for the database company, Judge William Aslup has ruled that the Java APIs cannot be copyrighted. That leaves Oracle with only the 9 lines of rangeCheck code and a handfull of decompiled test files to show for the massivecourt case. CEO Larry Ellison remains confident, claiming that the aquisition of Java creator Sun has still paid for itself.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:07 AM on June 1, 2012 (43 comments)

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the German zeppelin Hindenburg bursting into flames as it attempted to dock at a US Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, NJ. The Hindenburg was inflated with hydrogen, due to the United States' practical monopoly on helium, and its fabric skin was coated with a mixture of iron oxide and aluminium--both elements have been linked to the rapid fire, but the ratio of responsibility continues to be debated to this day. The explosion of the zeppelin was documented by a film crew, and more famously, by WLS radio reporter Herb Morrison. Such documentation has allowed for the Hindenburg disaster to be a well-known event that has been referenced in popular culture over the years, from such disparate means as the famous "Turkeys Away" episode of WKRP In Cincinnati...to MeFi's own Spatch having a fever dream approximately 15 years ago that led to, well, just watch it for yourself.
posted to MetaFilter by stannate at 5:54 PM on May 6, 2012 (64 comments)

Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done". Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
posted to MetaFilter by 40 Watt at 11:35 AM on April 26, 2012 (54 comments)

Old School Color Cycling with HTML5
This was a technology often used in 8-bit video games of the era, to achieve interesting visual effects by cycling (shifting) the color palette. Back then video cards could only render 256 colors at a time, so a palette of selected colors was used. But the programmer could change this palette at will, and all the onscreen colors would instantly change to match. It was fast, and took virtually no memory.
posted to MetaFilter by crunchland at 2:38 AM on July 26, 2010 (39 comments)

Just in time for Flash Fun Friday, they came out with a sequel to Pigs Can Fly (previously): Pigs Will Fly! Enjoy!
posted to MetaFilter by phunniemee at 9:08 AM on April 6, 2012 (14 comments)

One of the more conservative of the Fed's regional banks, the Dallas Federal Reserve, says "too-big-to-fail" banks must be broken up. Now. An interesting and important essay(pdf) from a most unlikely source.(via)
posted to MetaFilter by AElfwine Evenstar at 8:48 PM on April 2, 2012 (12 comments)

What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by limon at 5:40 PM on September 8, 2007 (237 comments)

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama
posted to MetaFilter by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:01 PM on March 28, 2012 (98 comments)

In December 1974, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh's front-page account (paywall) of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program documented their illegal domestic intelligence operations against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States. The article eventually prompted investigations by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church and Pike committees. "There have been other reports on the CIA's doping of civilians, but they have mostly dished about activities in New York City. Accounts of what actually occurred in San Francisco have been sparse and sporadic. But newly declassified CIA records, recent interviews, and a personal diary of [George H. White,] an operative at Stanford Special Collections shed more light on the breadth of the San Francisco operation." SF Weekly: "Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA doped San Francisco citizens with LSD." MK-ULTRA: Previously on Metafilter. (Via)
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 3:32 PM on March 26, 2012 (29 comments)

The AV Club's Todd Van der Werf enters the Dungeon "I’ve been at this for three days straight, and I need to start getting back to my everyday life, to start settling back into my real role as a TV critic with -3 dexterity. I go through the motions of playing the good guy, of standing in front of doors as we open them, in case they’re booby-trapped. This, of course, is how I end up getting splashed with copious amounts of acid, which begins to eat away at my health. (“It’s not a second-edition game unless there’s a room full of acid,” Brett says, and everyone agrees.) Instantly, I’m into it."
posted to MetaFilter by Sebmojo at 2:18 PM on March 21, 2012 (52 comments)

How to Host a Dungeon is a solitaire pen-and-paper game in which you create an underground complex of rooms, populate them with various fantasy races and monsters, and simulate its history. At almost any time you can stop and have the basis for a D&D campaign. Here's a YouTube playthrough of a game: Part 1 - Part 2
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 9:44 PM on March 4, 2012 (53 comments)

People need to realise that their wars are not fought by the guy on the news that lost a leg and loves his flag — he was the FNG [f--king new guy] that got blown up because he was incompetent, who left the fight before it turned him into one of us. A private military contractor and former infantryman talks about the military PR complex.
posted to MetaFilter by bumpjump at 8:35 AM on March 2, 2012 (63 comments)

Tevis Thompson writes about Nintendo's video game series The Legend of Zelda. Specifically about how it's gone downhill since Ocarina of Time. (via Kotaku)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:42 PM on February 22, 2012 (113 comments)

It's On The Ceiling! Roll d12:
1. d100 Swords of Damocles
2. City of the Intellectual Bats
3. Manhole-like trap door to maintenance level
4. Tapestry of webs depicting events in spider history
5. Stalactite pueblo dwellers: evil dungeon fairies
6. Adventurers impaled on barbed spikes
7. The furniture: nailed up by prankster
8. Alarming amount of dripping water and muddy seepage
9. Pulsating illumination from strange glass tubes in metal fixtures
10. Shriekers!
11. Eyes (d1000)
12. Hand-chiseled diagram of dungeon level
This and many other useful tables for DM improvisation at The Dungeon Dozen. New table every day!
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:46 PM on February 3, 2012 (22 comments)

This notice is here to tell you not to remove this notice.
posted to MetaFilter by latkes at 11:46 PM on January 17, 2012 (132 comments)

My Guantánamo Nightmare. Lakhdar Boumediene was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for seven years without explanation or charge until his case made it to the Supreme Court, leading to a decision which bears his name and his release ordered by a federal judge. The NYTimes has his and another account from another former detainee: Notes From a Guantánamo Survivor. [Via]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 12:41 PM on January 9, 2012 (62 comments)

Moppy is a M_usical Fl_oppy controller program built for the Ardiuno UNO. (Github link.) Who dares argue the haunting refrain of the Imperial March fails to haunt ever more still when played back by floppy drive read-heads? Perhaps you'd enjoy Jonathan Coulton's Still Alive in the original 3.5", or Daft Punk's Tron anthem Derezzed? And though the season has lapsed, you can always cue up Carol of the Bells, primed and ready for December 2012.
posted to MetaFilter by disillusioned at 3:59 PM on January 6, 2012 (10 comments)

Chemical Reactions. Four minutes of the best moments of stuff burning, breaking, freezing, exploding, melting, and generally reacting in interesting ways.
posted to MetaFilter by quin at 1:48 PM on December 30, 2011 (14 comments)

Here is Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King, a computer game that adapts the 3rd Edition rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game to roguelikes.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:24 PM on December 22, 2011 (24 comments)

In 1783, John Jacob Astor set out for the United States with $25 and five flutes. Upon his death in 1848, he was the wealthiest person in the US, having amassed a fortune of at least $20,000,000, making him the third wealthiest person in American history (measuring wealth as a fraction of GDP).
posted to MetaFilter by davidjmcgee at 10:25 AM on December 20, 2011 (26 comments)

𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝓪, 𝓪 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒆𝑻𝒚𝒑𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝓪𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝓪𝒊𝒏𝒔 10,000 𝒄𝒉𝓪𝒓𝓪𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔. 𝓘𝓯 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓭, 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓬𝓪𝓷 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓰𝓮 (𝔲𝔫𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲'𝔯𝔢 𝔲𝔰𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝕮𝔥𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔢).
"Here is Quivira, a free TrueType font that contains 10,000 characters. If you have it installed, you can read this message (unless you're using Chrome)."
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 7:45 AM on December 10, 2011 (111 comments)

Here is VASSAL, an open-source engine for playing board games online, by email, on forums or on a single machine. Which board games? These. (Requires Java.)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:31 AM on December 7, 2011 (41 comments)

How should I best amuse myself at the expense of fake tech support scammers?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by flabdablet at 7:26 AM on December 7, 2011 (39 comments)

Who's coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street? The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that, although there was rampant speculation about Homeland Security's role in Occupy Wall Street crackdowns across the nation given multiple police force's paramilitary actions, the Feds are not directly involved. Instead, planning has been facilitated by an affiliated non-profit organization called Police Executive Research Forum, aka PERF.
But what exactly is PERF?
posted to MetaFilter by stagewhisper at 8:24 PM on November 19, 2011 (269 comments)

If you recognize the name Hayao Miyazaki, it's most likely due to his anime films. But along with his involvement in animation, Miyazaki has produced some manga and illustrated story books. Part of the reason his work in still images is less known is lack of translation and distribution. That's where the fans come in, digging up and translating many Miyazaki works, back to his first published manga, which was a serious serialized work, in 1969-1970.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 12:21 PM on October 4, 2011 (33 comments)

Journalist Ben Hammersley gives the UK's cybersecurity specialists his view of how the Internet is changing the world: "We expect everything. And we expect it on our own terms."
posted to MetaFilter by kristi at 12:35 PM on September 10, 2011 (28 comments)

Two sheepy shorts, of different sorts: Sheeped away (5:22, Vimeo) and Eyrie (4:01, embedded YT)
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2011 (6 comments)

The CRPG Addict is playing every PC role-playing came in chronological order. Currently, he's playing Ultima V.
posted to MetaFilter by kittensofthenight at 6:12 PM on August 29, 2011 (58 comments)

Mortys. (Vimeo) A short, animated film in French with English subtitles. Also on YouTube and DailyMotion
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 11:38 AM on July 29, 2011 (6 comments)

Is American law enforcement colluding with Cisco? A quick lesson on how to abuse the law and quiet whistleblowers.
posted to MetaFilter by blue_beetle at 11:57 AM on June 7, 2011 (62 comments)

The Higher Education (Debt) Bubble - "[H]igh and increasing college costs mean students need to take out more loans, more loans mean more securities lenders can package and sell, more selling means lenders can offer more loans with the capital they raise, which means colleges can continue to raise costs. The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it. If this sounds familiar, it probably should...
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 9:00 AM on May 17, 2011 (184 comments)

Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.
Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes uncren them. But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.

Delcot
This is the delcot of tondam, where gitches frike and duscats glake. Across from a tophthed curple, a gomway deaves to kiloff and kirf, gombing a samilen to its hoff. Crenned in the loff lutt are five glauds.
>_
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:54 AM on April 30, 2011 (63 comments)

Dear Metafilter, way to make a pregnant woman having a bad day cry.
posted to MetaTalk by zizzle at 11:40 AM on April 13, 2011 (99 comments)

10 O'Clock Live is a show currently airing on Channel 4 in the UK. It could be considered a British take on the Daily Show, but longer, weekly, with more discussion, and performed live. MeFi favorite Charlie Brooker is one of their presenters, along with David Mitchel, Lauren Laverne and Jimmy Carr. While focused on British issues, the show sometimes covers international topics, and is wildly funny. Here are some highlights:
Charlie Brooker: On Gaddafi - On Berlusconi - On the 'Big Society' - On Sarah Palin - On the iPad 2 - On the English Defense League & the Daily Star - On Ed Miliband (Leader of the Labour Party, beating out his brother David) - On Prince Andrew
David Mitchell: On political hyperbole - On language in the media - On encouraging rich people to immigrate - On what to do with the Olympic Stadium
Jimmy Carr: As Berlusconi - On Product Placement
Lauren Laverne: Guide for new democracies - Inside the brain of Ed Miliband - British PR companies helping tyrants
Everyone on David Cameron on The One Show (this one's awesome)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:07 PM on March 24, 2011 (84 comments)

A few months ago, a bunch of us thought that Goodnight Dune would make a great sci-fi children's book. So did Julia Yu.
posted to MetaFilter by KGMoney at 3:28 PM on March 1, 2011 (65 comments)

In 1979, gaming company Avalon Hill (since bought by Hasbro) released a board game based on the popular science fiction novel Dune. Regarded by many as a masterpiece of the form, it is an asymmetrical wargame designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, the people who created Cosmic Encounter. Six different factions vie for control of the desert planet Arrakis. As WickerNipple notes in his Everything node on the game, “Instead of giving subtle differences to the various factions like most games, Dune gives huge differences and advantages, that don't over-balance things only because every faction receives them.” The thing is, each player has special rules that give them very different options and abilities compared to the other sides, and yet the game remains balanced (especially when played by a full six players). The game has been long out of print due to the Frank Herbert estate refusing to re-license. Fantasy Flight Games is rumored to be working on a release of the game without the Dune license. Importantly, all the necessary files are available on the game's BoardGameGeek page to construct a copy of the game. (Homebrew game board - Rules, cards, counters and extras - Windows freeware game client and server)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:20 PM on February 23, 2011 (58 comments)

The largest model railway layout in the world, Hamburg's Miniatur Wunderland has been featured here before. Featuring areas modelled on real life attractions, it also is home to the fictional town of Knuffingen where the 200,000 mini-inhabitants are very much looking forward to the opening of their new airport.
posted to MetaFilter by jontyjago at 4:20 PM on February 12, 2011 (15 comments)