MetaFilter

I don't think tags are quite as necessary now that we have favorites search. If I can remember a word or two from the post or comment I can find it.

That's sort of missing the point, and frankly a bit transparent in motive, pb. (Advice from the master: The key to effective laziness is to be affirmative yet noncommittal. Eventually the request will be forgotten, abandoned, or fulfilled by someone else. Flat-out refusals tend to cause conflict, which... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Sys Rq at 3:42 PM on March 11, 2009

Dr.: What seems to be the problem?
Metafilter: It hurts when I do this (clicks MeFi Dr. Directory).
Dr.: Make sure you don't have NoScript blocking the site's javascript.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:55 PM on February 27, 2009

As with any special feature you want on MetaFilter that most people won't want, need or use, the answer is invariable a GreaseMonkey script.

With that in mind, I present MetaFilter Comment Box - code tags, which automatically escapes < and > tags when you are inside of <code> tags.

It appears to play nice with automatic preview, and it happens as you type.
posted to MetaTalk by Deathalicious at 3:04 PM on February 23, 2009

Holy smokes, a company I used to work for back in the dot com heydays used to have the distro rights for this entire collection, along with tons of other stuff on the Smithsonian label. While there are definitely pearls and wonders amongst the selection, there are also tons of really bizarre recordings. It was my job to go through, listen through each CD for audio defects, and then enter and index the performer data for each album into our database. The tricky part arose... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by FatherDagon at 1:23 PM on February 16, 2009

I, too, prefer the more-subsites option.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:37 PM on December 19, 2008

Oh, just fuck this.
I started to write a more eloquent response, but stopped, because I promised myself that anything citing the condition "made of win" or "made of fail" only deserves the above response.
It's done me right so far.
posted by Graygorey at 3:15 AM on December 18

I think you're missing the semiotics at work here. This is a chart of symbols of machismo as they have come to define... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pastabagel at 6:28 AM on December 18, 2008

Needs to be done for Un Chien Andalou
posted to MetaFilter by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2008

We have always been at Google with MetaFilter.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:29 AM on December 5, 2008

NONE LEFT BEEF

"It's like, how much more pizza left beef could it be? The answer is, none."
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:44 AM on December 3, 2008

Well, I wasn't going to self-link it :)

Dan Kaminsky here. Metafilter's been a long time haunt of mine, but it never gets any less weird to see stories about me show up here :) To go over a couple of things:

Regarding the postponing the inevitable: Nobody should be depending on DNS, or unencrypted and (more importantly) unauthenticated communications nearly as much as they are. When I found the bug, I knew it was bad, but...damn. Autoupdates?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by effugas at 12:08 AM on December 2, 2008

A little poem dedicated to IvoShandor, with apologies to Agustus de Morgan:

Great snarks have little snarks upon their backs to bite 'em
And little snarks have lesser snarks, and so ad infinitum.

I love this place too.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Quietgal at 9:21 AM on November 18, 2008

I wonder if it would be possible to create a "magic box" with several layers, where each of them would be "harder" to open, technology-wise.

The first lock could just be a normal keyhole, with a short description of what the box is and a picture of what the key should look like. Once inside, you get a brief description of electricity, and instructions for creating a simple potato battery. The next layer would maybe talk about magnetism, and you'd have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ymgve at 5:38 PM on November 8, 2008

I lived in Québec for a time, and I have to say I really enjoyed myself there, apart from the lack of available work (my primary sources of income were playing my guitar in the street and picking strawberries on the île d'Orléans).

Holy crap! Me too ('cept I picked cukes and zucchini, and did street performance art). That's crazy! I thought I told this story before but I am unable to find it, so...

When the US declared war on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by humannaire at 5:01 PM on October 26, 2008

My favorite part of the eagerly awaited Levi interview is that it appears he learned to lie from Sarah Palin herself:

For starters, he said his much-maligned MySpace page was a joke — the one that claimed he said: "I'm a ... redneck," and "I don't want kids." Johnston said his friends created the page a few years ago and he had nothing to do with it.

Dude 1: Hey man, let's set up a fake MySpace page for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by troybob at 1:36 PM on October 13, 2008

Not that the "newspapers" thing isn't awful enough on its own, but...

I just remembered that her college degree is in journalism.
posted to MetaFilter by Flunkie at 5:44 PM on September 30, 2008

I would be interested to know if the suggestion found here to uncheck the "enable 3rd party browser extensions" pref in IE7 helps anyone.

(I work on Flickr and am investigating similar bug reports today, as it so happens.)
posted to MetaTalk by ericost at 10:30 AM on September 29, 2008

Just as I predicted upthread: Hillary Clinton will be dropping the hammer on Palin:Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Sunday that Senator John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate would lead to a greater role for Mrs. Clinton as she campaigned this fall on behalf of her former rival, Senator Barack Obama.

Mrs. Clinton’s friends said she was galled that Ms. Palin might try to capitalize on a movement that Mrs. Clinton, of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DaShiv at 5:27 PM on September 1, 2008

I love these 'me too!' / weird-stuff-the-brain-does threads. Here's my collection...

bookstores
porn in the woods
screaming in my head
time sense
extra people
brain idling
ghosts
mindgasms
imaginary worlds
derealization
dream timing
heart fluttering
rain hunger
warm/cool eyes
...and for fun, cats and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Xelf at 12:12 AM on July 23, 2008

This actually makes alot of sense, when you consider that the main goal of Fox News (and other righty media outlets) is to destroy news itself.

See, for a long time, journalism was an extremely important, respected profession. Not always of course (see Yellow Journalism in America 1776-1914), but I think its safe to say that for the latter half of the 20th century, journalism was understood as a means of providing the facts about the world around us to the American... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Avenger at 9:19 AM on July 3, 2008

Here's a true story about how awesome Pixar is.

As some of you know, when the trailer first came out, my girlfriend, Courtney, burst into tears at the trailer. She was emabrrassed but somewhat amused by this, as so she made a video of herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing she would start crying every time that little robot said his own name.

After a few months, she started to get trickles of emails from people at Pixar who said... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 12:18 PM on July 1, 2008

Why do I let myself get interested in this kind of shit? Clearly there's something wrong with me.

Through and including jermsplan's comment:

Neither/keep same/I like the tag cloud - 10
Unclear expression of preference - 8
non-voting comment - 41

Clear vote for "A" - 120
Clear vote for "B" - 86

I did not try to track duplicate votes, although I did correct for desjardin's change of vote.
posted to MetaTalk by yhbc at 8:02 AM on June 18, 2008

Sebastopol, CA also blocked free public WiFi. It's absolutely hilarious.
posted to MetaFilter by zsazsa at 10:05 AM on June 17, 2008

there's some point in gamer culture where gay and fag became the go-to insults between gamers online, and I cannot for the life of me pinpoint where that is. Obviously, it has to have occurred after the invention of online gaming. did people playing MUDs and MOOs speak to each other like that? I'm not sure. I remember being infantile and griefing in roleplaying aol chat rooms, but never homophobic. I feel confident that it didn't start with friends playing 1v1 doom games with each other... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by shmegegge at 1:19 PM on May 29, 2008

How do they get the cats in there?
posted to MetaFilter Projects by mathowie at 10:27 AM on May 27, 2008

test comment.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by pb at 2:09 PM on May 26, 2008

Yeah, you know, we just got ours last night, and the first thing my kids did was bust it out and set up WiiFit profiles for themselves. I had to moderate the whole thing, because to an almost 9-year-old and a 5.5-year old, it seemed pretty harsh. My daughter was informed that she was normal, but it asked her to set a weight-loss goal, which became a "teachable moment" about what healthy feels like and the importance of eating and getting stronger, etc. etc. But the verdict on my son... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:57 AM on May 22, 2008

delmoi: If she had been running the campaign she's been running lately after super Tuesday, she'd probably be the winner now

No. The math: Super Tuesday decided the race. The video fails to give the proper context that the race has been over for just over three months now, and everything since then (i.e. the last 2:30 of the video) has been nothing more than a media circus.

To start with, the nomination... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DaShiv at 7:20 AM on May 7, 2008

Do you have a format you'd like to see your comments in?

mbox.
posted to MetaTalk by ikkyu2 at 9:18 AM on April 15, 2008

The schools of math taught during high school are strange as well; why is calculus typically favored over discrete math, or probability and statistics? Maybe schools are worried that a population educated in probability won't buy any more education-funding lottery tickets...
posted to MetaFilter by jenkinsEar at 7:44 AM on April 10, 2008

pb, could you possibly share with us the name of the recommendation engine you've used for this?

Unless he's rolled in something since we were last working on it, the name of the recommendation engine we're using is Hey, I Bet We Could Write a Recommendation Engine, Eh? from PBware, with a third-party library from Cortex Solutions called libLook, I'll Do Some Crazy Fucking Math with the Tags to Make Things Work Better.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:43 AM on April 3, 2008

Why does this weigh 21 pounds and cost over eleven bucks?
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:24 PM on April 2, 2008

Sorry, I was out running errands all day with the family (it's spring break for all the local schools and daycare), but I did want to post as soon as I got back.

Overall, I've been thinking that things aren't going downhill so much as the community feels a bit strained from so many users. The other day I posted something in a thread and wanted to hear reactions to it and someone posted some derail and everyone followed along with the derail instead of sticking to the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 4:38 PM on March 26, 2008

Matt: If you're shipping over the border, make sure it's not sent UPS or Purolator. Those guys charge a customs handling fee that's a hassle. Sending USPS with insurance does not incur the same fee. There are sometimes short delays due to customs, but it's not too bad in my opinion. Maybe it's different if things don't go smoothly.

No idea about warranty though. Maybe check Best Buy or Future Shop's online stores?
posted to MetaTalk by ODiV at 12:56 AM on March 21, 2008

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?
posted to MetaTalk by arto at 11:57 AM on March 19, 2008

This is actually kind of true. The worst, in my experience as an engineer, are electrical engineers. Why that is I have no idea. Show me a professor who is a Holocaust denier or other wacky type and I'll show you an engineer 95% of the time.
posted by Justinian at 1:32 PM on March 10

The reason for this is simple - other engineers are idiots. Mechanical engineers? Wow, you built a bridge. Go home and play with your legos, kid, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pastabagel at 1:11 PM on March 10, 2008

After my parents were divorced in 1978, they set up a visitation schedule, as they lived in 2 different states. I was to spend 6 weeks every summer with my dad until age 18. That first summer, I felt awful. There was seemingly nothing to do, and my little brother was too young to be a companion that could help me through it.

Then, one day, my dad takes me around to the place of this new woman he's seeing. On her table is the blue box. While... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by thanotopsis at 1:26 PM on March 4, 2008

This reminds me -- I don't think it warrants its own thread but there's a hack to get better-quality videos from youtube by appending &fmt=6 or &fmt=18 to the url. I'd love for this to be added into the youtube links like the affiliate on Amazon links for the times I don't have the greasemonkey script handy.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by flatluigi at 12:17 PM on March 4, 2008

Ouch. Make that link Raymond Scott's 'Powerhouse'.
posted to MetaFilter by Herodios at 8:58 AM on February 26, 2008

The concept of "the unmarked category" comes to mind. Because whites are the predominant ethnic class in the US, things relating to them are just considered "regular." Meanwhile, other ethnic groups identify everything that's specific to them with special labels.

The TV channel going after the black audience is called "Black Entertainment Television."
But the Fox Network is just the Fox Network. The "White News... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by scarabic at 4:01 PM on February 15, 2008

Ugh.... this article made me absolutely sick to my stomach.

I love my violin. Love it. I've written poetry to it. It has a name. I'm looking at it right now...

When most guys my age were working at a fast food joint in high school to buy their first car, I was working in a fast food joint to earn the down payment on my instrument. I knew exactly what I wanted it to sound like, almost two years before I finally found it. I raised the money... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Baby_Balrog at 3:09 PM on February 13, 2008

Great friends are people who

- remember your preferences for food/drink stuff and always make your coffee the way you like it
- send you little fun stuff in the mail for no reason
- remember things that are going on in your life and ask you about them
- have some magic ability to give advice when you want it and not when you don't
- adjust to your level of feeling like you need a friend so if you're in a bad place, they're... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:20 AM on February 12, 2008 marked best answer

Each page of the site is hand-carved like a fine piece of wooden art. And sometimes you forget to leave the horn on the unicorn and you just end up with a horse.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:00 PM on February 10, 2008

I wrote Lucy a nice non-anonymous comment on her blog.Ah the irony of the hot-under-the-collar web world.

Hi -- I'm not anonymous, I'm one of the moderators of MetaFilter and I got to spend some of my New Years Eve watching this unfold and making sure it didn't get too crazy. My name is Jessamyn West and I live in Vermont.

Probabably the best place to get an idea of what happened is from the GiveWell blog where Holden explains... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:57 AM on January 1, 2008

Heh. Now that my head is all swolled up, you'll be getting bills for my services in your MeMail, alla youse carriage-fuckers.

Special sneak preview, just for my fellow MeFites: the saying I quote from my mother-in-law is "Oh, for shitting in the sink." Next time something goes wrong, try hollering that and see if you don't feel better!
posted to MetaTalk by languagehat at 10:04 AM on December 18, 2007

First, I don't think MeFi's not part of the boom. Web 2.0 means a lot of different things to different people -- to some people it's an eye-rolling buzzword about trying to shoehorn community into the same old sites that flopped during the last bubble. To others, it's a reflection of the fact that the experience of discovering and sharing and connecting online has fundamentally improved over the first generation of web apps.

The upside of the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by anildash at 3:58 PM on December 11, 2007

Jeeze, I went to lunch. Remain calm.

So the way IE6 did it was when you made something a Favorite, it would download the favicon once. The url for the favicon would be stored in history, the actual icon would be stored in the temporary internet files cache. So you visit a site, it does a lookup in history to figure out what the url for the favicon is, then it looks in the TIF to see if the icon is there. If you cleared either one, history or the cache, the icon was... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jeffamaphone at 1:54 PM on December 6, 2007

I wrote a greasemonkey script that replaces 'welcome back' with GYOFB to get that snarky feeling back. Message is easily switched in the script.
I don't know what I'm doing so it might cause your computer to develop self-awareness and eat your cat. Any feedback appreciated.
posted to MetaTalk by jacalata at 8:23 AM on November 6, 2007

I used to work in Macy's Department Stores corporate offices (as a buyer, not a dog handler), above the Herald Square store in Manhattan. As the store is incredibly large (about 10 floors of retail space), they at one point had a problem with either a) homeless people hiding in the store for a warm place to sleep at night, b) would-be thieves hiding in the store waiting to plunder and then hopefully break their way out of the store after hours, or c) both.

So, naturally,... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by allkindsoftime at 3:34 AM on November 5, 2007 marked best answer

As a working screenwriter, we need the strike, and aspiring scabs might want to really look at why this strike is getting ready to happen before they offer their services.

If you write an episode of Metafilter Towers, you get paid according to scale for the script; you get paid according to scale for residuals when the show goes into reruns. You always wrote the script, the show is still making money, consequently, you're entitled to some of that. That's the current... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by headspace at 7:25 AM on November 2, 2007

mathowie writes "mefi mail all locals would annoy me."

Besides think of the poor bastards forced to live in NYC with hundreds of members within spitting distance.
posted to MetaTalk by Mitheral at 4:45 PM on October 23, 2007