7647 MetaFilter comments by Malor (displaying 51 through 100)

Jonathan Winters, the wildly inventive actor and comedian who appeared in such films as "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and "The Loved One" and played Robin Williams' son on the TV show "Mork & Mindy," has died. He was 87.
comment posted at 1:59 PM on Apr-12-13


A former top female North Korean spy gives an exclusive interview, saying Kim Jong-un is posturing on the world stage because he is too young and too inexperienced to gain control of the military.
comment posted at 4:37 AM on Apr-10-13
comment posted at 4:39 AM on Apr-10-13

More than two years later, the Raymond Davis episode has been largely forgotten in the United States. It was immediately overshadowed by the dramatic raid months later that killed Osama bin Laden — consigned to a footnote in the doleful narrative of America’s relationship with Pakistan. But dozens of interviews conducted over several months, with government officials and intelligence officers in Pakistan and in the United States, tell a different story: that the real unraveling of the relationship was set off by the flurry of bullets Davis unleashed on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2011, and exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions in the days and weeks that followed. In Pakistan, it is the Davis affair, more than the Bin Laden raid, that is still discussed in the country’s crowded bazaars and corridors of power. - The Spy Who Lost Pakistan (SL NYTIMES Magazine)
comment posted at 12:05 PM on Apr-9-13
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Apr-9-13

Fairsearch (a group led by Microsoft, Oracle and Expedia) has filed a complaint [PDF] with the EU claiming that Google has a monopoly in the mobile market and is using its mobile position to force its other products on users.
comment posted at 8:45 AM on Apr-9-13

Hardcore Gaming 101 present an in-depth examination of the Mortal Kombat series.
comment posted at 11:43 PM on Apr-8-13
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Apr-9-13

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a towering figure in 20th-century astronomy. Born in 1900 in England, she won tuition to Newnham College where she studied botany, chemistry, and physics. After attending an astronomy lecture in 1919, she changed the focus of her future studies. She moved to the United States, where she went on to earn the first Ph.D awarded in astronomy from Radcliffe College. She later became the first female to be promoted to full-professor from within the faculty at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and was the first woman to head a department at Harvard when she was appointed to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy. Amongst her numerous studies and advances, she challenge the belief that the sun was made of the same composition of the earth, furthered the study of metallicity of stars and the structure of the Milky Way.
comment posted at 2:26 PM on Apr-8-13

One Photo a day... while in an abusive relationship. Not for the faint-of-heart.
comment posted at 10:37 PM on Apr-7-13

Megabumtopia (explanatory Reddit thread) is a virtual libertarian paradise which houses over a million happy Sims without worrying about things like 'power' or 'sewage treatment' or 'drinkable water'. SimCity's recent launch problems have been discussed previously on Metafilter.
comment posted at 8:18 PM on Apr-7-13
comment posted at 10:09 AM on Apr-8-13
comment posted at 10:16 AM on Apr-8-13
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Apr-8-13
comment posted at 9:11 AM on Apr-9-13
comment posted at 2:05 PM on Apr-9-13
comment posted at 12:54 AM on Apr-10-13


Postcards From Google Earth: "I collect Google Earth images. I discovered them by accident, these particularly strange snapshots, where the illusion of a seamless and accurate representation of the Earth’s surface seems to break down. I was Google Earth-ing, when I noticed that a striking number of buildings looked like they were upside down."
comment posted at 8:43 PM on Apr-6-13

40 Years of Music Industry Change, In 40 Seconds or Less: A gif showing the revenue contribution from various music formats, 1973-present, based on RIAA figures.
comment posted at 7:06 PM on Apr-6-13
comment posted at 8:17 PM on Apr-6-13
comment posted at 8:38 PM on Apr-6-13
comment posted at 8:45 PM on Apr-6-13
comment posted at 3:37 PM on Apr-7-13



Does it at low temp (122 deg F) and atmospheric pressue. Uses a normal plant sugar, Xylose, and any quantity of biomass. The trick seems to be a cocktail of enzymes from microorganisms that grow at extreme temperatures such at the boiling point of water.
comment posted at 10:52 AM on Apr-5-13


Facebook announces Facebook Home, a layer of apps for Android that turns your phone into a Facebook hub. The Verge has a review with pictures – they seem to like it. But Om Malik fears that Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy for its users:
So if your phone doesn’t move from a single location between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. for say a week or so, Facebook can quickly deduce the location of your home. Facebook will be able to pinpoint on a map where your home is, whether you share your personal address with the site or not. It can start to build a bigger and better profile of you on its servers. It can start to correlate all of your relationships, all of the places you shop, all of the restaurants you dine in and other such data. The data from accelerometer inside your phone could tell it if you are walking, running or driving. As Zuckerberg said — unlike the iPhone and iOS, Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well.

comment posted at 5:20 AM on Apr-5-13
comment posted at 5:24 AM on Apr-5-13
comment posted at 10:54 PM on Apr-6-13

Bioshock Infinite (previously) has been hailed as brilliant by many but others, even while enjoying it, have questioned the way the game deploys violence and whether this limits the audience that may otherwise have enjoyed the fascinating narrative put forth by the game. While not directly implicating the game's violence others have suggested that Bioshock Infinite might be the last of a dying breed (the Triple A, big budget, narrative game) due to the lack luster returns of such fare in the face of cheap, accessible indie and mobile games.
comment posted at 2:44 AM on Apr-5-13
comment posted at 5:50 AM on Apr-5-13
comment posted at 9:37 AM on Apr-5-13


Roger Ebert has announced that he has had a recurrence of cancer and will be taking a partial hiatus from reviewing while he undergoes treatment. Ebert, who lost the ability to speak and eat to cancer in 2006, filed a career-record 306 reviews in 2012. The news comes as Ebert plans to revamp his website and is considering a Kickstarter campaign to bring back his iconic show At the Movies. A documentary about Ebert directed by Steve James and executive produced by Martin Scorsese is currently in production.
comment posted at 8:44 PM on Apr-3-13


Two of our finest authors, humanist and government critic, Iain [M] Banks is dying of cancer. His next novel will be his last. His books are a source of inspiration and joy for me and many other mefites.
comment posted at 4:57 AM on Apr-3-13


Tom Roeser was unhappy about the decline of his town, Carpentersville, IL. So he decided to do something about it. Roeser bought some foreclosed properties, renovated them, and then rented them out for below market value.
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Apr-2-13

On the passing of Jane Nebel Henson, who was, as this piece from a Muppets fansite explains, more than Jim's widow, she was the original Second Muppeteer.
comment posted at 5:35 PM on Apr-2-13

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