10 items tagged “metafilter”
2019
In Kākāpō breeding season news…. I posted on MetaFilter about this year’s record-breaking Kākāpō breeding season.
2018
One of the ways the internet has changed around us over the years is the blog-o-sphere of MetaFilter's early years has all but disappeared, and so has the kind of link-sharing culture that went with it.
Metafilter financial update and future directions. Recent drops in revenue from Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliates have left MetaFilter (19th birthday coming up next month) with a $8,000/month shortfall. They have an optional monthly subscription which currently brings in $7,500/month (monthly expenses are $38,000) so I’ve opted in and thankfully it looks like a lot of other people are subscribing or upping their subscription. I joined the site nearly 14 years ago and it’s been an important part of my online world ever since.
2010
My ability to decide how I feel about Wikileaks’ activities is totally annihilated by my ongoing realization that it cannot possibly be real. It’s a plot device in a near-future thriller novel. I mean, seriously, semi-stateless man with an unusual appearance uses an army of anonymous allies to expose governments’ secrets, and posts an insurance file in public with some kind of deadman switch in case he’s taken out by his enemies? That shit does not happen in real life. Julian Assange is a Neal Stephenson character who’s escaped in to the real world.
2009
“I made the first animated under construction icon”. twoleftfeet on MetaFilter describes how he created the first ever Under Construction animation in 1995, after discovering his server-push animations could be replaced by the exciting new animated GIF.
I grew up in a college town, and one Halloween our doorbell rang and we opened the door expecting to see trickortreater - but what was in front of our open door - was another door! Like, a full-on wooden door, that had a sign that said "Please knock." So we did, and the door swung open to reveal a bunch of college dudes dressed as really old grandmothers, curlers in their hair, etc, who proceeded to coo over our "costumes" and tell us we were "such cute trick or treaters!" One even pinched my cheek. Then THEY gave US candy, closed their door, picked it up and walked to the next house.
Meta Is Murder. I hadn’t realised how important MetaTalk was in ensuring high quality discussions on MetaFilter, by ensuring that meta-discussions happened somewhere else. Speaking of which, happy birthday MetaFilter.
2008
Popular Websites Vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks. Ed Felten and Bill Zeller announce four CSRF holes, in ING Direct, YouTube, MetaFilter and the New York Times. The ING Direct hole allowed transfer of funds out of a user’s bank accounts! The first three were fixed before publication; the New York Times hole still exists (despite being reported a year ago), and allows you to silently steal e-mail addresses by CSRFing the “E-mail this” feature.
The problem of grues is, of course, their recursive nature. To wit: A) Grues are found wherever it is very dark. B) There are no light sources on the inside of a grue. Therefore, being eaten by a grue is a fate which entails being eaten by an infinite number of progressively smaller grues, presumably nested in a geometrically complicated and interesting way.
— Arturus
2007
Flickr users are marked as such in the Yahoo user database. What this means is that the account is permanently protected from deletion, even if you cancel your SBC-Yahoo DSL and even if you never check your Yahoo Mail (if you elect to have one). Both free and pro accounts are protected. And your Yahoo signon name will not be displayed anywhere on Flickr -- your existing Flickr username will stay the same.