Best Of MetaFilter

Photo by Kendrick Erickson, via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmysocks/)

Turns out the internet actually is a series of tubes! Or at least cables, laying on the floor of the world's oceans, with all the muck and salt. Somebody has repair them, as chronicled in this post by 'the duck by the oboe', which looks at the undersea cables, how they get damaged, and how they get repaired.

In Ask Metafilter, Klipspringer wants to know, What are your favourite general-interest browser extensions in 2024?

Screenshot of Metafilter from 1999.

Prepare yourself, we're about to toot the horn of MetaFilter!

Mecran01 has shared a post from someone who joined MetaFilter in the early 2000s and grew up reading the site. It's a reflection on themselves, and the site, through changing times personally and on the internet.

Giant Teddy Bear by focusc (cc by)

Great link on the enshittification of the internet and how platforms die by Cory Doctorow

Teapotty at Chi-TEK at the V&A by Rain Rabbit (cc by-nc)

I've made a few internet connected tea kettles in my day.

pmg talks about "the EastEnders Threshold," kettle controls, tea, attention span, and intellectual property restrictions in the cyberpunkworldproblems thread.

Dan Kaminsky visualization: "There is a black hole at the center of this particular galaxy"

Dan Kaminsky here. Feel free to ask anything about this bug. It's a nasty one.

Mefite effugas, aka security expert Dan Kaminsky, answers questions in Sleeper's post about "a potentially catastrophic flaw in one of the Internet's core building blocks"

Lego Firefox by Johnath (cc by-sa)

... but a distressing number of our users wind up making some unwise choices and/or installing some dodgy third-party software that a guy on the corner said would be perfectly safe and legal and also a good time, and wake up with a headache and no wallet and some addons that don't _quite_ do what that guy on the corner said they would. And when they try to figure out why their computer is suddenly so slow, process monitor isn't going to tell them it's because that download-accelerator that ad on the torrent site said to install is mining bitcoins on the side, it's going to say "Firefox, 99% CPU".

Mozillian MeFite Mhoye adds insight and answers questions in Rhaomi's recent multi-link Crazy like a (Fire)Fox post.

This video is about everyone in the world who isn’t Phil Fish.

It turns out the great video, "This is Phil Fish" posted by jklaiho was created by "Mefi's own" Peevish. (The transcript has been posted here.)

A former classmate of Ghyslain Raza (otherwise known as the infamous Star Wars Kid) talks about what it was like going through law school with him and how amazing it is to hear Ghyslain speak about cyberbullying, ten years later:

Think about that burden, and the awful paranoia and loathing that would fester. And think about the publicity and retraumatization that will entail from stepping out like this, especially considering how much he has been protecting his identity the last 10 years.

Considering all of that, it is fucking HEROIC that he has decided to step into public and take a stand for such a good and appropriate cause. I would never in a million years have the guts to do it.

Look what I used to read my first emails by codepo8 (cc by)

A thread about the sounds dial-up modems used to make prompted member Devonian to recall being a fly on the wall during the development of modem speed standards:

I was lucky enough to have something of a ringside seat for this, as a friend was (possibly still is) a senior figure on the ITU committee that decided the v. standards for modems, and I followed developments closely between around 1990 and 2000 when a lot of the clever stuff was being agreed. (Being a rapporteur for an ITU committee is a good gig. You get diplomatic status, and access to the special diplomatic duty-free shops at airports. What, you didn't know about those?)