https://www.metafilter.com/favorites/all Posts from across all sites, marked as a favorite most often in the past seven days. Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:08:19 GMT Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:08:19 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 Full disintegration He finished the recordings on the morning of September 11, 2001, a few hours before he was due at a job interview in the World Trade Center.

In August 2001, William Basinski was digitizing some old tape loops of easy listening music he'd recorded back in the 80s. In the process, the ferrite coating on the tape started flaking off, so each pass of the loop came out a bit more degraded than the last. Instead of fixing it, he let the tape deck run and captured the whole decay live, which became The Disintegration Loops.
He finished the recordings on the morning of September 11, 2001, a few hours before he was due at a job interview in the World Trade Center. That evening he sat on the roof of his apartment in Williamsburg with friends and neighbors, filmed the smoke over Manhattan as the light faded, and the loop played as an accidental soundtrack to the whole thing.
Stills from that footage became the covers for the four albums, released 2002–2003.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214474/A-world-gone-in-hours www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214474 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:14:51 GMT beesbees 60 years later, 'Star Trek' continues to 'live long and prosper' NPR: 60 years ago, NBC aired the first episode of Star Trek, a television show that became a pop culture phenomenon. The original series starred William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, who led his diverse crew of humans and at least one alien, on adventures in space.

LA TIMES: 'Star Trek' is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Why its optimistic vision of the future endures If you ask George Takei whether he ever thought he'd still be talking about "Star Trek" 60 years after its debut, he will respond with a smile and a shrug.

NY TIMES: 'Star Trek' Endures for the Next Generation, and the Next, and the Next As of 2026, the 60-year-old science fiction franchise boasts a fandom of carbon units — sorry, humans — that spans at least three generations. What began, in 1966, as a five-year space mission on the U.S.S. Enterprise to "boldly go where no man has gone before" now represents an anthology of space travel across more than 25 series and films in parts of two centuries.

THE CONVERSATION: 'Star Trek' and NASA have intertwined legacies – the show championed diversity and inspired generations of real space scientists "Star Trek" is also unusual for its close connections to NASA, both in its storylines and in the real world. Decades of "Star Trek" adventures have ignited a love of spaceflight across generations, inspiring many who now work as space professionals.

TV LINE: 60 Best Star Trek Episodes In Franchise History, Ranked "Star Trek" debuted 60 years ago today — and that's inspired us to boldly go into the archives to rank the greatest episodes in franchise history. Since the original "Star Trek" series premiered on NBC on September 8, 1966, "Star Trek" has become not only an enduring science fiction staple, but also a shining beacon of hope. In a sea of cynical, pessimistic visions of the future, "Trek" dared to dream big and show us a brighter tomorrow we can all dream of achieving.

WILLIAM SHATNER on X: It's been 60 years in the making and it's all thanks to you the fans! Happy Birthday @StarTrek! My best, Bill]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214441/To-Boldly-Go www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214441 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:55:40 GMT pjsky LG TVs Caught Spying Even When Offline or On Standby from the Verge by way of /.

A Gamers Nexus investigation found that LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even while they are offline or in standby mode. "The company's TV sets scan Wi-Fi networks for nearby devices, record audio logs through their microphones, and use audio and video sampling to recognize exactly what you're watching from across the TV inputs," reports The Verge.

Gamers Nexus partnered with fellow YouTubers Level1Techs and independent security researchers for the investigation, which involved testing retail LG OLEDs. Packet captures showed the TVs scanning the local area network for nearby hardware like phones or smartwatches, as well as logging location data and details of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and feeding the information back to LG Ad Solutions. Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored.

Previously: Earlier this year, LG was found to be silently installing an adware-like app on Windows PCs that ran pop-up ads for other LG apps and even McAfee antivirus.

https://hackread.com/lg-monitors-install-adware-app-windows-pcs/]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214445/More-LG-SmartTV-shenannigans www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214445 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:55:18 GMT aleph In the temperate rainforests of southern Chile and Argentina hides a peculiar species of vine. Discovered early in the 2010s, this strange species called Boquila trifoliolata (locally titled the pilpil), has the incredible ability to mimic the leaves of other plant species it grows upon. The leaves of the pilpil, though naturally stubby and lobed, grow to nearly perfectly match the leaves of multiple other species near it. How it does it do it? Maybe chemical volatile signals? Maybe horizontal gene transfer? Yet, the pilpil will mimic the leaves of artificial plants.

Paper: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant

Related: Veggies with Vision: Do Plants See the World around Them?]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214433/The-plants-have-eyes www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214433 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 18:14:22 GMT ShooBoo The first trailer for You Can See Everything, a new documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Elizabeth Holmes. The doc got a surprise drop at the Telluride Film Festival and gets a wider release in October.

Early reviews and choice quotes from the festival:

• Fielder himself seems baffled by it all, stunned that an innocuous idea turned into a three-year trip into the mind of Elizabeth Holmes, no holds barred or expected. "What I am really excited about is for you to see the movie and tell me what I experienced," he said during a Q&A following the first public screening at Telluride. "I don't know why they wanted me there. Why am I there?"
• What I can tell you is this documentary uncovers complex new layers to the Holmes saga and pushes the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking into new, uncharted terrain.
• The pairing is the story. Two artists obsessed with how the camera warps the thing it records, turned loose on the most studied liar of the century.

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, previously.

Nathan Fielder, previously and on Fanfare.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214434/Of-course-Im-not-deceiving-you www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214434 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 19:40:28 GMT Kybard nyc.gov/sept11docs, featuring an initial release of approximately 170,000 pages of records concerning health concerns, air quality and the City's response to September 11th, as well as the settlement of two lawsuits brought by 9/11 Health Watch, ending a multi-year legal battle over records concerning air quality and health concerns following September 11th. [CNN] [ABC]

Reported by Time.com: Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York in 2001, told right-leaning news organization Newsmax that Mamdani should skip the event. "Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he's coming," Giuliani said. The former mayor also attacked Mamdani's religion, Islam, and baselessly suggested the mayor was supportive of Muslim extremist ideology.

Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor who was nine years old when the attack happened, has long faced Islamophobic comments. Speaking to the Times last year, Mamdani lamented how the 2001 attacks had made anti-Muslim prejudice "a fact of life" for Muslim-Americans, claiming: "It was this horrific day that was also, for many New Yorkers, the moment at which they were marked an 'other.'"]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214447/Mamdani-Administration-Opens-Citys-9-11-Records-to-the-Public www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214447 Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:47:00 GMT AlSweigart Krillion is a trivia game (with a quirky UI) that rewards uncommon answers. Each day, everyone gets the same seven questions and you have 30 seconds to type one (valid) answer to each. The more rare your answer is, the more points you get. At the end of the game, your score is measured against everyone else that played that day. (Pro tip: when the game is over, you can click on your answer to expand a list of all possible answers and their scores). There's also a few one off themes you can play including Words and Language, Movies, Sports and Geography. (Although I believe if you want to play those more than once they want to charge you).]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214461/A-daily-trivia-game-with-a-twist www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214461 Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:31:14 GMT jeremias
"Severed Dreams" is Babylon 5's finest hour. Years of buildup culminating in one of the show's greatest space battles where the stakes couldn't possibly be higher. This is the story of "Severed Dreams" and how it changed television forever.

Bonus video: G'Kar's speech from season 2.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214462/How-Babylon-5-Changed-Television-Forever www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214462 Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:16:25 GMT RonButNotStupid https://ask.metafilter.com/390649/Overwhelming-voices ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.390649 Sat, 05 Sep 2026 14:51:27 GMT jebs Just try to follow Scott Dersam as he talks breathlessly, at hyperspeed, about his prehistoric discoveries after a couple beers at 9,500 feet in the Beartooth Mountains. It's hard to keep up.

"This sediment shouldn't occur for us here," Dersam says, thigh deep in an excavated pit as the setting sun bleeds orange on the horizon. "I wouldn't say it's impossible, but in standard paleoecology in the surrounding ecosystem, all the glaciology experts, this is just not something that should exist given the ecosystem we believe we had I wasn't even trained for surveying for [artifacts as old as we're finding] in these ecosystems because they wouldn't have existed."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214446/It-should-not-exist-Ancient-archaeological-mystery www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214446 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 23:51:08 GMT ShooBoo Thank you for your cooperation during this trying time.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214421/Microwave-bootstrapped-itself-to-sentience-sorry www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214421 Sun, 06 Sep 2026 16:08:29 GMT chavenet wIth a list of Gary Larson's 10 best Farside comics. Given the enormous number of possibilities over the long life of the daily strip, there must be some that were overlooked, right? So step right up and let everyone know yours.

Of course, there's this one, which would certainly be #1 in a list of Most Confusing. With that out of the running, what else is there?]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214470/Lets-Argue-Over-Something-Other-Than-Music www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214470 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:53:31 GMT tommasz
The old internet, meaning, there's no algorithm here. There's no endless scroll. There's nothing trying to shove the most popular posts in your face (which are usually inflammatory rage bait). On the front page you have a chronological feed that you actually have to read and digest. In the thread, comments are again just chronological. There's no awards there's no "filter by best".And by humans I mean, when I interact with someone here I have a reasonably high level of certainty that what I'm reading or responding to is a person. It's not a bot, it's not a bad actor just karma farming, it's not a paid shill, it's not a psyop. It's just some random person. Which is again what the old internet was like, just weird people doing shit.When I come here I don't feel like it's enshittified or it's the dead internet (even though this place is much more dead than it was 10 or 20 years ago).Metafilter really valuable I think in 2026. There aren't many places like it anymore.]]> https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26968/In-praise-of-Metafilter metatalk.metafilter.com,2026:site.26968 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:39:20 GMT supercrayon "Everybody in a rich country like this one should be able to have a good life."

(slTheWalrus)]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214451/Manitoba-Has-an-Ambitious-Plan-to-End-Homelessness www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214451 Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:00:20 GMT Kitteh WinHelp was MicroSoft's help document format on Windows up to 95. Some users repurposed it as an ezine format in the nineties and early aughts. The Internet Archive has a collection of nearly 400 examples, all of which are viewable in your browser.

Most of the collection is computer related, unsurprisingly, with the target audience ranging from rank beginners to technical experts. Some examples:

• Roadmap to the Information Superhighway #8 Spring 1995
  • The Roadmap to the Information Superhighway was a Winhelp ezine/hypertext reference from Lighthouse Productions, providing an index of resources available on the Internet, as well as some information about getting started on the Internet. It coexisted with the Inter-Active Yellow Pages, and had similar content.


• WOLR100 - WinOnLine Review #100
  
  • The WinOnLine Review was a WinHelp magazine published by the Windows Online BBS. It was formerly known as Windows Online "the Weekly", and before that, "Windows Online News", Under these names, it ran from 1991-1996, and had 115 issues altogether.


• Orange Bytes Vol. 21 Issue 6 (NOCCC)
  
  • NOCCC (the North Orange County Computer Club) was founded in 1976 and is currently active (2026), with their Web site located at https://www.noccc.org/. This is a Winhelp version of the Orange Bytes newsletter, which has been published in various formats, including by snail mail. Vol 21 Issue 6 (June 1996) may have been the final Winhelp version of the newsletter


• Electrified Sysop Magazine #1
  
  • Electrified Sysop was an ezine published by Welsh Communications (formerly Pro-Data), containing news and information pertaining to BBS administration. There was an Electrified BBS (formerly the Electrified Visual Basic BBS).


• The Hardware Book v1.3
  
  • The Hardware Book was a free PC hardware reference in both 16 and 32 bit Winhelp formats... Both 32-bit and 16-bit Winhelp versions were released at least up to v1.3, based on Wayback Machine.

There's also a number of non-computer, and a few non-English, publications. Some examples:

• The Meaning of Liff
  • The Meaning of Liff is a humorous dictionary by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, who assigned creative meanings to existing place names, in an effort to create words for concepts in need of them. It was put into WinHelp hypertext format by Michael Malcolm Anderson, who remarks that many items reference other items, making WinHelp/hypertext a good format.


• The Bear and the Bee
  
  • The Bear and the Bee is an original WinHelp children's book by LeftJustified Publiks. It suggests a $6 donation, and requests works from other authors for publishing. LeftJustified Publiks is be currently (2026) active at https://leftjustified.com/


• Fire and Fur: The Last Sorcerer Dragon by Roger C. Schlobin
  
  • Omnimedia published a number of eBooks in the WinHelp format, as shareware versions with their contents partially encrypted by Softlock technology.
    • NOTE: Despite the description, all (AFAICT) of these titles are completely readable on the Archive.
  
  


• Obserwator Issue #001 (PL)
  
  • Obserwator (Observer) was a Polish language ezine, which covers news and politics related topics, as well as some reviews and poetry.

WinHelp was replaced by Compiled HTML Help in a Windows 95 update, with native support removed entirely in Windows 10.

Most of the Archive's collection was uploaded by one person, Vannevar K (h/t Jason Scott.)]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214453/Help-Windows-Me www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214453 Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:18:53 GMT ChurchHatesTucker previously, previouslier) has another delightful video about fonts, this time set to the tune of a certain light opera patter song [slyt]]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214458/Papyrus-is-a-virus-and-restraint-is-the-inoculum www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214458 Thu, 10 Sep 2026 06:54:25 GMT Jon_Evil Dirty Old Town said this about FanFare in the year 2022, upon hitting FanFare post #1,000: "I'm gonna keep making FF posts at as high a rate as I can, as long as I can. It's fun for me and I doubt I'll ever stop." Less than four years later, he's hit #2,000.]]> https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26966/Fan-Farin-Fantastic-II-Phlegmatic-Reviewaloo metatalk.metafilter.com,2026:site.26966 Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:06:43 GMT chavenet After Work, We'll Have Each Other:

Relatedly, before industrialization, there was very little sense that working, in itself, could be dignified or meaningful. We were not defined by our jobs but by our participation in a densely interconnected social world. And we might be again. That's the natural consequence of all these relationalist predictions — a world where our connections to other humans are what give us structure, identity, and meaning.

I am afraid they're right.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214422/there-was-very-little-sense-that-working-in-itself-could-be-dignified www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214422 Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:23:40 GMT learning from frequent failure Bayeux Tapestry updated for 2026. Edith Pritchett gives us a 21st century version with scrolls and trolls. Backstory on the tapestry including Napoleon, Nazis, and Anglo-French back-and-forth. Make your own Bayeux Tapestry. Why not. End it with a watch of the Animated Bayeux Tapestry (YT-4min)]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214442/Borne-on-the-Bayeux www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214442 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:43:06 GMT storybored the apple watch worn by someone sitting next to you?

Or maybe it's all those cameras that have been popping up all over your neighbourhood. No not those ones. These ones.

Or maybe it'll be that one AI company that tries to position itself as being the most ethical, but has recently been advertising for "a corporate intelligence role in August that listed 'activism' among the global threats its security team may investigate."

I was getting bored of only being spied on by my TV anyways.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214466/Wake-up-babe-new-surveillance-tech-dropped www.metafilter.com,2026:site.214466 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 02:45:28 GMT supercrayon