MetaChat - Is Metafilter Being Hacked?

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10 June 2005

Is Metafilter Being Hacked?
I'm starting to wonder if someone other that Mathowie or Jessamyn has gained access to the MeFi code, and is actually the source of some of the mysterious disapering comments
but then again I've had quite a bit to drink

post by: anastasiav at: 23:37 | 37 comments

Myself, I'm wondering about all those damn diapering comments. Get a room, you two!

posted by yhbc 11 June | 00:00

Say more about that. (Either the drinking or the hacking.)

posted by omiewise 11 June | 00:00

..or it could just be a giant buggy piece of shit. either one.

posted by puke & cry 11 June | 00:09

well, i just had a long email exchange with Jess, and she's taken a very light touch, as a result of the heavy hand she had before.

posted by amberglow 11 June | 00:12

now i'm gonna end up making my mix while soused and cynical
probably won't be much difference

posted by ethylene 11 June | 00:16

you haven't made your mix yet? i uploaded mine earlier today. can i get a gold star or something?

posted by puke & cry 11 June | 00:21

without the gimpy finger, i'd post a pic for ya

posted by ethylene 11 June | 00:23

" Get a room, you two!" And film it! People these days love to watch other people humiliate themselves. Check out Fear Factor. You will make $$$!

posted by arse_hat 11 June | 00:23

i did but i haven't loaded it
tried to make it very accessible
wanted to dedicate each track instead of titles

if anyone has "now it can be told" live devo. i'd be much obliged

posted by ethylene 11 June | 00:25

"you haven't made your mix yet? i uploaded mine earlier today. can i get a gold star or something?" Ha! I was first! So! So. Yeah, well I was just having a hard time staying focused on work.

posted by arse_hat 11 June | 00:25

You know, anastasiav, that's what I thought the last time there were a lot of weird deletes... But it turned out to be valid from matt and jess. It was such a deviation from the norm, though, that I did suspect foul play.

posted by taz 11 June | 00:54

it's the undeleted stuff that bothers me...i'm pretty sure this was a self link.

posted by dhruva 11 June | 01:04

Why do you say dhruva? [I'm not challenging you, just too lazy to do the legwork if you've already done it.]

posted by omiewise 11 June | 01:10

Did you flag it, dhruva? Because his name is right there on the about page.

posted by iconomy 11 June | 01:15

You know, anastasiav, that's what I thought the last time there were a lot of weird deletes... But it turned out to be valid from matt and jess. It was such a deviation from the norm, though, that I did suspect foul play.

but this time they both claimed they had nothing to do with the deletion. it was a system error. or something.

posted by puke & cry 11 June | 01:16

i did flag it...but the elevator doors refused to open :)

posted by dhruva 11 June | 01:17

Hossein Derakhshan is the one who came with the original idea to keep track of Google results for Iranian politicians. He lives in Canada and has a popular Persian weblog

usually when i see an iran link, i know it's coming from hoder. that's his agenda. but damn, it's right there.

posted by puke & cry 11 June | 01:19

Yeah, i automatically associate iran links with hoder, which is why I even bothered to go to the about page.

posted by dhruva 11 June | 01:22

puke & cry, yeah that doesn't make any sense to me. bh said he/she saw the comment after refreshing the page, which would definitely mean that comment made it through the entire process. It's hard to imagine a system glitch that would end up deleting one posted comment. This one is strange, unless he/she is mistaken about refreshing the actual page, and maybe only refreshed the preview page.

posted by taz 11 June | 01:30

hoder's been given a pass on that rule in the past, but I wonder if he's abusing the privilege. At the very least he ought to use a disclaimer.

posted by dhartung 11 June | 01:37

bh said he/she saw the comment after refreshing the page, which would definitely mean that comment made it through the entire process. It's hard to imagine a system glitch that would end up deleting one posted comment. This one is strange, unless he/she is mistaken about refreshing the actual page, and maybe only refreshed the preview page.

that's pretty much what i was thinking. maybe he thought he saw the comment after refresh, but was a victim of the usual comment/refresh "deletion". but matt is saying that his comment was indeed deleted and that he didn't do it. with is troubling to say the least.

also, matt apparently ignored the question of his "test" comment in that thread. coincedence?

posted by puke & cry 11 June | 01:41

If we have an intruder, though, he's awfully subtle - which hardly seems likely.

posted by taz 11 June | 02:48

Mmm...intruding to delete a comment? Morelike the poster fluffed his comment posting no?

posted by peacay 11 June | 04:52

That's what I think, unless we start hearing about a lot more like this - in which case I would say it's some sort of extremely strange internal error.

posted by taz 11 June | 05:14

A patient hacker with a malicious sense of fun could slowly start driving a whole bunch of MeFites crazy. I know my favorite pranks are the slow, drawn out subtle ones. Although in this instance I'm still thinking it's two parts human error and one part gremlins.

posted by Slack-a-gogo 11 June | 07:14

lots'a'gremlins. I fed them after midnight.

posted by dabitch 11 June | 07:42

never take your gremlin into the shower

posted by dodgygeezer 11 June | 07:44

My money's on taz' theory. It could have something to do with overall site traffic coupled with frequent previews/refreshing/spellchecking of pages; enough throughput *may* be throwing the submission queue off balance.

Any spooling errors of this sort could've led to the JRun turmoil we've already witnessed.

posted by Smart Dalek 11 June | 08:40

YOU FUCKERS ARE SO AMUSING. "throwing the submission queue off balance" and "spooling errors". BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! any fool could see that the checksum routines are encountering rogue gotos and throwing exceptions! after all, mathowie is only half a programmer. the other half is a designer! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*reads RFC*

posted by quonsar 11 June | 09:56

Talk about coincidence! I just had lunch with a rogue Goto!

posted by taz 11 June | 10:00

Rogue Goto sounds like a character from the new Star Wars films

posted by dodgygeezer 11 June | 10:58

I thought Goto was a 4-armed monster who challenged everyone to Mortal Combat...

posted by Peak Oil 11 June | 14:43

The Goto was a subcompact car from Kragujevac.

It was originally called the "Zastava" before it was imported to the United States.

Ironically, the factory which built the Gotos was bombed by NATO in 1999, as the workers there were secretly building weapons for Slobodan Milosevic.

posted by Smart Dalek 11 June | 17:01

you get errors like that with databases, multiple threads and transactions, i think.

posted by andrew cooke 11 June | 17:06

I deleted the hoder thread, fyi.

posted by jessamyn 11 June | 23:12

Deleted, sure, but has he been banned for self-linking?

posted by gramschmidt 12 June | 12:23

that's a mathowie call. I hope so.

posted by jessamyn 12 June | 22:37

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