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Category: Technology

The Trouble with Comments (on alternative media)

If you are short of time, just skip to the Six Battle-tested Rules to Help Publishers Nurture an Intelligent Comments Section.

I’ve been participating very actively in political conversations on various alternative sites for the last six months and recently over at MoonOfAlabama.org. I’ve also been involved in a very involved internal comments-or-not debate for a high profile and widely read international political site recently. Professionally at Foliovision, we develop what is the most powerful freestanding (software, not a service) comment moderation software, Thoughtful Comments1. Commenting has been on my mind would be an understatement.

MoonOfAlabama is not the only anti-Empire alternative media site who suffers from comment issues. Here’s a short list of some sites with whose comment sections I’m very familiar.

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Letter to a friend about the environment, leadership

The funny thing about those people favouring fracking and who don’t care about the plastic pollution in the oceans or the disappearing potable water is that the environment affects us all. More and more people die from cancer from our toxic environment and food. If we don’t wake up as a species, we will literally destroy our own habitat. There will be very little worth fighting over.

And none of it has to be this way if we were to reshape capitalism to make preservation and improvement of the environment our highest goal. Nothing to prevent us making health care and education a secondary priority. Particularly the second is very environmentally friendly. Young people reading books and improving their minds has very little carbon effect.

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NiceHash $64 million hack: inside job or not?

A Bitcoin investor friend of mine asked me if I thought the guys from NiceHash, Marko Kobal and co-founder Sasa Coh, were involved in the recent $64 million hack of their own bitcoin mining co-operative.

I didn’t watch the screencast but the guys don’t look particularly evil or guilty to me. They looked like guys who’d just been burned. Guys who thought they were smarter than they are. Sure, they could protect themselves (or you and I) from the kind of hackers who are interested in a $2 million heist but not those accustomed to a $50 million score. There’s a difference between high school ball and the NFL.

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