the comprehender

Spammers, scammers and the currency of attention

This New Yorker piece on defeating Nigerian email scams is very interesting indeed. It made me see spammers and scammers in a new light.

The Comprehender is reality!

Many moons ago, I lightheartedly suggested that we build a device to reduce the volume of stupid internet comments. The device would force you to answer a reading comprehension question before posting a comment. This would cut down on irrelevant drive-by insults and comments that misunderstand the entire point of the post. I called this imaginary device The Comprehender.

The Comprehender

I have an idea to change the bottom half of the internet.

Lots of blogs, including mine, use captchas to prevent robot spam, but these are powerless in the face of human stupidity and aggression. Many other blogs moderate comments before publication, but this makes work for the blog owner, and that work is often very tedious.