I just can't be bothered to have comments on my site. It adds nothing but headaches. Cross-posting articles to HN or Reddit for comments is a much nicer way, I think.
it usually ends up with either sugary sweet comments or comment wars; I agree 100%
I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
351–360 of 408 posts
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally feel differently about the Pihole. I run one and it blocks a lot of telemetry traffic from smart TVs, apps like Netflix, etc. that are not originating from a browser. I'm showing a 23.1% block rate today. But for my use case, I like having the Pihole UI to see the charts and it's nice for temporarily unblocking one domain, etc. Here is an excellent alternative to running Pihole that I've used before: htt…
> I personally feel differently about the Pihole. I run one and it blocks a lot of telemetry traffic from smart TVs, apps like Netflix, etc. that are not originating from a browser. I'm showing a 23.1% block rate today. Damn. I played around with PiHole years ago on an original Raspberry Pi Model B, and kinda forgot about it--it broke some stuff, and most of my connected devices could run their own adblocker. Only in…
I bought an apple tv box so I could disconnect my samsung TV from the internet forever. I think no matter what you do they will find a way to spy on you through your TV. I'm sure there are android boxes that will do as well as apple TV too.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#353It's disgusting what the internet has become, in this case it's even more egregious that the author as far as I see isn't even making any commission off of these ads, not that that would justify it. And then you have companies like Google who will punish you intentionally for using tools to reduce the amount of spam you're exposed to on your own device. We need a better model of financially supporting websites and se…
It's like that episode of black mirror where if he shut his eyes to the ads it would start yelling at him.
Episode is called million merits. Sits one of the first season and yes, Charlie Brooker was always on the trigger.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
IG, TikTok, Meta have a lot of data they can use to do good ad targeting that is harder to apply to Google/iOS apps. Also has to do with the ad format, placement, etc.
I get that but I’m surprised that Google doesn’t have that info too. Google’s ad biz is bigger than Meta’s.
Some formats are better than others. The Meta products comparable to GDN (audience network, various banner ad placements in its platforms) also kind of suck. Google wishes they had a feed based website, thats where people respond to direct respond ads in a big way.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do select cheap ads if they don't have any personalization data. Companies who pay for targeted ads don't want to pay for impressions on users that don't meet their criteria.
The poo ads will continue until I comply I guess.
Advertisers are generally driving this. They don't want to pay any money for someone they can't target.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spot on! My samsung TV menus are soooo much better in terms of snappiness by having Pi-Hole running and also setting up DNAT for those IoT devices who want to hardcode their DNS.
> DNAT (Destination Network Address Translation) Yes! This is easy to do on OpenBSD as well, though it's called "redirect" instead of "DNAT": pass in quick on $int_if inet proto udp to any port 53 rdr-to $dns_server port 53 pass in quick on $int_if inet proto tcp to any port 53 rdr-to $dns_server port 53
This config is surprisingly easy to read.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if your theory allows categorizing an entire industry as crap, your theory is basically unfalsifiable Or maybe, just maybe, the entire industry is crap and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem.
>and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem. If you're defining "ads" to be a "problem", then it turns the statement into a meaningless tautology. Only crappy brand use ads, because brands that use ads are crappy.
> Only crappy brand use ads, because brands that use ads are crappy.
Hey, you're starting to get it, but not quite.
Only crappy brands use ads, because ads pollute my very valuable time, my very valuable window of vision, my very valuable hearing, and my very valuable sanity in trying to stay safe against malware hiding in advertisements. That's on top of wasting my valuable money convincing me to buy things that I don't want to buy.
If a brand really wants me to use their product, then make a great product and show off its features in demos, at conferences, and it will eventually get to me by word of mouth. One friend showing me how a product has improved their life is worth at least five-figure digit counts of ads shown to me, if not six-figure counts.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#358Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#359I ditched Disqus for the exact same reason, too many ads Then I built an alternative using free Cloudflare Worker https://github.com/est/req4cmt It's a simple service that transform comment POST form data to JSON, append to a .jsonl file, then do a `git push` It renders comments by `git fetch` from a .jsonl file from a remote repo, or simply via raw.githubusercontent.com if your repo was hosted by Github. The advanta…
pardon my ignorance, but isn't there a solution that adds a Github comment box right below your post, and you comment directly with your Github account? isn't that better IF the commenter has a GH account? (if you're writing a personal tech blog, then it's not a problem, your readers are Github users already)
> and you comment directly with your Github account
Github issue or discussion based plugins require OAuth
If you look closely, some OAuth scope requires "Act on your behalf". Others require "repo" scope which means read your private data.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#360A few years back I noticed something similar and had to find an alternative, which I found in Commento, which is now unfortunately abandoned: https://www.davidbcalhoun.com/2020/ditching-disqus-migrating... I'm not sure it's worth the upkeep to have comments. Seems that mostly spammers comment, and rarely real people. I just wanted a low-maintenance commenting system and Commento seemed to work decently at the time. I…
Then you might find Talkyard interesting: https://blog-comments.talkyard.io — reminds of Disqus, in that it's threaded, best first (optionally). (I'm developing it.)
> showing some CORS error
In my case, I found it annoying when cookies gradually stopped working, and eventually I had to make the software use custom HTTP headers instead of cookies.
> Seems that mostly spammers comment
The more interesting the contents of the blog is, the more real humans will like it and post comments? (if they can find it)
But a "Our company posts something each day, even if nothing has happened" blog, or AI fluff, attracts only spammers?