I'm only bringing this up because there's a new WordPress 2.3.3 exploit that's as-yet unpatched. So far it seems to only affect blogs with open registration, but no one's yet sure what exploit is being targetted. So far the only stopgap solution is to create a directory in wp-content/ called 1/, and set the permissions to 000, using an FTP program:

While you're in there, you should also make sure your wp-content/ directory is set to 755, and you should set wp-content/index.php to 444, since the exploit seems to replace that file as well.

Defensio launched their public beta today. I've been part of the private beta for a couple months now, after openly criticizing Akismet. Defensio is a similar tool, so it does fall prey to the same "wisdom of crowds" weaknesses. Defensio's usability far outstrips SK21 and Akismet2, and the launch of the website improves it a bit. Now there's an RSS feed for my spam. Granted, that's a little strange, but it's better than SK2's digest emails, which untrain google's filters by passing along spam content inside legitimate emails. I like having a choice in anti-spam measures, and especially one that's upfront about its accuracy, and that's cognizant of the need to police your own quarantine. Here's a couple screenshots to give you an idea of what it looks like:

1. gouge my eyes out ugly
2. requires plugins upon plugins to be usable

For a second, i thought it might be an overzealous supporter, leaving a real comment on an unrelated entry (i delete those, but don't feed them to akismet). Then I looked at the post the comment was attached to: urbanlab. The post is unremarkable, save one thing:

It has the lowest post ID on my blog. Only a bot would dig through my blog that way. any human would have commented on the most recent post.

So as for the question of whether Ron Paul is spamming digg? I have no doubt that he is, and that his "supporters" are using bots to do it, thinking they're doing him a favor. Although this does put me in the awkward position of agreeing with rush limbaugh.

web 2.0, meet political graft. This will be the year that online political polls show up DOA. unless they start feeding poll results to akismet.

<span class="jsmail"><!--
document.write("<a href='mailto:put your scrambled address here' class='jsmail'> wp-admin [at] archgfx [dot] net</a>"))
// --> 

</script>

</span>

I also changed the 'contact us!' text to a human readable, but not copyable version of the email address. Now, get your email turned into an image, and we're going to use the image in CSS, so that even if a real person is browsing the site with javascript disabled, they'll still see the email address:

.jsmail {

display: block;

width: 129px;

height: 11px;

background: url('http://safemail.justlikeed.net/e/dd6330802be7d20f41dc95336e2acbfa.png') no-repeat 0 0;

text-indent: -9000px;

}

i like it. it's not completely accessible, but it's pretty good. it's reliable, and it won't be confusing to people with older browsers or strict security settings. Here's an example.

WordPress Planet is not core functionality. It's frilly, extra, bloat.

If you're trying to simplify the wordpress admin area, start here. I've left the admin panel alone because it's never been worth the effort to hack a core file, or install a plugin to get rid of stuff. plugins should be for adding functionality. Now it's worth it because some idiot jesus freak thinks it's okay to preach at people from the WTC.

Looks like i'll be subscribing to Alex, Owen, and the other developers who have a sense of propriety in my RSS reader now. I would have thought after the mike little birthday incident, you would have the sense to tell your freaky religious zealot friends to keep their spammy preaching to themselves.

UPDATE:

due to x-Dashboard looking ugly(er) in Tiger Admin (it doesn't use the #zeitgeist div, so the sidebar doesn't float properly), I hacked /wp-admin/index.php to show feeds from Ozh's Planet wordpress. (he has the good sense to only syndicate the wp-plugins category from WTC, hence, no jesus.