Ryan's Blog

Email spam is bad, but blog spam is even worse. When a junk message arrives in your inbox, only you see it; when a junk message gets posted to your blog, anyone who visits can see it. Spammers use automated programs to post comments on blogs, partly to attract people to their sites, but mostly to improve their rankings in search engines like Google. Comment spam was so frustrating, and stopping it so elusive that I turned off comments for a year. When a new version of MovableType came out that offered better spam protection, I turned comments back on. The filtering worked, and it was good.

Nothing good lasts forever. Starting a few months ago, bunches of comments started to get through the filters. Spammers are like viruses: they adapt. Before long, I had comments all over my site that I was embarrassed to read, much less have other people reading. To give you a sense of the volume that we’re talking about, in the last three years I have received 191 legitimate comments. In the last seven days I have received 1,141 spam comments. Here’s what this last week looks like:

And if anything, the spammers are speeding up. In three years, I’ve received 17,431 spam comments, which is about 100 a week on average. In the last seven days there were over a thousand.

What to do? First, I resolved not to turn off comments again. I have slowly but surely begun attracting feedback; I don’t want to squash what little progress I have made by eliminating feedback completely. There are services that make readers sign up for an account to comment, but the associated overhead for my readers is enough to discourage activity. My default spam filters were catching 97% of junk comments, which is pretty good, but the extra 3% meant that five or six comments showed up on my site each day, most of which were X-rated. I don’t have daily access to the internet, so often comments accumulated and remained on the site for days. While 97% may be an A in school, it’s not good enough in this case. I thought I could add some observations to get my spam filters back on-track for near 100% accuracy. I went wading in the spam pool to see what I could find in the comments that were slipping through. Here are some samples.

Mr. Soma Sonic writes:

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Mr. Buy Viagra Online Plz writes:

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Mr. Online Phentermine Safe Trust writes:

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and Kathy writes:

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I noticed one common thread was some compliment, e.g. “awesome site!!”. Spammers, you flatter me. I take pride in my site, but it’s a little minnow in the giant ocean of the Internet. Awesome? You have me confused with FlashEarth. Cool? Maybe you meant Google’s GapMinder. Perfect? I can’t even comprehend the metaphysical implications of a perfect website. The truth is that I am normal, and I added a spam filter to take advantage of being average. Now every comments that contains “perfect,” “nice,” “good,” “great,” “cool,” or “awesome” followed by “site” goes right into the trash. Amazingly enough, that rule covered 252 of the 1,141 in the last week. These spammers praise early and praise often. No more; now the praise falls on deaf ears. I also blacklisted a handful of recurring words, some of which I don’t care to write here, and others like “slot machine,” “credit card,” “ambien,” “cialis,” and “hardcore.”

This was a step in the right direction, but junk comments kept trickling in even with my additions. Spam protection is an ongoing battle: once you’ve made some development to counter spammers’ tactics, spammers change them, and the race starts anew. I doubt that any spammer will read my blog and stop leaving “Great site!” comments, but certainly someday the content will change. Plus it’s a waste of my time to have to read through junk comments, trying to identify the newest common characteristics. This is ultimately why spam filters and blacklists aren’t the ideal approach. Paul Graham, a well-known programmer, explains the reasons in his seminal essay on spam protection and points to the new direction, which is spam protection based on Bayesian filtering. This means that automated systems have adaptive algorithms that continually re-evaluate what message characteristics correlate with being spam. Once a lot of people flag messages with the phrase “buy cialis” and many outgoing links, the system will learn that messages like these are likely to be spam. I signed up with Akismet, a free service that evaluates all my comments using this system and marks them as legit or spam. Since then, I haven’t received a single junk comment. As far as I can tell, no real comments have been accidentally marked as junk either.

Do your worst, spammers. I’m ready. And to those real human beings who want to leave a comment like, “Totally awesome site!!! By the way, I have cheap phentermine that I’m unloading at bargain-basement prices….,” my apologies. Chances are your message will end up in my circular file cabinet.

Posted by Ryan at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hoards of people wait to board the subway at Vicente Valdes, the first station on the green line of the Santiago subway. Imagine what it’s like at the subsequent stations.

Have you ever seen six-year-olds play soccer? If so, then you have some idea of what Chilean lines can look like. If not, I’ll describe both simultaneously: people clumped together in groups, running around, trying to get something with little regard for planning, and crammed together on the same physical point in a way that defies certain laws of physics. When it comes to complaining about line chaos in Chile, been there, done that. The subway in Santiago, however, has lifted the hilarity of lines to a new level.

The city recently debuted a new integrated transit system, Transantiago, which has been called optimistically Transanfiasco. It does little the old system didn’t while adding new hassles. To make the massively overcrowded subway less unpleasant, the company that operates it has undertaken a cultural education campaign to teach metro manners. To that end, there are now hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of this photogenic finger-pointer giving tips about using the subway. He is the director of customer relations, and he relates the following message: This is very important. Next comes one of three options: (1) don’t cross the yellow line, (2) don’t interfere with the closing doors, or (3) let others off before you board.

Really, they should have skipped the first two and focused on the third. People already know not to jump in front of moving trains, and they’re going to cram between closing doors unless you line them with razor blades. We need to put our energy where it might effect change. My recent experience tells me that people are getting better about letting others off before boarding. There are still plenty of thrown elbows and mosh-pit-like entrances onto the trains. The other day I saw one guy pull some running, flying, WWF elbow-drop on this grandma, though it turned out he was just trying to get on during rush hour. But at least people are waiting and letting others off before they pull their tricks. One part that needs clarification is where people should wait while other people disembark. I recommend changing the message to, “Let others off before you board, remembering that people can’t pass through your body like they did in that movie Ghost, so you’re going to have to wait at the sides of the doors instead of directly in front of them.” It’s wordy, but these aren’t things we can take for granted.

Special privileges for the expecting and elderly extend beyond the transit system. At the grocery store there are check-out lanes reserved for expecting mothers and members of the “third age,” the polite term for elderly here.

I digress. Although the state of lines in Chile in particular and public manners in general are still lamentable, my main point in writing today is to mention a peculiar exception. People may shove like there’s no tomorrow, but they are aggressively polite when it comes to the elderly, handicapped, and pregnant/child-carrying women. Especially the women. Someone who falls into any of these categories can except to sit down within 30 seconds of boarding even the most crowded car. The other day I was packed into a subway sardine tin when one woman shouted to a mother down the car holding a baby on her hip, “Hey, woman with the baby, take a seat here!” (I don’t want you to think I’m playing fast and loose with the translation, so check this transcript for yourself: “Oiga, señora con la guaguita, tome asiento acá.”) The mother gracefully declined, indicating that she was getting off at the next stop. On other occasions, I have taken part in a courteous version of musical chairs to rearrange seat space for a mother and children.

Sometimes these musical chair seat swaps add a bit of humanity to the cold world of city transit. Strangers are quick to help blind people using the subway. A person who can’t see have to wait mere moments before a passerby will ask where he is going, orient him, escort him onto the train, or get him a seat. Two weeks ago Caitlin saw a man offer his seat to an elderly man who had just boarded the subway car. At the next stop, an expecting woman stepped aboard. The elderly man vacated his just-acquired seat and gave it to her.

While more general courtesy would be nice, I suppose the system works out. Those of us who can fight the wild lines and crowds do, while those who could use some help get it. If we ever run into each other on the Santiago Metro, and you look like you could use some help, you can have my seat. Otherwise, prepare yourself because I throw a mean elbow.

Posted by Ryan at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is the world premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and as our community event for the week we’re going to see it. Check out these posters from all the Santiago subway stations:

Note the title in Spanish: Piratas del Caribe: En el Fin del Mundo. There are easily several dozen advertisements throughout the subway system. Makes you realize how expensive a publicity campaign can be to promote a major film release. On a side note, the director’s name, Gore Verbinski, is on my list of best names ever, alongside Rip Torn.

Posted by Ryan at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wrote before about Chile’s beloved triple-window system in stores. In a nutshell it’s this: you pick something out here, you pay for it there, and you pick it up over there. This applies to everything; I once made the triple-window circuit to buy $0.45 worth of nails. But I had only experienced my slow-lane, countryside version of the triple window. Last week I got a taste of the big-city version when I did some electronics shopping in downtown Santiago.

I don’t do much electronics shopping here in Santiago, partly because I don’t need anything, but mostly because I barely make enough each month to buy a blank CD-R. This time wasn’t for me. One of the Holy Cross sisters here asked me to buy a few things for her: a wireless router, an extension cord, and a TV antenna. I made my way to her recommended locale, Casa Royale, which despite a passing resemblance to Casino Royale, shares nothing with the glitzy Bond flick.

At Casa Royale, I picked out a wireless router. The salesperson printed out my receipt and directed me across the store to the second window. I snaked through the crowd, eventually making my way to a line in the back where I exchanged money for a stamp on my receipt that said “PAID.” Then I joined a herd of customers at a third location awaiting the delivery of their purchases.

The delivery system was especially ludicrous. The three men working the counter had specialization of labor down pat. One man madly stuffed purchases into plastic bags and taped receipts to the side. This man is the bag stuffer. The other two men took customers’ stamped receipts, seemingly at random, and proceeded to search all the plastic bags for the one with the corresponding receipt. “That one’s mine! That one’s mine!” the man next to me shouted as he saw the bag stuffer package his purchase. No luck—the bag stuffer cannot be responsible for delivery. Everyone waits his turn, buddy.

Eventually I got my package, and that would be the end of the story were I a smart man. But the Casa Royale is a much more extensive electronics store than I had bothered to imagine. They also sell extension cords. I walked to that section of the store, talked with a salesperson, and repeated the whole process for my second purchase. Just as I was about to leave, I spotted TV antennas. For some inexplicable reason—maybe I was particularly off my electronics-purchasing game that day—I hadn’t even thought to look for the antenna when I went back for the extension cord.

I dragged my embarrassed self to the salesperson managing the antenna department. As the salesperson was printing out my pre-receipt, I thought about lowering my voice and bargaining with him in hushed tones. Look, you’ve got that antenna, right? And there’s the price tag right there. Now don’t tell anybody, but I got some money right here in my pocket. And it’s just enough to pay for that antenna. How abouts I give you the money and you give me the antenna? I mean, nothing wrong going on here. Me just giving you some money, you just giving me the goods. Waddaya say?

But I didn’t want to be kicked out of the store. Instead, I made my way through the system for the third time. Triple-window, you win this round.

Posted by Ryan at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I began work this week with an NGO called Fundación Contigo. Contigo, which means “with you” in Spanish, is an organization that works with microcredit and job training to improve people’s quality of life. Microcredit as a formal system is a relatively new development, and it has become more well known in the last several years. In fact last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner was Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh, who won the prize for his application of microcredit in his country.

The concept of microcredit is essentially to loan small sums of money to entrepreneurial individuals or groups who could otherwise not receive loans from banks. These loans allow people to engage in self-employment and run small businesses. It has been especially helpful in developing countries where, for example, lack of $100 in supplies prevents an individual from entering the market. With startup help through microcredit loans, people who couldn’t participate in the economy can.

So far work with Fundación Contigo is very interesting. I went on a couple site visits Tuesday with loan assessors to visit clients and fill out paperwork for new loan requests. Both places were tailor shops, and both women (microcredit is often lauded for allowing women more opportunities) were looking to purchase an extra industrial sewing machine to augment their capacity. One woman manufactured furniture coverings, the other fleece baby outfits (which she said sold like hotcakes at the local market).

My first two projects at the foundation are to redesign the website and research a microfundraising campaign. In the case of the website, I feel up to the task. I’m already developing our strategy to organize and develop the content. For the microfundraising campaign, we’re investigating the possibility of asking a large number of companies (200-300) for a small donation (instead of vice-versa) to further microcredit work. Raúl, the manager of Contigo, says that volunteers should feel that they get to know the organization and how microcredit works during their time there. That’s a great attitude for a volunteer like me interesting in learning about the workings of the system.

According to the Chinese proverb, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Although you might infer that teaching a man to fish is better than giving him fish, both are necessary components of social work; you need to eat today while you learn to fish for tomorrow. It’s dangerous in only seeing one of the two components because it can lead to despair or hopelessness. If you’re always working with people on the ground, solving immediate problems, it’s easy to think the problems will never end, or that society will never change. On the other hand, if you’re always working for structural reform, you can loose touch with the people who need help and lose your motivation for the work in the first place.

Here in Chile I’ve done plenty fish-giving, or help to alleviate the current situation. Last year some of the things were working with girls in the foster home, in the soup kitchen, or visiting the nursing home. I’m still involved in that this year. With the move to Santiago I started working in a meals-on-wheels program run by a Holy Cross brother. Working with Fundación Contigo should be an opportunity to see some work at a higher structural level. Certainly loans serve an immediate need, but there is also some view of more long-term change. I’m looking forward to my Tuesdays and Wednesdays with Contigo.

Posted by Ryan at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some years ago Photoshop entered the public consciousness. Before, it was known only by the designers and photographers who used it. These days everyone knows about Photoshop and expects it to work retouching miracles. Photoshop’s ubiquity has come at the cost of increased wariness of photos’ credibility. Now when you see a beautiful or impressive photograph you wonder how much is reality and how much is digital magic.

Once you have used Photoshop for awhile, it’s easy to recognize certain tell-tale signs that something has been added or changed. At many postcard stands in Chile you can find cards from Alex Huber. The first time I saw one I was all but certain that it had been Photoshopped. I thought the moon in this photo had been added.

The giveaway is that the moon is far too large in the picture. Unless you use a long telephoto lens, the moon appears tiny in photos. And when you use such a lens, you can’t get the panoramic perspective that you see in this picture.

Want more proof? It turns out that Huber has a moon fetish. Here are some more of his postcards that also have unrealistically large moons in them.

OK, so Huber loves the moon. To a less scrutinizing eye, though, it could just be that he is exceptionally skilled moon photographer. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that these aren’t just postcards with digitally-added moons; they’re photos that have the exact same digitally-added moon. Look at these enlarged sections of the moon in each picture.

Though the size and brightness vary in the photos, the shading of the moon in each is identical. Looking back at two of the photos, you can see that highlights have been added to the water to show the reflecting moonlight.

Clearly we have varying expectations about when photos can be changed. Photos in the New York Times are subject to different standards than photos on the cover of Vogue. This is why the L.A. Times photographer who changed his Iraq photo got fired, while designers at ad agencies get paid to change photos in similar ways. We expect new photos not to be changed while we expect cover models to be retouched out of reality— or at least it doesn’t surprise us.

Postcards probably fall somewhere in between. The ideal is to depict a real scene or event, something you could have seen if only you had been there, but also something that is visually attractive. For that reason, retouching and compositing multiple photos are sometimes necessary. As a matter of honesty, if something has been changed, the card should indicate somewhere that it is a composite photograph. On this count Huber is headed in the right direction. One of the five cards shown here credits him with “photo and digital post-production.” The other four do not.

Another option would be to make the retouching so obvious that no one would ever believe the photo hasn’t been retouched. Here’s another Huber moon classic that takes that approach:

But then you have a new problem: your postcard is ugly. Well, you can’t win them all.

I’ve got all these moon postcards lying around now, so the first six people who leave comments will receive an Alex Huber postcard from Chile. I’ll contact you for your mailing address.

Posted by Ryan at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)