*I've hired a new guy to manage the hundreds of comments here on BEYOND THE BEYOND. Actually, our budget here is mighty shallow, so I didn't exactly "hire" him. He works for free. That's because he's underage. He's a 13-year-old cyberpunk sci-fi fan from Italy, but he's a regular reader of the blog here, and seems to have a lot of spare time on his hands.
*Italo's brief is to look at all the comments, and to instantly and permanently delete "anything that looks stupid."
*There will be no appeal from Italo's editorial decisions. Unless you want to take on the job of comments management yourself. I am perfectly willing to let you do that: BUT YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY ME FOR IT. That's my new freemium model: in order to edit the comments here (so as to advance your blistering partisan agenda, presumably), YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY ME. Yes, pay me A LOT, like five thousand dollars a year for a twelve-seat BtB blog-editing license. Then all twelve of you can enjoy your committee debates.
*Genius scheme, eh?
*I know know this inventive freemium policy is a little unusual by corny, old-fashioned blogging standards, but so is the blog here. It the policy seems unjust, please feel entirely free never to comment on anything ever.
*It would appear by the following report that Twitter was blasted off the Internet for hours yesterday by Russian wingnuts in pursuit of one, single, lousy Georgian partisan blogger. Apparently the Russki kids rounded up a major leftover Stormy botnet someplace, and just blasted any global service anywhere that was remotely connected to this guy.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10305200-245.html
*I frankly don't believe this report, although it has a certain dorky plausibility, especially if the perpetrators were under the age of 17. It sure is a great way to attract a lot of attention to an obscure Georgian blogger. If I somehow put it around that Twitter had been crushed "in order to silence Bruce @bruces Sterling," I'd have five million Twitter followers by Sunday.
PS: The twitter-crusher "lone gunman theory." Not buying this either.
https://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/is-a-psychopath-attacking-twitter-and-facebook/
