Hi Derek Kerton

Solve media, our captcha option that prevents us from being inundated by spam, while still leaving comments open to any reader passing by without requiring any sign-ups anywhere, should not be requiring flash at all, and I can not explain why it seems to have done so on your setup since I'm not driving your computer/device.
We're not a fan of the recent "lets close comments all-together" trend that so many publications have opted for, Solve has been our most effective help in culling spam, and works seamlessly on all kinds of devices.

Registered adgrunts (members) never see ads at all, and never have. Well, except the ones we want to watch. ;) They also don't see the captcha.

Looking forward to you returning in a few months to share your findings on the numbers of readers of Techdirt who whitelist Techdirt in Adblock, and the increase in Techdirts ad revenue. That will be a most interesting case study and I encourage you, or Mike Masnick since he's the founder and wrote the original piece, to share those numbers once some time has passed. Lots of people would be very interested to see the results of this, not just us ad-people. Cheerio!