Category Archives: Asides

Interesting links.

Are you a WordPresser?

Asides

You might be a WordPresser if…

  • You like to have freedom and control over all your software.
  • You don’t mind taking a bit more time to invest in tools that give you agency.
  • You like inserting little opportunities for joy in everyday interfaces.
  • You want future generations to grow up with a free and open web.
  • You like to tinker, hack, mod, customize, and share what you learn.
  • You are impeccable with your word.
  • You think software should have a little soul in it.
  • You love giving other people superpowers, teaching them not to need you anymore.
  • You appreciate a good plan but want to be able to color outside the lines, or completely reimagine the canvas altogether.
  • You think technology is best when it brings people together.
  • You get excited by updates.
  • You want your corner of the web to truly be yours, not generic or commoditized slop.
  • Your friends come to you to learn about new stuff.
  • You leave things better than you find them.
  • You fix things as you find them, it’s never someone else’s problem.
  • You know a single comment can light up someone’s day.
  • You’ve gotten out of the house to meet other people into WordPress.
  • There’s a Wapuu item or sticker somewhere in your life.
  • You “view source.”
  • You know the difference between owning your content and being a digital sharecropper.
  • You’ve drunkenly registered a domain, and have more domains than websites.
  • You’ve snuck an easter egg in a slug.
  • You have a Gravatar, and it’s also a museum of all your email identities over the years.
  • You think code can be poetry.

If you identified with two or more of these statements, I am afraid to inform you might be classified as a WordPresser. What did I miss?

The New Yorker is always good, but they’re having a bit of a victory lap as they celebrate their centennial. This article on the vaunted fact-checkers is such a delight, with so many in-jokes and back references it’s hard to keep track.

When I started WordPress, I wrote down five publications that I hoped someday we’d make software so good they’d adopt it. The New Yorker is one of them. If you enjoy words that make your brain tingle, make sure to also follow Automattic’s publications, Longreads and Atavist.

It’s a busy speaking season! I just spoke at the Intelligent Change summit, and will be at SaaStock in Austin on May 14, SXSW London, on June 4, Brilliant Minds in Stockholm, and WordCamp EU in Basel, Switzerland, on June 7.

It’s so funny that my random re-engagement with Radiohead re-emergence coincides with them doing a new entity that might mean something. I did a poll on Twitter and people preferred OK Computer to Kid A 78%!

Grok told me: “The band has recently registered a new limited liability partnership (LLP) named RHEUK25, which includes all five members—Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, and Philip Selway. This move is notable because Radiohead has historically created similar business entities before announcing new albums, tours, or reissues.”

WordCamp Asia and Maha Kumbh Mela

Asides

It’s been fantastic being in the Philippines for this year’s WordCamp Asia. We have attendees from 71 countries, over 1,800 tickets sold, and contributor day had over 700 people! It’s an interesting contrast to US and EU WordCamps as well in that the audience is definitely a lot younger, and there’s very little interest in “wpdrama” du jour, in fact I’ve had tons of amazing conversations of support and talking about the strength and growth of the community.

Some of the earliest international WordCamps I went to were in Manila and Davao, back in 2008. (I’m going to share some pictures at the start of my talk.) Between that and spending lots of time in Daly City when I moved to San Francisco when I was 20 I have developed a fondness for the cuisine, creativity, family orientation, and warmth of the culture here.

After this I’ll be taking a bit of time off for a trip to the big Hindu religious pilgrimage in India, the Maha Kumbh Mela, which is currently on a 144 cycle. It’s the largest human gathering in the world, with some days measured with tens of millions of people visiting. I’ll be returning to my Photomatt roots as well and bringing my big camera rig, right now a Nikon Z 7II, and two lenses: 24-70 2.8 and 70-200 2.8.

In high school when 5% of your class doesn’t like you it’s like 3-5 people.

Running a company of 1,700+ when 5% doesn’t like you, that’s 85 people! That fills a room.

150k followers and 5% don’t like you now you have a small stadium of 7,500 people.

It’s still 5%.

Boom & Deepseek

What an exciting time to be alive. I was hipped to Deepseek by Andrej Kaparthy’s tweet the day after Christmas, it was clear then that something big had happened and that it was truly open source and open weights (not this fake Llama stuff). It’s been fun to see the rest of the world catch up to it, and how radically accessible and deployable these models will be for people to hack on. I don’t have any comment on public markets or stocks.

The other super inspiring thing today was Boom’s first supersonic flight. It’s worth watching the video. We’re 4-5 years away from halving flight times with supersonic flight. In that same timeframe we might have something even more dramatic from SpaceX, like Houston to Tokyo in 30 minutes. Really cool to see the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation around all of these things. It’s tempting to get distracted by drama (WPE and legal battles), but there’s such freedom and joy in just continuing to build, to engineer, to solve problems. I’m so grateful I get to do so every day with such incredible colleagues at Automattic.

Age-gating

Asides

I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer.

See also: Australia’s Senate bans social media for kids under 16. But there are lots of other less controversial examples, like adult websites, or ordering alcohol online or through an app.

Carmack & Rogan

I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on YouTube again, which means the gems from the archives can now pop up. I was alerted to this conversation between Joe Rogan and John Carmack, and it’s pure gold. I know I’m five years late in watching this, but that makes it even better because it’s so prescient. Joe asks amazing, in-depth questions that reveal deep domain knowledge, and it sparks John Carmack to make observations that are quite wise. No filler. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see both Joe and John being absolutely right. This is one of my favorite podcast episodes ever.

It was a huge pain in the butt, because my mail-in ballot didn’t register properly, but I found a last-minute flight to Houston and this morning walked over to Congregation Emanu El and voted. It is our most sacred duty as a citizen. I encourage every American to vote.