The first-party premier Simplenote native apps for Android, iOS, and macOS are now fully open source. I’m very proud of the team for this, and excited that the broader Simplenote community can now see behind the scenes of how things are developing with the app, which remains one of my personal favorites across every platform. What’s Simplenote? It’s the easiest way to have your plain text notes synced instantly across every device and browser you use.
Wharf to Wharf Race Time-lapse Video
Caught a time-lapse from the first runners to some of the last walkers, and a cool band “The Noisy Neighbors” playing for this year’s Wharf to Wharf race in Santa Cruz. Video is about 23 seconds, if you look closely you can see the front-runners at the very beginning.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
I found this poem through the Search Within Yourself book, in which I’ve enjoyed learning about mindfulness in a business context. I found this poem online here.
Mortgaging your site to a closed-standards vendor gives them, not you, the economic power.
Another Matt from Alley ruminates on Medium’s uncertain future for publishers. I agree that these first couple of publishers probably got a good deal: better than free, they’re guaranteed money regardless of whether Medium makes money or not.
In making the decision to hitch their horse to Medium’s wagon while fording a river, they’re probably betting on Medium not going out of business, which I agree there’s only like a 10% chance of happening. However I think there is a 97% chance that Medium’s business model will change in the future because the path they’re on and these publishers are dependent on will not sustain their current costs or the investment they’ve raised.
It’s an old one, but I love this story about how part of what psyched Kasparov out, and possibly turned the tide, in his famous chess match against Deep Blue was actually a bug.
I’m really happy about the feature in today’s new 4.1 release of Jetpack that streamlines logging in with your WordPress.com account. When this is finished it’ll completely protect you from brute force attacks (and server load), and you can secure one login with two-factor for all your sites rather than maintaining dozens of user/pass combinations for all your WordPresses.
Posted from the WordPress.com Mac app.
It’s a time-tested strategy for social networks to pay influential early adopters to use their service, in the hopes of convincing regular folks to create content on it for free.
Mark Armstrong asks you to think about What to Consider When the Platforms Show Up with Money.
Jenna Wortham has a good piece on How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History, bringing together some interesting threads from Keith Haring to quantum mechanics. This is part of the reason I’ve been fascinated by the inter-planetary file system, which I mentioned on stage at WordCamp Europe on Friday.
First Father’s Day
This is my first father’s day without my father. His memories and spirit have been very present with me the past week, but today is still tough. Miss you, Dad, and I will continue to try and make you proud.
Dave Winer has a great blog post, Your human-size life which covers wealth, success, happiness, and Peter Thiel. Hat tip: Toni.
WordPress is a Teenager
Thirteen years ago, building on the work of Michel and B2, Mike and I pushed the button on the first-ever release of WordPress. That means it’s now a teenager, which is blowing my mind similar to what I imagine real parents might feel at this stage. We now have 5-7 years of awkwardness and incredible growth to look forward to.
Good to keep in mind, especially as you’re making data-informed product decisions:
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Stephen Hawking
Anker has come out with a pretty cool new USB charger that also supports USB PD, which is the USB-C power delivery standard which means it can fully power a Macbook. So you can take the USB-C cable that came with your Macbook and use this instead of the white brick that Apple makes and other things as well, so fewer things to travel with. It will of course charge any USB-C devices like your Nexus phone super fast as well. I really hope everything uses USB-C PD in the future
If you’re looking for a fun Friday read, check out this story of a young GQ writer who gave control of his Tinder account to his Mom. It’s adorkable.
.Blog
It’s now public that Automattic is the company behind Knock Knock Whois There LLC, the registry for the new .blog TLD. (And a great pun.) We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention, but nonetheless the cost of the .blog auction got up there (people are estimating around $20M). I’m excited we won and think that it will be both an amazing business going forward and give lots of folks an opportunity to have a fantastic domain name in a new namespace and with an easy-to-say TLD. You can sign up to be first in line to reserve a domain here. If you have a trademark you can get in August, and then October for the “land rush.”
Marco Arment has a great take on how the decentralized nature of podcasting is a feature, not a bug, and Apple being more proactive there would be harmful to the ecosystem. As an aside, since I’ve been in Houston more recently, which means driving a lot, I’ve been really loving his app Overcast and I opted in to the optional paid subscription for it. I just need to get in more of a habit of listening to podcasts outside of Houston.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
This quote is almost always attributed to Buddha. Luckily there’s a great WordPress site called Fake Buddha Quotes that tracks down its actual provenance.
ESPN has a fascinating longread on The Secret History of Tiger Woods, especially in the context of his relationship with and the death of his father.
The economic uncertainty surrounding basic income is huge, and the politics of bringing such a program about on a large scale are daunting. But something makes this radical proposal so exciting that people and governments are increasingly willing to try it. Basic income challenges our notions of the social safety net, the relationship between work and income, and how to adapt to technological change. That makes it one of the most audacious social policy experiments in modern history. It could fail disastrously, or it could change everything for the better.
From FiveThirtyEight, What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?