Mullenweg Criticized for 1st Amendment Claims Mullenweg on Sunday published a blog post claiming that WP Engine’s lawsuit against him and Automattic is an attempt to “curtail” his “First Amendment rights.” He wrote: “WP Engine has filed hundreds pages of legal documents seeking a … | Continue reading
Oh god oh god the NHS Change project has a website where members of the public can suggest ideas for the NHS AND ALL OF THEM ARE BEING PUBLISHED. At least one “idea” is a scene from “The Thick of It”. change.nhs.uk/en-GB/pro… | Continue reading
Opinion | I ran Twitter’s civic integrity team. Elon Musk knows nothing about how elections are run.: Musk also called it “weird” that Dominion voting machines were supposedly uncommon in much of the country, but used in key precincts like Philadelphia and Arizona’s Maricopa Coun … | Continue reading
Regarding our Cease and Desist letter to Automattic | WP Fusion: The events of the past month have made me realize a few things: I don’t trust Matt. Matt doesn’t appear to be taking advice from legal counsel. Always defend your trademarks. With those points in mind we sent a ceas … | Continue reading
Fashion Renagades of 80s London, at the Fashion + Textile Museum. | Continue reading
Samantha Cole at 404 Media – Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos: In July, before the latest WP Engine blowup, an Automattic employee wrote in Slack that they received a direct message from Mullenweg sending them an identi … | Continue reading
Dan Gillmor on Dave Winer’s 30 years of blogging: I became a blogger because of Dave. So, in a sense, did I. The first blogging platform I used was Radio Userland, which Dave created. I moved on to web-based blogging applications — first Blogger, I think, then Movable Type — but … | Continue reading
Matt Mullenweg and WordPress Hijack the Advanced Custom Fields Plugin – Pixel Envy It is nearly impossible to get me to feel sympathetic for anything touched by private equity, but Mullenweg has done just that. He really is burning all goodwill for reasons I cannot quite understa … | Continue reading
Because I might be moving from WordPress to Micro.blog, I have imported all the posts from my main domain – so if I do switch off WordPress, nothing will be lost (although there might be a bit of redirecting to be done…) | Continue reading
This was probably about the time that I first discovered Linux. It looks very old-fashioned now, but at the time, GNOME was pretty comparable to Windows and (pre-OS X) macOS. | Continue reading
An IndieWeb reader: My new home on the internet • Aaron Parecki People on blogs feel slightly less performative than people on big social networks. Yes! This! I wonder why, though. | Continue reading
With the current lack of trust over Mat Mullenweg’s stewardship of WordPress, I’m investigating whether I can use Micro.blog as an alternative. | Continue reading
1. Well who could possibly have seen this coming? I wrote a while ago that the era of major levels of affiliate revenue for publishers was going to come to an end within the next three to five years. Generative AI writing means both that Google is likely to become a sea of slop, … | Continue reading
1. Apple’s built in apps can do (almost) everything One of the characteristics of hardcore nerdery is the tendency to over engineer your systems. People spend a lot of time creating systems, tinkering with them, making them as perfect as possible, only to abandon them a few years … | Continue reading
1. Inventing the future If there is a book about Apple, I have probably read it. On my first day working at the company in 1989 I was given the obligatory copy of then-CEO John Sculley’s Odyssey: From Pepsi to Apple. After that, I devoured as much as I could. I don’t think I have … | Continue reading
QuickTime My first look at QuickTime came before it was publicly released. I was working at Apple in IS&T in 1990, and we had a session one afternoon showing everyone the world of the future. Of course, Knowledge Navigator took pride of place, but also shown off was an early vers … | Continue reading
1. Oh was there some new Apple stuff? Apparently there was. I didn’t get chance to watch the keynote live — I was in Amsterdam for a conference — but the only thing that really stood out for me when I saw it later was the feature for AirPods Pro which allows them to function as a … | Continue reading
I have always felt at home in hospitals. As a small child, my mother - a psychiatric nurse - would take me to work with her on Wednesdays, to collect her wages. Back then your wage was weekly, and came in an envelope full of actual money, rather than direct into a bank. Often she … | Continue reading
John Gruber on the EU ruling that Apple owes 13bn euro in taxes to Ireland: Ireland doesn’t want the money... What a great win for Margrethe Vestager, making clear to the world that the EU is hostile to successful companies. Good job. Ireland has long had a reputation as, effecti … | Continue reading
I could – and probably should – write an entire essay about the cult of the founder in Silicon Valley, how it developed and the damage it has done. This article from Dave Karpf, though, encapsulates some of my own thinking. Contrasting Aaron Swartz and Sam Altman – both members o … | Continue reading
Dave Winer (who really should know better): Graham uses Steve Jobs as an example. He knew what was and wasn't an Apple product. A hired CEO would have to have that explained to him. Sculley, who Graham cites, is a perfectly nice person in my experience, had no idea how to deal wi … | Continue reading
A 1600, a group of English merchants were granted a royal charter, a legal document which allowed them to venture to foreign lands and seek trade. This was a big bet: not only were the territories they aimed to trade in a long way from England, dangerous to get to and occupied by … | Continue reading
1. Model collapse isn’t just for AI When a large language model starts to ingest a lot of content written by either itself or other large language models, it falls into what’s called model collapse: a state where, like a snake eating its own tail, it no longer makes sense. Back w … | Continue reading
1. The smartest comment you will read about AI and art this week From the wonderful Laurie Anderson, about an AI version of her late husband, Lou Reed: “I mean, people might have black-and-white photographs of their grandparents or even a VR representation, but nothing can captur … | Continue reading
1. Just because we killed you doesn't make us liable Dr. Kanokporn Tangsuan died after eating a meal at a Disney resort. Her family claims this is down to an allergic reaction after the restaurant allegedly failed to label their food properly. So far, so tragic — but tragic in a … | Continue reading
1. IBM 1956 = Google 2024 (and Apple, and Microsoft, and and and) As I've noted before, you are likely to read an awful lot of bad punditry about Apple's cases with the EC/DOJ in the next few months/years. But you're likely to hear a lot of even worse punditry about the judgement … | Continue reading
Yeah, this one is late. I'm doing some extra work, OK? Anyway, onward. 1. Nerdy. Very nerdy First something nerdy. Very nerdy. Of course, it’s from Howard Oakley, which is both the man who knows more about the Mac than anyone outside Cupertino and one of the world’s leading exper … | Continue reading
Eric Seufert, on Threads: Regarding Taboola’s partnership with Apple: I’ve seen people claim that this is somehow hypocritical from a privacy perspective, assuming that Taboola’s somewhat obnoxious, clickbait-style ads must invasively target user profiles and browsing histories.T … | Continue reading
1. Oh come on, Apple Back when Apple changed its app guidelines to permit emulators and HTML 5-based mini games it looked like the dawning of just a little bit of light in Cupertino. Completely coincidentally these changes were made just before the DOJ case at which this kind of … | Continue reading
I wouldn’t say that Apple using Taboola is going to make me rethink my Apple usage, but it’s definitely an indication that “we focus on user experience” now very much takes a back seat to “we would like to make more money” om.co/2024/07/1… | Continue reading
Jack Dorsey, Bluesky, decentralised social networks and the very common crowd – Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: There’s a kind of person who is the reason that blocks and bans exist. They’re also the ones who argue loudest that blocking is evil, and you’ll be stuck in a filter … | Continue reading
1. Couldn’t happen to a nicer billionaire What’s interesting about the European Commission’s charges against Twitter (which I refuse to call X because it’s a stupid name) is the focus on the blue checks' policy. Everyone knew this was a bad idea driven solely by Musk’s hatred of … | Continue reading
1. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you Surprise! The use of energy-intensive AI to make stupid graphics that look instantly like AI and write words that it would take you five minutes to right have pushed Microsoft's greenhouse gas emissions up by 30% since 2020 and Google's up 48% s … | Continue reading
1. Oh Perplexity, why must you test me so? I have been a big proponent of Perplexity for a while, mostly because I found it incredibly useful as a research tool. Turns out the reason it was useful as a research tool was it was scraping a load of data that it shouldn’t, pretending … | Continue reading
That time in the 90s I persuaded a Japanese film crew that my friend was Richard Branson, inadvertently foreshadowing the “geek pie” incident in “Nathan Barley”. | Continue reading
I’m sure that Nick Bostrom’s move from AI doomer to “maybe AI is going to save us” has absolutely nothing to do with AI making a lot of money for people who he wants to fund him. www.wired.com/story/nic… | Continue reading
This sounds bad, but kudos to Dropbox for being transparent about it – and from what they say it sounds like other services (i.e. storage) were not affected. www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/secu… | Continue reading
One of these days I am going to have to write up how I’ve turned Obsidian into the best environment for writing I’ve ever used. Today is not going to be that day though. | Continue reading
Informed Consent and Privacy – Pixel Envy: Meta is probably one of the more agreeable players in this racket, too. It hoards data; it does not share much of it. And it has a brand to protect. Data brokers are far worse because nobody knows who they are or what they collect, share … | Continue reading
A History of United States v. Microsoft – Pixel Envy: In other words, how much is it okay for a first party to advantage themselves over third parties? If there is a line, where should it be, and who should establish it? There is obviously deep resistance to government interventi … | Continue reading
Someone’s post just reminded me about “Will it blend?” and now I want to go back and watch things blending. | Continue reading
Daring Fireball: Apple Terminated Epic’s E.U. Developer Account: I guess Epic is implying that the EU government, not Apple, should have that discretion? They don’t say so, but who else but Apple could have that discretion? But the European Commission isn’t set up for that sort o … | Continue reading
Craig Grannell on Apple’s u-turn on web apps: Apple has performed a screeching U-turn on killing web apps, perhaps because the European Commission publicly stated there was no need for Apple to scrap them in the first place. Oh dear. I look forward to certain (mostly US) commenta … | Continue reading
9to5Mac: Apple has also confirmed that it will charge a commission on purchases made through alternative payment platforms. This commission will be 12% for developers who are a member of the App Store Small Business Program and 27% for other apps. The commission will apply to “p … | Continue reading
Finally, A Grocery Cart That Can Save Me From The Horror Of An Ad-Free Moment Of Existence | Defector: This is one of those new technologies that’s useful primarily as a viewfinder on a dismal present and a future determined to be even more miserable. Nobody anywhere will like th … | Continue reading
Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (08 Dec 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow: In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NE … | Continue reading