Forty!

Birthday

Birthdays are so great because they’re about generosity.

The act of giving, helping, is so generative.

It’s what we can all do for ourselves and each other.

But accepting is really hard, too! Gosh! Let it in.

Sometimes we don’t let the gifts in.

Approaching forty has felt impossibly light and heavy at the same time for me.

It’s so cool to be typing this into something we made together. I want you to really think about that. Ponder the enormity of all that came before that allowed you to be here today, and I want you to get a little bit excited, in that sacred hidden part of your heart that yearns for more.

Let’s keep doing that. And let’s make it better and share it so everyone can enjoy it. We make the world.

I’ve been enjoying so much all the posts coming in for the birthday gift. I’m reading them as fast as I can.

Specifically, my failure mode is I share too much. I’m too generous. I like to err on the side of open. Here’s some amazing code I wrote that you have a legal license to use however you like. If you ask those closest to me how I mess up, it’s that I over-extend myself and try to do too much.

I’ve never shared this publicly, but when the Bay Lights wasn’t going to make it the first time, I mortgaged my apartment and used that money to get it over the line. My personal finances were messy for years after that. I think a lot about being impeccable with my word.

I want people to give the smallest $10 donation to the Bay Lights and encourage others to do the same so that we can all share in feeling that together, we can build things. And every time you see the light or bridge or think of San Francisco, you’ll think of that sacred hidden part of your heart that yearns for more, wants to leave everything better than you found it.

Add some light.

Let the gift in.

This is the part where the sounds come in and you hear it’s the remix.

I find myself returning, again and again, to the Automattic Creed, especially the first line:

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

I’m having the most amazing day reading everything that people are sharing. I want to re-share the quote I shared on Tim’s podcast from Will Durant:

Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.

All birthday posts: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.

Sonos Tip

Automattic

If you’re obsessed with Sonos like I am, a nice MacOS utility is the Menu Bar Controller. Hat tip to Mike Tatum, who happened to be the gentleman who convinced my parents it was okay for me to drop out of college and move to San Francisco to take a job at CNET. Mike’s now at Sonos and in October arranged for some top execs at Automattic to go to Santa Barbara to meet with their peers at Sonos, and Patrick Spence and I did a joint CEO town hall that was broadcast to both of our companies. It was I think fascinating for both sides because of a shared passion for craft, design, culture, and execution, but our companies are in no way competitive, so it allowed for a lot of transparency. I learned a ton, and I think that kind of sharing is what increases the mimetic evolutionary speed of companies.

Atoms are hard! I think I’ll stick mostly to bits.

Back With Tim

press

I returned on the podcast with my good friend Tim Ferriss, by my count the sixth time we’ve recorded together, but the very first time we did it in video! Tim asked me to bring five things I’m excited about, five things I’ve changed my mind on in the past few years, and five things that are absurd or ridiculous but I still do, and that ended up being a pretty fun anchor for a two-and-a-half hour conversation, which you can watch here:

Or listen to on Pocket Casts or any podcast player, thanks to open standards:

I ended up having more than five things for each list, especially the excited one, but tried to edit it down. This was a very vulnerable and personal conversation for me, which I think was possible because we’ve known each other so long at this point and Tim made it really easy and fun to open up. We discuss everything from open source to kids to my upcoming sabbatical.

Coincidentally, this was episode 713, which is the original area code for Houston! We didn’t plan that but I think that’s so cool. I’m also going to watch his episode with Kevin Rose who he’s also very close with, I always learn new stuff from those two.

Birthday Gift

Birthday

It’s true, it’s true, I turn forty years old in ten days.

What do you get the guy who has everything?

I admit I’m not the easiest to shop for, I can be quite particular in my preferences of this cable versus that one, but the good news is the gift I most want for my 40th is something everyone can do.

I want you to blog.

Publish a post. About anything! It can be long or short, a photo or a video, maybe a quote or a link to something you found interesting. Don’t sweat it. Just blog. Share something you created, or amplify something you enjoyed. It doesn’t take much. The act of publishing will be a gift for you and me.

That’s what I want for my birthday. If you link to this post and use WordPress the Pingback system will notify me about your post and it will show up in the comment stream, but I’m okay even if you don’t use WordPress, just post something and send me a link. You can start a free site on Tumblr or get a domain that can be your home on the internet with WP.com.

You’ve got ten days! After the 11th I’ll close the comments and pingbacks on this post. But I’m so curious to read what people write.

That’s it! No wrapping paper or bows. Just blogs and blogs and blogs, each unique and beautiful in its own way. (Oh! And put $10 toward the Bay Lights so we can get the contributor number as high as possible.)

Books 2020–2023

Books

I’m a few years behind in posting my book lists, and past few years a good amount of my book reading time shifted to other mediums. I have been rediscovering the joy of books so here’s what I read the past few years as a motivation to myself to pick it up more in 2024.

2020

  1. The Gift by Hafiz
  2. I hope this reaches her in time by r.h. Sin
  3. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
  4. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
  5. Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy
  6. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
  7. Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
  8. High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
  9. The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
  10. What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz
  11. Gideon Falls 1: The Black Barn by Jeff Lemire
  12. Gideon Falls 2: Original Sins by Jeff Lemire
  13. Gideon Falls 3: Stations of the Cross by Jeff Lemire
  14. What if I Say the Wrong Thing? 25 Habits for Culturally Effective People by Vernā Myers
  15. The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
  16. Wool by Hugh Howey
  17. Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
  18. Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord
  19. Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello
  20. How to Know Higher Worlds by Rudolf Steiner
  21. No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

2021

  1. Broken Stars by Ken Liu
  2. The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  3. Broadbandits by Om Malik
  4. How to be Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi
  5. The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida
  6. Billionaire Wilderness by Justin Farrell
  7. Antarctica: What Everyone Needs to Know by David Day
  8. San Fransicko by Michael Shellenberger
  9. Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent by Gabrielle Walker
  10. At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
  11. Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas
  12. This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
  13. Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God by Will Durant

2022

This year I ended up mostly reading AI and machine learning academic papers, attempting to “learn AI deeply” as I asked people at the State of the Word that year. Started a bunch of other books but these were the only two I finished.

  1. 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman
  2. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Guin

2023

  1. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  2. Belong by Radha Agrawal
  3. Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly
  4. On That Note by Michael Wolff
  5. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
  6. Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman
  7. Permutation City by Greg Egan
  8. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
  9. Damn Good Advice by George Lois

All book years: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020–2023.

What’s in My Bag, 2023

In My Bag
  1. 16” M3 Max MacBook Pro, with all the memory and storage. I went from carrying two laptops earlier in the year, a 14” as well to just this. I like the Space Black color because it’s novel but might go back to silver next time. Brand new so just a few stickers so far!
  2. Black Magic Mouse, steady and useful when I’m doing lots of emails. Looking to replace this, as it uses Lightning. At home I’ve been using the Mojo Pro Performance Silent Gaming Mouse because it’s wired and quiet when you click, so something wireless and quiet could be nice for when on the go… I do like the gestures of the Magic Mouse though. I’ll be testing out some new mice over the holidays.
  3. Universal Airplane Phone Holder, also good along with #4 for mounting an iPhone for using the Continuity camera or selfies (after taking that he said “please don’t go to jail”). Also super cheap, <$20 for two.
  4. Capstone Continuity Camera mount for MacBook laptops, easy way to mount your iPhone to your laptop to use as a webcam. Looks amazing, but a bit of a pain, which is why I’m excited about #6.
  5. Anker 655 USB-C 8-in-1 Hub. I use this mostly for Ethernet, but since everything is USB-C now I can also use this with either phone or the iPad. I seem to have bad luck with USB hubs, I’m always burning through them, but this one has lasted a while. This thing is heavy! I could go smaller/lighter here.
  6. Opal Tadpole webcam, this is the Opal product everyone has been waiting for. Quality close to iPhone at a smaller size, plugs in via USB-C so you don’t have to worry about connectivity or charging, doesn’t need any special software, looks amazing. Only fits a laptop though, not a bigger monitor. The way the cable works is really clever, great design.
  7. This is one of my most delightful new additions, a Pixel G1s RGB Video Light, it can cast warm light for a Zoom call or you can send it to a specific color to enhance the ambience of room for a party. It can rotate through a rainbow of colors. I ended up giving this to all my friends, and now when we’re in the same place we can instantly vibe out a room with two or three of these devices, and turn off any unpleasant default lighting a space may have. It charges via USB-C, natch. Hat tip: Robb Walters.
  8. UE Premier custom headphones. The best aural experience you can have. Invest the time in visiting an audiologist to get earphones and earplugs customized for your ears.
  9. Belkin Rockstar headphone splitter, great for sharing audio with others, especially if they have #8.
  10. Small USB-C to 1/8th inch converter, to be extra though upgrade to this one from Belkin with power.
  11. Rolling Square inCharge XL 6-in-1 Multi Charging Cable, nice compact all-in-one I’ve been playing with. They make some other interesting accessories. A 100w Swiss army knife of cables, and the thing they do combining Lightning and Micro-USB is so cool.
  12. Baseus has made a retractable 100w/5a USB-C beautiful cord. This is probably the one you’ll want to carry around. Someday it will replace all other cables when we achieve USB-C nirvana.
  13. Chafon USB-C multi-cable is my ultimate workhorse, what I use the most. It’s available at different lengths. I like the way the attachments can be moved around, but there is some fragility being entered at every connection so I like to travel with these not linked so they don’t bend or break.
  14. Tiny Miisso 6000mah battery pack with cables built in.
  15. Pixel Fold. I always try to have an Android device for testing and the pixel fold has been a interesting one, because I found myself using it in ways that feel like sci-fi. Reading a book on the Kindle where you can turn the pages it’s really nice. It’s just a fun tool.
  16. Pixel Buds Pro, they sound remarkably good. Airpods for Android.
  17. Airpods Pro, now with USB-C as God intended. I have a little robot on mine. Just amazing, and how great that you can buy them anywhere in the world. This is the first thing I’d replace if I lost it.
  18. iPhone 15 Pro, now that it has USB-C, my favorite iPhone ever. No notes.
  19. Maruman N196A Nemosine Notebook, great paper. I have a small Pilot Couleur pen tucked into the spiral binding. Both brands are Japanese and I think I picked them up on a trip there, probably at the amazing Daikanyama T-Site.
  20. OHTO Needle Point Knock 0.7mm pen, a nice daily driver. I was carrying around a Montblanc Heritage Egyptomania Doué ballpoint pen but I lost it somewhere.
  21. Notecards from Ugmonk Analog. I really enjoy everything they make, great company, I keep these on every desk as well. These cards are often what drives my day.
  22. Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, finally with USB-C! I prefer the Oasis, but they inexplicably haven’t updated it to be USB-C, so I carry the Paperwhite instead.
  23. 11-inch iPad Pro, always great in a pinch. I have the pen in case I magically develop an ability to draw and the keyboard and alway-connected 5G makes this great for hopping on Slack or Texts.
  24. 35w dual USB-C charger, from Insignia I probably picked up at Best Buy. Here is a 40w Amazon alternative I recommend and usually carry. This is one of the items I give away the most, so I must have given away my Highsay version.
  25. Ugreen 100w 4-port compact charger, this is what I break out when I want to charge my laptop quickly.
  26. Belkin 37-Watt Dual USB Car Charger, I use this very rarely now but it’s great in a pinch, especially on older cars that have very weak USB ports.
  27. Epicka travel adapter. Nice that it has some built-in ports, but I rarely use them. I probably should switch back to the smaller and lighter Muji adapter.
  28. Still my favorite power cable: Baseus 60w. I tried the higher watt models, they didn’t always work on planes. This is a 6-foot extension cord and can charge a laptop directly. Really a joy. When they do an all-USB-C version I’ll probably upgrade..
  29. Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger, of course with USB-C
  30. This year, I’ve been focused more on my overall health. As I’m getting into the habit of moving my body everyday, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has been motivating because it’s great at letting me know how much I don’t run. Jokes aside, I’m a data person so seeing the numbers of my habits have helped me optimize my goals. 
  31. A candle can make a space feel cozy. Though I don’t travel with my own candle, I like to have my trusted Rechargeable Candle Lighter. Light fire with USB! 
  32. Swiss Army Card, let’s talk about cool gadgets. I use every feature of this card on a regular basis during my travels. It’s incredibly compact and slim. I’ve had to reorder this card a couple of times because they will confiscate the tiny knife. 
  33. Petzl e+LITE Headlamp, as a former boy scout, I’m always prepared for anything including a potential blackout.  
  34. Lockpick set.
  35. Carabiner is always good to have on hand.
  36. You know, a Disposable mask is just good practice. This mask shape is my favorite and very comfortable. 
  37. Immunity Throat Spray was recommended to me by Paul Stamets. I’m not sure if it’s a placebo, but I haven’t gotten sick. Thus, 3 sprays twice a day will keep the doctor away… for me at least. 
  38. Lately, I’ve been curious about the quality of air. I carry the Aranet4 CO2 monitor to gain insight about different spaces. Higher CO2 literally makes your brain slower!
  39. Winter is coming… BioDerma Chapstick is my go-to for dry lips. 
  40. I must admit I don’t really eat the mints from this Marunao Mint Case. However, I have a high admiration for this elegantly crafted case. It has a soft finish feel and a satisfying magnetic closure.
  41. Kikkerland Red Plaid Earphone Case is where I store my custom molded ear plugs. 
  42. SmartMouth travel packets was the best recommendation I received in 2019. It really tackles mouth hygiene well for all day freshness. 
  43. Cloth card holder / wallet, simple minimalist way to carry some extra cards and a few bills. I believe Tim uses one of these as well.
  44. WordPress ring.
  45. Sea2See Sunglasses. Sunglasses made from recycled plastic collected from the ocean. I discovered this from a goodie bag at the Brilliant Minds conference and have since purchased more to have it everywhere I go.
  46. Small plastic holder I got from my sister that helps me carry around stickers without them getting crinkled.
  47. Hermes business card holder. There are some occasions where exchanging business cards is a ritual. Also great to wedge it in a door jamb to keep it from autolocking. 
  48. Passport, never leave home without it. Always be ready for adventure! My passport photo is actually AI-generated, because, why not? We live in the metaverse.
  49. Eye Mask. I like these because the material feels nice on the skin and the wraparound is excellent for blocking out the light and some sound since it covers your ears. Great for sleeping or just needing a moment away from overstimulating environments. Similar one here (the version I have doesn’t appear readily available outside of Europe). 
  50. REI Goretex mittens. They’re shell liners, lightweight and water resistant. The ones I have are an older version and no longer in stock. Version 2.0 available. There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.
  51. Gloves, nice in the winter but I carry them year round in case I need to carry wood or something. Also the fingertips have the conductive material that makes it touchscreen compatible for devices.
  52. This is a grey wool buff, which works as a scarf, a hat, or an eye cover if I’m trying to sleep. I tried this out because of one of Tynan’s also-great gear posts.
  53. Gore Thermo Beanie, my favorite feature are the slits by the ears for sunglasses. Kept my eyes and ears protected while in Antarctica with Tim. He and I recorded a podcast episode in our tent talking about our personal fears, bucket lists, and more. Have a listen!
  54. Aer Fit Pack 3 backpack, embroidered black-on-black with Automattic and WordPress logos. I upgraded this year from version 2 to 3, which changed some of the interior pockets a bit, and most notably added outside side pockets, which I have found super useful. This is the bag that makes it all work.

Not pictured: Flipper Zero, which was actually in my pocket and I forgot to put it in the photo. I have found this device really handy and fun to play with, just a delightful piece of technology.

Here’s what I was rocking earlier in the year:

I’m not going to label it all, just posting for posterity. It’s mostly the same except I gave up on carrying around the Airpods Max, the grippy tripod, and haven’t found a great disco phone light yet.

Podcast with Texts founder Kishan and Techcrunch

Kishan Bagaria and I had chance to catch up with Alex Willhelm on the Techcrunch Equity podcast, it’s a bit of a time travel since we recorded this on November 28th and there has been a ton of activity in the messaging space including the whole Beeper Mini launch and smackdown from Apple. However it’s worth listening to get to know Kishan and hear some of Automattic’s broader, long-term strategy in this space.

To give our current take with regards to iMessage: Right now we run on desktop only, basically automating Apple’s first-party app. This obviously won’t work on iOS or Android. With every network we support we want to have a good, non-adversarial relationship that puts the user first, with the utmost standards for privacy and security, and understanding the principles and values each network is trying to uphold. We’re watching this space unfold very closely, and trying to help where we can. Check out the episode here:

State of the Word 2023

WordPress

I was really impressed with the warmth of the WordPress community in Madrid, Spain for State of the Word this year. The in-person crowd had a ton of energy, and we had tens of thousands stream it live on platforms like Facebook and Youtube. If you missed it, and want to hear about all the fun stuff that happened in WordPress in 2023 and what’s coming for the future, here’s the video:

Sunbird Security Isn’t Nothing

Apple

This might get lost in the OpenAI earthquake happening, but it’s important so I wanted to post about it. (And gosh! A Starship launch, which is amazing. We live in interesting times.) On Tuesday, Nothing, who makes the cleanest and most interesting Android phones (and whose earbuds sound great), announced via my favorite tech video channel, MKBHD, that the phones would support iMessage on Android, so you can be a blue bubble with your friends. This got a lot of pickup!

It got a little buried, though, because on Thursday Apple said it was going to support the RCS standard, which Google and others had been lobbying hard for. However, it’s doing the bare minimum: RCS isn’t actually encrypted, and Apple’s not doing the Google proprietary thing to encrypt it, and so non-Apple people still get green bubbles. (More on that later.)

iMessage on Android (and Windows!) is on the roadmap for Texts, the all-in-one messaging platform Automattic acquired last month. The Texts team is obsessed with security, and that’s part of why the platform is desktop-only right now—to keep everything 100% client-side and fully encrypted in a way that could never be accessed by the team, or have any compromise in the middle, they’ve been taking their time to get the engineering right on the mobile versions. So they poked around the Sunbird app that Nothing partnered with, and it wasn’t pretty. Here’s Texts founder Kishan Bagaria:

The BlueBubbles thing might be a mistake, but seeing the unencrypted data on the wire definitely wasn’t. Sunbird replied and doubled down on Twitter, citing some ISO standard and claiming it was “encrypted.”

Okay! Now you’re caught up to Friday. Texts says Sunbird isn’t secure, Sunbird says it is. He said, she said, right? Not quite—there are receipts. This blog post lays out even more than Kishan tweeted originally and shares code so you can confirm this yourself. tl; dr: Sunbird puts all your iMessages and attachments into Firebase.

What should you take away from this?

Nothing (the company) still makes amazing hardware that you should absolutely check out and use. It’s my favorite Android experience. I think the company got bamboozled by Sunbird, and unfortunately this went mainstream on MKBHD.

Sunbird appears either not to understand security or to lie about it, and probably misled Nothing. I would recommend double-checking what that team claims in the future.

Who should we actually be upset with?

Apple.

You shouldn’t need to jump through all these hoops to have a blue bubble on iMessage. Design can create great things; it can also harm. Apple’s design decisions to “magically” upgrade SMS or texts or RCS into iMessage, which is better and more secure, creates a green-bubble ghetto that’s also a terrible user experience for anyone not on an Apple-made device.

I’ve heard stories of teenagers being ostracized because they couldn’t afford an iPhone, of group chats rejecting people who turn the chat from blue to green. I know that sounds petty, but do you remember middle school? It’s about status, and Apple knows that. Everything they make bleeds status and signaling. They’re the best in the world at it, and I should know—I’m typing this post from a M3 Max black MacBook with 128GB of RAM. But while status signaling with amazing hardware and design touches is harmless, in software and social settings in can be harmful.

Regardless of how it started, today the green bubble indicates cheaper, lower-status, less secure. Apple’s half-hearted support of RCS just continues this. Sunbird (and others) shouldn’t need to jump through so many hoops around this stuff by reverse engineering. Apple should open up iMessage APIs so it can be natively supported just like every other 100M+ messaging platform is: Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, et al. Teens who can’t afford or don’t want an iPhone should be able to have an app that lets them connect with their friends as peers, securely and with all the features that are easy to support in messaging.

Tim Cook, Apple, we love you. Trillion-dollar company, and lots of room still to grow. Allowing iMessage/FaceTime to interoperate (like it used to!) might take .01% off your growth rate, but it’s the right thing for humanity. Yes, I know Google is shady too, and they’re locked in this smartphone death match with you. But take person-to-person communication out of the struggle, make it a DMZ, and be content to compete in all the other areas you’re currently crushing: design, silicon, Continuity, security, privacy, customer experience, retail stores, spatial audio, the list goes on.

I have no idea how to get in touch with YouTubers, but Marques, if you see this, I’m happy to chat about the future of technology, open source, freedom, and privacy.

Update: As I was writing this, the Nothing Chats app has been pulled from the Play store.

Update 2: From my colleague Batuhan:

Texts Joins Automattic

Asides

Texts is a fun application (desktop only for now) that brings all of your messages into one inbox. It currently supports iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, X/Twitter DMs, Instagram DMs, LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord DMs, with more on the way soon. It runs entirely on the desktop so it’s super fast and secure. It’s founded and led by Kishan Bagaria, a really unique entrepreneur and technical talent, and has a slate of amazing investors including Lachy Groom, Guillermo Rauch (former Automattician!), Sahil Lavingia, and many others—and I’m excited to announce that it’s now part of Automattic!

This was announced today on the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway (my part starts 48:50 in), and also covered in The Verge, TechCrunch, MacStories, and a few others.

Today is also my 18th anniversary at Automattic! So, an exciting day all around.

Using an all-in-one messaging app is a real game-changer for productivity and keeping up with things. Texts is a paid app, with discounted student pricing, and I think a lot of people will find value in it. It’s quickly become one of the top three apps I spend time using.

This is obviously a tricky area to navigate, as in the past the networks have blocked third-party clients, but I think with the current anti-trust and regulatory environments this is actually something the big networks will appreciate: it maintains the same security as their clients, opens them up in a way consumers will love and is very user-centric, and because we’re committed to supporting all their features it can actually increase engagement and usage of their platforms.

We’re still working out everything for mobile, so if you’re looking for the all-in-one experience on iOS or Android in the meantime, I recommend checking out Beeper. It really is great to have everything together.

If you’re a reverse engineer hacker that is interested in working with a super-small elite team in this space with the fun of a startup and the air cover of Automattic, get in touch with Kishan on Twitter DM or email (kb at texts). Here’s a fun video for Texts. 😄

Wowza!

Asides

Okay, I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, but this has me fairly floored. I was at an EcoAmerica board meeting dinner and afterward instead of calling an Uber like I usually would, I tried a self-driving car, a Waymo. (The name inspired by my friend, Jaime Waydo.) As I got home I was so excited to tell my Mom what just happened.

I feel like every cell in my body is charged, it’s like the first time I got a script to run, or committed code into b2/cafelog, this is definitely a before and after moment. Here’s a video as the car arrived and I got out. I’m really at a loss for words. The “wow” you hear me say in one of my most genuine in my life. The thing is I know these self-driving cars exist, I’ve seen them around San Francisco forever, but the experience of being picked up and dropped off by a robot navigating the tricky SF hills and streets just hits different.

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”

William Gibson

One thing that always brings me back to San Francisco is you feel like you’re living in the future. Tonight was no exception.

Cost of Spam

Asides

Twitter/X is testing charging users $1/year with the idea that will keep out bots and spam. It’s an appealing idea, and charging definitely does introduce a “proof of work” that wasn’t there before, but the history of the web shows this is not really a big deterrent. Domains cost money, usually a lot more than a dollar a year, and millions are used for spam or nefarious purposes. The spammers obviously thought their benefit would be more than the cost of the domain, or they use stolen credit cards and identities. Charging may cause a short-term drop in bots while the bad guys update their scripts, but the value of manipulating X/Twitter is so high I imagine there is already millions of dollars being spent on it.

Long term to keep a platform healthy you really have to take a nuanced look at behavior and content, like Automattic does with Akismet, and have a fairly sophisticated trust and safety operation with great engineers. T&S is really important, not an enemy of progress, which would have been my chief edit to the otherwise exciting The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen. (If you missed Marc’s Why AI Will Save the World, that’s also an excellent read with dozens of references you can go down a rabbit hole with.)

Do the work

Asides

There’s a way to run a company like managing a government, with reports, surveys, and abstractions.

There’s a way to run a company like building a ship, where every board and seam has to be understood and checked.

Both can be successful, but you need to decide which you want to do.

Preserving Harvard’s Blogging History

Asides

This month, Automattic had the privilege of working with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (BKC) to migrate their early 2000s blogging platform over to our Pressable infrastructure. (Pressable is a small host Automattic runs to develop our WP.cloud infrastructure, it gets you all the performance and security of our high-end WP.com plans, but with a more plain-vanilla WP interface.)

The Harvard Blogs network that the Center launched back in 2003 was an important milestone in internet history. It provided a platform for over 1,500 high-impact bloggers—including Harvard students, faculty, fellows, staff, and alumni—to publish and engage in discussion.

We were alerted to BKC’s plans to decommission blogs.harvard.edu by none other than Dave Winer, the pioneering developer behind blogging, RSS, and podcasting, and a Berkman Center fellow from 2003-2004. As BKC shared in their announcement, the network played a formative role for many now-influential bloggers and internet figures. It also contributed to the rise of podcasting and projects like Ushahidi.

When we learned BKC planned to retire the Harvard Blogs platform, we wanted to ensure this valuable archive of early internet culture was preserved. We offered to host the network’s blogs indefinitely so they can remain publicly accessible for years to come.

The Harvard Blogs multisite consisted of around 1,500 blogs. To move it over, we systematically migrated the archive to our servers and then upgraded the network to the latest version of WordPress (we also updated a handful of plugins and themes and tested the updated versions against the original sites hosted by Harvard).

Much like our recent unveiling of the 100 Year Plan for WordPress.com, the preservation of the Harvard Blogs archive demonstrates Automattic’s commitment to protect vital pieces of internet history and culture for generations to come. By preserving these blogs, we hope to inspire future generations of online voices.

There was something really nice about the neighborhood of blogs the Harvard blog network provided that I hope they or another university tries again sometime. Harvard is now 387 years old, I hope these blogs last at least that much longer (that would be 2,410 AD!).