I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! To me, the holiday is a reminder to be grateful. A gratitude practice is one of the most surefire ways to improve your happiness, as this study covered by Harvard Health explains. I was part of a leadership coaching cohort with other founders and CEOs, and one … Continue reading Thanksgiving →

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving this year with my sister Charleen in Austin, and it’s no surprise there’s a great Meshtastic community here!

If you have ever customized your home setup, or done extra work to make the cable just so, it’s impossible not to delight in the very deep rabbit holes this person goes in 3D-printing custom holders for everything in his junk drawer. I’m in awe. It’s an ad for Bambu Lab, but honestly it’s the … Continue reading 3D Printing Wowza →

There’s a new video with Jeff Dean talking at the Stanford AI Club, only 2k views so far, he’s half of the pair I blogged the other day.

When I can, I always try to time my flights for sunrise or sunset. The astounding beauty of nature never fails to amaze. The default nowadays is shades down; everyone is watching something, but sometimes it’s hard to match what you see out the window. And realize that only a small portion of humanity has … Continue reading Flying From SFO →

Fred Vogelstein writes on Crazy Stupid Tech: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different? “To us what’s happening is obvious. We both covered the internet bubble 25 years ago. We’ve been writing about – and in Om’s case investing in – technology since then. We can both say unequivocally that the conversations we … Continue reading Vogelstein on AI →

While there is much to celebrate in WordPress sometimes we must also mourn. In a horribly tragic incident, Zeel Thakkar, a WordPress contributor and Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship 2025 recipient, passed away on stage at WordCamp Surat. WordCamp Asia has written a beautiful memorial to her. She will be forever on our Remembers page.

Two interesting AI updates this week: It’s nice to read Andrej Karpathy’s review of Tesla’s FSD v13, as someone who was involved with creating their first self-driving efforts. I’ve only experienced v12, so very excited to try out the latest generations soon. Ubiquitous self-driving will reshape cities and save countless lives. On the heels of … Continue reading Gemini & FSD →

It’s been hard for me to write about Friday because it was so overwhelming, to see so many friends and loved ones and teachers and mentors there, including friends of my late Father’s I hadn’t seen in years, and to be with all of the people who have been driving the mission of the Rothko … Continue reading Rothko Chapel Garden →

In case you missed it, Kanye has started apologizing for the event he went through. I didn’t comment on it publicly when it happened because it seemed so strange to me that such a beautiful soul, who had created so much life-changing music with so much love, could express such hate. I’ve had close friends … Continue reading Kanye’s Back →

Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better. I’m an unabashed fan of Warren Buffett and the late Charllie Munger, I even have bronze busts of them in my office! I was very lucky to attend his last shareholder meeting, as part of … Continue reading Buffett Thanksgiving →

The story of what Bending Spoons has built is very impressive, and I’m a customer of theirs through Evernote, WordPress uses Meetup a ton. I think Automattic’s Noho office used to belong to Meetup. They’ve built an incredible engineering and product culture that can terraform technology stacks into something much more efficient. I think their … Continue reading Bending Spoons →

I’ve been following this cool open source project called Meshtastic, which is “An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices.” I finally got some time to set it up tonight. It was super easy; you just flash the Meshtastic firmware in your browser to any of the compatible devices. … Continue reading Meshtastic →

Check out Ben Thompson of Stratechery (one of the most valuable subscriptions) on The Benefits of Bubbles.

Mimi Lamarre at Switchboard Magazine has a delightful long read in The Curious Case of Kaycee Nicole, where, in the early days of online communities and blogging, a fake person claimed to have leukemia. The blogging community was relatively small back then, and I recall some of this happening contemporarily.

I’m often on the other side, but it’s such a delight to be an interviewer, I really enjoy it and put a lot of work into coming up with questions and shaping a conversation I think will draw out something novel from the person. Besides the Distributed Podcast, I’ve had a chance at at events … Continue reading Conversation with John Borthwick →

I just got off stage from the great dev/ai/nyc event with John Borthwick, we had a wide-ranging discussion that we’ll post online soon. We had hundreds of people in the room and hundreds on the waitlist… the energy in NYC is electric! As a few recommendations from the event, I recommended revisiting the movie Her … Continue reading Post-talk Recs →

Most interviews I watch at 1.5-2x speed, but among my friends, we joke that there are a few people for whom we really enjoy their thoughts at 1x (shoutout to JT). I’m an unabashed fanboy of Andrej Karpathy (blogged nanochat Oct 13), and his interview with Dwarkesh is excellent. It’s very dense; I marinated it … Continue reading Andrej on Dwarkesh →

Mia Elvasia has a great article about how they realized they were spending $635/yr across various plugins to get things that Jetpack offered bundled and often free. Save money! Jetpack is frequently overlooked as one of the most underappreciated plugins in the WordPress universe. This is partially our fault, as the article notes, because the … Continue reading Jetpack Saves →

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. Kyle Kowalski has an amazing blog post exploring many aspects of this Zen Kōan, including some diversions into David Foster Wallace’s legendary commencement speech, This is Water.

This week, the Automattic Creed received its first-ever update, which I’ll describe as a minor point upgrade. This is the sentence before and after. 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 … Continue reading Creed Update →

Automattic has been working with the Internet Archive to develop a plugin to combat link rot, and it’s a plugin I’d encourage you to install. As the plugin says: When a linked page disappears, the plugin helps preserve your user experience by redirecting visitors to a reliable archived version. It also works proactively by archiving … Continue reading Wayback Machine Joint →

For smart, enterprising hackers Beeper is offering bounties of up to $50,000 for people who create open source bridges.

Live oaks reach branchesSunlight graces every leafWith gentle wisdom Inspired by the not-haiku on my ITO EN tea. (BTW the Automattic home page is all haiku since 2009.)

It’s very interesting to compare my Wikipedia article and my Grokipedia article. The Grokipedia version is much, much longer, and does a better job of listing my accomplishments versus some random recent controversy. (Will someone reading about me a hundred years from now care that WordPress briefly had a sustainability team as one of its … Continue reading Grokipedia →

On November 5th at our Noho office the legendary John Borthwick (investor in Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed, Digg, Venmo…) and I will have a conversation on the future of the Open Web and human-centered AI. Please join us!

If you like rabbit holes, a wonderful way to spend your Sunday is in the writing of Zach Holman, an early engineer at Github and Gitlab. All are good, but a particular favorite of mine is UTC is enough for everyone …right? You don’t need to code to appreciate that time is a construct, that … Continue reading Time Zones →

The Atlantic November issue is lovely, focused on the American Revolution. I particularly enjoyed: So pick up a copy as you pass through an airport or by a newstand. I consider it a very worthwhile subscription. It might be better to read in print or through Apple News+ as their website a bit broken for … Continue reading November Atlantic →

It’s a bit of Automattic lore, but although I founded the company in June 2005, CNET asked me to stay on for a few more months to finish out some projects, which I did. Our HR systems have me as the second employee, after Donncha O Caoimh (still at the company!) So today is my … Continue reading Automattic 20 & Counter-claims →