Radiohead’s Paranoid Android, Hive Mind Edition
Sonic fraternal twin, amazing result. Edited together from separately posted clips, some years old.
h/t @aweissman
Jun 21
Jun 12
geyserville
The weather couldn’t have been nicer today in Sonoma.
May 27
Living in a man-made world
Such a choice is possible because of the most fundamental change in Earth history that the Anthropocene marks: the emergence of a form of intelligence that allows new ways of being to be imagined and, through co-operation and innovation, to be achieved. The lessons of science, from Copernicus to Darwin, encourage people to dismiss such special pleading. So do all manner of cultural warnings, from the hubris around which Greek tragedies are built to the lamentation of King David’s preacher: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity…the Earth abideth for ever…and there is no new thing under the sun.” But the lamentation of vanity can be false modesty. On a planetary scale, intelligence is something genuinely new and powerful. Through the domestication of plants and animals intelligence has remade the living environment. Through industry it has disrupted the key biogeochemical cycles. For good or ill, it will do yet more.
– Oliver Morton, from his Economist essay “The Anthropocene: A man-made world”
May 23
WordPress: The Free Software With a Big Economy & How You Can Get Involved
Over at The Next Web, Joel Falconer’s overview of the WordPress economy touches on many topics we’ve talked about over the years here at Automattic. Amazing to see what happens when software, web, and people meet to create a movement.
Perhaps one of the things Mullenweg can be most proud of is that his platform and the economy that has developed around it sustains the livelihood of probably hundreds of families and thousands of people, drawing on a wide range of talent in a loyal, dedicated community. Between theme developers who sell their products on marketplaces like ThemeForest, companies that make WordPress products and employ support staff, product managers, developers, designers, lawyers, accountants and more, and Automattic itself, the reach is huge.
When open source loyalists say that their philosophy can change the world, you only need to look as far as WordPress to see that mantra in action.
/via The Next Web, h/t ma.tt
May 13
Casa Q, Lima, Peru
A sure sign I've been working at Automattic a long time - my first thought was, "Can we rent this for a meetup?"
Mar 31
Like a Lion
March was an awesome month here at Automattic. I just took a quick look back at the main blog for WordPress.com, and we had a dozen announcements this month introducing a mix of new features, community events, and more. When you add in posts from our other projects – both our own and the open source ones we contribute to – it’s approaching fifty.
Some of the highlights from the month that was:
- Our Theme Wranglers rolled out several gorgeous new premium and free themes
- VideoPress now supports native playback on iPhone, iPad and HTML5 browsers
- Our social team introduced Jetpack, which makes WordPress.com services available to self-hosted WordPress sites
- Our Happiness Engineers are now making guided transfers available for people taking the plunge into self-hosted WordPress
- We launched a beautiful iPad-optimized view for all 18.6 million WordPress.com blogs, which is also available via plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites
- We made embedded tweets even more interactive with support for Twitter’s new tools for replying, retweeting and favoriting
Phew! If working on some of the web’s biggest and most popular services sounds interesting to you, make sure to check out our jobs page — we’re hiring for all kinds of roles, from coders to designers to business types.
Feb 26
VaultPress Stories
Since joining Automattic, one of my main responsibilities has been working with an amazing team to build and launch VaultPress.
One of the best parts of delivering a brand new service is hearing back from customers who’ve come to rely on it, which is why we’ve started posting profiles of VaultPress customers to our blog. I love hearing these stories and learning how people came to become serious WordPress publishers.
Check the first three out here:
Feb 12
SHAD
Canada’s top MC? Introduced to SHAD last night by Ian D. Stewart.
“The only thing I love more than rapping is napping.”
Feb 12
The Ludicorp Business Philosophy
Ludicorp created Flickr back in the day. Via Kottke.
“Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits.
“But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine’s activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent.
“The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity.”
To which the Ludicorporate added: “The goal is to kick ass.”
Feb 11
