WordPress Celebrates its 15th Anniversary Today

15 Years of WordPress

On May 27, 2003 — exactly fifteen years ago today, the first version of WordPress was made available for download. Unlike most software releases that start at v1.0, this was Version 0.7 of WordPress that was being released as the first non-beta.

What began as a fork of b2/cafelog over 15 years ago has today turned into a robust, reliable and popular Content Management System that powers close to 30% of the world’s top 10 million websites.

WordPress holds a very special place in my life and I’ve been building websites powered by WordPress since 2006. Although I’m not a fan of the clunky mess that WordPress is turning into, I still love building with WordPress and couldn’t be more excited about the years to come.

May 27, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Mozilla Statement on Recent Reports of Aadhaar Data Being Breached

Mozilla has published a statement on their Open Policy and Advocacy blog about the recent report that it is possible to purchase a cracked software for as little as ₹2000 (US$30) to get ‘write’ rights to the Aadhaar database, allowing you to update any information in there without any kind of verification or checks.

The official Mozilla statement is as follows:

Mozilla is deeply alarmed by recent reports that it is possible to purchase editing rights to the Aadhaar database for a mere 2,000 rupees.

Mozilla has long argued that the Aadhaar lacks critical safeguards. With the demographic data reportedly compromised, it is hard to see how Aadhaar can be trusted for authentication. Access to myriad vital public and private services which require Aadhaar for more than a billion Indians is now at risk.

Mozilla calls for the UIDAI to close these glaring security loopholes, and to engage an independent firm to do a security audit of the Aadhaar. We further call on the Justice Srikrishna Committee and the Government of India to ensure that the forthcoming data protection bill strongly protects Indians, including from the privacy and security harms that they’ve already suffered from Aadhaar.

May 2, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Man has his France.com Domain Seized by the Country, So He’s Suing Them

Cyrus Farivar, writing for Ars Technica:

[…] sometime around 2015, that very same ministry initiated a lawsuit in France in an attempt to wrest control of the France.com domain away from Frydman.

By September 2017, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that France.com was violating French trademark law.

and…

[…] on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation.

I wouldn’t blame Web.com — it seems like they had to follow the rule of the law, but not notifying an old client of theirs of such a thing — that’s just lousy and also very bad customer service.

This story also makes me wonder how much of our identities — what people know us for — are dependent on a single decision maker at some online service company. It’s incredibly scary how easy it is for someone to flick a switch, for example, and stop you from accessing your primary domain, email address, or account.

April 30, 2018 ✚ Permalink

BuySellAds Acquires Digg

BuySellAds — the popular ad-tech company — has just bought Digg from BetaWorks.

Cale Guthrie Weissman, reporting for Fast Company:

The company bought Digg’s assets, as well as its editorial and revenue teams, for an undisclosed amount. Additionally, the blockchain-based digital publishing platform Civil has hired up many people from Digg’s tech team.

BuySellAds owns brands like Carbon ads* and has previously bought and absorbed ad networks like Fusion Ads & Yoggrt in the past. The company has also acquired other companies like like Authentic Jobs and LaunchBit in the past. Interestingly, Digg’s tech team was not part of the acquisition.

(Note: Nuclear Bits was previously a part of the Carbon Ads network and Beautiful Pixels still runs ads from them.)

April 26, 2018 ✚ Permalink

GitHub Desktop

GitHub has introduced a new Desktop app for macOS and Windows platforms today.

Extend your GitHub workflow beyond your browser with GitHub Desktop, completely redesigned with Electron. Get a unified cross-platform experience that’s completely open source and ready to customize.

If you visit the page, the H1 tag on it reads “The new Native“.

If GitHub starts pushing for Electron apps as “native”, what hopes do we have left?

April 25, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple Refused to Fix Their Broken iMac Pro

Linus from Linus Tech Tips explains how Apple refused to fix their iMac Pro, even if they were ready to pay for getting it fixed.

What Apple has done here is to release a brand new platform that they are unwilling and/or unable to provide support for.

This sure works as a great ad for your brand new “Pro” offering, especially when you’ve gone above and beyond to ensure that all your other “Pro” offerings are nowhere close to being Pro-level machines in reality.

April 18, 2018 ✚ Permalink

iPhone Users in the US Spent 23% More On Apps in 2017

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

[Sensor Tower] found that U.S. iPhone users spent 23 percent more on in-app purchases in 2017 than they did the year prior – or, an average of $58 per active user was spent on in-app purchases, up from $47 in 2016.

Hardly surprising when it comes to games — they’re a hot category to build for these days. But the 57% jump in the entertainment category is interesting to see.

April 16, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Instagram Announces Changes to “Improve” Your Feed

Instagram has today announced that it is making some changes to the Instagram Feed. The feed has been my single biggest annoyance about the app over the last few months, so I was excited when I read the title. Not only are the ads that show up every three posts irrelevant and annoying, the out-of-order timeline is even more terrible.

Unfortunately, these changes are too little and too late.

We’ve heard it can feel unexpected when your feed refreshes and automatically bumps you to the top. So today we’re testing a “New Posts” button that lets you choose when you want to refresh, rather than it happening automatically. Tap the button and you’ll be taken to new posts at the top of feed — don’t tap, and you’ll stay where you are. We hope this makes browsing Instagram much more enjoyable.

and

Based on your feedback, we’re also making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed. With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about. So if your best friend shares a selfie from her vacation in Australia, it will be waiting for you when you wake up.

The first change is nice, but what is up with the second? “More likely”? Why can’t I just see the posts in the feed in the order they were posted? Goddamnit!

Facebook really needs to stop shoving its algorithms everywhere.

March 23, 2018 ✚ Permalink