Losing 4M is pretty significant considering that's 4M people who actively decided to uninstall something. A majority of the 16M might be dead users (installed on an old browser) or people who don't realize it's still installed but also don't interact with the extension at all.
No, the reason is because there are different tradeoffs, and things that work well often trade off other things.
For instance, Dan is one of the best writers for illustrating a general point with dozens of rapid fire small examples. This gives the point credibility in a way that a writer who might craft an easier-to-digest narrative doesn't have, but can be tiresome for those don't like the style.
Although it is marked up according to HTML guidelines.
Technically speaking that's why it also qualifies as a single line of HTML.
Similar to a single line (per paragraph) of plain text which can then be pasted into any email window, for better right-nonjustification than average.
A single line of HTML will justify according to any user's browser default settings, so you always get what you want in that regard. And this one is so generic that it more closely resembles a clearly typewritten page or newspaper column, depending on how wide you size your browser combined with its default font size. Like it's supposed to do.
It's not "quite" a novel, but truly does fit the classic "short-story" layout.
Basically about as close as you get to the most readable professionally typeset classic literature. The only thing missing is the traditional indentation to start each paragraph, but it's worth it to retain universality on the web since tabs are so unreliable in browsers.
There's just a lot there, almost 52kb of useful text content which takes up the vast majority of this huge 58kb web page.
On this page I don't think he is trying to convince people that he is "a man of few words".
With the same readily-available one-line of content though, maybe there is a text connoisseur who is enough of an expert to get it down way below 58kb with far better readability on a wider variety of default browsers too. That's an example I'd like to see.
This is sort of like planting trees. I cut bait on chrome when they first announced they were dropping/impacting adblockers. For the most part, things are good enough the only time I spin up chrome is confirming something renders as expected on a personal site. Firefox works well enough for streaming and surfing.
Without even visiting the page I can predict what this writing will be about with uncanny accuracy.
1. Big words at the start - pretending to hack at a problem so big that just swinging the axe is a major undertaking
2. The prose slowly drifts to make less and less sense; words have no practical meaning anymore.
3. Simplistic images galore. Various plots via cellular automata and "pretty" images show things that have nothing to do with the topic and are only distant metaphors at best. Yet these images are the proof that it all "works."
4. A nothingburger by the end. Leaves you wondering, why did I read all this?
> Sadly, instead of supporting open source with $5 million, they each will spend 10 million on lawyers.
I think both sides more or less see this as a case of standing up against a bully — they may lose out in the short run (in terms of money), but they think that they will discourage future bullying by fighting back.
I’m not sure if either side is right, but that’s why they both drew a line in the sand, imho.
Ignoring the executive drama (on both sides) it is in bad taste to build WPEngine off an Open Source project and barely contribute back to it.
It's probably a case where their version is so heavily customized they don't spend much time on the fundamentals. But still. I wonder if that had a petty rationale as well. Relationships are important in business.
WPEngine contributed a lot to WordPress. It was, in fact, one of the biggest sponsors of the conference it was just banned from participating in. It also wrote the most popular plugin.
When Matt says "contribute" he means monetarily. Probably (speculation) because his company is about to be bankrupt without finding a way to get more money.
Matt shouldn't have made his thing "open source" [1], just like Elastic and other vendors shouldn't have allowed Amazon to set up shop and steal their work.
Unrelated organizations coming in, soaking up all the profit, and not contributing back is horrible. "Open source" needs to be amended to prevent this.
Something like MAU, MRR, or market% seems like a healthy way to limit big time corporations from taking over.
To go to Matt’s for profit entity, for his for profit entity to direct as they wish.
“I demand you give resources to your for profit competitor for them to use as they wish. And I’ll pretend to be wearing my non-profit, independent hat while demanding it.”
And they demanded full auditing while also making them agree to not fork GPL licensed software. No CEO with even the most basic of business educations would sign this agreement. It's a total farse, he's trying to shut the company down and either doing so for his own benefit or for the benefit of his buddies at Newfold or Blackrock.
The term sheet is here [0], the money option offered was only to Automattic. The other choice was 8% of developer time to WordPress itself, which is arguably under the control of the non-profit, but no one is quite sure at this point what the distinction between the two even is.
Silver Lake and WPE's legal attacks may impact my ability to provide free services on WordPress.org in the future, especially things like Slack or forums that are grounds for discovery. I hope not, though. Going to fight this with everything I have.
Matt, I mean this sincerely: get yourself checked out. Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your house? You're behaving so manically that it's hard to come up with a reason for this sort of behaviour unless there's something medical going on. The barely-veiled threats to take down WordPress.org (did you forget Cloudflare offered to host it for free?) aren't a rallying cry, they're a last gasp. WordPress is your life's work, don't ruin your meaningful contributions to the world. Go to a 10 day silent retreat, or buy a ranch in Montana and host your own Burning Man... anything but this. You're making a bunch of anti-establishment nerds side with Private Equity, that's how bonkers your behaviour is.
Thanks, I carry a co2 and carbon monoxide monitor. Co2 where I'm at is 572.
I do own a place in Montana, and I meditate several times a day. I have not threatened to take down WordPress.org. WPE's preservation requests do complicate things, legally, though, for the Slack and forums that W.org offers.
Both Cloudflare and Fastly have reached out offering CDN services to W.org, which we're considering. Cloudflare also serves a lot of WP Engine. We do like controlling our infrastructure, though, for a variety of reasons, and have run it without problems or downtime for 21 years. Currently the only outside vendor we use is Slack/Salesforce, which donates free Slack Pro accounts for 49k users. (I think that would cost ~5M/yr.) We also use some Github, which is free for open source.
You do realise just how guilty people sound when complaining about preservation requests for discovery during lawsuits?
If you're "right" and "on the side of good and freedom", what are you worried about in Slack/forums/whatever?
Because everything made public so far in their filing is pretty fucking bad (for you), I can only assume that discovery is gonna reveal some even worse behaviour on your part - or you'd have responded in public with some of that instead of whining about "preservation requests complicating thing"...
Yeah. I foresee a possible hilarious outcome here.
Matt wins this case, having the court determine the trademarks are "worth" so much that WPEngine - one out of thousands of WP hosting companies - owes licence fees of 10mil per year. Lets ballpark that at a billion dollar a year in licence fees worth of revenue, maybe 5 or 10 billion value.
The IRS then steps in and "Al Capones" Matt and Automattic for tax evasion by moving billions of dollars of assets between a non profit and a for profit company without disclosing or paying tax on it. IRS wins punitive damages, wipes out every company asset Matt's ever been involved with.
WPEngine and Silver Lake buy the remains of these companies (including the trademarks) at fire sale prices.
WPEngine isn't just one out of thousands of WP hosting companies. They're an absolute juggernaut dwarfing everyone else.
It's like saying AWS is one of dozens of cloud providers. The sad thing is that there are FAR BETTER WP hosting services out there, like Pantheon.io, and the majority of the WordPress community does not even know that they exist.
I think it was explained elsewhere, but Automattic has the commercial trademark rights, so licensing money wouldn’t be transferred to a non-profit foundation.
Yeah, but according to the filing, Matt had Automattic transfer the ownership of the trademarks to the foundation, they had the foundation grant the exclusive licence back to Automattic.
If those trademarks are asserted to be worth billions, there are presumably reporting and tax obligations for both the ownership transfer and the licence grant agreement.
Automattic: Owns the commercial right to use and sell the license
This is done because the WordPress Foundation is non-profit. The legal intricacies of this have been worked out a long time ago. You want to use the WordPress license? Then you'll have to buy it from Automattic.
Your chance to do that was before you threw a grenade into the WordPress ecosystem and injured hundreds of thousands of innocent WordPress developers over a {trademark|giving back|general bad vibes} dispute. No one here is buying your attempts to pawn responsibility for your actions off onto WP Engine.
They may have legitimately been the bad guys until a month ago, but you've thoroughly stepped into that role now and you're making no effort to step back.
I'm not going to engage with brand new accounts on this thread. It's nothing personal, but there are way too many of them posting here and it's too hard to distinguish sincere questions from sock puppets.
If you're legitimately new to HN, welcome! I hope to see you around engaging with other topics.
I don't think folks want you to provide those free services, is the thing. I think most folks want those housed inside a foundation that can seek industry support in the normal ways. A lot of people seem to have thought they already were.
The donkey, feeling unappreciated, approaches God with a heavy heart.
"Dear God," says the donkey, "why is it that all the other animals mock me, belittle me, and hold me in contempt?"
God listens patiently and replies, "My dear donkey, I understand your pain, but there's nothing I can do."
Surprised, the donkey responds, "But you are God! The all-powerful, creator of all things. Surely you can help?"
God smiles gently and says, "I may have created the world, but even I cannot change public opinion."
---
Matt Mullenweg might feel like God and might be among the most influential and richest people on the planet. But they won't be able to change public opinion, which is without a doubt against them.
I would advise stopping the madness before it is too late.
Matt, the Wordpress Foundation (which you control) explicitly lists the Plugin Repository and Theme Repository as Foundation projects, but now you’re saying that they’re your personal projects: https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/
lmfao my dude stop acting like a pariah, it's pathetic. You 100% brought this on yourself. Never thought anyone could be so reckless when extorting people.
I assume that you're well intentioned but Internet Psychiatric Diagnosis (IPD) counts as a form of personal attack (in effect, if not intent), and therefore not allowed here.
But if you look at the number-crunching process that gave you those percentages, it turns out to be woefully fragile and sensitive to a whole range of other factors
Countless prior models were completely off, but this one is suddenly correct and needs to be treated as a reliable predictor.
The problem is that if you dare to question the accuracy, you are immediately labeled a "denier." The only acceptable answer is that no matter what the prediction is, if it is alarmist, it is correct.
Check those numbers. I looked at the original data, and it seems that in the report you linked, debt is defined as a credit card balance.
I don't know about others, but I always float thousands on my balance and pay it off by the end of the month; the payment is all automatic. Often, for large sums, I pay it off online right away when I get home.
In my opinion, this is not debt—as long as you have the money, don't overspend, and pay it off within the grace period of 30 days, as long you are using the credit card as an intermediary for convenience and as a service that gives you various protections. There is benefit to the customer.
Stepping back, I think this is getting silly. The upstream comment stated to prefer cash over credit to avoid fees. You called that wrong and state there is a benefit to using credit. My claim is that you are equally wrong if the first person is wrong because interest and fees are often payed (data in peer comment)
If someone has cash, and is using credit to float the amount monthly, is there even really a distinction? If so, then the first commenters second paragraph could be amended to state to prefer credit only if you have the cash. Which is exactly what you are arguing.
I chafe at this thread since you are eager to call others wrong while actually arguing the same thing in the end.
That there is a benefit, can be a benefit to CC users is not in dispute. Meanwhile, the implications and practical effects of a duopoly are the interesting things. Notably, fir example, all prices being 3% higher. Yes that can be offset by cashback rewards, but sometimes is not and is certainly not when paying cash.
I am not calling others wrong, I am calling the definition incorrect.
A credit card balance during the grace period is not a debt - it is no different than paying by check - it is not more than a delay between a purchase being reflected on an account. That's all.
Only the balance after the grace period should be counted as a debt if we are using that term to talk about a population being more or less indebted than say X number of years ago etc.
A credit card balance is simply a form of bank account for large number of people.
> I am not calling others wrong, I am calling the definition incorrect.
Yet you wrote: "Regardless, your last paragraph is also wrong". The last paragraph was stated borrowing money was to be avoided. Nothing about debt vs balance.
> A credit card balance during the grace period is not a debt
This conflates "long term debt" with "short term debt." Debt generically refers to current debt, which might be short term or long term.
Second, by way of counter example, imagine a Credit card with a $100k balance. Your net assets are zero, and income are zero - if you max out that card - you have $100k of debt. Go to a creditor, tell them that $100k balance is actually zero debt because you have yet to repay it and have yet to pay any interest. I suspect you would be laughed at or charged with fraud. That $100k balance is not $0 in debt. Income actually does not matter to that statement. It would only matter if you qualify it as long term or short term debt. This is exactly why creditors often look at debt to income ratio, and not just absolute debt.
> Only the balance after the grace period should be counted as a debt if we are using that term to talk about a population being more or less indebted than say X number of years ago etc.
I agree that would give a more accurate picture of long term debt. Though, most redit card debt does represent long term debt. It must because the average balance exceeds the average income.
> A credit card balance is simply a form of bank account for large number of people
Indeed, but a large number is also small fraction of a giant number.
Let's step back. The second paragraph you said was wrong stated to essentially avoid borrowing money. You said (paraphrasing) "nuh-uh, credit is good for floating money." My retort is while that can be the case, for the majority of Americans credit cards are borrowing money. For a sizable and privileged minority, it is a way to purely float a balance. To then argue because of that, credit cards are a net good for the majority of people seems very flawed. That is further predicated that the interchange fees that are always payed are also always offset by credit card rewards programs. The predicate is flawed, and the assertion that for a majority credit is good because it just floats money is not supported by the data.
Credit card debt and credit card balance are the same thing.
> I don't know about others, but I always float thousands on my balance
This is the operative part. People on this forum tend to be in tech, and floating thousands is possible. A quick google search showed average US income is 60k/yr. Less 10k for taxes, less 20k for housing, that allows a float of less than 3k per year. The source previously stated an average debt of 6k, which is a balance more then the monthly income, and ergo is being carried over.
Looking for more direct data on how many Americans are paying credit card interest, I found this data:
"Half of credit cardholders surveyed in June (2024) as part of Bankrate's latest Credit Card Debt Survey said they carry balances over month to month. That is up from 44% in January – and the highest since since March 2020, when 60% of people carried debt from month to month" [1]
I thereby stand by my statement that your second paragraph was equally wrong (and equally right) as the second paragraph you were calling wrong.
Credit card debt and credit card balance aren’t the same thing, in practice.
If I had long standing debt on a credit card, I’d be paying an extremely high interest rate on that debt even with a >800 credit score.
If I have a balance that’s completely paid every month, I pay no interest on that “debt”. And while that money is floating, it’s in a 4.5% high yield savings account (Sallie Mae).
In the former situation, I am losing money. In the later, I’m making money. (Compared to paying with cash / debit).
In what percentage of total cases and to what fraction of the total balance? Please bring citations. This strikes me as a very glib, noisy, and unsupported claim.
> Credit card debt and credit card balance aren’t the same thing, in practice.
In practice, but pedanticatically speaking they are the same. If I asked, how much credit card debt do you have, you shouldn't say zero just because you likely will pay off the balance before the grace period expires.
EG:What is the balance on your mortgage? How much mortgage debt do you have? (The latter implies across all mortgages. That is the extent to which there is a distinction)
Pedantics and straw-manning aside, the main point, supported by citations - is that most americans are not paying their credit cards off, in full, every month.
As someone who has developed commercially in at least a dozen languages I couldn't disagree more.
There is no one language that is faster at prototyping than others. It's purely based on whatever you experience is and what aligns most with your way of thinking.
Some people like me need strong typing and functional constructs to be productive. Others are the complete opposite.
Some people would instantly gravitate towards SPA for anything web based others would go for SSR.
Another datapoint to whether one can compete or not
SkyDio, a US startup, entered the market producing drones with object avoidance so advanced that it was far beyond what DJI offered.
Their consumer pricing was quite competitive ~ 1000, the drone was by far the best in the market. Nothing was even remotely as good as a Skydio at high-speed object avoidance!
It seems like the US government became interested and probably funded them in some capacity, and with that, they exited the consumer domain. They only sell drones to governmental agencies now.
> In March 2021, the company became a unicorn, becoming the first US company that both manufactures and sells its own drones to exceed $1 billion in value
Saying that that no one can compete with DJI is simply not true. You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.
Drone technology, like chip technology is a national security issue.
Skydio had a gimmick, but camera, stabilization, range, radio and price were all worse than dji. There is a reason Ukrainians crowdsource donations for DJI even when their units get assigned Skydio drones funded directly by US DOD. DJI is simply better.
>You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.
No. It's because they have much lower skilled labor costs. See how much it costs to hire an experienced mechanical, hardware, firmware and software engineer in the US vs in Shenzhen.
You can't make a competitively priced consumer appliance or electronics product in the west anymore that's competitive to those coming from Asia and still expect to make western profit margins. Your profit margins will either be too slim to stay in business or to afford to attract any talent, or you can choose good profit margins but then your product will not be competitive on the "free market".
Why do you think there are no western companies making phones, TVs or computers any more since 20+ years? Apple is the only exception now, but let's not forget that before them creating the iTunes and AppStore markets that made them wealthy today, they were months away from bankruptcy when they were selling just computers made to compete with cheaper PCs.
I think you are conflating two different things here: where you come up with ideas and where you produce the goods.
To stay on the topic of drones, Skydio is an example of a US startup that produced drones in the US, and for some applications, it produced better drones than an established and sophisticated competitor. Is every component in Skydio manufactured in the US, very unlikely ...
I am no DJI hater, I have owned multiple of their drones and I think their products are awesome of extremely high quality.
That being said, a SkyDio was light-years ahead of them when it came to high-speed object avoidance.
