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aimazonon Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands?

The .io registry is operated by Identity Digital which is a consolidation of a bunch of different registries from the last decade[1]. Identity Digital own (and sometimes just operate) many different TLDs and ccTLDs: most likely, the registrar will retain the right to operate the ccTLD and start paying license fees for each .io to Mauritius. The .tv ccTLD is the most famous example of this, as something like 15% of Tuvalu's GDP is from licensing of the .tv ccTLD.

[1] ICB acquired by Afilias, Afilias acquired by Donuts, Donuts rebranded to Identity Digital.

aimazonon Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

"she wanted to be the Executive Director of WordPress.org for Automattic"

But you own and run and finance WordPress.org personally, as you've revealed and talked about numerous times in the last few weeks. I don't follow, how can Heather apply for a job with Automattic to be the Executive Director of a website you personally own?

aimazonon Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/

"May 2024 May 30: Automattic shares first term sheet with WP Engine via email."

Share the term sheet that you sent to WPEngine in May. The lawsuit suggests that this term sheet is to do with a (now cancelled) partnership between WPEngine and Automattic in regards to WooCommerce. Your blog post suggests that it's a term sheet regarding WPEngine paying the 8% trademark fee for WordPress. You can significantly undermine WPEngine's argument by proving that you presented a WordPress trademark licensing term sheet to them months ago.

aimazonon Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

[flagged]

aimazonon Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine

Matt (intentionally?) mumbles it so that might be how you missed it but at 14:50 he shows the term sheet email and says “September 20th” which is the day of the initial blog post that kicked off the storm. There was no term sheet until the situation was public.

aimazonon Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine

"Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday party invites, not term sheets.

I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys" given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility through decades of community-minded WordPress stewardship, but let's not pretend this is some business deal that went sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-equity machine taking money away from his community-minded company.

Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that, it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day. Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt has not accepted the offer).

aimazonon If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed

The WordPress Foundation is irrelevant to WordPress itself, it just holds events. The WordPress project is owned by Matt and that’s what Automattic donates to (in the form of Automattic employees working roughly 4k hours per week on the WordPress project). There’s also the money spent on running WordPress.org by Automattic but that’s entirely opaque (nobody knows how much it is, although it’s claimed to be millions).

aimazonon If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed

The contributions are legit. Despite his claim to have never spoken publicly about his contributions before, he has spoken about them (when it was convenient to make a point about his moral superiority). He donated hundreds of thousands per year to the Apache Foundation, for example. Additionally the WordPress Foundation’s financials are public, they don’t receive many donations (tens of thousands per year).

aimazonon If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed

What are you choosing to believe? The 8% isn’t disputed. Matt has acknowledged it is true. Matt has acknowledged his actions are because he believes WPEngine are not fulfilling their moral obligation. The facts are settled, the question is whether you side with Matt’s belief about WPEngine’s obligations and how you feel about Matt’s actions (in the context of Matt operating a competitor).

aimazonon Sam Altman: Long con was "child's play for me"

You’re missing my point. I’m suggesting there was no con. The “manufacture[d] leadership crises” were not manufactured. Reddit was sold to Conde Nast, it struggled due to lack of investment, a plan was put forward to rescue it, Conde Nast consented to the plan. If Reddit was struggling due to underinvestment why would crises need to be manufactured? Everyone on Reddit back then recognised that it was a shit show due to underinvestment. Reddit continued to struggle for years after the “con” because it takes a long time to fix underlying issues, if the crises were manufactured, then a post-“con” reddit would have been wonderful and stable but it wasn’t.

Altman and co. benefit from reframing the history of reddit as a grand genius conspiracy.

aimazonon Sam Altman: Long con was "child's play for me"

You're accepting that the "con" was a con. For the con to be a con (consensual or otherwise) we have to believe that Conde Nast were willing to give up their majority stake without knowing that it would lead to the company being worth billions. If they didn't think giving up their majority stake would benefit them, why did they do it? The entire premise of the con is that Conde Nast were simultaneously too stupid to realise that there was a path to success for reddit but also willing to give up their majority stake based on the need to hire some people?

aimazonon Sam Altman: Long con was "child's play for me"

What a great con! They conned Conde Nast into turning Conde Nast's (reported) $20 million investment into billions of dollars for Conde Nast. Sam Altman is a genius, Conde Nast are such fools!

aimazonon Open Source, Trademarks, and WP Engine

Matt has a reputation for flying off the handle, a smaller scale Elon Musk. Matt has been trying to get WPE to contribute more to the Wordpress project for years. Last week Matt heard that WPE were pressuring employees to stay silent about WPEs internals and so he flew off the handle and started throwing everything at the wall… thus, the festering resentment towards WPE for their lack of contributions to the project became the basis of all the things he’s throwing. Demand for payment was the easiest thing in reach. That didn’t work, and now trademark infringement claim is the easiest legal-shaped thing in reach. There’s no deeper explanation than man throws things.

The Wordpress foundation is Matt. Automattic is Matt. For all the pomp and circumstance, Wordpress is just Matt doing whatever he wants unchecked. Hence the trademark pages of the Wordpress website mysteriously changing today to reflect the version of reality needed to make this case stronger.

Wrong? Maybe. Consistent? Yes.

aimazonon WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

Automattic benefits greatly from their close relationship to Wordpress. Using the power they have to threaten a commercial competitor that has a good reputation in the community will push the Wordpress community to reevaluate that relationship. The contributions Automattic makes to Wordpress are valuable but valuable contributions do not excuse bad behaviour. Souring the relationship between Automattic and Wordpress is a major blunder, which Matt will be responsible for. If Automattic lose their preferential treatment and are forced to compete with WPE based only on service then they will be crushed because Automattic’s offerings are not as good — there’s a reason Matt is so sensitive about WPE. Automattic are just as dependent on venture capital as WPE, even more so because of how their business has been losing focus. Automattic’s value is based on its relationship with Wordpress, whereas WPE’s is entirely based on the service. Matt is threatening Automattic’s most valuable asset, removing him may be seen as the only option to rescue the relationship.

As an aside, people don’t usually act like this when things are going good. Perhaps Matt is lashing out because of pressure he is already under.

edit: and to close the loop, Matt is demanding benevolence from WPE that Automattic themselves don’t engage in. Automattic own the Wordpress.com domain and promote their hosting service through Wordpress.org (which causes the exact confusion Matt accuses WPE of benefiting from). The money Automattic spend on supporting Wordpress project is not a donation, it’s quid pro quo. Would WPE pay $10m a year to own all that? Of course, any rational company in the space would… but that’s not what Matt is offering.

aimazonon WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

Matt is predictable. WPE wrote this letter for the community. They knew Matt would throw a fit and they would be able to take the high ground while also releasing an assassination of Matt’s character. The Wordpress community doesn’t care about Wordpress.com, Matt just blew what little credibility he had left. Worthless as a legal letter, brilliant as a response for the Wordpress community. Matt will inevitably step down within a few weeks, and a few years from now, this will be seen as a pivotal moment enabling WPE to dominate Wordpress.com. Matt could not have played this worse.

aimazonon London saw a surprising benefit to ultra-low emissions zone: More active kids

London, like most major cities, has significant wealth disparity: central London is filled with high-earning transplants living side by side with impoverished locals. Southwark is the London borough containing The Shard, Tate Modern, Borough Market, Tower Bridge yet almost 30% of children in Southwark live in poverty. Poverty touches every part of London. Even the City of London has housing estates.

aimazonon London saw a surprising benefit to ultra-low emissions zone: More active kids

Vehicle ownership in London has always been expensive. Poor people have never driven in London, poor people use public transport. For all London's faults (of which there are many) the high population density makes public transport useful. Please share evidence for your assertion that the "ULEZ is a tax on being poor". Only half of households in London have a vehicle.

aimazonon Why GitHub won

in hindsight, the success of GitHub could be seen as a missed opportunity for Google with Google Code but at the time SourceForge was a website with some advertising, the commercial opportunity was minuscule compared to what GitHub is today. I'm sure you can go back to Hacker News from 2007/2008 and find discussions that confirm what the parent said.

aimazonon Show HN: Typeform alternative, turns Markdown to forms

Very good work, especially for a solo developer. Feedback:

1. Design language of the forms feels too much like Typeform, you're a talented designer: differentiate the design to establish your own identity. If the forms look like Typeform, form-fillers are not going to investigate what form software it is and use it -- which was a big part of why Typeform grew.

2. The name is terrible. Blocks? The name sounds like you decided on it for a different project (some sort of component framework using Markdown?) and then reused it for this. The domain forms.md is available to register. Anything that include "form" in the name would be a significant improvement.

aimazonon Launch HN: Arva AI (YC S24) – AI agents for instant global KYB onboarding

If Revolut is handling tens of thousands of manual business reviews per day, and only 40% of applications require review, that's upwards of 10 million new businesses joining Revolut per year. Revolut does not yet have one million business customers, let alone 10 million. Are you conflating KYC with KYB?

Verifying articles of incorporation is a poor example. Verifying business incorporation is very straightforward, it does not require AI, a simple rules-based system will capture most cases because there is a single authority in every jurisdiction. Revolut's business onboarding process has direct integration with Companies House in the UK. AiPrise offers that as a product.

I do not understand where AI fits into a world driven by rules and authoritative information. The success of existing platforms demonstrates this. I hope that I am wrong and that you succeed.

aimazonon The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

Not all videos have transcripts.

aimazonon Ask HN: Google Ads Rejected My SaaS as Compromised Site

Your domain has a 20+ year ownership history. Are you the first owner? The suggestion that you switch to .com could be a subtle way to tell you that your domain has a bad reputation that cannot be fixed. Once Google thinks a domain is bad, it’s hard to change their mind. If you’re not the first owner, you don’t know what the previous owners did using the domain.

aimazonon Mike Lynch among missing after yacht sinks off Sicily

Sells company for billions, accused of inflating the value of the company, sued, found not guilty, uses money from sale to buy boat, names boat after the company that he (allegedly) inflated the value of, dies in a boat accident 2 months later. Perhaps the universe wasn't happy with the court's conclusion in the fraud case or just has a sense of humour.

aimazonon Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

I’m not sure I understand the comparison. Megaupload was a file sharing platform that we used to download mostly pirated material and although they had a music platform at some point, that wasn’t the primary method that most people interacted with Megaupload. The illegal equivalent to Spotify was Grooveshark, not Megaupload. The majority of Kim Dotcoms products outside of file sharing came long after Megaupload was attracting scrutiny. He was not a trailblazer, even Megaupload itself was a clone of Rapidshare. I’m sure we all remember the terrible album he used to launch his music platform which came after he was arrested.

aimazonon ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user's cloned voice during testing

Attacks on trust have been around for as long as we have had trust. Generative AI makes some attack vectors easier but it's nothing new: if your trust is earned using a voice you recognise then you model for trust has been broken since before most of us were born.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonator

aimazonon Maestro: Netflix's Workflow Orchestrator

isn’t Maestro an alternative to Airflow, not Temporal? Temporal isn’t a workflow orchestrator. There’s some overlap on the internals but they’re different designs for different use cases.

aimazonon CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

The only common belief held by investors in a stock is that the price is going to go up. You may have value investors with a belief that Shopify is undervalued based on earnings, you may have investors betting that the rest of the market will buy Shopify, you may have people who’ve seen the line go up and decided to buy…

Stock prices have been decoupled from earnings or “value” for a long time now and that’s toothpaste we will never get back in the tube. We are in the Robinhood age where you can buy and sell a stock in seconds with no effort.

aimazonon xAI announces series B funding round of $6B

considering the names involved and why the money is needed, almost certainly $6bn raised

aimazonon FTX bankruptcy examiner's report [pdf]

“Just one more roll” the gambler says to himself, “I can make it all back.”

FTX’s fate was sealed long before its collapse, an extra 6 months would not have changed the outcome.

aimazonon Did GitHub Copilot increase my productivity?

I don’t think you’re a dimwit but I read your post[1] with an example and I am curious to whether you feel you’re losing something by telling the LLM it’s wrong and to try again, rather than going through the exploratory/iterative learning process yourself. For example, would you have known to ask about GeoJSON if you had not come across and learned about it pre-LLM? More succinctly: do you feel you’re learning more or less or an equal amount when using LLMs?

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/22/claude-and-chatgpt-cas...