Just pushed out the first episode of a new, somewhat experimental, maybe-a-bit meta, podcast idea. Give it a listen, and let me know what you think!
https://commitaccess.com/podcast/episode-0-felix-arntz/
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On staying Indie
WordPress, to me, is an independent publishing platform. It grants me the right to complete & total autonomy when it’s desireable, but also allows me to group up with others when that makes sense too.
An article from The New York Times puts into a nice perspective why I think WordPress is really important to the future of the web.
Every pirated music video or song posted on YouTube or Facebook robs the creators of income, and YouTube in particular is dominated by unlicensed content. Google’s YouTube has an over 55 percent market share in the streaming audio business and yet provides less than 11 percent of the streaming audio revenues to the content owners and creators. But Facebook, which refuses to enter into any licensing agreement on music or video, is challenging YouTube in the free online video and music world.
And this…
“They are taking all the money,” he noted. “They have algorithms we don’t understand, which are a filter between what we do and how people receive it.”
I don’t think this is anything new – tides will shift, and new technologies will emerge to try and help with distribution of content – but it’s scary to me now that so much of what’s being published funnels out into our enormous world through only a few hoses.
There’s more money in the world changing hands than every in recorded history, and I suppose it’s always been this way – content creators are starving artists and content distributors are benefactors – but the trickle-down distribution of wealth continues to run perpetually dryer vs. wetter.
I think in the WordPress space, companies like Envato are undervalued. Their operating costs are surely not as low as one may think, yet they continue to pay out millions of dollars to digital artists & creators. I think there may be room for more Envato’s to carve out their own niches, and WordPress plugins like Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce are the long-term solutions for people hoping to have a sustainable independent lifestyle.
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Afraid to Click
Users of the Internet in the United States are starting to experience what millions of others in many other nations have dealt with since the widespread deployment of the world-wide web:
Fear.
As the web evolves, an increasing amount of control is being exercised, or at least recognized as an opportunity that maybe wasn’t really achievable until more modern generations of client & server technologies emerged.
Even a simple Tweet becomes a questionable, yet enticing, click…
Excellent plan. If you want to talk and it's risky, go to a public computer, far from home & work, and start here: https://t.co/IvVdo4gUOV. https://t.co/ozKjnBOed2
— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) December 12, 2016
This is an experience I haven’t really felt – at least not since being a teenager galavanting around AOL chat rooms where literally everything was a risky click – but it is a relatively common way of life for so many already. When there’s so much unchecked information about us out amongst the world, it becomes really easy for someone to create their own narratives based on your search history, browsing history, bookmarks, online chat histories, et al.
I think all most of us can do is continue doing whatever we can to keep the web a free & openly accessible place, and try our best to create safe places to congregate with one-another.
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💯∞
In 2014, Matt Mullenweg challenged the WordPress community to volunteer 5% of their time towards open-source and WordPress.org.
A few months later, I ran a successful fundraising compaign that allowed me to donate 6 months worth of time towards BuddyPress & bbPress.
For 2017, and hopefully with your help, I’m going to try something a little different that I’ve nicknamed: 💯∞.
My goal is be a fully funded independent ambassador for WordPress & the surrounding initiatives, backed by many of the best companies who continue to push WordPress beyond its limits on a daily basis.
Practically speaking, I imagine this to work like a monthly retainer to work on WordPress core and Dotorg. Someone pays, say, $7500, and I get to say January 2017’s progress was brought to you by Pagely, February by GoDaddy, March by CrowdFavorite, April by Jetpack, May by WebDevStudios, June by GiveWP, and so on, forever.
(The structure is a bit TBD. Maybe it’s weekly rather than monthly, or quarterly, or something else entirely. Hopefully you get the idea.)
It’s like a podcast, but instead of airtime ad placement, it’s coretime leadership, contributor relations, and issue management.
Some of y’all who think this is somewhat unconventional may say – Why not just be a full-time employee?
That may end up happening – it may actually be the smarter move in the long run here – but I think there’s high value in being an independent, nonpartisan thought leader that *wants* to help everyone navigate the ins & outs of contributing to open-source, more specifically WordPress, et al. Since that’s where I’ve seen the most success, I’d like to put maximum effort into continuing that trend; if it’s not sustainable, then we learned something together and try something different.
This weekend at WordCamp US, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with several folks who love the idea and are… deeply… interested in making this work however they can, up to and including growth beyond myself for other individuals who are able to provide more value as an independent voice.
If you’d like to help, please email me. If you have questions, concerns, criticisms, or feedback, please get in touch somehow.
Thanks for having an open mind, and for considering investing in the future of something that really, truly means a lot. To the folks who are already onboard, I’m so excited you are willing to give this a try with me.
P.S. Have I mentioned how much better WordPress is on mobile? I wrote all of this from my iPhone without any issues, which is still so incredible to me. Great job, mobile team!
P.P.S. If you’re unfamiliar with why I think I can do this, I’ve contributed to every major WordPress release since 2.5, am a member of the security team, meta team, and have helped lead BuddyPress & bbPress since 2009. I love WordPress and want to help it continue to grow in whatever direction it needs to take. I’m going to do it anyways, and with your help we can do it together.
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Super Mario Bros. 3 (Wrong Warp)
This super-educational video explains how ROM & RAM can be live-hacked to trick a Nintendo into executing arbitrary code to produce unintended results.
Some days helping keep 27% of the web secure seems pretty complicated, but the types of game-breaking glitches in this video would be insanely difficult to track down on the open-web.
