Andrew Shell

Strategies for thinking, learning, and productivity. Here to make friends. DMs open.

[Pablos @pablos]

We have a lot of work to do to make the internet better. This is easy to lose sight of on some days, but not on a day when people disparage the integrity of @photomatt and slander his character. Until you have dedicated as much of yourself to making our online world a positive place, kindly stand down.

There are times when I am disappointed in myself for letting disagreements interfere with friendships. For years, Matt has been THE inspiration to me for doing the opposite. To run afoul of his generosity and patience would require some lack of humanity.

Thanks for the love and friendship @photomatt.

[Dion Hinchcliffe @dhinchcliffe]

@davewiner I still have my original UserLand Frontier manuals in mint condition, Dave!

Just don’t program in it as much these days.

[Paolo Belcastro @p3ob7o]

I joined @automattic over 15 years ago to work for @photomatt because I believed in his vision for an open web belonging to the people and not the corporations.

I still believe it’s the most important task in front of us, and I’m proud to continue doing so with him at the helm.

[Darren Ethier @nerrad]

No matter what happens, I will ALWAYS be grateful to @photomatt for bringing WordPress into the world, standing up for the values of open source, and providing the opportunity for me to work in a company that is empowering so many incredible creators around the world. Not to mention getting to work with so many brilliant and talented people!

Every story has it's unknown bits. Every person has their untold pain. Humans are messy, and one thing that AI will never be able to do is generate the sparks of beauty that comes out of that messiness.

[Mary Hubbard @4thhubbard]

I'm relieved and pleased to see Matt Mullenweg return as CEO of Automattic, the largest financial contributor to the WordPress project. Having WordPress's Co-founder and Project Lead at the helm gives me confidence that their support will remain strong. Matt has my support.

[Matt Mullenweg @photomatt]

I've got some big news to share: https://t.co/msed5kQ10o

[Fahim Reza @ifahimreza]

i don’t understand why some people can’t respect what someone has done.

@photomatt gave more than 20+ years of his life to WordPress and open source.

WordPress built one of the most diverse communities i have ever seen. developers, designers, businesses, contributors, WordCamps, people from all over the world.

this community helped me build my own business too.

matt is not perfect. criticize him when he is wrong.

but i still believe matt helped keep WordPress open and independent for all these years.

maybe i am wrong, but i worry about what happens without people like him protecting it.

i don’t want to wake up one day and see salesforce, or another huge company controlling the future of WordPress.

open source can stay open source, but who controls its direction still matters.

[Andrew Shell @andrewshell]

The board removing @photomatt from Automattic is such a bad move.

[Derek Sivers @sivers]

https://t.co/xZ0CkqyW3Q

[Andrew Shell @andrewshell]

Made it to #WPUS

[Adam Curry - curryirc.com @adamcurry]

No Agenda Episode 1888 - "In The Mourning" https://t.co/2zAVDgFG3o

[Mark Jeffrey @markjeffrey]

RIP Dvorak. Just heard the news.

I was on his Silicon Spin ZDTV show ~8 times or so back in the day -- great dude.

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

John Dvorak explains trolling on a mass scale.

https://t.co/u7SDcLqxqU

Many years ago.

[The No Agenda Show @NA_Announce]

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of John C. Dvorak, our beloved husband, father, and cherished host of the No Agenda Show at the age of 74.
More to follow.

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

# Fractional horsepower social network

In the past when I announced a product, people could use it right away, and usually they click a couple of things and then go away.

In the case of https://t.co/HKHbBlYMVQ -- what you will see is very much like what you see when you aren't logged in, or what you see on a social network like X, or Mastodon or whatever. The UI is nice, but it's not the thing.

That will be revealed relatively slowly, over time -- as new instances pop up, and even more importantly, as developers figure out that this setup works well enough to clone. I'm not selling a product here -- I want to bootstrap an ecosystem, using all I learned from several successful bootstraps -- blogging, RSS, podcasting.

The idea is this -- the web itself is a social network. It's up to us, all of us, not just me -- to build that network.

When you see how we proceed from here that will become clearer.

In the meantime I'm going to change the message you get when you try to sign on, and start a wait list so that when more instances are available, some meant to be open to the public, we'll be sure to let you all know about that.

For now, I'm operating a network for people I work with, and it's all open for anyone to read. That's also one of the ideas I want to explore, something I call a "Fractional horsepower social network," stealing a very good idea from Steve Jobs.

I don't want to turn the world over to a startup, we've done that and have a pretty good idea of where it goes. I want lots of small ones that have a very strong basis to be connected together in as many ways as people can imagine.

[Andrew Shell @andrewshell]

The rssCloud Server now features WebSub support, enabling compatibility between rssCloud and WebSub, allowing apps to use either protocol to publish and subscribe to RSS feeds seamlessly.
https://t.co/7YDHvjzqIE

[Theo - t3.gg @theo]

I've been getting a TON done with Fable today and I'm not hitting rate limits. Wanted to share some tips on how I'm doing that

1. I only use Fable on "high" effort for now. xhigh is token hungry. max/extra is a furnace with worse outputs than lower options imo

2. I taught Claude Code how to use Codex as a fallback for lots of implementation tasks. GPT-5.5 is incredibly steerable, and Fable can learn how to steer it

3. I wrote up a big section in my CLAUDE[.]md on how to prioritize different models for different work when orchestrating workflows and subagents

4. Things that are unnecessarily token hungry (computer use, codebase analysis, etc), I do with other models and report results back to Fable

[Nathan Baschez @nbaschez]

RIP Om Malik

A legend of our industry, one of the kindest people I ever met, gone far too soon 💔

I owe Om so much and am so grateful for his mentorship and friendship

[jay plemons @jayplemons]

Elon Musk, Scott Adams personally wanted you in his biography, and you're the one person we still can't reach.

Joel Pollak is writing it and needs to interview you. Please reach out to @joelpollak, it would be greatly appreciated.

The deadline is approaching fast. If you can amplify or get this to @elonmusk, please RT, we really need your help.

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

If you run a feed reader or other form of news consuming software, you will encounter RSS 2.0 feeds that support rssCloud. This example Node app shows you how to hook into the network to get instant updates. No polling. As fast as a twitter-like system