Canadian Engineer living on the coast in Spain. Traveler, Code, Tinkerer; previously co-founder BraveNewCode (acquired in 2016) #longcovid
Valencia, Spain
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I went to the hospital in distress on Feb 14, 2024, about five weeks after my primary infection. I said I was having neurological issues, difficulty thinking, confusion. They did a CT and sent me home. Three days later I went into full psychosis, and wandered the streets for hours. When I eventually ended up back at the hospital later that night, I had a resting HR of 134 and my brain was totally mush - difficulty speaking, paranoia etc. In all their wisdom they decided to lock me in the psych ward (no history of mental illness at all) without a neurological consult. I had no phone so it took days for people to find me.
No MRI, no neurology consult, just pumped full of anti-psychotics for days while friends and family tried to figure out where I was. Despite six hospital visits in six weeks showing low blood sodium, difficulty breathing, cognitive dysfunction, positive covid test six weeks earlier, not once did anyone consider anything other than depression. My official report said "psychosis due to depression" even though it later said "we could find no reason for the depression".
So yah, sorry, I don't trust the medical system anymore. Took me a year to basically refute that diagnosis thanks to a neuro-immunologist and neurologists who actually dug a little deeper.
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If he's honestly that scared of being shot, he shouldn't be taking his kid out in public.
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Canada chiming in here - horrible news out of the USA with Trump. No other way to spin it.
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Looks like I’m officially part of the blocked team. Just a recap of some of what I tried to contribute over the years.
I contributed five plugins to #WordPress, including two that were voted the #1 and #3 plugins by users in 2009. The mobile plugin I helped make was the default mobile version on WP.org for a while.
I coded the first few iterations of profiles.wordpress.org. I’ve also contributed to core.
I organized three WordCamps, two in Vancouver and one in Whistler. I sponsored many others through my business, the majority of which I never even attended.
There’s an old saying that when your friends suddenly become your enemies, you should seriously ask yourself why.
I still believe in WordPress, I just find the recent actions to be reprehensible and not in the spirit of open source or what I thought was the spirit WordPress.
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Trump thought McCain was a loser because he got captured. That’s the kind of guy he was. The guy who dodged service said a veteran who endured torture was a loser.
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The West tried for 31 years to help Russia become a better nation, and they still attacked a sovereign nation and brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. Time for the west to worry about the west and to let the flame of Russia finally die out.
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I have honestly been wondering what all those guns are for? I always thought it was to protect at some level against a tyrannical government. But so far not a shot fired. Are they just to kill kids I guess? Sounds harsh, but no protests, no placards? Nothing?
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Shoigu asked Austin to forward the instruction manuals for the Bosch 2960 and the LG 1640 Washing Machines.
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You don't give away your sovereignty. It's a non starter. It's like voting away your right to vote.
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When you read the history books, it’s always like, that would never happen here, people would stand up and stop it. And here it is, just rolling along. Nobody other than a few judges trying to slow it down.
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Canadá should invoke article IV. Get Trump and the USA to explain themselves in front of nato.
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Reminds me of Revenge of the Sith - this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
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I’m back in Canada visiting family. But my home in Valencia, Spain is facing massive flooding now. More than 62 people dead so far. It’s horrific. Some videos people have sent me privately via WhatsApp.
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Just released version 1.0.1 of my new #WordPress privacy plugin. This version strips out data sent to WP.org for plugins that are hosted off-site. Currently wp.org receives information about every plugin on your system, including "private" and off-site ones.
At this point, I'm only looking for devs to install this and help flush it out. But if you don't mind doing some testing, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to keep adding some privacy options over the next few days to limit that amount of data leakage that seems to be happening with a default install.
You can find the plugin here if you want to test it out:
github.com/wp-privacy/wp-api…
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That Stardew Valley won game of the year and is about farming shows most people just want good gameplay.
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He’s also said he’s been talking with Xi daily, which Xi said is bullshit. Trump is an unreliable narrator.
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So it's only genocide if you go into it balls deep? If you're going to have laws and rules, they need to apply equally to everyone.
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It still boggles my mind how useless the WordPress dashboard is. If I don't run out of steam, that's my next WP plugin. Like this should be the heart and soul of your WordPress site, now it's just some smouldering dumpster out back. Quick draft? Like who uses that.
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So I was trying to figure out how Automattic knows the WP Engine websites. If you actually look at the payload to the WordPress.org API to get the list of plugins, WordPress is adding the URL on the user-agent. There's absolutely no technical reason to do this, it's just to obtain more data. They could just as easily leave the URL out and leave in WordPress/6.6.2.
So with each call, WordPress.org is getting the WordPress version number, the website it's installed on, and the IP address it's installed on. All they have to do is check when that IP address changes and they'd know that the hosting provider changed. This is actually pretty intrusive.
The API call in this case was api.wordpress.org/plugins/in…. You can inspect this yourself using the HTTP Requests Manager plugin.
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You can tell he was biting his tongue as he likely actually has a great deal of military experience, and she talks about it only as if she's read it in a book. She threatens nuclear missiles and it's clear his point is that she looks foolish for doing so.
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Glad to see Automattic isn't petty at all.
It appears they've literally set up a web page to track people leaving WP Engine. I'm sure the judge will think this is just great, especially since Matt's lawyers argue WPE hasn't been materially affected:
wordpressenginetracker.com/
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It’s not a fork if you don’t change the slug. It’s a takeover of the plugin. If someone compromised the distribution channel of Wordpress and released their own version, would you call that a fork? Because that’s what happened here.
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Can you show us some tweets where you denounced the war and the needless Ukrainian deaths? Otherwise stay and protest. Your life isn’t worth more than a Ukrainian one. If you won’t stand up publicly for them why should anyone else help you ?
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Matt's on Reddit basically implying that WordPress is his work and that we've all profited more than he has. Can you imagine WordPress with only Akismet? No other plugins? Does he realize how useless it would be? It has no caching, no fields API, and crappy SEO.
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Putin hoped the USA would abandon Europe and he’d basically be the big man on campus. He didn’t count on Europe finding its backbone finally. Europe should just ramp up their military spending such that Russia bankrupts itself trying to keep up.
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Sounds like what's being put into the WordPress repository is basically a nulled version of ACF Pro without some of the copyrights. It's clear Matt's no longer a champion of any of the things he once he said he was. I left a review. Here's a video explaining it more - piped.video/watch?v=nYHKSpfh…
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But you use topical dutasteride? The risk profile on that is worse than finasteride and for sure some goes systemic.
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I feel like there is just a room at Automattic where these people sit around under dim lights waiting for a Route 53 health check notification telling them WPE is down. The pettiness on the official account is so childish.
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Some people think that the employees helping take over ACF, launching WPE tracker, etc. are faultless, as they are just following orders. That's not my position. I think if you do something unethical or potentially illegal, even as an employee, you need to be held accountable.
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So the Automattic employee who is personally working on the nulled version of ACF Pro in the repo is apparently doing it because he wants to “do it right/better”. This was an exchange over in Mastodon. I wouldn’t touch this code with a thousand foot pole.
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The judge in the WPE vs Automattic/Matt ruled this morning on the injunctive relief and GRANTED it. It's a 42 page document that basically says the following:
storage.courtlistener.com/re…
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It’s not a public space, its a private coffee shop and the altercation happened on the patio of that establishment. And you can’t smoke within six meters of restaurant doors and food establishments in Vancouver. The guy shouldn’t have been vaping there.
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I feel bad, @photomatt spent the last three days saying he's not a mafia boss, and some cat jumped into his lap and now he's stroking it like the Godfather. Not his fault, but makes for good TV.
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Once it’s hit it’ll tumble and reach terminal velocity like everything else that falls.
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This is the second time Matt has unblocked me long enough to snipe a reply, and then block again. I can’t respond to these as it won’t let me. But he basically accused me of living in a bubble for asking an honest question.
I’ve had enough though, so he’s earned a block too now. Nulling and taking over plugins with two million users isn’t my idea of helping humanity though.
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The thing is, he has no right to ask. Those countries are independent, they are free to make their own alliances. Even Russian generals pre-war said that.
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Looks like the nulled ACF Pro in the #WordPress repo automatically deactivates the real ACF/SCF. This is explicitly forbidden in the guidelines, and once again shows there are different rules for Matt/Automattic and the rest of us serfs.
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They have almost guaranteed that the majority of that money won't be spent with US contractors either based on recent actions.
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In Spain the 3rd floor in actually the 4th in Canada. They don’t count the bottom as 1, I suspect Argentina is the same. Plus lots of those old buildings have high ceilings, so likely higher than it seems.
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WPE responds to Matt and Automattic’s injunctive relief response. They basically say Matt and Automattic seem to be living in an alternate universe where what they are saying in legal docs is opposite to what they have said publicly.
For example, despite saying they haven’t been harmed in the legal documents, they’ve included all the times Matt’s basically publicly bragged about them being harmed.
The also include an apparent quote from Matt’s own website basically saying #Wordpress dot org isn’t owned in the traditional sense as it belongs the community.
You can read the entire submission here.
storage.courtlistener.com/re…
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Did you know #WordPress exposes all your users via the WP API? I've never understood why, it seems like it's just giving hackers more info about logins. For example, if we look at Matt's site, we can see 4 users: A8C, saxmatt (him), Otto, and a designer
ma.tt/wp-json/wp/v2/users
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If you watch Michael J. Fox's documentaries, he always had to be doing something with his hands to stop his tremors. Either holding something, twiddling something, or whatever. So likely trying to hide Parkinson's tremors.
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It bothers me as a Canadian living in Spain as people here toss stuff on the ground all the time, it's rare in Canada.
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She basically admitted to war crimes. I can’t wait for her and others to be tried in The Hague.
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It would be funny if there was some circular dependency here. Like CF built some piece on Google cloud who then at some point relied on those same CF services.
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I spent the last 48 hours looking at the #WordPress update APIs. It's pretty staggering the amount of data that is being passed around. I tried to summarize it in this post. As far as I'm aware this isn't really documented anywhere, nor is it opt-in.
duanestorey.com/posts/down-t…
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I wrote a plugin last night and this morning to strip out the personal information (your site) from outbound #WordPress requests using the internal API. If any devs want to do a quick sanity check that this works on their machines, I would appreciate it.
github.com/wp-privacy/wp-api…
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This is such an embarrassing thing - like the pineapple thing was implemented without any thought to the downstream effects on support or anything.
Automattic is just a ship run by captain Ahab at this point, on a singular vindictive quest without care of the consequences.
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Yup. Not only is WP.org not part of the Foundation, it’s Matt’s site to do what he wants. Everyone who contributed a plugin for the greater good just basically uploaded it to a private site to do with as they please.
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Jesus Christ dude, apply for a visa and get the hell out if you hate it so much. You realize people move between countries all the time?
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Apparently @photomatt posted in a recent blog entry that (ma.tt/2024/11/gpl-clarificat…) sites selling GPL code without support or docs aren't legal as they don't provide support. He may want to re-read the GPL v2 license, which explicitly grants the right to charge for distribution only.
"Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my distribution site?" Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program.
I'm not in support of nulled plugins, but his post saying it's not legal due to the GPL is just factually inaccurate.
gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.…
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Got my third and final block last night. It’s the open source triple crown. I keep standing up because I disagree vehemently with what #WordPress is doing here and how they continue to show contempt for the community.
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I went looking for the #WordPress trademark application to understand it more. I noticed there are two pending applications for 'Managed WordPress' and 'Hosted WordPress', both under the WordPress Foundation. If I was a hosting provider in this space, I'd probably take notice.
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Because the guy she just met 30 minutes ago was killed and fell off that cliff and she wanted to be with him during the credits.
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Ukraine should start just leaving piles of vodka and valuables in piles with some guns around and let them take care of each other.
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Tomorrow Trump announces a shitty gold plated Chinese made wearable called TrumpFitness.
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Burn baby, burn. He won’t stop until it’s all gone. I still can’t believe the people who are still defending him.
Equally gross blog post on WordPress DOT org wordpress.org/news/2025/01/j…
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What a fucking baby. All Joost did was offer to help.
I think the whole community feels like it was stabbed repeatedly by Matt when it was down.
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It’s a phone people. It’s not curing cancer. USB-c supports 100W or more. When phones need more we probably have a bigger problem.
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Thank you for the hard work. Lots of support and love here from Spain. We met today to support Ukraine in Valencia.
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I’m surprised some of the Automattic employees who defended the actions over the last four months are continuing to interact. If I were them, I’d be burying my head in the sand or issuing an apology. Stealing a plugin and defending it isn’t something that will easily be forgotten
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Listen to the person that did it people, all by himself I guess. No credit to the 50,000 plugin or theme authors, or the thousands of core contributors.
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Oh hey, ACF is now (as of six days ago) an officially registered trademark of WP Engine. Now probably isn't the best time to null the ACF Pro plugin and stick it on Matt's repository to download (while leaving in all the references to ACF), but what do I know?
tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=9…
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Why post it then? Not everything in life is about generating clicks and traffic. Have some tact.
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I find it funny that Russians think they can only visit family in one direction, i.e. by going to the EU. Simply bring your mom back for a visit if you want to see her for now.
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I just waited four months to see a specialist in BC, and was called yesterday, two days before my appointment, and informed it was cancelled for the foreseeable future.
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Sounds like the WPE engine request to speed up the injunction decision date was granted. I guess they weren't convinced with the whole #WordPress isn't WordPress thing.
storage.courtlistener.com/re…
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Couldn't you argue that Russia has been fighting for 8 years though too in that same war? I think it's a confluence of factors, but certainly Ukraine deserves the bulk of the success.
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Thankfully most Canadians are too busy drinking beer and eating poutine to be hanging on X. But as a Canadian, our politics have become a lot more US-like in recent years unfortunately.
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Once mirrors of the repo and APIs go live, the quality of Automattic’s data quickly drops. They won’t have full visibility on sites using WP, which sites use which plugins or themes, etc. it’s a huge loss of info for them.
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Wow, I just noticed the #WordPress Engine Tracker has been reported for phishing.
For the record, it wasn't me, I've been busy coding. I just went to look and noticed it had changed.
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It’s hard to separate him from the USA when he has a large vocal cheering section celebrating these types of decisions.
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It's idiotic, I've been hit with this a few times from Valencia where I can't hit R2 buckets. I hope @LaLiga gets sued into the stone ages.
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Hey @github, idea for you. Lots of WordPress devs moving to GitHub for their themes and plugins. Any chance you can add a new zip file type to the releases that contains the repo-name as a directory inside with all the files in that? Then the WP update mechanism can work as is.
It if my repo is my-repo, instead of a zip file contain all my repository files, it would contain a single folder called my-repo, with all the files in that. That would greatly simply developing and releasing plugins and themes. Thanks!
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Europeans don’t care. I moved from Canada to Spain. This American idea where you can only be happy if you’re spending all your money on TVs and stuff is farcical. So many Canadians and Americans in Spain and Portugal enjoying a better quality of life.
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