The drama between Matt Mullenweg and WPEngine is a sh*tshow of epic proportions. This is not good for the WordPress nor open source community. It is damaging to WordPress developers, plugin developers and providers and others who host WordPress sites. 20 years of good has been trashed in a single week.
WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg calls WPEngine (which has always been better at marketing that services) “A cancer to WordPress” and urges the community to switch providers.
Ah yes, the “Play-Doh” experiment from 2015 is proven true. (In 2015 we had to get an Android phone for testing and had to install Facebook. Out of curiosity we blurted the word “Play-Doh” every few hours with no context. A day later ads for Play-Doh and other kids toys started appearing on The Facebook page. It was immediately deleted from the Android phone)
Google Chrome gives all *.google.com sites full access to system / tab CPU usage, GPU usage, and memory usage. It also gives access to detailed processor information, and provides a logging backchannel.
GoDaddy sucks -- even more.
Not only that the CEO is a massive 💩 but now they are silently making customers change subscriptions if they use the GoDaddy DNS API to validate LetsEncrypt SSL certificates.
https://www.reddit.com/r/godaddy/comments/1bl0f5r/am_i_the_only_one_who_cant_use_the_api/
Ezra Klein breaks up with Gmail. You should too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/opinion/gmail-email-digital-shame.html
They said the quiet part out loud: Google agrees to destroy browsing data collected in Incognito mode
https://blog.wmd.dev/google-agrees-to-destroy-browsing-data-collected-in-incognito-mode/
The fact that Google has to do this tells you everything you need to know about Chrome and every single Google product.
Get #Firefox!
Mastodon (X/Twitter alternative) has over 400k more users than they expected. Get onboard!
Google gets worse.
#Chrome now directly tracks users, generates a "topic" list it shares with advertisers.
As if feeding #Google everything you do through Chrome isn't bad enough they are doubling down on selling your data.
If you must use Chrome get Chromium: https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/
"Modern cars are a privacy nightmare."
From Mozilla: "We reviewed 25 car brands in our research and we handed out 25 “dings” for how those companies collect and use data and personal information."
• 84% share or sell your data
• 92% give drivers little to no control over their personal data
• Nissan can collect “sexual activity” & Kia says they collect info about your “sex life”. Others collect genetic characteristics.
The internet runs PHP. And we develop using it with Symfony, WordPress, Joomla! & Drupal. Didn't realize that Joomla! outpaces Drupal. Yikes.
And we still get asked why we "waste our time" hosting our own email servers and don't just "farm it out to Microsoft and Google". Because we value privacy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/12/microsoft-hack-china/
They're not even hiding it anymore: Google Says It'll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI
https://gizmodo.com/google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-1850601486
In light of Google offloading their Google Domains business, David Heinemeier Hansson states the obvious: You Can't Trust Google
Remember, to Google you are only as valuable as your personal data is to marketers.
As he states:
"Google will eventually kill every single service you care about, if they can't find a way to directly monetize it with ads at a scale of billions."
Worth the read.
Oh look! Another reason to not use Google. Hit pause: get a Kars for Kids Kommercial! No thanks.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/18/23728150/youtube-tv-unskippable-ads-premium-pause-commercial
Inside Google's Plan to Kill the Cookie
To replace the cookie in Chrome and Android, Google has an offering for the world called “Privacy Sandbox." Here's an exclusive peek into how it will work.
https://gizmodo.com/google-chrome-cookie-privacy-sandbox-1850303764
From the article: "consumer advocates say Privacy Sandbox just lets Google and others spy on you in a different way."
And that is exactly what it is. Instead of a universal open standard Google is forcing everyone to do it their way. A resounding NO to this awful idea.
We love it when a client makes good news! Go #outandequal!
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article273376315.html
In an SEC filing, domain registrar #GoDaddy reveals its network suffered a multi-year security compromise allowing hackers to steal its source code, as well as customer and employee login credentials, The attackers also installed malware that redirected customer websites to malicious sites. https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001609711/e4736ddb-b4c7-485b-a8fc-1827691692c9.pdf
"A lack of transparency" - First LastPass, now Slack and CircleCI. The hacks go on (and will likely worsen)
Don't expect victims to be forthcoming. Their alerts conceal more than they reveal.
The downside of closed source.
Privacy-focused web development and hosting.