Matt on Tumblr

Important Security Update WordPress 7.0.2 went out today with two important security updates. One is a type of pre-authorization RCE we (fortunately!) have only seen a few times in WordPress' 23-year history; the last, I believe, …...

Code for the People Lights! Camera! Action! Todd Spangler at Variety writes: Automattic’s ‘Code for the People’ Documentary Is a Rallying Cry for Users to Fight for the Open Internet…... https://ma.tt/2026/07/people-code/

USA 250 This auspicious 250th Independence Day, I find myself thinking of what Om wrote in iAMerican when he became a US citizen in 2013…...

Om Links There has been a lot of excitement about the OmFest idea. If you'd like to attend or contribute, …... https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-links/

All Roads Lead to Om Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, passed away. They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood.... https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-2/

No Bubble A throwback from 2007: a local Bay Area a cappella group called The Richter Scales made a Webby Award-winning viral video about how that bubble felt. Hat tip: Toni. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to add to the two quotes from my Dad’s obituary, “Seven days without chicken made one weak.” and “If you fail at raising your children, nothing else mattered.” with another saying he had. Ain’t no hill for a stepper. If you’d like to learn more about this, check out this part of the A Way with Words podcast, and apparently, it might have come from the musician John Gaar.

Death by PowerPoint PowerPoint makes us stupid. — Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander Classic 2010 NYT We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.

Best Trash A typography savant on staff had spent a month designing link underlines (literally just lines) that were more visually pleasing than Chrome or Safari’s defaults.... https://ma.tt/2026/06/best-trash/

Midjourney Medical I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person, but I was so excited to watch the…...

It looks like Ubiquiti is coming for Sonos with its PoE Audio Port, a $199 device that closely resembles the $499 Sonos Port, and $599 PowerAmp. Sonos is going up-market with the Amp Multi. Sonos has had a rough patch, but I’m pretty ride or die for them, and some of my favorite people are there: Tom Conrad, the CEO, Hugo Barra on the board, and Mike Tatum in CorpDev (he’s the guy who got me to drop out of college and join CNET back in 2004!). The only time I don’t do Sonos in a home is for the amazing audio experience of Syng Alpha. The triphonic thing can be really magical. (Analog/vinyl is still Shindo Laboratories, but that’s just for special occasions.) For headphones right now, it’s either some custom Airpods Pro 3 or the Sennheiser HDB 630 (Hat tip: Pud, who is also making some crazy headphones).

Assorted Links Sometimes you have to just start with beauty. Listen to Jon Batiste's Beethoven Blues, then…...

Patricia from Geneva: What about multilingual?

Question: Where are the young people?

7.0 favorite things

WCEU

Bee Champion Spelling bees have gotten a lot more intense. How many of these do you know? torrone, enthymeme, iguape, Denebola, fais-dodo, cywyddau, pohutukawa, monadnock, émeute, nannofossil, tongkang, Natchitoches, flaith, semele, rusell, sawder, campernelle, Nicol, Zamenis, Tharparkar, tlachtli, madoqua, retiarius, balintawak, tessaraconter, taurokathapsia, rapakivi, uayeb, paroemia, melengket, teraglin, homelyn, chikungunya, bromocriptine (cashaw)...