Web

This expansion is described as capable of supporting a “fully-fledged media business, encompassing rich design, advanced websites, deep analytics, automated marketing features,” plus newsletters, podcasts, videos, etc.

Last week, WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg was ordered to remove the checkbox that asked users to verify that they’re not affiliated with WP Engine when logging in — and he seems to have replaced it with this:

The WordPress co-founder posted the message in a Slack community and changed his username to “gone 💀” after a judge granted WP Engine’s preliminary injunction, 404 Media reports:

Jason Koebler on the ritual of analyzing a killer’s online life:

You can already see parts of the rebrand live on Mozilla’s website, including its new flag logo that doubles as a dino.

My new favorite fan-binding project: Second Head, a collage of fanfic sentences that employ a vivid yet frequently repeated turn of phrase.

Meta seemed to have bought the domain earlier this year, sometime after it bought the company that owned it prior to the debut of threads.net, where Meta’s Twitter competitor lives.

After days of explosive growth on the platform, the Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that it received 42,000 moderation reports in the preceding 24 hours (versus 360,000 in all of 2023).

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed during a live X session that Elon Musk will be “very involved” in helping thwart The Onion’s purchase of Infowars, according to Mother Jones.

US District Judge Christopher Lopez put The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars on pause and ordered a hearing to go over the results of the bankruptcy auction, according to Variety. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction,” Lopez said during an emergency status conference, Variety reports.

Our sister site Polygon has joined us in getting active on Bluesky, complete with a starter pack of reporters. If you prefer your decentralization ActivityPub-flavored, they’re still posting on Mastodon too.

The Verge’s Bluesky account is now actively posting stories from the site, and there’s a starter pack for following individual reporters, editors, and others. Come find us!

As spotted by @DuaneStorey on X, the “WP Engine Tracker” says more than 16,000 sites stopped using WP Engine since late September, which is when WordPress.com parent company Automattic started its public campaign against the third-party hosting service.

The long-running instance hosts some of the fediverse’s great bots, like one that imagines the Google Searches of Star Trek: TNG’s Commander Riker. Another is posting 2001: A Space Odyssey, one frame at a time (which could take about five years).

If you were a nerd online in the early ‘10s, you may recall Lore Sjöberg’s Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Speak with Monsters. The webcomic went dark years ago and it’s been only available in spotty online archives. But it’s getting republished (with an archival installment every Friday) in Sjöberg’s newsletter, starting with a strip based on the early D&D illustration below.