ItchySunItchyKnee

What the fuck kind of take is that lol?

Are you wishing the people good luck? Or the state of Israel?

Because, as it stands, the state seems to be a fascist shithole.. and especially that state should remember what is done to fascists.

Late last year the messaging app Beeper raised the ire of Apple when it found a way to recreate Apple’s infamous “blue bubble”messaging on Android. Apple later hobbled Beeper, but it’s not an entirely unhappy ending: The startup has been acquired in a deal valued at $125 million.

Founded three years ago, Beeper is being snapped up by Automattic, the respected parent company of WordPress.com, the blogging and content management platform, as well as Tumblr, which it acquired in 2019. Beeper cofounder Eric Migicovsky said that the company will continue to exist as a stand-alone product within Automattic, and that all of Beeper’s 27 employees—who, like Automattic’s employees, are entirely remote—will be absorbed into the larger entity.

Exact financial terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic, is on a sabbatical and chasing the eclipse and wasn’t available to comment. According to Migicovsky, Beeper will be part of Automattic’s broader strategy to offer more messaging features. Automattic first invested in Beeper in 2022, and late last year snatched up another messaging app, Texts, for $50 million.

The acquisition comes on the heels of a highly publicized battle between Beeper and Apple, in which Beeper tried to bridge the gap between Android messaging and iMessage but was ultimately thwarted. It was unable to monetize its app and, with 30,000 users as of writing, hadn’t reached critical mass.

“Beeper is not an ‘easy mode’ company, and one of the things I’ve learned through this experience is that you’ve got to know who your friends are,” Migicovsky said. “Matt [Mullenweg] and Automattic have been extremely supportive, and as we talked about the future of chat and messaging, it was just clear that he and I saw eye-to-eye on this.”

Beeper was founded in 2020 by Migicovsky and Brad Murray. Migicovsky had previously founded Pebble, an early 2010s smartwatch company that appealed to the nerd crowd for its open source approach to software and innovative use of an E-Ink display. (The Beeper deal is, by all accounts, a better outcome than the Pebble acquisition in 2016, when the flailing smartwatch company was sold to Fitbit.)

During the early days of the pandemic, Migicovsky became fixated on fragmented messaging—the generally recognized fact that most people have to use a variety of different apps to keep in touch with their contacts. Migicovsky and Murray started building a service that would collate all messaging in one app container, using an open source, decentralized messaging protocol called Matrix.

But the holy grail for Migicovsky was to create texting equality between Android and iOS. Normally when an Android user sends a message to an iOS device, it shows up as a green bubble, while blue bubbles are reserved for iMessage only. Beeper on Android would instead send secure, encrypted, “blue bubble” messages to iOS devices.

The standard version of Beeper used hundreds of Mac mini computers as relay points so that Android messages to iOS devices wouldn’t default to SMS. But Migicovsky and his team later created a forked “mini” version of their app that reverse engineered the way iOS notifications work and let the messages flow between the Beeper app itself and iOS Messages. The blue bubble was achieved. Migicovsky charged $2 per month for this Beeper Mini app at launch.

No sooner did Beeper Mini roll out in late November than Apple took steps to squash it, citing security concerns. Migicovsky and his team scrambled to create workarounds, and made the app free in the interim. But by the end of 2023 it was clear that Beeper Mini was an untenable product, although Beeper had succeeded in raising awareness around Apple’s tight grip over its software.

In December more than a dozen watchdog and digital rights organizations called on the Department of Justice and the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Apple for anticompetitive behavior. The DOJ’s investigation into Apple was already long in the works, but earlier this month that suit finally landed—and cited green bubbles as an antitrust concern.

Beeper was ultimately more of a symbol of the challenges faced by upstarts who challenge the entrenched interests of Big Tech than it was a stand-alone product. But Migicovsky insists he’s not disappointed in the results. He’ll continue on at Automattic as the head of the Beeper product, and he says he’s glad Beeper wasn’t sold to a giant tech company. “I think this at least introduced another philosophy around anti-competitiveness, like a company can have monopolies in some markets or specific parts of markets,” Migicovsky said.

Beeper’s reliance on an open source protocol, Matrix, was also appealing to Automattic. While usage of the Beeper app wasn’t widespread, it had managed to support more than a dozen different messaging platforms within its app. In this way it’s similar to Texts, the other Automattic-owned messaging app, which aggregates messages from iPhone, WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Slack, and others all in one container.

Mullenweg said in an interview with TechCrunch at the time of the Texts acquisition that he thinks too many technology services became “closed,” and that the “pendulum is now swinging very hard in the other direction towards more open standards.” While WordPress is Automattic’s most important product right now, Mullenweg has said that he thinks messages, not websites, could have a bigger impact in the long run.

At the very least, Beeper gets to live another day, which is more than a lot of tech startups can say.

I was curious about this too. I found one article (by fox29) that states:

“Authorities later filed the drug offense filed after psilocin mushrooms were discovered during a search of his home.”

So the way I understand the situation is that he originally came in contact with Law Enforcement because of the racial slurs and such, after which a search of his residence was done (don’t know if related to the original charges), where they found magic mushrooms. The sentencing seems to be related to the latter.

I too would love more info on this case than is being reported.

While I do agree with this sentiment, I would change one thing about the first sentence you wrote:

“I propose that anyone getting in the way of an abortion —— gets to have ..”

In my opinion there is no need for the child to have a serious condition before an abortion would be permitted.

If both the mother and the doctor decide it is for the best, that should be the end of it.

I’d like to end this comment with a quote after reading too much US news:

“Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy”

Can you mark this post as NSFW please?

What is this “Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail”?

The article describes it as an advocacy group. But for what exactly? In my humble and biased opinion, these two things are very far apart (LE and Retail)

Edit: to -> two

Ahhh i did not see a comment above his, probably blocked that user.. thanks for the info!

Edit: hmm I searched for this user and he was not yet blocked. I wonder if this is related to the iOS App for lemmy, Memmy..

Edit 2: so I was curious as to why I could not see that users comment, so went and downloaded a different Lemmy App, Voyager

I know this is not the best community to ask this, but anyone else have similar problems?

Both of these are on the same instance (lemmy.world) on the same device

The 2 articles in the linked post were very informative. Thanks for sharing!

I read the entire article after reading your comment.. Honestly asking, what was the antisemitic pivot?

What a cute little golden retriever 😍😂

Ahhh but that is easy ;) all you need to be able to do is count to three

I really appreciate you copy/pasting not only the comment itself, but also adding the username <3

That was indeed an “exusemewtf” comment. Glad the original user I replied to called him out on this!

I hate that witch!

English is not my first language, but should that not be “which”?

Made me laugh though!

Just checked through browser, same problem.. so i do not think it is related to the app itself..

I prefer memmy as well, makes me nostalgic about Apollo :)

Point well made <3

Anyone know what the author of the article means at the end of this paragraph:

"Following recent above-average rainfall in Paris, the water quality in the Seine has remained below acceptable standards for safeguarding swimmers' health," read a **statemeold old nt.**>

I mean the bolded part (bolded to highlight) Is it just a typo?

Didn’t know for sure if Lemmy had a flag for that, but if the platform does, yes, NSFL

That was a really interesting read, thank you for sharing.

The blog comes across a lot more professional than expected, cheers

Okay so i just checked in browaer, private mode, same thing, shows barely anything comments wise

In memmy I cannot even open this thread without crashing the app anymore :(

Any other apps i might be able to check on iOS?

But since this is in browser as well, i expect it has to do with my instance (lemmy.world), which would surprise me..

About your second paragraph, I love being able to converse with internet strangers without the need for name calling etc. I love it here because of these kind of interactions..

I have found my people <3