Automattic

ICYMI: Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley joined our Head of Product, AI, Jeff Smith at our NoHo Space for this month’s dev/ai/nyc. Dennis has been building software for cities for over 20 years, first with Dodgeball (which Google bought in 2005) and then Foursquare. These days he’s at Hopscotch Labs working on BeeBot, which talks to you through your headphones about what’s going on around you as you walk around New York. He was pretty upfront with Jeff about what’s working and what isn’t yet. He also told the story of the day Facebook launched check-ins, and how Foursquare used to know to send you a menu recommendation about six minutes after you sat down at a restaurant. Swipe through for some of our favorite shots from the night. 🍎 Watch the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/e2r8Ps5v 🍎 Our next one is November 18. Hope to see you there: https://lnkd.in/eUEyY_Qq

Some relationships deserve a bigger screen. Mesh now unfolds on iPhone Duo, with more room for the people, context, and history that matter to you. 📱 Check it out! 👇

“Everyone’s got the same tech. The only way to win is to outweird people.” That was Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare and co-founder / CEO of Hopscotch Labs, in conversation with our Head of Product, AI, Jeff Smith October’s dev/ai/nyc. Dennis has spent more than 20 years building software for cities and streets. His latest, BeeBot, works like a radio station for New York, with a DJ that pulls from hundreds of local sources and tells you what’s happening around the corner as you walk by. Jeff, who has launched products at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks, asked Dennis about building Foursquare ten years too early, why apps with opinions win, and what it takes to make a repeatable magic trick for people out in the real world. 🍎 Watch the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/e2r8Ps5v 🍎 And we’ll see you at the next one on November 18!

Some parties have a strict door policy. Akismet's has turned away 570 billion uninvited guests over 21 years. Happy birthday! 🎉

Two days until Dennis Crowley and our own Head of Product, AI, Jeff Smith talk shipping AI in the real world at dev/ai/nyc. Free drinks, free bites, free ideas.🗽 Get your last minute ticket here: https://luma.com/sjnwdzsw

Save the date, New York. 🗽 Our next dev/ai/nyc is a week away, and we're opening the doors of our NoHo Space for a conversation about AI out in the real world. On Wednesday, October 28, we're joined by Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare and now CEO of Hopscotch Labs, in conversation with Jeff Smith, our Head of Product, AI. Dennis is building BeeBot, which uses AI to tell you about the things around you as you walk through a city. He and Jeff will dig into the product and technical decisions behind it, where AI works in physical spaces and where it falls short, and what he's learned going from Foursquare to building with AI today. On the agenda: 🍎 A real talk on shipping AI that lives outside the screen 🍎 Live audience Q&A 🍎 Drinks, small bites, and time to swap notes with the people building the open web Event details: 🗽 Automattic NoHo Space 🗽 Wednesday, October 28 🗽 Doors @ 5:30 PM ET 🗽 Fireside chat @ 6:00 PM ET It's free to attend, but these evenings tend to reach capacity so make sure to grab your ticket! 🎟 Save your spot: https://luma.com/sjnwdzsw

Heads up, New York! Community keeps open source moving. It jumpstarts projects and careers, and it's how people find each other in the first place. So, the platform that brings those communities together should be open too. That idea led Mike Auteri to build GatherPress. He brought it to the WordPress community, spent years working through the realities of adoption across a global project, and watched it spread to communities well beyond WordPress. Today, the WordPress Foundation is building its events platform on GatherPress. On Tuesday, October 27, Mike joins the WordPress NYC Meetup to share how it all came together, what the team has learned, and where it goes from here. Event details: 🗽 166 Crosby Street, New York 🗽 Tuesday, October 27 🗽 Snacks and mingling @ 6:00 p.m. ET 🗽 Talk @ 6:45 p.m. ET Pizza and drinks are on the house, and spots are limited, so grab yours early. 🎟 RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/eDjt-Nk5

Some people write their history down. Paul Mayne built a place for millions of others to do the same. After nearly 16 years, Paul Mayne, the founder of Day One Journal, is moving on from Day One and Automattic. What started as a simple, beautifully designed journaling app grew into a place where people preserve their memories and reflect on their lives. Paul lived that belief himself, with more than 50,000 journal entries of his own. When Day One joined Automattic in 2021, Paul talked about building something that would last. That vision carries forward. Day One isn’t going anywhere. Pedraum Pardehpoosh, our VP of Product, who previously led product for Apple’s App Store, will serve as Interim Head of Day One alongside the team that knows the app and its community best. The commitment to privacy, including end-to-end encryption, stays the same. Thank you, Paul, for everything you built. Read the blog from the Day One team: https://lnkd.in/ezM_NC45

Your sites are protected. Today, the PHP project released security updates for two critical vulnerabilities in PHP itself, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 and nicknamed "PHP2Shell. Both are rated 9.2 out of 10 on the CVSS scale. They can be exploited over the internet with no login, and they can give an attacker control of the server. If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WP Cloud, Pressable, Tumblr, or any Automattic infrastructure, you’re already covered. We worked closely with the PHP Security team to protect every site on our platform as quickly as possible, so there’s nothing you need to do. Because the flaws live in the PHP runtime, updating WordPress or your plugins is not enough to protect your site. If you manage PHP yourself, update to a fixed release now. Thank you to the PHP Security team and to WIZ Research, Calif, OpenAI, and Quarkslab for finding and responsibly reporting these issues. Read the full post for more detailed information and mitigation steps: https://lnkd.in/eUc5ChFw

Come with an idea. Leave with something live. Join us for the inaugural Spacefast Build & Hack Night designed to get your AI projects out of your head and onto the web. Bring your agent, your team (or just yourself), and that tool, dashboard, game, or experiment you’ve been meaning to build. Experts will be in the room to help you turn your idea into something finished and published with Spacefast. Build your own project, try what others create, demo your work to the room, or put it to the test in our optional hackathon challenge. Show up ready to build and leave with something you can share! 🪐Monday, October 26 🪐Automattic NoHo Space, NYC Register now: https://luma.com/3w2xd2z6