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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 1d

I'm always impressed by just how many people who've never maintained any open source software are so wonderfully generous with their advice about how to do it correctly

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 6d

Had an amazing time this week speaking at PenpotFest in Madrid - there’s a lot of inspiring work happening in open source design tools these days that gives me a lot of optimism for the future

Thanks for having me @penpot.app 🫶

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks so much! 🙏

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 12d

🤣🤣🤣 10/10

John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 12d

@rmccue.io You were workin' as a waitress in a cocktail bar

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · 16d

it’s amazing (not in a good way) how many books these days are just lengthy accounts of every guest the author has had on their podcast and what each of them said

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 10

Aggregate publisher revenue on @ghost.org is currently growing at ~$1M ARR per *week*

The business of independent publishing and journalism is looking in better shape than it has in a very long time

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 10

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

www.lesswrong.com/posts/vidXh2...

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox — LessWrong

I was born in July 1989, which means I am of the last generation who will remember the time before the internet. The cables and data centers and hype…

www.lesswrong.com

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 9

Ah I see! It’s not a 12MP crop of a 48MP sensor, it’s a pro fusion telephoto liquid XDR Dynamic Island camera system ultra

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 8

One of the easiest ways to spot an AI generated reply, other than em dashes, is the endless use of the phrase: "This isn't [trivial, insignificant thing], it's [important, considered thing]."

Stands out like a sore thumb.

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 8

that's what I've heard! new limits and no opus or something? I'm still catching up

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Sep 8

I took a couple weeks off, can someone catch me up on the 4years of AI news that happened while I was away? So far I've gathered that we all hate Claude now

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 19

Another story hidden between the lines of this one:

Publishers on Ghost are earning (multiples) more revenue compared to some other platforms that are endlessly shilling their "game changer growth hacking features"

Quality content > Growth hacking

John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

We've now generated over $136M from free, open source software with @ghost.org 📈

$36M in revenue from managed hosting
$100M in platform revenue for indie publishers

The ecosystem is growing really quickly at this point, and really excited about where things are heading next:

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

We're hiring btw

If you want to get paid to work on open source full time and help shape the the future of Ghost, we'd love to hear from you

careers.ghost.org

Ghost

We're hiring! Ghost is a proud non-profit organisation building open source technology for fiercely independent, professional publishers.

careers.ghost.org

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

Yes! Took off way faster than we expected, and continues to grow at an astonishing pace.

The main KPI we track is a subset of it: How many publishers generate sufficient subscription revenue for it to become their fulltime job

That's where we try to move the needle

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thank you sir ❤️ really appreciate it!

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

We can just keep reinvesting 100% of what we make into improving the product.

That's going to create some really interesting asymmetric market dynamics over the next few years!

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

It's taken 12 years to get to this point as a bootstrapped non-profit org with no outside funding, but the position we're in now is pretty remarkable:

Other platforms have hundreds of millions of dollars in VC debt to repay, and shareholders to enrich.

We don't.

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

For a while it felt like the entire web was moving toward big centralized platforms — but as subscription businesses grow we consistently see that people want to run their own platform & have full control

Bullish on publishers using Ghost, and the future of open, shared infrastructure more broadly.

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 18

We've now generated over $136M from free, open source software with @ghost.org 📈

$36M in revenue from managed hosting
$100M in platform revenue for indie publishers

The ecosystem is growing really quickly at this point, and really excited about where things are heading next:

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 17

When writing was first invented, it was critiqued as likely to create the “illusion of wisdom” - because people would no longer bother to memorize knowledge.

What happens when we invent tools?

We adapt, and we evolve.

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · Aug 17

We’ve already seen one major tech-driven culture shift from the pre-internet era to a swipe-and-stream generation hooked on instant gratification and app convenience.

When AI is always-on and omnipresent, what behavioral rewiring comes next? What happens when thinking itself feels too hard?

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 13

lmfao

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 13

Single most annoying thing to me about Claude Code is that it consistently does "what it believes you meant, based on what you said" rather than "what you said"

Apparently this is a deliberate/intentional feature - but really wish there was a way to disable

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 13

my kingdom for a flight booking MCP so I never have to touch an airline website again

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John O'Nolan @johnonolan.bsky.social · Aug 6

Jesus Christ, this thread is wild 🤣

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