Dan Q

I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.

I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found out geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.

I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.

Photograph of Dan, his ponytail hanging over the shoulder of his black t-shirt, smiling from behind his beard and waving to the camera.

  • Firsts and Lasts

    I was listening to the bats flying silently above me while I watched the Perseids, the other month. When was the last time I was actually capable of hearing their echolocation? I simply can't remember, because it didn't feel significant at the time. Read more →

  • Meetup Magic

    As I come to the end of a week in Mexico with ~400 of my the smartest, friendliest, open-source-loving geeks I could wish to know, I come to realise that Automattic's meetups are just... magical. Read more →

  • We'll Pay You to Go (so we're confident in who stays...)

    This week, Automattic made a very generous offer to employees who didn't feel aligned with the company and its leader: to pay them to leave. 8.4% of the company took it, and it's been a heartbreaking time, but we'll build back stronger, I'm sure. Read more →

  • Digital Dustbusting

    I've been doing a bit of tidying-up of the mess that is my personal Internet hosting. I've made a lot of progress, but the rest is probably going to have to wait until later in the year. Read more →

  • What if Emails were Multilingual?

    Wouldn't it be nice if there were a standard for multilingual emails? Oh wait, there is! Let's see how it works, and whether it's (ever going to be) ready for mainstream use... Read more →

  • WP Engine's Three Problems

    Matt Mullenweg kicked off a battle of words between Automattic and the WordPress Foundation and hosting company WP Engine. Without weighing in on the legal aspects (IANAL), I've written up my thoughts. Read more →

  • D20 with Advantage

    D&D players spend a lot of time rolling D20s. Sometimes they 'roll with advantage' - that is, roll two dice and take the largest. Last night I dreamed I derived the probability matrix for such rolls, and it got me thinking... could you construct a single die that rolls 'D20 with Advantage'? Read more →

  • Idea: Meeting Spoofer

    Coworkers keep scheduling meetings in periods you've blocked-off for no-meetings, head-down focus time? Maybe you should try scheduling fake meetings in those slots instead and see if they respect those any better! (But perhaps there's a bigger cultural issue you oughta look at instead.) Read more →

  • Roll Your Own Antispam

    The Web contact form of a nonprofit I founded started attracting a huge volume of spam, and conventional tools weren't helping. But a little analysis allowed us to block almost all of it without compromising on accessibility, privacy, or the false-positive rate. Read more →

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    (articles are traditional long-form blog posts)

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  • ✅ Inbox Zero ✅ Slack Notification Zero ✅ Assigned PR Reviews Zero ✅ Owned PRs… one, but it’s approved and just waiting for the right moment to mergeThat’s got the be the first time in… literally years… that I’ve ended a workday so “clean”. Feels amazing.There’ll be a mess again tomorrow, but hopefully only of […] Read more →

  • Happy International Pronouns Day! 🥳 I use he/him pronouns. Read more →

  • Post: Facebook AI Training Opt-Out

    And while we're talking about AI... it took a disproportionate about of time to find the right (tiny) link, but eventually I managed to opt-out of my content being used to train Facebook's AI. They don't make it easy, do they? Read more →

  • Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres

    As Google invest in next-generation nuclear generation to provide electricity to their energy-hungry AI datacentres, so they can keep providing shit answers to everyday questions, I'm optimistic that maybe after the LLM fad fizzles out we'll be left with new power technologies that can benefit all of humankind. Read more →

  • Note #24735

    You know that you REALLY needed that coffee when you:1. get out a mug, 2. turn on the coffee machine, 3. load the dishwasher while you wait for the coffee machine to warm up, 4. can’t find your mug any more, oh shit it’s in the dishwasher 🤦 × Read more →

  • eBay UK have changed their terms to (a) remove seller fees for most private sellers, but (b) instead of paying-out immediately, payouts are four times a year (or on-demand).That sounds like they’re trying to keep money in their ecosystem. The hope is, I guess, that by paying sellers in virtual “eBay Pounds” rather than actual […] Read more →

  • This evening I pushed against my illness-addled brain to try to sit in on the fortnightly Zoom call with the Three Rings dev team. Unfortunately it seems like the primary symptom of my cold is an inability to string words together.At one point, I apologised to by colleague “Beff” (I meant “Bev”, but I had […] Read more →

  • London Transport 25

    Girl on the Net diverts from her usual sex blogging to write about taking a date on a 25-forms-of-transport tour of London, and it's delightful. Read more →

  • Note #24701

    Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn’t both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂× Read more →

  • Calm after the storm

    Rosie, who like me never even considered taking Automattic's alignment offer, writes about her experience of this week's meetup. Read more →

  • Note #24696

    I’m back home from Mexico (and feeling a little worse for wear), where this young lady wanted to let me know that I was sorely missed.× Read more →

  • Post: Goodbye Tulum

    Goodbye, Tulum! You were delightful, if very hot. It’s time for me to head back to the UK.× Read more →

  • EXIF geodata, and what if you took a picture on the moon?

    Cassie Jones asks what EXIF photo metadata would - or should - look like for a photograph taken on the moon. It got me thinking, a bit. Read more →

  • Hurricane Milton

    From safely outside of its predicted path, just around the Yucatan coast, Hurricane Milton seems like a forboding and distant monster. A growing threat whose path will thankfully take it away, not towards, me. My heart goes out to the people on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico who find themselves along the route of this awakened beast. Read more →

  • Post: Five Cards

    It’s a bit hard to perform close-up magic to an audience 40 metres deep, so I pre-recorded my favourite card trick! Then I talked over it, explaining to colleagues from my division why it’s my favourite bit of slight-of-hand, and what great magic tricks have in common with great code. I feel like I’m likely […] Read more →

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