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Comment by solarkraft | Hacker News Reader

Automattic also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts, publishing the code of the latter. I used to have a subscription just to support them.

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The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain. I'm amazed the purchase decision was ever made, and more amazed that it still exists after the hit to the user base.

And unlike the Twitter acquisition, Tumblr users basically universally hate its new owner. Twitter has plenty of Elon boosters, but I've never seen someone on Tumblr actually _like_ photomatt.

Wow I had no idea Pocket Casts was open source now. I still have a subscription because it's a perfect app I use every day.

And Simplenote.

Which is no longer in active development

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093

That is sad but not surprising. I think they always had a bit more trouble with its sync system than they would have wanted.

I loved Simplenote for the longest time but ultimately simple pragmatism switched me to Apple Notes after dalliances with several task management apps.

They clearly changed their mind.

That "no longer developed" note is from September 2025.

They made a bunch of non-trivial improvements in 2026: https://simplenote.com/blog/

These appear to be a sort of AI-driven re-evaluation.

I am a sort of engaged cynic about AI but I am happy to chalk this one up as a straightforward win for the machines.

(I'm also quite intrigued about the other blog post regarding an MCP for Simplenote — I love the idea of an LLM's knowledge-base being accessible in such an instantaneous way)

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