How The Internet Saved the Home of Blogging Pioneer Noah Grey

At the end of the year 2000, Noah Grey created the free and open-source blogging software Greymatter (now maintained by a community of users). Wil Wheaton's new book describes it as "the original, primordial blogging platform. Blogs look like they do... because Noah Grey did it first."

Three days ago Noah Grey created a Gofundme campaign headlined "I am losing my home in four days."

"I am deeply ashamed and afraid of having to doing this, but I have no choice." My sister and I are about to lose our house. It's being foreclosed next Tuesday (May 3rd)... unless we can pay $35,000 before then. (We could pay $23k and get to keep the house for now, but will be left to pay off the rest over an unknown amount of time....)

I don't know who among the few friends I have that will read this can contribute anything at all, and heaven knows I understand.... [T]his was sprung on us with no warning, and having the money ready to go is our only salvation....
Noah's plea was retweeted by long-time geeks who remembered his contribution, including tech entrepreneur Anil Dash as well as the founder of Harvard's Nieman Lab. And a San Antonio newspaper reported on another response from Texas: Alex Mahan, the brand director of Lockheed Martin, wrote on Twitter: "I coded my first blog in 2000 with Greymatter. If it weren't for Noah, I might not have had a career in web development. He was always helpful and patient with my beginner questions back then. Please throw down some $ if you are able."
Wil Wheaton himself apparently got involved. (Several people made donations along with the tagline #WilSentMe.)

And with an average donation size of $95.87, a total of 1,073 people ultimately donated... $102,873.

By the end of the day Friday, wearing a t-shirt that says 127.0.0.1, Noah Grey shared a tearful video on Twitter.

"This has been the craziest, most emotionally overwhelming day of — of my life.... Oh my god, thank you. It hardly even feels like enough to say the words. But thank you so much. Everybody, oh my god... It may take me time to respond to all of this, but I will — I will.... I have never felt so seen. I have never felt so — I've never felt embraced by the internet before.
"I've seen some say this feels like 'the Old Internet' in action...." Grey posted on Twitter this weekend. "But 20+ years ago I was still a struggling mentally-ill man who wanted to matter... and never dared let himself feel he *might* til now. I am shattered with gratitude."

Re:

[b0s0z0ku]

Not everyone can afford to buy until their late 30s or even 40s with the way the property market is today. Fuck the Fed.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Forget the fucking Fed. The real problem here is that it's not illegal for businesses to buy up all the housing and turn it into rentals. That's unsustainable, and will only do harm overall, so it's reasonable to prohibit it. A contributing problem is that laws prohibiting airbnbs aren't being enforced. I know of people who own four homes, all but one of which they bought to airbnb them. That means that they have one legit airbnb, and four unregulated hotels operating illegally which used to be housing unit

Re:Mortgages

[PPH]

It's a matter of the present value of a series of mortgage payments vs the price of the house.

If you have part or all of the principle in hand and some reasonable level of skill at investing, a mortgage plus an investment portfolio is the way to go.

Even a minimum down payment plus a decent income stream and the discipline not to spend it on weed/fast cars will work.

Re:

[PPH]

This from someone who in their 20's couldn't figure out how the fuck people afforded a mortgage.

This is the kind of thing they need to teach in high school.

Australian here

So, you are always upside down on your mortgage.

Re:

[batkiwi]

No bank in Australia offers fixed rates for the lifetime of a mortgage.
The most I've found is 5 years, and those rates are closer to 5%.

Where are you borrowing from that has this magical rate and terms?

Re: Mortgages

[St.Creed]

Banks are tied to the rate of their central bank but also check the competition. Dutch rates are climbing now, but I got 2.7% for 20 years a few years ago, today I could get 3% for 20 years on a fixed annuity mortgage.

Link: florius.nl/hypotheekrente

Re:

[batkiwi]

Australia doesn't do fixed rate mortgages period for more than 5 years, and he was claiming this was in Australia.

I'm not saying he couldn't do that in other locales.

Re:

[computer_tot]

You realize paying off a 300k house would require the same amount of money as buying around 300 iPhones, right? Unless you're buying several a year, your phone choices aren't going to make a dent in your house purchases and cost.

Re:

[thegarbz]

You're only throwing away if you're a stupid investor.

In the mean time my house value including the rate of inflation is currently exceeding all expenses I would have paid in interest over the life of the loan even if it wasn't paid off early.

With interest rates the way they are you aren't throwing away anything. Meanwhile while you're living a poor life you're contributing to someone else's value without ever generating any of your own.

For my girlfriend her mortgage repayments are less than the cost of her

Re: Mortgages

[JoeRobe]

I can't believe this is modded insightful. Money makes money. If you hand someone else that money, you lost the chance for it to earn you more. Investment return is typically 10% annualized. Fixed 30 year mortgages are in the 5-6% range right now in the US (they were around 3% mid-pandemic). You're currently better off taking debt at that rate and investing.

Let's say you buy a $300k house and have $100k on hand.

Option 1: do what you say, pull all of your money out of investments that return on average ~8%/yr and pay as much off as possible. Then live a poor life, and pay the house off in 5 years. After 5 years you own a house worth $300k. You rebuild your $100k over the next 10 years (now 15 years after you bought the house) and invest. By 30 years after purchase your house is worth $600k (due to inflation) and your investments are worth $317k, for $917k total.

Option 2: take out a 30 yr mortgage with a 5% fixed apr and keep your $100k in investments. After 30 years, you will have paid $280k in interest (so that's a minus in the accounting). Your $100k of investments at 8% annual return are now worth $1mil. You also own a house worth $600k. Subtract off the $280k in interest and your worth is $1.3mil. $400k more than in option 1.

There are more devils in the details here (I probably haven't quite accounted for inflation correctly, nor income), but the point is that when you have the opportunity, you should make your money earn you more money, not spend it asap so you have no debt.

Re:

[Gunslinger42]

Debt is good, as long as the interest on it is less than what your investments make. Don't pay off low-interest debt until you have to.

Re:

[hazem]

You're completely neglecting that probably the main thing a mortgage gets you is stability in your housing prices. I was renting a small 1 bedroom apartment for $700/month when I bought my house (3 bedroom with a yard). My mortgage payment (including the required insurance and taxes escrow) was $1200. I've since refinanced that to just $1000 and cut the term in half. In the mean time, that same little no-frills apartment is renting for $1700.

Eating rice and beans wouldn't have saved me from that escalat

Pssh. Poser.

[93 Escort Wagon]

The kewl kids nowadays wear t-shirts that say "fe80::"

Re:

[Arnonyrnous Covvard]

::1

Heartwarming

[freedom_surfer]

Not often I have an internet feel good moment, so thanks for sharing. Seems like a humble man and I'm glad he's getting some recognition for his pioneering contributions.

Re:I guess that's great but what nobody is asking.

[destinyland]

Er, read the article(s)? The San Antonio newspaper reported that he's seriously disabled -- and that he's been supporting his sister/caretaker for the last two years after the death of their mother.

He goes into a lot of detail on his GoFundMe page. (The newspaper tactfully calls it "family tragedies," but there's a lot more to it than that.)

Re:I guess that's great but what nobody is asking.

[tragedy]

I guess it's awesome that he got a ton of money in donations and ended up with about 3 times what he asked for, but how come nobody is asking exactly how he got $35,000 in the hole here? That's not normal.

It is actually kind of normal. There are about 84 million owner occupied housing units (houses, condos and so forth that might have a mortgage) out of about 140 million housing units total. There were 92 thousand foreclosures in 2021. That works out to about 0.11% That does not sound like that much, but most mortgages are 30 years long, so that would work out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.3%. These are all rough numbers, but that's a fairly decent amount of foreclosures. Also, among the mentally ill, it is probably a lot more common. Also, unlike rich people, who can reach the point where they can't pay their loans and renegotiate so that the amount they have overdue on, say, a ten-year loan simply goes back into the remaining principle and the 10 year loan becomes, say, a 12 year loan. In the end, the bank gets all its money back (maybe) and extra interest and it's all good. Regular people don't get that option. They might get some accommodation, but it's usually something impossible like making double-size mortgage payments until they're caught up. Economists will at this point go on about how it has to be this way due to "moral hazard", etc. but, for some reason, that applies to some classes and not others.

In this case, he gives detail. To summarize, this appears to be a family home that the mother ended up with after a divorce, but needed to take a mortgage out on to cover expenses. She then died a couple of years ago, so her income was lost and her two adult children could not pay the mortgage (possibly didn't even know about it until recently) and they don't have enough income to pay it.

So, chances are fairly good that, yes, they will run into a crunch in the future, maybe from property taxes, etc. You seem to be implying that it's not worth it and that this is some sort of pointless charity. The thing is though, he made a genuine contribution. Many people appreciate it. Most people giving money probably think of it less as a charitable contribution and more as simply paying what's due.

Re:

[JudgeFurious]

I didn't get that he was implying anything. Simply asking. It's a touchy subject and hard to do without giving offense but I think it's perfectly normal to wonder why someone needs to $35,000 or so in three days. If there's an explanation for it then that's great and I'm glad he made his deadline. There's nothing wrong with asking questions like that though.

Re:

[tragedy]

I didn't get that he was implying anything. Simply asking.

To be honest, I was was giving a pretty mild evaluation of what I think he was implying. I think he was pretty much outright saying that he thought giving money was pointless. Sure though, benefit of the doubt and all. I also see that, currently, the poster is modded down to (-1, Troll). That doesn't really seem reasonable. Maybe if there were a (-1, asked questions that were explained in the article, and even partly in the summary) mod, the poster might be deserving of that. I think most of us are from tim

Re:

[computer_tot]

Being 35k in the hole is very normal. I've talked with a handful of people recently, some friends, some community members, some work peers. Most of them are either around 30-40k in the hole or have been bankrupt. Not all of them, but a lot. Several, as a result of covid, are dealing with suddenly finding themselves with less income than expected and draining lines of credit to try to get through.

Re:

[Chas]

The mortgage was taken out by his mother. She died 2 years ago.
Noah and his system are both on financial support due to medical reasons.
That money wasn't able to allow them to keep up with the payments.
It's not like he was simply trying to scam the money out of people. He, genuinely, was in need.

Re:

[coopertempleclause]

It's amazing to me how many people (especially in the States) think that if someone's going through financial hardship, then it absolutely MUST be because of either (1) some moral failing; or (2) Because they did something wrong.

Sometimes life just keeps kicking you for no reason.

Re: I guess that's great but what nobody is asking

[SirSlud]

Americans are taught from a very early age that people get what they deserve. It's a necessary oversimplified view of world in a society full of voters who need reasons to justify weak social safety nets and the low tax rates they permit.

Re:

[JudgeFurious]

Works for me!

Re:

[tragedy]

I can't help thinking of Trump Jr's "lesson on socialism" that he claimed in a tweet that he gave his child at Halloween by telling her that he was going to take away some portion of the child's candy to give away to other children. He was obviously teaching her a very messed up lesson if he was not able to recognize the difference between socialism and taxation, but also if he was unable to recognize the fact that Halloween candy is a handout it in the first place.

Of course, the thing that really got me is

Faith in Humanity...

[beheaderaswp]

Man this is just the best thing to read about before going back to work on Monday...

Here's a guy who made a fundamental contribution to the internet. He's wired a lot differently than most in our species. No one paid him a pile of money for his work.

And when he gets in trouble- the public picks his ass up.

This is how it's supposed to work folks. Now we just need to work out how to help the other 3 million people out there who deserve it but don't have it...

So he has enough to pay taxes

[bsdetector101]

So he has enough money to pay future taxes. Home is paid now which is good.

lol etc.

[drinkypoo]

At the end of the year 2000, Noah Grey created the free and open-source blogging software Greymatter (now maintained by a community of users). Wil Wheaton's new book describes it as "the original, primordial blogging platform. Blogs look like they do... because Noah Grey did it first."

I got news for you, some of us were blogging way before this software was invented. The original, primordial blogging platform was static pages, just files being shared by a server with no interpretation. The reason Greymatter (which I have literally never heard of before now, despite having had a webpage with dynamic content since the mid-nineties) looks the way it does is because it was copying the style of the blogs which existed before it. And those blogs, including mine, were influenced by the state of web browser development. Once tables became a thing, sidebars became popular, and defined the look of webpages in general.

I'm not against people helping people with their medical bills, though it's pathetic that this is still necessary on the richest nation on the planet. I have nothing against the author of this software, and wish him the best. But the whole idea that the blogosphere was defined by this little-known software is revisionist nonsense.

Re:

[ohhoe]

At the end of the year 2000, Noah Grey created the free and open-source blogging software Greymatter (now maintained by a community of users). Wil Wheaton's new book describes it as "the original, primordial blogging platform. Blogs look like they do... because Noah Grey did it first."

I got news for you, some of us were blogging way before this software was invented. The original, primordial blogging platform was static pages, just files being shared by a server with no interpretation. The reason Greymatter (which I have literally never heard of before now, despite having had a webpage with dynamic content since the mid-nineties) looks the way it does is because it was copying the style of the blogs which existed before it. And those blogs, including mine, were influenced by the state of web browser development. Once tables became a thing, sidebars became popular, and defined the look of webpages in general.

I'm not against people helping people with their medical bills, though it's pathetic that this is still necessary on the richest nation on the planet. I have nothing against the author of this software, and wish him the best. But the whole idea that the blogosphere was defined by this little-known software is revisionist nonsense.

It's really not 'revisionist nonsense' because you weren't a part of the community at the time. Greymatter created a community around its users that was much different than just ftp-ing your static files, which I also did prior to its release. Also just because you haven't heard of something, it doesn't make it little-known. It inspired WordPress. Everything / Nothing sites were super popular with teenagers in the early 2000s and the knowledge sharing around blog layouts and integration w/ greymatter and th

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It's really not 'revisionist nonsense' because you weren't a part of the community at the time

I was blogging already when this software was invented. Tell me again how I wasn't a part of the community.

Re:

[Holgate]

I logged into /. for the first time since [checks profile] 2003 just to say that this narrative is the revisionist nonsense.

Consistent templating and organization (e.g. automatic datestamps on posts, reverse-chron indexes by month, category indexes, etc.) were hard problems for non-programmers and the tools to do them were rudimentary. Blogger's approach was to do all that stuff server-side, generate static pages, and either upload them directly via FTP -- oh, those naive days -- or dump them as a zipfile t

Not first

[Gunslinger42]

Never heard of Greymatter, but LiveJournal was earlier and has all the now standard blogging features too.