It ’s been a long time, I know.

In December, I wound down w3w, my tech newsletter on Substack. I did so in order to switch to a new personal publishing setup offering greater editorial independence, with my self-hosted blog as the centerpiece.

As a next step, today I begin using Buttondown to securely host email subscriptions to my content. As an active w3w subscriber, you’ve automatically been added to the Buttondown distribution list instead of Substack’s.

I look forward to continuing our conversation about tech throughout the rest of 2026 and beyond via this new publishing stack. To be honest, w3w was always basically a one-man show anyway. So I figure my approach to the migration will make sense for most of the old w3w subscribers.

That said, I also want to be transparent about moving people's email addresses from one service to another. If you don't want to be included on the new Buttondown-hosted distribution list, please unsubscribe using this link.

As for editorial content, I expect the tone and substance of future updates to be generally familiar to w3w readers. But the emails should arrive in your inbox on a somewhat looser schedule compared the w3w era’s cadence every Sunday.

The main idea is to take a more incremental approach. I anticipate doing 1-3 updates a week. They may sometimes be shorter than before, but a bit more frequent.

Subject matter will remain focused on things like AI, blockchain, quantum computing, and open source.

I also want to broaden out a bit to include some tech-adjacent topics that interest me, such as a smidge of macroeconomics.

I’ll be getting a little more global and, at times, more technical. For example, I’ve been experimenting some personal vibe coding projects I want to tell you about soon.

And there may be occasional 100% off-topic rants about baseball or other stuff because… hey… it’s a personal blog. 😊

Finally, I would note that this new setup is 100% free to subscribers, whereas my Substack had an optional subscription tier. Frankly, I was finding the paid Substack tier too hard to maintain and grow, with too little return and too much of a hit to visibility and usability of content for the audience.

To me, the better course at this point is to just have a free, open discussion of tech and see where it leads.

If you think some idea I share might be directly useful for your business, or if my past experience in startups and media is relevant, great. I’m looking for new roles right now, either full-time or contract.

To get in touch, please drop me a DM on LinkedIn, or email directly at peter[at]pmckay[dot]com. Or if you want to hop on a video chat, book a time slot on my Calendly page.

If not, if these updates for you are just food for thought about how to fix the broken internet, I’m glad for that as well. Lord knows, there’s a lot to talk about these days in that regard.

— Peter A. McKay