Fediverse
[Sean Tilley] Sean has been integrating We Distribute with the fediverse for years. It's been hard - particularly at the beginning, which is the plight of the very early adopter. This rundown is incredibly useful for anyone who wants to integrate their own publication with the network, and
AI
[Simon Willison] Prompt injection attacks have been one of the bugbears for modern AI models: it's an unsolved problem that has meant that it can be quite dangerous to expose LLMs to direct user input, among other things. A lot of people have worked on the problem, but
Notable links
[Andy Bounds in the Financial Times] The last few months have radically changed the risk assessment for people traveling to the US from abroad - as well as Americans who plan to cross the US border. In this case, it's European Commission staff: "The European Commission is
As I write this, I’m flying home from the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy. Now in its 19th year, it’s an annual meeting of newsrooms, journalists, and news professionals from all over the world. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was blown away by
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[Zoë Schiffer at WIRED] The Social Security Administration is changing its communications strategy in a surprising way: ““We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” said SSA regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis in a
Media
[Alexander Lee at Digiday] Substack isn't the best deal in town for independent journalists: "A year after leaving Substack in early 2024, newsletter writers are making more money peddling their words on other platforms. [...] Since leaving Substack, some writers’ subscriber counts have plateaued over the past year,
AI
[Jeremy Keith] Jeremy Keith highlights the hammering that the public service internet is getting from LLM vendors: "When we talk about the unfair practices and harm done by training large language models, we usually talk about it in the past tense: how they were trained on other people’s
Media
[Zach Seward] I first met Zach Seward when he was running Quartz, the news startup with the quippy haiku notifications that had, at the time, captured a lot of the media world's attention. It was really good. This piece, by Zach, is written on the heels of the
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[Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson and Elizabeth Dwoskin at The Washington Post] More "efficiency" from DOGE: "Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to
Technology
[Eve Upton-Clark at Fast Company] I love this. Tumblr is so back: "Thanks to Gen Z, the site has found new life. As of 2025, Gen Z makes up 50% of Tumblr’s active monthly users and accounts for 60% of new sign-ups, according to data shared with Business
Notable links
[Kate Conger in The New York Times] Here's one way Elon Musk is gaining from his involvement in the current administration: "The positioning of X as a powerful government mouthpiece has helped bolster the platform, even as the company continues to struggle." It's worth
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[Ernie Smith at Tedium] Ernie Smith points out the creator-economy platform Gumroad open sourced its platform at a surprising time: "But if that’s all Gumroad was doing, I wouldn’t feel compelled to say anything. The reason I’m speaking up is because of this Wired story, released
