Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
This is my monthly roundup of the books, articles, and streaming media I found interesting. Here's my list for October, 2021. Books The Girl with All the Gifts, by M. R. Carey. I wasn’t prepared for the visceral gore, but beyond the zombie shenanigans, this is a
"If Bronstein’s idea works, it is quite realistic to develop a system analogous to human language models that generates grammatically correct whale utterances. The next step would be an interactive chatbot that tries to engage in a dialogue with free-living whales. Of course, no one can say today
This year, in conjunction with National Novel Writing Month, I’m kicking off my own writing project, Untitled. Untitled is a serial novel that will be written to coincide with NaNoWriMo’s goals, but is likely to carry on beyond that limit. It’s also designed in such a way
“The political group is using a network of Facebook pages and websites made to appear as legitimate news outlets.” [Link]
I really feel this. I'd prefer to feel like these stories are happening in another layer to the world; spooky goings-on just out of eyeshot. [Link]
"This seems to me like a very important and very under-appreciated fact about the past two years. This is not just the first recession in which household income didn’t fall. It’s the first recession — in modern times, if not ever — that hit higher income families harder than
"“The benchmarking data is one of the things that makes the index so valuable,” Franklin said. “It’s not just ‘How am I doing?’ It’s ‘How am I doing compared to other similarly sized news organizations across companies around the country?’ Several publishers have mentioned how valuable the
"Behind the scenes, Facebook programmed the algorithm that decides what people see in their news feeds to use the reaction emoji as signals to push more emotional and provocative content — including content likely to make them angry. Starting in 2017, Facebook’s ranking algorithm treated emoji reactions as five
"In July, Judge Preska found Mr. Donziger guilty of all charges. On Oct. 1, Mr. Donziger was sentenced to six months in prison, a day after he asked the court to consider an opinion by independent United Nations experts that found his court-ordered home confinement of more than two
"Hertz said in its announcement that it will complete its purchases of the Tesla Model 3 small cars by the end of 2022. It also said it will establish its own electric vehicle charging network as it strives to produce the largest rental fleet of electric vehicles in North
"Facebook employees have long understood that their company undermines democratic norms and restraints in America and across the globe. Facebook’s hypocrisies, and its hunger for power and market domination, are not secret. Nor is the company’s conflation of free speech and algorithmic amplification. But the events of
"Over the last three years, Chrome has been working to empower web applications that want to push the boundaries of what's possible in the browser. One such web application has been Photoshop. The idea of running software as complex as Photoshop directly in the browser would have