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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

The two Fediverses

I was tagged in a fairly critical SocialHub post about the Social Web Foundation launch announcement. I wasn’t in a position to add to the conversation then, but I’ve been thinking about it all week. Before I dive further, a reminder: I am not an employee or founder

05 Oct 2024

Media

Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

[Andrew Schmelyun] Following my piece about reading the news on paper, I came across this post from Anrew Schmelyun: "I recently purchased a dot matrix printer from eBay, and thought it would be a great excuse to have a custom "front page" printed out and ready for

04 Oct 2024

Is There Still a Place for Print in the Future of Media?

I think there’s more work to be done to explore print as a modern product to support great writing and journalism. Lots has been said about its death — but comparatively little about its potential to live on in new forms. I think print has a lot of life left

03 Oct 2024

Technology

Solving the Maker-Taker problem

[Dries Buytaert] "Addressing the Maker-Taker challenge is essential for the long-term sustainability of open source projects. Drupal's approach may provide a constructive solution not just for WordPress, but for other communities facing similar issues." Dries lays out a constructive approach to crediting open source contributors. There&

02 Oct 2024

Technology

How to share your access to media with family and simultaneously sweep the annual nerdy nephew of the year awards

[Matt Haughey] "A couple months ago I was hanging out with my aunt, and she mentioned her cable+internet bill was around $250 per month. I thought that was insane and that I should do something about it. She's a 75 year old retiree that watches baseball

01 Oct 2024

Culture

Bop Spotter

[Bop Spotter] "I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the

30 Sep 2024

Climate

How the UK became the first G7 country to phase out coal power

[Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans in CarbonBrief] "Remarkably, the UK’s coal power phaseout – as well as the closure of some of the country’s few remaining blast furnaces at Port Talbot in Wales and Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire – will help push overall coal demand in 2024 to its lowest

30 Sep 2024

Technology

Digital Divinity

[Rest of World] "Technology has transformed how we spend, study, live, eat — even how we sleep. And for the 6.75 billion people around the world who consider themselves religious, technology is also changing their faith. How people worship, pray, and commune with the divine is transforming from Seoul

30 Sep 2024

Technology

The secret power of a blog

[Tracy Durnell] "Blogs coax out deeper thinking in smaller blocks. A blog gives you the space to explore and nurture ideas over time, perhaps growing so slowly you hardly notice the extent of the evolution of your thoughts till you read something you wrote a few years ago."

30 Sep 2024

IRL taking priority

We’ve been dealing with some intense family health events since Wednesday night, so I’m running on very little sleep and not updating much over here. I’ll be popping in from time to time, but probably not running on all cylinders for a little while. There’s a

28 Sep 2024

Technology

Hire HTML and CSS people

[Robin Rendle] "Every problem at every company I’ve ever worked at eventually boils down to “please dear god can we just hire people who know how to write HTML and CSS.”" Yes. Co-signed. Speaking of which ... "ProPublica, the nation’s leading nonprofit investigative newsroom, is in

27 Sep 2024

Media

Google Discover is sending U.S. news publishers much more traffic. (Social? Still falling.)

[Laura Hazard Owen at NiemanLab] There are some interesting referral statistics embedded in this piece. Facebook referral traffic has fallen more than 40% over the last year; referrals from Reddit have increased by 88%. But the focus is this: "Search traffic, still dominated by Google search, has remained relatively

25 Sep 2024
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Werd I/O explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. It's independently published by Ben Werdmuller, reader-supported, and always free to read.