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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

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

Media

Back to Basics

[Paul Bradley Carr] "I’ve worked at (and founded!) my fair share of billionaire-funded publications and I’ve always had a firm rule: You have to be more critical of the people writing the checks (and their cronies) than you are of anyone else. It’s the only way

25 Sep 2024

Media

Arc was supposed to be a key to The Washington Post’s future. It became a problem instead.

[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation] Dan Kennedy picks up on a detail in Brian Stelter's Atlantic article about troubles at the Washington Post: "The Post’s content-management system, Arc, which was supposed to be a money-maker, had instead turned out to be a drag on the bottom

25 Sep 2024

More coverage of the Social Web Foundation

More coverage of the Social Web Foundation has been rolling in today. (See my coverage of the announcement over here.) The New Stack: The fediverse has been a critical development in the open web over the past several years, since most of the social media landscape is dominated by centralized

24 Sep 2024

Unlocking the Fediverse: The Social Web Foundation is Shaping the Next Era of the Web

I’m extraordinarily excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation, which has been created to promote and support the growth of the Fediverse: the interoperable social network powered by the ActivityPub protocol. Users of services on the Fediverse can follow, share, and interact with each other, regardless of

24 Sep 2024

Media

What I learned in year four of Platformer

[Casey Newton at Platformer] This fantastic round-up post focuses on Platformer's decision in January to leave Substack in protest of its content policies that permitted full-throated Nazis to earn money on the platform. With a long-term view, it's been a good strategic move: "We’re

24 Sep 2024

AI

Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops

[Matthew Hutson at Nature] "Beyond the ability to fine-tune open models for focused applications, Kal’tsit says, another advantage of local models is privacy. Sending personally identifiable data to a commercial service could run foul of data-protection regulations. “If an audit were to happen and you show them you’

21 Sep 2024

AI

Re-opened Three Mile Island will power AI data centers under new deal

[Kyle Orland at ArsTechnica] "Microsoft and Constellation Energy have announced a deal that would re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The agreement would let Microsoft purchase the entirety of the plant's roughly 835 megawatts of energy generation—enough to power approximately 800,000

20 Sep 2024
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.

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Ben Werdmuller explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. Always independently published, reader-supported, and free to read.