Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Notable links
[Arno Rosenfeld at the Forward] The Heritage Foundation is out to "identify and target" Wikipedia editors, using antisemitism as a cover: "Employees of Heritage, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration, said they plan to use facial recognition
Previous birthday posts: 45 wishes, 44 thoughts about the future, 43 things, 42 / 42 admissions, 41 things. One. I lie in bed as Ma read Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians to me. It was the fifth, and last, straight time; after this, she would finally put her
Technology
[Alex Weprin at The Hollywood Reporter] I don't think this is a great thing at all: "Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, with content review to be based in Texas. “As we work to promote free expression, I
When did you last look up? What’s the best thing you’ve seen lately? Who did you want to show it to? Why?
Notable links
[A.R. Moxon at The Reframe] An interesting election mortem and post-mortem, from an arguably refreshing perspective: "Here's what I think is going on: Our system is foundationally built to devour human beings in order to enrich the already wealthy, and it's moved so far
AI
[Things we learned about LLMs in 2024] Simon's overview of what happened in the LLM space during 2024 is genuinely excellent. For example, on the environmental impact: "Companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are all spending billions of dollars rolling out new datacenters, with a very
Notable links
[Joshua Kaplan at ProPublica] This ought to be a movie: "Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of
Hey, it’s 2025! Happy New Year. May it be better than we hope and fear. Here are my technology predictions for the year. Here are my resolutions / OKRs. Ready or not, here we go!
As a child, I freaking adored Tintin, the Belgian comic strip about a boy detective and his little white dog, Snowy. There was something intoxicating about the mix: international adventures, a growing cast of recurring characters, conspiracies, humor, hi jinx. Even the ligne claire style of drawing — cartoonish figures on
You know what they say: predictions are like resurgent nationalist movements. Everyone’s got one. I missed the deadline for Nieman Lab’s always-excellent Predictions for Journalism this year, so I thought I’d share a few more bite-sized predictions about various topics I’ve written over the last year.
Technology
[Ryan Barrett] Ryan Barrett takes Stewart Brand's Pace Layering and adapts it to model technology progress: "I’ve been a fan of Stewart Brand‘s Pace Layering for decades now. Really great framework for thinking about how different ecosystems and emergent forces interact. I’ve been thinking
Technology
[Thanos Pappas at CarScoops] There are a few different levels to this story about the VW Group's terrible cybersecurity: "According to a new report from Germany, the VW Group stored sensitive information for 800,000 electric vehicles from various brands on a poorly secured and misconfigured Amazon