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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

AI

These Wrongly Arrested Black Men Say a California Bill Would Let Police Misuse Face Recognition

[The Markup] "Now all three men are speaking out against pending California legislation that would make it illegal for police to use face recognition technology as the sole reason for a search or arrest. Instead it would require corroborating indicators." Even with mitigations, it will lead to wrongful

12 Jun 2024

Community survey 2024

I consider myself really lucky that people stop by and read my posts. Thank you! Every year I like to pause and ask folks a little bit more about themselves, what they’re worried about, and what they’re interested in. It’s a really short, anonymous survey that helps

11 Jun 2024

Notable Links

Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised’

"Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country

11 Jun 2024

Notable Links

ORG publishes digital rights priorities for next government

"Open Rights Group has published its six priorities for digital rights that the next UK government should focus on." These are things every government should provide. I'm particularly interested in point number 3: "Predictive policing systems that use artificial intelligence (AI) to ‘predict’ criminal behaviour

11 Jun 2024

Business

Study finds 1/4 of bosses hoped RTO would make staff quit

"The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving." Unsurprising but also immoral: these respondents believed that subsequent layoffs

10 Jun 2024

Media

Former Politico Owner Launches New Journalism Finishing School To Try And Fix All The ‘Wokeness’

"There’s an ocean of problems with journalism, but the idea that there’s just too damn much woke progressivism is utter delusion. U.S. journalism generally tilts center right on the political spectrum." This is a story about the founder of Politico creating a "teaching hospital

10 Jun 2024

Fediverse

What if we worked together

"Remember! If you only signed up to hear when this feature is available, or you're wondering what ActivityPub even is: This probably is not the newsletter for you. This is a behind-the-scenes, engineering-heavy, somewhat-deranged build log by the team who are working on it." And I

09 Jun 2024

Technology

A Link Blog in the Year 2024

"After 17 of using Twitter daily and 24 years of using Google daily neither really works anymore. And particular with the collapse of the social spaces many of us grew up with, I feel called back to earlier forms of the Internet, like blogs, and in particular, starting a

09 Jun 2024

It's time to get real: I'm not 25 anymore

Last week, without warning, my back went “crunch”. I’ve been dealing with what feels like a painful, bruised coccyx ever since. It should heal up within a few weeks, but until then, getting up from a sitting or lying position is really hard, walking has been awkward, and I

09 Jun 2024

AI

AI Lobbying Group Launches Campaign Defending Tech

"Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition whose members include Amazon, Apple and Meta, is launching a campaign to defend the legality of using copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence systems." I understand why they're making this push, but I don't know that it&

08 Jun 2024

Business

A Guide to VC “Congrats” Tweets, From 🤑 to 😐

“Tweet: Thrilled to have represented [VC firm] in our work with [company]. Huge outcome!” "Translation: A partner we fired actually did the deal, and no one serviced it well until it was clear it was going to be a homerun. Then we all fought over it and rewrote history

08 Jun 2024

Fediverse

Bluesky and Mastodon users can now talk to each other with Bridgy Fed

"An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved." Bridgy has always been a useful product; Bridgy Fed is an easy way for folks on the fediverse and on Bluesky to be able

05 Jun 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.