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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

NotableLinks

How Black Lives Became The Hidden Cost of Clean Energy

"The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American

02 Jun 2024

NotableLinks

“The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve ever been”

"The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve ever been. This is truly a jointly owned responsibility among the business side and editorial." Every non-profit newsroom needs to move their center of gravity from large contributions to smaller, distributed support

01 Jun 2024

NotableLinks

User Research Is Storytelling

I shared this with my team and one of them said they had to check that I didn't write it. This is exactly how I think about (and ask my team to think about) rooting software development in human needs. "All the elements of a good story

31 May 2024

NotableLinks

Unexpected Anti-Patterns for Engineering Leaders

"The key to effective engineering leadership lies in figuring out which scenarios are worth deliberately defying conventional logic, and when to simply follow the rules." Lots of good food for thought here. I've definitely been guilty of some of the anti-patterns here - particularly trying to

31 May 2024

Can we at least agree that killing is wrong?

I don’t think it’s possible to morally support the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, but that’s too weak a statement. What’s happening there seems to be — based on what I’ve read through the news, what I’ve seen in video, the stories that have been sent

28 May 2024

NotableLinks

Who actually uses Instagram’s Threads app? Taiwanese protestors

"While young Taiwanese users discuss everything from relationships to celebrity gossip on Threads, the app has gradually become a gathering space for progressives, who favor independence from China to defend the island’s democracy." Threads has an official stance of not promoting political use. This is an example,

28 May 2024

NotableLinks

Study Finds That 52 Percent of ChatGPT Answers to Programming Questions Are Wrong

On answering programming questions: "We found that 52 percent of ChatGPT answers contain misinformation, 77 percent of the answers are more verbose than human answers, and 78 percent of the answers suffer from different degrees of inconsistency to human answers." To be fair, I do expect AI answers

27 May 2024

NotableLinks

Nostr Journalism Accelerator

Nos is running a "journalism accelerator", which onboards independent journalists and publications onto Nostr with guaranteed promotion and 1:1 help. Nostr is a different kind of open network, in the sense that it's decentralized rather than federated. Famously, Jack Dorsey defected there from Bluesky, in

25 May 2024

NotableLinks

Why publishers are preparing to federate their sites

"At least two digital media companies are exploring the fediverse as a way to take more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement." The Verge and 404 Media will both support ActivityPub (a protocol, not a "plugin", as the article calls it) and plug

25 May 2024

NotableLinks

The Fatal Flaw in Publishers' OpenAI Deals

"It’s simply too early to get into bed with the companies that trained their models on professional content without permission and have no compelling case for how they will help build the news business." This piece ends on the most important point: nobody is coming to save

24 May 2024

The AI data goldmine

If I was a nefarious software company, here’s how I might be thinking: AI functionality tends to require that data is sent to a centralized service for processing. This is often data that is not being shared online in any other way that is easily available for analysis: existential

24 May 2024

Unoffice Hours

I’m enamored with Matt Webb’s unoffice hours: a way to chat with him about anything, without needing to email him first, for 30 minutes. As Matt says: I loved those open conversations over coffee in the Before Times. There’s an ostensible reason to connect, so you talk

24 May 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.