Ben Werdmuller
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

NotableLinks

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wants AI clones in meetings

Eric Yuan has a really bizarre vision of what the future should look like: "Today for this session, ideally, I do not need to join. I can send a digital version of myself to join so I can go to the beach. Or I do not need to check

04 Jun 2024

Protecting artists on the fediverse

Over the weekend, I started to notice a bunch of artists moving to Cara, a social network for artists founded by Jingna Zhang, herself an accomplished photographer. The fediverse is a decentralized cooperative of social networks that can interact with each other: a user on one network can follow, reply,

03 Jun 2024

Known fizzled

One of my biggest regrets is how the Known hosted service declined. The paid subscriptions came to an end, and eventually the hosting whimpered out. Behind the scenes, the database cluster was in need of more maintenance than I was able to provide. Known itself has required more maintenance than

02 Jun 2024

NotableLinks

The 21 best science fiction books of all time – according to New Scientist writers

This list of the New Scientist's favorite science fiction books is brilliant. The books I've read that are included here are some of my favorites of all time; the others are on my to-read list. What's your favorite? #Culture [Link]

02 Jun 2024

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
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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.