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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Palantir's earnings call rhetoric is terrifying

Mark Nottingham highlighted this alarming quote by CEO Alex Karp from the latest Palantir earnings call: I think the central risk to Palantir and America and the world is a regressive way of thinking that is corrupting and corroding our institutions that calls itself progressive, but actually -- and is

08 May 2024

NotableLinks

Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT

"Users who disagree with having their content scraped by ChatGPT are particularly outraged by Stack Overflow's rapid flip-flop on its policy concerning generative AI. For years, the site had a standing policy that prevented the use of generative AI in writing or rewording any questions or answers

08 May 2024

NotableLinks

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

"We found the company's phony authors and their work everywhere from celebrity gossip outlets like Hollywood Life and Us Weekly to venerable newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the latter of which also told us that it had broken off its relationship with AdVon after finding its

08 May 2024

Productivity

Bookending

"Here’s a small trick that worked for me over the dozen years I led remote teams: at the end of your working day, shut down every app on your machine. Yes, all of them. Stash your tabs somewhere if you must, but close them all down." I

08 May 2024

NotableLinks

40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be once again broadcast over FM radio

"There were times when Sinclair ZX Spectrum games were copied over the radio waves across Slovenia. Radio Študent broadcast screeching, beeping and whining, which we recorded on tape and played a game a few hours later." I love this! I never had a ZX Spectrum, but I did

08 May 2024

Options are a lottery ticket

Update: I wrote a longer post that explains this argument less flippantly and in more detail. This post is anecdotal and should not be considered to be investment advice. A company I used to be associated with sent out an email yesterday that essentially explained that the effective share price

08 May 2024

TIL

Browsers imply noopener for links in new tab

A small web development thing I’d missed until yesterday: When you want a link to open a page in a new tab, you’ve long been able to add the attribute target="_blank" to the tag. The problem was, that actually gave the opened pages rights to

08 May 2024

NotableLinks

Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose

"Researchers have devised an attack against nearly all virtual private network applications that forces them to send and receive some or all traffic outside of the encrypted tunnel designed to protect it from snooping or tampering." Except, oddly, on Android, which doesn't implement the DHCP setting

06 May 2024

My employer won a Pulitzer

ProPublica, the newsroom I work for as Senior Director of Technology, won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service journalism for its work on Supreme Court justices’ beneficial relationships with billionaire donors. You’ve probably heard something about Clarence Thomas’s corruption in particular; that story was broken by us.

06 May 2024

The best thing about blogging is the replies

By far the coolest thing about blogging is the replies. I’ve had a bunch of responses to my latest iteration of the baby stack across various platforms: universally other dads, none of which I’ve met before, who are looking for recommendations. I think that’s really neat. Some

06 May 2024

NotableLinks

How to recognize a psyop in three easy steps

"So, how do you distinguish between a psyop – a weaponized story – from other kinds of communication? Walk with me through these three simple steps." This is a great introduction - I can't wait to read the full book. It reminds me a little of some of

06 May 2024

NotableLinks

North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

"A local authority has announced it will ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems." It's rare to see bad database security design advertised so openly! I can't wait to see what havoc the local residents will cause.  #Technology [Link]

06 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.