Florence
I’ve spent the week in Florence, Oregon, a lovely little town on the coast. It’s a bit windy and a little cold, but as I’m fond of saying, I lived in Scotland for a decade. I can take it. Frank Herbert came to the town in 1957
Ben Werdmuller
Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
AI
Declare your AIndependence: block AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click
[Cloudflare] "To help preserve a safe Internet for content creators, we’ve just launched a brand new “easy button” to block all AI bots. It’s available for all customers, including those on our free tier." This is really neat! Whatever you land on AI scraping, giving site
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An Open Letter to the United Nations
[Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Hadley Beeman, Daniel Appelquist, Robin Berjon, et al] "Government engagement in digital and Internet governance is needed to deal with many abuses of this global system but it is our common responsibility to uphold the bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive model of Internet governance that
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Sotomayor says immunity ruling makes a president ‘king above the law’
[Rachel Leingang at The Guardian] "The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate
Technology
Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World
[Jonathan Zeller at McSweeney's] "We do not live in some tech dystopia in which our smartphones clandestinely use their mics to pick up every word we say and then feed us commercial messages based on them. The truth is simpler and not at all alarming: your phone
An apology for my comments about the British election
I want to apologize for yesterday’s rant about British politics. That kind of rhetoric isn’t big or clever, and it runs against the tone I usually try for*. Over time, this space has shifted from more personal thoughts towards more directed opinions at the intersection of tech and
Culture
Peter Capaldi says posh actors are smooth, confident and tedious
[Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian] “Art is about reaching out. So I think it’s wrong to allow one strata of society to have the most access.” This is an older article, but it resonated with me so much that I wanted to share it immediately. This is so important,
AI
Fighting bots is fighting humans
[Molly White] "I fear that media outlets and other websites, in attempting to "protect" their material from AI scrapers, will go too far in the anti-human direction." I've been struggling with this. I'm not in favor of the 404 Media approach, which
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AP to launch sister organization to fundraise for state, local news
"Governed by an independent board of directors, the 501(c)3 charitable organization will help AP sustain, augment and grow journalism and services for the industry, as well as help fund other entities that share a commitment to state and local news." Fascinating! And much needed. I'
Some polite words regarding the British General Election on July 4
On July 4th I’ll be on the beautiful Oregon coast, and I plan to have a bottle of champagne handy. Not so much because of the American Independence Day — although there’s nothing wrong with celebrating that, and I’m sure I will — but because of the British election
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Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans’ mail, records show
[Drew Harwell at the Washington Post] "Postal inspectors say they fulfill [requests from law enforcement to share information from letters and packages] only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in
AI
The Future of Fashion Commerce Is a Designer's AI Bot Saying You Look Great and Your Personal AI Bot Sifting Through the Bullshit
[Hunter Walk] "The best commerce platforms will be constantly grooming you, priming you, shaping you to buy. The combination of short-term and long-term value that leads to the optimal financial outcome for the business." I think this is inevitably correct: the web will devolve into a battle between