Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Imagine a life where you dictate your own schedule, free from the confines of a traditional job. That’s a thought experiment I’ve been playing with lately: what would it look like if this was my last ever job? How might I optimize my lifestyle for freedom? By that
AI
[Janet Vertesi at Public Books] "Our lives are consumed with the consumption of content, but we no longer know the truth when we see it. And when we don’t know how to weigh different truths, or to coordinate among different real-world experiences to look behind the veil, there
A few weeks ago I wrote about how solving the challenges facing the news industry requires fundamentally changing newsroom culture. While newsrooms have depended on referrals from social media and search engines to find audiences and make an impact, both of those segments are in flux, and audiences are therefore
Technology
[Renee Dudley at ProPublica] "Former [Microsoft] employee says software giant dismissed his warnings about a critical flaw because it feared losing government business. Russian hackers later used the weakness to breach the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others." This is a damning story about profit over principles: Microsoft
Business
[Calm Company Fund] "Inhale. Exhale. Find the space between… Calm Company Fund is going on sabbatical and taking a break from investing in new companies and raising new funds. Here’s why." Calm Company Fund's model seems interesting. It's a revenue-based investor that makes
AI
[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
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
Notable links
"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
Notable links
"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
Business
"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
Media
"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
Fediverse
"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