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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

NotableLinks

Caribou High School to use fingerprinting to track student attendance

"[The ACLU] publicly challenged the school district in a statement to media outlets stating that it has filed a public records request seeking more information about the district’s decision to [a firm] to track student attendance and tardiness by having students place their fingers on a biometric scanner.

14 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Extending our Mastodon social media trial

The BBC extends its Mastodon experiment for another six months: "We are also planning to start some technical work into investigating ways to publish BBC content more widely using ActivityPub, the underlying protocol of Mastodon and the Fediverse." The BBC's approach has been great: transparent, realistic,

13 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?

"Local news publishers, [VP Platforms at The Boston Globe] Karolian told Engadget, almost entirely depend on selling ads and subscriptions to readers who visit their websites to survive. “When tech platforms come along and disintermediate that experience without any regard for the impact it could have, it is deeply

12 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books

"A wide swath of the ruling class sees books as data-intake vehicles for optimizing knowledge rather than, you know, things to intellectually engage with. [...] Some of us enjoy fiction. And color." Amen. I'm firmly on team fiction. A brilliant novel can teach you more about the

11 Feb 2024

A creative process

Over on Threads, Amanda Zamora asks: I'm plotting away on Agencia Media and some personal writing/reporting this weekend (over a glass of 🍷 and many open tabs). One of the things I love most about building something new is the chance to design for intended outcomes — how to

11 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Hidden prison labor web linked to foods from Target, Walmart

"Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products

10 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Enough is enough—it’s time to set Julian Assange free

The former Editor in Chief of the Guardian on Julian Assange: "I know they won’t stop with Assange. The world of near-total surveillance, merely sketched by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-four, is now rather frighteningly real. We need brave defenders of our liberties. They won’t all be Hollywood

10 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Meta won't recommend political content on Threads

"Threads users will be allowed to follow accounts that post political content, but the algorithm that suggests content from users you don't follow will not recommend accounts that post about politics." It's not clear to me what the definition of "politics" encompasses

09 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

FCC Makes AI-Generated Voices in Robocalls Illegal

"The FCC announced the unanimous adoption of a Declaratory Ruling that recognizes calls made with AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)." A sign of the times that the FCC had to rule that making an artificial intelligence clone of a voice

08 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

What Medium's Tony Stubblebine has learned about tech and journalism

Tony is a smart, analytical person, which comes across strongly in this useful, transparent interview about the future of Medium. It's doing better than it ever has. Also, I like this, which is very close to how my career has worked to date: "The creator economy locked

07 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own

A characteristically great review from Molly White of Chris Dixon's disclosure-free shilling of blockchains as a way to save the web. Read, written, owned. I do think there are some areas where blockchain is unfairly maligned: it introduced the idea of decentralization to a much wider audience, and

07 Feb 2024

NotableLinks

Boeing Max 9s start flying again after door panel blowout

"“I would tell my family to avoid the Max. I would tell everyone, really,” said Joe Jacobsen, a former engineer at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration." And so I shall. This is going to be a textbook example of how moving to a sales-led rather than engineering-led

07 Feb 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.