[Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson and Elizabeth Dwoskin at The Washington Post] More "efficiency" from DOGE: "Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are b … | Continue reading

[Kate Conger in The New York Times] Here's one way Elon Musk is gaining from his involvement in the current administration: "The positioning of X as a powerful government mouthpiece has helped bolster the platform, even as the company continues to struggle." It's worth rememberin … | Continue reading

The world is full of darkness. So much is going wrong. Experts agree that America has succumbed to right-wing authoritarianism; call it fascism or something else, these are extraordinarily difficult times. This post is a break from all of that. At least kind of. In this piece, I … | Continue reading

[John Markoff in The New York Times] A lovely piece about Mike McCue, who, through Flipboard, Surf, and his general activities through the community, has become one of the open social web's most important figures. "Three decades ago, as vice president of technology at the groundb … | Continue reading

[Mandy Brown] A good reminder here from Mandy Brown. "Among the people I’ve witnessed working through crises in their work and lives, the one pattern that comes up over and over again is making art. Art brings us back to ourselves, helps us root in our own agency and creative pow … | Continue reading

[Nell Dhanesha at Nieman Journalism Lab] This was fun to watch unfold in real time: "The truck’s journey to that spot had begun a few days earlier, as an email with the subject line “guerilla marketing for sources” in the inbox of Ariana Tobin, editor of ProPublica’s crowdsourcin … | Continue reading

[Brian Krebs]Sobering roundup from Brian Krebs about how each of the five pillars of the First Amendment - speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs - has been attacked during the first few months of t … | Continue reading

[Allison Morrow at CNN]It's refreshing to see this kind of AI skepticism in a major outlet:"Apple, like every other big player in tech, is scrambling to find ways to inject AI into its products. Why? Well, it’s the future! What problems is it solving? Well, so far that’s not clea … | Continue reading

[Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott at ProPublica] I bet this practice is more common than anyone might think, and certainly isn't limited to China. As always, follow the money: "In December, [SpaceX investor] Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China becau … | Continue reading

Inadvertently, the other day, I became one of those people. My team and I were sitting together as part of a week-long summit; some attendees were in New York City, while others attended remotely. I was taking them through the principles that I believe are important for developin … | Continue reading

[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge] I appreciated this deep-dive on whether it's safe to travel through US borders with your phone. Journalists and anyone who's made overt political statements should take particular note. "The government maintains that it doesn’t need a warrant to cond … | Continue reading

[Ella Yurman in Teen Vogue] This interview with Musk's daughter Vivian Wilson is everything. "The Nazi salute sht was insane. Honey, we're going to call a fig a fig, and we're going to call a Nazi salute what it was. That sht was definitely a Nazi salute. The crowd is equally to … | Continue reading

[Jasmine Mooney] A nightmare account from a Canadian citizen detained by ICE: "I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them like dead bodies. The … | Continue reading

[Freedom of the Press Foundation] Wired is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. This approach makes a ton of sense: "They’re called public records for a reason, after all. And access to publi … | Continue reading

[Ghost] Ghost has released its ActivityPub social web integration in beta: "Today we're opening a public beta for our social web integration in Ghost. For the first time, any site on Ghost Pro can now try out ActivityPub." Those of you who are, should. And everyone in the space s … | Continue reading

[Om Malik] This is an ongoing trend. Om Malik has now moved to sharing on his blog first rather than posting directly to social media: "The inspiration for the newly rebooted “daily blog” comes from Dave Winer, who maintains a “Links” blog. I’ve been using his new project, Wordla … | Continue reading

[Erin In The Morning] While America is destroying the ability for trans people to participate in public life, over in Europe they're (rightly) improving care for trans people. "In recent years, U.S. politicians have selectively framed European healthcare policies to justify restr … | Continue reading

[A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, James Bandler, ProPublica, and Lukáš Diko, Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak] A tragic story of a teenager recruited by a network of extremists, who ultimately murdered multiple people before taking his own life. It's also an example of … | Continue reading

[Joe Woods] This is good, actionable advice: "As an engineering leader, you should be constantly working to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete one cycle of a feedback loop. What do I mean by feedback loop? This is anything where you do work, and then you need to await … | Continue reading

[Kunal Khullar at Tom's Hardware] Straight into my nightmares: "Australian biotech company Cortical Labs has introduced what it claims to be "the world’s first code deployable biological computer," which combines human brain cells with traditional silicon-based computing. The sys … | Continue reading

[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge] This is dystopian: "The Trump administration may soon demand the social media accounts of people applying for green cards, US citizenship, and asylum or refugee status. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — the federal agency that oversee … | Continue reading

[Andy Kroll at ProPublica] Cutting the IRS has nothing to do with government efficiency: "Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, t … | Continue reading

Much of the last decade or two of the tech industry has been dominated by the idea of the cloud: the simple, powerful idea that all of your applications and data can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. Enterprise businesses around the world have decommissione … | Continue reading

It’s Oscars day! I haven’t seen very many of the nominees this year, but of the ones I have, I need to make this recommendation: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, nominated for best documentary picture, is brilliant. It’s an under-told part of American history, still highly relevant a … | Continue reading