[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
[Anthony Ha at TechCrunch]China Miéville, who is one of the great contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors, is right on the money about Silicon Valley's tendency to create the Torment Nexus.This is exactly why I think science fiction is so important, and why it has a lot … | 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
[Lubna Kably in The Times of India]Worrying stuff being reported by the Times of India (and, at the time of writing, under-reported in the domestic US press). AI is being used to flag international students because of their social media activity, among other signals, who are now … | 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
[Makena Kelly at WIRED]If you know anything about building software, you know that this is an absurd idea:"The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely o … | 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
[Sabhanaz Rashid Diya at Rest of World] Like the author, I read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams' account of her time as a director for global public policy at Facebook during a period when the company transitioned from a largely-domestic social network to a worldwide powerho … | 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
Fp9ootron ABCXXZXCFDSESW4ZXDAWEQ!QWZ fwwqqqqwwQsxXSQWSASXC XDΩSXEDRTY7U8I9 Editor's note: does toddler input have sufficient entropy to be used as a random number generator? | 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
[Brandon Vigliarolo at The Register] In the wake of the French and German governments joining forces to build an alternative to Notion and Google Docs, the Dutch government has passed eight motions to avoid US software and move to a home-grown stack. ""With each IT service our go … | 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
[Meredith Whittaker in the Financial Times] A great op-ed from Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal on the ludicrous demands by the British government for Apple to backdoor its encryption: "Imagine a government telling a car company to secretly weaken the effectiveness of the … | 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
I cleaned out my desk a little over five years ago. It feels like last week. I was leading engineering at ForUsAll, a fintech company that seeks to make it easier for small businesses to offer retirement plans for their employees. The co-founder, David, had been wearing a mask ar … | 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
[Scharon Harding at Ars Technica] Don't keep an Amazon Echo (or any smart speaker) in a room where you'll be having sensitive conversations, either with your family or on a work call. Particularly if you're a journalist or activist - but privacy is something everybody should be g … | 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
[Benedict Collins at TechRadar] This was always inevitable, but in the current environment it makes sense that it's accelerating: "Several major European tech companies are pushing for greater action from the European Union to reduce the bloc’s reliance on foreign-owned infrastru … | 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
[Mike Monteiro] On whether it's always been this bad in America: "America was born in blood, genocide, kidnapping, and death. Behind every story we were told about America’s greatness, there is a secret second painting. A thing America doesn’t want you to see. Behind every “from … | 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
[Jake Offenhartz, Cedar Attanasio and Philip Marcelo at The Associated Press] This seems completely in line with the First Amendment's protections against restrictions on speech and assembly by the US government: "President Donald Trump warned Monday that the arrest and possible … | 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
[Davis Erin Anderson and Dr. Martin Shelton at the Freedom of the Press Foundation] These security tips are designed for journalists but are good ideas for everyone (and particularly activists or anyone working in a sensitive field): "In tumultuous times, we believe in being prep … | 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
If you're in Austin, visiting Fediverse House at 412 Congress Ave today and tomorrow is what you need to be doing. You don’t need a SXSW ticket - just show up and meet some of the key people building and thinking about the most important thing happening on the web right now. Unfo … | 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
[Mike Masnick at Techdirt] Mike Masnick on why tech journalism has a huge part to play in decoding current events right now: "We’ve spent decades documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either strengthen or undermine democratic institutions. We understand the dangers … | 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
So, yes, hi, I have a Tesla. It’s a long range Model 3 which I bought in 2021. After a career spent working on open source and mission-drive projects — right now I work for a non-profit newsroom; once upon a time I built a social networking platform for education — it might shock … | 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
[Andrew Paul at McSweeney's] "I gotta be honest with you, though. I think the Outer God got the message loud and clear. Our tasteful combination of fashionably coordinated clothes, tiny paper fans with BAD! printed on them, and some of our sternest looks of disapproval to date re … | 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
[Jean Hsu and Jen Dennard] This is a good inaugural post from two people who really have lived the startup operations life many times over: "We think of the operations part of a startup like getting dinner on the table. Sure, some days, you might try a new and involved recipe, bu … | 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
[Ghost] Another really great update from the Ghost team about their progress implementing ActivityPub: "In our logs, that looks like our average request time dropping from 5+ seconds, to ~50ms: [...] There are still a few places where we're using the old database architecture tha … | Continue reading
I’ve seen a lot of this sentiment lately, and can relate: I miss being excited by technology. I wish I could see a way out of the endless hype cycles that continue to elicit little more than cynicism from me. The version of technology that we’re mostly being sold today has almost … | Continue reading
[Natalie Alms at Nextgov/FCW] I'd say this was an unbelievable own-goal. But, unfortunately, it's believable: "The General Services Administration deleted 18F, a government tech consultancy that helps other agencies with their technology, early Saturday morning. The office has be … | Continue reading
[Mel Leonor Barclay and Jasmine Mithani at The 19th] The impact of this will be severe: "Organizations that provide services to LGBTQ+ victims of domestic and intimate partner violence expect much of the federal funding they rely on to dry up as the Trump administration’s executi … | Continue reading
[Anna Betts in The Guardian] He's not wrong: "Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, has said that Jeff Bezos’s announcement that the newspaper’s opinion section would narrow its editorial focus was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” th … | Continue reading
[Bill Fitzgerald] What a missed opportunity. As Bill Fitzgerald points out: "Mozilla has given a masterclass, yet again, in how to erode trust among people who have loved your work." Mozilla rolled out a new terms of service and privacy policy that rolled back a key promise never … | Continue reading
[Edwin Wong and Andrew Melnizek at The Verge] This is much-needed research: "The Verge partnered with Vox Media’s Insights and Research team, along with Two Cents Insights, to better understand how American consumers are embracing this shift. The goal of the work was to redefine … | Continue reading
[Brad Reed at RawStory] This is incredibly disappointing to see: "David Shipley, who has spent the last two-and-a-half years running the Washington Post's editorial page, has stepped down from his position over new demands being made by Post owner Jeff Bezos. In a letter sent out … | Continue reading
[Craig Silverman at ProPublica] Let the attention dollars flow: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said in January that the company was removing or dialing back automated systems that reduce the spread of false information. At the same time, Meta is revamping a program that has paid … | Continue reading
[Dan Sinker] This story doesn't feel like it's going to end up inspiring, but bear with it: "George Dale printed their names in his newspaper, part of his unrelenting, unceasing, and unflinching attack on the Muncie Klan. [...] When he wrote an editorial accusing circuit court ju … | Continue reading
[Bert Hubert] A European point of view: "We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer … | Continue reading