The Curious Engineer

Ben Werdmuller

2012–2026

169 posts

2026 166

October 2026

  1. Notable links: October 30, 2026
  2. Proton is AI-pilled and calls caution "loser thinking".
  3. ChatGPT knows everything about its users. It will not be a good steward of that power.
  4. Solar is "offensively cheap". To live up to its promise, it also needs to be equitable.
  5. Notable links: October 23, 2026
  6. News will be intermediated by AI. What's next?
  7. AI can weaken relationships between people - and teams suffer as a result.
  8. Foursquare died at the hands of private equity. What happens next?
  9. A landmark study of AI in newsrooms reveals they need to be coaxed to experiment with their business models
  10. Notable links: October 16, 2026
  11. Current Affairs says it's banning AI
  12. Treat your 1:1 relationships with intention
  13. Argentina's top news app was made by two 23 year olds using AI
  14. Young people trust AI more than the people in their lives.
  15. Graze's election night dashboard demonstrates the power of open algorithms
  16. The space to breathe
  17. Amazon tries to placate data center protesters

September 2026

  1. The Lenfest AI Collaborative has additional funding. That's great for open source in news.
  2. The Public Ledger of Credentials directory is taking flight
  3. Trump TV is the only source of footage of the President. That may be exactly what he wants.
  4. Seeking a "yes, and" space
  5. 7 Windsor Ave, Elkins Park, PA — 1925 Tudor Home for Sale
  6. Notable links: September 11, 2026
  7. Two more newsrooms are suing OpenAI. It's complicated.
  8. Your TV is spying on you, and it's worse than you think.
  9. AI companies are at risk of making Silicon Valley's harmful mistakes all over again

August 2026

  1. Notable links: August 14, 2026
  2. Chicago's social network is a huge bet for news. I think it's the future.
  3. My next experiment

July 2026

  1. Notable links: July 31, 2026
  2. Change is fractal. It starts with leaders
  3. Don't bring sensitive data to a border crossing
  4. Can data collectives help strengthen vulnerable cultures in the face of AI?
  5. Notable links: July 24, 2026
  6. AI vendors can't be trusted to secure their systems. Newsrooms need to act accordingly
  7. Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change.
  8. People are transcribing your conversations without asking. That puts you at risk.
  9. American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing.
  10. Notable links: July 17, 2026
  11. To innovate, news needs allies
  12. The SFPD leaked its drone footage. It shouldn't be surveilling to begin with.
  13. We need a PIT Crew for news
  14. Climate.gov was destroyed. Open data saved it.
  15. The Trump administration is subpoenaing journalists to reveal sources. Their data security is more important than ever.
  16. Notable links: July 10, 2026
  17. Communities will build trust and loyalty for local public media. Chicago Public Media is taking a big leap forward.
  18. As social networks fill up with AI slop, trusted relationships and communities will win.
  19. IndieWeb Fiction Carnival: May 2026 Roundup
  20. Startups track business metrics. Newsrooms should learn from them.
  21. CNN and CNBC promote gambling to make a cheap buck
  22. Governance can prevent AI from being used to undermine democracy. But only if it has teeth.
  23. Happy 250th birthday, America
  24. Notable links: July 3, 2026
  25. A new media spinout provides streaming apps for public service broadcasters. I just wish it was open.
  26. Newsrooms need to get comfortable expressing their business value - and raising money on it.
  27. OpenAI wants to give us 5% of its success. It's a bad bargain.
  28. I have a theory about AI fake news site The Editorial
  29. AI's costs are going through the roof - so businesses are telling LLMs to talk like cavemen
  30. They tell us surveillance makes us safer. It undermines our democratic rights.

June 2026

  1. A concrete tool to help newsrooms cover emergencies
  2. Community Survey 2026
  3. A right-wing media chain tried to replace 47 newspapers with AI. They all died.
  4. Two posts about writing
  5. Are frontier models really too dangerous?
  6. Notable links: June 26, 2026
  7. All you need to poison an LLM is 13 words.
  8. To build resilient organizations, you need to empower your team to make decisions.
  9. Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself.
  10. Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
  11. Notable links: June 19, 2026
  12. The European Commission falls for openness theater by working with W Social
  13. More people get their news from social media than anywhere else - globally. The platforms we use matter.
  14. AI answers are a new vector for election disinformation
  15. The honest truth about leaders who want to replace their workers with AI
  16. To build the future, we need theories of change
  17. It's not enough to have better ideals.
  18. The community-first software era

May 2026

  1. Notable links: May 29, 2026
  2. "The protocol world has been trying to solve the problem of how to leave, and the next step is working on how we can stay together."
  3. To reach your big goal, you need to sell where you're heading next
  4. The Fediverse is not a product. It's time to get real about marketing
  5. When the AI boom subsides, the data centers will remain. What we do now matters
  6. The Pope used his first encyclical to warn about tech centralization
  7. Affordances for me, but not for thee
  8. Like sunrise over a sink
  9. Why micropayments can't save news
  10. A quarter of a century of open educational technology
  11. Notable links: May 15, 2026
  12. 52 actionable posts about building a culture of innovation
  13. AI may be the new gatekeepers, but human connection is more needed than ever
  14. Bridging feels seamless. Behind the scenes, it's a technical marvel
  15. To maintain their independence, publishers are fleeing Substack
  16. Asking platforms to do better won't work. We need to force their hands
  17. WordPress powers 47% of the web. Now it's more social, too
  18. Canvas is open source, but its cloud services ransomware attack really hurts
  19. Notable links: May 8, 2026
  20. Plugging the gaps won't save news. It's time to redesign
  21. The way to save news is not to create monopolistic monocultures
  22. Open source maintainers need to go in with open eyes
  23. Claude Opus can now identify an author from their writing
  24. Notable links: May 1, 2026
  25. IndieWeb Fiction Carnival: May 2026

April 2026

  1. Matt Mullenweg thinks WordPress is in decline. He may be right
  2. Product-shaped or movement-shaped?
  3. Building with love, and paying for it
  4. That terrible Signal exploit has been fixed. We have journalism to thank for it
  5. All You Fascists (Bound to Lose)
  6. Sustaining innovation has failed us. It's time to think more radically
  7. AI is not a magic wand and it won’t fix your problems
  8. The world is not a database
  9. Notable links: April 24, 2026
  10. In wartime, megascale data centers may make way for distributed architectures
  11. XOXO Explore is fitting showcase for a brilliant experiment
  12. The user-tailored newsroom
  13. It pays to reward curiosity more than looking smart
  14. Copyright and DMCA Best Practices for Fediverse Operators
  15. The Technological Republic, in brief
  16. Notable links: April 17, 2026
  17. Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data.
  18. You Own Your Role, We Own The Outcome
  19. FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database
  20. Stop Flock
  21. One size fits none: let communities build for themselves
  22. The bottleneck shifts to distribution
  23. When the President threatens to commit a genocide
  24. "Cognitive surrender" leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds
  25. Notable links: April 3, 2026
  26. The open web isn't dying. We're killing it
  27. An AI company set out to fix news deserts. Instead, it copied local journalists’ work
  28. LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer
  29. Surf demonstrates the power of the open social web
  30. What Digital Isolation and Censorship Evasion Look Like In Wartime Iran
  31. The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning

March 2026

  1. An alternate history of social media
  2. Building trust in the open at ONA 2026
  3. Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, an app for building custom feeds
  4. The DOJ thinks news is contraband
  5. The White House has an app now, and Trump wants you to report people to ICE on it
  6. Notable links: March 27, 2026
  7. Why Knight Foundation Invested in Bluesky
  8. Make Space for Every Voice
  9. Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case
  10. I built a CLI for Ghost
  11. Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high
  12. Histomat of F/OSS: We should reclaim LLMs, not reject them
  13. Ageless Linux
  14. AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds
  15. Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, with U.S. Decline “Unprecedented”
  16. Notable links: March 20, 2026
  17. Four things about Yahoo News that may surprise you
  18. The Last Quiet Thing
  19. Agentic Engineering Patterns
  20. Businesses rush to rehire staff after regretted AI-driven cuts
  21. FCC Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters’ Licenses Over Iran War Coverage
  22. Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims
  23. When Using AI Leads to “Brain Fry”
  24. BuzzFeed Nearing Bankruptcy After Disastrous Turn Toward AI
  25. Notable links: March 13, 2026
  26. Coming Off the Bench for Bluesky
  27. Your Browser Becomes Your WordPress
  28. Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
  29. Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester
  30. BBC says ‘irreversible’ trends mean it will not survive without major overhaul
  31. The Safety Levers

February 2026

  1. Good vibes, bad vendors

January 2026

  1. 47 lessons

2025 1

December 2025

  1. 2025: a personal year in review

2021 1

August 2021

  1. What do I want you to know about Ma?

2012 1

September 2012

  1. XOXO: crafty makers from the future