NEW RESOURCES

I don’t know really how to categorize this. It’s fascinating. I’ll be thinking about it for a while. i-D: This video game celebrates the stories of Black trans people. “London-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s latest project, WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT, is an interactive digital archive video game, which aims to preserve the stories of Black trans people in a world determined to erase them. At its simplest, the game uses keyboard prompts to allow players to be diverted down different pathways, depending on their expressed gender identity. But with its trippy visuals, unsettling music and aesthetic elements — which recall traditional kente patterns — Danielle conjures up something much more than that.”

Adam Matthew: Adam Matthew Digital announces publication of ‘Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain’. “Adam Matthew Digital has today announced the publication of ‘Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain ’, a vital resource for the study and teaching of life in Victorian Britain. With material drawn from the British Library, the National Archives, UK and the Family Welfare Association Library housed at Senate House Library, UK, this unique collection offers insight and perspective on welfare reform and the social tensions surrounding poverty at the time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

VentureBeat: Google Translate launches Transcribe for Android in 8 languages. “Google Translate today launched Transcribe for Android, a feature that delivers a continual, real-time translation of a conversation. Transcribe will begin by rolling out support for eight languages in the coming days: English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.”

DigitalNC: The Morrisville Progress, a New Newspaper Addition to DigitalNC. “The Progress is a really interesting view into an area that has changed a lot in the last thirty years. During the span published in The Progress you can see a focus on development and growth, with articles describing the diminishing farm economy and the development around RDU airport and RTP. The article below, taken from the front page of the January 31, 1996 issue, talks about land being sold at a premium thanks to Morrisville’s convenient location.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website. “How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server? Is the site using WordPress or Gatsby? Which ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is my site accessible from China? Here are some of the most useful online tools that will help you know every single detail of any website.” Good list, decent annotation.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Photo archive of life in apartheid-era South Africa to be auctioned. “A rare studio photo archive that shines a light on the undimmed spirit of township life in apartheid-era South Africa is to be auctioned in London. The archive contains more than 1,000 images of people posing for the camera in front of a simple parted black curtain with basic props, often a basket of plastic flowers, cheap plastic sunglasses or an unplugged telephone.”

High Snobriety: Meet the Curators Behind Instagram’s Favorite Moodboard Accounts. “From famous ateliers to voracious consumers, Instagram pages have become an outlet for stream-of-consciousness expression, and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers in the process. You know these accounts when you see what’s on them: a leaked sneaker design; an archival, behind the scenes photo of an early Margiela collection; a Yahoo! Japan auction listing; an old EastBay catalog. Accounts like Lil Jupiter have made a name for their ability to tap into the taste level of this crowd, and parlayed it into partnerships, sneaker collaborations, or consulting gigs.”

Politico: Stealth political ads flourish on Facebook. “More than half of Facebook pages that displayed U.S. political ads during a recent 13-month period concealed the identities of their backers, according to research reviewed by POLITICO — a tide of deceptive messaging that raises new questions about the social network’s promises of transparency.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Huffington Post: EXCLUSIVE: Documents Show Modi Govt Building 360 Degree Database To Track Every Indian. “The Narendra Modi government is in the final stages of creating an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents, previously undisclosed government documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish.”

BetaNews: Microsoft warns that hackers are exploiting two unpatched Windows bugs. “Microsoft has warned that all versions of Windows feature critical unpatched RCE vulnerabilities. The security problems stem from the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library, and relates to the parsing of fonts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: AI analyzes biology studies to find out we’re getting better at wildlife conservation . “A new AI system has revealed that we’re finally getting better at wildlife conservation. Researchers came to this conclusion after using machine learning to analyze more than 4,000 studies on species reintroduction across four decades.”

ZDNet: Social media and influencers still dominate our online shopping habits. “Online shopping will surge in popularity as we hunker down to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic by staying indoors. But we are influenced by others far more that we would like to admit. Redwood City-based social commerce platform Poshmark recently released its 2020:the year of social shopping report. It gained insights from 8,573 shoppers across the US and Canada, and Poshmark’s community of 60 million users.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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