NEW RESOURCES

The Hindu: A portal for film archives. “To this day, there is a gap in documenting and archiving the history of Kannada cinema in an accessible way, which a new online portal… aims to fill. The portal, designed with fonts from yesteryear film posters, is drenched in nostalgia for old films, songs, their history, trivia, and rare-to-find photographs. Kannada is a language spoken in India. You can learn more about it here.

EVENTS

Landscapes of Injustice: Landscapes of Injustice Digital Archive Database Launch events. “Landscapes of Injustice is pleased to announce the launch of the Digital Archives database this March. Join us for one or both of the launch events each as we explore the materials contained within, demonstrate how to retrieve them and chat with members of the Japanese Canadian community about the files related to their family history and heritage.” The two launch events are March 28 and March 31.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Poynter: Introducing The Collective: A newsletter for passing the mic on the path to equity. “As we approach the first anniversary of the racial reckoning in America’s newsrooms, the unique challenges of being a journalist of color continue. And who understands what we’re going through better than someone who has been through it themselves? That’s why we’re excited to launch The Collective, a newsletter that will come out on the last Wednesday of the month starting in April. We’re looking for fresh voices to elevate.”

Neowin: Twitter might let you ‘undo’ tweets in the future… if you pay for it. “As spotted by prominent reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong – who found out about the feature in the first place -, there appears to be a subscription page currently tied to the ‘undo tweet’ functionality. While this makes sense given that we know that Twitter is considering a subscription service, it’s difficult to see the value in paying for a capability that only allows you a five-second respite so you can undo a tweet before it is sent.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: 7 best apps for making quick GIFs on your phone. “DIY GIF-making is possible on your Android or iPhone smartphone if you have the right apps. Even some apps you probably already have downloaded include some hidden GIF features: You may not associate WhatsApp or Twitter with making your own silent short video sequences, but we’re here to fix all that.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Gucci designed virtual sneakers for hypebeasts in Roblox and VRChat. “Gucci is diving into virtual luxury footwear with a new exclusively digital pair of sneakers called The Gucci Virtual 25 that can be ‘worn’ in augmented reality (AR) or used in partnered apps like Roblox and VRChat. Surprisingly, the shoes are a lot less expensive than a typical Gucci piece: you can buy the Virtual 25s from Gucci’s app for $12.99, or $8.99 in the Wanna Kicks AR sneaker app.”

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Gutenberg 10.2 Causing Fatal Errors. “WordPress publishers are discovering that Gutenberg 10.2 (released March 17, 2021) is causing ‘fatal errors’ due to a WordPress incompatibility issue. One publisher suggested that Gutenberg autoupdates should do a compatibility check and trigger a warning if the incompatibility exists.”

The Guardian: Ex-Trump aide tweets ‘executive orders’ after Google lists him as president. “Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence turned potential Republican candidate for governor of California, gleefully seized on an error by Google on Saturday, promising ‘a plethora of executive orders’ after the search giant listed him as ‘President of the United States since 2021’.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: What happens when your massive text-generating neural net starts spitting out people’s phone numbers? If you’re OpenAI, you create a filter.”In December, computer scientists from industry and academia – including Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, OpenAI, and Google – collaborated to demonstrate that GPT-2 – GPT-3’s predecessor – could be provoked to include personally identifiable information, such as people’s names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers, in the prose it was asked to generate. In fact, the team found that ‘at least 0.1 per cent’ of GPT-2’s ‘text generations – a very conservative estimate – contain long verbatim strings that are “copy-pasted” from a document in its training set.'”

New York Times: China Punishes Microsoft’s LinkedIn Over Lax Censorship. “LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network allowed to operate in China. To do so, the Microsoft-owned service for professionals censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese users. Now, it’s in hot water for not censoring enough.”

Route Fifty: Utah Poised to Block Porn on Smartphones. “Cell phones and tablets sold in Utah could soon be required to block pornography under a bill awaiting a signature from Gov. Spencer Cox. The bill, passed by the House in February and the Senate earlier this month, requires tablets and smartphones sold after Jan. 1, 2022, to automatically enable a pre-installed ‘filter capable of blocking material that is harmful to minors.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Quest for prosthetic retinas progresses toward human trials, with a VR assist. “An artificial retina would be an enormous boon to the many people with visual impairments, and the possibility is creeping closer to reality year by year. One of the latest advancements takes a different and very promising approach, using tiny dots that convert light to electricity, and virtual reality has helped show that it could be a viable path forward.” Good morning, Internet…

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