NEW RESOURCES

National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators: New NASFAA Toolkit Provides Guidance to Help Colleges Build and Deploy Unbiased Financial Aid Policies. “Financial aid administrators — as one of the key facilitators of educational access for students — have an important role to play in reducing the operational influence of implicit bias related to racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural identity; spoken language and/or accents; religion; age; sexual orientation; socioeconomic status; nationality; and more. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) today published an Implicit Bias Toolkit which aims to help financial aid offices at institutions of higher education across the country establish a neutral basis from which to build policies and deploy procedures in the administration of financial aid.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Oculus makes it easier to create mixed reality apps. “Expect to see more mixed reality apps in the future, at least for the Oculus Quest 2. WinFuture notes that Oculus has unveiled a toolkit, Passthrough API Experimental, that will make it relatively easy to ‘seamlessly’ merge VR with the real world view from the Quest 2’s cameras.”

Chrome Unboxed: Google Docs Improves Braille Mode With Detailed Inline Suggestions. “Google is improving its support for braille mode in Docs so that those using screen readers and refreshable braille displays can interact with suggestions in their documents easier. Basically, inline detailed suggestion information will be audible out loud alongside the rest of the text in the document.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 40+ Best Sites to Download High Quality Royalty-Free Images. “In this showcase I put together a collection of 40+ sites with beautiful free stock photos and royalty-free images that you can choose from. Hopefully, they will help you to spice up your future designs. Do read the licenses carefully though as some of these services and photos may require proper attribution.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

France24: Macron pressured to apologise for nuclear tests in French Polynesia. “Macron will be ‘encouraging several concrete steps’ regarding the legacy of nuclear tests, with the opening up of state archives and individual compensation, a French presidential official who asked not to be named said. French officials denied any cover-up of radiation exposure at a meeting earlier this month with delegates from the semi-autonomous territory led by President Edouard Fritch. The meeting came after French investigative website Disclose reported in March that the impact from the fallout was far more extensive than authorities had acknowledged, citing declassified French military documents on the 193 tests.”

The Register: For a true display of wealth, dab printer ink behind your ears instead of Chanel No. 5 . “Dipping its nib in one inkwell before delicately wiping off the excess on some blotting paper, Which? found that a multipack of colour ink (cyan, magenta, yellow) for the WorkForce WF-7210DTW printer costs £75.49 from Epson. ‘This works out at an astonishing £2,410 a litre – or £1,369 for a pint,’ said Which?.” £1,369 works out to just over $1,887 USD.

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans. “President Biden has assembled the most aggressive antitrust team in decades, stacking his administration with three legal crusaders as it prepares to take on corporate consolidation and market power with efforts that could include blocking mergers and breaking up big companies.”

Bleeping Computer: No More Ransom saves almost €1 billion in ransomware payments in 5 years. “The No More Ransom project celebrates its fifth anniversary today after helping over six million ransomware victims recover their files and saving them almost €1 billion in ransomware payments. No More Ransom is an online portal launched in July 2016 and a public-private partnership created by law enforcement and industry leaders (Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, McAfee, and Kaspersky).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IndieWire: Lucasfilm Hired the YouTuber Who Used Deepfakes to Tweak Luke Skywalker ‘Mandalorian’ VFX. “YouTube is full of deepfake videos that attempt to improve on polarizing visual effects in movies, but rarely do these videos lead to actual studio jobs. A popular deepfake YouTuber who goes by the name ‘Shamook’ announced this month in the comments section of one of his videos that he joined the team over at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic.”

Virginia Tech: Researchers are pulling movements out of microfilm with digital history. “Firsthand accounts and images of Black soldiers hold hidden chapters of U.S. history. Historians and computer scientists are harnessing technologies like virtual reality and AI to equip the public to immerse themselves in those perspectives, learn from them, and broaden historical dialogue.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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