NEW RESOURCES

International Criminal Court: International Criminal Court Launches French and Spanish Versions of Case Law Database. “Today, 20 January 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched the French and Spanish versions of the ICC Case Law Database (CLD). The CLD is an easily searchable database of the Court’s jurisprudence providing free access to the entire case-law of the ICC in English, and to the available translations in French and Spanish. Users can search for ICC jurisprudence based on several criteria, including full-text and keywords. The CLD contains all judicial decisions, judgments, and orders issued by any Chamber or the Presidency of the Court, including separate and dissenting opinions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers. “Twitter’s full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title, according to internal records viewed by CNBC. Around 75 of the company’s 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers. The company’s trust and safety team, which makes policy recommendations, design and product changes with the aim of keeping all of Twitter’s users safe, is down to fewer than 20 full-time employees.”

Engadget: Amazon is shutting down the AmazonSmile charity program in February. “Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of what they paid to the charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. As a parting donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months what they earned in 2022 through the program.”

CNET: Microsoft Is Shutting Down Its Social VR Platform AltspaceVR. “AltspaceVR, a social virtual worlds platform acquired by Microsoft in 2017, will shut down on March 10. In a blog post on Friday, the AltspaceVR team said they’re shifting focus to ‘immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh,’ the tech giant’s cloud-based AR/VR platform.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 7 Best Ways to Track Flights. “There are different methods to track flights, and in this post, we are going to list some of the best ways to do that. These include tools, a search engine, and one of iOS’s built-in apps. Let’s take a look at these in detail.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

9to5Mac: Tapbots readies ‘Ivory’ client for Mastodon as Tweetbot era unceremoniously ends. “In an update published on its website, Tapbots apologized to Tweetbot users and thanked them for their years of support. The Tapbots team, however, also teased that even though Tweetbot is no longer, they’re continuing their work on the Ivory client for Mastodon.”

The Wrap: ‘Kim’s Video’ Review: Pursuit of a Legendary VHS Archive Becomes a True-Life Comic Mystery . “Video stores started to close by 2008 when the near-mythical Mr. Kim offered his collection of 55,000 movies to any institution that would keep it intact. The town of Salemi, Sicily, acquired the archive, and in 2012 there was an article in The Village Voice by Karina Longworth that attempted to figure out what had happened to it, but the final fate of the collection is at last revealed in ‘Kim’s Video,’ a documentary by director David Redmon and his filmmaking partner Ashley Sabin that plays like an expert comic thriller.”

NPR: A rocky past haunts the mysterious company behind the Lensa AI photo app. “A Belarussian millionaire living in Cyprus. A dinner with the CEO of Snap. A six-figure patent troll case. They are all part of the history of Prisma Labs, a largely obscure artificial intelligence startup that spent years under the radar until November, when the company introduced ‘Magic Avatars.’ The feature in Prisma’s Lensa app has allowed millions to turn mundane selfies into dazzling AI-generated animated portraits of fairy princesses and astronauts. And it has brought in tens of millions of dollars.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: India releases guidelines for social media influencers accepting paid promotions. “As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines to limit unfair trade practices and misleading promotions on the web. On Friday, the Department of Consumer Affairs held a press conference to announce new guidelines to make it mandatory for social media influencers to disclose promotional content in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.”

NY Jewish Week: A serial flasher crashed a live chat with Orthodox women. Now its influencer organizer is sleuthing him out.. “A Brooklyn-based Orthodox activist wants her community to be the last one targeted by a possible serial flasher who crashed an online chat she was leading last week. Adina Miles-Sash, who is known to her 61,000 followers as Flatbush Girl, also says her community’s reaction to the flashing incident underscores the changes needed if women are to feel respected and secure.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UChicago News: UChicago launches accelerator for data science and emerging AI startups. “The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Data Science Institute today announced the launch of Transform, a new accelerator for startup companies focused on the breakthrough technologies of data science and artificial intelligence.”

Northeastern Global News: Can ‘digital traces’ from internet searches and social media predict outbreaks of COVID-19?. “A team of scientists including Northeastern University machine learning expert Mauricio Santillana says internet users’ ‘digital traces’ can be adopted to alert public health officials to sharp increases in COVID-19 at the county level one to six weeks ahead of a major outbreak.” Good morning, Internet…

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