Happy Nice Mall

Since the war started, people around the world have been trying to help refugees and the Ukrainian cause. For those with research skills like Aeden, this means using their time and effort to analyze material posted on the web by Ukrainians to document possible war crimes and verify their exact location.

The skills gained from the January 6 uprising in the US, and subsequent efforts to locate the rebels online, turned into online detectives using the same skills in the war in Ukraine. However, whether and how this effort will actually result in admissible evidence for a potential war crimes prosecution is unclear, particularly without a universal system to categorize the incoming flood of evidence. Read the full story.

—Tanya Basu

must read

I scoured the internet for today’s most entertaining/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Pfizer seeks emergency FDA approval for fourth covid shots
Only for 65+ for now. (politics)
+ Wastewater monitoring shows a resurgence of covid cases in many parts of the US. (Bloomberg $)
+ Vaccine supplies are finally arriving in Africa, but keeping track of who gets what and when is a logistical nightmare. (NYT $)
+ New Zealand will reopen to fully vaccinated travelers next month. (Guard)
+ The Johnson & Johnson vaccine appears to be more effective than previously thought. (NYT $)

2 Inside Ukraine’s 300,000-strong volunteer hacker army
It sounds impressive, but the actual impact of the band is hard to measure. (Guard)
+ Crashed leading Russian websites. (New Scientist $)
+ But the propaganda war has overshadowed the cyber war in Ukraine. (EN)
+ Digital printing has been on the rise in Russia for years. (scientific american $)

3 Must be a perfect time for electric vehicles
But the industry is not yet ready to take advantage of it. (wired)

4 OpenAI’s new coding program is fun, fast and full of flaws
This can help us automate boring life tasks. But it can also result in cluttering the internet with bugs. (wired $)
+ The FTC has a new enforcement mechanism: algorithmic destruction. (Protocol)

5 Swiss cartographers manually clearing the glaciers of the Alps 🏔️
It must be such a worrying business. (NYT $)

How does Amazon lock you into Prime?
There are hidden tricks at work from the moment you sign up. (insider $)

7 El Salvador’s bitcoin gambling is falling apart
It was a slow motion car crash from the start. (rest of the world)
+ The crypto scene seems so cliche. (Guard)

8 Interest in metadata and NFTs is falling off a cliff 📉
This level of hype was never going to be sustainable. (forbes)
+ Mark Zuckerberg continues to pursue plans to bring NFTs to Instagram. (Engadget)

9 Daylight saving time could become permanent in the US ☀️
The proposal was rarely unanimously accepted by senators yesterday. (Ars Teknik)

10 American astronauts set the record for longest stay in space
Mark Vande Hei has been aboard the International Space Station since April 2021. (CNET)

—Graham Shellenberger, global team director at Miburo Solutions, which monitors extremism online Financial Times Why should we not underestimate the outrage that the sudden cessation of access to platforms like Instagram in Russia can cause.

We can still have beautiful things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these strange times. (Any ideas? Write me or tweet me.)

+ love this insight How David Byrne wrote the lyrics.
+ we have another one stuck ship! It’s a pale imitation of its predecessor, but I still can’t pretend not to be a little excited. Especially since the ship was called “Never Forward”.
+ A beautiful timber bridge in China.
+ Technology is a wonderful thing. up to ten stops working.
+ this flower seems to belong to another world.
+ I really want to know where this is bird-based warfare He’s climbing the next step in Japan.
+ These Crufts version Swan Lake is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.
+ If you are celebrating Easter, How are you today The place to go for food inspiration.