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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Open Circuits

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet that picks up where the old, good internet left off. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Every trip to Defcon – the massive annual hacker-con in Las Vegas – is a delight. Partly it's the familiar – seeing old friends, getting updates on hacks of years gone by. But mostly, it's the surprises, the things you never anticipated. Defcon never fails to surprise.

I got back from Vegas yesterday and I've just unpacking my suitcase, and with it, the tangible evidence of Defcon's cave of wonders. My gear bag has a new essential: Hak5's malicious cable detector, a little USB gizmo that lights up if it detects surreptitious malicious activity, even as it interdicts those nasty payloads:

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/malicious-cable-detector-by-o-mg

(In case you're wondering if it's really possible to craft a malicious USB cable that injects badware into your computer and is visually indistinguishable from a regular cable, the answer is a resounding yes, and of course, Hak5 sells those cables, with a variety of USB tips:)

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/omg-cable

But merch is only a sideshow. The real action is in the conference rooms, where hackers update you on the pursuit of their obsessions. These are such beautiful weirdos who pursue knowledge to ridiculous extremes, untangling gnarly hairballs just to follow a thread to its origin point.

For the second year in a row, I caught a presentation from Joseph Gabay about his work on warshopping: slicing up shopping cart wheels and haunting shopping mall parking lots during resurfacing to figure out how the anti-theft mechanism that stops your cart from leaving the parking lot works:

https://www.begaydocrime.com/

And of course, I got to give one of those presentations, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," to a packed house. What a thrill! It was livestreamed, and if you missed it, you'll be able to catch it on Defcon's Youtube page as soon as they upload it (they've got a lot of uploading to do!):

https://www.youtube.com/@DEFCONConference/videos

After my talk, I went back to the No Starch Press booth for a book signing – which was amazing, so many beautiful hackers, plus I got to share a signing table with Micah Lee. As I was leaving, Bill Pollock slipped me a giant hardcover art-book, and said, "You're gonna love this."

I did. The book is Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components, by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer, and it is a drop-dead gorgeous collection of photos of electronic components, painstakingly cross-sectioned and polished:

The photos illustrate layperson-friendly explanations of what each component does, how it is constructed, and why. Perhaps you've pondered a circuit board and wondered about the colorful, candy-shaped components soldered to it. It's natural to assume that these are indivisible, abstract functional units, a thing that is best understood as a reliable and deterministic brick that can be used to construct a specific kind of wall.

But peering inside these sealed packages reveals another world, a miniature land where things get simpler – and more complex. Inside these blobs of resin are snips of wire, plugs of wax, simple screws, fine sheets of metal in stacks, wafers of plain ceramic, springs and screws.

Truly, quantity has a quality all its own. Miniaturize these assemblies and produce them at unimaginable scale and the simple, legible components turn into mystical black boxes that only the most dedicated study can reveal. Like every magician's trick, the unfathomable effect is built up through the precise repetition of something very simple.

A prolonged study of Open Circuits reveals something important about the hacker aesthetic, a collection of graphic design, fashion and industrial design conventions that begins with this realization: that the crisp lines of digital logic can be decomposed into blobby, probabilistic lumps of metal, plastic, and even wax.

It reminds me of George Dyson's brilliant memoir/history of computing, Turing's Cathedral, where he describes how he and the other children of the scientists building the first digital computers at the Princeton Institute spent their summers in the basement, hand-winding cores for the early colossi their parents were building on the floors above them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/03/12/george-dysons-history-of-the-computer-turings-cathedral/

You can see my hacker aesthetic photos in my Defcon 31 photo set:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=defcon31&user_id=37996580417%40N01&view_all=1

In this video, Eric Schlaepfer illustrates the painstaking work that went into decomposing these tiny, precise components into their messy, analog subcomponents. It's pure hacker aesthetic, and it's mesmerizing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKyJ0b04Lo

But Open Circuits isn't just an aesthetic journey, it's a technical one. After all, Oskay is co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, one of the defining places where hardware hackers gather to tear down, pick apart, mod, improve and destroy electronics. The accompanying text is a masterclass in the simple machines that combine together to make complex assemblies:

https://www.evilmadscientist.com/

Defcon is a reminder that the world only seems hermetically sealed and legible to authorized parties with clearance to crack open the box. From shopping cart wheels to thermal fuses, that illegibility is only a few millimeters thick. Sand away the glossy outer layer and you will find yourself in a weird land of wax-blobs, rough approximations, expedient choices and endless opportunities for delight and terror, mischief and care.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/14/hidden-worlds/#making-the-invisible-visible-and-beautiful

#pluralistic #books #reviews #evil mad scientist laboratories #no starch press #Windell Oskay #Eric Schlaepfer #electronics #hacker aesthetic #makers #diy #secret knowledge #gift guide #photography

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ow-old-men · 1 year

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Obsessed with the idea of omnic specific body language and etiquette, like-

Balling your hands into fists around human people is polite, there’s a lot of small moving parts and a lot of strength in them to damage a distracted human passing by you. Open or especially moving hands when walking among people is read as a politics statement or as aggression

Most omnics won’t instinctively point their face plating towards a conversational partner. On most omnic models, the audio and visual sensors are not located in a way where that would enhance their sense of the conversation

A lot of omnics don’t ever stay completely still unless they’re shut down. They’re optimised for manual cooling, moving their limbs slightly to allow proper and varied airflow

Most big emotions will make internal fans kick on if the omnic in question have them

Compared to most human people, a lot of omnics initiate physical touch with very big, obvious movements (holding a hand outstretched for you to take, slowing down right before touch happens or verbally stating a touch will happen, even a very casual one). It started as a practical thing stemming from omnics sometimes being uncomfortable or dangerous to touch due to high temperatures, sharp or grinding parts. These days it’s pretty much just unconscious and happens in omnic to omnic interactions just as much as between omnics and humans

For most omnics, instinctually ‘looking at someone’ will be looking at their chest (or most chest like part if they’re an omnic) rather than their face or head

Tired or stressed omnics often get twitchy and shaky. At a certain point of exhaustion most omnics will wrap their limbs close to their body, sometimes even holding their arms down or pinning them to their torso for fear of a malfunctioning limb lashing out

A lot of slang and language that emerged from omnic culture includes the clicks and clacks that comes from moving in an omnic body as a sort of grammar or second layer of language. Thus, there’s often a lot of gestures included as well

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #omnic thoughts #zenyatta #Ramattra #I love them I wish there was more casual wrldvuilding?

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a-twisted-circumstance · 6 months

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🐙 - Ok, the stupid thing is on, but where's the video?

🐟 - Wagga wag? [Girl, does it look like I know?]

🐙 - Well the audio is still being captured apparently....

🐟 - Waag ag waa. [Well, at least some stupid part of the old junk heap works.]

🐙 - (Ugh, whatever, let's just do it this way....)

🐙 Howdy Splatsville! Even if you can't see me, I'm Twist Salfin! Salvager and nomad extraordinaire!

🐟 - Gragg wab waaa - graga ag? [ Extraordinaire my fin - That's not what I said?]

🐙 - Hmmm, gonna have to work on that auto translate app, seems to be kinda carp... Anyway, the Salmonid you hear is my friend Nom Nom! That's just his nickname, his real name is a bit of a mouthful.

🐙 - We recently moved to Splatsville after the World Premiere Splatfest! It was so fun and everyone was so nice! We don't usually stay in one place for long but we figured a few months here playing turf and exploring the city couldn't hurt. And I bought this old second hand camera to....(Noms, what was that word again?)

🐟 - <THE APP COULD NOT PICK UP WHAT YOU SAID, PLEASE TRY~> *click*

🐙 - (ugh that's annoying, I'll have to manually translate him it looks like) Anyway, yes, thank you Nommy, I'm going to live blog my time here. Feel free to say hi if you see a tent set up outside of Grizzco!

🐟 - *unintelligible angry gargling*

🐙 - (Look, I know, ok? It's the only place that would let us set up without charging us rent for a tent we already own) We'll also be answering any questions we get here on Squiblr! So feel free to send those! Be nice though or I will cry!

🐟 - Ragg ga wana wa! [ And if you make her cry, I'll bite off your left -]*click*

🐙 - NO. (How the hell did that stupid app turn back on?) Anyway, I'm looking forward to my time here in Splatsville! See you on the Turf!

🐟 - twag la wa, graga.... [ Twisted Fin, I think I found why there's no visual....]

🐙 - Oh shit, really?

🐟- graaaaga waga wu.... [ The lens cap is still on.....]

🐙 - .......oh.....I knew that......

🎉THE ASK BOX IS NOW OPEN 🎉

#splatoon #Splatoon OC #Twist #A Twisted Circumstance #Ask blog #Ask box open #This blog takes place currently during Drizzle Season 2022 #So keep that in mind for asks #New Seasons will be specified in later comics #I didn't have the energy to draw anything for this I'm sorry #Hope you guys enjoy the upcoming comic!

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showfallmediacameracrew · 7 months

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[Transmission Received.]

[Equipment identified: standard Tripod, turned on manually by equipment owner Jasprix]

[ The video opens on a closeup of Jasprix’s frowning face, the expression making the scar across the bridge of his nose more prominent, and his sharp teeth visible with the sneer when he notices the red light blinking to show the video is on. ]

J: “Figured I’d turn this on myself instead of giving it a chance to do it itself at a more inappropriate time.”

[ He moves away, giving the video the opportunity to once more see his room, and the form of Marvin Bird once more on his bed. The blankets piled on the bed are different from last time, more brightly colored then the darker shades of before, and Marvin himself is wearing purple pajama pants patterned with black cats and crows, notably a size too big for his legs. ]

[ Jasprix goes to stand beside the bed, touching a hand to Marvin’s bandaged cheek. Jasprix himself is wearing a long sleeved green shirt instead of his usual black, though the stretchy shorts he wears are still black.]

J: “I need you to try and use your legs, just a bit today, so it’ll be easier to take you places until I get a wheelchair. Your friend brought us some stuff, so let’s make today a couch day, and I’ll change the bandages and help you eat. Just a few steps, then you can sit again. I know you can do it, just keep your arm around my shoulders and I’ll help with the rest. Are you ready to try?”

[ Marvin groans, obviously being more dramatic than necessary. He slowly props himself up, wincing the whole time. He seems to have more color on his face today. ]

J: “You’re obviously doing a little better after a day of sleeping. Come on then, You’ll be able to cuddle me just as easily on the couch.”

[ Jasprix takes Marvin’s hand, and puts a hand against Marvin’s side to keep him steady as he leads his arm around his shoulder. He moves away from the bed slowly, supporting Marvin as he pulls him up off the bed. For a second, once Marvin’s feet touch the floor, Jasprix pauses to check that he’s fine and steady. ]

[ Marvin is wobbly and uncoordinated, struggling to stay on his feet. He furrows his brow as if concentrating on the mere task of standing upright. There’s a hint of panic in his expression as he attempts to take a step and grossly miscalculates the amount of effort it requires. He stumbles, but Jasprix’s hold on him keeps him from toppling over. ]

J: “Yeah, I’ve got you, just keep on trying, but I’ll lead you anyway. Just lean on me if you need to.”

[ Jasprix moves slowly, half dragging Marvin more than he walks himself, keeping a hold of his arm around his shoulders as he supports him, another arm loose at his bandaged side. Marvin is very obviously attempting to walk on his own, but it's no use. Eventually, they leave the frame of the bedroom, and the audio is of something being put down on a couch and some noises. ]

[ After a minute, Jasprix comes back and approaches the video, and the visuals become shaky as he grabs the tripod and moves it into the other room. The front of the Hot Topic, which has been emptied of its usual products, instead has the light turned on, to a room occupied by a large plush couch that takes up one of the side walls. The other, across from it, has a medium sized tv half embedded in the wall, and sitting on a dresser cabinet. An empty bookshelf beside it lacked the shelves and obviously taken from an ikea with how badly it was put together.]

[ The camera eventually is motionless again, placed behind the arm of the couch nearest the door, giving it the feel that it could be hidden if no one turned to look at it. The couch is occupied, Marvin sitting in the middle of it on top of a towel, with water bottles and a pile of food items to his left. A new larger med kit is situated on his right, nearly hidden by his body.]

[ Jasprix comes back into frame after finishing the placement, and kneels to the right of Marvin, looking up at him. ]

J: “Feel better now that you’re sitting again? Sorry I can’t change how bright the lights are, most are out in the hall, but I think a change of scenery is good for injured people? Probably?”

M: “Better. The lights are fine. All good.”

[ Marvin’s voice is croaky and barely above a whisper. It’s still hard for him to talk, but the slightly longer sentences are a good sign. ]

J: “I’ll put more stuff on your neck later, and wrap the scarf around it again, but for now, before I feed you, I’m going to cut the bandages and check them, and put fresh ones on after. Please, don’t freak out.”

[ Jasprix moves up into a crouch on his barefooted toes, and leans over Marvin, a knife with blood stains on the handle in his hand that the camera hadn’t previously seen. He presses it to the edge of the chest bandage, glancing for a moment to Marvin’s face, before he pushes it down and cuts through the material. ]

J: “I didn’t get to ask before, in the moment and after, but this is real right? I’m not really interested in seeing which of us is the gayest chicken anymore, but I promise this isn’t a threat.”

[ Marvin tries to laugh, but it ends up being the start of a bad coughing fit, and Jasprix looks at him in concern. He shudders and looks at Jasprix with exhausted eyes, but he’s smiling. ]

M: “It’s real. It’s real.”

[ Jasprix hums happily, then focuses back on what he's doing and cuts down, taking some time to rip through the material past the overabundance of layers he had wrapped around him, grimacing as he hacks through, careful to avoid cutting the skin when he gets to it. Eventually, the front is fully cut through, and he peels it away from Marvin’s body, putting the knife down to gently nudge Marvin’s back off the couch so he can pull the gauze completely from his body. ]

[ The video catches sight of the injuries that were hidden under the gauze, which are not as white on the inner layer as they were on the outer where Jasprix had tossed the used gauze to the side. The discarded gauze is soaked with both dried and bright red blood. The wounds seem mostly closed, but a few are still weeping red droplets. Jasprix did a good job of stitching them shut, all things considered. But they’re far from being healed. Marvin looks anywhere else than those injuries. He doesn’t want to see them.

J: “They aren’t that bad, at least... compared to before. Um, I’m going to put some cream stuff in this kit on them, I think it’s meant to be soothing? Then wrap them up again alright. Just, just watch the TV.”

[ Jasprix gets up, putting the knife on the dresser as he picks up the remote, putting it in Marvin's hand as he focuses on opening the med kit and pulling out the new gauze and small tub of medical cream. ]

J: “Put on what you want, luckily I don’t need to fix the stitches. I don’t know how this will feel for you though, so sorry.”

[ He kneels in front of Marvin again, the cap of the tub twisted open to show the white substance inside, and dips his fingers in to pull out a nice dollop of the cream. The TV turns on, and the sound goes on in the background. It flips on to a channel broadcasting a nature documentary of the ocean. Marvin glances at Jasprix as he uses his other hand to put smaller portions on his other fingers, and rub them against the injuries as gently as he can. He’s close to Marvins body, his head in the way if Marvin attempted to look at what he was doing. ]

J: “Just a bit longer of this, then I’ll get it wrapped up again and check on how the bandages on your face are doing. Just relax as much as you can.”

[ Jasprix’s hands are pink, by the time he’s finished covering the wounds with as much of the cream as he is able to. He looks at them, glancing around slightly lost for a second, before he wipes them on the towel Marvin’s sitting on. He stands back up and ruffles Marvin’s hair carefully, much to his delight, turning away to gather the fresh bandages and gauze from the large box. ]

J: “That didn’t hurt too much, did it? I have no bloody fuckin’ idea if it’s meant to or not, but the label said it helps with healing.”

M: “I’m ok.”

[ He stops for a moment, and turns to the TV when he hears someone mention a specific ocean creature, tail momentarily twitching as he glares at it, then huffs and turns back to the box, tail swishing behind him as his ears flick to keep listening. Marvin looks amused but refrains from commenting. ]

[ He turns back around with the gauze rolls and bandages, taking a seat beside Marvin this time instead of in front of him. Looking at his torso and the injuries a final time before he presses a large bandage against it, then the end of the gauze to it and wraps it around again, moving Marvin’s arms up to get under and around his back properly. Despite all of his gentleness, Marvin still whimpers out at points. ]

[ It takes a good few minutes before the large injury is fully wrapped back up in a thick layering of gauze, but Jasprix is eventually done and gets it to stay in place with the medical tape he grabs from the box, before putting the rest of the unused supplies back in their place. ]

J: “Not too tight, I hope, but I think it needs to be a bit stiff to work, avoid letting someone...twist, or something. It’s not like, making it hard for your arms to be down, right? Tell me in a minute though, I’m going to get you a shirt to wear over that.”

[ He gets up and grabs the knife as he leaves, going back into the back room, leaving Marvin by himself on the couch. Marvin watches Jasprix leave, keeping an eye on him for as long as he can. Once he’s out of sight it's immediately apparent that he goes on guard. His eyes flick from the entrance and then to the camera, and back to the entrance. ]

[ Very slowly he grabs a water bottle and attempts to look casual while opening it. This quickly turns into confusion as he fumbles with the cap, having a hard time getting his hands to even grip the thing. Alarm crosses his face and he quickly sets it down, resolving to just ask Jasprix to do it for him. ]

[ Jasprix returns, a tie dyed shirt in hand as he comes back to sit next to Marvin. He glances at the bottle next to him, and cocks his head. ]

M: “... Couldn’t open it.”

[ Marvin avoids his eyes, embarrassed that such a simple action was something he couldn’t even complete. ]

J: “You’ll manage to do it soon. You’re still healing from a week of-.”

M: “Yeah, uh, anyways- Please, open it? Thirsty.”

[ He quickly changes the subject away from his absence by pushing the water bottle into Jasprix’s hands. Jasprix sighs, but nods and twists open the cap for him. ]

J: “Do you need me to hold it as you drink?”

M: “Better safe than wet.”

J: “Depends on the type you mean, doesn’t it?”

[ Marvin freezes and a blush rapidly blooms on his face. Jasprix grins at him, holding up the bottle to his mouth and waiting for a moment for Marvin to open before he tips it upward, slowly letting the water go into his mouth to avoid him choking. ]

[ Marvin drinks the entire bottle without stopping. He was very, very thirsty. Jasprix had tried to move the bottle away at one point, to have him pace himself, but he stopped at the look and noise Marvin gave him when he attempted to put it down. ]

J: “Do you need another one, before I put the shirt on you? I don’t think this thing is allowed to get wet.”

M: “Fine for now.”

[ He looks at the tag on the back of the colorful shirt, brows furrowed as he reads the cleaning instructions, before he turns his attention back to Marvin. ]

J: “Alright, try and push your arms through the sleeves then. I’ll help if you need it.”

[ He puts the shirt over his head and pulls it down, being careful as he does it when it goes over his neck. He’d gotten a shirt a few sizes big for Marvin, to avoid the fabric around the neck from being too uncomfortable, and allow him not to have it bunched up at the bandages. Marvin is able to hold his arms up long enough to slip the shirt on with no difficulty. The shirt being a large size was a good call. The neckline rests on his collarbones, completely avoiding the tangle of wires embedded in his neck. ]

J: “There we go. Now, you get a treat before I feed you some... Yogurt. Um, Archivist got me these things, so I promise these are from one of the truck supplies from outside, and not food made here.”

[ Marvin immediately perks up as soon as Jasprix says the Archivist’s name. He looks very curious. ]

J: “Oh yeah, the others, who you know, they ah. They’re happy you’re alive, and also worried about you. But anyway. You’ve done really well, today, with trying. So here’s your reward from me.”

[ Jasprix leans over and catches Marvin’s mouth in a kiss, deeper than the one he’d given him the other day. For a moment, he catches sight of the camera, and his expression turns a bit childish. Marvin, who has been enjoying this very much, makes a noise of surprise. The blush on his face deepens and he doesn’t pull away. ]

[ Jasprix looks surprised, blushing as well when he notices this, the color faintly more gold-like than red, and hums as he relaxes into the kiss. He closes his eyes for a second, then pulls back a few inches from Marvin, licking his lips as he takes a breathe. ]

J: “There you go, that was worth trying things today, wasn’t it?”

M: “Yeah.”

[ Marvin says softly, a bit breathless after that. Marvin yawns and leans back into the couch. Apparently smooching took a lot out of him. Jasprix smiles, reaching over him to grab one of the little food containers and peel the top off. ]

J: “We can go back to cuddling and watching the TV after you eat a little bit. You must be hungry right? Come on, just a minute more and then I’ll hold you.”

M: “Fineeee.”

[ Jasprix laughs quietly, and picks up the little plastic spoon from in the pile. He holds the spoon with yogurt up to Marvin’s mouth, waiting. ]

J: “I’m not going to play airplane with it, unless you’d also like me to find you something different to wear that won’t require you to need me to help you to a toilet.”

[ Marvin just rolls his eyes and accepts the yogurt. Not his favorite, but anything tastes great right now. Jasprix hums encouragingly, and feeds him the rest of the little container slowly, careful to wait for him to swallow before giving him more.]

J: “That good enough right now? I’ll feed you more later, but I think I’ll save the more solid stuff until another day.”

[ Marvin nods. His energy seems pretty sapped after all that.]

[ Jasprix throws the empty container towards the tripod, it disappears somewhere below the frame into hopefully a trash can. He shuts the kit and moves it off the couch onto the floor, and scoots closer to pull Marvin into a secure embrace against his side. ]

J: “We’ll go back into my room later, once you’ve had some more time out here to rest and regain some strength. I did find out this TV has some sort of pirating thing going on, it used to be a display thing, I guess it showed full movies on silent at some point. That doesn't fucking matter, what does is, since we missed it, I think I could find Barbie on the pirating list thing. Want to watch that before we try walking back?”

[ Marvin nods and lets himself melt into Jasprix’s side. After a bit of wincing and readjustment, he finds a good position to rest in. A small hum escapes him, content and cozy. Jasprix looks warmly at him, rubbing a hand along his arm comfortingly and then placing it against the side of his head to card his fingers through his hair. He uses the remote in his other hand and flips to the long list of movies available on screen, and presses something that makes a bright Barbie logo screen appear on the tv. ]

J: “Sleep if you need, we can always watch it again. I’ll wake you and help you back into the bedroom after, tell me if we gotta get to a bathroom.”

[ He simply makes a noise of acknowledgement and looks towards the screen. It doesn’t take long at all before he’s out cold. ]

J: “He’s getting better, he’s getting better. He heals so damn slow but that’s probably normal for other people. He won’t heal as fast as me.”

[ He’s being quiet, whispering this reassurance to himself to avoid bothering Marvin, as the movie starts up and he turns the volume down to its own quiet whisper. He adjusts slightly, pulling Marvin slightly closer until he’s content with the protective embrace, glancing out the glass walls to the empty hallway as he keeps carding his hand idly through his hair. ]

[ He goes silent, watching the movie for a few minutes before glancing back at the camera. He glowers at it, a silent snarl showing it his teeth as he hisses quietly. ]

J: “Shut down, you jackass.”

[ Transmission ended from manual verbal command. ]

#showfall ask blog #showfall camera operator #showfall media ask blog #ask blog #encoreverse blog #showfall jasprix #transcript

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narangmedical · 1 month

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NET NIC500 - Infant Radiant Warmer (Basic) features a microprocessor-based servo-controlled unit enabling two operation modes, automatic and manual, with display of set temperature and skin temperature, along with audio and visual alarm functions for various failures, and transparent side panels with two infusion seals .. https://www.narang.com/infant-care-baby-care-equipments/infant-radiant-warmer-open-care-system-orange-series/NIC500.php

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meeks-just-wants-to-scroll · 2 years

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Ryland and Rocky bond over legos. Rocky not being able to see means he can’t read the builder manual, so Ryland has to look up an audio instruction for a set. Turns out there is a friends set which I thiink has a audio version of the instructions that lets visually impaired people build them, which is nice. Also, the Lego set being a Friends brand one is pretty wholesome to me. I built one of those sets once and it was pretty fun. Ryland has never strikes me as someone who made a big deal about being a guy and playing with “girls toys”. I still feel like years ago he might have had some internalized stuff and or didn’t question only indulging in stuff he considered masculine. His students opened his mind though and he became more comfortable with it. Plus, Ryland playing with a “girls” Lego set just makes me smile. Rocky loves it too. It’s this set btw:

#project hail mary #meeks rambles #andy weir #meek’s art #ryland grace #project hail mary rocky #meek’s headcanons #project hail mary fan art #project hail mary ryland grace #project Hail Mary

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thatfailedpokemontrainer · 5 months

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Pelipper malice! A fridge. A few seconds after it arrives, the door automatically opens, and an illusion/hologram starts playing. It includes visuals and audio, but nothing else that's real.

Dusk the Zoroark bursts out the fridge. "Charlotte," he taunts mockingly, then transforms into a Houndoom. The image of Casey and Indigo standing outside the fridge appears, only to be blasted into ashes by the Houndoom. Dusk turns back into a Zoroark, grins, and starts pulling corpses out of the fridge: A Zigzagoon, an Arcanine's head, a Nidoking's head, a Joltik, a Quilava, a Mudkip, and a Dedenne. He grins again, says "I'll be watching you, Charlotte," then turns into a Spearow and flies into the fridge and disappears. The door automatically closes after.

The hologram will automatically replay about ten seconds after finishing. The first time it plays, there's some sort of force field around it preventing anything from touching it, but after the door closes the first time you can destroy it. Opening/closing the fridge door manually disrupts the hologram from playing temporarily.

Arc-

what the fuck-

Anon- you have been like fucking- studying me - to see things I don't like

't wasn't too bad. Usually see dusk and... other stuff a lot.

the pokemon... didn't like that

#sprite :>#tw pokemon death #pkmn irl #pokeblogging #tw anon hate #pokemon irl #pokemon #rotumblr #rotomblr #pkmn #ask game

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freshthoughts2020 · 2 years

Link

#JHarry #nfinite records #open manual audio visual #wop #off white wop #mike #hip hop #rap #michigan rap #plant city #florida #jacksonville #rochester #new york #soulelection #takeadaytrip #kid cudi #veeze #babyface ray

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instructionsonback · 14 days

Audio

(THE CORNER® | OPEN MANUAL AUDIO VISUAL)

#SoundCloud #music #THE CORNER® | OPEN MANUAL AUDIO VISUAL #JHarry #terror era #Hip Hop #conductor williams

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dwn024 · 1 year

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yippe anon back on btw im sorry if youve already mentioned it but what software do you use for your audio mixing?

i don’t think anyone has ever asked me about audio things before YIPPEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! my default go to is audacity my best friend audacity, mostly cuz it’s A) free and B) runs nice and easy on my poor lappy, plus when i do my fun little “editing voice clips to sound like a robot” the two plugins i use for that (graillon 2 and dblue crusher/glitch)) those are audacity plugins and i don’t know if they exist for any other software?

but the audio mixing for my student film i used adobe audition cuz i get it through my school and, admittedly, despite being an adobe product, it is THE BEST audio mixing program i have ever used holy fuck it’s like all the best parts of audacity but in like, a more sophisticated package if that makes sense?? it’s the only adobe product i have ever actually enjoyed using it’s SO good especially cuz to import audio onto your multitrack it lets you go through your computer files and preview them Within audition instead of having to like, have windows explorer with the preview pane open in another window like i do with audacity. AND you can import a video to edit its audio in sync with the visuals cuz it lets you preview the video at the same time!!!! that feature fucking rules!!!! but for mixing like music audio i still prefer audacity, audition is just really good for anything that needs like, sound effects and Varying Reverb

if you mean what music software i use though i have garageband on my ipad and since i hate the thing it does where it automatically lowers the volume of all your other tracks when it starts getting too loud, i manually export all the tracks individually to import into audacity and master that way. && vocaloid 4 free edition my best friend^_^ my dad uses ableton and i’ve been meaning to learn that one too FOREVER maybe when i’m back home i can check it out on his computer…. also the rudimentary audio editing effects in shotcut (the video editing software i use) are also pretty good when i want to do like SFX editing without having to put my poor lappy in distress

#anon my friend i apologize but you are talking to the guy that got so autistically excited he almost started crying when they showed us #the mummy trailer in our intro to sound design class that was the happiest i have ever been in my life. i love sound design/editing^_^#also the way they taught us audition was by giving us a clip from the iron giant and a SFX library and letting us go to town THAT WAS AWESOM

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mariacallous · 1 year

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TikTok has emerged as a key platform on which footage of the invasion of Ukraine is shared.

This includes footage of missile strikes and their aftermath, damaged or destroyed military equipment, as well as visual evidence of suspected war crimes and other atrocities.

Misinformation and disinformation about the invasion can also be found on the platform. This includes posts by Russian state-backed media, posts of old or unrelated videos falsely claiming to show contemporary events and misleading or false claims about the details of a video -such as the location it was recorded.

In short, there is much for digital investigators to explore on TikTok.

But compared to other social media companies, TikTok does not currently allow researchers to access and inspect data at scale. Investigating content on TikTok is mostly a manual process that can be very time consuming. Yet there are methods, tools and shortcuts that can help.

Bellingcat released a guide in 2020 detailing some of the basic steps to investigate TikTok. This detailed how to:

Extract user profile information, download and archive profile photos and videos

Understand the differences between using TikTok on a web browser and mobile app

Tips on privacy for users and investigators

Use the app for content and information discovery for videos, users and hashtags

Use external platforms such as search engines and other social media platforms to find TikTok content

Readers can view this guide here.

What follows is a guide that builds on that introduction, adds new tips and techniques and shows how they can be applied to the War in Ukraine.

Among the topics covered are:

An update on the differences between the mobile app and web browser

Tips on content searches and how to find metadata on the app

Using third party tools and browser plugins to extract audio, text from images, and conduct real-time translation

Recording your work as you go and how to get the best out of the app and web browser versions

While this article can work as a standalone guide, it is also worth reading our original intro to TikTok as a refresher. More recently, we also published this guide on the Bellingcat-built tool that lets you analyse TikTok Hashtags.

Before we begin, however, a quick word on privacy and security. If you are using TikTok for research purposes, it’s recommended you operate anonymously and disclose as few personal details as possible. In November, TikTok released an important privacy policy update for users in the UK and EU, confirming that their data can in some cases be accessed by employees outside the continent including in China. New research found that code in TikTok’s in-app web browser allows the company to track users’ keystrokes. Researchers should never share any sensitive personal information on TikTok’s in-app web browser or via the mobile app. Before beginning your research, take some time to update your privacy settings on the app. Switch off ‘suggest your account to phone contacts,’ switch off ‘people who open or send links to you,’ switch off ‘Facebook friends sync’ and switch off ‘profile view history’.

What has Changed Since 2020?

TikTok originally only supported 15-to-60-second video options, but users can now also post three-minute videos. Ten-minute videos are currently available to some users and full release is likely to follow soon. TikTok has also added a livestream option for users who are over 16-years-old and have more than 1,000 followers. User profiles still contain profile photos, biography, follower metrics, display and username, but users can now also link to other social media accounts (only Instagram and YouTube for now) in their profile. Currently, it is only possible to see if a user has linked to other social media accounts when using the TikTok mobile app.

Similarly, users can add a URL to their biography. Many use this to link to a landing page platform such as Linktree, so be sure to click through to this if investigating a user as you might find links to their other social media accounts. Users can now also create playlists, although these are also only viewable on the app, not a web browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Update on Mobile App vs Web Browser Experience

TikTok is designed to be a mobile application. That means the web browser version has limited functionality compared to the mobile app but you’ll probably end up using both and moving videos from your mobile to a web browser like Chrome or Firefox on your laptop/desktop during the course of an investigation. I tend to think of the process like this: use the mobile app for content/account discovery and use the browser version on a laptop for archiving or performing analysis (geolocation, etc).

A user’s followers and following lists are viewable on the app but not on the web browser, so if you find a noteworthy account and want to find more like it, use the app to click through and inspect these lists, effectively using a snowball sampling methodology, to discover similar accounts. You can use the app and web browser version to perform searches using relevant keyword(s), for example Severodonetsk/Сєвєродонeцьк. On a web browser, you can toggle between tabs for accounts and videos that feature your keyword though you can’t filter your results and the feed of videos returned is generally sorted by relevance, meaning a combination of videos posted recently or that received large views or interactions. On the app you can filter your video results by activity (whether you’ve watched or liked these videos before); the date the videos were posted (yesterday, this week, this month), or sort the results by relevance or most-liked. It’s recommended you perform your main searches on the app because of the increased search functionalities.

Conducting Smart Content Searches on TikTok and Beyond

TikTok does not offer an official API, nor does it allow boolean searches to include specific dates in your searches. Therefore conducting searches using the date filters on the app is one of the most effective ways to discover timely videos. Naturally, if you’re conducting ongoing monitoring of Ukraine, or any other topic, undertaking daily or weekly searches and filtering your video results by ‘yesterday’ or ‘this week’ will give you the best chance of gathering relevant content more regularly.

As a general rule for any open source investigation and online search, the more unique a keyword or search term is, the less noise or irrelevant information you will get in your results. This applies for TikTok searches too. Keywords related to locations remain the most effective search terms, especially specific terms and those related to smaller, less populated locations. For this reason, you can understand why Kyiv/Київ returns so many videos in a search, even if filtering for videos posted only ‘yesterday,’ compared to a district or a smaller town or village. If searching for Kyiv content, try street names or districts instead. In the case of conducting searches about Ukraine, you should definitely include alternate English spellings of locations but, more importantly, you should also search using the Ukrainian language and Cyrillic script. It’s always smarter to search using local terms and the local alphabet. In other words, when deciding on your search terms it always helps to think like a local.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, TikTok does not offer users many ways to see how a video has been shared by others, unless the original video creator used their own audio for their video. You can then click through to see other videos that use that sound or audio by clicking on the track (which appears at the bottom of any post and is always named “Original Sound” followed by the creator’s username). However, if users created videos using TikTok Sounds or audio tracks (which includes many popular songs) clicking through to a feed of thousands of videos that use the same sound or song but are not related to the video you’re analysing, is practically useless.

Users also often react to and share videos from others by using the Duet or Stitch functions. Duet allows creators to record alongside existing TikTok videos, while Stitch offers creators the option to crop existing videos and add their own contribution to create a new recording that is then published on their account. You can also use these terms as keywords to include in your search. For example, if you want to see how others have shared videos from the account of RT’s Editor-in-Chief, Margarita Simonyan, try searching the username, “@simonyan.m”, with “#stitch” or “#duet” and then use date filters to refine your search. Or instead of “#duet” use the Russian/Ukrainian equivalent “#дуэт.” It’s not a perfect tool but it can often help you find supplementary content. You can also use this approach to discover content around developments in the conflict that TikTok users are sharing and posting on the platform. By combining keywords like #duet or #stitch along with terms relevant to the conflict, such as locations, alongside date filters in your video searches, this can assist you in finding the latest related content that users are sharing on the platform, as highlighted in the #Duet Kherson example included in the image below.

Unlike other platforms, TikTok allows users to easily download and share native TikTok content on other social platforms. Searching for something like “TikTok” and a relevant keyword, such as Donbass/Донбас, on other platforms can be an extremely effective way of finding relevant videos. In addition, searching generic and noisy terms in the Hashtags tab, such as “Putin”, can also reveal additional specific hashtags that might be worth investigating.

Or, you can use the new hashtag tool Bellingcat released that allows you to collect a dataset of TikToks associated with specific hashtags over lengthier periods of time.

Metadata and View Source Shortcuts: Find Views, Upload Time, Account Creation Time

Once you find a video of note, there are some handy shortcuts to find out more information about the video or when the account was created. When viewing a user’s feed on both the app and browser, you can see the number of views for each video they have posted. When you click through to a video, you can see the upload date (in the US date format). If you want the specific number of views or the specific upload time, there are some useful shortcuts you can use. For views, open your video on your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or Opera) and press Control + U (for Safari, it’s Control + Alt + U) and then open View Source (or right click anywhere on the page and select View Source if your browser still allows it). When a new tab opens you should press Control + F (on Mac, this Command + F) and search for “playcount”, the term used by TikTok to label video views. The number after the colon is the number of views it has received to date. For the specific upload time, you should use the Bellingcat TikTok timestamp tool. Just input the URL of the video and the tool will display the specific upload time for you.

The Not-So-Real Zelenskyy

Let’s put all of these skills to use and look at one of several TikTok accounts that claimed to be the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The fact that the president’s website does not include any links to TikTok among the other listed social media accounts, as well as the absence of any verified TikTok accounts bearing his name, should be enough of a giveaway that there is no official Zelenskyy account on TikTok. Yet, there are opportunists, pranksters and bad actors who will try to convince users otherwise. One such account, @official.zelenskiy, described itself as the “official” account of the President of Ukraine. The account (since removed, but archived here) had a photo of Zelenskyy on its profile, featured a playlist (viewable on mobile only) of Ukraine videos and its feed was replete with videos of Zelenskyy with the account’s username watermarked on the videos. The videos were shot front-facing, speaking to a smart phone, the selfie style for which Zelenskyy has become famous since the beginning of the invasion. However, Zelenskyy and his team prefer to use other platforms like Telegram and Twitter to post these videos, not TikTok. This supposedly-official account was popular and before it was removed had over 356,400 followers; its uploaded videos had received a total 2.2 million likes.

Using the methodology described above, we can find the upload times of this TikTok account’s videos and compare them to the same videos posted on Zelenskyy’s official accounts, such as Telegram. At no point did this TikTok account post a video before they were first posted on Zelenskyy’s Telegram, suggesting whoever was running this TikTok account was simply scraping content from Zelenskyy’s official account and reposting it. There is another giveaway though. Every video posted after March 28 included the account’s username, @official.zelenskiy, as a watermark on the corners of the video. But if you examine any video posted before this date, right back to the earliest video on the account, posted on March 1, the watermark viewable on each video was @_dinim313. This was the username of the account before it changed to the more official-looking alternative. Watermarked usernames are a great way of tracking account changes and spotting potential fakes or misleading videos.

My guess is that, seeing the large views the March 1 video received, this user decided to post only content featuring Zelenskyy and deleted any videos posted between January 25, when the account was created, and March 1, before then committing fully and changing their username around March 28 too. At the start of the invasion, it was reported that many users pretended to be based in Ukraine and broadcast fake livestreams complete with added air raid siren sound effects to garner attention and interest from others users. Crucially, users can also seek donations and gifts from livestreams, demonstrating how misinformation about Ukraine could be monetised on TikTok. In fact, in the course of writing this article, I observed this fake Zelenskyy account broadcasting a livestream featuring a slideshow of selfie photos of the president to which users were encouraged to donate and send gifts to the account. The account has since been removed from TikTok. Following the invasion of Ukraine, TikTok said it had dedicated significant resources to “developing and enforcing new protective measures” on the platform, including improving methods to detect and take action on livestreams broadcasting recycled or misleading content.

Web Browser Third Party Tools and Useful Plug-ins: Audio Analysis, Extracting Text From Images and Archiving Shortcuts

Note: In this section, unless otherwise stated, the browser and plug-ins noted here are on Chrome.

Now that we have explored how to navigate the platform itself, let’s look at some external tools that can help with TikTok research. These include optical character recognition (image-to-text) tools and how to analyse audio on TikTok. First up: audio. If you are analysing a video on TikTok and it includes a song but it is not labelled or referenced clearly in the post and you want to know its name then you should use Shazam, a popular application that can identify songs-even from short audio clips. Two ways you can do this are: Install the Shazam plugin on your web browser, start playing the video and then click the plug-in to start Shazam or; play the video on one device, such as your browser, and start Shazam on your phone. The tool is generally very quick at identifying most songs and is also quite good at identifying remixes. It has also occasionally identified cover versions for me too.

Here’s an example (it appears TikTok geoblocked the video in some regions, an archive of the clip is viewable here). In early March many prominent Russian content creators on TikTok participated in a trend that saw them hold up “Russian Lives Matter” placards. Each video featured a remix of a song that was originally used by @Evgen_military but wasn’t listed as an official sound on TikTok, just an ‘original sound’ attributed to this user. The original video is now gone, but over 11,000 other videos have used this sound. By using Shazam, you could quickly figure out the song was a remix of the Soviet military folk song, Katyusha.

Beyond music, what do you do if you encounter a TikTok video in which you don’t understand the language that someone in the video is speaking and there are no text references or clues in the post caption? This is a challenge commonly faced by researchers conducting analysis in many conflict zones. Luckily there are numerous audio transcription and translation tools available online. A quick caveat, though. Audio transcription tools are under constant development and while the technology underpinning these tools is becoming more sophisticated and capable at audio detection, we should still temper our expectations of what’s currently possible. A video of a speech, shot in a quiet room with little background noise offers more opportunities for a helpful transcription than a video taken on a busy street, and so on. Still, these tools can be quite effective at recognising references to locations or place names and sometimes, that’s all you need to geolocate a video. A tool like Google Translate offers voice-to-text transcription functionality (via the mic icon) that can be really helpful. You can’t ask Google Translate to define the language before beginning, so you’ll need to have at least a small assumption of what the language might be. Or you’ll need to try out a few languages. If you’re working on a Ukraine investigation though, you can make an educated guess and set the language-to-be-transcribed as Ukrainian or Russian and translate it into English or whatever your working language is.

Here’s how to do it. Start the transcription on one tab and play the video on another tab of your browser or on your mobile. Or switch it around and use Google Translate on your phone and play the video on your browser. Break the video down into 15 second segments and use the tool on each segment a few times and assess what is transcribed. You can also use the Voice Typing function on Google Docs to transcribe audio in real time too, though one of the advantages of using Google Translate first is that it not only transcribes text but will immediately translate it for you too.

Extracting Text From TikTok Videos

As well as audio, you will likely encounter videos that contain text embedded on-screen that you might want to capture and translate. This can provide useful investigative clues. Unlike the text in the post caption that you can just copy and paste into a translation tool or run through a plug-in like Google Translate, embedded on-screen text can’t be copied. Instead, you will need to use optical character recognition software which is available on Yandex, Google Lens or other image-to-text tools that can extract the text for you. Plug-ins like InVID’s WeVerify are very helpful for conducting image reverse searches or extracting text from images, but these tools aren’t so flexible when you’re working with video. For that, we need a different approach. You’ll probably have to play and pause a video many times, stopping each time you want to extract text from a new frame. You could obviously pause a video, screenshot the frame and upload that frame to Yandex or similar sites, but doing so would take a long time. Instead, a quicker way to do this is to install a plug-in like Copyfish. With this, every time you pause a video, you can then use the extension to quickly take a screenshot and paste the text onto a clipboard that will then open on-screen. Reminder: Press the gear icon to change the language you want to use Copyfish to capture. It doesn’t currently support Ukrainian but does support Russian (and I am told Ukrainian is on the way, also). Once your text has been copied, you can hit the Google Translate shortcut on the clipboard and this will open a new tab and translate the text for you.

A quick example. On March 3 Russian state-controlled news organisation NTV published a video on TikTok showing Russian soldiers on the move in trucks and various armoured vehicles. The post’s caption states this was recorded somewhere in the Kyiv region. The video includes on-screen text which, using Copyfish, you can extract and translate to tell you the same. You can also use Copyfish to extract text from road signs too which, along with storefront names, can be invaluable sources of information. But where exactly in the region was this recorded? At the very start of the video there is a large yellow and blue overhead sign that reads “Ukraine,” so, since we believe this video was shot in the Kyiv region, we can then surmise this is likely Ukraine’s border in the Kyiv region with Belarus. Can we get the exact location? At 0:08, the video shows a blue road sign which, again using Copyfish, you can extract the text from to tell you this is the “Полі́ський райо́н” or Polis’kyi district in the Kyiv region. (The Polis’kyi district was abolished in 2020 and incorporated into the Vyshhorod district though it’s possible the signs at border crossings haven’t been updated.) Moving off TikTok, performing a web search for border crossings in the area will yield further information such as these photographs captured by Getty Images’ Chris McGrath who said they were taken in Vilcha, Ukraine, which is located within the Vyshhorod district. Further, in one of McGrath’s photos, you can distinctly see the road sign with “Полі́ський райо́н” in the background, meaning we can then confirm the exact location where the TikTok video was recorded.

To take it one step further, Getty Images’ states McGrath’s photos were taken on February 13. By comparing the state of buildings and the general scene in these images with the footage posted online on March 3, you can then begin to assess what may have been damaged or destroyed in the intervening period too.

Archiving Shortcuts and Saving Your Work

Once you’ve used the TikTok mobile app, you’ll immediately realise how quickly you can be pulled down numerous rabbit holes conducting different searches; inspecting a user’s followers, scrolling through videos on a hashtag page and so on. It’s easy to lose track of your progress or forget about a useful or interesting video you want to investigate further. As noted above, I tend to think of the TikTok discovery process like this; use the mobile app for content/account discovery and use the browser version on a laptop for archiving and performing analysis. Naturally there are many ways you can create your own workflow like this but for those of you starting out on TikTok, here’s a sample breakdown of one easy way to do it. To move videos between the mobile and laptop web browser versions, you can use a live Google/Teams spreadsheet to log video URLs as you find them via mobile. Add a short one line summary when you add them to your spreadsheet to describe the content and the relevance of the clip.

On the TikTok mobile app you can of course like relevant videos and then see them instantly in your ‘liked’ video collection on the web browser, but incorporating a live spreadsheet means you save them somewhere external to the platform, which is good practice in case you lose access to your account. On mobile, you can also bookmark videos and add them to your favourites and create specific collections, which is definitely useful, but bookmarks/collections are only accessible on mobile, not web browsers. By using a spreadsheet, you will also have a short description of the video available when needed and you can use different tabs/spreadsheets for numerous investigations instead of creating a singular clogged feed of videos on your ‘liked’ collection. For security reasons too, it may be wise to avoid liking or interacting with the content or user you’re investigating.

Once you open your videos on a web browser on your laptop, you should archive them. Tools like the Wayback Machine and Archive.Today are getting better at archiving TikTok content but they’re still not perfect. For high value videos, I prefer to save local versions of the video and download them directly. There are numerous plug-ins that do this. As well as video archives, you should also take screenshots of accounts, video pages and comments when needed too. A plug-in like Save to Google Drive is a one-click process that screenshots an entire page on a browser on your laptop. The added bonus of this tool is that you can select/create a folder on your Google Drive as the save location. Again, with many investigations in progress, having numerous, specific folders will save you time in the long run. As always, file management is the key to any good open source investigation.

Geolocation

Much of your investigation will likely involve trying to confirm the location shown in a piece of footage. Bellingcat regularly publishes guides and tutorials with tips on geolocation, including our recent article about the first steps you should consider before getting started. But since this invasion has also exposed lots of new people to online open source investigations, particularly through TikTok content, it’s also worth including a section here about what geolocation is like on TikTok. Spoiler: it’s not all that different to other platforms since you’re still working with visual footage, but there are some points to keep in mind. First of all, read the caption and hashtags of the particular post and listen to (or translate) the audio of a video in case there are any geographical references to what is shown in the video. Read (or translate) the comments too. As previously stated, it’s best not to engage with accounts you are investigating, but in some rare cases it may be beneficial to ask others in the comment section where the location is; if you need to do this, remember to be careful about protecting your own identity whilst conducting your investigations. Inspect the TikTok user’s account in full, examine their profile for references to their general location in their biography, other videos on their account or in their linked social media accounts. Regarding the footage itself, it will be easier for you to view and analyse the video on laptop/desktop versus mobile. When examining the footage, look out for distinctive landmarks like buildings, monuments or street signs, or features on buildings. A shop name can be googled and their address could confirm the location. If you want to take it a step further, you might even want to use their phone number or social media accounts to contact them and ask them about the event that was captured in the footage. Distinctive features are your friend when it comes to geolocation. The placement of lampposts, the width of a street, the location of train tracks and much, much more can all help you to corroborate and confirm a location. You can also incorporate the placement of the sun and shadows into your analysis to work on determining the time of day that a video was recorded too. This can be incredibly important work when establishing a timeline and you should read our guide for this specific task as well. When you have an assumption, you will want to corroborate and confirm your hunch. Here, you should use satellite map imagery, including Google Maps or Yandex Maps (try out a few as each service can differ in quality depending on the location) to find and visit the location. Video or images from news organisations, government entities or local civilian or armed groups can also be extremely useful as they will often include geographical references when sharing footage online. And, of course, use Google to search images or search for locations (and use the timeline feature) on photo libraries for agencies like the Associated Press or Getty Images.

And lastly, use the crowd. There are active open source communities online, particularly on Twitter, but also on Discord, Reddit and other platforms, where you can ask questions about footage, share your findings and learn new skills. This is also where journalists and people closest to an event tend to share information.

Things to Remember

We’ve covered a wide range of tools, tricks and tips to help you investigate the invasion of Ukraine (or any other event) like a pro! Before you start your own Ukraine investigation, here’s a quick list of things to remember:

Conduct searches in the local language first, Ukrainian or Russian terms.

Use image-to-text or audio transcription tools to capture and translate to your working language.

Use specific search terms and keywords, especially locations and place names, in combination with the date fields on TikTok video search to get the most up-to-date results.

Follow valuable accounts, inspect their followers/following, view their accounts on mobile to access linked social accounts and search their usernames on other social platforms. Note usernames or videos in a separate spreadsheet to track your work.

Archive, catalogue and save content as you go as conflict videos often get quickly taken down. Screenshot pages using one-click tools as you work.

Remember that you are going to get things wrong, especially if you are starting out with online open source investigations or using TikTok for the first time. It’s important that you are careful and considered in your research but most of all, it’s essential that you are creative and curious and seek new and additional methods to uncover more evidence and confirm (or dismiss) your findings. Lastly, archive everything.

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