Twitter won’t let government-affiliated accounts tweet photos of POWs

Twitter is once again tightening its rules to address how its platform is handling the war in Ukraine. The company said Tuesday that it will no longer allow official government or government-affiliated accounts to tweet photos of prisoners of war “in the context of the war in Ukraine.”

The policy will apply to photos published “on or after April 5th,” according to an update in Twitter’s rules. Government accounts sharing such images will be required to delete them, said Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity. “Beginning today, we will require the removal of Tweets posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts which share media that depict prisoners of war in the context of the war in Ukraine,” Roth said.

“We’re doing so in line with international humanitarian law, and in consultation with international human rights groups. To protect essential reporting on the war, some exceptions apply under this guidance where there is a compelling public interest or newsworthy POW content.”

In a blog post, the company added that in cases in which there is a “compelling public interest” for a government account to share photos of prisoners of war, it would add interstitial warnings to the images.

While the new rules apply to official government and government-affiliated accounts, Twitter noted that it will take down POW photos shared by anyone with “with abusive intent, such as insults, calls for retaliation, mocking/taking pleasure in suffering of PoWs, or for any other behavior that violates the Twitter rules.”

Additionally, Twitter is taking new steps to limit the reach of Russian government accounts on its platform. Under a new policy, the company will no longer “amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict,” Roth said. “This measure drastically reduces the chance that people on Twitter see Tweets from these accounts unless they follow them.”

It’s not yet clear if or how Twitter plans to enforce this policy for contexts other than the war in Ukraine. In a blog post, the company left open the possibility that it would apply the rules to situations “beyond interstate armed conflict” but didn’t elaborate.

“Attempts by states to limit or block access to free information within their borders are uniquely harmful, and run counter to Twitter’s belief in healthy and open public conversation,” the company wrote. “We’re committed to treating conversations about global conflicts more equitably, and we’ll continue to evaluate whether this policy may be applied in other contexts, beyond interstate armed conflict.”

The changes are the latest way Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Twitter to adapt its content moderation rules as tries to suppress Russia-backed disinformation. The company has already taken steps to limit the visibility of Russian state media outlets and turned off advertising and recommendations in both Russia and Ukraine. Russia has blocked Twitter since March 4th.

A new Tomb Raider game is on the way, powered by Unreal Engine 5

Crystal Dynamics has “just started development” on a new Tomb Raider game, the studio announced today on Twitter. It didn’t share what the game will be called nor when fans can expect to play it, but it did note that it will run on Epic’s new Unreal Engine 5. After working on the mediocre Marvel’s Avengers, the project will see Crystal Dynamics return to the franchise it spent more than a decade making popular again.

It would also appear to signal the end of the studio’s in-house Foundation engine, which powered Rise of the Tomb Raider and the most recent mainline entry in the series, 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Crystal Dynamics said the move to UE5 would help the studio take its “storytelling to the next level.” The next Tomb Raider joins a handful of games already announced for UE5. Those include the next Witcher game and Black Myth: Wukong. Of that group, only the latter has a release date, with Chinese developer Game Science Studio aiming to get it out sometime in 2023.

‘Marcel The Shell With Shoes On’ turns a decade-old viral video into a feature film

A24 has shared the first trailer for Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, a film adaptation of the viral YouTube series of the same name. If you’re not among the millions of people who have watched the shorts (the first entry has more than 32 million views)…

Unreal Engine 5 is finally ready to power a new generation of games

Unreal Engine 5 is finally here after nearly a year of early access. Epic Games has officially released UE5 to developers, promising both more photorealistic visuals and easier-to-use creator tools. 

The new Unreal Engine’s most obvious upgrades affect the basics of 3D rendering. The Nanite geometry system lets producers use objects with millions of polygons each while scaling gracefully and maintaining playable frame rates. Lumen, meanwhile, provides dynamic global lighting that adapts to everything from the time of day to a character’s flashlight. You’ve seen early results in Epic’s The Matrix Awakens tech demo — UE5 can render extremely detailed scenes with more natural lighting than you might have seen in the past.

Unreal Engine 5 city sample
Epic Games

There are some behind-the-scenes improvements that should affect the games you play, too. It’s now much easier for developers to make open-world games thanks to systems that both automatically divide areas (to make them easier to stream) and let multiple developers work on the same region at the same time. There are new and upgraded tools to create models, animations and audio without resorting to external editors, and companies making videos or still images can generate very high quality output that would normally require a time-consuming offline renderer.

It will take a while for content to use the new engine. At best, studios have had less than a year to test the engine and start work on their projects. Even Black Myth: Wukong (one of the first announced Unreal Engine 5 titles) won’t be available until 2023, and the next Witcher game doesn’t have a release date. Still, the launch effectively sets the stage for the next wave of games and video special effects. You could see a significant leap in realism from games that take better advantage of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the latest PC video cards.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder, asks users if they want an edit button

Elon Musk, who recently became Twitter’s largest shareholder, has posted a poll on the website asking users whether they want an edit button. His options are a misspelled “yse” and “on,” which might make you think that the whole thing is joke until you see that the poll has been retweeted by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Agrawal wrote, hinting that the poll could lead to an actual edit button on the social network. 

Many Twitter users have asked for an edit button over the years, but the website has remained staunchly resistant to those requests. In a video Q&A with Wired back in 2020, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey said the website will “probably never” add an edit button. He explained that the social network started as a text messaging service, and you can’t take back a text once you’ve sent it. Twitter apparently wanted to preserve that vibe and feeling.

Musk, who’s been a prolific tweeter way before he purchased 9.2 percent of the social network, might serve as the catalyst for the company to change that outlook. As of this writing, 74.7 percent out of the 1,439,779 accounts that participated in the poll voted “yse” to an edit button. Whether Twitter will immediately start working on the feature if “yse” wins remains to be seen. That is, if it hasn’t started developing it yet — the official Twitter account recently posted that the company is “working on an edit button,” but that was on April Fools’ Day.

It’s also unclear how an edit button would work on Twitter, where reposting other people’s content is widely practiced. If the person who tweeted the original post edits it, will the retweeted content reflect the change, as well? And will the edit button for a tweet be available indefinitely or only for a short period of time? Dorsey said during the Wired interview that Twitter previously considered giving users a 30-to-60-second window to correct something, which would be more than enough time to edit spelling mistakes and other minor changes.

A Monkey Island sequel from creator Ron Gilbert is coming this year

One of the best video game series of all time is making a return in 2022 with some of its key original creatives on board. Return to Monkey Island is “a game by Ron Gilbert,” who conceived the point-and-click comedy-adventure saga in the late ’80s.

Gilbert wrote and directed the original game, The Secret of Monkey Island. He was director, programmer and designer on the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. He left Lucasfilm Games soon after the latter was released, but he was credited on 2009’s Tales of Monkey Island. Gilbert is now back at work on arguably the series he’s best known for as a co-designer and co-writer alongside fellow Monkey Island veteran Dave Grossman.

Return to Monkey Island is in development at Gilbert’s Terrible Toybox. The studio’s working alongside Devolver Digital and Lucasfilm Games on the latest entry. According to the description on a teaser video Devolver posted, it’s a “long-awaited follow-up” to the first two games.

The clip also notes that Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian — all of whom have previously worked on the series — are handling the music, while Dominic Armato is reprising his role as Guybrush Threepwood. So, it’ll certainly sound like a proper Monkey Island game.

Gilbert tried for years to get back the rights to Monkey Island (and Maniac Mansion) from the Disney-owned Lucasfilm Games to no avail. Still, it’s great to see him and so many other Monkey Island veterans returning to the series. 

This just shot to the top of the list of my most-anticipated games in 2022. Sorry about all the game of the year awards you just lost, Elden Ring.

Elon Musk now owns a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk now owns 9.2 percent of Twitter after purchasing $2.89 billion in stock, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing spotted by CNBC. The purchase follows recent criticism by Musk over the social media site’s free speech policies. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” he tweeted last week.

Musk is a prolific Twitter user and has over 80 million followers, but the platform has also brought him trouble. Most famously, in 2018 he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, setting off an SEC lawsuit that cost him $20 million and his spot as chairman of the board. Musk recently challenged the settlement, saying that the SEC overstepped its authority. He’s asking a federal judge to terminate his agreement requiring some tweets to be vetted by a lawyer.

Along with the comment, Musk launched a Twitter poll last week with the question “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this [freedom of speech] principle?” He also mused about the idea of starting his own social media platform, saying he was giving it “serious thought.” 

In a follow-up tweet, Musk said that “the consequences of this poll will be important,” and that prediction has now apparently come true. His stake in Twitter is still a passive one, but he could up the stakes somewhat. “This eventually could lead to a buyout,” analyst Dan Ives told CNBC. Musk is now the platform’s largest shareholder, and Twitter shares have reportedly surged more than 25 percent in premarket trading, according to CNBC. 

Update 4/4/2022 11:52 AM: The post has been updated with information that Musk is now Twitter’s biggest shareholder.

The latest ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ trailer promises a return to form

A little more than a month before its May 5th premiere, Paramount+ has shared a new trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. For those who have become weary of the franchise’s more dark tone during the Alex Kurtzman era, Strange New Worlds looks like a return to the relentless optimism and romanticism put forward by creator Gene Roddenberry. “I love this job,” Pike whispers to Rebecca Romijn’s Number One, followed by a brief montage of some of the adventures the crew of the Enterprise will find itself in season one of the series.

Set about a decade before The Original Series, Strange New Worlds features a handful of future Star Trek greats before their career-defining stint on the Enterprise, with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck reprising their respective roles as Pike, Spock and Number One from Star Trek: Discovery season two. To that cast, the series adds the likes of Celia Rose, portraying a young Nyota Uhura, and a few newcomers that we haven’t seen before.

In the US, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will stream exclusively on Paramount Plus.

Apple’s ‘Prehistoric Planet’ is a dinosaur documentary narrated by David Attenborough

If you love dinosaurs (and who doesn’t?), you’ll want to mark May 23rd on your calendar. That’s when Prehistoric Planet, a new five-part documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough will debut on Apple TV+. Produced by the BBC’s Natural Histor…