Bleeping Computer: Google: Hackers exploited Zimbra zero-day in attacks on govt orgs. “According to Google’s threat analysts, the threat actors exploited the vulnerability on government systems in Greece, Moldova, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Pakistan to steal email data, user credentials, and authentication tokens, perform email forwarding, and lead victims to phishing pages.”
Evening Standard: Pakistan museum of food: New project to offer ‘most comprehensive’ picture of country’s culinary landscape. “Filmmaker and activist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has collaborated with Google Arts and Culture and the British Council to build the ‘most comprehensive’ picture of Pakistan’s culinary landscape. A new website, launching at Google’s UK offices in King’s Cross, will feature more than 80 videos alongside hundreds of articles and documents with the aim to preserve Pakistani heritage and chart the evolution of the nation’s dishes.”
The Vinyl Factory: Rescuing records: Archiving the UK’s biggest South Asian vinyl collection. “Having your pick of 3000 records in a dusty backroom is a crate-digger’s dream, and it’s one that Faisal Hussain has lived. The Birmingham artist is the director of the True Form Projects vinyl archive–the largest South Asian vinyl collection in the UK. Rescued by Hussain from Muhammad Ayub’s Oriental Star Agencies– a Birmingham-based store that imported Indian and Pakistani music until its closure in 2017–the collection has spent the last three years being archived by Hussain and a team of volunteers.”
ProPakistani: This New Website Lets You Search All Federal Laws of Pakistan. “The Prime Minister of Pakistan has launched a new website that lets you look up all the federal laws, allowing for easy access. The website is called Pakistan Code and it also has Android and iOS apps. The iOS app is in the beta version for now.”
New-to-me, from New Indian Express Indulge: An atlas of the past . “Launched in 2020, [Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia] is a collaboration between Cambridge and a host of archaeologists and researchers throughout India and Pakistan to develop an open-source and free database of heritage sites throughout the Indus River Basin. It aspires to be the first complete catalogue of heritage in the region and is funded in its current form until the end of March 2024.”
Bloomberg: Wikipedia is blocked in Pakistan over ‘sacrilegious’ content. “Pakistan has blocked Wikipedia services in the South Asian nation after the platform failed to remove ‘sacrilegious’ content. The action was taken because some of the content is still available on Wikipedia after the expiry of a 48-hour deadline, Malahat Obaid, spokesperson for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said by phone.”
The Print (Pakistan): Pakistan National Assembly bans entry of YouTubers, TikTokers, social media influencers into premises. “The Pakistan National Assembly Secretariat has banned the entry of YouTubers, TikTokers and other social media influencers into its premises, ARY News reported. The decision has been taken after an incident of misbehaviour with lawmakers by some unauthorised YouTuber/social media influencers at Gate No 1 of Parliament House on December 23 last year, as per the ARY News report.”
Dawn (Pakistan): What Pakistan stands to gain if Google opens shop. “Over the years, officials claimed multiple times that companies have agreed to establish their presence in Pakistan, but nothing substantial came out of it. Last month, it was reported that Google has decided to open a liaison or representative office in Pakistan. The move was unlike the past claims, as the California, US-based search engine giant also obtained a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).”
Global Village Space: Google to soon begin operations in Pakistan. “According to the details, the Senator said that a delegation of Google will visit Pakistan on December 11 to start operations. The platform will also provide 15,000 scholarships to Pakistani citizens after starting operations in Pakistan.”
New York Times: Survivors of Partition Seek Closure Through an Unlikely Source: YouTube. “Mr. [Nasir] Dhillon is the driving force behind Punjabi Lehar, a six-year-old YouTube channel that posts regular interviews with survivors of that traumatic episode. He says it has enabled a number of Muslims and Sikhs — including some who live in North America — to visit their ancestral villages, and has led to about 100 in-person reunions. Partition led to communal violence, mass displacement and the deaths of as many as two million people. Some of the young people who survived were separated from their parents or siblings.”
Youth Journalism International: Preserving memories of the 1947 partition that divided India and Pakistan into separate nations. “Memories of the August 14, 1947 partition of India and Pakistan ‘nearly disappeared into the abyss of time,’ said the founder of an online archive dedicated to preserving oral histories of the time so that ‘history will not be forgotten.’”
Reuters: India Partition: After 75 years, tech opens a window into the past. “The partition of colonial India into two states, mainly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, at the end of British rule triggered one of the biggest mass migrations in history…. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since then, and relations remain tense. They rarely grant visas to each others’ citizens, making visits nearly impossible – but social media has helped people on either side of the border connect.”
Rest of World: A million-strong troll army is targeting Iran’s #MeToo activists on Instagram. “More than one million bots have flooded the Instagram accounts of prominent Iranian feminist activists, in a coordinated harassment campaign that started mid-April, according to a new report released by Qurium, a digital forensics nonprofit.”
Dawn: Pakistan’s first online Antique Cars Museum launched. “Shoaib Qureshy, the owner of the online museum, said the idea came to him some two-and-a-half years ago during the Covid-19 lockdowns. ‘We often do classic car shows to share our hobby and our beautiful cars with the general public but we wanted a single platform for this purpose where most of our cars could be showcased. This is the first Pakistan online museum for antique cars where we can show the best of these cars in not just our country but also to the world,’ he said.”
CNET: Pakistan Journalists Move to YouTube as Political Upheaval Forces Them Off TV. “When Imran Riaz Khan lost his job as an anchor at Pakistan’s Samaa TV last weekend, he joined a growing list of journalists who’ve found themselves out of work amid the country’s political turmoil. Luckily, Riaz Khan has a YouTube channel with 2.6 million subscribers to fall back on.”
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