Site Work
This week we added an AI flag option, for when you need to flag a project that was predominantly made by AI. Previously people were using the "Spam" or “Inappropriate” flags as a workaround.
If you have a big list of links on your user page and ran into a bug with sorting them, that is fixed.
Unregistered users now see the Follow button, so they know following artists is an option.
If you noticed missing images in the Wiki, some stuff got misplaced during cleanup but that should be fixed. Let me know if you see missing images anywhere. We're still in an overall internal site cleanup mode where weird things can happen.
Revisiting one of last week’s updates, if you ever experienced the bug where you uploaded an image in the author commentary of a project, only to have it be replaced with a line of text showing the path to where the image should be, that bug is now resolved. You will need to go back to those projects and re-upload the image, however.
There were a bunch of smaller changes this week, for example if a project has been deleted it will no longer say that it “never existed”, only that it doesn’t exist.
With the PHP update largely in the rearview, the current big project is an overhaul to the feed system. We’re making changes that will reduce database storage and improve performance of the feed, so it should feel snappier if everything works as expected.
Web News
In recent weeks, we learned that Reddit, Tumblr and Wordpress have made deals with AI companies, allowing them to train on user data.
There was also an executive order to stop the sale of personal data to countries like Russia and China. It’s still fair game for companies to sell it everywhere else, though!
Also noteworthy, here’s an Open Letter to Tim Cook, concerning Apple’s efforts to sabotage web apps. Word is that Apple has changed course after this letter but I’m sure they will still be looking for ways to make the web less competitive than apps.
I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone that we aren’t selling your personal data to anyone, we aren’t making deals to train AI on your data and we are committed to the open web.
We do have to compete with these companies for your attention, though! If it wasn’t for all the money to be made off personal data, a lot of these platforms might not even exist and NG would have a more level playing field.
Making things more challenging, NG is ad-free on every page except A-rated movies and games, with the goal of being 100% ad-free if enough people become Supporters! If all this sounds good to you, we would really appreciate your support.
Sludge Brothers Kickstarter
PFINNEY is hosting a Kickstarter to create an animated pilot for his original series, Sludge Brothers!
The Kickstarter made decent progress this week, if we can help get it close, it will encourage people to take it all the way in the final days. Here’s some of @PFINNEY’s movies on NG:
Collabs this Week
Here are some collabs that were released this week!
All of the ongoing art for the Dreamcast Collab has been making me wonder how enormous this will be!
Other News
Pixel Day Winners have been announced!
The Music Triathlon is currently in Voting Phase 2!
February 28th - LISA Campfire Collab deadline.
February 28th - Transformers Collab deadline.
February 29th - Pokemon Mystery Meat Collab deadline.
March 1st - Adult Swim Collab deadline.
March 8th - Bug Collab deadline.
March 15th - RIP General Collab deadline.
March 17th - Lucky Collab deadline.
March 20th - Storytime Collab deadline.
March 23rd - Sandwich Collab deadline.
April 3rd - Kamen Rider Collab deadline.
April 15th - Happy Tree Friends Gijinka Collab deadline.
April 20th - Earth Day Collab deadline.
April 21st - Flash Forward deadline.
May 18th - Pico Day
June - Midsummer Rumble month-long art event!
June 2nd - Dreamcast Collab extended deadline.
June 5th - NGTV Summer Bash deadline.
June 27th - Christmas in July Collab deadline.
June 28th - Too Many Games Meetup in Oaks, PA.
July 20th - Five Nights at Freddy's Collab deadline.
