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Voting is open for the 2021 Ursa Major Awards

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The Ursa Major Awards logo.The vote for the 2021 Ursa Major Awards is happening this month! Send them your e-mail address, and you can vote for any of the nominations in 14 categories. Voting closes on Thursday, March 31.

Links to the content in question are provided, some may be for mature audiences. Ursa's Twitter Feed also provides a summary of each of the nominees for the categories.

Spread the word - Please re-post this announcement if you're on an active furry message forum or social media site!

This year's nominees are...

WowNow - A whole bunch of animated films to avoid

Your rating: None Average: 3.6 (18 votes)

I had some friends over recently, both furry and dragon fans, to show them a retro and entertainingly stupid 1991 anime mini-movie called Capricorn. We poked holes and made fun of it. The following day, in a spirit of— amicable masochism I guess, my friend Dav treated me to the recent movie trailer for A Dragon Adventure:

Confused and somewhat alarmed by the quality levels, I started to look into where it came from.

I am well-aware that computer-animated films with talking animals are churned out all over the world, and most of them are of pretty terrible quality. The theory is that kids will watch anything. So if you believe that, then who cares about quality? Just work on a small budget and make money. What I hadn't done was to take a look down this particular rabbit hole. Now, having done so, I regret it.

To interview or not to interview; publish or not to publish

Your rating: None Average: 4 (7 votes)

Furry Youtuber Majira Strawberry and Youtuber YourMovieSucks(YMS), at a combined total of around one million subscribers, had announced that they had planned on accepting a guest spot on a podcast with the Youtuber h3h3 Productions, who sits at 6.23 million. Since its announcement there had been very passionate discussions amongst fur fans on whether this is something that should even be considered. As reasons they should decline critics brought up some of h3h3’s other guests, support of controversial figures, and particular jokes that were received as having transphobic connotations— apparently while h3h3 was actually trying to make a joke at his own expense about his body weight, which seems to be a running gag for his personal feed.

At first Majira stayed stead fast with his commitment to join the podcast. However, as time went on and more fervent messages were received from individuals within the furry community, the strawberry fox eventually relented and backed out of doing the interview.

This event has driven a stark divide in the furry community, with Furry Youtubers and other content creators getting frustrated about having their peer in the crossfire, while others claiming that Majira had adverted what would have been a disaster for himself and the fandom, believing h3h3 to have ill-intentions.

Tumblr's Tumble: Furs emigrate as rogue algorithm takes toll on artists

Your rating: None Average: 4.6 (34 votes)

Tumblr has said that all adult, NSFW work will need to be off the site by December 17th, 2018. Any post that is deemed to be adult content will be switched automatically to private mode and not viewable by the public according to an article by the Verge.

As the website is using an algorithm based solution on determining which content is to be cleaned up, the decision has not only impacted those who post adult works, but also clean artists as well. It has been comedically noted that even Garfield pictures are not safe from the computer’s judgement. Reports from several furs that do no sexual content on the platform have indicated their own works being content flagged, leaving some to suspect that the tag of furry is seen as unclean by default.

With this uncertainty, a mass emigration is underway for artists who used the platform as their mainstay. Many furry sites have been trying to lure in new content creators looking for a new home. Inkbunny, for instance, did a full on parody of the Tumblr announcement. Furry Network asks in light of the situation how they can best serve those affected. Weasyl also chimed in, but also with the reminder that they’re trying for more than just the furry market. At this time, SoFurry and FurAffinity have not commented on the situation. Furry sites are not alone wishing to get on this action, with the most strangest instance being PornHub reaching out to inform those leaving Tumblr that their site takes adult art as well.

Furry conventions get bigger in Texas - outgrowing California

Your rating: None Average: 4.1 (14 votes)

Texas Fiesta_0.jpgDeep in the fuzzy heart of Texas in February 2018, Furry Fiesta had convened at a brand new facility in Dallas to compensate for their continued growth in attendance. When the festivities came to a close, it was announced that 3,866 were in attendance. This number ups its ranking in the list of most populous furry conventions, it now being the fifth largest.

It replaces Further Confusion, one of the original large furry conventions from the early years of furry. The convention from San Jose, California has always had a strong following. It’s pilot year in 1999 saw it as the third largest furry convention behind the first major gathering of Confurence, another Californian convention, and the soon to be leader of the pack Anthrocon, which was in the Philadelphia area at that time.

Further Confusion is currently in a creepingly slow decline since peaking in 2014 at 3560. As of 2018 they are now at 3415, which is still higher than they were the year before they reached their peak. This stagnation in growth can be more likely contributed to factors of seasonal competition from other growing conventions rather than the Californian convention’s own actions. Furry Fiesta, being among them, which occurs only a month after it. But also Biggest Little Fur Con (Reno, Nevada) which is geographically within 4 hours San Jose, both contribute to some stiff competition for the long running event.

Furry Conned: Credit cards used at Midwest Furfest ATMs get fraud calls

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Multiple reports have been made by furries on social media that cards utilized at ATMs in the Hyatt Regency O'Hare hotel, the main hotel of Midwest Furfest, have had attempts at fraudulent charges in the Chicago area. If you had utilized a card to withdraw money from these machines it is advised to keep an eye for any unusual activities.

'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' to feature crystal foxes

Your rating: None Average: 3.3 (15 votes)

Vulptex

Furry fans may have noticed a seconds long clip of crystalline, possibly fox-like critters scampering around the trailer for the latest instalment of Star Wars, subtitled The Last Jedi. The upcoming movie was the subject of a cover story by the magazine Entertainment Weekly, and one of the things covered were these "crystal foxes", which are known as vulptices. The Last Jedi is scheduled to be released December 15 (which technically means it's opening Thursday, December 14 for "previews") in America, and now furry fox fans have a reason to get excited.

Furry "criticism" site Vivisector unreachable, likely done

Your rating: None Average: 3.6 (14 votes)

vivisector.gif

Welp, you didn't find it.

Website and forum devoted to "furry criticism" Vivisector has been unreachable since late June. As of the time of this article's writing, no one involved with maintaining the site has made a public announcement explaining why the site is unreachable, or even acknowledging that it is unreachable.

Two members of the site's Discord chat site, "Infovorr" and "coyotic", confirmed that the site's future is uncertain at best. Infovorr said:

We have no idea, the former owner took everything down and deleted himself from the net.
He said he'd be putting up a tarball of the site and its contents, but no one's seen or heard anything more.

coyotic was slightly more optimistic:

If we can get the database from the the former admin we'll rehost it at the same URL, the forums may or may not be locked forever afterward.

Vivisector has been called an "anti-furry" site by some, though most of the users were themselves furries. Other would call it a "drama" or "criticism" site; the latter being the site's own favored descriptor.

Fur Affinity restoring from six-day-old backups after server compromised; site source code distributed at BLFC

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Fur Affinity has been "pulled offline temporarily" after users' accounts and submissions went missing.

Update (21 May): FA returned for a day, but is now in read-only mode. Passwords were said to be hashed and salted, but if you've used the same one elsewhere, now is the time to change it to be unique per-site.

Update 2 (23 May): Fur Affinity has returned; however, all passwords have been reset, which is causing problems for those with an old/invalid email address.

It has been confirmed that an exploit was used to copy Fur Affinity's source code, later distributed at Biggest Little Fur Con. A subsequent attack deleted user profiles, submissions, and watches.

FA users took to Twitter and the Fur Affinity Forums looking for answers – which appeared to have been preemptively provided by a post asking "What would you do if you found an exploit on FA?", posted last Sunday on the Phoenixed Forums. However, more recent posts by the original poster disclaim responsibility.

The recent "ImageTragick" vulnerability in widely-used processing library ImageMagick was soon turned into an exploit and has been identified by FA as the original attack vector.

Fur Affinity community manager Dragoneer reports that backups exist, but are six days old:

The majority [of the site's data is secure], yes. The backup we have is 6 days old. We're still going through and trying to determine the extent of the issue, and once we have more information, we'll post it publicly and give a full, transparent run down of what happened.

Gaming Furever looking for new staff during relaunch

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StaffInterestApplication_1.pngWe're looking for a select group of staff for the new Gaming Furever. GF has been active in the furry gaming community since 2012, and is looking to revamp its mission and directive over the next few months with a new staff.

The GF staff is a place for driven, fun-loving-yet-serious gamers with an interest in running events, being social, and staying in the know about recent news around the gaming industry, specifically animal/furry related news. Our staff will be a tight-knit team of 3-4 people who will be responsible for contributing their opinions on site decisions, helping plan and staff events over the Internet on Steam or other platforms, and staying active on the site itself. Being visible online is a big plus. We don't want the staff on our site to be invisible, and you'll need to be able to interact with people. This means having a sound mind, and being able to deal with all types of situations and reporting them to upper admins if necessary.

Apply here.