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The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media. The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law…

University of Washington researchers planned to have preschool teachers wear cameras that would record everything they saw from a first-person perspective, including the children they were teaching, then use that footage to develop AI models. Crucially, the program was presented as opt-out, rather than opt-in, meaning that parents had to take steps to prevent recordings…

As you scroll around the web, how often to you think about the physical infrastructure—the miles of cables, acres of land—that makes up the internet? This is where real power lies, and there are ways to imagine it differently, as serving the people who use these utilities instead of big tech execs. This week, I’m…

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that were long in the tooth, trapped in the lattice, unearthed in Thailand, and entombed in post-apocalyptic waters. First, scientists discover that even Neanderthals had to go to the dentist. Then: a nuke-born crystal, a 60,000-pound herbivore, and life after the death of most…

A who’s who of the Iranian diaspora will meet at Uber HQ on Saturday to discuss tech and the future of Iran, according to an email about the event viewed by 404 Media. The guest list includes venture capitalists, angel investors, tech CEOs, and the son of Iran’s former leader who was deposed almost 50…

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss developers’ AI woes, how the magic happens, and the Beach Boys. JOSEPH: Earlier in the week we published ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on…

ArXiv, the open-access repository of preprint academic research, will ban authors of papers for a year if they submit obviously AI-generated work.  Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading…

Mayo Clinic, the massive U.S. hospital network, is using what it describes as “Ambient Listening” to record patient interactions with nurses, including in emergency rooms, then using AI to process that collected data. The recording is opt-out, rather than opt-in, and at least some patients are likely not aware the recording is happening. The recording…

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. The sudden shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by DOGE in 2025 is associated with a rise in violent conflicts across Africa, according to a study published…

A few weeks ago, I came across a wild post on Reddit’s r/DHExchange, a subreddit for trading large datasets: “I hoarded a large database of something valuable, just not what’s [sic] you expect…150k stools images.”  The post, made by a user called Ill_Car_7351, was advertising exactly what it sounds like: A database of poop images,…