A software engineer in Austin has hooked up Animal Crossing to an AI and breathed new and disturbing life into its villagers. Using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on Animal Crossing scripts and an RSS reader, the anthropomorphic folk of the Nintendo classic spouted new dialogue, talked about current events, and actively plotted against…
📄 This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here. A data broker owned by the…
This week, we talk about how ‘Boring History’ AI slop is taking over YouTube and making it harder to discover content that humans spend months researching, filming, and editing. Then we talk about how Meta has totally given up on content moderation. In the bonus segment, we discuss the ‘AI Darwin Awards,’ which is, uhh,…
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that broke ice, broke hearts, and broke out the libations. Also, if you haven’t seen it already, we just covered an amazing breakthrough in our understanding of the cosmos, which is as much a story about humanity’s endless capacity for ingenuity as it is…
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 “free speech,” keeping stupid thoughts in one’s own head, and cancel culture. JASON: In August 2014, I spoke to Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com, a timeless,…
A company-wide email from Comcast executives, sent to everyone working at NBCUniversal on Friday morning, mourns right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk’s death and reminds employees that saying the wrong thing about Kirk’s legacy can get you fired swiftly. The email, obtained by 404 Media and first reported by Variety, has the subject line “A message from…
There is an aggrieved cry reverberating through the places on the internet where gamers gather. To hear them tell it, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel to the stone-cold classic 2017 platformer, is too damned hard. There’s a particular jumping puzzle involving spikes and red flowers that many are struggling with and they’re filming their frustration…
Thursday morning, Ezra Klein at the New York Times published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.” Klein’s general thesis is that Kirk was willing to talk to anyone, regardless of their beliefs, as evidenced by what he was doing while he was shot, which was debating people on college campuses….
Freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software. I first noticed this trend in the form of a meme that was circulating on LinkedIn, sharing a screenshot of several profiles who advertised themselves as “vibe coding cleanup specialists.” I couldn’t confirm if the accounts in that screenshot…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have captured the clearest ever gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—a breakthrough that has resolved decades-old mysteries about black holes and the nature of our reality, according to a…
