The internet is becoming harder to use because of unintended consequences in the battle between adult content creators who are trying to protect their livelihoods and the people who pirate their content. Porn piracy, like all forms of content piracy, has existed for as long as the internet. But as more individual creators who make…
Welcome back to the Abstract! What an extreme week it has been in science. We’ve got extreme adaptations and observations to spare today, so get ready for a visually spectacular tour of deep seas, deep time, and deep space. First up, a study with an instant dopamine hit of a title: “Extreme armour in the…
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 our top games, “dense street imagery,” and first-person experiences with apps. JOSEPH: This week we published Flock Wants to Partner With Consumer Dashcam Company That Takes ‘Trillions…
Add LEGO to the list of hobbies that Trump has made more expensive and worse with his tariff policy. Thanks to America’s ever shifting trade policies, LEGO has stopped shipping more than 2,500 pieces from its Pick a Brick program to both the United States and Canada. Pick a Brick allows LEGO fans to buy…
Here’s the podcast recorded at our recent second anniversary party in New York! We answered a bunch of reader and listener questions. Thank you to everyone that came and thank you for listening to this podcast too! SPONSORED Thanks again to DeleteMe, use code 404media for 20% off. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube….
The Trump administration is throwing various hobbies enjoyed by Americans into chaos and is harming small businesses domestically and abroad with its ever-changing tariff structure that is turning the United States into a hermit kingdom. It has made buying and selling things on eBay particularly annoying, and is making it harder and more expensive to,…
The front page of Imgur, a popular image hosting and social media site, is full of pictures of John Oliver raising his middle finger and telling MediaLab AI, the site’s parent company, “fuck you.” Imugrians, as the site’s users call themselves, telling their business daddy to go to hell is the end result of a…
An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it. Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers…
Popular chatbots offered direct responses to questions about self-harm methods while hesitating to answer questions seeking therapeutic help directly, according to a new study that looked at how ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini handled suicide-related questions. Of “particular concern” was that ChatGPT provided direct answered to high-risk questions 78 percent of the time, and both ChatGPT…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. 4chan and Kiwi Farms sued the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) over its age verification law in U.S. federal court Wednesday, fulfilling a promise it announced on August 23. In the lawsuit, 4chan…
