A company called Germ is aiming to bring end-to-end encrypted messages to Bluesky’s AT Protocol, a feature that the social network doesn’t currently have. The tool’s security is yet to be independently audited, but the company says it plans to seek that out soon. Mark Xue, a former privacy engineer at Apple and CTO of…
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the climate warnings, cosmic apocalypses, and wolf tales that made an impression on me this week. First, a dispatch from the northernmost settlement on Earth, where climate warming is completely reshaping the landscape. Then: a case of star-crossed companions, encounters with globular clusters, and some trophic cascades as…
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 creeper glasses, Amazon comms, and a DIY 404 party. SAM: Earlier this week, Chris Samra released this teaser video for Waves, smart glasses in the vein of…
Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and…
Payment processors are rapidly changing what types of content can and can’t be easily accessed online. Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and other major players that process most of the money people earn on the internet have always had this power, and have long discriminated against sexual content and sex work, but they have been forcing…
Grindr won’t allow users to add “no Zionists” to their profiles, but allows any number of other phrases that state political, religious, and ethnic preferences, according to 404 Media’s tests of the platform and user reports. Several users received an error message that says “The following are not allowed: no zionist, no zionists,” when they…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. A lawsuit filed in California against Roblox and Discord alleged that the former hosted Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jeffrey Epstein themed content children could easily access. The games had names like “DIDDY SURVIVAL,” “diddy…
The creators of an AI tool and Discord community that allowed people to create AI videos of NBA stars says that it got a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing LeBron James. This marks one of the first known times that a high-profile celebrity has threatened legal action against an AI company for enabling the creation…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Humans may be tiny compared to the immensity of Earth, but our activity can alter its dynamics on a planetary scale—for good and ill. Scientists have even discovered that Earth’s rotation…
Yesterday the Pew Research Center released a report based on the internet browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults which found that Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who don’t encounter an AI summary. To be precise, only 1 percent of users who…
