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 how data is accessed, AI in games, and more. JOSEPH: This was a pretty big week for impact at 404 Media. Sam’s piece on an exposed AI…
Police departments and officials from Border Patrol used Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to monitor protests hundreds of times around the country during the last year, including No Kings protests in June and October, according to data obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The data provides the clearest picture yet of how…
Elon Musk is a better role model than Jesus, better at conquering Europe than Hitler, the greatest blowjob giver of all time, should have been selected before Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft, is a better pitcher than Randy Johnson, has the “potential to drink piss better than any human in history,” and is…
The federal government claims that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a “system crash” deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility. People detained at ICE’s Broadview Detention Center in suburban Chicago sued the government on October 30; according to their lawyers and…
OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platform’s CEO recently announced. As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesn’t say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions…
The Ukrainian Army is knocking a once-hyped Russian superweapon out of the sky by jamming it with a song and tricking it into thinking it’s in Lima, Peru. The Kremlin once called its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles “invincible.” Joe Biden said the missile was “almost impossible to stop.” Now Ukrainian electronic warfare experts say they…
In a move that has confused and angered its users, the r/JoeRogan subreddit has banned all posts about politics. Adding to the confusion, the subreddit’s mods have said that political comments are still allowed, just not posts. “After careful consideration, internal discussion and tons of external feedback we have collectively decided that r/JoeRogan is not…
An erotic roleplay chatbot and AI image creation platform called Secret Desires left millions of user-uploaded photos exposed and available to the public. The databases included nearly two million photos and videos, including many photos of completely random people with very little digital footprint. The exposed data shows how many people use AI roleplay apps…
We start this week with a rant from Jason about how the latest dump of Epstein emails were released. It would be a lot easier to cover them if they were published differently! After the break, we talk about Joseph’s piece about a contractor hiring essentially randos off LinkedIn to physically track immigrants for $300….
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Kissing is one of humanity’s most cherished rituals—just think of the sheer variety of smooches, from the “wedding kiss” to the “kiss of death.” Now, scientists have discovered that the origins…
