🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. An astronomer has reported a possible new signature of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up most of the universe, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Journal…
It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few years since generative AI tools started flooding the internet with low quality content-slop. Just over a year ago, you’d have to peruse certain corners of Facebook or spend time wading through the cultural cesspool of Elon Musk’s X to find people posting bizarre and repulsive synthetic…
We start this week with Sam’s piece about a massive leak of an AI chatbot, and how it showed that people were taking ordinary women’s yearbook photos and using them to make AI porn. After the break, Jason explains how a recent change on X exposed a bunch of grifters all around the world. In…
A new website is holding Arc Raiders players accountable when they betray their fellow players. Speranza Watchlist—named for the game’s social hub—bills itself as “your friendly Raider shaming board,” a place where people can report other people for what they see as anti-social behavior in the game. In Arc Raiders, players land on a map…
The FOIA Forum is a livestreamed event for paying subscribers where we talk about how to file public records requests and answer questions. If you’re not already signed up, please consider doing so here. Recently we had a FOIA Forum where we focused on our reporting about Flock. This includes how to file public records requests…
Because we run 404 Media on Ghost, an open source and privacy-forward stack, we actually know very little about who reads 404 Media (by design). But we’re hoping to learn a bit more so we can figure out how people are discovering our work, what our readers do, and what other projects people might want…
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…
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…
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…
