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…
Tens of thousands of people, at any given time, are idly listening to the ambient, muted beats that accompany the Lofi Girl livestream: in solo studying sessions, taking tests in a classroom, and using the tunes as a stand-in for white noise to aid sleep. The livestream, which is one of the longest running live…
Employees at Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services received an email Tuesday morning with the subject line “AI Deployment,” which told them that ChatGPT would be rolled out for all employees at the agency. The deployment is being overseen by Clark Minor, a former Palantir employee who’s now Chief Information Officer…
The AI Darwin Awards are here to catalog the damage that happens when humanity’s hubris meets AI’s incompetence. The simple website contains a list of the dumbest AI disasters from the past year and calls for readers to nominate more. “Join our mission to document AI misadventure for educational purposes,” it said. “Remember: today’s catastrophically…
Less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration ended de minimis, a rule that let people buy products from overseas without paying tariffs or associated processing fees if the item cost less than $800. As we predicted, the end of de minimis has made having basically any sort of hobby that requires the purchase of…
If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced Michael James Pratt, the owner and operator of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking ring, to 27 years in federal prison on Monday….
An Instagram account with almost 400,000 followers is promoting racist and antisemitic t-shirts, another sign that Meta is unable or unwilling to enforce its own policies against hate speech. 404 Media flagged the account to Meta as well as specific racist posts that violate its hate speech policies, but Meta didn’t remove the account and…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently spent nearly four million dollars on facial recognition technology in part to investigate people it believes have assaulted law enforcement officers, according to procurement records reviewed by 404 Media. The records are unusual in that they indicate ICE is buying the technology to identify people who might clash with…
