Welcome back to the Abstract! I’m trying out something a little different this week: Instead of rounding up four studies per usual, I’m going deep on one lead study followed by a bunch of shorter tidbits. I’m hoping this shift will make for a more streamlined read and also bring a bit more topic diversity…
This week, we discuss Star Wars’ weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.
Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment of t-shirts from a streetwear brand that sells an “Eliminate ICE” t-shirt and multiple shirts critical of police and capitalism. Among the shirts seized was a design that features a swarm of bees attacking a police officer. Emails seen by 404 Media indicate that the shirts are going…
Doom: The Dark Ages, Bethesda’s recently released prequel to the demon slaughtering first-person shooter, is using anti-piracy software that’s locking out Linux users who paid for the game. According to multiple posts on Reddit, Doom: The Dark Ages uses the infamous anti-piracy software Denuvo. One Reddit user on the Linux gaming subreddit said that they…
A startup is throwing chatbots at “ghosting”—being abandoned by someone abruptly and without explanation—by roleplaying as your ex, former friend, or absentee job recruiter who is just so sorry about how it all went down. Closure is currently in open beta, and launched on Product Hunt on Thursday. The company has been running ads on…
For a few hours on Wednsday, X’s Grok AI wouldn’t stop talking about about white genocide. When the X account for a baseball podcast asked Grok about the stats for Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, it answered the question, then monologued about white farmers being attacked in South Africa. “Gunnar Henderson’s 2025 season WAR is approximately…
📄 This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here. In February 2023, a brief national…
Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company whose cameras are installed in more than 5,000 communities in the U.S., is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches to “jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,” allowing police to much more easily identify and track the movements…
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual effects studio that practically invented the field as we know it today, revealed how it thinks it will use generative AI in the future, and that future looks really bad. Much of what we understand today as special effects in movies was born at Industrial ILM, which was…
We start this week with Jason and Matthew’s story about an AI avatar that testified in court. It might be a sign of things to come. After the break, well, well, well, Meta is developing facial recognition for its smart glasses. In the subscribers-only section, Jason tells us all about AI in baseball. Listen to…
