This week Sam unpacks how social media algorithms manipulate our emotions around everything from engagement rings to wedding dresses to babies, and what it feels like getting lost in the #Weddingtok sauce. Then, Emanuel breaks down a satirical but functional AI tool that rips off open source software. There’s a long history in “clean room”…
Today after recording our normal weekly podcast, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason spontaneously began discussing the legacy of Tim Cook as Apple CEO, the #BreakingTechNewsofTheWeek. We got really riled up so decided to press record to discuss Tim Cook’s accountant energy, his legacy of creating different sizes and shapes of rectangle and square phone-like devices, and…
For a small price, Malus.sh will use AI to ingest any piece of software you give and spit out a new version of it that “liberates” it from any existing copyright licenses. The result is a new piece of software that serves the same function, but doesn’t have to honor, for example, the kind of…
This week, Sam is joined by Maddy Myers, editor-in-chief of Mothership. She’s also a co-host of the video games podcast Triple Click. Maddy launched Mothership with co-founder Zoë Hannah in January. It’s a queer and women-owned independent publication that focuses on gender and games. They discuss Maddy’s early days of games journalism at a (print!)…
On Wednesday the Federal Aviation Administration rescinded a temporary flight restriction (TFR) that created a no-fly zone within 3,000 feet of “Department of Homeland Security facilities and mobile assets.” The new restriction softened the language of the original and abandoned the threat of civil or criminal penalties but added the Department of Justice to the…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. The remnants of a bizarre long-lost world that fell apart before our planet was fully formed are falling to Earth in the form of meteorites, according to a new study in…
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 the Madonna-whore algorithm, reader tips, and jazz. SAM: Yesterday morning I published a story I started working on weeks ago and only in the last week or…
A new report from the nonprofit research group Tech Transparency Project (TTP) claims that Google and Apple’s app stores go beyond simply hosting harmful “nudify” and “undress” apps that remove women’s clothing in images, and actually encourage users to download those apps. In January, TTP published research that showed how the app stores host dozens…
On Wednesday shareholders in Thomson Reuters demanded the company’s board launch an investigation into whether its products have contributed to human rights violations, specifically with regards to Thomson Reuters’ ongoing sale of peoples’ personal data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Thomson Reuters sells access to the CLEAR investigative database, which can include peoples’ names,…
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy praised robots as the future of war in a Defense Industry Worker Day address on Monday. “For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms—ground systems and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without…
