On May 23, we got a very interesting email from Ghost, the service we use to make 404 Media. “Paid subscription started,” the email said, which is the subject line of all of the automated emails we get when someone subscribes to 404 Media. The interesting thing about this email was that the new subscriber…
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies that caught my eye this week. First up, a bummer! NASA is facing devastating cuts to Earth science, and science in general, which is pretty important for an agency tasked with understanding the universe. I try to keep this newsletter relatively downer-free, but current events are…
Tensor.Art, an AI image creating and model sharing site announced on Friday that it is “temporarily” restricting AI models, tools, and posts related to pornographic content or the depiction of real-world celebrities due to pressure from payment processors. The announcement is yet another example of payment processors acting as the ultimate arbiter of what kind…
This week, we discuss choosing what to cover, fishing expeditions, and the library.
🌘 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 are searching for signs of a “fifth force” at the center of our galaxy that could rewrite the rules of gravity and help to resolve some fundamental mysteries in the…
I am talking to Amina, an AI avatar that plays the role of a woman living in a refugee camp in Chad after she escaped violence in Sudan. “I’m hanging in there, yeah,” Anima tells me. “ It’s tough here in the camp, but we’re staying strong.” I ask her how she came to be…
Last month I put down $100 to pre-order the Trump Organization’s forthcoming mobile phone, the T1. Or, I tried to. As I wrote at the time, the website went to an error page, charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70, and sent a confirmation email saying I would receive another confirmation email when…
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have gained access to a massive database of health and car insurance claims and are using it to track down people they want to deport, according to internal ICE material viewed by 404 Media. The database, which contains details on more than 1.8 billion insurance claims and 58…
We’re back! We start this week with Emanuel’s article about Anubis, an open source piece of software that is saving the internet from AI bot scrapers. After the break, Joseph tells us about the new facial recognition app ICE is using and which he revealed. In the subscribers-only section, we do a lightning round runthrough…
Data preservationists and archivists have been working tirelessly since the election of President Donald Trump to save websites, data, and public information that’s being removed by the administration for promoting or even mentioning diversity. The administration is now targeting National Parks signs that educate visitors about anything other than “beauty” and “grandeur,” and demanding they…
