Welcome back to the Abstract! In the immortal words of a wise crab: “Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from me.” That’s why we’re going to be under the sea for most of this week’s column, though the wonderful things that surround us will be 1) massive flesh-eating sharks 2) conveyor belts…
The Transport Security Administration has a freeze on credit card purchases for its bomb-sniffing dogs, TSA confirmed to 404 Media on Friday. The statement follows the leak of an alleged internal email which said TSA was cutting off requests for dog food and vet visits. A TSA spokesperson told 404 Media: “Our heroic canines are…
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 companies’ responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went. JOSEPH: This week…
Mahmoud Khalil, the green card holding legal permanent resident arrested by ICE on Saturday, and a group of other students are suing Columbia University, the university’s trustees, and a number of other officials, according to newly filed court records. The move is the latest episode in one of the most high profile immigration cases in…
Something very strange is happening inside Super Nintendo (SNES) consoles as they age: a component you’ve probably never heard of is running ever so slightly faster as we get further and further away from the time the consoles first hit the market in the early ‘90s. The discovery started a mild panic in the speedrunning…
Last week, Aix Marseille University, France’s largest university, invited American scientists who believe their work is at risk of being censored by Donald Trump administration’s anti-science policies to continue their research in France. Today, the university announced that it is already seeing great interest from scientists at NASA, Yale, Stanford, and other American schools and…
A Saudi Arabian company that was created by the Saudi Arabian government just purchased Pokémon Go, the most popular augmented reality game of all time, with a collective worldwide player base of more than 100 million people and their locations in the real world. Niantic is selling Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now…
Some Spotify employees are not happy that the audio streaming giant was, until this week, hosting and profiting from a course about “pimping hoes” by Andrew Tate, according to internal Spotify communications viewed by 404 Media. “Pretty vile that we’re hosting Andrew Tate’s content,” one Spotify employee said in a company Slack channel called #ethics-club,…
A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and many other U.S. government agencies has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target individual’s publicly available data from a wide array of sites, social networks, apps, and services across the web at once, including Bluesky, OnlyFans, and various Meta platforms, according to…
We start this week with Emanuel’s great investigation into Chinese AI video models, and how they have far fewer safeguards than their American counterparts. A content warning for that section due to what the users are making. After the break, Joseph explains how police are using AI to summarize evidence seized from mobile phones. In…
