Holding area for imported/news content. Posts should remain post-level noindex until editorially rewritten and approved.
An old school ransomware attack has a new twist: threatening to feed data to AI companies so it’ll be added to LLM datasets. Artists&Clients is a website that connects independent artists with interested clients. Around August 30, a message appeared on Artists&Clients attributed to the ransomware group LunaLock. “We have breached the website Artists&Clients to…
It’s now illegal in Michigan to make AI-generated sexual imagery of someone without their written consent. Michigan joins 47 other states in the U.S. that have enacted their own deepfake laws. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the bipartisan-sponsored House Bills 4047 and its companion bill 4048 on August 26. In a press release, Whitmer specifically…
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 our top games, “dense street imagery,” and first-person experiences with apps. JOSEPH: This week we published Flock Wants to Partner With Consumer Dashcam Company That Takes ‘Trillions…
Add LEGO to the list of hobbies that Trump has made more expensive and worse with his tariff policy. Thanks to America’s ever shifting trade policies, LEGO has stopped shipping more than 2,500 pieces from its Pick a Brick program to both the United States and Canada. Pick a Brick allows LEGO fans to buy…
Here’s the podcast recorded at our recent second anniversary party in New York! We answered a bunch of reader and listener questions. Thank you to everyone that came and thank you for listening to this podcast too! SPONSORED Thanks again to DeleteMe, use code 404media for 20% off. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube….
The front page of Imgur, a popular image hosting and social media site, is full of pictures of John Oliver raising his middle finger and telling MediaLab AI, the site’s parent company, “fuck you.” Imugrians, as the site’s users call themselves, telling their business daddy to go to hell is the end result of a…
An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it. Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers…
Popular chatbots offered direct responses to questions about self-harm methods while hesitating to answer questions seeking therapeutic help directly, according to a new study that looked at how ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini handled suicide-related questions. Of “particular concern” was that ChatGPT provided direct answered to high-risk questions 78 percent of the time, and both ChatGPT…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. 4chan and Kiwi Farms sued the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) over its age verification law in U.S. federal court Wednesday, fulfilling a promise it announced on August 23. In the lawsuit, 4chan…
🌘 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 made a major breakthrough in the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth by demonstrating how two essential biological ingredients could have spontaneously joined together on our planet…
