The biggest AI story of the first week of 2026 involves Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot turning the social media platform into an AI child sexual imagery factory, seemingly overnight. I’ve said several times on the 404 Media podcast and elsewhere that we could devote an entire beat to “loser shit.” What’s happening this week with…
The Department of Health and Human Services’ new AI nutrition chatbot will gleefully and dangerously give Americans recommendations for the best foods to insert into one’s rectum and will answer questions about the most nutrient-dense human body part to eat. “Use AI to get real answers about real food,” a new website called realfood.gov proclaims….
Depending on version downloaded, app approaches its answers with preamble of reasoning which it then erases
A group of more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers have demanded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provide its definition of “domestic terrorist,” after the agency labelled U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti, which DHS officers killed, as such. The move also comes as DHS and its various components purchase and deploy a wide…
A team of researchers at Columbia University, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have developed “machines that can grow by consuming other machines.” Video of the experiment shows tubular robots that move by extending their shafts to inch along the ground. As the tubes gather, they connect and form into more…
Personal data enables cybercrime, yet securing data remains a significant challenge for cyber leaders, who face competing priorities.
The president is surrounded by the leaders of the richest and most powerful companies in history — but their dominance may yet be checked
🌘 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 long been puzzled by the sturdy glaciers of the mountains of central Asia, which have inexplicably remained intact even as other glaciers around the world rapidly recede due to…
We start this week’s episode with our massive story on TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump administration uses to archive messages which was hacked. We have more detail than anyone else on that story. After the break, Jason tells us about another hack, this time GlobalX Air, one of the airlines used by ICE for…
🌘 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 discovered all five nucleobases—the fundamental components of DNA and RNA—in pristine samples from the asteroid Ryugu, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. The finding strengthens…
