Welcome back to the Abstract! This week, we’re moving in next to anacondas, so watch your back and lock the henhouse. Then, parenthood tips from wild baboons, the “cognitive debt” of ChatGPT, a spaceflight symphony, and a bizarre galaxy that is finally coming into view. When your neighbor is an anaconda Cosendey, Beatriz Nunes and…
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 Deadheads and doxxing sites. SAM: Anyone reading the site closely this week likely noticed a new name entering the chat. We’re thrilled to welcome Rosie Thomas to…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. The FBI has accused a Texas man, James Wesley Burger, of planning an Islamic State-style terrorist attack on a Christian music festival and talking about it on Roblox. The feds caught Burger after another…
This week we start with Joseph’s article about the U.S’s major airlines selling customers’ flight information to Customs and Border Protection and then telling the agency to not reveal where the data came from. After the break, Emanuel tells us how AI scraping bots are breaking open libraries, archives, and museums. In the subscribers-only section,…
As Israel and Iran trade blows in a quickly escalating conflict that risks engulfing the rest of the region as well as a more direct confrontation between Iran and the U.S., social media is being flooded with AI-generated media that claims to show the devastation, but is fake. The fake videos and images show how…
A report from a cybersecurity company last week found that over 40,000 unsecured cameras—including CCTV and security cameras on public transportation, in hospitals, on internet-connected bird feeders and on ATMs—are exposed online worldwide. Cybersecurity risk intelligence company BitSight was able to access and download content from thousands of internet-connected systems, including domestic and commercial webcams,…
🌘 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 directly confirmed the location of the universe’s “missing” matter for the first time, reports a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. The idea that the universe must contain…
On Monday, federal and state authorities charged Vance Boelter with the murders of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. An affidavit written by an FBI Special Agent, published here by MSNBC, includes photos of a notepad found in Boelter’s SUV which included a long list of people search sites, some of which make it…
I was sick last week, so I did not have time to write about the Discover Tab in Meta’s AI app, which, as Katie Notopoulos of Business Insider has pointed out, is the “saddest place on the internet.” Many very good articles have already been written about it, and yet, I cannot allow its existence…
📄 This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here. A California police department searched AI-enabled,…
