Ziff Davis, the $2 billion media conglomerate that owns dozens of sites including PCMag, Lifehacker, IGN and CNET, is quietly taking diversity, equity, and inclusion information off of its website, 404 Media has learned. In the past month, the company removed information about diversity-focused employee resource groups, inclusion-based hiring goals, and diversity training for its…
Researchers from the IIT Kharagpur and Intel Corporation has uncovered a significant vulnerability in Intel’s Trust Domain Extensions.
A listing on ultra-fast-fashion e-commerce site Shein used an AI-generated image of Luigi Mangione to sell a floral button-down t-shirt. Mangione—the prime suspect in the December 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson—is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, last I checked, and is not modeling for Shein. I first saw…
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 stunt blogging, Signal pains, and murderous Reels. EMANUEL: Yesterday Jason wrote about Instagram delivering users reels showing murder, gore, and extreme violence. It’s hard to say exactly…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is wasting workers’ time and taxpayer dollars on “a witch hunt to find any content deemed ‘bad,’” according to a source familiar with the work and internal communications viewed by 404 Media. Specifically, people who work on HHS websites are spending days scanning those sites 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 advertising, protests, and aircraft. EMANUEL: On Thursday Meta announced that it has filed a lawsuit in Hong Kong against Joy Timeline HK Limited, the company that operates…
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that kept it reel, fertilized the land, established Martian law, and cooked up an extraterrestrial tempest in a teapot. First, ever wondered how cities are represented in Soviet propaganda? Look no further. Then: the path to civilization runs through the bums of birds, what…
The video game industry has had a turbulent few years. The pandemic made people play more and caused a small boom, which then subsided, resulting in wave after wave of massive layoffs. Microsoft, one of the major console manufacturers, is shifting its strategy for Xbox as the company shifts its focus to AI. And now,…
A network of Instagram accounts is using AI to steal content from human creators and deepfake their faces to make them look like they have Down syndrome. 404 Media was able to determine the accounts are linked because they reuse Instagram bios, videos, and in some cases link to the same OnlyFans competitors pages where…
A software engineer in Austin has hooked up Animal Crossing to an AI and breathed new and disturbing life into its villagers. Using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on Animal Crossing scripts and an RSS reader, the anthropomorphic folk of the Nintendo classic spouted new dialogue, talked about current events, and actively plotted against…
