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404 Media is an independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
A software engineer made a version of the game that runs off code printed onto a small card.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
A tool that uses facial recognition to reveal cops' names, a big and complicated AI ruling, and the AI slop between Iran and Israel.
404 Media
• Rosie Thomas
LLMs are not familiar with “ate that up,” “secure the bag,” and “sigma,” showing that training data is not yet updated to Gen Alpha terminology.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
A judge rules that Anthropic's training on copyrighted works without authors' permission was a legal fair use, but that stealing the books in the first place is illegal.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
Blaming payment processor restrictions, Fansly—a platform creators flocked to after OnlyFans announced it'd ban sex—announced it's changing the rules for multiple types of content.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
A free tool that allows anyone to upload a photo of an LAPD officer to get their name and badge number.
404 Media
• Janus Rose
New Session publishes poetry via Telnet, rejecting the internet’s fast-paced enshittification.
404 Media
• Rosie Thomas
Researchers found Meta’s popular Llama 3.1 70B has a capacity to recite passages from 'The Sorcerer's Stone' at a rate much higher than could happen by chance.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
Here is the video archive for our FOIA Forum where we explained how we got records about Massive Blue, a company selling AI personas to cops.
404 Media
• Roshan Abraham
Details about how Meta's nearly Manhattan-sized data center will impact consumers' power bills are still secret.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
A preprint study found that participants who used an LLM to write essays performed worse “at all levels” than those who didn’t.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
This week, we discuss Deadheads and doxxing sites.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
According to the FBI, a Texas man talked about killing christians on Roblox and searched for ‘are suicide attacks haram in islam’ on his iPhone.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Scientists have spotted the universe’s “missing matter” hiding in a vast cosmic web with some help from fast radio bursts from deep space.
404 Media
• Rosie Thomas
Tens of thousands of security cameras in businesses, CCTV cameras, and cameras from commonplace internet-connected devices were found vulnerable to dark web actors, a new report shows.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
Airlines selling detailed flight data to DHS; how AI scrapers are hammering open archives; and the casual surveillance relationship between ICE and local cops.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
There’s a lack of footage from the conflict and AI-generated content is filling the void.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
New data obtained by 404 Media also shows California cops are illegally sharing Flock automatic license plate reader (ALPR) data with other agencies out of state, who in turn are performing searches for ICE.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
The list of sites in the suspect's notebook, which can easily reveal where someone lives, are a simple Google search away, have been for years, and lawmakers could make changes if they wanted. They have before.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
In an industry full of grifters and companies hell-bent on making the internet worse, it is hard to think of a worse actor than Meta, or a worse product that the AI Discover feed.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
"This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn't sure what the process is for solving the problem.”
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
The RNC and other Republican groups are violating Utah telecommunications law by continuing to text people incessantly after they've asked them to stop, a new complaint alleges.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
I got a confirmation email saying I'll get another confirmation when it's shipped. But I haven't provided a shipping address.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
Police departments in Oregon created an "analyst group" where they casually offer each other assistance with surveillance tools.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
A survey of 7,000 active users on Instagram, Facebook and Threads shows people feel grossed out and unsafe since Mark Zuckerberg's decision to scale back moderation after Trump's election.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Scientists exhumed bald cypress trees that lived thousands of years ago and recorded climactic turmoil.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
This week, we discuss advertising, protests, and aircraft.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Telescopes perched on the Andes Mountains glimpsed elusive encounters fueled by the first of the first stars in the universe more than 13 billion years ago.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
Exclusive: An FTC complaint led by the Consumer Federation of America outlines how therapy bots on Meta and Character.AI have claimed to be qualified, licensed therapists to users, and why that may be breaking the law.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
As part of what it claims is a new crackdown, Meta is suing a nudify app and "strengthening" its enforcement.
