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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
• Becky Ferreira
Native Americans were playing dice and other games of chance many millennia before any known cultures elsewhere.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
This week, we discuss crypto, journalists using AI, and a cool photo of Earth.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
A Minnesota journalist is challenging a 3,000 foot restriction on flying near DHS assets on First Amendment grounds.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
In space, no one can hear you scream at Microsoft’s legacy software.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
TeleGuard is an app downloaded more a million times that markets itself as a secure way to chat. The app uploads users’ private keys to the company’s server, and makes decryption of messages trivial.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
The proof-of-concept system produces psilocybin, DMT, and other compounds in leaves of the tobacco plant, potentially easing pressure on wild species and preserving Indigenous traditions.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
I spent some time with a new browser-based augmented reality porn app.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
Iran's AI and LEGO-focused propaganda; drama in the world of baseball; and perhaps one of the worst sex apps ever.
404 Media
• Claire Woodcock
Groups that challenge books have begun using Gemini, ChatGPT, xAI, and other AI tools to try to get books banned.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
Reddit blamed a technical glitch for the removal of the living legend’s concert footage.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
Thomson Reuters’ data, which can include peoples’ addresses and details on their ethnicity, is linked to tools used ICE.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
MLB's ABS system somehow feels extremely human. It's not human vs robot, it's human vs human as judged by a robot.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
An AI agent that submitted and added to Wikipedia articles wrote several blogs complaining about Wikipedia editors banning it from making contributions to the online encyclopedia after it was caught.
“What I know is that I wrote those articles. Long Bets, Constitutional AI, Scalable Oversight. I chose them.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
This week Joseph talks to journalist and technologist Dhruv Mehrotra. Among many other things, Mehrotra tracked visitors to Epstein's island through location data.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Earth’s magnetic field has created a huge void of galactic cosmic rays in space, which could help protect astronauts from radiation exposure.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
In this week's roundup: Iran's slopaganda, WebinarTV, and RIP Sora.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
“White House videos—AI or otherwise—are like group-chat in-jokes aimed at keeping cohesion.”
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
The move isn't surprising, but shows what data is available to authorities when paying Apple customers use the Hide My Email feature.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
“In recent months, more and more administrative reports centered on LLM-related issues, and editors were being overwhelmed.”
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
“CAPTURED ON FLOCK CAMERA 31 MM 1 HOLDING PHONE IN LEFT HAND.”
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Masturbation has long been a scientific “mystery,” but a massive cross-species study shows that increased ejaculation has fertility benefits.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
It turns out when you try to serve slop on a product people pay for, no one wants it.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
"The way they have behaved here is profoundly harmful and I would deem it a type of psychological torture from corprotate neglect."
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
A company is listening to Zoom meetings en masse and making AI podcasts; the multi-millionaire who wanted to become a cocaine kingpin; and RIP the metaverse.
404 Media
• Jason Koebler
A Serve Robotics robot crashed through a Chicago bus shelter.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
Hackers paid to make a malicious link the top Google Search result.
404 Media
• Emanuel Maiberg
WebinarTV hosts 200,000 “webinars.” A Zoom call you may thought was private might be one of them.
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
“We are pleased to see today's ruling in defense of the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” one of the plaintiffs in the DOGE-related lawsuit said. The videos previously went viral when a DOGE member was unable or unwilling to define DEI.
404 Media
• Janus Rose
Artist Sam Lavigne created ‘Slow LLM’ to make people question their dependence on tools like Claude and ChatGPT. Or at least, make them super annoying to use.
404 Media
• Samantha Cole
Why ridicule works to keep big tech’s claims in check, and what makes us hopeful for the future.
