Category: 404 Media

🌘 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 identified the submerged remnants of a giant lost supercontinent that played a pivotal role in the explosion of complex life more than 500 million ...

If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Just before Austin Gordon died, he left Megan Jones a letter telling her she was the love of his life. ...

Channel 5, the YouTube channel hosted by Andrew Callaghan, said it gave a list of its email subscribers to Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, who went on to promote his new memecoin, a move that a data privacy expert told 404 Media is likely illegal in some jurisdictions. Callaghan ...

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, ...

When we launched 404 Media in August 2023, it was a leap of faith. We were leaving the world of big, corporate media — where we worked for years alongside exceptionally brilliant colleagues, but also under the constant turmoil of investor whims, executive decisions we had no say in, and ...

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that transcended realms, switched sexes, went south, and expanded their range. First, scientists break new ground in trying to get the universe to fit nicely together into a little package for once. Then: a frog sex party, an invasion ...

Flock taught cops how they could surveil the No Kings protests and “small parades” using a mix of Flock’s technology and law enforcement’s own databases in a webinar last year. As Flock publicly downplays the power of its automated license plate camera network and highlights its use to solve violent ...

An island that appeared to suddenly materialize, then vanish, on Williston Lake in British Columbia over the summer was rediscovered on the massive reservoir on Monday.  Once you’ve taken that all in, let’s ask the important question: How the heck did that happen?  The existence of the disappearing island—a floating ...

We start this week with Emanuel’s follow-up to his Amazon book scanning story, in which he spoke to someone who worked in the Amazon warehouse which destroys books to train Amazon’s AI products. After the break, Emanuel and Sam tell us about the same few names appearing in LLM output ...

Axon says cops are asking it to make its automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) look different from Flock cameras because Flock vandalism has become so widespread, according to comments Axon’s CEO made in a now deleted webinar. The comments highlight how Axon is trying to take advantage of sustained opposition ...