Category: 404 Media

A County Commissioner in North Carolina refused to let dozens of residents speak opposing Flock surveillance at a public meeting this week, instead forcing the group to designate one single spokesperson. “How many people are here for public comment dealing with license plate readers AKA Flock?,” Michael Garrison, the chairman ...

A software update to some Amazon delivery vehicles is automatically turning off the air conditioning after a few seconds if the driver is not in their seat, according to multiple Amazon delivery drivers who are complaining about the update online.  According to Amazon delivery drivers, the new update is for ...

Depending on which chatbot you ask, Elias Thorne might be a clockmaker, a lighthouse keeper, or a librarian. But if you ask ChatGPT or any of the other popular large language models to tell you a story, there’s a good chance he’ll appear, unbidden. And Elias’s stories are flooding the ...

Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock exposed the reasons cops conducted searches, and sometimes the specific searched license plates, in common search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing, according to tests by privacy advocates and 404 Media and a statement from the company. The news marks an unusual data breach, ...

The AI industry has been pushing a narrative that the technology is a “black box” whose inner workings are so complex that they remain unknown even to the people making it. But another black box of AI is the underlying cost of the technology, and, specifically, what the AI boom ...

For months during the summer of 2024, Jarmarus Brown, an Orange City, Florida police officer, ran his ex-girlfriend’s license plate through the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) system lookup database at least 69 times. He searched for the license plate belonging to her mom at least 24 times, and ...

For months during the summer of 2024, Jarmarus Brown, an Orange City, Florida police officer, ran his ex-girlfriend’s license plate through the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) system lookup database at least 69 times. He searched for the license plate belonging to her mom at least 24 times, and ...

We start this week with Emanuel’s story about the internal memes Google employees are making all about AI. Definitely check out some of the examples in the article or on YouTube. After the break, Jason tells us how Microsoft explicitly wants to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, ...

We start this week with Emanuel’s story about the internal memes Google employees are making all about AI. Definitely check out some of the examples in the article or on YouTube. After the break, Jason tells us how Microsoft explicitly wants to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, ...

🌘 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 discovered that people walking in crowds tend to spontaneously turn counterclockwise—regardless of the environment, from schoolyards to busy settings—a surprise finding that “may represent ...