Category: 404 Media

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that spoke in tongues, sought forbidden love, orbited an orbiter, and performed ritual magic. First, scientists have uncovered a “golden age” of languages that flourished for millennia before fading into our dark age of linguistic extinction. Then, Alan Turing’s ...

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 astrology, Flock on the brain, The Odyssey, and more. JASON: This week I wrote pretty much exclusively about Flock, and I am ...

After the Los Angeles Police Department allowed its contract with Flock to expire, the surveillance company’s CEO, Garrett Langley, told local news that people don’t understand how its technology works, and that its automated license plate readers (ALPR) only take a “static picture” of a car. “The technology is really ...

A judge caught a court reporter making AI-generated errors in a court transcript, and put stenographers everywhere on notice for their use of AI.  In a memorandum decision concerning a case about a man who sold drugs to another man who overdosed and died, filed on July 23, Judge Paul ...

🌘 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 a previously unknown behavior in orcas that involves one member of a pod holding up a massive dead sunfish while another charges and ...

A leaked document shows the spread of surveillance and investigative capabilities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have access to agency wide, from location data harvested from smartphones, to facial recognition apps that can reveal someone’s identity, to tools that let the agency stay anonymous online and approach people ...

A little over a month ago, the former American Idol contestant, country musician, and Instagram influencer Noah Orion appears to have learned about the surveillance company Flock. “Cities are now covering Flock cameras with trash bags,” Orion narrated over an Instagram post aggregating a 404 Media report. “It’s also pretty ...

Patreon laid off 93 employees, totaling 20 percent of its workforce on Thursday morning, according to an email to creators and staff from CEO Jack Conte. In a message sent to everyone on the platform signed up as a creator, and posted to the site, with the subject line “A ...

It’s that time again! We’re planning our latest FOIA Forum, a live, hour-long or more interactive session where Joseph and Jason will teach you how to pry records from government agencies through public records requests. We’re planning this for Thursday, July 30th at 1PM ET. That’s in just one week ...

On Tuesday night, the city council of my small town of Irmo, South Carolina, voted to install 22 new Flock cameras. That’ll bring the total up to 33. With a population of only 12,000 or so, it means there’ll be one Flock camera for every 300 residents. That means there ...