Category: 404 Media

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 Tim Cook, Meta layoffs, and a very bad ad. EMANUEL: This week we experimented with the podcast format a little bit. We ...

Earlier this week, I wrote an article about startups that are spending money on AI compute (tokens on tools like Claude and OpenAI’s products) rather than hiring human employees. There are all sorts of ways this business strategy could fail, and we are beginning to see signs that one of ...

Ypsilanti Township in Michigan is attempting to cut off the flow of water to a planned data center that would power a new generation of nuclear weapons research. On Wednesday, the Township’s Board of Trustees voted to institute a 365 day moratorium on the delivery of water to hyperscale data ...

“I’m the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin… Thursdays leak because they’re watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over,” Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. “Here’s my grip: slipping is the point, the precise choreography of leak ...

This week Sam unpacks how social media algorithms manipulate our emotions around everything from engagement rings to wedding dresses to babies, and what it feels like getting lost in the #Weddingtok sauce. Then, Emanuel breaks down a satirical but functional AI tool that rips off open source software. There’s a ...

Startup CEOs who are “tokenmaxxing” are bragging that they are spending more money on AI compute than it would cost to hire human workers. Astronomical AI bills are now, in a certain corner of the tech world, a supposed marker of growth and success.  “Our AI bill just hit $113k ...

Trump’s proposed 2027 budget would almost double the budget for plutonium pits, the chemical filled metal sphere inside a nuclear warhead that kicks off the explosion in a nuclear weapon. The same budget would slash almost $400 million from nuclear environmental cleanup. The budget request follows a leaked National Nuclear ...

Today after recording our normal weekly podcast, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason spontaneously began discussing the legacy of Tim Cook as Apple CEO, the #BreakingTechNewsofTheWeek. We got really riled up so decided to press record to discuss Tim Cook’s accountant energy, his legacy of creating different sizes and shapes of rectangle ...

For a small price, Malus.sh will use AI to ingest any piece of software you give and spit out a new version of it that “liberates” it from any existing copyright licenses. The result is a new piece of software that serves the same function, but doesn’t have to honor, ...

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Salmon exposed to cocaine swim farther and behave differently than unexposed fish, according to the first study to observe the effects of cocaine on fish in ...