Category: 404 Media

On June 26, the County Manager of Henrico County, Virginia, John Vithoulkas, sent an email to thousands of county employees asking them to help the local government conserve electricity. “Beginning July 1st, the rate we pay for electricity used in all Henrico County government and school facilities will increase dramatically ...

Music streaming service Tidal announced it won’t pay royalties for AI-generated music in an email to users and an announcement on its website published Monday. “Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,” the announcement reads. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute ...

I am standing just outside of the Yahoo Explorer’s Society, where the line for DJ Tiësto stretches well past Microsoft Gardens, out toward the Canva Creator Cabana and Influential Beach. Thankfully the line doesn’t cross with “Make Noise, Not Just Content” featuring Diplo at Salesforce Beach, or Mumford & Sons ...

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that yucked it up, went interstellar, controlled the weather, and sang our praises. First, the sounds of ape laughter have been gracing our planet for 15 million years. Then: a visit from a cosmic elder, a meteorological martial art, ...

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 talking aloud to computers, Cannes, and “Engineering Creativity: Guac Is Extra.” JASON: This week I was in Cannes, France for the Cannes ...

In February, police in Claremore, Oklahoma arrested farmer Darren Blanchard for speaking a little too long during a community meeting about data centers. The city charged Blanchard with criminal trespass, a crime with a $200 penalty, but he’s vowed to fight the charge. He recently shared video of the bodycam ...

The hackers that stole a large cache of data from Madison Square Garden called a low level employee and tricked them into letting the hackers into MSG’s systems, according to the hackers and 404 Media’s review of the stolen data. The breach highlights the risk of social engineering over voice ...

We start this week with Matthew’s story about a fascinating paper that argues if LLMs are sentient, then by those metrics so is the classic game Age of Empires II. After the break, Matthew tells us about a wild story out of Texas with a data center being built on ...

I am staring at a painted portrait of King Charles, who is wearing a red suit. The comically oversized and heavy Snap Specs I am wearing have basically created a digital version of the real painting and overlaid it over the real thing. A narrator speaking through the glasses asks ...

Behind closed doors and without expert input, the Trump administration issued a major policy change to how census data is released. Data experts are concerned the result will be less reliable public data related to redistricting, natural disasters, the workforce, housing, and more. On June 4, the Trump administration released ...