Category: 404 Media

This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation.  Around this time last year, Rachel Rodman was happily employed as a library clerk and program assistant with the Crawford County Library District in the east-central part of Missouri. Rodman didn’t think anything of the display she curated for Pride ...

Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.  Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is ...

This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation.  Earlier this year, an Alaskan assembly member found himself in hot water for introducing a resolution that would have prohibited the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Public Library System from making books and other media available to anyone if deemed “harmful to minors” ...

This week Joseph speaks to Jake Hanrahan, creator of the independent conflict-focused media company Popular Front. They talk all about conflict journalism and how to get your journalism out there when platforms like YouTube make it all that much harder, sometimes. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become ...

Board members of a small township in Michigan agreed to “fight to our very last breath” against an AI data center planned in their community. America’s nuclear scientists and the University of Michigan want to build a massive data center in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan. If built, the data center will, ...

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the stories this week that shook the Earth, birthed a universe, exploded in space, and sought the fountain of lepidopterological youth. First, a wave from a disastrous earthquake journeyed to the center of the Earth and back, revealing a phenomenon that has never ...

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 questionable analysis, mysterious parcels, and the Knicks (sorta). SAM: I was in Amsterdam for most of this week and walked by something ...

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Ancient fossils have revealed that the earliest animals to walk on land more than 300 million years ago did not experience a metamorphosis similar to modern ...

Salesforce has an internal dashboard which tracks each team’s use of AI, including which teams are using specific tools such as ChatGPT and how much, with the company also handing out digital badges that describe its employees as a “Champion,” “Innovator,” and “Legend” depending on the AI training courses they’ve ...

In a viral essay about how ludicrous the idea that LLMs are conscious is, science fiction writer Ted Chiang asked us to consider Microsoft Word: “Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious, or, more ...