Category: 404 Media

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that lived and died by the spear, drew unequal lots, paged Fox Mulder, and peered at an alien moon. First, scientists discover a mortal spear wound in a Neanderthal who lived 75,000 years ago, possibly opening a window into ...

This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. Newly filed court records show exactly what happens when messaging app Telegram provides data to U.S. authorities. A letter written by Telegram, and providing a specific user’s phone number, user ID, ...

We start this week with Joseph’s article about Raven, previously known as Geospy. This is an AI tool that can geolocate photos, and now says it can pinpoint a specific house based just on one photo taken inside. After the break, Jason explains why a judge ruled a particular Flock ...

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 a new pod setup, video games, and Elon’s spending habits. JASON: Exciting news: I am building a podcast studio / riso printing ...

This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. Police arrested a Chicago area high school maintenance worker who attempted to meet a child for sex after investigators posed as a 15-year-old boy using AI generated images. Christopher ...

Scientists have made a breakthrough toward the mind-bending goal of creating computers made of brains by demonstrating that human neural tissue can classify letters of the Braille alphabet, according to a study published on Friday in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.   A team transmitted electrical signals corresponding to Braille letters to ...

Last week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the Pentagon would livestream the execution of convicted killer Nidal Hasan. Today, Trump said the execution would move forward but that it wouldn’t be livestreamed. But the propaganda damage is already done. Experts who watch terrorist spaces online told 404 Media that ...

Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s largest data center on Wednesday. This was Ukraine’s fourth strike on Russian data centers in the past week and confirmation of a new reality of war: data centers are valuable enemy assets and they will be targeted. In 2006, British economist Clive Humby declared “data is ...

OpenAI lets anyone inject ads into ChatGPT users’ sessions, targeting specific groups of people based on their email address, phone number, or a unique identifier on their phone, according to 404 Media’s own tests of ChatGPT’s advertising ecosystem. While the ad targeting available in ChatGPT is somewhat standard practice across ...

There is a lot of stuff about how creepy ad targeting is in today’s newsletter. Our first story is one I did, about how advertisers — or really anyone with 5 minutes on their hands — can inject ads into your ChatGPT session based on your phone number or email ...