Category: 404 Media

Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that pottered around, ate well, shone bright, and went long in the tooth. First, scientists identified a Bronze Age tradition of pottery as one of the earliest “brands,” revealing that humanity’s love for reliable commodities has deep roots. Then: ...

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 three years of 404 Media. JASON: Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the launch of 404 Media. If you haven’t been paying ...

Ypsilanti Township in Michigan passed a six month moratorium on “major electric utility infrastructure” on Tuesday night. The moratorium is a delaying tactic, the latest in the Township’s long fight to stop the construction of a $1.2 billion data center that’s backed by the University of Michigan and the Pentagon’s ...

I can clearly remember the first time I saw a deepfake. I was waiting for the train on my way to the Vice office in 2017 when I got a Twitter DM from someone who saw it posted to Reddit. It was a short .gif from the start of a ...

During the public comment portion of a recent San Diego city council meeting, the council called for the next comment to take the podium: “Darth Vader?” As he approached the microphone in his black helmet and cape, his heavy breathing reached the mic before he did. At the Public Safety ...

We start this week with Emanuel’s big story about Amazon buying, and destroying, masses of books to train AI. After the break we talk about a couple of wild cases where people are using AI. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Meta’s new smart glasses patent and research into ...

Body camera footage obtained by 404 Media shows a police officer explaining why he used police databases and license plate reader cameras to research, stalk, and pull over a woman he met on the set of a TV show. “I mean, I saw a shiny thing, teasing and all that,” ...

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Microbes from Earth could survive on parts of the Moon for at least a week, a discovery that suggests that the lunar surface is not as ...

The National Park Service (NPS), the agency tasked with managing the U.S. national parks and monuments, has purchased Flock cameras and had them installed at parks including in Yosemite. Current and former NPS rangers are not happy about it. “Flock protects property, not people or parks. People should be free ...

X’s algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper, titled Value misalignment of X’s feed algorithm is a reflection of value tensions in engagement, found that the site’s ...