404 Media

Scientists have discovered that an exotic particle that existed at the birth of the universe might solve one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology and help explain reality as we know it, according to a new study in Physical Review Letters.

A group of Texans believe they’ve discovered evidence that the state’s environmental regulatory agency has continued to issue permits to data centers despite Governor Greg Abbott’s call for it to stop.

A Florida police department claims that scammers used AI to clone a sheriff’s voice, with scammers increasingly using voice clones that trick people into thinking they’ve missed jury duty or have a warrant out for their arrest are increasing.

A Chinese organized crime group hacked into retail giant Staples, used that access to fraudulently issue millions of dollars worth of gift cards for stores like Target and Sephora, then went on a nationwide shopping spree, shipping many of the stolen elec…

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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.

We start this week with Joseph’s article about Raven, previously known as Geospy.

This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.

This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.

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 Artifici…

Last week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the Pentagon would livestream the execution of convicted killer Nidal Hasan.

Consulting giant Accenture has told many employees that the company will now only spend $29 a month per person on Claude.

A website that was dedicated to the human endeavor of reverse engineering, “decompiling,” and modifying video games is shutting down because people using AI to clone and decompile games have fully overrun the community and are far outpacing what human sof…

There is a lot of stuff about how creepy ad targeting is in today’s newsletter.

An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”

We start this week with a story from our old friend Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, about how cops can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones.

Body camera footage obtained by 404 Media reveals the first Flock camera searches ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, and highlights how the system has turned otherwise mundane traffic stops into interrogations for drivers.

Jonathan the tortoise, the world’s oldest living land animal, is still chugging along at the ripe age of roughly 194.

Howdy, it's hump day and we're rolling along.

A man convicted of manslaughter in Arizona will be resentenced because an AI-generated video of his victim speaking from beyond the grave was ruled to have carried “undue emotional weight” as an impact statement.

Multiple Democrat, Republican, and Independent lawmakers have introduced new pieces of legislation that, if passed, would dramatically curb federal agencies’ access to Flock cameras, with the lawmakers referencing reporting by 404 Media in their explanati…

arXiv, an open-access repository where researchers publish preprint academic research, has announced it will rate limit submissions because it has been inundated with AI-written papers.

In the immediate weeks before Muse’s launch, Meta engineers found several security vulnerabilities in the company’s viral AI agent product, at least one of which could have allowed malicious users to break outside of Muse’s intended environment and access…

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A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a woman accused of meth trafficking when he searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader system simply because her license pla…

We start this week with Joseph’s stories on the massive FBI hack. 404 Media broke this news and continued to cover the breach of data on all FBI employees and their spouses.

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.

Student journalists meet the moment, as we’ve seen most recently this week.

Student journalists, their advisors, and legal advocates say colleagues and administrators are attempting to undermine student reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, Gaza, and other issues that public institutions would rather not have their reputations connected…

A company that makes phone hacking devices claims to have developed a solution that freezes iPhones in a state that lets cops more easily access sensitive data inside them, according to a video obtained by 404 Media.

One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effecti…

A lawyer used ChatGPT to generate briefs that included completely made-up witnesses and testimony while representing a man accused of shooting his wife.

The United States Postal Service is running a pilot program to put cameras in its mail carrier trucks that continuously scan roads and signs, map roadways and sidewalks, and improve “community safety,” according to a letter posted by a labor union and a s…

Abusive, sexually explicit deepfakes have only become easier to make and more widespread in the last nine years.

Surveillance isn’t just about who is collecting the data.

The Trump administration is using an anti-drug trafficking grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the country to funnel their ongoing collection of automated license plate reader data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the

Scientists have identified two new contenders for the world’s loudest bird—the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema—both of which can exceed 120 decibels, which is louder than a jackhammer, according to a study published on Tuesday in Evoluti…

A thing I’ve been saying over and over is that surveillance companies can’t be trusted to regulate themselves or to make privacy decisions themselves, because one company’s red line is another company’s business opportunity.

As Flock continues to be the center of a nationwide conversation about automatic license plate reading cameras, the company has said that it doesn’t, and won’t, do facial recognition: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett…

Some tech workers in San Francisco hooked up ChatGPT to a Toyota Corolla and got it to drive around a parking lot.

The hackers behind the massive FBI breach told 404 Media on Monday they do not intend to publish the data.

Facial recognition is everywhere now.

This piece contains references to eating disorders.

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We debated for a long time about whether to write about the following video, which comes from a murder trial in which a man named Caleb Flynn is accused of killing his wife.

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.