404 Media

May I present: a hungry singularity, movie brains, Pompeii bling, and elephant showers.

On Thursday 404 Media reported that police were freaking out about mysteriously rebooting iPhones. Now multiple experts have found that Apple introduced code that reboots locked phones after a period of time.

The streamer, who opened new channels when Nintendo shut them down, said he “can do this all day.”

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 talk about the question "are people nutting to that?", doomscrolling on election night, and calls for Lysistrata 2024.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, we weren't sure if good journalism mattered anymore. Now, we're more sure than ever it does.

No heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men

Law enforcement believe the activity, which makes it harder to then unlock the phones, may be due to a potential update in iOS 18 which tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have not been in contact with a cellular network for some time, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.

After getting hit with a 4 a.m. emergency alert about a shooting hundreds of miles away from where they were sleeping, a lot of Texans were very pissed.

Phantom Secure started legitimate before turning into a tech company for organized crime. Its owner, Vincent Ramos, is now out of prison.

AI and Rule 34 have inevitably turned the Catholic Church’s cute Luce mascot into very graphic pornography.

Audio obtained from board of elections meetings in Georgia show how a tool called EagleAI was pitched to election officials.

Voting rolls are technically public records but can be laborious to get hold of. A right-wing site weaponizes that information by allowing anyone, anywhere, to search for a voter’s physical address and party affiliation.

An AI-generated video of a cute parrot got thousands of upvotes before moderators removed it and locked the thread.

This week we have Jason on EagleAI, Sam on Microsoft's gender AI mistake, and Joseph on the infostealer industry.

Netflix exec says Generative AI is a ‘once in a generation’ inflection point for video game development.

The mystery, which dates back to the 1980s, has finally been solved. The song is Fex—Subways of Your Mind.

Connor Moucka said he didn't have a lawyer yet. He was arrested at the request of the U.S.

Wired is going to co-publish two of our articles a month.

For more than a week Judische, the hacker linked to the AT&T, Ticketmaster and other breaches, has not been responding to messages. That's because he's been arrested.

New York Times tech workers are on strike for fairer pay and just cause job protections. In steps the CEO of Perplexity, an AI company that has repeatedly ripped-off the work of human journalists.

When you download that piece of pirated software, you might be also getting a piece of infostealer malware, and entering a highly complex hacking ecosystem that is fueling some of the biggest breaches on the planet.

Lessons about echolocation topography, tadpole gigantism, rat police, and an iconoclastic star.

This week, we talk about deciding what images to publish, digging through Meta and Snap data, and finding the Secret Service talking about you.

"I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated."

Microsoft said it would retire its AI-powered gender classifier in 2022. Now it says some users still had access to it because of an error.

By documenting her transition every week on Instagram this artist shows the absurdity in how Instagram and AI classify gender and the human body.

Jeff Bezos is not the answer at The Washington Post. And billionaire funding is not the answer for journalism.

The latest expansion of an Elon Musk-funded super PAC; how New York's largest hospital system is using AI; and how Epic Games' control over the 3D model market could "destroy" cultural heritage.

The employee separately changed all menu text to Wingdings, the complaint says.

Air Force General Anthony J. Cotton said that the US is developing AI tools to help leaders respond to ‘time sensitive scenarios.’

An Elon Musk-funded PAC is targeting Republicans with ads that depict a fever-dream caricature of what Harris would do if elected president.

At Northwell Health, executives are encouraging clinicians and all 85,000 employees to use a tool called AI Hub, according to a presentation obtained by 404 Media.

Sketchfab users who champion open access are worried that Epic Games’ ownership and transition to Fab puts thousands of 3D models used for science and preservation at risk.

This week, we toast to the saga of the Well-man, tip a hat to the tardigrades, catch a contest of eyestalks, and observe gorilla democracy in action.

The former candidate for Virginia House of Delegates Susanna Gibson on how she went from full-time nurse, to running for office, to being targeted by non-consensual intimate imagery and harassment—and how her new model legislation and nonprofit are focused on helping other victims of NCII.

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 talk about going viral, what we're watching lately, and a trip to Best Buy.

A new federal rule makes it legal to bypass software locks on commercial food equipment for the purposes of repair.

Twister was one of the first DVDs ever released. Now it's stuck in still-functioning Redbox machines.

The company is selling Kamala Harris and Donald Trump merch, and falsely promising to donate proceeds from the sales to the campaigns and other political causes.

A massive story on how a U.S. government-bought tool can track phones at abortion clinics; a very special guest drops by to talk about The Abstract; and how we found where a Musk-funded PAC is targeting Snapchat ads.