wrote about my new favorite topic: extremely bad billionaire vanity podcasts https://www.404media.co/washington-post-make-it-make-sense-opinion-podcast/

I wrote about being inundated with AI writing at every turn, unwittingly turning my brain into the AI police, and how shitty AI writing is randomly showing up in my real life outside of the internet https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/

Canvas hack is extremely bad, the "biggest student data privacy disaster in history" because it contains billions of messages between students and their professors, which can be extremely sensitive: "There's personal circumstances, medical circumstances, accessibility accommodations, disputes […]

Was so fun to go on Close All Tabs to talk about how farmers have fought for right to repair! Thought this episode turned out really great and the show in general is amazing: https://www.kqed.org/news/12077465/to-hack-a-tractor-how-farmers-won-the-right-to-repair

This project from @codinghorror is so needed & good - well-organized guaranteed minimum income projects around the world keep showing huge promise so I'm excited to see what happens here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/launching-the-rural-guaranteed-minimum-income-initiative/

New: DHS now says that two weeks of missing surveillance footage from ICE's Broadview Detention center isn't "missing," it was never recorded in the first place and thus can't be produced in an abuse lawsuit. An utter shitshow […]

extremely broad and alarming drone no fly zone designed to protect ICE agents just dropped. notable in part because some folks have used drones to film law enforcement abuses: https://www.404media.co/feds-create-drone-no-fly-zone-that-would-stop-people-filming-ice/

ICE has recently bought the capability of monitoring the location histories of entire neighborhoods worth of phones. The data is likely harvested from apps that sell your data, which filters up through data brokers and eventually to companies that sell to ICE […]

SCOOP: Flock left at least 60 of its AI-powered, people-tracking surveillance cameras exposed and livestreaming to the open internet. We tracked ourselves. The exposure highlights the power of these cameras and types of things they're tracking. Not just cars. […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Porn is being injected into dozens of government websites across the country using malicious PDFs. A separate attack is hijacking govt websites to redirect to penis enlargement scams and animal vagina masturbators. Cool stuff […]

404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it […]

X's location "transparency" feature showing many MAGA accounts are based internationally reveals what we already knew: The world is using American social media and American politics as a slot machine and social media companies are directly incentivizing this […]

New: A judge in Washington has ruled images from Flock surveillance cameras are public records and that anyone can request them. Highlights the pervasiveness of this tech and just how much surveillance is being done. Very notable ruling […]

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort […]

New: The FBI filed a subpoena trying to unmask the person or people behind archive.is/archive.today, which have been running anonymously for 13 yrs. Site was widely used by GamerGate, and then to bypass paywalls but has become kind of core archiving infrastructure […]

this is very cool: Kodak quietly relisted Kodak Gold and Ultramax on its website and confirmed to me it is selling the films directly to photography stores again. this is a big deal because for the last decade, Kodak has not controlled distribution of its own film […]

The end of Windows 10 support is going to be an environmental and security disaster, an egregious example of planned obsolescence that doesn't have to be this way: https://www.404media.co/the-end-of-windows-10-support-is-an-e-waste-disaster-in-the-making/

Some exciting news: 404 Media just won a grant via Muckrock to investigate book bans and educational censorship in the U.S. The plan is to file hundreds of public records requests around the country and to report on and archive all the documents for public use […]

Spent many (many!) hours pulling legal explanations and apologies from lawyers who were caught using AI that hallucinated in which they explained to a judge why they used AI. The explanations are astonishing and extremely good […]

The much-hyped SIM farm the Secret Service seized uses readily available off the shelf tech that, very interestingly, has also become critical to ticket scalping. I, like others, am extremely not buying the idea that this was intended to take down the cell network […]

New: We have just sued ICE to demand it turns over a secretive spyware contract that it refuses to release: https://www.404media.co/were-suing-ice-for-its-2-million-spyware-contract/

Good news: Rather than deal with tariff logistics, some international eBay and Etsy sellers have simply jacked their shipping costs up to $2,000 for Americans buyers: https://www.404media.co/2-000-shipping-international-sellers-charge-absurd-prices-to-avoid-dealing-with-american-tariffs/

Talked to 23 people who suddenly have to pay huge tariffs or otherwise cannot get chainmail from Pakistan, yarn from France, retro computers from Japan, metal music from the Netherlands, DVDs from Germany, cosplay supplies, sunscreen, etc […]

BREAKING: Michael Pratt, the ringleader of Girls Do Porn, was sentenced to 27 years in prison today. @samleecole.bsky.social is at the court in what sounds like a completely gut-wrenching day: https://www.404media.co/michael-pratt-girlsdoporn-ringleader-sentenced/

AI "boring history" slop has taken over YouTube and is particularly insidious because it flattens history and drowns out the tireless work of creators who have been integral to legitimizing YouTube as a place for high-quality history videos […]

Trump take LEGO: https://www.404media.co/lego-stops-shipping-individual-bricks-to-united-states-after-trumps-tariffs/

Buying anything from overseas is about to get more expensive, more logistically complicated, slower, and overall more annoying. Film photography community, retro games community, people into skincare already seeing chaos on eBay. eBay sellers locking US buyers out […]

New: An app developer has restored functionality to popular Echelon exercise bikes after the company made them all-but-useless unless you have a subscription. But he can't legally release the software […]

Breaking: 4chan and Kiwi Farms have sued the United Kingdom over the Online Safety Act: https://www.404media.co/4chan-and-kiwi-farms-sue-the-uk-over-its-age-verification-law/

80s nostalgia AI slop: A niche like any other, reverse engineered by 20-something digital nomads in Bali to boomerfy the masses as they astral project to a fake past in service of making fractions of a cent per view on Zuckerberg's cultish algorithmic slop machine […]

Today is the two year anniversary of 404 Media, which is hard to fathom. We wrote about how it's going, what we've done, what we're going to do, and what we've learned. We cannot do this without the support of our subscribers and for that we are endlessly thankful […]

TikTok Shop is selling 'Silent' GPS trackers that are marketed to stalkers and domestic abusers. Many of the videos have millions of views and at least 100,000 of them have been sold. TikTok's algorithm endlessly puts these in front of you if you fall into the algo […]

An ICE sizzle reel propaganda video that used a Jay-Z song got hit with a copyright takedown and has been deleted off of X. Sound removed on Instagram and Facebook https://www.404media.co/ice-propaganda-video-that-used-jay-z-song-hit-with-copyright-takedown/

SCOOP: A CBP agent wore Meta's AI smart glasses to an immigration raid in Los Angeles. CBP has no deal with Meta so it's possibly his own personal device https://www.404media.co/a-cbp-agent-wore-meta-smart-glasses-to-an-immigration-raid-in-los-angeles/

New: A Sheriff's Office in Texas has access to data from AI license plate reading cameras at hundreds of Home Depots (in Texas) and Lowe's (around the country) https://www.404media.co/home-depot-and-lowes-share-data-from-hundreds-of-ai-cameras-with-cops/

Apple is now selling repair parts for iPads ... but the prices are often astronomical and make repair totally untenable: https://www.404media.co/apple-is-selling-ipad-repair-parts-for-astronomical-prices/

SCOOP: The manifests for three legally contested deportation flights to El Salvador contain the names of dozens of people who have not been acknowledged in any way by the US government. Immigration experts following the case say they don't know where these people are […]

All American trains have a vulnerability where a hacker can remotely trigger the brakes over radio frequency. A single researcher has been warning about this for 13 years and the government has FINALLY acknowledged it’s real and is making train companies fix it […]

Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms […]

NEW: ICE is using a facial recognition smartphone app that pulls faces from CBP's database of people who cross the border: https://www.404media.co/ice-is-using-a-new-facial-recognition-app-to-identify-people-leaked-emails-show/

if you missed our FOIA Forum last week, where we talk about how we do public records reporting and how you can too, the archive is here: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-video-for-our-sixth-foia-forum-massive-blue/

Spending the next 2-3 hours shipping merch! If you order now your order will ship today. Tank tops and horse shirts back in stock! https://404media.myshopify.com/products/doom-code-404-tank-top-pre-order

In 15 mins we're doing a FOIA FORUM about how we reported a story about cops using AI-powered sockpuppet bots on social media. This is for subscribers only, we'll be taking questions about FOIA, showing examples of our requests, etc. Come hang out! […]

after using it for gazillions of hours as a webcam, my sony a6000 is totally broken now. need recs on: - good webcams for podcast recordings that ultimately go to YT i.e. want very good quality - minimum viable used model sony e-mount camera to use as webcam bc i already have lenses/setup dialed in

NEW: Here's an internal police email thread where 1) Local police performs a license plate lookup for ICE HSI 2) Local police in an informal "analyst group" offer each other, ICE's HSI, and the FBI help with a variety of surveillance tools […]

New: A judge refuses to throw out the FTC's repair monopoly lawsuit against John Deere. Means two major antitrust suits over its repair practices are going to trial, which is a big deal: https://www.404media.co/john-deere-must-face-ftc-lawsuit-over-its-tractor-repair-monopoly-judge-rules/

Scoop: GitHub code shows Trump administration is building a platform to "accelerate" AI across the government called ai.gov that is supposedly going to launch on the Fourth of July https://www.404media.co/github-is-leaking-trumps-plans-to-accelerate-ai-across-government/

Airlines sell passenger data to the feds through a separate data broker they spun up and put in the contract that DHS is not allowed to tell anyone that it comes from the airlines: https://www.404media.co/airlines-dont-want-you-to-know-they-sold-your-flight-data-to-dhs/

I spoke to two former govt workers who helped create IRS's Direct File software, which is set to be killed by DOGE/Trump/Intuit but thankfully just got open sourced. Both of them seem optimistic about what people are going to be able to do with the codebase […]