Notices by Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social)

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

https://www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to-unmask-owner-of-infamous-archive-is-site/

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:

https://www.404media.co/help-us-investigate-book-bans-and-educational-censorship-around-america/

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/

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

https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-boring-history-videos-are-flooding-youtube-and-drowning-out-real-history/

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

https://www.404media.co/80s-nostalgia-ai-slop-is-boomerfying-the-masses-for-a-past-that-never-existed/

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:

https://www.404media.co/two-years-404-media-anniversary/

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:

https://www.404media.co/tiktok-shop-sells-viral-gps-trackers-marketed-to-stalkers/

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/

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: https://www.404media.co/hackers-can-remotely-trigger-the-brakes-on-american-trains-and-the-problem-has-been-ignored-for-years/

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:

https://www.404media.co/the-medias-pivot-to-ai-is-not-real-and-not-going-to-work/

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/

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:

https://www.404media.co/directfile-open-source-irs-tax-filing-software-turbotax-is-trying-to-kil/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

"The Trump administration’s constant use of AI art reflects its own brute force attack on American democracy. It’s not just that its aesthetics are useful for Trump, its entire mode of being is useful for how his administration has governed so far"

https://www.404media.co/the-ai-slop-presidency/

NEW: GlobalX, the company doing many deportation flights for ICE, has been hacked. Hackers claim to have stolen flight manifest information and flight details, and have also defaced the website

https://www.404media.co/globalx-airline-for-trumps-deportations-hacked/

The idea of reshoring high-tech manufacturing isn't bad but it has to be done in a coherent and strategic way. Here is where Apple components are currently made. This is not coming back to the US overnight and probably not ever

Here I explain why the idea that we are going to suddenly make iPhones in the U.S. is pure fantasy and if Apple WERE to do that it would come after several years of deep pain. The iPhone is perhaps the most global product that has ever existed: https://www.404media.co/a-us-made-iphone-is-pure-fantasy/

Meanwhile, Apple's automation efforts are not going that well and there are still millions of human beings who work on it. Reshoring think tank suggests American workers in the same job make ~10x what a similar worker in Vietnam makes

Flexport's CEO, who handles international logistics, says some clients it works with have already *stopped plans to build factories in the US* because tariffs have made buying equipment to expensive