Notices by 404 Media (404mediaco@mastodon.social)

TheTrillionDollarDinner. Gov’ Registered Around Time of Trump’s Pay-to-Play Memecoin Dinner Announcement

🔗 https://www.404media.co/thetrilliondollardinner-gov-registered-around-time-of-trumps-pay-to-play-memecoin-dinner-announcement/

This Website Is Running on a Wii

🔗 https://www.404media.co/this-website-is-running-on-a-wii/

This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

🔗https://www.404media.co/this-college-protester-isnt-real-its-an-ai-powered-undercover-bot-for-cops/

New: LAPD demanded footage from a Waymo, whose cameras saw a hit-and-run. Shows the police are seeing these are roving surveillance cameras:

https://www.404media.co/lapd-publishes-crime-footage-it-got-from-a-waymo-driverless-car/

A Russian guy made tens of thousands of dollars posting AI disinfo and misery porn about the LA Wildfires to Instagram:

https://www.404media.co/inside-the-economy-of-ai-spammers-getting-rich-by-exploiting-disasters-and-misery/

How a $2,000 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured

https://www.404media.co/how-a-2-000-made-in-the-usa-liberty-phone-phone-is-manufactured/

I spoke at length to the creator of the Liberty Phone, a US-manufactured smartphone, about the challenges of sourcing US-made components, tariffs, and the lack of product engineering expertise in US. The Chinese version costs $700, the US version costs $2,000.

https://www.404media.co/how-a-2-000-made-in-the-usa-liberty-phone-phone-is-manufactured/

DOGE "saves" a million dollars by taking critical government archives off of best-in-class, durable tape archives and putting them on hard drives

https://www.404media.co/doge-gsa-magnetic-tape-archives-digital-storage/

Wikipedia Editors Call It: It’s the “2025 Stock Market Crash”

https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-editors-call-it-its-the-2025-stock-market-crash/

Petabytes of critical government research that is marked for possible deletion cannot be archived because of technical and legal restrictions, meaning it is very likely to be lost forever:

https://www.404media.co/nih-archives-repositories-marked-for-review-for-potential-modification/

Princeton economist and other leading economists tells me tariff policy is "astonishing for its stupidity" and will drive up the price of the Switch 2, everything else

https://www.404media.co/sea-of-idiocy-economists-say-trump-tariffs-will-raise-price-of-switch-2-and-everything-else/

T-Mobile shows users the names, pictures, and exact locations of random children

https://www.404media.co/t-mobile-shows-users-the-names-pictures-and-exact-locations-of-random-children/

You need to use Signal's nickname feature

Encryption can’t protect you from adding the wrong person to a group chat. But there is also a setting to make sure you don’t.

https://www.404media.co/you-need-to-use-signals-nickname-feature/

How three alleged Tesla vandals got caught

Automatic license plate readers, Instagram captions, and fingerprints.

https://www.404media.co/how-three-alleged-tesla-vandals-got-caught/

AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality

https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

@index Between this and things like Surf from Flipboard, we're really excited re: the future of longer form written content and unified ActivityPub feeds!

@index So far the bugs are pretty interesting. It's not picking up every article, not every ActivityPub client is picking everything up, and it's not picking up our profile image. But the beta just launched yesterday.

The feature we're most excited for is Notes, which is going to let us post social-first posts that will hopefully eventually be able to show up directly on our website. So we can do a mix of our normal articles and shorter things that don't rise to level of "article"

We are testing Ghost's ActivityPub beta integration for 404 Media! We're really excited about the future of the decentralized internet, we're stoked that Ghost is leading the way, and we're proud to be one of its first adopters.

You can follow us @index

Right now things seem pretty buggy but it's obviously very early. Looking forward to messing around with it and making the product better. Eventually as it gets better that will probably become our main account but for now we'll crosspost

Generative AI is enabling a brute force attack against the algorithms that control reality. AI slop is taking over every algorithmically controlled social media platform and search platform, and the tech platforms are helping:

https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

A French University has so much interest from American scientists trying to flee the country that it is now asking other European universities to begin taking them into "scientific exile"

https://www.404media.co/nasa-yale-and-stanford-scientists-consider-scientific-exile-french-university-says/