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

The U.S. government has charged Samuel Tunick with allegedly typing in a passcode to wipe his phone before officers could search it. “I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people,” he said.

https://www.404media.co/the-government-hopes-to-set-a-precedent-an-interview-with-the-man-charged-for-allegedly-wiping-his-grapheneos-phone/

Scientists have predicted that human linguistic diversity flourished between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago, before declining with the rise of multinational states and colonial expansion.

https://www.404media.co/scientists-uncover-lost-golden-age-of-languages-that-ended-1-000-years-ago/

A new procurement record says ICE wants access to personal data, including names, Social Security numbers, and ethnicity, to investigate in part what the agency calls “voters fraud.”

https://www.404media.co/ice-to-pay-thomson-reuters-125-million-to-find-voter-fraud/

“Creators deserve credit, compensation, and consent. If that's not on the table, the crawlers can stay the fuck off Patreon," CEO Jack Conte wrote on Thursday.

https://www.404media.co/patreon-cloudflare-partnership-ai-crawlers/

Sources and leaks from Amazon, Adobe, Atlassian, Citi, and more show what is really happening with AI right now: companies are trying to reign in AI use as costs spiral out of control.

https://www.404media.co/companies-are-throttling-employees-ai-use-because-its-too-expensive/

Researchers discovered that people found AI impersonators to be more authentic, coherent, and relevant than the real politicians, raising alarm bells around the potential for public deception.

https://www.404media.co/untitled-28/

We spoke to Darren Blanchard, the man arrested while speaking out against data centers at a community meeting. He's sharing the bodycam footage of his arrest for the first time with 404 Media.

https://www.404media.co/bodycam-footage-video-claremore-oklahoma-data-center-meeting/

“Whether it is rising utility bills, unsustainable demands on our water, nonsensical tax incentives or the loss of farmland and rural ways of life, people are asking a very basic question: who is this ultimately serving?”
https://www.404media.co/bodycam-footage-video-claremore-oklahoma-data-center-meeting/

Hackers stole more than 45GB of data from Madison Square Garden, including data related to “talent” and the Knicks. Clues in the data point to how the hackers got in.

https://www.404media.co/how-hackers-broke-into-madison-square-garden/

Joseph speaks to Jake Hanrahan all about Patreon, YouTube, and getting journalism in front of people.

https://www.404media.co/stopping-tech-company-censorship-with-jake-hanrahan/

In 1999, a farmer gave away 87 acres of land to a small Texas city to use as a park. The city sold to a data center developer for $10 million.
https://www.404media.co/a-farmer-donated-land-to-turn-into-a-park-the-city-is-building-a-massive-data-center-instead/

"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."

https://www.404media.co/it-is-trivially-easy-to-use-reddit-to-manipulate-ai-search-research-suggests/

A massive whale graveyard in the Indian Ocean contains the remains of hundreds of extinct whales dating back more than five million years, along with recent carcasses that support hotspots of seafloor life.

https://www.404media.co/scientists-discover-vast-ancient-necropolis-teeming-with-strange-new-creatures/

Three Amazon data centers are still under construction, but local residents are already paying at least $10.60 extra per month for them, according to a new study.

https://www.404media.co/amazon-data-centers-in-mississippi-have-already-raised-electricity-rates-for-local-customers-report-suggests/

There have been more than a dozen cases around the country where police use Flock to obsessively and illegally stalk people.

https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using-flock-to-stalk-people/

The FCC wants to legally force telecoms to collect new and renewing customers' government issued identity number and physical address, impacting everyone from the privacy-conscious to domestic abuse survivors. “We never thought that would happen here.”

https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/

A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, “no-tech” tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers? Now, demand is booming. https://www.404media.co/demand-is-booming-for-ursa-ag-new-no-tech-repairable-tractor/

Google’s CEO says 75% of the company’s code is AI-generated. The people who write that code are making memes about how bad it is.
https://www.404media.co/google-employees-internally-share-memes-about-how-its-ai-sucks/

Cities around the country have been reconsidering their relationship with Flock after reporting from 404 Media and local news outlets that showed data from the cameras was making its way to ICE. https://www.404media.co/cities-are-covering-flock-cameras-with-trash-bags/

A random sequence in an innocuous GPS message field is likely encrypted traffic from the U.S. military's system for remotely updating cryptographic keys around the world.

https://www.404media.co/the-u-s-military-quietly-turned-gps-into-a-global-numbers-station-evidence-suggests/