Google's AI summaries are - killing traffic to legitimate sites - producing summaries that can be wrong - in the long run probably making you a dumbass

404 Media

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and cr...

The 404 Media Podcast is up! This week: - Spotify publishing AI-generated tracks of dead artists without permission - company selling data from hacked computers to debt collectors - subscribers: the Astronomer CEO incident and the surveillance dystopia we live in

404 Media

Podcast: Spotify Is Publishing AI Tracks of Dead Artists

Spotify is publishing AI-generated tracks of dead artists; a company is selling hacked data to debt collectors; and the Astronomer CEO episode show...

Five hours at the Tesla Diner to see why people were there.

404 Media

'It's Not a Political Statement': Checking in With Tesla Superfans at Elon Musk's New Diner

The Tesla Diner has two gigantic screens, a robot that serves popcorn, and owners hope it will be free from people who don't like Tesla.

New: a hacker compromised a version of Amazon's Q AI agent, added commands to 'wipe' computers, then Amazon released it. Unclear if wipe effective; hacker did it to prove point. “Ruthless corporations leave no room for vigilance among their over-worked developers.”

404 Media

Hacker Plants Computer 'Wiping' Commands in Amazon's AI Coding Agent

The wiping commands probably wouldn't have worked, but a hacker who says they wanted to expose Amazon’s AI “security theater” was able to add...

New: in internal memo we obtained, the military says it will 'continuously' monitor bathrooms to comply with the anti-trans order. Also ordered a stop on "questionable content" at Stars and Stripes, the military's editorially independent newspaper.

404 Media

Military Says It Will ‘Continuously’ Monitor Bathrooms to Comply With Anti-Trans Order

An internal memo obtained by 404 Media also shows the military ordered a review hold on "questionable content" at Stars and Stripes, the military's...

Los Angeles: we are having a live 404 Media event *next week* - free beer/wine - in a cool DIY space - live podcast on the tech that powers ICE (w/ guests potentially) - Q&A and party to follow FREE for 404 Media subscribers; $10 every one else July 30, 6PM Sign up here: bit.ly/404ripspace

We just translated a wave of our ICE coverage into Spanish. No paywall, no email signup necessary. From leaks about Palantir's work with ICE to ICE's new facial recognition app, we think there is a massive public interest in this info. Read why and support us here:

404 Media

We're Publishing Our ICE Reporting In Spanish

From ICE's facial recognition app to its Palantir contract, we've translated a spread of our ICE articles into Spanish and made them freely available.

New from 404 Media: Spotify is publishing AI-generated songs on the official pages of real artists. One problem: those artists died years ago. "One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so."

404 Media

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

"They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to d...

New from 404 Media: a startup is selling data hacked from peoples' computers to debt collectors, divorce lawyers, more. People already hacked, now being re-vicitmized by startup. I used the tool, found peoples' personal addresses. “This is so gross and predatory.”

404 Media

A Startup is Selling Data Hacked from Peoples’ Computers to Debt Collectors

Infostealer data can include passwords, email and billing addresses, and the embarrassing websites you use. Farnsworth Intelligence is selling to d...

I wrote about handling the hacked ICE deportation flight manifests, how we revealed the unknown people on the 3 legally contested deportation flights to El Salvador, and why journalists should not indiscriminately dump data. Most complicated hacking story we've done

404 Media

Behind the Blog: High Stakes Data Dumps

This week, we discuss data dumps, high stakes, and lizard brain screen time.