this is so so so wild, must read:
404 Media
Super Nintendo Hardware Is Running Faster as It Ages
Why is this speedrunner putting his Super Nintendo in the freezer? Science.
Pokemon Go sale to a Saudi Arabian company owned by govt comes with six separate corporate announcement blogs, not one of them directly addressing what happens to 100 million people's location data, AR mapping capabilities, or the AI maps they have been training:
404 Media
Saudi Arabia Buys PokΓ©mon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data
A company owned by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund just bought the most popular AR video game of all time.
very dumb question but does anyone know why 404 media links arent expanding on Mastodon anymore? Worked for a very long time, and still works on other social media platforms:
404 Media
Facebook Cybertruck Owners Group Copes With Relentless Mockery
A Facebook group for Cybertruck owners is full of videos of people flicking off Cybertrucks.
Scoop: The databases powering doge. gov are insecure, and people outside the government have already pushed their own updates to the site to prove it:
404 Media
Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website
"THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN."
A "True Crime" documentary YouTuber racked up millions and millions of views with fully AI-generated murders that did not happen
404 Media
A β€˜True Crime’ Documentary Series Has Millions of Views. The Murders Are All AI-Generated
The creator of a viral "true crime" series where the murders were all invented by AI explains how he did it.
Wikipedia is rolling out anonymity features piloted in countries with authoritarian governments in the US & is making a change to not show editor IP addresses in response to a global "increase in threats" from Elon Musk, Heritage Foundation, and governments
404 Media
Wikipedia Prepares for 'Increase in Threats' to US Editors From Musk and His Allies
The Wikimedia Foundation says it will likely roll out features previously used to protect editors in authoritarian countries more widely.
Just spoke very briefly to National Archivist Colleen Shogan, who confirmed she was fired by Trump a few minutes ago:
404 Media
Trump Fires National Archives Director Colleen Shogan
β€œThis evening, President Trump fired me. No cause or reason was cited."
senator proposes bill that would criminalize downloading open source AI from China
404 Media
Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time for People Who Download DeepSeek
According to the language of the proposed bill, people who download AI models from China could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, ...
New: Github reveals some of the code and banal back-and-forth discussion used to clean a federal database of "forbidden words" in a dataset that tracks spending effectiveness for Headstart, which affects "America's most vulnerable young children":
404 Media
β€˜Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases
A project called "Remove-DEI" shows the tweaks used to remove "forbidden words" from a database about childhood school readiness.
"Everything I say leaks," Zuckerberg says in leaked meeting audio. "It sucks"
404 Media
'Everything I Say Leaks,' Zuckerberg Says in Leaked Meeting Audio
"There are a bunch of things that I think are value-destroying for me to talk about, so I’m not going to talk about those."