Study Finds A Third of New Websites Are AI-Generated
Researchers analyzing Internet Archive data found that roughly 35% of websites launched between August 2022 and May 2025 were AI‑generated or AI‑assisted, up from virtually none before ChatGPT’s debut. Using the Pangram v3 detection tool, the team examined semantic diversity, sentiment and factual accuracy across millions of archived pages. Their results show AI content makes the web more upbeat and less semantically dense, but it does not increase verifiable misinformation. The authors plan to turn the study into an ongoing monitoring system to track AI’s evolving impact on the digital landscape.
Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
A former Trenchant employee covertly sold government‑grade zero‑day exploits to a Russian firm, which subsequently passed the tools to the Russian state and possibly Chinese criminal networks. The leak, detailed by TechCrunch journalist Lorenzo Franceschi‑Bicchierai on the 404 Media podcast,...
Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious
Google DeepMind senior staff scientist Alexander Lerchner released a paper arguing that large language models and any computational system can never achieve consciousness, coining the “abstraction fallacy.” The work directly challenges DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis’s claims that artificial general intelligence...
Behind the Blog: Waiting in the Apple Store
The Verge’s editorial team released a behind‑the‑scenes podcast after wrapping their regular show, using the surprise announcement that Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s CEO as the centerpiece. The unscripted episode also covered recent Meta layoffs and a widely...
Community Votes to Deny Water to Nuclear Weapons Data Center
Ypsilanti Township’s Board of Trustees voted to impose a 365‑day moratorium on water service to a proposed $1.2 billion, 220,000‑sq‑ft hyperscale data center slated for Hydro Park. The facility, partnered with the University of Michigan, would support Los Alamos National Laboratory’s...
Startups Brag They Spend More Money on AI Than Human Employees
Startup CEOs are flaunting AI compute bills that eclipse traditional payroll, with Swan AI reporting a $113,000 monthly spend on Claude tokens for a four‑person team. This "tokenmaxxing" mindset treats AI spend as a proxy for headcount, aiming for sub‑10‑person...
This AI Tool Rips Off Open Source Software Without Violating Copyright
Malus.sh, a for‑profit LLC, offers an AI‑driven service that ingests any open‑source project and returns a functionally identical codebase stripped of its original license obligations. By employing two separate AI agents—one to generate specifications and another to write code—the tool...
Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children
Forbes rolled out ForbesPredict in January 2026, a token‑based prediction platform built with Axiom to keep readers on its site longer. The tool embeds interactive boxes in articles, letting users wager non‑cash tokens on outcomes such as whether Congress will...
FAA Scraps Civil and Criminal Penalties for Flying Drones Near ICE Vehicles
The Federal Aviation Administration withdrew a temporary flight restriction that had banned drones within 3,000 feet of ICE vehicles and threatened civil or criminal penalties. The revised advisory softens the language, removes the penalty threat, and expands the list of...
The Destroyed Remnants of a Lost World Are Falling to Earth, Scientists Discover
A new study provides the first definitive evidence that angrites originated from a large, now‑destroyed protoplanet. Using a novel geobarometer on the primitive meteorite NWA 12,774, researchers estimate the angrite parent body’s radius at least 620 miles (≈1,000 km), comparable to Pluto or...
Behind the Blog: Jazz and Journalism
In its Behind the Blog column, 404 Media reflects on recent pieces, highlighting the "Madonna‑whore" algorithm discussion, reader tips, and a deep dive into jazz. The author also revisits a long‑form investigation into the wedding‑planning social‑media ecosystem, noting audience reactions...
Thomson Reuters Shareholders Demand Investigation Into ICE Contracts
Shareholders, led by the B.C. General Employees’ Union, have filed a proposal urging Thomson Reuters’ board to commission an independent human‑rights impact assessment of its CLEAR investigative database. The proposal highlights evidence that ICE integrates CLEAR data—names, addresses, Social Security...
Ukraine Says Russians Are Surrendering to Robots
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted a breakthrough where an enemy position was seized entirely by unmanned ground vehicles and drones, marking what he called the first such victory in the war. The operation, likely the December assault north of Kharkiv...
Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit
An independent audit by webXray examined traffic on more than 7,000 California websites and found that Google, Microsoft and Meta routinely set advertising cookies even when users sent a Global Privacy Control (GPC) opt‑out signal. Google ignored the signal on...
WebinarTV Secretly Scraped Zoom Meetings of Anonymous Recovery Programs
WebinarTV, a platform that indexes Zoom webinars, has secretly scraped and posted more than 200,000 Zoom sessions, including confidential addiction recovery, health‑support, and even nudist gatherings. The recordings expose participants' full names and faces, violating the expectation of privacy that...
FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database
The FBI recovered deleted Signal messages from a suspect’s iPhone by extracting the device’s push‑notification database, which stored copies of incoming messages even after the app was removed. The evidence was used in a trial concerning a July incident at...
A 'Self-Doxing' Rave Helps Trans People Stay Safe Online
On Trans Day of Visibility, activists hosted a digital self‑defense workshop called “404: Deadname Not Found” in Queens, teaching trans participants how to locate and erase personal data from the open web. Attendees used tools such as IntelBase, PimEyes and...
I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do
Bungie's new extraction shooter Marathon has sold roughly 1.2 million copies and now averages 20,000‑30,000 concurrent players on Steam. The title’s modest live‑service numbers contrast sharply with Sony’s $3.7 billion acquisition of Bungie and its desire for Fortnite‑scale revenue. Compared with failed...
Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates
Microsoft abruptly terminated the account VeraCrypt’s developer, Mounir Idrassi, used to sign Windows drivers and bootloaders, leaving the project unable to publish Windows updates. Idrassi received only a generic verification‑failure notice and no prior warning, despite the account being active...
Maine Is Close to Passing a Moratorium on New Datacenters
Maine’s Senate approved LD 307, imposing a moratorium on new data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November 1, 2027. The bill also creates a Data Center Coordination Council to oversee environmental and electricity impacts. The move follows secretive deals in Lewiston...
Multiple Hackers Warned Anti-Porn App Quittr About Security Issue for Months
Quittr, a self‑help app aimed at reducing pornography consumption, faced a serious security flaw in its Firebase backend that allowed unrestricted read/write access to user data. Independent researchers warned the company about the misconfiguration as early as September 2025, but...
Wisconsinites Can Keep Watching Porn After Governor Vetoes Age Verification Bill
Governor Tony Evers vetoed Wisconsin Assembly Bill 105, which would have required age verification for porn and other adult‑content sites. The governor cited privacy intrusion, data‑security risks, and First Amendment concerns. The veto leaves Wisconsin among the few states without...
Journalist Sues FAA Over Drone No Fly Zone Designed to Prevent Filming ICE
Minnesota photojournalist Rob Levine and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have filed a lawsuit against the FAA over a temporary flight restriction that bars drones within 3,000 feet of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities and mobile...
A Secure Chat App’s Encryption Is So Bad It Is ‘Meaningless’
TeleGuard, a messaging app boasting over one million downloads, claims end‑to‑end encryption but stores users' private keys on its servers. Security researchers discovered that the keys can be accessed trivially, allowing anyone to decrypt messages. The flaw also enables attackers...
Scientists Create Plant That Produces Ayahuasca, Shrooms, and Toad Psychedelics All At Once
Scientists have genetically modified tobacco plants to biosynthesize five distinct psychedelic compounds typically sourced from psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca vines, and the Sonoran Desert toad. The engineered pathway, detailed in a Science Advances paper, yields measurable amounts of psilocybin, DMT, 5‑MeO‑DMT...
Paul McCartney Banned From Reddit After Promoting Himself in Paul McCartney Subreddit
Sir Paul McCartney’s Reddit account was permanently banned after he posted concert photos from a Fonda Theatre show using a Dropbox link. The ban was applied site‑wide by Reddit administrators, not by the r/PaulMcCartney moderators, who clarified they lack authority...
How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir
Thomson Reuters, a global information provider, is supplying its CLEAR data‑broker service to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The data—names, addresses, vehicle registrations, Social Security numbers and ethnicity markers—appears to be feeding ICE’s targeting tools and may be integrated...