404 Media

2025-08-06 20:35:58

ICE Is Buying Mobile Iris Scanning Tech for Its Deportation Arm

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is looking to buy iris scanning technology that its manufacturer says can identify known persons “in seconds from virtually anywhere,” according to newly published procurement documents.

Originally designed to be used by sheriff departments to identify inmates or other known persons, ICE is now likely buying the technology specifically for its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) section, which focuses on deportations.

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ICE Is Buying Mobile Iris Scanning Tech for Its Deportation Arm

MORIS and I.R.I.S. was designed for Sheriff's Offices to identify known persons with their iris. Now ICE says it plans to buy the tech.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2025-08-06 20:05:59

Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity

Donald Trump’s media company is teaming up with Perplexity to bring AI search to Truth Social, the President’s X.com alternative.

Truth announced the endeavor in a press release on Wednesday. Anyone using the browser version of Truth can now use Perplexity to search the web. “We’re proud to partner with Perplexity to launch our public Beta testing of Truth Social AI, which will make Truth Social an even more vital element in the Patriot Economy,” Devin Nunes, Trump Media's CEO and Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, said in the press release.
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“We’re excited to partner with Truth Social to bring powerful AI to an audience with important questions. Curiosity is the engine of change, and Perplexity’s AI is developed to empower curiosity by delivering direct, reliable answers with transparent citations that allow anyone to dig deeper,” Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko said in the press release.

According to the announcement, “the mission of Trump Media is to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back.” Which is a funny thing to put in an announcement about Trump partnering with a company whose investors include Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and the former CEO of GitHub.

Perplexity’s Truth Social search engine will be powered by stolen content. Earlier this week, Cloudflare reported Perplexity used stealth and undeclared crawlers to evade websites that explicitly set themselves up to avoid being catalogued by LLMs. Perplexity has a long history of using scrapers that ignore the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Perplexity started as a demo that scraped Twitter with fake academic accounts backed by AI-generated research proposals.

Forbes, the New York Times, New York Post, and the Dow Jones have all accused Perplexity of plagiarism. News Corp‘s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post sued Perplexity in 2024 for copyright infringement, claiming in the federal lawsuit that Perplexity is “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.” In 2024, WIRED reported on the accusations of Perplexity’s plagiarism and Perplexity almost immediately plagiarized the story. When New York Times tech workers went on strike last year, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas offered to help the Times keep the paper going.

Big Tech has aligned itself with the Trump administration since before the election, seeing an alliance of opportunity for deregulation of AI in particular.

But is the Perplexity-powered AI aggregation machine “woke?” I asked a few questions to find out. I wanted to know: Is Trump in the Epstein files?“There is no evidence in the recently reviewed and released government ‘Epstein Files’ of a ‘client list” or documentation placing Donald Trump as implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's criminal actions,” it said. “While Trump’s name, like many other prominent individuals, appears in public records of Epstein’s social and business contacts (such as guest lists or flight logs, widely reported over the years), there is no mention in current official documents or filings that directly implicates Trump as a criminal participant in Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.”

How does Truth Social’s search engine think the American economy is doing?

“The American economy is currently facing significant headwinds, with signs of slowdown—most notably by a contraction in GDP, rising inflation, and softening labor market conditions—though some leaders still emphasize areas of resilience,” Truth Search AI said.

Are the tariffs to blame?“Recent tariff increases in the United States have generally had a negative effect on economic growth and employment, raising costs for businesses and consumers while providing only limited benefits to some manufacturing sectors,” Truth Search AI said.

Damn. It’s woke as hell.

Big Tech Backed Trump for Acceleration. They Got a Decel President Instead

Effective accelerationists didn’t just accidentally shoot themselves in the foot. They methodically blew off each of their toes with a .50 caliber sniper rifle.

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}

404 Media

2025-08-06 15:04:26

Constitution Sections on Due Process and Foreign Gifts Just Vanished from Congress' Website

Congress’ website for the U.S. Constitution was changed to delete the last two sections of Article I, which include provisions such as habeas corpus, forbidding the naming of titles of nobility, and forbidding foreign emoluments for U.S. officials.

The last full version of the webpage, archived by the Internet Archive on July 17, still included the now-deleted sections. Parts of Section 8 of Article I, as well as all of Sections 9 and 10 of Article I are now gone from the live site. The deletions, as of August 6, are also archived here. The change was spotted by users on Lemmy, an open-source aggregation platform and forum.

This webpage, maintained by the U.S. government, hasn’t changed significantly in the entire time it’s been saved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine—since 2019. The page for the Constitution on the National Archives website remains unchanged, and shows the entire document.

The removed portion begins halfway through Section 8. It includes:

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section 9

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

As people in the Lemmy forum conversation note, this could be a glitch, or some kind of error with the site. But considering the page doesn’t include many dynamic elements, and is mainly a text reprinting of the Constitution, a nearly 240-year-old document that hasn’t changed since the addition of the 27th Amendment in 1992—and that the page itself has barely changed at all in the six years it’s been archived—it’s a noteworthy and sudden move.

The Trump administration does not have any control over Congressional websites, but the sudden disappearance of important parts of the Constitution is happening in the context of a broader government war on information.

Since the Trump administration took office, official federal government websites with public information have come under attack, being taken offline entirely or altered to reflect this administration’s values. This has included critical information promoting vaccines, HIV care, reproductive health options including abortion, and trans and gender confirmation healthcare being purged from the CDC’s live website, thousands of datasets disappearing from Data.gov, and the scrubbing of various documents, employee handbooks, Slack bots, and job listings across government agencies. Some deleted pages across the government were restored following a court order, but the administration then added a note rejecting “gender ideology” to some of them.

Habeas corpus, which is among the now-deleted provisions on the Constitution webpage, allows people to challenge their imprisonment before a judge. In May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said before a congressional committee that Trump can remove the Constitutional provision of habeas corpus, calling it “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights.” Trump has said he’s considering suspending habeas corpus for people detained by ICE.

“That’s incorrect,” Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan replied to Noem, calling habeas corpus “the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”

Trump Admin Adds Note Rejecting ‘Gender Ideology’ on Sites Court Ordered Them to Restore

FDA and HHS sites now note that “The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children.”

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}

404 Media

2025-08-06 15:01:07

Million-Year-Old Evidence of Epic Journey Near ‘Hobbit’ Island Discovered by Scientists

Scientists have discovered million-year-old artifacts made by a mysterious group of early humans on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, according to a breakthrough study published on Wednesday in Nature.

The extraordinary find pushes the archaeological record of Sulawesi back by about 800,000 years, and confirms that hominins, the broader family to which humans belong, crossed treacherous ocean passages to reach the island, where they crafted simple tools.

The tool-makers may have been related to a group of archaic humans—nicknamed “hobbits” for their short stature—that lived on nearby Flores Island. But while the hobbits left behind skeletal remains, no fossils from the Sulawesi group have been unearthed. The tools, found at a site called Calio in South Sulawesi, are the only record of their existence for now.

“The discovery of these ancient stone tools at Calio is another important piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the movements of early hominins from the edge of the Asian landmass into the isolated zone of islands known as Wallacea,” said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University and a co-author of the new study, in an email.

“A major question remaining is the identity of the archaic humans of Sulawesi,” he added, noting that they might be Homo erectus, or descendents of this influential early human species that migrated from Africa to Asia. ”But until we have their fossils, who they were will remain a mystery.”
Stone tools dated to over 1.04 million-years-old, scale bars are 10mm. Image: M W Moore
The discovery was made by Budianto “Budi” Hakim, an Indonesian archaeologist who has spent decades searching for traces of archaic humans in Sulawesi. Hakim spotted one of the artifacts while scouring the region’s sandstone outcrops, prompting an excavation that unearthed a total of seven flaked tools crafted from chert rock. The remains of extinct elephants and pigs were also found in the sedimentary layers at the site, hinting at an ancient origin.

The team used two independent methods to date the tools, both of which placed their age at a minimum of 1.04 million years old, making the artifacts the earliest evidence for hominin occupation of Sulawesi by far.

“Budi has been searching for this evidence for much of his life, so it is very exciting indeed,” said Brumm. “But it is not so surprising that we now have evidence for hominins on Sulawesi by one million years ago; we have long suspected that there had been a very deep history of human occupation of this island based on the discovery (in 2010) of stone tools on Flores to the south that date to at least a million years ago. Sulawesi was probably where the first hominins to set foot on Flores actually came from, so it made sense to us that the human presence on Sulawesi would go back at least as far as a million years, if not considerably earlier.”

“And personally, it did not surprise me that Budi unearthed this new find,” he continued. “He is a renowned figure in Indonesian archaeology and undoubtedly has the ‘golden touch.’”

The tools are sharp-edged flakes that were probably cut from larger rocks obtained from a nearby river channel. Like many tools made by hominins across time and regions, they would have been useful for cutting and scraping materials, though their exact purpose is unknown.
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The tools “can’t tell us very much about the behaviour or cognitive capacities of these early humans, other than that they were tool-makers who clearly understood how to choose stones with suitable properties and to fracture them in a controlled way to produce a supply of usable tools,” explained Brumm. “Over the past 2.5 million years, many different hominin species (including our own, Homo sapiens) have made stone tools that are essentially indistinguishable from the Sulawesi tools.”

In addition to their mysterious identity, it is unclear how these early humans crossed ocean waters to reach these island shores, given that the shortest distance between the Asian mainland and Sulawesi would have been 30 miles, at minimum.

“This is too far to swim (in any case the ocean currents are too strong),” Brumm explained. “It is also very unlikely these archaic hominins had the cognitive ability to develop watercraft that were capable of making sea voyages, or indeed of the advanced planning required to gather resources and set sail over the horizon to an unseen land.”

“Most likely, they crossed to Sulawesi from the Asian mainland in the same way rodents and monkeys are suspected to have done; that is, by accident, perhaps as castaways on natural ‘rafts’ of floating vegetation,” he concluded.

It’s incredible to imagine these early humans getting caught up in tides or currents, perhaps stranded at sea for days, only to serendipitously wash up on a vast island that would become home to untold generations. Hakim, Brumm, and their colleagues hope to find more evidence of this long-lost population in the coming years, but for now, the stone tools offer a rare window into the lives of these accidental seafarers and their descendants.

Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene - Nature

Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.

^Nature