404 Media

2025-10-03 02:19:17

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

The developer of ICEBlock, an app that lets people crowdsource sightings of ICE officials, has said he is determined to fight back after Apple removed the app from its App Store on Thursday. The removal came after pressure from Department of Justice officials acting at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to Fox which first reported the removal. Apple told 404 Media it has removed other similar apps too.

“I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” Joshua Aaron told 404 Media. “ICEBlock is no different from crowd sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple's own Maps app, implements as part of its core services. This is protected speech under the first amendment of the United States Constitution.”

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Do you know anything else about this removal? Do you work at Apple or ICE? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

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ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” the developer said.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2025-10-02 14:42:04

Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why

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It’s not the vibes; Earth is literally getting darker. Scientists have discovered that our planet has been reflecting less light in both hemispheres, with a more pronounced darkening in the Northern hemisphere, according to a study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new trend upends longstanding symmetry in the surface albedo, or reflectivity, of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In other words, clouds circulate in a way that equalizes hemispheric differences, such as the uneven distribution of land, so that the albedos roughly match—though nobody knows why.

“There are all kinds of things that people have noticed in observations and simulations that tend to suggest that you have this hemispheric symmetry as a kind of fundamental property of the climate system, but nobody's really come up with a theoretical framework or explanation for it,” said Norman Loeb, a physical scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, who led the new study. “It's always been something that we've observed, but we haven't really explained it fully.”

To study this mystery, Loeb and his colleagues analyzed 24 years of observations captured since 2000 by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), a network of instruments placed on several NOAA and NASA satellites. Instead of an explanation for the strange symmetry, the results revealed an emerging asymmetry in hemispheric albedo; though both hemispheres are darkening, the Northern hemisphere shows more pronounced changes which challenges “the hypothesis that hemispheric symmetry in albedo is a fundamental property of Earth,” according to the study.

Loeb and his colleagues suggest that asymmetry is primarily driven by the effects of climate change, reductions in aerosol pollution, and natural disasters like volcanic eruptions and wildfires. Since snow and ice are highly reflective, the thinking goes, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets due to anthropogenic gas emissions is causing a reduction in albedo, especially in the Northern hemisphere.

Meanwhile, aerosols—which stimulate the formation of clouds—are causing uneven regional albedo changes. For example, the international effort to remove harmful commercial aerosols from the atmosphere has resulted in a drop in these substances over the Northern hemisphere, and therefore cloud cover, exacerbating the darkening effect. In the Southern hemisphere, aerosol-heavy clouds generated just over the past few years by disasters like the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires and the 2021 to 2022 Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption may have brightened the albedo relative to the Northern hemisphere.

“The amount of aerosols has been increasing in the Southern hemisphere, and they've been decreasing in the Northern hemisphere,” explained Loeb. “Since aerosols reflect solar radiation, that would give you this asymmetry where you're seeing darkening in the Northern hemisphere compared to the southern Hemisphere.”

“All of these pieces added together give you this trend,” he continued. “But what was mysterious to me was that the clouds weren't compensating. If this hemispheric symmetry is a fundamental property of the system, the clouds should be giving you more reflection in the Northern hemisphere to compensate for the non-cloud properties. And I don’t see that—at least, not yet.”

Loeb’s team was able to spot this trend thanks to the long-term observations collected by CERES, a program that dates back to the late 1990s. The program has monitored the evolution of albedo in high resolution over decades, enabling the scientists to spot the new divergence from the normal symmetry.

“CERES has really opened up a new avenue of research that we couldn't do before,” Loeb said. “We had some measurements of Earth's radiation budget, but we struggled to have the same level of quality of the data.”

“Right now it's wonderful because we have very precise measurements over 25 years from CERES,” he continued. “It’s a unique opportunity for us to study things like this symmetry in a new light.”

To that end, Loeb and his colleagues plan to continue monitoring the asymmetry with CERES and probing its possible causes with more sophisticated climate models. The researchers are watching for signs that the symmetry might reemerge in the future, or if asymmetry is perhaps the new normal.

The overall darkening of Earth’s albedo is already accelerating the effects of climate change, and an asymmetric hemispheric darkening could produce its own complex impacts, including disruptive shifts in precipitation.

It’s very difficult to tease out the individual components that merge to create such complicated dynamics (Loeb calls it “unscrambling the egg”). To make matters worse, NASA is facing major cuts from the Trump administration, especially to its Earth observation satellites. CERES is due for one more launch in 2027, but these instruments are getting “long in the tooth,” Loeb said, and another program will eventually have to take up the mantle. Until then, researchers across disciplines will puzzle over why Earth is anomalously darkening, and what it might mean if this asymmetry is here to stay.

“We'll keep measuring and keep studying it, and I think this study should open the avenue for others to look at it,” Loeb concluded.

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2025-10-02 14:24:41

Red Hat Investigating Breach Impacting as Many as 28,000 Customers, Including the Navy and Congress

A hacking group claims to have pulled data from a GitLab instance connected to Red Hat’s consulting business, scooping up 570 GB of compressed data from 28,000 customers.

The hack was first reported by BleepingComputer and has been confirmed by Red Hat itself. “Red Hat is aware of reports regarding a security incident related to our consulting business and we have initiated necessary remediation steps,” Stephanie Wonderlick, Red Hat’s VP of communications told 404 Media.

A file released by the hackers and viewed by 404 Media suggested that the hacking group may have acquired some data related to about 800 clients, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, the US Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center, the Federal Aviation Administration, Bank of America, AT&T, the U.S. House of Representatives, and Walmart.

“The security and integrity of our systems and the data entrusted to us are our highest priority,” she said. “At this time, we have no reason to believe the security issue impacts any of our other Red Hat services or products and are highly confident in the integrity of our software supply chain.”
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Red Hat is an open source software company that provides Linux-based enterprise software to a vast number of companies. As part of its business, Red Hat sells consulting contracts to users to help maintain their IT infrastructure. A hacking group that calls itself the Crimson Collective claims it breached a Red Hat GitLab repository that contained information related to Red Hat’s consulting clients.

“Since RedHat doesn't want to answer to us,” the hackers wrote in a channel on Telegram viewed by 404 Media, suggesting they have attempted to contact Red Hat. “Over 28000 repositories were exported, it includes all their customer's CERs [customer engagement reports] and analysis of their infra' [infrastructure] + their other dev's private repositories, this one will be fun,” the message added.. A CER is an internal document consultancy firms use to understand how its clients interact with their business. For an IT firm like Red Hat, this kind of document would contain a lot of information about a client's tech infrastructure including configuration data, network maps, and information about authentication tokens. A CER could help someone breach a network.

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Do you know anything else about this story? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at +1 347 762-9212 or send me an email at matthew@404media.co.

“We have given them too much time already to answer lol instead of just starting a discussion they kept ignoring the emails,” the message added.In another message, the group said it had “gained access to some of their clients' infrastructure as well, already warned them but yeah they preferred ignoring us.”

404 Media viewed data related to the breach and attempted to contact some of the affected clients, including the US Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City and T-Mobile, but did not hear back.

Joseph Cox contributed additional reporting to this article.

Correction: this piece has been updated to say that the breach impacted a Red Hat GitLab, not a GitHub.

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404 Media

2025-10-02 13:57:13

Government Shutdown Causes Even More Confusion for U.S. Visa Applicants

Amid the government shutdown, visa applicants are facing more confusion and are worried about potential delays, as some services essential to their application processes are “under maintenance” due to lapses in funding.

The Foreign Labor Application Gateway website, which employers use for labor certification and immigration applicants use to access documentation for their applications, is down due to the shutdown, with an “Under Maintenance” notice on the site in place of the portal.

The federal government shut down on Wednesday, as Republican legislators refuse to budge on their desired cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act healthcare subsidies. The last government shutdown was in 2018, also under President Donald Trump, and lasted 35 days.

“Due to a lapse in funding, all foreign labor certification activities administered by the Department’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) have been suspended,” the site currently says. “During this suspension, access to the Foreign Labor Application Gateway (FLAG), will be disabled and will not permit system users to prepare and submit new applications as well as submit any information associated with applications pending a final determination.”
Screenshot of flag.dol.gov as of Oct. 2
A notice on the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs site says consular operations domestically and abroad will remain operational, however, including passports, visas, and assisting American citizens abroad. Consular services, including US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), are almost entirely fee-funded and only a small part of their funding is reliant on congress. The American Immigration Council notes that for this reason, application interviews, naturalization ceremonies, biometrics processing, and other parts of the immigration system should continue as usual, and past reports have shown that only one percent of the USCIS would likely need to be furloughed during a shutdown, but that backlogs and increased immigration enforcement from the Trump administration could mean even that one percent could create more delays.

The Office of Foreign Labor Certification website shows a notice about a lapse in appropriations: “This website is currently not being updated due to the suspension of Federal government services,” the site says. “The last update to the site was 10/1/2025.  Updates to the site will start again when the Federal government resumes operations.”

An Australian applicant for an E3 visa — a specific type of temporary, non-immigrant work visa for Australian citizens — told 404 Media that not being able to access the FLAG website means she can’t access or download the Department of Labor-certified Labor Condition Application she needs for her visa appointment in two weeks.

“If the shutdown is lifted prior to my visa appointment, I’ll download the LCA and be on my way. If however the shutdown goes on past my appointment date, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said.

The immigration and visa application process, overhauled by the Trump administration since taking office, has already caused chaos and confusion for applicants. On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that adds a $100,000 fee for applicants to the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers. US-based workers visiting abroad during the announcement rushed to travel back to the US after Trump’s announcement left them only hours before Trump’s deadline at midnight on Sunday, while some employers, especially small startups, scrambled to pay the fees for their workers.
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H-1B visa: US tech sector scrambles in the face of $100,000 fees

Startups and smaller firms could bear the brunt of Trump's new H-1B visa fee, and some fear it could thwart US innovation.

^{Danielle Kaye (BBC News)}