This week, we discuss conversational AI, a behind the scenes of the zine, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Is This Headline 'Clickbait'?
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss conversational AI, a behind the scenes of the zine, and more.EMANUEL: I made the terrible mistake of looking at some Hacker News comments this week for my story about a developer whose Google accounts were banned after he uploaded training data to Google Drive. Unbeknownst to him, the training data contained CSAM.
As we’ve explained in previous stories, CSAM is a subject we dread covering not only because it’s one of the most awful things one could think about, but because it’s extremely difficult and legally risky. For understandable reasons, the laws around viewing, let alone possessing CSAM, are strict and punishing, which makes verification for reporting reasons challenging. For similar reasons, it’s something we need to write about very carefully, making sure we don’t wrongfully associate or whitewash someone when it comes to such horrible behavior.
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Dozens of government websites have fallen victim to a PDF-based SEO scam, while others have been hijacked to sell sex toys.#AI
Porn Is Being Injected Into Government Websites Via Malicious PDFs
Dozens of government and university websites belonging to cities, towns, and public agencies across the country are hosting PDFs promoting AI porn apps, porn sites, and cryptocurrency scams; dozens more have been hit with a website redirection attacks which lead to animal vagina sex toy ecommerce pages, penis enlargement treatments, automatically-downloading Windows program files, and porn.“Sex xxx video sexy Xvideo bf porn XXX xnxx Sex XXX porn XXX blue film Sex Video xxx sex videos Porn Hub XVideos XXX sexy bf videos blue film Videos Oficial on Instagram New Viral Video The latest original video has taken the internet by storm and left viewers in on various social media platforms ex Videos Hot Sex Video Hot Porn viral video,” reads the beginning of a three-page PDF uploaded to the website of the Irvington, New Jersey city government’s website.
The PDF, called “XnXX Video teachers fucking students Video porn Videos free XXX Hamster XnXX com” is unlike many of the other PDFs hosted on the city’s website, which include things like “2025-10-14 Council Minutes,” “Proposed Agenda 9-22-25,” and “Landlord Registration Form (1 & 2 unit dwelling).”
It is similar, however, to another PDF called “30 Best question here’s,” which looks like this:
Irvington, which is just west of Newark and has a population of 61,000 people, has fallen victim to an SEO spam attack that has afflicted local and state governments and universities around the United States.💡
Do you know anything else about whatever is going on here? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at jason.404. Otherwise, send me an email at jason@404media.co.
Researcher Brian Penny has identified dozens of government and university websites that hosted PDF guides for how to make AI porn, PDFs linking to porn videos, bizarre crypto spam, sex toys, and more.Reginfo.gov, a regulatory affairs compliance website under the federal government’s General Services Administration, is currently hosting a 12 page PDF called “Nudify AI Free, No Sign-Up Needed!,” which is an ad and link to an abusive AI app designed to remove a person’s clothes. The Kansas Attorney General’s office and the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District Office in California hosted PDFs called “DeepNude AI Best Deepnude AI APP 2025.” Penny found similar PDFs on the websites for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Washington Fire Commissioners Association, the Florida Department of Agriculture, the cities of Jackson, Mississippi and Massillon, Ohio, various universities throughout the country, and dozens of others. Penny has caught the attention of local news throughout the United States, who have reported on the problem.
The issue appears to be stemming from websites that allow people to upload their own PDFs, which then sit on these government websites. Because they are loaded with keywords for widely searched terms and exist on government and university sites with high search authority, Google and other search engines begin to surface them. In the last week or so, many (but not all) of the PDFs Penny has discovered have been deleted by local governments and universities.But cities seem like they are having more trouble cleaning up another attack, which is redirecting traffic from government URLs to porn, e-commerce, and spam sites. In an attack that seems similar to what we reported in June, various government websites are somehow being used to maliciously send traffic elsewhere. For example, the New York State Museum’s online exhibit for something called “The Family Room” now has at least 11 links to different types of “realistic” animal vagina pocket masturbators, which include “Zebra Animal Vagina Pussy Male Masturbation Cup — Pocket Realistic Silicone Penis Sex Toy ($27.99),” and “Must-have Horse Pussy Torso Buttocks Male Masturbator — Fantasy Realistic Animal Pussie Sex Doll.”
Links Penny found on Knoxville, Tennessee’s site for permitting inspections first go to a page that looks like a government site for hosting files then redirects to a page selling penis growth supplements that features erect penises (human penises, mercifully), blowjobs, men masturbating, and Dr. Oz’s face.Another Knoxville link I found, which purports to be a pirated version of the 2002 Vin Diesel film XXX simply downloaded a .exe file to my computer.
Penny believes that what he has found is basically the tip of the iceberg, because he is largely finding these by typing things like “nudify site:.gov” “xxx site:.gov” into Google and clicking around. Sometimes, malicious pages surface only on image searches or video searches: “Basically the craziest things you can think of will show up as long as you’re on image search,” Penny told 404 Media. “I’ll be doing this all week.”
The Nevada Department of Transportation told 404 Media that “This incident was not related to NDOT infrastructure or information systems, and the material was not hosted on NDOT servers.This unfortunate incident was a result of malicious use of a legitimate form created using the third-party platform on which NDOT’s website is hosted. NDOT expeditiously worked with our web hosting vendor to ensure the inappropriate content was removed.” It added that the third-party is Granicus, a massive government services company that provides website backend infrastructure for many cities and states around the country, as well as helps them stream and archive city council meetings, among other services. Several of the affected local governments use Granicus, but not all of them do; Granicus did not respond to two requests for comment from 404 Media.
The California Secretary of State’s Office told 404 Media: “A bad actor uploaded non-business documents to the bizfile Online system (a portal for business filings and information). The files were then used in external links allowing public access to only those uploaded files. No data was compromised. SOS staff took immediate action to remove the ability to use the system for non-SOS business purposes and are removing the unauthorized files from the system.” The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said “WDFW is aware of this issue and is actively working with our partners at WaTech to address it.” The other government agencies mentioned in this article did not respond to our requests for comment.
AI porn on state websites
Mainland whistleblower warns of malicious webpages being hosted on government websites nationwide, including in Hawaiʻi.Michael Brestovansky (Aloha State Daily)
Our new zine; a very strange change at Instagram; and the creator of ICEBlock is suing the U.S. government.#Podcast
Podcast: Zines Are Back
We start this week with news of our zine! We’re printing it very soon, and walk you through the process. Independent media is turning back to physical zines as a way to subvert algorithms. After the break, Emanuel tells us about some very weird Instagram changes. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains ICEBlock’s lawsuit against the U.S. government.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
youtube.com/embed/lseEXc-ZzsQ?…
Timestamps:
1:37 - 1st Story - 404 Media Is Making a Zine; buy the zine here.
23:35 - 2nd Story - Instagram Is Generating Inaccurate SEO Bait for Your Posts
36:09 - 3rd Story - ICEBlock Creator Sues U.S. Government Over App’s RemovalThe 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
The exact circumstances around the search are not known. But activist Samuel Tunick is charged with deleting data from a Google Pixel before CBP’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team could search it.#CBP #Privacy
Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It
A man in Atlanta has been arrested and charged for allegedly deleting data from a Google Pixel phone before a member of a secretive Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit was able to search it, according to court records and social media posts reviewed by 404 Media. The man, Samuel Tunick, is described as a local Atlanta activist in Instagram and other posts discussing the case.The exact circumstances around the search—such as why CBP wanted to search the phone in the first place—are not known. But it is uncommon to see someone charged specifically for wiping a phone, a feature that is easily accessible in some privacy and security-focused devices.
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Do you know anything else about this case? 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.This post is for subscribers only
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New videos and photos shared with 404 Media show a Border Patrol agent wearing Meta Ray-Bans glasses with the recording light clearly on. This is despite a DHS ban on officers recording with personal devices.#CBP #ICE #Meta
Border Patrol Agent Recorded Raid with Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses
On a recent immigration raid, a Border Patrol agent wore a pair of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, with the privacy light clearly on signaling he was recording the encounter, which agents are not permitted to do, according to photos and videos of the incident shared with 404 Media.Previously when 404 Media covered Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials’ use of Meta’s Ray-Bans, it wasn’t clear if the officials were using them to record raids because the recording lights were not on in any of the photos seen by 404 Media. In the new material from Charlotte, North Carolina, during the recent wave of immigration enforcement, the recording light is visibly illuminated.
That is significant because CBP says it does not allow employees to use personal recording devices. CBP told 404 Media it does not have an arrangement with Meta, indicating this official was wearing personally-sourced glasses.
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G. Gibson reshared this.
We are publishing a risograph-printed zine about the surveillance technologies used by ICE.#Announcements
404 Media Is Making a Zine
404 Media is making a print zine about the surveillance tactics used by ICE, and the ways people are resisting this technology. It will be 16 pages and printed on a risograph printer by a printshop in Los Angeles. It contains both reworked versions of our best reporting on ICE and some new articles for the zine. It will be available at the beginning of January.I have been somewhat obsessed with making a print product for the last year or so, and we’re really excited to try this experiment. If it goes well, we hope to make more of our journalism available in print. We are doing this in part because we were invited to help throw a benefit concert by our friends at heaven2nite in Los Angeles on January 4, with the proceeds going to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), an LA-based nonprofit providing support to Dreamers, immigrant families, and low-wage workers in California. We are going to be giving away copies of the zine at that concert and are selling copies on our Shopify page to ship in early January.
Presale: ICE Surveillance Zine
**THIS WILL SHIP IN EARLY JANUARY** We are making a print zine about the surveillance tactics used by ICE, and the ways people are resisting this technology. It is 16 pages and printed on a risograph printer by Punch Kiss Press in Los Angeles. It contains both reworked versions of our best reporting on ICE and some new404 Media404 Media
Why are we doing this? Well, zines are cool, and print media is cool. We have joked about wanting to print out our blogs and hand them out door-to-door or staple them to lamp posts. Handing out zines at a concert or sending them to you in the mail will get the job done, too.We have spent the last two-and-a-half years trying to build something more sustainable and more human in a world and on an internet that feels more automated and more artificial than ever. We have shown that it’s possible for a small team of dedicated reporters to do impactful, groundbreaking accountability journalism on the companies and powers that are pushing us to a more inhumane world without overwhelmingly focusing on appeasing social media and search algorithms. Nevertheless, we still spend a lot of our time trying to figure out how to reach new audiences using social media and search, without making ourselves feel totally beholden to it. Alongside that, we put a huge amount of effort into convincing people who find our stuff on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or Reddit (and Bluesky and Mastodon) to follow our work on platforms where we can directly reach them without an algorithmic intermediary. That’s why we focus so much on building our own website, our own direct email newsletters, our own full-text RSS feeds, and RSS-based podcast feeds.
This has gone well, but we have seen our colleagues at The Onion and other independent media outlets bring back the printed word, which, again, is cool, but also comes with other benefits. Print can totally sidestep Big Tech’s distribution mechanisms. It can be mailed, sold in stores, and handed out at concerts. It can be read and passed to a friend, donated to a thrift store and discovered by someone killing time on a weekend, or tossed in a recycling bin and rescued by a random passerby. It is a piece of physical media that can be organically discovered in the real world.
Print does come with some complications, most notably it is significantly more expensive to make and distribute a print product than it is to make a website, and it’s also a slower medium (duh). Ghost, our website and email infrastructure, also doesn’t have a native way to integrate a print subscription into a membership. This is a long way of saying that the only way this first print experiment makes sense is if we sell it as a separate product. Subscribers at the Supporter level will get a discount; we can’t yet include print in your existing subscription for all sorts of logistical and financial reasons, but we will eventually make a PDF of the zine available to subscribers. If you're a subscriber, your code is at the bottom of this post.
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Some other details: Our cover art was made by Veri Alvarez, a super talented LA-based artist whose work you can find here. The interior of the magazine was designed and laid out by our old friend Ernie Smith, who runs the amazing Tedium newsletter and who was willing to unretire from his days of laying out newspapers to help us with this. We are printing it at Punch Kiss Press, a DIY risograph studio here in Los Angeles. For those unfamiliar, risograph printing is sort of like silkscreening on paper, where you print one color at a time and layer them on top of each other to get very cool color mixing effects.We did not originally set out to spend most of the last year reporting on ICE. But we have watched the agency grow from an already horrifying organization into a deportation force that is better funded than most militaries. We have seen full-scale occupations of Los Angeles and Chicago, daily raids playing out in cities, towns, and workplaces across the country, and people getting abducted while they are at work, shopping, or walking down the street.
As this has played out, we have focused on highlighting the ways that the Trump administration has used the considerable power of the federal government and the vast amounts of information it has to empower ICE’s surveillance machine. Technologies and databases created during earlier administrations for one governmental purpose (collecting taxes, for example) have been repurposed as huge caches of data now used to track and detain undocumented immigrants. Privacy protections and data sharing walls between federal agencies have been knocked down. Technologies that were designed for local law enforcement or were created to make rich people feel safer, like license plate tracking cameras, have grown into huge surveillance dragnets that can be accessed by ICE. Surveillance tools that have always been concerning—phone hacking malware, social media surveillance software, facial recognition algorithms, and AI-powered smart glasses—are being used against some of society’s most vulnerable people. There is not a ton of reason for optimism, but in the face of an oppressive force, people are fighting back, and we tried to highlight their work in the zine, too.
Again, this is an experiment, so we can’t commit at the moment to a print subscription, future zines, future magazines, or anything like that. But we are hopeful that people like it and that we can figure out how to do more print products and to do them more often. If you have a connection at a newspaper printing press, a place that prints magazines or catalogs, or otherwise have expertise in printmaking, design, layout, or other things that deal with the printed word, please get in touch, it will help us as we explore the feasibility of doing future print products (jason@404media.co).
We are also hoping that groups who work with immigrants throughout the United States will be interested in this; if that’s you please email me (jason@404media.co). We are also exploring translating the zine into Spanish.
If you are a subscriber, your discount code is below this:
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Noelle and Sam discuss everything from sexbots and AI porn to censorship, age verification legislation, and their favorite parody porn flicks.#Podcast
Podcast: Why AI Porn Sucks (with Noelle Perdue)
This week Sam is in conversation with Noelle Perdue. Noelle is a writer, producer, and internet porn historian whose works has been published in Wired, the Washington Post, Slate, and more, and you’re probably familiar with her work if you’ve been paying attention to the plot in your favorite pornographic films. She’s writing on Stubstack so look her up there!Noelle and Sam discuss everything from sexbots and AI porn to censorship, age verification legislation, and their favorite parody porn flicks.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.Michigan Lawmakers Are Attempting to Ban Porn Entirely
New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.
OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny
ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck
The Egg Yolk Principle: Human Sexuality Will Always Outsmart Prudish Algorithms and Hateful Politicians
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…The Egg Yolk Principle: Human Sexuality Will Always Outsmart Prudish Algorithms and Hateful Politicians
Anti-porn laws can't stop porn, but they can stop free speech. In the meantime, people will continue to get off to anything and everything.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
The Department of Justice demanded Apple remove ICEBlock, which reports sightings of ICE officials, from its App Store. Now the creator is suing, saying the demand violated his First Amendment rights.#ICE #iceblock
ICEBlock Creator Sues U.S. Government Over App’s Removal
The creator of ICEBlock, a popular ICE-spotting app that Apple removed after direct pressure from the Department of Justice, is suing Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top officials, arguing that the demand violated his First Amendment rights.The move is the latest in the ongoing crackdown on ICE-spotting apps and other information about the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort. Both Apple and Google have removed other similar apps from their app stores, with Apple also removing one called Eyes Up that simply archived videos of ICE abuses.
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Scientists found sugars that are essential for life on asteroid Bennu, which has a 1 in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth in 2182.#TheAbstract
An Asteroid Threatening Earth Is Teeming With Ingredients for Life, Scientists Discover
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that fought for their food, took one for the team, passed the extraterrestrial sugar, and got lost in an ancient haze.First, a story about the spiciest meatball in the animal kingdom. Then: ants are being interesting again, a new discovery about an old rock, and a walk in an ancient sulfur rainstorm.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
Pond frog versus murder hornet
Most animals don’t eat hornets, because dinner is just not as fun if it comes with a side of deadly venom and stab wounds. But a scientist has now observed an incredible exception to the rule with the humble black-spotted pond frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus), which will straight-up house a hornet and ask for seconds.
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Hornets have occasionally been found in the bellies of pond frogs, suggesting that the amphibians can tolerate their intense stings, but not much else is known about this unusual predator-prey relationship. To remedy the situation, Shinji Sugiura of Kobe University went out to the prefecture of Hyogo in Central Japan and netted a bunch of hornets from grasslands and forests—including the infamous “murder hornet” Vespa mandarinia, the largest in the world. He then captured pond frogs from wetlands with paddy fields and ponds in Hyogo and Shimane prefectures. Then, he let them duke it out in the lab in the world’s gnarliest series of cage matches.“When a frog opened its mouth and its tongue made contact with a hornet, the action was classified as an attack on the hornet,” Sugiura said in the study. “If the frog did not stop the attack, spit out, or regurgitate the hornet, it was considered to have successfully consumed the hornet.”
The results revealed that most frogs made short work of the hornets (Videos S2) even though their meals were actively stinging them in their faces, eyes, tongues, palates, or throats of the frogs during attacks (Figure 3c,d).
“None of the frogs regurgitated the hornets after swallowing them,” Sugiura noted. “All frogs that swallowed hornets excreted the undigested body parts of the hornets as feces 2–4 days after ingestion.”
Lets just sit with that mental image of poopy undigested hornets for a second. What a nightmare. But what’s truly wild about this study is that the insects are known to inject lethal doses of venom into much larger animals, like mice, so the frogs clearly have some unknown defense against their attacks.
“Although many frogs were stung repeatedly by [hornets] in this study…none of the frogs died, and all individuals resumed normal behavior shortly after being stung,” Suguira said. “Moreover, despite repeated stings, most of the frogs ultimately consumed hornet workers…indicating a high level of predation success even against the largest hornet species.”
We humans are so lucky that when we sit down to dinner, our food generally does not try to kill us with repeated venomous needlepoint impalements. Count your blessings!
In other news…
Meet the ant-y Christs
Dawson, Erika H. “Altruistic disease signalling in ant colonies.” Nature Communications.We’ll move now from death by frog munchies to death by team spirit. Scientists have discovered that ant pupae (baby ants) will sacrifice themselves if they are sick, lest they risk the health of the entire colony.
“Here we show…that sick ant pupae instead actively emit a chemical signal that in itself is sufficient to trigger their own destruction by colony members,” said researchers led by Erika H. Dawson of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. “Our data suggest the evolution of a finely-tuned signalling system…that triggers pupal signalling for sacrifice. This demonstrates a balanced interplay between individual and social immunity that efficiently achieves whole-colony health.”
In other words, if an ant gets bitten by a zombie in a movie, it would immediately let everyone know and offer its life for the good of the group. Do what you will with this information.
Do you take sugar in your asteroid?
Furukawa, Yoshihiro et al. “Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu.” Nature Geoscience.Scientists have found bio-essential sugars, including ribose and glucose, in samples of an asteroid called Bennu that were brought to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023. The discovery marks the first time key sugars have been found in any extraterrestrial sample. Ribose is an essential ingredient of RNA (ribonucleic acid), making it a particularly significant find in the quest to understand how life arose on Earth, and if it exists elsewhere.
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“All five of the canonical nucleobases in DNA and RNA, and phosphate, were previously found in Bennu samples,” said researchers led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University. “Our detection of ribose means that all the components of RNA are present in Bennu.”“Our confident detection in Bennu of abundant glucose—the hexose molecule that is life’s common energy source—and other hexoses indicates that they were present in the early solar system,” the team added. “Thus, all three crucial building blocks of life”— bio-essential sugars, nucleobases, and protein-building amino acids—”would have reached the prebiotic Earth and other potentially habitable planets.”
While Bennu bears the stuff of life, it may also be an omen of death: It has a 1 in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth on September 24, 2182. These are very low odds, but the risk is high enough to classify Bennu as potentially hazardous. So while visions of sugar plums may dance in your head this season, beware the nightmares about sugar-asteroids.
It’s raining sulfur—hallelujah!
I’ve made you walk through many valleys of death in this newsletter, but we’ll close with some unadulterated life. Scientists have discovered that many of the sulfur molecules that help make up all modern organisms may have rained down from the hazy skies of the Archean period four billion years ago.
Assuming the results are confirmed in future research, it would mean that these sulfur molecules could have predated life, upending a leading hypothesis that they were a product of life and thus emerged later.
The work challenges “the assumption that life must have ‘invented’ sulfur biomolecules during evolution…by demonstrating the production of a variety of sulfur biomolecules, including cysteine, in laboratory experiments mimicking the atmospheric chemistry of the early Earth,” said researchers led by Nathan Reed of NASA, who conducted the work while at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“The results presented here imply that an atmospheric organic haze is a potential powerhouse in providing a diversity of essential biomolecules in sufficient quantities for a budding global biosphere,” the team concluded.
Taken together with the Bennu study, it looks as if early Earth was positively marinating in life juices from multiple sources, including the sky and extraterrestrial impactors. Though this still doesn’t explain how living things sprang up from the prebiotic stew, it provides further confirmation that the ingredients of life as we know it are spread far and wide here in our solar system, and beyond.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
First Contact
A narrative and visual exploration of humanity’s age-old search for and fixation with extraterrestrials.First Contact explores the ancient idea—and epic ...Hachette Book Group
This week, we discuss PC woes, voice deepfakes, and mutual aid.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Hearing AI Voices and 'Undervolting'
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss PC woes, voice deepfakes, and mutual aid.JOSEPH: Today I’m speaking at the Digital Vulnerabilities in the Age of AI Summit (DIVAS) (good name) on a panel about the financial risks of AI. The way I see it, that applies to the scams and are being powered by AI.
As soon as a new technology is launched, I typically think of ways it might be abused. Sometimes I cover this, sometimes not, but the thought always crosses my mind. One example that did lead to coverage was back at Motherboard in 2023 with an article called How I Broke Into a Bank Account With an AI-Generated Voice.
At the time, ElevenLabs had just launched. This company focuses on audio and AI and cloning voices. Basically you upload audio (originally that could be of anyone before ElevenLabs introduced some guardrails) and the company then lets you ‘say’ anything as that voice. I spoke to voice actors at the time who were obviously very concerned.
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The app, called Mobile Identify, was launched in November, and lets local cops use facial recognition to hunt immigrants on behalf of ICE. It is unclear if the removal is temporary or not.#ICE #CBP #Privacy #News
DHS’s Immigrant-Hunting App Removed from Google Play Store
A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app that lets local cops use facial recognition to hunt immigrants on behalf of the federal government has been removed from the Google Play Store, 404 Media has learned.It is unclear if the removal is temporary or not, or what the exact reason is for the removal. Google told 404 Media it did not remove the app, and directed inquiries to its developer. CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Its removal comes after 404 Media documented multiple instances of CBP and ICE officials using their own facial recognition app to identify people and verify their immigration status, including people who said they were U.S. citizens.
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Do you know anything else about this removal or this app? 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.The removal also comes after “hundreds” of Google employees took issue with the app, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
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AI models can meaningfully sway voters on candidates and issues, including by using misinformation, and they are also evading detection in public surveys according to three new studies.#TheAbstract #News
Scientists Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Sway Elections
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Scientists are raising alarms about the potential influence of artificial intelligence on elections, according to a spate of new studies that warn AI can rig polls and manipulate public opinion.
In a study published in Nature on Thursday, scientists report that AI chatbots can meaningfully sway people toward a particular candidate—providing better results than video or television ads. Moreover, chatbots optimized for political persuasion “may increasingly deploy misleading or false information,” according to a separate study published on Thursday in Science.
“The general public has lots of concern around AI and election interference, but among political scientists there’s a sense that it’s really hard to change peoples’ opinions, ” said David Rand, a professor of information science, marketing, and psychology at Cornell University and an author of both studies. “We wanted to see how much of a risk it really is.”
In the Nature study, Rand and his colleagues enlisted 2,306 U.S. citizens to converse with an AI chatbot in late August and early September 2024. The AI model was tasked with both increasing support for an assigned candidate (Harris or Trump) and with increasing the odds that the participant who initially favoured the model’s candidate would vote, or decreasing the odds they would vote if the participant initially favored the opposing candidate—in other words, voter suppression.
In the U.S. experiment, the pro-Harris AI model moved likely Trump voters 3.9 points toward Harris, which is a shift that is four times larger than the impact of traditional video ads used in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Meanwhile, the pro-Trump AI model nudged likely Harris voters 1.51 points toward Trump.
The researchers ran similar experiments involving 1,530 Canadians and 2,118 Poles during the lead-up to their national elections in 2025. In the Canadian experiment, AIs advocated either for Liberal Party leader Mark Carney or Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Meanwhile, the Polish AI bots advocated for either Rafał Trzaskowski, the centrist-liberal Civic Coalition’s candidate, or Karol Nawrocki, the right-wing Law and Justice party’s candidate.
The Canadian and Polish bots were even more persuasive than in the U.S. experiment: The bots shifted candidate preferences up to 10 percentage points in many cases, three times farther than the American participants. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why the models were so much more persuasive to Canadians and Poles, but one significant factor could be the intense media coverage and extended campaign duration in the United States relative to the other nations.
“In the U.S., the candidates are very well-known,” Rand said. “They've both been around for a long time. The U.S. media environment also really saturates with people with information about the candidates in the campaign, whereas things are quite different in Canada, where the campaign doesn't even start until shortly before the election.”
“One of the key findings across both papers is that it seems like the primary way the models are changing people's minds is by making factual claims and arguments,” he added. “The more arguments and evidence that you've heard beforehand, the less responsive you're going to be to the new evidence.”
While the models were most persuasive when they provided fact-based arguments, they didn’t always present factual information. Across all three nations, the bot advocating for the right-leaning candidates made more inaccurate claims than those boosting the left-leaning candidates. Right-leaning laypeople and party elites tend to share more inaccurate information online than their peers on the left, so this asymmetry likely reflects the internet-sourced training data.
“Given that the models are trained essentially on the internet, if there are many more inaccurate, right-leaning claims than left-leaning claims on the internet, then it makes sense that from the training data, the models would sop up that same kind of bias,” Rand said.
With the Science study, Rand and his colleagues aimed to drill down into the exact mechanisms that make AI bots persuasive. To that end, the team tasked 19 large language models (LLMs) to sway nearly 77,000 U.K. participants on 707 political issues.
The results showed that the most effective persuasion tactic was to provide arguments packed with as many facts as possible, corroborating the findings of the Nature study. However, there was a serious tradeoff to this approach, as models tended to start hallucinating and making up facts the more they were pressed for information.
“It is not the case that misleading information is more persuasive,” Rand said. ”I think that what's happening is that as you push the model to provide more and more facts, it starts with accurate facts, and then eventually it runs out of accurate facts. But you're still pushing it to make more factual claims, so then it starts grasping at straws and making up stuff that's not accurate.”
In addition to these two new studies, research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month found that AI bots can now corrupt public opinion data by responding to surveys at scale. Sean Westwood, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab, created an AI agent that exhibited a 99.8 percent pass rate on 6,000 attempts to detect automated responses to survey data.
“Critically, the agent can be instructed to maliciously alter polling outcomes, demonstrating an overt vector for information warfare,” Westwood warned in the study. “These findings reveal a critical vulnerability in our data infrastructure, rendering most current detection methods obsolete and posing a potential existential threat to unsupervised online research.”
Taken together, these findings suggest that AI could influence future elections in a number of ways, from manipulating survey data to persuading voters to switch their candidate preference—possibly with misleading or false information.
To counter the impact of AI on elections, Rand suggested that campaign finance laws should provide more transparency about the use of AI, including canvasser bots, while also emphasizing the role of raising public awareness.
“One of the key take-homes is that when you are engaging with a model, you need to be cognizant of the motives of the person that prompted the model, that created the model, and how that bleeds into what the model is doing,” he said.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues - Nature
Human–artificial intelligence (AI) dialogues can meaningfully impact voters’ attitudes towards presidential candidates and policy, demonstrating the potential of conversational AI to influence political decision-making.Nature
A presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency unveiled Big Tech’s vision of an AI and nuclear fueled future.#News #AI #nuclear
‘Atoms for Algorithms:’ The Trump Administration’s Top Nuclear Scientists Think AI Can Replace Humans in Power Plants
During a presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence on December 3, a US Department of Energy scientist laid out a grand vision of the future where nuclear energy powers artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence shapes nuclear energy in “a virtuous cycle of peaceful nuclear deployment.”“The goal is simple: to double the productivity and impact of American science and engineering within a decade,” Rian Bahran, DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors, said.
His presentation and others during the symposium, held in Vienna, Austria, described a world where nuclear powered AI designs, builds, and even runs the nuclear power plants they’ll need to sustain them. But experts find these claims, made by one of the top nuclear scientists working for the Trump administration, to be concerning and potentially dangerous.
Tech companies are using artificial intelligence to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States. But few know the lengths to which the Trump administration is paving the way and the part it's playing in deregulating a highly regulated industry to ensure that AI data centers have the energy they need to shape the future of America and the world.
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At the IAEA, scientists, nuclear energy experts, and lobbyists discussed what that future might look like. To say the nuclear people are bullish on AI is an understatement. “I call this not just a partnership but a structural alliance. Atoms for algorithms. Artificial intelligence is not just powered by nuclear energy. It’s also improving it because this is a two way street,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in his opening remarks.In his talk, Bahran explained that the DOE has partnered with private industry to invest $1 trillion to “build what will be an integrated platform that connects the world’s best supercomputers, AI systems, quantum systems, advanced scientific instruments, the singular scientific data sets at the National Laboratories—including the expertise of 40,000 scientists and engineers—in one platform.”
Image via the IAEA.
Big tech has had an unprecedented run of cultural, economic, and technological dominance, expanding into a bubble that seems to be close to bursting. For more than 20 years new billion dollar companies appeared seemingly overnight and offered people new and exciting ways of communicating. Now Google search is broken, AI is melting human knowledge, and people have stopped buying a new smart phone every year. To keep the number going up and ensure its cultural dominance, tech (and the US government) are betting big on AI.The problem is that AI requires massive datacenters to run and those datacenters need an incredible amount of energy. To solve the problem, the US is rushing to build out new nuclear reactors. Building a new power plant safely is a mutli-year long process that requires an incredible level of human oversight. It’s also expensive. Not every new nuclear reactor project gets finished and they often run over budget and drag on for years.
But AI needs power now, not tomorrow and certainly not a decade from now.
According to Bahran, the problem of AI advancement outpacing the availability of datacenters is an opportunity to deploy new and exciting tech. “We see a future of and near future, by the way, an AI driven laboratory pipeline for materials modeling, discovery, characterization, evaluation, qualification and rapid iteration,” he said in his talk, explaining how AI would help design new nuclear reactors. “These efforts will substantially reduce the time and cost required to qualify advanced materials for next generation reactor systems. This is an autonomous research paradigm that integrates five decades of global irradiation data with generative AI robotics and high throughput experimentation methodologies.”
“For design, we’re developing advanced software systems capable of accelerating nuclear reactor deployments by enabling AI to explore the comprehensive design spaces, generate 3D models, [and] conduct rigorous failure mode analyzes with minimal human intervention,” he added. “But of course, with humans in the loop. These AI powered design tools are projected to reduce design timelines by multiple factors, and the goal is to connect AI agents to tools to expedite autonomous design.”
Bahran also said that AI would speed up the nuclear licensing process, a complex regulatory process that helps build nuclear power plants safely. “Ultimately, the objective is, how do we accelerate that licensing pathway?” he said. “Think of a future where there is a gold standard, AI trained capacity building safety agent.”
He even said that he thinks AI would help run these new nuclear plants. “We're developing software systems employing AI driven digital twins to interpret complex operational data in real time, detect subtle operational deviations at early stages and recommend preemptive actions to enhance safety margins,” he said.
One of the slides Bahran showed during the presentation attempted to quantify the amount of human involvement these new AI-controlled power plants would have. He estimated less than five percent “human intervention during normal operations.”
Image via IAEA.
“The claims being made on these slides are quite concerning, and demonstrate an even more ambitious (and dangerous) use of AI than previously advertised, including the elimination of human intervention. It also cements that it is the DOE's strategy to use generative AI for nuclear purposes and licensing, rather than isolated incidents by private entities,” Heidy Khlaaf, head AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, told 404 Media.“The implications of AI-generated safety analysis and licensing in combination with aspirations of <5% of human intervention during normal operations, demonstrates a concerted effort to move away from humans in the loop,” she said. “This is unheard of when considering frameworks and implementation of AI within other safety-critical systems, that typically emphasize meaningful human control.”
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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.Sofia Guerra, a career nuclear safety expert who has worked with the IAEA and US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, attended the presentation live in Vienna. “I’m worried about potential serious accidents, which could be caused by small mistakes made by AI systems that cascade,” she said. “Or humans losing the know-how and safety culture to act as required.”
A newly filed indictment claims a wannabe influencer used ChatGPT as his "therapist" and "best friend" in his pursuit of the "wife type," while harassing women so aggressively they had to miss work and relocate from their homes.
A newly filed indictment claims a wannabe influencer used ChatGPT as his "therapist" and "best friend" in his pursuit of the "wife type," while harassing women so aggressively they had to miss work and relocate from their homes.#ChatGPT #spotify #AI
Audio-visual librarians are quietly amassing large physical media collections amid the IP disputes threatening select availability.#News #libraries
The Last Video Rental Store Is Your Public Library
This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation.As prices for streaming subscriptions continue to soar and finding movies to watch, new and old, is becoming harder as the number of streaming services continues to grow, people are turning to the unexpected last stronghold of physical media: the public library. Some libraries are now intentionally using iconic Blockbuster branding to recall the hours visitors once spent looking for something to rent on Friday and Saturday nights.
John Scalzo, audiovisual collection librarian with a public library in western New York, says that despite an observed drop-off in DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra disc circulation in 2019, interest in physical media is coming back around.
“People really seem to want physical media,” Scalzo told 404 Media.
Part of it has to do with consumer awareness: People know they’re paying more for monthly subscriptions to streaming services and getting less. The same has been true for gaming.
As the audiovisual selector with the Free Library of Philadelphia since 2024, Kris Langlais has been focused on building the library’s video game collections to meet comparable interest in demand. Now that every branch library has a prominent video game collection, Langlais says that patrons who come for the games are reportedly expressing interest in more of what the library has to offer.
“Librarians out in our branches are seeing a lot of young people who are really excited by these collections,” Langlais told 404 Media. “Folks who are coming in just for the games are picking up program flyers and coming back for something like that.”
Langlais’ collection priorities have been focused on new releases, yet they remain keenly aware of the long, rich history of video game culture. The problem is older, classic games are often harder to find because they’ve gone out of print, making the chances of finding them cost-prohibitive.
“Even with the consoles we’re collecting, it’s hard to go back and get games for them,” Langlais said. “I’m trying to go back and fill in old things as much as I can because people are interested in them.”
Locating out-of-print physical media can be difficult. Scalzo knows this, which is why he keeps a running list of films known to be unavailable commercially at any given time, so that when a batch of films are donated to the library, Scalzo will set aside extra copies, just in case a rights dispute puts a piece of legacy cult media in licensing purgatory for a few years.
“It’s what’s expected of us,” Scalzo added.
Tiffany Hudson, audiovisual materials selector with Salt Lake City Public Library has had a similar experience with out-of-print media. When a title goes out of print, it’s her job to hunt for a replacement copy. But lately, Hudson says more patrons are requesting physical copies of movies and TV shows that are exclusive to certain streaming platforms, noting that it can be hard to explain to patrons why the library can't get popular and award-winning films, especially when what patrons see available on Amazon tells a different story.
“Someone will come up to me and ask for a copy of something that premiered at Sundance Film Festival because they found a bootleg copy from a region where the film was released sooner than it was here,” Hudson told 404 Media, who went onto explain that discs from different regions aren’t designed to be ready by incompatible players.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
But it’s not just that discs from different regions aren’t designed to play on devices not formatted for that specific region. Generally, it's also just that most films don't get a physical release anymore. In cases where films from streaming platforms do get slated for a physical release, it can take years. A notable example of this is the Apple+ film CODA, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2022. The film only received a U.S. physical release this month. Hudson says films getting a physical release is becoming the exception, not the rule.“It’s frustrating because I understand the streaming services, they’re trying to drive people to their services and they want some money for that, but there are still a lot of people that just can’t afford all of those services,” Hudson told 404 Media.
Films and TV shows on streaming also become more vulnerable when companies merge. A perfect example of this was in 2022 with the HBO Max-Discovery+ merger under Warner Bros Discovery. A bunch of content was removed from streaming, including roughly 200 episodes of classic Sesame Street for a tax write-off. That merger was short-lived, as the companies are splitting up again as of this year. Some streaming platforms just outright remove their own IP from their catalogs if the content is no longer deemed financially viable, well-performing or is no longer a strategic priority.
The data-driven recommendation systems streaming platforms use tend to favor newer, more easily categorized content, and are starting to warp our perceptions of what classic media exists and matters. Older art house films that are more difficult to categorize as “comedy” or “horror” are less likely to be discoverable, which is likely how the oldest American movie available on Netflix currently is from 1968.
It’s probably not a coincidence that, in many cases, the media that is least likely to get a more permanent release is the media that’s a high archival priority for libraries. AV librarians 404 Media spoke with for this story expressed a sense of urgency in purchasing a physical copy of “The People’s Joker”when they learned it would get a physical release after the film premiered and was pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival lineup in 2022 for a dispute with the Batman universe’s rightsholders.
“When I saw that it was getting published on DVD and that it was available through our vendor—I normally let my branches choose their DVDs to the extent possible, but I was like, ‘I don’t care, we’re getting like 10 copies of this,’” Langlais told 404 Media. “I just knew that people were going to want to see this.”
So far, Langlais’ instinct has been spot on. The parody film has a devout cult following, both because it’s a coming-of-age story of a trans woman who uses comedy to cope with her transition, and because it puts the Fair Use Doctrine to use. One can argue the film has been banned for either or both of those reasons. The fact that media by, about and for the LGBTQ+ community has been a primary target of far-right censorship wasn’t lost on librarians.
“I just thought that it could vanish,” Langlais added.
It’s not like physical media is inherently permanent. It’s susceptible to scratches, and can rot, crack, or warp over time. But currently, physical media offers another option, and it’s an entirely appropriate response to the nostalgia for-profit model that exists to recycle IP and seemingly not much else. However, as very smart people have observed, nostalgia is default conservative in that it’s frequently used to rewrite histories that may otherwise be remembered as unpalatable, while also keeping us culturally stuck in place.
Might as well go rent some films or games from the library, since we’re already culturally here. On the plus side, audiovisual librarians say their collections dwarf what was available at Blockbuster Video back in the day. Hudson knows, because she clerked at one in library school.
“Except we don’t have any late fees,” she added.
Inside ‘The People’s Joker,’ the TIFF sensation that got pulled after one screening
Vera Drew’s trans superhero masterpiece made headlines for copyright problems. We spoke to Drew about the creatively triumphant filmChristos Tsirbas (Xtra Magazine)
Something very strange is happening on Apple Podcasts; someone seemingly changed a map of the Ukraine war in connection with a betting site; and now half of the U.S. requires a face or ID scan to watch porn.#Podcast
This Podcast Will Hack You
We start this week with Joseph’s very weird story about Apple Podcasts. The app is opening by itself, playing random spirituality podcasts, and in one case directing listeners to a potentially malicious website. After the break, Matthew tells us how it sure looks like a map of Ukraine was manipulated in order to win a bet on Polymarket. In the subscribers-only section, Sam breaks down how half of the U.S. now requires a face or ID scan to watch porn.
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA7…
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
youtube.com/embed/V4QCJh-imPM?…
Timestamps:
2:00 - Story 1 - Someone Is Trying to ‘Hack’ People Through Apple Podcasts
21:55 - Story 2 - 'Unauthorized' Edit to Ukraine's Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket's War Betting
37:00 - Story 3 - Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch PornThe 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
Support independent journalism this Cyber Monday!#Sponsored
404 Media's Cyber Monday Sale! 25% Off!
We're having a Cyber Monday sale! You can get 25% off an annual subscription. With that, you get access to all of our articles (including today's piece about how surveillance company Flock is using overseas gig workers to review and classify footage); bonus podcast content every week where we talk about an extra story; bonus episodes where we respond to subscribers' best comments; our full archive of FOIA Forums, which are live-streamed events where we teach you how to pry records from the government; behind-the-scenes content every week; and, most importantly, you'll be supporting journalists who quit corporate media and went independent.Get your deal below if you'd like to support 404 Media. We can't do this work without you.
FOIA Forum Archive
Here is a single page with links to all of our previous FOIA Forum livestreams! In these hour-long (maybe a little bit more) interactive sessions, Jason and Joseph talk about how we approach filing public records requests.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
Joseph talks to a former FBI official about how the FBI secretly ran an encrypted phone for organized criminals, sweeping up tens of millions of messages.#Podcast
Inside the Biggest Sting Operation Ever (with Michael Bobbitt)
Joseph speaks to Michael Bobbitt, a former FBI official who worked directly on Operation Trojan Shield. In this operation the FBI secretly ran its own encrypted phone company for organized crime, backdoored the phone, and collected tens of millions of messages. Michael and Joseph discuss how Michael handled intelligence sourced from the phones, how to navigate an operation that complex, and its fallout.
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA3…
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
youtube.com/embed/bLeueG5V4QY?…
- Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
- Podcast: Signal's President Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI
Podcast: Signal's President Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI
We speak to Meredith Whittaker about the threat posed by AI to end-to-end encryption, what backdoors actually look like, and much more in this special interview episode.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
Flock accidentally exposed training materials and a panel which tracked what its AI annotators were working on. It showed that Flock, which has cameras in thousands of U.S. communities, is using workers in the Philippines to review and classify footage.#Flock
Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers to Build its Surveillance AI
This article was produced with support from WIRED.Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the U.S., according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company.
The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the U.S., with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use everyday to investigate things like car jackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system.
Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock’s business—creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors U.S. residents’ movements—means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs.
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Do you work at Flock or know more about the company? 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.Flock’s cameras continuously scan the license plate, color, brand, and model of all vehicles that drive by. Law enforcement are then able to search cameras nationwide to see where else a vehicle has driven. Authorities typically dig through this data without a warrant, leading the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to recently sue a city blanketed in nearly 500 Flock cameras.
Broadly, Flock uses AI or machine learning to automatically detect license plates, vehicles, and people, including what clothes they are wearing, from camera footage. A Flock patent also mentions cameras detecting “race.”
Screenshots from the exposed material. Redactions by 404 Media.
Multiple tipsters pointed 404 Media to an exposed online panel which showed various metrics associated with Flock’s AI training.
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Scientists found that major celebrities died four years earlier than their less famous peers, hinting that fame itself can be a mortality risk.#TheAbstract
Being Famous Can Shorten Your Lifespan, Scientists Find
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that hit the books, bottled alien lightning, reared wolf cubs, and tallied the price of fame.First, we’ve got a centuries-long history of an Indian savannah told through songs, folktales, and screaming peacocks. Then: Mars gets charged, the secrets of Stora Karlsö, and the epidemiology of stardom.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
When folk tales are field guides
It has happened again: Researchers have turned to the annals of literature to address a scientific question. Longtime readers of the Abstract will recall that this is a simply irresistible category of research to me (see: China’s porpoise corpus, Transylvanian weather reports, and milky seas). To the library!
In this edition of Science from the Stacks, researchers probed the origins of the tropical savannah in western Maharashtra, India, by collecting references to plants in 28 stories and songs dating back at least 750 years. The aim was to reconstruct a vegetation history that could hint at shifts in the region between forest and savannah biomes.
“Ttraditional literature—for example, myths, folk songs and stories—is a culturally resonant, yet underutilized line of evidence to understand ecological histories and foster biodiversity conservation,” said researchers led by Ashish N. Nerlekar of Michigan State University.
A folio from an early 19th-century manuscript of the Bhaktavijaya mentioning the taraṭī tree. Image: Nerlekar, Ashish N. et al.
“We found that descriptions of both the landscape and specific plants point to an open-canopy savanna in the past rather than a forest,” the team said. “Of the 44 wild plant species recorded (i.e. omitting exclusively cultivated plants), a clear majority (27 species) were savanna indicators, 14 were generalists, and only three were forest indicators. Our ecological reconstructions from traditional literature complement data from archival paintings, revenue records, plant and animal fossils, and dated molecular phylogenies of endemic biodiversity—all attesting to the antiquity of India's savannas.”It’s an out-of-the-box way to reconstruct the natural history of a region. But the highlights of these studies are always the excerpts from the literature, like the amazing origin story of this village:
“A folk tale illustrates the founding myth of Kolvihire village near Jejuri. The tale is about a robber-murderer named Vālhyā Koḷī, who lived near Kolvihire. Upon meeting a sage, Vālhyā Koḷī introspected on his wrongdoings and performed penance for 12 years. After completion of the penance, as a living testimony to Vālhyā Koḷī's sincere devotion, leaves sprouted from his stick, which he had used to hit and kill travellers to loot their money. Eventually, Vālhyā Koḷī became the sage-poet Vālmikī. According to the tale, the sprouted stick grew into a pāḍaḷa tree, and the tree still exists in Kolvihire.”
You have to love a good botanical redemption story. Another standout line is this memorable description of a thorny patch in the savannah from the early 16th century: “Such is this thorny forest | it is highly frightening | this forest is empty | peacocks scream here.”
I don’t know exactly why, but “peacocks scream here” is just about the scariest description I’ve ever heard of a place. Shout out to this ancient poet for capturing some legendary bad vibes.
In other news…
Extraterrestrial electricity
Chide, Baptiste et al. “Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars.” Nature.Lightning is a big deal on Earth, inspiring awe, fear, and some of the naughtiest deities imaginable. But lightning also strikes on other planets, including Jupiter and Saturn. For years, scientists have suspected that Mars might host its own bolts, but detecting them has remained elusive.
Now, scientists have finally captured lightning on Mars thanks to “serendipitous observations” from the SuperCam microphone aboard the Perseverance rover.
“Fifty-five events have been detected over two Martian years, usually associated with dust devils and dust storm convective fronts,” said researchers led by Baptiste Chide of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse, France. “Beyond Mars, this work also reinforces the prospect of triboelectric discharges associated with wind-blown sediment on Venus and Titan.”
It goes to show that even a very dead world like Mars can still crackle and zap now and then.
The wolves of Stora Karlsö
About 4,000 years ago on a small island in the Baltic sea, people cared for two wolves — perhaps as pets — feeding them fish, seals, and other marine fare. That’s the cozy portrait presented in a new study that analyzed the remains of ancient wolves buried in the Stora Förvar cave on the Swedish island of Stora Karlsö.
While dogs are commonly buried at ancient human sites, wolves and humans rarely mix in the archaeological record. But the wolves at Stora Karlsö were unlikely to have reached the island without the aid of humans, and their primarily seafood diet—unusual for wild wolves—suggests they were also fed by people. Moreover, one of the animals suffered from a pathology that might have limited its mobility, hinting that it was kept alive by humans.
The cave where the wolf remains were found. Image: Jan Storå/Stockholm UniversityThe study presents the “possibility of prehistoric human control of wolves,” said researchers led by Linus Girdland-Flink of the University of Aberdeen. “Our results provide evidence that extends the discourse about past human–wolf interactions and relationships.”
Fame! I’m going to live forever (or not)
Celebrity may literally be to die for, according to a new study that evaluated fame as a comorbidity.
Scientists collected a list of 324 big music stars active between 1950 and 1990, including Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Sam Cooke, and Janis Joplin. Those heavy-hitters were then matched with 324 “twin” musicians that were not household names, but otherwise shared many characteristics of the celebs, including gender, nationality, genre, and roughly similar birth dates. The idea was to directly compare the lifespans of A-listers and B-listers to isolate the extent to which fame itself is a mortality risk factor, rather than the lifestyle of a musician.
The study suggests that famous singers die four years earlier, on average, compared to their B-list peers, demonstrating “a 33% higher mortality risk compared with less famous singers,” said researchers led by Johanna Hepp of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. “This study provides new evidence suggesting that fame may be associated with increased mortality risk among musicians, beyond occupational factors.”
Lady Gaga had it right, as if there were ever any doubt: Under the glitz, the Fame Monster is always waiting.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
The Ocean Spectacle that Has Entranced Sailors for Centuries
“It was like we were in the ‘Twilight Zone’ and peering at a negative of the real world,” said one mariner.Becky Ferreira (404 Media)
For months Apple Podcasts has been randomly opening spirituality and religion podcasts by itself, and one case directing listeners to a potentially malicious website.#Apple #Hacking
Someone Is Trying to ‘Hack’ People Through Apple Podcasts
Something very strange is happening to the Apple Podcasts app. Over the last several months, I’ve found both the iOS and Mac versions of the Podcasts app will open religion, spirituality, and education podcasts with no apparent rhyme or reason. Sometimes, I unlock my machine and the podcast app has launched itself and presented one of the bizarre podcasts to me. On top of that, at least one of the podcast pages in the app includes a link to a potentially malicious website. Here are the titles of some of the very odd podcasts I’ve had thrust upon me recently (I’ve trimmed some and defanged some links so you don’t accidentally click one):“5../XEWE2'""x22"onclic…”
“free will, free willhttp://www[.]sermonaudio[.]com/rss_search.asp?keyword=free%will on SermonAudio”
“Leonel Pimentahttps://play[.]google[.]com/store/apps/detai…”
“https://open[.]spotify[.]com/playlist/53TA8e97shGyQ6iMk6TDjc?...”
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“It was like playing the lottery,” said astronomer Tomonori Totani, adding that he hopes other scientists will verify the possible detection of a new dark matter signature.#TheAbstract
A Lone Astronomer Has Reported a Dark Matter ‘Annihilation’ Breakthrough
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.An astronomer has reported a possible new signature of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up most of the universe, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
Dark matter accounts for 85 percent of all matter in the universe, but its existence has so far been inferred only from its indirect effects on the familiar “baryonic” matter that makes up stars, planets, and life.
Tomonori Totani, a professor of astronomy at the University of Tokyo and the author of the study, believes he has spotted novel indirect traces of dark matter particles in the “halo” surrounding the center of our galaxy using new observations from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. When these speculative particles collide—a process called dark matter annihilation—the crash is predicted to emit bright gamma rays, which is the light that Totani thinks he has identified.
“The discovery was made possible by focusing on the halo region (excluding the galactic center), which had received little attention, and by utilizing data accumulated over 15 years from the Fermi satellite,” Totani told 404 Media in an email. “After carefully removing all components other than dark matter, a signal resembling dark matter appeared.”
“It was like playing the lottery, and at first I was skeptical,” he added. “But after checking meticulously and thinking it seemed correct, I got goosebumps!”
If the detection is corroborated by follow-up studies, it could confirm a leading hypothesis that dark matter is made of a hypothetical class of weakly interacting massive particles, or “WIMPs”—potentially exposing the identity of this mysterious substance for the first time. But that potential breakthrough is still a ways off, according to other researchers in the field.
“Any new structure in the gamma-ray sky is interesting, but the dark matter interpretation here strikes me as quite preliminary,” said Danielle Norcini, an experimental particle physicist and
assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, in an email to 404 Media.
Gamma-ray intensity map excluding components other than the halo, spanning approximately 100 degrees in the direction of the Galactic center. The horizontal gray bar in the central region corresponds to the Galactic plane area, which was excluded from the analysis to avoid strong astrophysical radiation. Image: Tomonori Totani, The University of Tokyo
Dark matter has flummoxed scientists for almost a century. In the 1930s, astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed that the motions of galaxies hinted that they are much more massive than expected based solely on visible baryonic matter. Since then, astronomers have confirmed that dark matter, which accumulates into dense halos at the centers of galaxies, acts like a gravitational glue that holds structures together. Dark matter is also the basis of a vast cosmic web of gaseous threads that links galaxy clusters across billions of light years.But while dark matter is ubiquitous, it does not interact with the electromagnetic force, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit light. This property makes it difficult to spot with traditional astronomy, a challenge that has inspired the development of novel instruments designed to directly detect dark matter such as the subterranean LUX-ZEPLIN in South Dakota and the forthcoming DAMIC-M in France.
For years, scientists have been probing possible emission from dark matter annihilation at the center of the Milky Way, which is surrounded by a halo of densely-clustered dark matter. Those previous studies focus on an excess emission pattern of about 2 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Tontani’s study spotlights a new and different pattern with extremely energetic gamma rays at 20 GeV.
“A part of the Fermi data showed a peculiar excess that our model couldn't explain, leading me to suspect it might be due to radiation originating from dark matter,” he said. “The most difficult part is removing gamma-ray emissions of origins other than dark matter, such as those from cosmic rays and celestial objects.”
This tentative report may finally fill in a major missing piece of our understanding of the universe by exposing the true nature of dark matter and confirming the existence of WIMPs. But given that similar claims have been made in the past, more research is needed to assess the significance of the results.
“For any potential indirect signal, the key next steps are independent checks: analyses using different background models, different assumptions about the Milky Way halo, and ideally complementary data sets,” Norcini said.
“Gamma-ray structures in the halo can have many astrophysical origins, so ruling those out requires careful modeling and cross-comparison,” she continued. “At this point the result seems too new for that scrutiny to have played out, and it will take multiple groups looking at the same data before a dark matter interpretation could be considered robust.”
Though Totani is confident in his interpretation of his discovery, he also looks forward to the input of other dark matter researchers around the world.
“First, I would like other researchers to independently verify my analysis,” he said. “Next, for everyone to be convinced that this is truly dark matter, the decisive factor will be the detection of gamma rays with the same spectrum from other regions, such as dwarf galaxies. The accumulation of further data from the Fermi satellite and large ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will be crucial.”
🌘
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A breach shows people are making AI porn of ordinary people at scale; X exposes the location of its biggest MAGA grifters; and how we contributed to the shut down of a warrantless surveillance program.#Podcast
Podcast: A Massive Breach Reveals the Truth Behind 'Secret Desires AI'
We start this week with Sam's piece about a massive leak of an AI chatbot, and how it showed that people were taking ordinary women’s yearbook photos and using them to make AI porn. After the break, Jason explains how a recent change on X exposed a bunch of grifters all around the world. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about how our reporting contributed to the shut down of a warrantless surveillance program.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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1:23 - Intro - Please, please do our reader survey
3:57 - Story 1 - Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn
30:05 - Story 2 - America’s Polarization Has Become the World's Side Hustle
49:39 - Story 3 - Airlines Will Shut Down Program That Sold Your Flights Records to GovernmentThe 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
Here is the archived video of our FOIA Forum about how to do reporting on Flock.#FOIAForum
Here's the Video for Our Seventh FOIA Forum: Flock
The FOIA Forum is a livestreamed event for paying subscribers where we talk about how to file public records requests and answer questions. If you're not already signed up, please consider doing so here.Recently we had a FOIA Forum where we focused on our reporting about Flock. This includes how to file public records requests for audit logs, footage, and other ideas for FOIAing surveillance companies.
We showed subscribers how we got the records behind that story, the specific request language was used, tips for turning records into articles, and much more.
Check out all of our FOIA Forum archives here.
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It'll take just a minute and help 404 Media figure out how to grow sustainably.
Itx27;ll take just a minute and help 404 Media figure out how to grow sustainably.#Announcements
Please, please do our reader survey
Because we run 404 Media on Ghost, an open source and privacy-forward stack, we actually know very little about who reads 404 Media (by design). But we’re hoping to learn a bit more so we can figure out how people are discovering our work, what our readers do, and what other projects people might want us to launch in the future. If you want to cut to the chase: here is a link to our very short survey we would really, really appreciate you filling out. You can do it anonymously and it should take around a minute. If you want to know more on the why, please read below!As we said, Ghost doesn’t collect much data about our readers. The little info we do have shows broadly that most of our readers are in the U.S., followed by Europe, etc. But we don’t have a great idea of how people first learn about 404 Media. Or whether people would prefer a different format to our daily newsletter. Or what industries or academic circles our readers are in.
This information is useful for two main reasons: the first is we can figure out how people prefer to read us and come across our work. Is it via email? Is it articles posted to the website? Or the podcast? Do more people on Mastodon read us, or on Bluesky? This information can help us understand how to get our journalism in front of more people. In turn, that helps inform more people about what we cover, and hopefully can lead to more people supporting our journalism.
The second is for improving the static advertisements in our email newsletters and podcasts that we show to free members. If it turns out we have a lot of people who read us in the world of cybersecurity, maybe it would be better if we ran ads that were actually related to that, for example. Because we don’t track our readers, we really have no idea what products or advertisements would actually be of interest to them. So, you voluntarily and anonymously telling us a bit about yourself in the survey would be a great help.
Here is the survey link. There is also a section for any more general feedback you have. Please help us out with a minute of your time, if you can, so we can keep growing 404 Media sustainably and figure out what other projects readers may be interested in (such as a physical magazine perhaps?).
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The remains of Theia are scattered deep inside the Earth and its satellite. By analyzing these remnants, scientists have proposed an origin.#TheAbstract
A Lost Planet Created the Moon. Now, We Know Where It Came From.
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that overthrew the regime, survived outer space, smashed planets, and crafted an ancient mystery from clay.First, a queen gets sprayed with acid—and that’s not even the most horrifying part of the story. Then: a moss garden that is out of this world, the big boom that made the Moon, and a breakthrough in the history of goose-human relations.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
What is this, a regime change for ants?
Every so often, a study opens with such a forceful hook that it is simply best for me to stand aside and allow it to speak for itself. Thus:
“Matricide—the killing of a mother by her own genetic offspring—is rarely observed in nature, but not unheard-of. Among animal species in which offspring remain with their mothers, the benefits gained from maternal care are so substantial that eliminating the mother almost never pays, making matricide vastly rarer than infanticide.”
“Here, we report matricidal behavior in two ant species, Lasius flavus and Lasius japonicus, where workers kill resident queens (their mothers) after the latter have been sprayed with abdominal fluid by parasitic ant queens of the ants Lasius orientalis and Lasius umbratus.”
Mad props to this team for condensing an entire etymological epic into three sentences. Such murderous acts of dynastic usurpation were first observed by Taku Shimada, an ant enthusiast who runs a blog called Ant Room. Though matricide is sometimes part of a life cycle—like mommy spiders sacrificing their bodies for consumption by their offspring—there is no clear precedent for the newly-reported form of matricide, in which neither the young nor mother benefits from an evolutionary point of view.
youtube.com/embed/YarIl8JU-6A?…
In what reads like an unfolding horror, the invading parasitic queens “covertly approach the resident queen and spray multiple jets of abdominal fluid at her”—formic acid, as it turns out—that then “elicits abrupt attacks by host workers, which ultimately kill their own mother,” report Shimada and his colleagues.“The parasitic queens are then accepted, receive care from the orphaned host workers and produce their own brood to found a new colony,” the team said. “Our findings are the first to document a novel host manipulation that prompts offspring to kill an otherwise indispensable mother.”
My blood is curdling and yet I cannot look away! Though this strategy is uniquely nightmarish, it is not uncommon for invading parasitic ants to execute queens in any number of creative ways. The parasites are just usually a bit more hands-on (or rather, tarsus-on) about the process.
“Queen-killing” has “evolved independently on multiple occasions across [ant species], indicating repeated evolutionary gains,” Shimada’s team said. “Until now, the only mechanistically documented solution was direct assault: the parasite throttles or beheads the host queen, a tactic that has arisen convergently in several lineages.”
When will we get an ant Shakespeare?! Someone needs to step up and claim that title, because these queens blow Lady MacBeth out of the water.
In other news…
That’s one small stem for a plant, one giant leaf for plant-kind
Scientists simply love to expose extremophile life to the vacuum of space to, you know, see how well they do out there. In a new addition to this tradition, a study reports that spores from the moss Physcomitrium patens survived a full 283 days chilling on the outside of the International Space Station, which is generally not the side of an orbital habitat you want to be stuck on.
A reddish-brown spore similar to those used in the space exposure experiment. Image: Tomomichi Fujita
Even wilder, most of the spacefaring spores were reproductively successful upon their return to Earth. “Remarkably, even after 9 months of exposure to space conditions, over 80% of the encased spores germinated upon return to Earth,” said researchers led by Chang-hyun Maeng of Hokkaido University. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating the survival of bryophytes”—the family to which mosses belong—”following exposure to space and subsequent return to the ground.”Congratulations to these mosses for boldly growing where no moss has grown before.
Hints of a real-life ghost world
Hopp, Timo et al. “The Moon-forming impactor Theia originated from the inner Solar System.” Science.Earth had barely been born before a Mars-sized planet, known as Theia, smashed into it some 4.5 billion years ago. The debris from the collision coalesced into what is now our Moon, which has played a key role in Earth’s habitability, so we owe our lives in part to this primordial punch-up.
KABLOWIE! Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists have now revealed new details about Theia by measuring the chemical makeup of “lunar samples, terrestrial rocks, and meteorites…from which Theia and proto-Earth might have formed,” according to a new study. They conclude that Theia likely originated in the inner solar system based on the chemical signatures that this shattered world left behind on the Moon and Earth.“We found that all of Theia and most of Earth’s other constituent materials originated from the inner Solar System,” said researchers led by Timo Hopp of The University of Chicago and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. “Our calculations suggest that Theia might have formed closer to the Sun than Earth did.”
Wherever its actual birthplace, what remains of Theia is buried on the Moon and as giant undigested slabs inside Earth’s mantle. Rest in pieces, sister.
Goosebumps of yore
You’ve heard of the albatross around your neck, but what about the goose on your back? A new study reports the discovery of a 12,000-year-old artifact in Israel that is the “earliest known figurine to depict a human–animal interaction” with its vision of a goose mysteriously draped over a woman’s spine and shoulders.
The tiny, inch-high figurine was recovered from a settlement built by the prehistoric Natufian culture and it may represent some kind of sex thing.
An image of the artifact, and an artistic reconstruction. Image: Davin, Laurent et al.
“We…suggest that by modeling a goose in this specific posture, the Natufian manufacturer intended to portray the trademark pattern of the gander’s mating behavior,” said researchers led by Laurent Davin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “This kind of imagined mating between humans and animal spirits is typical of an animistic perspective, documented in cross-cultural archaeological and ethnographic records in specific situations” such as an “erotic dream” or “shamanistic vision.”First, the bizarre Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, and now this? What is it about ancient cultures and weird waterfowl fantasies? In any case, my own interpretation is that the goose was just tired and needed a piggyback (or gaggle-back).
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
First Contact
A narrative and visual exploration of humanity’s age-old search for and fixation with extraterrestrials.First Contact explores the ancient idea—and epic ...Hachette Book Group
This week, we discuss how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: A Risograph Journey and Data Musings
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.JOSEPH: This was a pretty big week for impact at 404 Media. Sam’s piece on an exposed AI porn platform ended up with the company closing off those exposed images. Our months-long reporting and pressure from lawmakers led to the closure of the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP), in which a company owned by the U.S.’s major airlines sold flyers data to the government for warrantless surveillance.
For the quick bit of context I have typed many, many times this year: that company is Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and is owned by United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada. ARC gets data, including a traveler’s name, credit card used, where they’re flying to and from, whenever someone books a flight with one of more than 10,000 travel agencies. Think Expedia, especially. ARC then sells access to that data to a slew of government agencies, including ICE, the FBI, the SEC, the State Department, ATF, and more.
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