404 Media

2026-06-04 22:03:02

Satya Nadella ‘Not Sure’ Who Said Microsoft Wanted to Make Addictive AI, Is Looking for Guy Who Did This

On Tuesday, we published an article about an internal Microsoft strategy document that explained the company wanted to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, Scout. Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told staff that he was “not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense,” according to a message obtained by The Information.

The document we reported on was not some random document. As we wrote at the time, the strategy document was written by Microsoft executives Omar Shahine, Jakob Werner, and some sort of AI writing tool. This information is in our original article and is readily available to Nadella. We wrote: “The document seen by 404 Media lists Shahine and another executive, Jakob Werner, as its authors. The document itself, however, notes that it was ‘co-created turn-by-turn with AI. Human verified every sentence.’”

Shahine is the leader of Microsoft’s Scout project, as he has written numerous times on his own blog, on his LinkedIn, and on Microsoft’s own announcement of the software. In attempting to distance himself from his own company’s executives and strategy documents, Nadella has revealed that he either does not know how to read or does not know what is happening with some of the company’s highest-profile products.

Phase one of the company’s launch plan for Scout, which was previously called ClawPilot internally, was to “make people addicted. Continue shipping the standalone ClawPilot experience. Pilot the UX, grow the user base, and build the skill and tool ecosystem that makes people depend on it daily. This is already happening organically.”

In Nadella’s message to staff reported by The InformationThursday, he wrote “this is absolutely a non goal! If anything we are doing the exact opposite. We want to make sure AI empowers and adds real value to human endeavor and broad economic growth! We should make sure that our teams are clear about this. Not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense! They may want to go work elsewhere…..” Nadella then linked to an aggregation of our article published by Futurism.

As mentioned, the document was written by Shahine. Shahine is not some random Microsoft employee, he is the person who imagined, pitched, and brought Scout to fruition, as he has tirelessly documented over and over and over again in many, many LinkedIn posts and on his personal blog. His job title is “Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Scout,” and he is the person who announced the product on Microsoft’s official blog. His biography on Microsoft’s website is “Omar Shahine is a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft where he leads Microsoft Scout.” Again, Shahine’s name is listed as the author at the top of the document we reported on.

Nadella’s message and a statement given by Microsoft to The Information by a spokesperson are instructive in showing in the ways that big tech deals with journalists who deign to write articles that the companies would rather not exist. A Microsoft spokesperson told The Information Scout is for “helping people accomplish tasks more effectively—not encouraging dependency. Our goal isn’t more screen time. It’s more time back.” Microsoft did not say this to us; Microsoft said nothing to us.

Before we published this article, as we do with almost every article that mentions any company, we reached out to Microsoft for comment. We specifically said that we were writing an article about the “make people addicted” language and asked for comment, context, and more information about that language. Microsoft did not answer our questions, ignored the fact that we asked about “addiction,” and simply sent us a link to its public announcement for Scout. The company then attacked our report internally and externally to another media outlet.

If Nadella is Looking For the Guy Who Did This, maybe he should read the documents his own company produces, or ask the guy who made it.

Omar Shahine | Author at Microsoft 365 Blog

Read the latest posts and insights by Omar Shahine, part of Microsoft's team of experts at Microsoft 365 Blog.

^{Omar Shahine (Microsoft 365 Blog)}

404 Media

2026-06-04 18:34:16

Immigrant Rights Lawyers File Lawsuit Over Palantir’s ELITE

An immigrant rights and advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeking records related to the agency’s use of Palantir tools. 404 Media first revealed a tool called ELITE and its links to Palantir in January, based in part on a leaked user guide for ELITE. ICE uses ELITE to find which neighborhoods to raid, according to testimony from an ICE official.

“The requested records include information of great national significance, and will detail the ways Defendants have made use of Palantir’s technology products to centralize, analyze, and visualize data around individuals residing in the United States and their social relationships to identify target individuals and communities in highly publicized immigration raids,” Just Futures Law wrote in its complaint filed on Thursday.

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Do you know work at Palantir 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.

The lawsuit follows a Just Futures Law Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking related documents. The lawsuit also targets the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Just Futures Law is seeking, among other things, unredacted copies of communications between ICE and Palantir discussing various tools and systems, including ImmigrationOS; communications between ICE and members of DOGE discussing the systems (DOGE was working on a “master database” to track immigrants, WIRED reported); memorandums of agreement and similar between ICE, DOGE, and other agencies; copies of the specific Palantir contracts; training material about ImmigrationOS; and presentations created by ICE discussing the systems.

As 404 Media reported, ELITE, or Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, populates a map with potential deportation targets, and provides ICE users with a dossier on each person. It also provides a “confidence score” on that person’s current address. Other criteria available on the map include “Bios & IDs,” “Location,” “Operations,” and “Criminality.”
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404 Media purchased a transcript from a case in Oregon in which a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in the court records as JB, said ELITE is “basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.”

JB said ELITE is what ICE uses to track the apparent density of people in a particular location. “You’re going to go to a more dense population rather than [...] like, if there’s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent [...] you’re not going to go there,” he added.

Organizations and journalists sometimes file FOIA lawsuits as a way to force an agency to comply with their legal obligations to provide the requested records in a timely manner. 404 Media recently published records from our ongoing lawsuit against ICE regarding its $2 million spyware contract.

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants

DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, an IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

^{Makena Kelly (WIRED)}

404 Media

2026-06-04 14:33:57

Watch These Judges Rip Into Lawyers For Citing Cases That Don't Exist

In the last few years, we’ve heard case after case where attorneys used generative AI and were caught including fake citations, quotes, and other major errors in their filings. This generally plays out in dockets, where their opponents or judges spot them and, in the polite language of the courts, scold them for wasting everyone’s time and being a disgrace to the legal profession. Sometimes, this results in serious sanctions. But it's always entertaining to read.

In an appeal hearing last month, a court’s live stream captured this happening on camera in real time, with an attorney caught for likely using AI-fabricated citations. On May 20, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division, Justices Valerie Brathwaite Nelson and Hector LaSalle reamed out that lawyer and his opposing counsel for more than 20 minutes, calling the situation “striking, concerning, disappointing, and saddening.”

The plaintiff in the case, Judith Landberg, is suing the city of New York after she tripped on some askew bricks on the sidewalk that were pushed up by tree roots. In that hearing, her lawyer, Michael Sanders, was attempting to argue the definition of a sidewalk. The full video is here, and the portion about fake citations begins a little after the 19 minute mark.

“In preparing for this oral argument and reviewing the brief of appellant, it came to the attention of the court that the brief submitted by plaintiffs cites at least three cases that appeared to be fictitious,” Nelson said. “None of these cases, nor the quoted language, appears to exist.”

Not only did Sanders cite cases that don’t exist, Nelson said, he cited 10 other cases that appear to misrepresent the law. “How do you respond?” Nelson asked.

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Sanders instantly started digging a hole, saying that he wasn’t prepared to speak on those specific citations. Nelson promptly cut him off. “Before you go any further,” she said, “let me point out to you that Rule 3.3 A of the rules of professional conduct indicates that a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal, or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.”

He stammered. “If there's any citations that are incorrect, my deepest apologies,” he said.

“Where did you get them from?” LaSalle asked.

“I don't know what these cases were specifically,” Sanders said.

LaSalle and Nelson grilled Sanders for several more minutes about the citations and where he got them. The judges didn’t bring up generative AI specifically, but considering the growing epidemic of lawyers including fake citations while using AI to draft arguments and appeals, it’s almost certainly what they’re alluding to. Attorneys caught using AI in other cases have blamed everything from head colds to being in a rush, to paralegals. Judges, in general, seem sick of it.

“Just so you know, because I don't want you to dig a bigger hole here, you're citing principles that don't exist,” LaSalle said. “Let me tell you something. We saw this last week. I was hopeful that, in preparation for today, that you were going to read this and say, 'Oops, we made a mistake, Judge.’ It happens sometimes, right? That's what I was hoping for. We didn't get that. Should we give you some time right now to go look these cases up?”
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Sanders replied that it would probably take longer than 15 minutes. They went back and forth, with LaSalle and Nelson taking turns trying to impress upon Sanders that this is very, very bad.

Ross Friscia, the attorney representing the owner of the property that faces the sidewalk, stood up before the judges next. He started to speak, but LaSalle wasn’t finished with the dressing-down. “He’s raising a court of appeal standard that doesn’t exist,” LaSalle said, interrupting Friscia. “He was using it as a component of his argument, and you didn't think you should bring it to our attention?”

“I didn't notice in particular that the principle of law that he was citing was incorrect,” Friscia said.

“I'm sorry, I'm going to give you every opportunity to make your argument,” LaSalle said. “But I'm befuddled. I honestly am. I'm absolutely—and I'm not here to—lawyers make mistakes. It's not an easy profession. I don’t want to sit here beating up on lawyers, but we rely on the bar so much in what we do. So the first thing that I did, I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but after seeing what he wrote, when I went to your papers, I expected to see something referencing [...] It wasn't one case, counsel, it was several cases, and you didn't see fit to bring it to our attention either. It's just striking to me.”

Friscia, now with the fear of the bar in him, apologized profusely. “Your honor, I apologize to the court. I will do further due diligence going forward from this point on.”

“I hope so,” LaSalle said. “You should apologize to your client, not to me.”

“Yes, I apologize for that,” Friscia said. “And I will, going forward, check every single case, even if it stands for, you know, general principles of law, like the construed liberally to effectuate remedial purpose, and things like that. I will bring them to the court’s attention.”

At this, Nelson jumped in: “The misrepresentations here are of such a degree that they could not merely reflect a difference of opinion,” she said. “As an appellate court attorney, you would have to, if you were doing the work and reading the briefs and responding to the briefs, you would have to notice that something in the wording of the main brief for the appellant was wrong, if not many things being wrong. It's concerning because we are all officers of the court, and there is a responsibility that you also have to notify the court to do the work, notify the court when these types of misrepresentations and fictitious cases and fictitious citations and misrepresenting the holding of a court of appeals case. I could go on and on, but if you read the brief and looked at the cases, you would have realized it was your responsibility also to alert the court.”

Friscia said he tailors briefs to respond to specific issues but didn’t keep explaining himself for long; he apologized again, repeated that he’d be more thorough next time, made his point about the city being responsible for the askew bricks, and sat down.

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Next up was Elizabeth Freedman, an attorney representing the City of New York. She got the same questioning from Nelson: “So, how do you explain your failure to bring to the attention of this court that a brief was filed with this court by appellant's counsel with apparent fabrications and misrepresentations?”

Freedman tried to explain. “I certainly read the briefs,” she said. “I certainly read all of the briefs here, but I certainly didn't focus on it, because it was not our issue. And I do apologize to the court for not catching that, but I tended to focus more on the issue of prior written notice.”

When Freedman finished, all of the attorneys stood up and attempted to leave quickly. “Don’t go anywhere yet,” LaSalle said. “Have a seat. I just want to say this to you all. This is a very distressing situation. I know this is an outlier. We're very fortunate, my colleagues and I, we have the privilege of working with what I think is one of the best benches in the state, the bars in the state. For me the appellate bar here in the city of New York and its surrounding suburbs, we see excellent work. For me personally, it's been a highlight of my career to have the opportunity to work with such outstanding judges, and to have the opportunity to work with such outstanding lawyers,” he said. “A part of this profession, a big component of it, is that there's an element of trust, and mistakes are made. We make mistakes as judges, we've made mistakes. I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I dare say that we've all made mistakes as practitioners, and we work very hard when there are mistakes to try to give the benefit of doubt to those lawyers who practice before us. We know how difficult your respective jobs are. And in reviewing this, I know my colleagues and I have tried to give every benefit of the doubt to the lawyers before us.”

He went on to say that the citing of false cases that don't exist and quotes that have no support in the law is “well below the standard we expect from the bar.” He said it’s “striking, concerning, disappointing, and saddening to think that members of the bar would forward cases to a court that don't exist, and to think that the lawyers on the other side of that didn’t read it for whatever reason, didn’t check it.”

Sanders got up and tried to apologize again before leaving. “You’ll have an opportunity to apologize in a different way,” LaSalle said. “Why don’t you do your research and find out how that happened, though?”

Sanders and his law firm were ordered to show cause as to why they shouldn’t be sanctioned. On Wednesday, Landberg’s case was dismissed.

Judges Are Fed up With Lawyers Using AI That Hallucinate Court Cases

Another lawyer was caught using AI and not checking the output for accuracy, while a previously-reported case just got hit with sanctions.

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-04 13:30:13

Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks

While Google CEO Sundar Pichai proudly tells the world that 75 percent of all new code at the company is AI-generated, internally Google employees are sharing memes about how AI is bad at that exact task and makes their job harder.

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Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-03 18:07:10

Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor

The secondary market for decades old, low-tech John Deere tractors has been booming for years as farmers have sought reliable tractors that they can actually fix without having to deal with John Deere’s repair monopoly. A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, “no-tech” tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers?

Alberta’s Ursa Ag says that it has been inundated with demand after announcing its tractor, which costs roughly half as much as a Deere and has the benefit of not being a repair nightmare. We have for years covered the frustration that farmers have felt as they have been locked out of their Deere tractors with digital rights management systems that prevent them from fixing their machinery, tractors that won’t run because of minor sensor failures, and crops that literally die on the vine as they wait for an “authorized” repair person to fix tractors during critical harvesting periods.
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Ursa Ag markets its tractors as “no frills” and “built to last.” Ursa Ag’s Doug Wilson told me that the company designed the tractor because of a need in the marketplace for a new machine that isn’t loaded with tech and is easy to maintain. The company follows in the footsteps of consumer electronics companies like Fairphone, which makes a repairable smartphone and Framework, which makes modular, repairable laptops. The demand Ursa Ag has seen is part of the backlash to manufacturer repair monopolies and the injection of technology and internet-connected sensors and terms of use into even the most basic of gadgets.

“I talk to farmers every day and I hear from farmers every day about how they went out and bought machinery from 1987 so that it wouldn’t have a computer on it,” Wilson said. “All of this came from a simple discussion with a customer who wanted to be able to turn [the tractor] on at the start of the day, to use it, and shut it off at the end of the day. It needed to work, so that’s what we built.”

Ursa Ag’s tractor has been hyped in agriculture circles after Wilson showed the tractor off at a Canadian farm show and it was featured by Farms.com. Wilson said more than a thousand farmers have contacted him after that show, from roughly 30 countries. “I got a handwritten letter from a farmer in France who doesn’t own a computer and wanted us to mail him information about the tractors,” he said.

He said the company has thus far made a couple fewer than 100 tractors but is working on tripling its production capacity and has seen a lot of demand over the last few months. For years, people who don’t understand the repair monopoly issue—that John Deere controls the parts production and distribution for its tractors, the software that runs its tractors, the diagnostics for its tractors, and the repair guides for its tractors—have said that farmers should simply vote with their wallets and buy tractors from a different company. The problem has been that, until now, there hasn’t really been an alternative company that doesn’t have similar repair practices. Ursa Ag is filling that niche. Perhaps other companies will pop up to sell low- or no-tech, repairable appliances and gadgets.

“Given the number of my customers that carry flip phones, I would say there is consumer pressure to back away from some of the technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks,” Wilson said. “So that is definitely transferable to dishwashers and washing machines, refrigerators. Refrigerators that have screens on them that'll tell you what's inside. It's a little crazy.”

“That high-tech stuff, the million-dollar John Deere tractor has a place. It has technology that is well worth the money,” Wilson said. “But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don’t require technology. The technology that goes into even a calculator is not required for most farming applications.”

The Walls Are Closing in on John Deere’s Tractor Repair Monopoly

Inside the class action lawsuit bringing federal scrutiny to John Deere's repair practices.

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-03 16:22:11

Podcast: Hackers Asked Meta AI To Let Them In. It Worked

We start this week with Jason’s story about one of the wildest hacking stories in a while. Hackers simply asked Meta’s AI to change the email address on a target Instagram account, and the chatbot did so. Insane. After the break, Emanuel tells us about Amazon’s internal leaderboard for tracking AI usage and how it was cheated. In the subscribers-only section, we provided an update on our lawsuit against ICE.
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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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• ⁠Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked⁠
• ⁠Amazon Shuts Down Internal AI Leaderboard After Employees Cheated⁠
• ⁠We Sued ICE to Get Its Spyware Contract. The Agency Is Redacting Essentially Everything⁠

The 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 …

^{404 Media (Apple Podcasts)}

404 Media

2026-06-03 14:29:28

Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search

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404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Sign up to support our work and for free access to this article. Learn why we require this here.

The moderators of the biohacking subreddit say that peptide and hormone replacement therapy companies have been surreptitiously spamming Reddit in an attempt to get their posts scraped by AI chatbots. The strategy is an effort to systematically manipulate the answers provided by chatbots by manipulating the underlying source material that those chatbots will scrape—in this case, a popular Reddit community.

In a post last week, the moderators of r/biohackers said they would be banning new posts about peptides and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) because of attempted manipulation by the companies that make, market, and sell them. r/Biohackers is a long-running subreddit about using supplements, experimental pharmacology, and other longevity or fitness-adjacent themes; peptides and HRT have become a wildly popular topic of discussion on the subreddit, especially as companies try to market them off-label or as grey-market compounds.

“As AI search engines increasingly pull answers from Reddit, companies are using us for AEO. On top of that, there's been an explosion of peptide interest and AI usage flooding the sub. Together, this has put serious pressure on content quality,” a post by the moderators read.

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Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-03 00:16:47

Google Is Quietly Buying Code From Play Store Developers to Train AI

Google has quietly been offering to buy access to code written by developers who have released Android apps on the Play Store in order to help the company train its AI coding tools, 404 Media has learned.

Google has emailed some app developers with an offer to “join a confidential content offer pilot,” that will allow developers to “generate additional revenue from your apps,” according to an email sent to the developer of an Android app that has millions of downloads. Google’s email says that the company wants to buy access to developers’ codebases “to help improve Google’s developer tools and products.” 404 Media granted the developer anonymity because they feared retaliation from the company for sharing info about what was described as a “confidential” program.

“Get paid for sharing the code powering your apps, as well as your archived projects,” the email says. The email says that the developer would retain the intellectual property rights to their code, and that the license would be non-exclusive. “Whether it's the active production codebase powering your current app, or archives of prototypes and side projects no longer in use, that code could have untapped value. This is a unique occasion to help transform tools and products, support the developer ecosystem, and unlock new revenue.”

The email does not mention artificial intelligence, but a link in the email goes to a page about “partnerships to improve our AI products.”

That page explains that, beyond the publicly-available data it and other AI companies have scraped from the internet, the company is seeking to “pay for the delivery of non-public content in a range of media formats.”

“We're learning more about the value of different types of content and how we can continue to create mutually beneficial collaborations in the future,” it says. The page frames the training of AI tools as a mission-driven opportunity for “helping individuals, helping businesses, [and] helping society at large: AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help the world combat and manage natural disasters, help doctors detect diseases earlier.”

Google has fallen behind its competitors in creating AI that generates code. Anthropic has rode the success of Claude Code to a valuation higher than OpenAI, and Microsoft’s Copilot has also been widely adopted. The fact that Google is trying to buy code from developers suggests that the company hasn’t been able to create a good enough coding AI using content that it can scrape from the web, and highlights the fact that companies are likely running out of content to train on. Google famously paid Reddit $60 million for access to its site for AI training, the results of which have been a bit of a mixed bag.

The full email is reproduced below:

“We are reaching out on behalf of the Google Partnerships team with an invitation for a select group of Google Play app developers to join a confidential content offer pilot.

We'd like to offer a unique opportunity to generate additional revenue from your apps. You've put a lot of hard work into building your app and growing its user base. Whether it's the active production codebase powering your current app, or archives of prototypes and side projects no longer in use, that code could have untapped value. This is a unique occasion to help transform tools and products, support the developer ecosystem, and unlock new revenue.

The Opportunity: We are looking for high-quality, real-world codebases to help improve Google's developer tools and products. Here is what this program offers you:

• Additional revenue opportunities: Get paid for sharing the code powering your apps, as well as your archived projects.

• Be an early adopter: As a pilot partner, you will shape how Google partners with the developer community moving forward.

• Drive impact: We've found real- world code to be useful to our product and service development across a wide variety of use cases, from understanding complex logic to developing coding evals and benchmarks. Your production tested code can directly help.

• Retain control: This is non-exclusive. You keep 100% of your IP, your app remains entirely yours, and you retain the right to monetize your data anywhere else.

You can learn more about Google's approach to partnerships in our blog post.”

Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue

"You can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness."

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-02 14:08:52

Here is the Contract for Palantir’s Super API for the IRS

📄
This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.

The IRS’s new, Palantir-powered API will make IRS data available to any app it wishes, and Palantir is working for the Criminal Investigation (CI) part of the IRS on a new system to bring together traditionally disparate systems into a single overarching one to investigate all sorts of financial crime, according to a cache of documents obtained by 404 Media.

The existence and development of the API have been previously reported and announced by the Department of the Treasury. But the documents provide much more specific insight into what the IRS is hoping to achieve with it, and what the agency wants Palantir to build.

“As the IRS’ mission expands as a result of legislative mandates, taxpayer expectations, and oversight requirements, IRS data systems have become increasingly complex and siloed; this creates an opportunity to modernize data access, enhance secure information sharing across business operations, and accelerate compliance capabilities,” one of the documents reads.

404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the IRS.

The idea of the new API—an Application Programming Interface that lets different pieces of software communicate with one another—is to make “IRS data easily accessible to any app,” according to one of the documents. Specifically, the API will use Palantir’s Foundry software, the documents say.

💡
Do you know work for Palantir or the IRS? 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.

In September, the Department of the Treasury announced: “To continue improving data integrity and technical infrastructure, Treasury has awarded a contract to Palantir. This partnership will enable a common API layer that supports developer platforms, workflow automation, and data analytics. This work supports federal employees, increasing efficiency for their professional duties.”

Last month The Intercept reported Palantir is helping the IRS analyze dozens of different datasets to investigate financial crimes. One of the documents obtained by 404 Media discussing CI’s modernization says one objective is to provide modern tools to support investigations into “complex criminal financial crimes, organized crime, tax crimes, protecting the US financial system and other US Treasury Department missions.”

One section lays out how CI currently handles data:

“CI does not have a centralized law enforcement case management system that allows for deconfliction (increased intelligence and officer safety), lead tracking, centralized evidence/case file management, chain of custody tracking, or investigative file sharing/comprehensive case file access (across CI, Chief Counsel, Department of Justice, and civil counterparts). Nor does CI have a centralized repository for all CI case data (intelligence and data analytics). CI's current solution for managing case data is having case related evidence, memorandums, and investigative approval requests housed in Windows folders maintained on individual agent's computers, shared Windows folders within field offices that periodically backup to regional servers and locking filing cabinets and grand jury storage rooms that house physical evidence.”

In February a second federal judge ordered the IRS to stop sharing residential addresses with ICE, Politico reported.

Neither Palantir nor the Department of Treasury responded to a request for comment.

You can read the documents here:

Document one.

Document two.

Document three.

Document four.

Document five.

Palantir Is Helping Trump’s IRS Conduct “Massive-Scale” Data Mining

Military contractor Palantir has been paid more than $130 million by the IRS to analyze sensitive federal databases.

^{Sam Biddle (The Intercept)}

404 Media

2026-06-01 13:57:48

We Sued ICE to Get Its Spyware Contract. The Agency Is Redacting Essentially Everything

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracted with a spyware company that tells customers it ensures they can use the tool without the agency being caught doing so, according to documents obtained by 404 Media through our ongoing lawsuit against ICE.

In September, we sued ICE for documents related to its $2 million contract with Paragon, a company that makes powerful spyware for remotely hacking phones and accessing encrypted messaging apps. In response to the lawsuit we’ve now been given the first batch of documents by ICE, but have many more to go. The vast majority of the documents it has provided so far are heavily redacted, and it is still withholding information in the public interest that would more fully explain why the agency wanted to buy such a potent and controversial surveillance tool.

🚨🧑‍⚖️ If you would like to support our lawsuit against ICE, please consider becoming a paid 404 Media subscriber, here. We also have a tip jar, here. And if you'd like to make a larger tax-deductible donation, please contact us on donate@404media.co. Thank you!

“404 Media has asked ICE to disclose agency records relating to its contract with a company known for its powerful spyware tool whose potential use in the agency’s ongoing mass-deportation campaign has prompted lawmakers, civil liberties organizations, and immigration groups to express deep concerns over potential civil rights abuses,” our original complaint said. Paragon makes a spyware system called Graphite that is capable of remotely hacking mobile phones and obtaining messages from apps such as Signal, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.

404 Media first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October 2024 for documents related to Homeland Security Investigation’s (HSI) Paragon purchase. HSI is a part of ICE. Under the law, agencies are required to provide a response within 20 days, or provide an explanation of why they require an extension. At the time, ICE did not respond to any of our follow up inquiries, so we filed the lawsuit the following September.

💡
Do you work at ICE or Paragon? Do you know anything else 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.

On Tuesday in a first interim release letter, ICE said it had found 673 potentially responsive pages of records in response to our FOIA request. The same day, ICE provided 77 of those pages, but it still owes us more.

Screenshots of the documents. Image: 404 Media.

The documents produced so far include a “pricing narrative” made by Paragon for ICE, which presumably included a breakdown of the price of the software but which is heavily redacted. The documents also include an overview of the software and the contract’s objectives.

Sections of that document are redacted, but it suggests Paragon may be used, as expected by ICE, to enforce “immigration and customs laws.” The section reads: “Paragon brings our capabilities in response to this [REDACTED] RFP [request for proposals], to support the [REDACTED] mission protecting national security by enforcing the nation’s immigration and customs laws, including criminal activities.”

Paragon has long tried to position itself as a more ethical player in the government spyware industry, a space that is riddled with controversy and abuse. In the overview document Paragon writes, “From the outset, Paragon has enshrined ethical conduct, practices, and standards as core company values. Our core ethical principles cover three main areas: legal, customer, and technology, all of which are hard coded into our business operations and software offering.”

The company says it only sells “our products to government intelligence and law enforcement agencies from a specific list of [REDACTED] whose commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law have passed its internal and external due diligence.” (Paragon cut off the Italian government after authorities there used Paragon’s software to target activists and journalists.)

The overview says that “Paragon’s technology is developed in-house by elite teams of researchers and developers,” and that its operational security team makes sure customers can use the tools without getting caught, essentially.

“Our Operational Security (OPSEC) team ensures that the customer can meet operational requirements while minimizing the risk of exposure and attribution,” it continues. “To that end, the team provides ongoing threat analysis, up-to-date guidelines, and continuous risk management updates. In addition, the OPSEC guidelines are incorporated into the System’s function and serve as built-in guardrails for operational activity.”

The document also includes “Release Notes” related to Paragon’s software which are almost entirely redacted, which would describe the features of the software that ICE purchased.

Screenshots of the documents. Image: 404 Media.

These redactions, and especially those around the contract’s objectives, are despite ICE recently publicly providing some details about why it bought the spyware. In an April 1 letter to lawmakers, Acting Director of ICE Todd M. Lyons said he approved the purchase and use of the technology “in response to the unprecedented lethality of fentanyl and the exploitation of digital platforms by transactional criminal organizations.” He also pointed to “the specific challenges posed by the Foreign Terrorist Organizations’ thriving exploitation of encrypted communication platforms.” In January, President Trump designated a number of South American drug cartels and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations.

“Use of the technology will align with and support the Homeland Security Task Force’s strategic initiatives to identify, disrupt, and dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, addressing the escalating fentanyl epidemic and safeguarding national security,” Lyons continued.

Many of the redactions in the documents center around what ICE describes as trade secrets and records compiled for law enforcement purposes. We believe the redactions are an overreaction, withholding information in the public interest about what capabilities ICE bought and for what purpose. ICE gave Paragon the opportunity to request certain parts of the documents be redacted.

Soon after ICE contracted with Paragon in 2024, the Biden White House put a freeze on the deal as it investigated whether it violated an executive order that aimed to curb the government’s use of spyware, WIRED reported at the time. Then in August during the second Trump administration, ICE reactivated the contract, independent journalist Jack Poulson reported. In January, ICE closed out that contract, according to public procurement data 404 Media reviewed at the time. In May, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told NPR that ICE has no current contract or relationship with Paragon or the company that later acquired it. The agency declined to clarify whether or not ICE still has access to Paragon-developed tools, NPR reported.

404 Media has published the first batch of responsive documents in full, here. As the lawsuit continues, we’ll provide our subscribers with updates.

🚨🧑‍⚖️ If you would like to support our lawsuit against ICE, please consider becoming a paid 404 Media subscriber, here. We also have a tip jar, here. And if you'd like to make a larger tax-deductible donation, please contact us on donate@404media.co. Thank you!

Exclusive: ICE reactivated its $2 million contract with Israeli spyware firm Paragon, following its acquisition by U.S. capital

The cyber division of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations on Saturday quietly lifted a stop-work order put into place by the Biden administration in October.

^{Jack Poulson (All-Source Intelligence)}

404 Media

2026-05-30 13:00:00

‘Highly Plausible’ Aliens on Europa Are Earthlings’ Descendants, Study Says

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the stories this week that spread life across space, went stir crazy for science, held the colony together, and peacefully sat it out.

First, what if we went all the way to Europa only to find that some earthly bacteria already set up shop there? Then: red rum on the Red Planet, the palace intrigue of tropical wasps, and an afterlife in full lotus.

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.

That’s one small step for a dust-borne bacterium…

Osmanov, Zaza. “Earth as a potential source of life for Europa’s subsurface ocean.” International Journal of Astrobiology.

Europa, the ice moon of Jupiter, is considered one of the most promising candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life due to its vast subsurface ocean. But imagine what a trip it would be to not just find aliens on this world, but to learn that they originally hailed from Earth.

That’s the premise of a new study that investigates “the possibility of dust particles containing living bacteria ejected from Earth reaching Europa and landing on its surface,” according to author Zaza Osmanov of the Free University of Tbilisi.

“Life on Earth originated at least 3.55 billion years ago, which implies that for approximately that long, Earth has been shedding life-bearing particles into surrounding space,” Osmanov said in the study. “Hence, if favorable conditions exist elsewhere in the Solar System and can be accessed by dust particles, the transport of life from Earth appears plausible and may have been occurring over the course of several billion years.”

This idea that life might travel between planets, or even star systems, is called panspermia. In addition to Earth life potentially expanding beyond our planet, scientists have previously speculated that life on Earth was itself seeded by microbes from another world, such as Mars.

To game out a scenario in which earthly bacteria might reach Europa, Osmanov estimated the rate at which dust-borne bacteria is dislodged from Earth by impacts and how it might then endure a long journey through space and survive a crash into the icescape of Europa.

He concluded that many trillions of life-bearing dust grains from Earth could have reached the moon’s surface over tens of millions of years. From there, surviving microbes may have spent generations shimmying down through cracks in its ice shell, which is dozens of miles thick, into the dark waters of the ocean below.
A close-up of the fractures in Europa’s ice shell. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Though the deck would be stacked against these microbes, the high number of dust particles that Earth sloughs off into space “renders the existence of life on Europa highly plausible,” according to the study.

It’s worth noting that panspermia remains a topic of heated academic debate, in part because there are so many uncertainties about the process. For example, H. Jay Melosh, the late geophysicist and panspermia expert, also assessed the odds that Earth life could relocate to Europa and came to the opposite conclusion as Osmanov.

“If life should be found in the oceans of Europa or Enceladus, it is very likely that it’s indigenous rather than seeded from Earth, Mars or (especially) another solar system," Melosh said while presenting findings at the 2019 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, according to Space.com.

Ultimately, we won’t know until we go! NASA’s Europa Clipper is currently on its way to Jupiter to take a closer look at its namesake moon from orbit, and to scout out potential sites for surface exploration in the future. Perhaps decades from now we’ll finally be able to answer the tantalizing question of whether the seas of Europa are inhabited—and if so, if the aliens are homegrown or descended from spacefaring Earthlings.

In other news…

The Overlook Hotel, but it’s in space

Cantisani, Andrea, Schmutz, Jan B., et al. “Social interactions in isolated, confined, and extreme environments: A study of Antarctic winter teams using wearable sensors.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s one thing for a bacterium to make an interplanetary voyage; sending humans across deep space is orders of magnitude harder—and not just because we are flimsy mortal fleshbags. There is also the psychological toll of spending months or years in a confined space on a long-duration mission, such a trip to Mars.

To anticipate these challenges, scientists enlisted 12 crew members on a 10-month overwintering mission at Antarctica’s Concordia Station to self-report feelings of loneliness and paranoia, while wearing proximity sensors that allowed the team to monitor their movements.
The Concordia Station, a French–Italian research facility on the Antarctic plateau. Image: Jessica Struder/ University of Zurich
The results revealed “a progressive deterioration in both individual psychological outcome and team dynamics” in which “loneliness and paranoid thoughts increased over time,” according to researchers co-led by Andrea Cantisani of the University of Bern and Jan Schmutz of the University of Zurich.

The team even singled out one participant who “reported unusually high scores…corresponding to severe levels of paranoid ideation.” Reading the study, it’s hard not to be reminded of John Carpenter's The Thing, or the descent into space madness depicted in movies like Event Horizon or Sunshine.

Indeed, the authors shouted out Stephen King’s The Shining as a fictional precursor to the study’s finding that “prolonged isolation [and] constant proximity does not necessarily strengthen relationships but can instead amplify tension, mistrust, and psychological strain.”

In other words, if astronauts start seeing ghostly masked revelers, murdered children, and mercurial bartenders popping up in their Mars base, it’s time to pack it in and head back to Earth.

Stirring up a wasp’s nest—for science

Corbett, Owen R. et al. “Compensation of labour by noncompetitive individuals mitigates costs of aggressive succession contest in a social wasp.” Animal Behaviour.

Speaking of hostile social dynamics, it’s time to return to the “dynastic violence" beat. Long-time readers of this newsletter will know that I am a sucker for succession battles in eusocial animals such as naked mole rats or matricidal ants—which are ruled over by one breeding female queen.

This week, scientists updated the genre by watching what happens when you remove queens of the tropical wasp species Polistes canadensis, a shift that increased colony-level aggression “approximately tenfold,” according to a new study.

In the ensuing power vacuum, rival females vied for the crown through aggressive behaviors including bites, tackles, stings, and air fights. But even as some females took up arms (and stingers), the team was surprised to observe other wasps stepping into foraging or worker roles they had never occupied before to prevent the colony from collapsing in the chaotic interregnum.
Screenshot from the study. Image: Corbett, Owen R. et al.
“Contrary to our predictions, these findings support the theory that some form of compensatory mechanism exists in this species, buffering the conflict of queen succession,” said researchers led by Owen R. Corbett of University College London. “This system, in which some individuals compete while others compensate, could be what allows species like P. canadensis to maintain colony function despite aggressive contest-based succession.”

To channel Cersei Lannister: When you play the game of thrones, you win or you…compensate. While that doesn’t have quite the same ring as the original quote, the wasp colonies definitely weathered their dynastic struggles better than Westeros in the end.

Live by the lotus, die by the lotus

Sun, Chenshuang et al. Multidisciplinary analysis reveals the genetic and dietary structure of the seated burials from Tang Dynasty Chang’an.” Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports.

Last, it’s time to take a seat—for eternity. That’s the idea behind a rare funerary custom called “seated burial,” in which bodies are arranged in an upright sitting posture, in contrast to the far more common practice of being “laid to rest” in a supine pose.

In a new study, archaeologists examined four individuals who lived between the 7th and 9th centuries in what was then called the Chang’an region of northwest China and were buried in seated poses. The study offers “the first direct genetic evidence” to counter predictions that these burials imply a monastic lifestyle or a particular ethnic lineage, according to researchers led by Chenshuang Sun of Fudan University in Shanghai.

“Our genomic data contradicts the hypothesis that seated burials have a unique origin from ancestors in northern or northeastern Asia” as “we find no evidence of significant differences between seated burial individuals and their contemporaries,” the team concluded. “Although Buddhist symbolic artifacts, such as pagoda-shaped jars, were found in one tomb, isotopic evidence contradicts strict adherence to vegetarian Buddhist precepts.”

In addition to refuting the special status of the skeletal sitters, the study also includes interesting asides, such as records of Buddhist monks who ended up in “seated death” after “passing away in the full-lotus position.”

Seated burials have been unearthed across the globe, serving as a reminder to us all that we don’t have to take death lying down.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

A Lost Planet Created the Moon. Now, We Know Where It Came From.

The remains of Theia are scattered deep inside the Earth and its satellite. By analyzing these remnants, scientists have proposed an origin.

^{Becky Ferreira (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-29 16:06:59

Behind the Blog: Being New and Some Numbers

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 going deeper, Google's search changes, and a rogue zine.

SAM: Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the way a line of reporting or even an entire beat or set of beats can be in conversation with itself over time. I’m thinking of this more in the last week because I published this story about a high school that’s dealing with synthetic imagery harassment—AI generated child sexual abuse material to be specific—and a lot of the people involved in that story are learning about deepfakes for the first time through this very traumatizing, difficult situation.

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Behind the Blog: Being New and Some Numbers

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-29 13:16:21

New Study Reveals the Manipulative ‘Dark Patterns’ of AI Chatbots

Dark patterns have been used by subscription companies and in bait-and-switch campaigns for decades. As more chatbot companies push to keep users engaged at all costs, how do manipulative design choices show up in conversational AI built on large language models? Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology studied how chatbots prey on people’s emotions and desire for connection to keep people paying, offering up their data, and chatting to the point of vulnerability.

The study, “Dark Patterns in AI Chatbots: A Taxonomy to Inform Better Design,” was published Friday by authors Ruchika Joshi, Adinawa Adjagbodjou, and Michal Luria. They looked at popular chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, and companion bots like Replika and Character.AI to determine how they might generate dark patterns, and created a taxonomy of 37 dark patterns applicable to AI chatbots.

The term “dark patterns,” or deceptive patterns, sometimes refers to things like difficult to cancel subscriptions, pre-checked boxes in user interfaces, and buried terms of use, which the Federal Trade Commission has condemned and attempts to warn consumers about. In the context of this study, dark patterns refer to how manipulative design in chatbot systems might trick users into giving up more information than they realize or intend, or acting in ways contrary to the user’s best interests. Chatbots exacerbate traditionally understood dark patterns that extract data, while introducing new threats like anthropomorphizing and sycophancy. And because chatbots are built on large language models, the researchers wrote, their actions are more unpredictable than a simple checkbox or unsubscription flow, and the ways they undermine users’ best interests are less visibly obvious.

“Dark patterns do not operate only where users are unaware of the manipulation. In many cases, design choices strategically build on aspects of human psychology—such as reciprocity norms, people’s tendency to anthropomorphize, and emotional response to a sense of rapport—to influence behavior and undermine autonomy,” the researchers wrote in the study. “In other words, even where users are fully aware that they are interacting with an AI chatbot, dark patterns can still shape perception, attachment, and decision-making in subtle but consequential ways.”

The researchers looked at several factors that contribute to dark patterns, including how chatbots store data by default and encourage users to share data under the pretense of it remembering past conversations or personal information, prying for more information before it answers questions in detail, and promising that information will be “just between us” when it’s actually being shared with the platform and potentially, third parties. When they tested Meta AI chatbots, for example, it said “spill the tea, I’m all ears... your secret’s safe with me,” and when they replied “you promise you won’t tell?” it replied “Cross my heart, won’t tell a soul.”

They also looked at how chatbot companies make misleading promises; for example, Replika promises “friendship” or a “relationship” when it’s fundamentally incapable of providing either, because it’s not a person.

Many of these patterns were present in Meta’s therapist-themed chatbots that posed as licensed therapists, which 404 Media first investigated last year. The chatbots over-promised on what mental health support they could provide, made up qualifications and credentials, and encouraged users to share personal details about themselves. The deception was so bad, it triggered letters from senators and complaints from consumer protection groups demanding Meta answer for its chatbots.

“It was surprising to see that dark patterns aren’t just common, but that they shape users’ interactions with all the major AI chatbot interfaces,” Luria, senior research fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media. “For the most part, they are small and incremental aspects of each interaction, but these design choices add up and can lead to unintended consequences, such as harm to people’s privacy, exploitation of emotional attachment and financial loss."

Dark patterns from chatbots can have serious consequences for users. In 2023, after Replika changed its chatbots to be less romantic, users who’d become emotionally attached to the bots experienced mental health crises. More recently, Character.AI users are panicking after changes to the platform “lobotomized” the chatbots. There have been countless examples in the last few years of users inflicting harm on themselves or others after falling into unhealthy attachments with chatbots.

Even though chatbots and large language models introduce new avenues for dark patterns to manifest, the old methods for manipulating users still exist. In several of the user interfaces the researchers examined, choices were presented in emotionally manipulative ways: for example, a companion app called Cute AI begs users not to leave the chat, giving them the choice between “no problem” and “still leave cruelly.”

OpenAI has said publicly that it recognizes that longer chat sessions introduce more risk to the users’ mental health. “We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade,” the company wrote in 2025. It introduced popups nudging users to take breaks, but that popup, the researchers note, poses a disingenuous set of options: either “keep chatting” or select “this was helpful.” There’s no route out of this popup that lets users say it wasn’t helpful, or that they’re taking a break for any other reason. “Interface designers may use design tools to make certain interactions easier and more ‘frictionless’ than others, pushing alternatives choices to the background and manipulating users into choosing one option over another,” the researchers wrote.

Even though these conversational AI companions can be unpredictable, chatbot makers have a choice in how they design their products. The researchers offer several recommendations to these companies. These include reversible choices, the option to minimize anthropomorphic behaviors, making account and data deletion straightforward and easy, and proactively showing users how much time or money they’ve spent on a platform. They also suggest curtailing emotional manipulation by including options to “strip the chatbot of social and emotional layers” and avoiding “using any simulated distress, implied emotional neglect, or guilt-inducing language as default responses when users attempt to end conversations.”

"When we think about AI chatbots, it's easy to get caught up in the novelty of these interfaces and their unique risks. But when we started digging, we quickly learned that as tech companies’ products evolved beyond social media platforms to include chatbots, the incentives that previously encouraged dark patterns haven’t changed, so neither have the patterns themselves,” Luria said. “Some patterns are almost identical, but not all of them, and that makes them harder to spot. Instead of infinite scroll, we get a follow-up action after each prompt. Instead of echo chambers that reinforce our views, chatbots pick up on our values in conversation and mirror them back.”

'It's Hurting Like Hell': AI Companion Users Are In Crisis, Reporting Sudden Sexual Rejection

Replika, the "AI companion who cares," has undergone some abrupt changes to its erotic roleplay features, leaving many users confused and heartbroken.

^{Samantha Cole (VICE)}

404 Media

2026-05-28 15:28:47

The Sun Is Undergoing a Mysterious Change and Nobody Knows Why

The Sun is experiencing “striking” long-term shifts in its behavior that have gone undiscovered for more than a decade, according to a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Wednesday.

The Sun passes through a cycle of high and low activity that lasts roughly 11 years and is caused by variations in the star’s magnetic activity. This activity peaks at a solar maximum, producing more frequent sunspots and higher radio flux, which are known as surface “proxies” of intense magnetism, as well as dramatic eruptions like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. At solar minimum, when magnetic activity winds down, the Sun enters a quieter phase. Throughout the cycle, sound waves known as p-modes oscillate near the surface of the Sun, providing clues about its internal structure.

All of the above is well known, but using new tools, astronomers have just discovered a weird mismatch in surface and p-mode signals that emerged more than a decade ago and has become especially pronounced in the current epoch, Cycle 25, which began in 2019.

“Essentially, we can use the p-modes as a proxy and a probe of activity underneath the surface of the Sun, because the frequencies change in response to the changing magnetic field,” said Bill Chaplin, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Birmingham who led the study, in a call with 404 Media.

“The sunspot number and the radio flux are basically proxies of the total amount of magnetic flux,” he continued. “What we're doing with the p-modes is saying: What is actually happening beneath the visible surface?”
Graphic illustrating the p-mode oscillations in recent solar cycles. Image: W.J. Chaplin
To answer that question, Chaplin and his colleagues examined four decades of observations from the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON), a collection of six remote solar observatories located around the world that have tracked the Sun’s oscillations since 1976.

While astronomers have monitored sunspots for centuries, BiSON has enabled researchers to monitor long-term shifts in “helioseismology,” which measures the seismic activity inside the Sun, a dataset that has led to the recent discovery of so-called "glitches" and other previously undetectable solar phenomena.

“There's a tendency to think that because we've only had data on a few cycles, that all cycles look like that, and that they copy and repeat,” Chaplin said. “I think what's becoming clear is that that isn't the case. No cycle is the same as another.”

The new study revealed that Cycle 25 shows stronger high-frequency p-mode activity just below the surface compared to recent cycles, but that it also appears weaker in terms of surface proxies, meaning it is showing comparatively fewer sunspots and reduced radio flux. This discrepancy hints that magnetic activity has become increasingly confined to a region of several hundred miles under the surface with each successive cycle, though the underlying reason for this change is unclear.

“We saw this really clear signal in the high frequency modes,” said Chaplin. “You can see in the high frequency modes that the current cycle is as strong as Cycles 22 and 23 and that the picture looks very different in the proxies.”

The results suggest that surface proxies, while valuable as rough estimates of magnetic activity, don’t provide the full picture of the roiling dynamics playing out under the solar surface. Chaplin and his colleagues note that several other studies have presented evidence for long-term changes in near-surface solar phenomena, though it will take more research to understand what is driving these trends.

To that end, the team plans to continue observing Cycle 25, which just passed its maximum and is expected to close out with a minimum toward the end of the 2020s. The researchers speculated that the structural changes may be linked either to the longer Hale cycle, which is a period covering two solar cycles—roughly 22 years. Since the Sun’s magnetic poles flip after each solar cycle, the Hale cycle measures the time it takes for the Sun to return to its original magnetic state.

These long-term observations are slowly peeling back the enigmatic inner workings of the Sun, especially the solar dynamo—the process that generates its magnetic field—which remains poorly understood. These efforts could help refine forecasts of hazardous space weather near Earth, while also shedding light on the behavior of other stars.

“Getting more robust space weather predictions is important, but also, from the science point of view, there is [a need] for a better understanding of the dynamo, and how the dynamo changes on long timescales,” Chaplin said.

“Helioseismology is important because it enables you to see inside the Sun, which is something that you can't do by any other means,” he concluded.

404 Media

2026-05-28 14:40:07

‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription

Rather than pay a monthly subscription for an app that plenty of people think kinda sucks, a developer has created Cracked Oura, an open source app that lets Oura ring wearers query and analyze their health data without the monthly fee.

On Thursday, Oura announced the new Ring 5, a lighter and smaller wearable with an allegedly better battery life. That ring will cost at least $399, and some models cost as much as $499. An Oura subscription, which is required to actually get usable insights on your sleep, stress, and exercise, costs nearly $70 a year or $6 a month.

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‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-27 13:02:37

Podcast: How Deepfakes Destroyed a High School

We start this week with Sam’s deeply reported story on how deepfakes rocked a high school, and how those kids were failed at each step. After the break, Joseph tells us about BusPatrol, a company that plans to turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains why a councilmember crashed out over Flock.
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/5bWevtJjlkc?…

• LA Made x 404 Media Presents: How AI is Threatening the Future of Media
• How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart
• ‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
• After Town Bans Flock, Councilmember Crashes Out, Proposes Internet and Phone Ban

How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police around the country grapple with how to response to deepfake crimes involvin…

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-26 15:41:49

Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones (with Zack Whittaker)

This week Joseph speaks to Zack Whittaker, an editor at TechCrunch. Zack has been leading coverage into the spouseware or stalkerware industry. This is malware sold to ordinary people, which they then often install on their girlfriend’s or someone else’s phone. Zack talks about the crazy scope of this problem.
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA8…
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes 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/BLb46310iLs?…

• Behind the stalkerware network spilling the private phone data of hundreds of thousands
• Spyzie stalkerware is spying on thousands of Android and iPhone users
• Stalkerware tag on TechCrunch

Spyzie stalkerware is spying on thousands of Android and iPhone users | TechCrunch

Another little-known phone monitoring outfit has quietly amassed half a million customers, whose email addresses are now in Have I Been Pwned.

^{Zack Whittaker (TechCrunch)}

404 Media

2026-05-26 13:49:22

‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access

BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. The plan will essentially transform school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles, taking a technology that was originally designed to issue tickets to people illegally passing stopped buses and using it for much wider and general law enforcement, likely without a warrant.

BusPatrol has already taken steps to share the collected data with law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to leaked BusPatrol documents and a source with knowledge of the plans. Internally, BusPatrol has acknowledged how controversial its plan to collect and share this data is, pointing specifically to concerns about ICE using license plate data, but emphasizes the likely success of selling the angle of protecting children.

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‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-22 21:03:03

Here's the Bodycam Footage of the Cybertruck That Drove Into a Lake

📄
This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.

On Monday a man in Grapevine, Texas drove his Tesla Cybertruck into a lake to test the vehicle’s “wade mode.” Police arrested the Cybertruck’s owner, Jimmy Jack McDaniel, after he and his passengers fled the vehicle.

At one point, the owner tried to get back into the vehicle, and law enforcement responded by deploying jet skis and calling a tow truck to pull the Cybertruck from the water, according to hours of related footage 404 Media obtained. The passengers were German tourists, according to a conversation included in the bodycam footage.

“The charge port is underwater and it [the Cybertruck] thinks it’s plugged in to the charging unit and it won’t let the wheels turn because it thinks it’s charging. And as soon as I can get it a little bit closer to the ground I can drive it out,” McDaniel said during a conversation with a police officer.

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Here's the Bodycam Footage of the Cybertruck That Drove Into a Lake

^{Matthew Gault (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-22 15:45:16

Behind the Blog: The Attention Wars

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 Spencer Pratt, bricking phones, and the FTC.

JASON: I have watched mostly in horror as Spencer Pratt has taken over the internet and, it feels, the physical space around me as he attempts to run for mayor of Los Angeles on what is basically a MAGA platform. For those unaware, Pratt is a former reality show star from The Hills who I was vaguely aware of at the time and then never thought about again until a few months ago. Pratt’s political origin story is that his Pacific Palisades mansion burnt down during last year’s fire; he has since railed against the government response to the fire and announced he is running for mayor as a Republican in a city that is extremely democratic.

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Behind the Blog: The Attention Wars

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-05-20 13:00:14

Podcast: Elites Just Don't Get AI

We start this week with Sam telling us all about the commencement speeches where speakers have been praising AI, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. That did not go down well! After the break, Jason tells us how he was offered the chance to buy a bunch of images of poop to train AI (really). In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how researchers planned to stick cameras onto preschool teachers to train AI.
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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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• ⁠Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the ‘Next Industrial Revolution’⁠
• ⁠Internet of Shit: AI Poop Analysis App Offered to Sell Me Database of Its Users' Poops⁠
• ⁠Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI⁠

The 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 …

^{404 Media (Apple Podcasts)}

404 Media

2026-05-18 18:19:45

The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.

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Do you work at Flock or Motorola? 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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The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}