404 Media

2026-01-21 14:00:25

Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback

San Diego Comic-Con changed an AI art friendly policy following an artist-led backlash last week. It was a small victory for working artists in an industry where jobs are slipping away as movie and video game studios adopt generative AI tools to save time and money.

Every year, tens of thousands of people descend on San Diego for Comic-Con, the world’s premier comic book convention that over the years has also become a major pan-media event where every major media company announces new movies, TV shows, and video games. For the past few years, Comic-Con has allowed some forms of AI-generated art at this art show at the convention. According to archived rules for the show, artists could display AI-generated material so long as it wasn’t for sale, was marked as AI-produced, and credited the original artist whose style was used.

“Material produced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be placed in the show, but only as Not-for-Sale (NFS). It must be clearly marked as AI-produced, not simply listed as a print. If one of the parameters in its creation was something similar to ‘Done in the style of,’ that information must be added to the description. If there are questions, the Art Show Coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability,” Comic-Con’s art show rules said until recently.

These rules have been in place since at least 2024, but anti-AI sentiment is growing in the artistic community and an artist-led backlash against Comic-Con’s AI-friendly language led to the convention quietly changing the rules. Twenty-four hours after artists called foul the AI-friendly policy, Comic-Con updated the language on its site. “Material created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show,” it now says. AI is now banned at the art show.

Comic and concept artist Tiana Oreglia told 404 Media Comic-Con’s friendly attitude towards AI was a slippery slope towards normalization. “I think we should be standing firm especially with institutions like Comic-Con which are quite literally built off the backs of artists and the creative community,” she said. Oreglia was one of the first artists to notice the AI-friendly policy. In addition to alerting her circle of friends, she also wrote a letter to Comic-Con itself.

Artist Karla Ortiz told 404 Media she learned about the AI-friendly policy after some fellow artists shared it with her. Ortiz is a major artist who has worked with some of the major studios who exhibit work at Comic-Con. She’s also got a large following on social media, a following she used to call out Comic-Con’s organizers.

“Comic-con deciding to allow GenAi imagery in the art show—giving valuable space to GenAi users to show slop right NEXT to actual artists who worked their asses off to be there—is a disgrace!” Ortiz said in a post on Bluesky. “A tone deaf decision that rewards and normalizes exploitative GenAi against artists in their own spaces!”

According to Ortiz, the convention is a sacred place she didn’t want to see desecrated by AI. “Comic-Con is the big mecca for comic artists, illustrators, and writers,” she said. “I organize and speak with a lot of different artists on the generative AI issue. It’s something that impacts us and impacts our lives. A lot of us have decided: ‘No, we’re not going to sit by the sidelines.’”

Oritz explained that generative AI was already impacting the livelihood of working artists. She said that, in the past, artists could sustain themselves on long projects for companies that included storyboarding and design. “Suddenly the duration of projects are cut,” she said. “They got generative AI to generate a bunch of references, a bunch of boards. ‘We already did the initial ideation, so just paint this. Paint what generative AI has generated for us.’”

Ortiz pointed to two high profile examples: Marvel using AI to make the title sequence for Secret Invasion and Coca-Cola using AI to make Christmas commercials. “You have this encroaching exploitative technology impacting almost every single level of the entertainment industry, whether you’re a writer, or a voice actor, or a musician, a painter, a concept artist, an illustrator. It doesn’t matter…and then to have Comic-Con, that place that’s supposed to be a gathering and a celebration of said creatives and their work, suddenly put on a pedestal the exploitative technology that only functions because of its training on our works? It’s upsetting beyond belief.”

“What is Comic-Con trying to tell the industry?” She said, “It’s telling artists: ‘Hey you, you’re exploitable and you’re replaceable.’”

Ortiz was heartened that Comic-Con changed its policy. “It was such a relief,” she said. “Generative AI is still going to creep its nasty way in some way or another, but at least it’s not something we have to take lying down. It’s something we can actively speak out against.”

Comic-Con did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment, but Oreglia said she did hear back from art show organizer Glen Wooten. “He basically told me that they put those AI stipulations in when AI was just starting to come around and that the inability to sell AI-generated works was meant to curtail people from submitting genAI works,” she said. “He seems to be very against genAI but wasn't really able to change the current policy until artists voiced their opinions loudly which pressured the office into banning AI completely.”

Despite changing policies and broad anti-AI sentiment among the artistic community, Oreglia has still seen an uptick of AI art at conventions. “Although there are many cons that ban it outright and if you get caught selling it you basically will get banned.” This happened to a vendor at Dragon Con last September. Organizers called police to escort the vendor off the premises.

“And I was tabling at Fanexpo SF and definitely saw genAI in the dealers hall, none in the artists alley as far as I could see though but I mostly stuck to my table,” she said. “I was also at Emerald City Comic Con last year and they also have a no-ai policy but fanexpo doesn't seem to have those same policies as far as I know.”

AI image generators are trained on original artwork so whatever output a tool like Midjourney creates is based on an artist’s work, often without compensation or credit. Oreglia also said she feels that AI is an artistic dead end. “Everything interesting, uplifting, and empowering I find about art gets stripped away and turned into vapid facsimiles based on vibes and trendy aesthetics,” she said.

'Secret Invasion' AI Opening Cost No Artists Their Jobs

Method Studios clarifies reports that sparked a social media backlash, stating AI tools "complemented and assisted our creative teams."

^{Carolyn Giardina (The Hollywood Reporter)}

404 Media

2026-01-20 17:47:24

How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI (With Wikipedia’s CTO Selena Deckelmann)

Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, and it’s never been more important.

The online, collectively created encyclopedia has been a cornerstone of the internet decades, but as generative AI started flooding every platform with AI-generated slop over the last couple of years, Wikipedia’s governance model, editing process, and dedication to citing reliable sources has emerged as one of the most reliable and resilient models we have.

And yet, as successful as the model is, it’s almost never replicated.
open.spotify.com/embed/episode…
This week on the podcast we’re joined by Selena Deckelmann, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia. That means Selena oversees the technical infrastructure and product strategy for one of the most visited sites in the world, and one the most comprehensive repositories of human knowledge ever assembled. Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, so I wanted to talk to Selena about how Wikipedia works and how it plans to continue to work in the age of generative AI.

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.

• Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI
• The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
• Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
• Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
• Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'

youtube.com/embed/39LR9ouJR3c?…

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-19 14:28:36

ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice

When authorities used Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) facial recognition app on a detained woman in an attempt to learn her identity and immigration status, it returned two different and incorrect names, raising serious questions about the accuracy of the app ICE is using to determine who should be removed from the United States, according to testimony from a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official obtained by 404 Media.

ICE has told lawmakers the app, called Mobile Fortify, provides a “definitive” determination of someone’s immigration status, and should be trusted over a birth certificate. The incident, which happened last year in Oregon, casts doubt on that claim.

💡
Do you know anything else about this app? Do you work at ICE or CBP? 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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ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-17 14:00:31

Scientists Make Stunning Find Inside Prehistoric Wolf’s Stomach

Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that entered the belly of the beast, craved human blood, exposed primate bonds, and pranked birds

First, a prehistoric chew toy for a puppy opens a window into a doomed lineage. Then: why saving species could save your own skin, the dazzling diversity of same-sex behavior in primates, and the exploits of asexual yams.

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.

I’m so hungry, I could eat a woolly rhinoceros

Guðjónsdóttir, Sólveig et al. “Genome Shows no Recent Inbreeding in Near-Extinction Woolly Rhinoceros Sample Found in Ancient Wolf's Stomach.” Genome Biology and Evolution.

Record scratch, freeze frame: Yep, that's me, an Ice Age woolly rhinoceros in a mummified wolf stomach. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation. Well, the good news is that it was not because I am inbred, according to a new study.

That’s my pitch for a movie based on the true story of some half-digested woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) remains that were wolfed down by a permafrost-preserved pupsicle from 14,400 years ago.

Incredibly, scientists were able to sequence the genome of the rhino, which revealed that this individual still had a high level of genetic diversity in its lineage, and no signs of inbreeding. Considering that woolly rhinos vanished from the fossil record around 14,000 years ago, this study suggests that they may have experienced a very sudden population collapse, rather than a gradual demise.
The piece of woolly rhino tissue found inside the stomach of the Tumat-1 puppy. Image: Love Dalén/Stockholm University.
“While Late Pleistocene remains of woolly rhinoceros are numerous, very few remains exist from around the estimated time of extinction,” said researchers led by Sólveig M. Guðjónsdóttir of Stockholm University. At 14,400 years old, the mummified tissue found in the wolf is “one of the youngest known woolly rhinoceros remains.”

“Given our results, we suggest that any change at the genomic level associated with the species extinction must have taken place during the last few hundred years of the species' existence,” the team added. “We conclude that their decline toward extinction likely occurred rapidly after ∼14,400 years ago, most likely driven by rapid changes in environmental conditions.”

In other words, the last supper of a wolf that died when giant ice sheets still covered much of the Northern Hemisphere has opened a window into the rich heritage of this rhinoceros—and the sudden downfall that awaited its relatives.

And for anyone interested in cryptids, the authors note that the “last appearance dates in the fossil record do not exclude the possibility that the species persisted for longer.” Does this mean that woolly rhinos live on in some untrammeled wilderness to this day? Definitely not, they are dunzo. But it does raise the tantalizing question of when and where the last woolly rhino took its final steps, ending a long and storied line.

In other news…

Save wildlife, stay off the menu

Alves, Dálete Cássia Vieira et al. Aspects of the blood meal of mosquitoes (Diptera: culicidae) during the crepuscular period in Atlantic Forest remnants of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Here’s one way to get people to care about biodiversity loss: tell them that the mosquitos are out for their blood.

In a new study, scientists captured and studied 145 engorged mosquitoes from a deforested area in Brazil, which revealed a growing reliance on human blood. The results suggest that mosquitoes are more likely to seek out human blood in areas experiencing biodiversity loss.

“In the present study, human blood meals were detected in nine species” including mosquitoes that “spread dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya,” said researchers led by Dálete Cássia Vieira Alves of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. “The results revealed a clear tendency for the captured mosquito species to feed predominantly on humans.”

“Deforestation reduces local biodiversity, causing mosquitoes, including vectors of pathogenic agents, to disperse and seek alternative food sources…such as humans,” the team said.

In other words, a future of biodiversity collapse is going to be buzzy, and itchy, and deadly, given that mosquitoes are notoriously the most dangerous animals to humans—killing roughly a million people per year—due to their capacity to spread pathogens. It would be great if we could all conserve wildlife for solely altruistic reasons, but a little nightmare fuel is useful in small doses.

Same-sex sexual behavior plays many roles in primates

Coxshall, Chloë et al. “Ecological and social pressures drive same-sex sexual behaviour in non-human primates.” Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) is common in nature—documented in more than 1,500 animals—especially among socially complex species like primates. Now, scientists have presented a comprehensive review of these sexual bonds in dozens of non-human primates, which revealed that the interactions are context-dependent and may serve a variety of evolutionary functions.

“In baboons, for example, females form affiliative networks, through grooming and possibly SSB, to manage group tension, especially during unstable periods such as hierarchical shifts,” said researchers led by Chloë Coxshall of Imperial College London. “Male rhesus macaques use SSB to navigate aggression and shifting dominance by forming coalitions. Those engaging in SSB are more likely to ally and support each other in competition.”

While the study focused on non-human primates, the team also speculated about the possible evolutionary links between SSB in humans and non-human primates, but warned that the study “does not address human sexual orientation, identity or lived experience.”

“While acknowledging that cultural biases have historically shaped how SSB is reported in animals, we hope this study encourages further research into its evolutionary and social roles in primates at large,” the team concluded.

Don’t be deceived by the asexual yams

Chen, Zhi and Chomicki, Guillaume et al. “Berry Batesian mimicry enables bird dispersal of asexual bulbils in a yam.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Even in all of its diverse configurations, sex is simply not everyone’s bag. Lots of species have opted to eschew it entirely in favor of asexually cloning themselves, such as the Asian yam Dioscorea melanophyma.

This yam has evolved a clever technique to disperse its version of “bulbils,” the asexual version of seeds, by dressing them up like berries so that birds will eat them, reports a new study. This helps the plant spread its clones far and wide without the need for sexual reproduction.

“We show that the yam Dioscorea melanophyma—which has lost sexual reproduction—evolved black, glossy bulbils that mimic co-occurring black berries and entice frugivorous birds to ingest and disperse them,” said researchers co-led by Zhi Chen of the Kunming Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Science and Guillaume Chomicki of Durham University.
The false berry “bulbils” of the yam. Image: Gao Chen
The team found that birds preferred real berries “yet they significantly consumed bulbils too” and “could not visually discriminate bulbils from berries.” In this way, the yams use “mimicry to deceive birds and achieve longer dispersal distance,” the study concludes.

It’s amazing how many adaptive strategies boil down to pranking one’s fellow Earthlings. So if you’re a bird, beware the sham yam yums. And if you are looking to name a band, the Asexual Yams is officially out there as an option.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Aspects of the blood meal of mosquitoes (Diptera: culicidae) during the crepuscular period in Atlantic Forest remnants of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Identifying their food sources provides insights into mosquito foraging behaviors and directly impacts the epidemiology of mosquito-borne pathogens such as d...

^{Dálete Cássia Vieira Alves (Frontiers)}

404 Media

2026-01-16 17:17:14

Behind the Blog: Putting the Puzzle Together

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 the staying power of surveillance coverage, the jigsaw of reporting, and eyestrain.

JASON: I’ve started this year in the same way I spent a lot of last year: Writing about the automated license plate reader company Flock. In my career it’s been sort of weird for me to focus on one company or one thing so much for so long. I tend to get a little restless about the topics I cover, and there can sometimes be a very real fatigue with specific types of stories. After a while, people “get it,” and so the bar for a new story on a topic keeps going up. I wish this weren’t the case, and we try to cover things we feel are important, but if you’re writing about a topic and no one is reading it, then the audience might be telling you they don’t find that thing interesting anymore.

This has not yet been the case with Flock, somewhat to my surprise. I’ve been writing about surveillance technologies for a long time, and it’s rare for a specific company or specific type of technology to hold people’s interest and attention for too long.

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Behind the Blog: Putting the Puzzle Together

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-15 19:10:37

There’s a Lootbox With Rare Pokémon Cards Sitting in the Pentagon Food Court

It’s possible to win a gem mint Surging Sparks Pikachu EX Pokémon card worth as much as $840 from a vending machine in the Pentagon food court. Thanks to a company called Lucky Box Vending, anyone passing through the center of American military power can pay to win a piece of randomized memorabilia from a machine dispensing collectibles.

On Christmas Eve, a company called Lucky Box announced it had installed one of its vending machines at the Pentagon in a now-deleted post on Threads. “A place built on legacy, leadership, and history—now experiencing the thrill of Lucky Box firsthand,” the post said. “This is a milestone moment for Lucky Box and we’re excited for this opportunity. Nostalgia. Pure Excitement.”
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A Lucky Box is a kind of gacha machine or lootbox, a vending machine that dispenses random prizes for cash. A person puts in money and the machine spits out a random collectible. Customers pick a “type” of collectible they want—typically either a rare Pokémon card, sports card, or sports jersey—insert money and get a random item. The cost of a spin on the Lucky Box varies from location to location, but it’s typically somewhere around $100 to $200. Pictures and advertisements of the Pentagon Lucky Box don’t tell us how much a box cost in the nation’s capitol and the company did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Most of the cards and jerseys inside a Lucky Box vending machine are only worth a few dollars, but the company promises that every machine has a few of what it calls “holy grail” items. The Pentagon Lucky Box had a picture of a gem mint 1st edition Charizard Pokémon card on the side of it, a card worth more than $100,000. The company’s social media feed is full of people opening items like a CGC graded perfect 10 1st edition Venusaur shadowless holo Pokémon card (worth around $14,000) or a 2023 Mookie Betts rookie card. Most people, however, don’t win the big prizes.

Lucky Box vending machines are scattered across the country and mostly installed in malls. According to the store locator on its website, more than 20 of the machines are in Las Vegas. Which makes sense, because Lucky Boxes are a kind of gambling. These types of gacha machines are wildly popular in Japan and other countries in Southeast Asia. They’ve seen an uptick in popularity in the US in the past few years, driven by loosening restrictions on gambling and pop culture crazes such as Labubu.

Task & Purpose first reported that the Lucky Box had been in place since December 23, 2025. Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told 404 Media that, as of this writing, the Lucky Box vending machine was still installed in the Pentagon’s main food court.

Someone took pictures of the thing and posted them to the r/army on Monday. From there, the pictures made it onto most of the major military subreddits and various Instagram accounts like USArmyWTF. After Task & Purpose reported on the presence of the Lucky Box at the Pentagon, Lucky Box deleted any mention of the location from its social media and the Pentagon location is not currently listed on the company’s store locator. But it is, according to Gough, still there.

In gaming, the virtual versions of these loot boxes are frowned upon. Seven years ago, games like Star Wars: Battlefront II were at the center of a controversy around similar mechanics. At the time, it was common for video games to sell loot boxes to users for a few bucks. This culminated in an FTC investigation. A year ago, the developers of Genshin Impact agreed to pay a $20 million fine for selling loot boxes to teens under 16 without parental consent.The practice never went away in video games, but most major publishers backed off the practice in non-sports titles.

Now, almost a decade later, the lootboxes have spread into real life and one of them is in the Pentagon.

What is a Lucky Box and why is there one at the Pentagon?

The company that makes the machines announced on Christmas Eve that a Lucky Box is now inside the Pentagon

^{Jeff Schogol (Task & Purpose)}

404 Media

2026-01-15 14:03:04

‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid

Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.

The findings, based on internal ICE material obtained by 404 Media, public procurement records, and recent sworn testimony from an ICE official, show the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. The tool receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) among a range of other sources, according to the material.

The news comes after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Kristi Noem said the agency is sending hundreds more federal agents to Minneapolis amid widespread protests against the agency. Last week ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37 year old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good. During Operation Metro Surge, which DHS calls the “largest immigration operation ever,” immigration agents have surrounded rideshare drivers and used pepper spray on high school students.

“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” a user guide for ELITE obtained by 404 Media says. The tool aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place, to building a list of people, to supervisors approving selections for officers to ultimately go into the field and apprehend.

💡
Do you know anything else about this tool? Do you work at ICE, CBP, or Palantir? 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.

One feature of ELITE is the “Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab,” according to the user guide. This lets ICE see people it may potentially want to detain on a map interface, based on various criteria such as “Bios & IDs,” “Location,” “Operations,” and “Criminality.” An ICE officer can then select people one by one, or draw a shape on the map to see people in that selected area.

ELITE has already been used by ICE to target specific areas, according to sworn testimony from an ICE official in Oregon. In October, immigration officers waited in three unmarked SUVs outside an apartment complex in Woodburn. They went on to bust a driver’s window and pull a 45-year-old woman from a van, used ICE’s facial recognition app Mobile Fortify on her, and agents had the goal of making eight arrests per team per day, Oregon Live reported. Lawyers representing the woman say authorities arrested her and more than 30 other people in a “dragnet.”

“One of our apps, it’s called ELITE. And so it tells you how many people are living in this area and what’s the likelihood of them actually being there,” a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in court records as JB, testified about the raid in early December. 404 Media purchased a transcript of JB’s testimony from the court. “It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.”

“It pulls from all kinds of sources,” JB continued. “It’s a newer app that was actually given to us in ICE.” JB said ELITE is what ICE sometimes uses to track the apparent density of people at a particular location to target. “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.” For that raid in Woodburn, JB suggested the immigration officers used ELITE to generate leads. Additionally, in a text thread of immigration officers, someone described the area as “target rich,” which JB explained meant the officials had run multiple license plates in that area and found vehicles registered to people “who had either a criminal or immigration nexus.”

Screenshots of the ICE official's testimony. Image: 404 Media.

JB and other officials were testifying in the case of MJMA, the woman pulled from the van during the Woodburn raid. She is being represented by attorneys from Innovation Law Lab.

Once a person is selected on the map interface, ELITE then shows a dossier on that particular person, according to the user guide. That includes their name, a photo, their Alien Number (the unique code given by the U.S. government to each immigrant), their date of birth, and their full address. ELITE notes the source of the address (such as the government agency that supplied it), and gives an “address confidence score.” One address confidence score example in the guide is 98.95 out of 100; another is 77.25 out of 100. This score is based on both the source of the address and how recent the data is, the user guide says. (ICE is paying skip tracers, private investigators, and bounty hunters to help verify peoples’ addresses.)

Those sources can include HHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and “CLEAR.” The guide does not provide any more specifics on what CLEAR might be, but ICE has repeatedly contracted with Thomson Reuters which sells a data product called CLEAR. Thomson Reuters did not respond to a request for comment. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

The documents don’t say if those are the only entities providing data for ELITE. The user guide says ELITE is “integrating new data sources” to reduce officer workload.

ICE can also use ELITE to look up people based on an unique identifier, such as their Alien Number, name, or date of birth. ELITE also lets ICE do this in bulk, selecting up to 50 people at once, according to the guide.
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ICE can filter the map by what the guide calls Special Operations. These are “groups of pre-defined aliens specifically targeted by Leadership for action.” ICE officers are told to consult ICE leadership or “broadcasts” on when to use these operation filters. DHS’s surge in Minneapolis is focused at least in part on the city’s Somali community after renewed focus on a COVID-19 fraud case. The overwhelming majority of Somalis who live in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area are U.S. citizens, PBS reported.

“These records give us behind-the-scenes insight into the kind of mass surveillance machine ICE is building with help from powerful tech companies like Palantir,” Laura Rivera, senior staff attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media. “When combined with what we know from ICE testimony and other public information, it gives us a blueprint into how ICE is going into communities and identifying people for arrest in real-time.”

Senator Ron Wyden, who represents Oregon where ELITE was discussed, told 404 Media in a statement, “The fact ICE is using this app proves the completely indiscriminate nature of the agency's aggressive and violent incursions into our communities. This app allows ICE to find the closest person to arrest and disappear, using government and commercial data, with the help of Palantir and Trump's Big Brother databases. It makes a mockery of the idea that ICE is trying to make our country safer. Rather, agents are reportedly picking people to deport from our country the same way you'd choose a nearby coffee shop.”
Screenshot of the Palantir contract, via highergov.com.
The ELITE user guide does not say who developed the system. But the tool’s distinctive title—Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement—exactly matches one included in an addendum to a Palantir contract from last year. It says Palantir should “continue configuration and engineering services” for ELITE and some other ICE tools. That supplemental agreement for $29.9 million started in September and is planned to go on for at least a year.

Palantir has worked with ICE for years and was focused on criminal investigations, supporting Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts.

After participating in a three-week coding sprint, ICE updated an ongoing Palantir contract related to “Enforcement Prioritization and Targeting,” to “support the development of an accurate picture of actionable leads based on existing law enforcement datasets to allow law enforcement to prioritize enforcement actions,” according to an internal Palantir wiki previously obtained by 404 Media. The goal was to find the physical location of people marked for deportation, and Palantir said it believes its work with ICE is “intended to promote government efficiency, transparency, and accountability.”

The leaked material described Palantir’s deportation-focused work as “concentrated on delivering prototype capabilities” and lasting around six months. It left open the room for more work with ICE, and said “Palantir has developed into a more mature partner for ICE.” Documents ICE published described Palantir’s work as building a tool called ImmigrationOS.

More than eight months have passed since Palantir discussed the issue internally. Neither Palantir nor DHS responded to multiple requests for comment.

In their testimony, JB said, “it’s a tool that we use that gives you a probability. But there’s never [...] there’s no such thing as 100 percent.” The user guide adds, “As always, make sure you do your due diligence on each target to confirm removability prior to action.”

How ICE raids in Minnesota connect to a years-old fraud scandal

The Trump administration is using a years-old scandal first prosecuted under the Biden administration to justify its immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

^{David Ingram (NBC News)}

404 Media

2026-01-15 14:00:41

New Legislation Would Rein In ICE’s Facial Recognition App

A group of six Democratic lawmakers is proposing legislation that would dramatically rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) facial recognition app, according to a copy of the draft bill shared with 404 Media. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been scanning peoples’ faces with the app, called Mobile Fortify, across the country, using it to verify their citizenship and claiming that a result in the app should be trusted over a birth certificate.

The move signals the first potential legislative move against the app after 404 Media first revealed Mobile Fortify’s existence in June based on leaked ICE emails. Since then, 404 Media has covered its continued use against U.S. citizens, the 200 million images it uses, and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plan to roll out a version of the app to local law enforcement.

💡
Do you know anything else about 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.

“When ICE claims that an image it snaps and runs through an unproven app can be enough evidence to detain people for possible deportation, no one is safe,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, and who authored the legislation, said. “ICE’s use of Mobile Fortify to determine a person’s legal status is an outrageous affront to the civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike. DHS should not be conducting surveillance by experimenting with Americans’ faces and fingerprints in the field—especially with unproven and biased technology. It is time to put an end to its widespread use. We can secure the Homeland and respect the rights and privacy of Americans at the same time.”

The bill is being cosponsored by by Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Border Security & Enforcement; Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations & Accountability; Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It follows some of the lawmakers demanding answers from DHS about the app in September.

The proposed law, called the Realigning Mobile Phone Biometrics for American Privacy Protection Act, aims to curtail both Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify, the local law enforcement version, in a few ways. First, it would ban use of the apps except for identification at ports of entry. As 404 Media showed, Mobile Fortify uses CBP systems that are usually reserved for identifying and taking photos of people as they enter the U.S. Mobile Fortify turned that capability inwards to American streets.

The law would also require all photos and fingerprints of U.S. citizens captured before the practices introduced by the bill be deleted, and require that all photographs or fingerprints of U.S. citizens be destroyed within 12 hours of being taken. The law would also prohibit DHS from sharing the apps with non-DHS law enforcement agencies, effectively killing the local law enforcement version. (404 Media reported the app became unavailable on the Google Play Store in early-December.)

When an immigration officer scans someone’s face with Mobile Fortify, the app runs their face against a bank of 200 million images held by DHS, according to the app’s user manual previously obtained by 404 Media. If the app finds what it believes is a matching face, it returns a name, their nationality, age and date of birth, unique identifiers such as their “alien registration,” and a field titled “Immig. Judge Decision,” the manual says. This appears to refer to whether an immigration judge has ruled on this person’s case, and may include a result that says “remove.”

404 Media previously obtained an internal DHS document through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which showed ICE does not let people decline to be scanned by the app. 404 Media has found likely cases of the app being used in Chicago. In a partnership with Reveal, 404 Media reported the app has been used on U.S. citizens.

One video posted to social media this week showed an officer using the app to take a photo of an identification document in what the video said was Minnesota. 404 Media compared the app shown in the video to the user interface in the leaked Mobile Fortify user manual and they matched.

“The Trump Administration has weaponized federal agencies against the American people. This latest effort to use facial recognition to further target immigrant families is reckless and dangerous,” said Rep. Espaillat in a statement. “I’m proud to stand with Ranking Member Thompson to introduce legislation to combat ICE and DHS, prohibiting the use of facial recognition as yet another ruthless tactic to further this administration’s mass deportation agenda.”

“The abuse of this type of technology by DHS agents is not only invasive, it is likely unconstitutional and certainly un-American,” Rep. Meng added. “Immigration enforcement should not be conducted by an app and DHS should not conduct dragnet operations that terrorize communities and violate people's constitutional rights. I am proud to have worked with Ranking Member Thompson and my colleagues to introduce this commonsense legislation.”

A DHS spokesperson told 404 Media in a statement, “Claims that Mobile Fortify violates the Fourth Amendment or compromises privacy are false. The application does not access open-source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data. Its use is governed by established legal authorities and formal privacy oversight, which set strict limits on data access, use, and retention.”

“Mobile Fortify is a lawful law-enforcement tool developed under the Trump Administration to support accurate identity and immigration-status verification during enforcement operations. It operates with a deliberately high matching threshold and queries only limited CBP immigration datasets. Mobile Fortify has not been blocked, restricted, or curtailed by the courts or by legal guidance. It is lawfully used nationwide in accordance with all applicable legal authorities,” the statement continued.

Update: this piece has been updated to include a statement from DHS.

Inside ICE’s Supercharged Facial Recognition App of 200 Million Images

404 Media has seen user manuals for Mobile Fortify, ICE’s new facial recognition app which allows officers to instantly look up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases by just pointing a phone at someone’s face.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-14 19:46:53

Strange ‘Little Red Dots’ in Space Have a Mind-Boggling Explanation, Scientists Discover

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Astronomers think they have solved the puzzle of so-called “little red dots” in space, a population of bizarre objects at the very edge of the observable universe, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.

The new research suggests that these dots are likely the youngest black holes we have ever glimpsed, which are “cocooned” in dense gas, a never-before-seen phenomenon that sheds light on the early evolution of the universe.

“LRDs were first spotted in 2023 in the first images made with the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Vadim Rusakov, an astronomer at the University of Manchester, in an email to 404 Media. “People have very actively studied these objects since then.”

“They are tiny, bright and red objects seen when the universe was only about 5-15 percent of its current age,” he continued. “They have puzzled astronomers: on one hand, they are too compact and massive for normal galaxies, on the other, they do not look like typical supermassive black holes, because we do not detect their usual signals, such as X-rays. And they are not just a few odd apples—almost every tenth galaxy in the early universe is an LRD.”

These baffling properties have sparked spirited debate about the nature of LRDs. Some studies have suggested they might be exotic star-studded galaxies, or weirdly overmassive black holes.

Hoping to resolve the mystery, Rusakov and his colleagues analyzed JWST observations of more than a dozen of the little red dots across longer timescales. The team confirmed that the dots are likely black holes that are enshrouded by a “cocoon” of energetic gas that can explain their novel properties.

“Our simple solution is: we think that they are massive black holes wrapped in a thick cocoon of dense gas, which makes them appear red and hides the black hole,” Rusakov said. “This idea of the cocoon was inspired by another work that predicted the presence of thick gas. We could check this idea by studying the hydrogen emission from LRDs. This showed us that the cocoon is partly ionised—meaning it has lots of free electrons. This was a surprising discovery, because by scattering light, these electrons hid most useful black hole signals from our sight and also made it appear more evolved than it actually is.”

“By looking inside, we found that these are some of the youngest black holes ever seen,” he added. “This makes them unique laboratories for understanding how black holes got started in the early universe.”
An image of little red dots from JADES 1 The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (Eisenstein et al. 2023). Image: The CEERS Survey/The JADES Survey/PRIMER Survey/Dawn JWST Archive
In other words, it’s not that these objects aren’t radiating in X-rays, it’s just that those wavelengths are largely blotted out by the gassy cocoons. Moreover, the cocoons warp light from the black holes, making them seem much more massive than they actually are, like some kind of cosmic funhouse mirror. Rusakov and his colleagues calculated that the black holes are probably a few million times as massive as the Sun, more than a hundred times smaller than expected by their appearance.

The findings are part of a wave of discoveries about the early universe primarily fueled by the unparalleled precision and sensitivity of JWST’s infrared vision.

“The first JWST observations caused several debates about how galaxies formed in the early universe, such as whether galaxies grow quicker than we thought,” Rusakov explained. “In fact, some of those initially problematic galaxies turned out to be Little Red Dots. As our study shows, they were misinterpreted as purely stellar galaxies and they are supermassive black holes instead.”

As JWST continues to expose strange new frontiers of the universe, astronomers can determine which anomalies point to novel entities and which, like the little red dots, turn out to be familiar objects going through an unfamiliar phase.

Either way, each breakthrough raises new questions. Rusakov and his colleagues may have identified the origin of the little red dots, but it remains unclear whether these young black holes grow faster than the galaxies associated with them, and what that might mean for our understanding of galactic evolution.

“LRDs show us what the black holes looked like a long time ago, and if we are lucky, they may show us how these massive black holes got started,” Rusakov said. “Just to be clear, even though they are likely the youngest black holes we ever found, they already have masses of a few million Suns.”

“This opens up the next big questions: can we find even smaller black holes with the James Webb Space Telescope? Do black holes start tiny and grow or are they born already quite big?” he added. “These exciting questions will definitely keep us busy for some time.”

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Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons - Nature

The highest-quality JWST spectra reveal that little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas, where electron scattering, not Doppler motions, broadens their spectral lines.

^Nature

404 Media

2026-01-14 14:00:53

Podcast: The ICE Tool That Tracks Entire Neighborhoods

We start this week with Joseph’s article about Webloc, a tool ICE bought that can monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. After the break, Emanuel and Sam talk about their recent coverage of Grok. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how police inadvertently unmasked millions of their surveillance targets through a Flock redaction error.
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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/rurJo6vPhUY?…
Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

2:50 - First Story

23:00 - Second Story

• ⁠Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods⁠
• ⁠DHS Is Lying To You⁠
• ⁠Inside the Telegram Channel Jailbreaking Grok Over and Over Again⁠
• ⁠Masterful Gambit: Musk Attempts to Monetize Grok's Wave of Sexual Abuse Imagery⁠
• ⁠Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error

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 …

^{Apple Podcasts}

404 Media

2026-01-12 16:46:29

How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left Streaming to the Internet

On the podcast this week, I talked to YouTuber Benn Jordan, who has done some of our favorite reporting on Flock, the automated license plate reader surveillance company. A couple months ago, he found vulnerabilities in some of Flock’s license plate reader cameras.
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA9…
I have been following Benn’s work for a while, and soon after that video came out, he reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock’s Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet. In this episode, we discuss how he discovered the issue and what happened next.
youtube.com/embed/tSd0nXolnIs?…
Articles and videos discussed:

Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves
Flock left at least 60 of its people-tracking Condor PTZ cameras live streaming and exposed to the open internet.
404 MediaJason Koebler

youtube.com/embed/vU1-uiUlHTo?…youtube.com/embed/uB0gr7Fh6lY?…youtube.com/embed/Pp9MwZkHiMQ?…

Megaphone Embeddable Player

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404 Media

2026-01-10 14:00:07

‘Gifted’ Dogs Learn Human Language, Study Finds

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that lurked in the dark, pulsated with light, wagged a tail, and called it a night.

First, scientists have yet again spotted a bizarre object in space that has never been seen before—the universe just keeps serving them up. Then: news from the biggest star in the sky, a tale of eavesdropping dogs, and a jellyfish sleepover.

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliensor subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.

You don’t want to be on this Cloud-9

Anand, Gagandeep S. et al. “The First RELHIC? Cloud-9 is a Starless Gas Cloud.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers have glimpsed a new type of cosmic object—a starless clump of dark matter that never quite worked up the oomph to become a galaxy. Known as Cloud-9, the entity is located about 14 million light years away and likely provides the first look at an ancient dark matter halo.

Dark matter, as you may have heard, is weird stuff that has never been directly detected or identified, but nonetheless accounts for almost all matter in the universe. In the early universe, clumps of dark matter formed halos that attracted gas, sparked star formation, and evolved into the first galaxies. But while all galaxies appear to have dark matter halos, not all dark matter halos turned into galaxies.

Scientists have long speculated that some halos may have never accumulated the right amount of mass to make a star-studded galaxy. For years, astronomers have searched for the gravitational signatures of these dark starless “failed galaxies,” which are known as Reionization-Limited H I Clouds (RELHICs).

Now, a team reports that the first clear RELHIC candidate ever discovered, providing support for the standard model of cosmology, also known as the Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model, which is the current working framework of the universe.
Digitized Sky Survey image covering a 10′ × 10′ region around Cloud-9. Image: Anand, Gagandeep S. et al.
“The abundance of halos far exceeds that of known galaxies, implying that not all halos are able to host luminous galaxies,” said researchers led by Gagandeep S. Anand of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “This has been interpreted to mean that galaxies only form in halos that exceed a ‘critical’ mass.’”

“Our results make Cloud-9 the leading RELHIC candidate,” the team continued. “This provides strong support for a cornerstone prediction of the Lambda cold dark matter model, namely the existence of gas-filled starless dark matter halos on subgalactic mass scales, and constrains the present-day threshold halo mass for galaxy formation.”

Cloud-9 might one day accumulate enough mass to pass the threshold for star formation, allowing it to eventually graduate into a galaxy. But for now, it is a galaxy school flunkie.

In other news…

Big star go boom soon

Th van Loon, Jacco et al. “A phoenix rises from the ashes: WOH G64 is still a red supergiant, for now.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

WOH G64, one of the largest stars in the sky, is nearing its death. At about 2,000 times the size of the Sun, this supergiant would extend beyond Saturn if it were placed in our solar system.

Scientists have speculated that the recent dimming of the senescent star might signal a transition from a red supergiant to a yellow hypergiant, making it one step closer to supernova. But a new study reveals evidence that WOH G64 “is currently a red supergiant” and its changing light may be influenced by a companion star in orbit around it, making this a binary system.
Concept art of WOH G64. image: ESO/L. Calçada
“For a long time, WOH G64 was known as the most extreme red supergiant outside our Galaxy,” said researchers led by Jacco Th. van Loon of Keele University. “However, in a matter of years it has faded” and “its pulsations have become suppressed.”

“We have presented evidence that the remarkable changes witnessed in the 21st-century in the optical brightness and spectrum of the most extreme known extragalactic red supergiant, WOH G64 may be due to binary interaction,” the team continued, noting that “we may be witnessing the birth of a…supernova progenitor.”

Fortunately, this time bomb is located 160,000 light years away, so we are well beyond the blast radius. Whenever WOH G64 does explode, the supernova could be bright enough to see with the naked eye from Earth, despite its location far outside the Milky Way.

Learn with doggo-lingo

Dror, Shany et al. “Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing like 1.5-year-old infants.” Science.

It’s not your imagination: Your dog might actually be a really good listener. While it’s well-known that dogs respond to a variety of commands, researchers have now demonstrated that some pooches, known as Gifted Word Learners, can pick up new words just by passively overhearing their owners’ conversations.

Over a series of experiments, researchers gave dogs fun toys to play with, which their owners then named in conversations that were not directed at the dogs. The pets were then able to identify the toys by the labels at a rate significantly above what would be expected by chance, even though they had never been directly taught the words.
A dog that participated in the study, enjoying the toys. Image: Don Harvey
The findings suggest that some dogs may have sociocognitive skills parallel to young toddlers, and further confirms that a variety of animals can demonstrate various degrees of language comprehension. But the best part is the following detail about how the effervescent joy of dogs was accounted for in the experimental design.

“Because dogs are neophilic and often get excited by new toys, we gave them ample opportunities to interact with the toys without hearing their labels,” said researchers led by Shany Dror of University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Science completed? Check. Dogs got loads of playtime? Check. Win-win.

Jellyfish naps > cat naps

Aguillon, Raphaël et al. “DNA damage modulates sleep drive in basal cnidarians with divergent chronotypes.” Nature Communications.

We’ll close by yawning and going back to bed—a waterbed in this case, because this is a story about the sleep cycles of marine animals. To probe the broader evolutionary purpose of sleep, scientists monitored periods of slumber and wakefulness in the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea andromeda and the anemone Nematostella vectensis.

The results revealed that these animals had remarkably similar sleeping habits to people. “Like humans, both species require a total of approximately 8 hours of sleep per day,” said researchers led by Raphaël Aguillon, who conducted the work at Bar-Ilan University, and is now at IBPC Paris-Sorbonne University.

“Notably, similar to findings in primates and flies, a midday nap was also observed in C. andromeda,” the team added.

Talk about sleeping with the fishes! The upshot of the study is that sleep has evolved across all animals with a nervous system to help repair damaged DNA, a benefit that is apparently worth the vulnerability of a resting state. But for our weekend purposes, my takeaway is that even jellyfish enjoy a midday nap, so go ahead and take that siesta.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

NASA’s Hubble Examines Cloud-9, First of New Type of Object

A team using Hubble uncovered a new type of astronomical object — a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud, a remnant of early galaxy formation.

^{NASA Hubble Mission Team (NASA Science)}

404 Media

2026-01-09 18:09:17

Behind the Blog: The 'View From Nowhere'

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 viewing terrible images online and giving out zines at a benefit show.

EMANUEL: I’ve seen a lot of terrible videos in my years online but by far the most upsetting type of video shows police using excessive force and especially videos of police killing people. There are more graphic videos from battlefields and other dark corners of the internet but what happened to Renee Nicole Good this week could happen to anyone living in America, and when I imagine the tragedy that has been visited on her loved ones I can’t help but imagine how easily I or anyone I care about can find ourselves in the same situation.

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Behind the Blog: The 'View From Nowhere'

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-08 14:00:08

Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods

A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media.

Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media. The purchase comes squarely during ICE’s mass deportation effort and continued crackdown on protected speech, alarming civil liberties experts and raising questions on what exactly ICE will use the surveillance system for.

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Do you know anything else about this tool? Do you work for ICE, CBP, or another agency? 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 is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy project director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.

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Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods

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404 Media

2026-01-07 22:25:03

DHS Is Lying To You

A maroon Honda Pilot SUV sits perpendicular across a residential road in Minneapolis. At the time, federal authorities were in the neighborhood as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recently announced surge of thousands of officials. A silver Nissan Titan drives up the road and stops because the Honda is blocking its path. Two officers dressed in body armor, pouches, and badges saying “police” exit the Nissan.

The two people walk towards the Honda. Someone can be heard saying “get out of the fucking car.” One of them tries to open the driver’s door and reach through the open window. The driver of the Honda reverses and turns, getting straighter with the road. The driver then slowly accelerates and starts to turn to the right, leveling the car out with its front pointing away from the two officers.

A third officer, who has been standing on the other side of the road, pulls out a firearm while the car is turning away from him and fires into the car three times. The officer fires two of the shots when the vehicle is already well past him. He is not in front of the car, but to the side. The officer calmly holsters his weapon.

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DHS Is Lying To You About ICE Shooting a Woman

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-07 14:00:13

Podcast: The People Tracking America's AI Data Centers

We start this week with Matthew’s story about an organization tracking the location of AI data centers around the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. After the break, Jason tells us all about what Grok got up to over the holiday break, and we ruminate on what the breakdown in the information ecosystem means. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about how we bought ⁠404media.com⁠!
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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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Timestamps:

1:38 - ⁠Researchers Are Hunting America for Hidden Datacenters⁠

25:58 - ⁠Grok's AI CSAM Shitshow⁠

Subscriber's Story: ⁠We Bought 404media.com

404 Media

404 Media is an independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.

^{404 Media}

404 Media

2026-01-06 20:28:53

Astronomers Discovered Something Near the Dawn of Time That Shouldn’t Exist

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Astronomers have discovered an ancient reservoir of gas that is too hot for cosmic models to handle, reports a study published on Monday in Nature.

By peering over 12 billion years through time to the infant cosmos, a team captured an unprecedented glimpse of a baby galaxy cluster called SPT2349-56. Cosmological models suggest that the gas strewn between galaxies in these ancient clusters should be much cooler than gas observed in modern galaxies, which has been heated up by the intense gravitational interactions that play out in clusters over billions of years.

But the new observations of SPT2349-56 reveal an inexplicably hot reservoir of this intracluster gas, with temperatures similar to those at the center of the Sun, a finding that is “contrary to current theoretical expectations,” according to the new study.

“It is a massive surprise,” said Dazhi Zhou, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia who led the study, in a call with 404 Media. “According to our current theory, this kind of hot gas inside young galaxy clusters should still be cool and less abundant, because these baby clusters are still accumulating and gradually heating their gas.”

“This one we discover is already pretty abundant and even hotter than many mature clusters that we see today,” he added. “So, it's a bit different and forces us to rethink our current understanding of how these large structures form and evolve in the universe.”

The first stars and galaxies emerged in the universe a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, during an era called cosmic dawn. Galaxies gradually accumulated together into large clusters over time; for instance, our Milky Way galaxy is part of the Laniakea supercluster which contains about 100,000 galaxies and stretches across hundreds of millions of light years.

As a baby cluster, SPT2349-56 is much smaller, measuring about 500,000 light years across, and containing about 30 luminous galaxies and at least three supermassive black holes. Zhou and his colleagues observed the cluster with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a highly sensitive network of radio telescopes in Chile, which allowed them to capture the first temp check of its intracluster gas.

“Because this gas is pretty distant, it's very challenging to see the light of the gas directly,” explained Zhou. To probe it, the team searched for what’s known as the thermal Sunyaev–Zeldovich signature, which is a detectable distortion of the oldest light in the universe as it passes through intracluster gas.

The results produced a thermal energy measurement of 10⁶¹ erg, which is about five times hotter than expected. While the heat source is still unknown, Zhou speculated that it could be caused by high levels of activity in the cluster, where stars are forming 5,000 times faster than in our own galaxy and huge energetic jets of matter spout out of galactic cores.

However, it will take more observations of these distant clusters to figure out whether the hot gas within SPT2349-56 is an aberration, or if super-hot gas is more common in early clusters than predicted.

“Like every first discovery, we have to be cautious and careful with big results,” Zhou said. “We need to test it further, with more independent observations and comparisons to other galaxy clusters at a similar time. This is what we hope that our community will do next, and we're also planning for follow up observations of other clusters to see whether there is a broader trend or if this system is an outlier.”

The new study is part of a wave of unprecedented observations of the early universe within the past few years. The James Webb Space Telescope, for example, has discovered massive galaxies much earlier in time than expected, pointing to a tantalizing gap in our knowledge about how our modern cosmos emerged from these ancient structures.

“It is starting to change our current understanding of how energetic the galaxy formation process was in such an early time,” Zhou said. “Galaxies were formed and evolved with much more violence, and were more active, more extreme, and more energetic than what we used to expect. The James Webb results are also consistent with our current discovery that these galaxies were very powerful in shaping their surroundings.”

Sunyaev–Zeldovich detection of hot intracluster gas at redshift 4.3 - Nature

Detection of hot intracluster gas in SPT2349−56 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array provides new insights into early cluster formation.

^Nature

404 Media

2026-01-05 23:13:18

Hilton Hotel That Refused DHS Reservations Backpedals

A Hilton branded hotel that originally declined to host guests because they were with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has backpedalled, saying in a statement Monday it does “not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted.”

The episode started earlier on Monday when the official DHS X account posted what it presented as screenshots of emails from the Hilton hotel to officials.

“We have noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS, and we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property,” one of the emails reads. “If you are with DHS or immigration, let us know as we will have to cancel your reservation.”

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Hilton Hotel That Refused DHS Reservations Backpedals

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-04 17:57:17

Scientists Discover One of the World’s Oldest Cremations

Welcome back to the Abstract, and Happy New Year! Here are the studies this week that stoked the flames, cooled off, then went feral and rogue.

First, the ashy remains of a cremation pyre reveal a rare glimpse of an ancient ritual. Then: Uranus is chilling, ham on the lam, and a Saturn without a Sun.

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliensor subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.

An ancient cremation comes to light

Cerezo-Román, Jessica I. et al. “Earliest Evidence for Intentional Cremation of Human Remains in Africa.” Science Advances.

Some 9,500 years ago, a community of hunter-gatherers assembled to cremate a small woman in a ceremonial pyre at a rock shelter near Mount Hora in Malawi.

Millennia passed. Many things happened. And now, at the dawn of the year 2026, scientists report the unearthing of the ashy remains of this ritual at a site, called HOR-1, which is "the oldest known cremation in Africa” and “one of the oldest in the world,” according to their study.

“Archaeological evidence for cremation amongst African hunter-gatherers is extremely rare, with no reported cases south of the Sahara,” said researchers led by Jessica I. Cerezo-Román of the University of Oklahoma. “Open pyre cremations such as that at HOR-1 demand substantial social and labor-intensive investment on behalf of the deceased. Thus, cremation is rarely practiced amongst small-scale hunter-gatherer societies.”

Indeed, before reading this study, I did not fully appreciate the work that goes into cremating a corpse from scratch. For a body to be properly reduced to ash in this prehistoric era, a community had to collect tinder, build the pyre, ignite it, and then keep the flames stoked at high temperatures for around seven to nine hours by continually adding more fuel.

The process would have been long and arduous, suggesting that it held a significant meaning to these prehistoric attendees. This ancient rock shelter was clearly used for mortuary practices over millennia, which “reflect a deep-rooted tradition of repeatedly using and revisiting the site, intricately linked to memory-making,” the researchers said.

The oldest known pyre, located in Alaska, dates back 11,500 years and contains the created remains of a 3-year-old child. But HOR-1 is the oldest example of adult cremated remains found in a pyre. We will likely never know the identity of this woman, or why her death inspired such a carefully coordinated ritual. But it seems safe to assume that the cremation was a significant event for the community that expended so much forethought and labor to perform it.

“While this cremation is highly unusual in the African archaeological record, it contributes to growing evidence of complex social worldviews among tropical African hunter-gatherers,” they added. “These practices emphasize complex mortuary and ritual activities with origins predating the advent of food production.”

In other news…

The inexplicable Uranian chillout

Jasinski, Jamie M. et al. “Uranus' Long-Term Thermospheric Cooling Is Unlikely to Be Primarily Driven by the Solar Wind.” Geophysical Research Letters.

Uranus is so cool. I mean this in the flattering vernacular sense—Uranus is genuinely nifty—but it’s also literally true. Not only is this ice giant the coldest planet in the solar system, its upper atmosphere (the thermosphere) has been getting steadily cooler for the past 40 years—and nobody really knows why.

Scientists now think they have ruled out a hypothesis that linked this long-term thermospheric cooling to a weakening of the solar wind, which is a stream of energetic radiation and particles emitted by the Sun. A new analysis suggests that this weakening effect has reversed over the past 15 years, hinting that it is not the cause of the cooldown.

“We determine that the solar wind kinetic power at Uranus has increased by ∼28% since the start of solar cycle 24 (at the end of 2008),” said researchers led by Jamie M. Jasinski at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“If the solar wind is a driver of Uranus' thermospheric temperature, then one would have expected a gradual increase in the temperature since then. However, the temperature has continued to consistently decline over the same time period. Therefore…we argue that the solar wind kinetic power is unlikely to be the primary driver of thermospheric temperature at Uranus.”

As for the real cause, the truth is still out there. May this mystery inspire a new generation of Uranian scientists.

When pigs sail…

Stanton, David W. G. et al. “Genomic and morphometric evidence for Austronesian-mediated pig translocation in the Pacific.” Science.

Now, for the incredible adventures of ancient seafaring pigs. Today, many domestic and feral pig lineages are scattered across the Pacific islands of Wallacea, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia; their ancestors were schlepped over the oceans by early mariners in several migratory waves.

To learn more about how these boats brought home the bacon, scientists sequenced 117 modern, historical, and ancient pig genomes spanning nearly 3,000 years. The results revealed that pigs from Indonesia to Hawaii are mostly descended from a group of domestic pigs that voyaged with Austronesian-speaking groups from Southeast China and Taiwan about 4,000 years ago.

“Transporting these animals between islands resulted in a distinctive evolutionary history characterized by serial founder effects, gene flow from divergent lineages, and likely selection for specific traits that facilitated the establishment of feral populations,” said researchers led by David W.G. Stanton of Queen Mary University of London and Cardiff University.

In other words, some of the most significant Pacific voyages also doubled as piggyback rides.

A glimpse of a sunless Saturn

Dong, Subo et al. “A free-floating-planet microlensing event caused by a Saturn-mass object.” Science.

I don’t mean to cause alarm, but there’s a rogue Saturn on the loose in the galaxy.

Astronomers spotted this world drifting through interstellar space, untethered to any star, with a trippy technique known as microlensing. When a distant planet passes in front of a star from our perspective on Earth, its gravitational field warps the background starlight, creating a distinctive light signature that exposes its presence (for more on microlensing, here’s a short feature I wrote).
Concept art of a freefloating planet. Image: J. Skowron, K. Ulaczyk / OGLE
Now, a team has captured a microlensing event with telescopes located on both the ground and in space, a combination that allowed them to calculate the foreground planet’s mass (Saturn-ish) and its distance from Earth, which is about 10,000 light years. Based on its mass and its very quick pace through space, this gas giant was probably born around a star, but was flung out of its home system by gravitational interactions between neighboring stars or planets.

“We conclude that violent dynamical processes shape the demographics of planetary-mass objects, both those that remain bound to their host stars and those that are expelled to become free floating,” said researchers led by Subo Dong of Peking University.

It’s a reminder that as bad as things seem sometimes here on Earth, at least our planet hasn’t been violently ejected from the solar system to drift endlessly in the dark. Small wins!

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}

404 Media

2026-01-02 19:00:09

Scientists Identify Remains of the Earliest Human Ancestor

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Mysterious bones that date back seven million years likely belong to the oldest known human ancestor, according to a study published on Friday in Science Advances.

For years, scientists have debated whether Sahelanthropus tchadensis—an ape known from skull and limb bones found in Chad—was primarily bipedal, meaning that it walked on two legs like humans, or if it walked on all fours like chimpanzees.

Now, a team led by Scott Williams, an associate professor of anthropology at the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University, has spotted a detail in the femur bone, known as a femoral tubercle, that strongly suggests this ape was a biped. Since bipedalism is a defining trait of human relatives, known as hominins, the discovery confirms that these bones belonged to the earliest known human ancestor by a margin of about one million years.

“The really novel part of our study is the discovery of a new feature that had never been noticed before, and that's the femoral tubercle,” Williams told 404 Media in a call. “I think that was the final piece of evidence that convinced me that this was a biped, and therefore probably a hominin, because you don't find that feature in anything else.”

“I think this will convince a lot of people, but certainly not everyone,” he added. “There'll be rebuttals. I'm sure that people will challenge it. That's fine. That's how science works.”
Fig. 1. S. tchadensis fossils (TM 266) compared to a chimpanzee and a human. Image: Wiliams et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eadv0130
Indeed, the remains of Sahelanthropus tchadensis have generated controversy since they were initially reported in 2002. Over the past five years, different teams have argued both for and against the hypothesis that this species walked on two legs. This unresolved question inspired Williams and his colleagues to take a “fresh and independent look” at the fossils, he said.

The researchers conducted a comparison of the limb bones with other hominin remains, while also re-examining them using a technique called 3D geometric morphometrics. The latter effort exposed a hidden detail: the presence of a femoral tubercle, which is a bony protrusion where the femur connects to the hip.

“It basically prevents our torso from falling backward or falling sideways as we walk,” explained Williams. "Chimpanzees, gorillas, and other apes don't need to have that structure because they don't have to take on a vertical posture like we do. You don't need that structure—unless you're a biped.”

Of course, hominins didn’t just suddenly stand upright one day, and this ancient species shows an interesting mix of features that suggest it still spent plenty of time in the treetops in addition to walking on land. This liminal state between arboreal and terrestrial life persisted for millions of years in hominins until the rise of Homo erectus two million years ago, which is the first hominin to walk in a similar upright position to modern humans.

In addition to pinpointing our own human origins, the fossils offer a possible glimpse of the last common ancestor between humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. These two ape lineages split about six or seven million years ago, around the same time Sahelanthropus tchadensis was roaming through Chad.

“The debate about what the last common ancestor was like is really highly contested,” Williams said. The remains of Sahelanthropus tchadensis suggest that human relatives in this era may have been similar in size to chimpanzees and bonobos, but had body proportions more akin to later hominins.

While Sahelanthropus tchadensis can be described as the earliest human ancestor in a general sense, it was probably not the direct ancestor to modern humans. It’s become clear in recent decades that a diversity of hominin lineages emerged and became extinct over the past seven million years, so it’s difficult to trace the direct lineage of our own species, Homo sapiens, the only humans that have survived to the modern day.

“The more fossils that are discovered,” Williams said, “the more complicated the picture looks.”

404 Media

^{404 Media}

404 Media

2025-12-30 14:00:15

The Weird Way the 404 Media Zine Was Built

This post originally ran on Tedium, our zine designer Ernie Smith's wonderful website and newsletter about the Dull Side of the Internet. Check it out here.

I write a lot these days, but my path into journalism, going way back to J-School, was through layout.

For years, I was a graphic designer at a number of newspapers—some fairly small, some quite large. I was a card-carrying member of the Society for News Design. It was one of my biggest passions, and I fully expected to have a long career in newspaper design. But newspapers as a medium haven’t really panned out, so I eventually fell into writing.

But I still adore laying out a big project, conceptualizing it, and trying to use it to visually add to the story that the words are trying to convey. It’s not quite a lost art, but I do think that print layout is something that has been a bit back-burnered by society at large.

So when 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler, who spent years editing my writing for Motherboard, reached out about doing a zine, I was absolutely in. The goal of the zine—to shine a spotlight on the intersection of ICE and surveillance tech—was important. Plus, I like working with Jason, and it was an opportunity to get into print design again after quite a few years away.

I just had two problems: One, I have decided that I no longer want to give Adobe money because of cost and ethical concerns about its business model. And two, I now use Linux pretty much exclusively (Bazzite DX, in case you’re wondering).

But the good news is that the open-source community has done a lot of work, and despite my own tech shifts, professional-grade print design on Linux is now a viable option.

Why page layout on Linux is fairly uncommon

The meme in the Linux community writes itself: “I would move over to Linux, but I need Photoshop and InDesign and [insert app here] too much.” In the past, this has been a real barrier for designers, especially those who rely on print layout, where open-source alternatives are very limited. (They’ve also been traditionally at the mercy of print shops that have no time for your weird non-standard app.)

Admittedly, the native tools have been getting better. I’m not really a fan myself, but I know GIMP is getting closer in parity to Photoshop. Inkscape is a totally viable vector drawing app. Video is very doable on Linux thanks to the FOSS Kendenlive and the commercial DaVinci Resolve. Blender is basically a de facto standard for 3D at this point. The web-based Penpot is a capable Figma alternative. And Krita, while promoted as a digital painting app, has become my tool of choice for making frame-based animated GIFs, which I do a lot for Tedium.

But for ink-stained print layout nerds, it has been tougher to make the shift (our apologies to Scribus). And Adobe locks down Creative Cloud pretty hard.

However, the recent Affinity release, while drawing some skepticism from the open-source community as a potential enshittification issue, is starting to open up a fresh lane. For those not aware, the new version of Affinity essentially combines the three traditional design apps—vector editor, raster editor, and page layout—into a single tool. It’s pretty good at all three. (Plus, for business reasons related to its owner Canva, it’s currently free to use.)

While it doesn’t have a dedicated Linux version, it more or less runs very well using WINE, the technology that has enabled a Linux renaissance via the Steam Deck. (Some passionate community members, like the WINE hacker ElementalWarrior, have worked hard to make this a fully-fleshed out experience that can even be installed more or less painlessly.)

The desire for a native Linux version of a pro-level design app is such that the Canva subsidiary is thinking about doing it themselves.

But I’m not the kind of person who likes to wait, so I decided to try to build as much of the zine as I could with Affinity for page layout. For the few things I couldn’t do, I would remote into a Mac.

The RISO factor

Another consideration here is the fact that this zine is being built with Risograph printing, a multicolor printing approach distinct from the more traditional CMYK. The inky printing process, similar to screen printing, has a distinct, vibrant look, even if it avoids the traditional four-color approach (in our case, using layers of pink, black, and lime green).

Throughout the process, I spent a lot of time setting layers to multiply to ensure the results looked good, and adding effects like halftone and erase to help balance out the color effects. This mostly worked OK, though I did have some glitches.

At one point, a lime-green frog lost much of its detail when I tried to RISO-fy it, requiring me to double-check my color settings and ensure I was getting the right tone. And sometimes, PDF exports from Affinity added unsightly lines, which I had to go out of my way to remove. If I was designing for newspapers, I might have been forced to come up with a quick plan B for that layout. But fortunately, I had the luxury of not working on a daily deadline like I might have back in the day.

I think that this layout approach is genuinely fascinating—and I know Jason in particular is a huge fan of it. Could I see other publications in the 404 mold taking notes from this and doing the same thing? Heck yes.

A sneak peek at the inside layout of the 404 Media zine.

The ups and downs of print layout on Linux

So, the headline you can take away from this is pretty simple: Laying stuff out in Affinity over Linux is extremely doable, and if you’re doing it occasionally, you will find a quite capable tool.

Admittedly, if this was, like, my main gig, I might still feel the urge to go back to MacOS—especially near the end of the process. Here’s what I learned:

The good: Workflow-wise, it was pretty smooth. Image cutouts—a tightly honed skill of mine that AI has been trying to obsolete for years—were very doable. Affinity also has some great effects tools that in many ways beat equivalents in other apps, such as its glitch tool and its live filter layers. It didn’t feel like I was getting a second-class experience when all was said and done.

The bad: My muscle memory for InDesign shortcuts was completely ineffective for this, and there were occasional features of InDesign and Photoshop that I did not find direct equivalents for in Affinity. WINE’s file menus tend to look like old Windows, which might be a turn-off for UX purists, and required a bit of extra navigation to dig through folders. Also, one downside of WINE that I could not work past was that I couldn’t use my laptop’s Intel-based GPU for machine learning tasks, a known bug that I imagine slowed some things down on graphically intensive pages.
I checked, by the way; this was not a WINE thing, it did this in MacOS too. (Ernie Smith)
The ugly: I think one area Affinity will need to work on as it attempts to sell the idea that you can design in one interface are better strategies to help mash down content for export. At one point while I was trying to make a PDF, Affinity promised me that the file I would be exporting was going to be 17 exabytes in size, which my SSD was definitely not large enough for. That wasn’t true, but it does emphasize that the dream of doing everything in one interface gets complicated when you want to send things to the printer. Much of the work I did near the end of the process was rasterizing layers to ensure everything looked as intended.

When I did have to use a Mac app for something (mainly accessing Spectrolite, a prepress app for RISO designs), I accessed an old Hackintosh using NoMachine, a tool for connecting to computers remotely. So even for the stuff I actually needed MacOS for, I didn’t need to leave the comforts of my janky laptop.

Looking for a Big Tech escape hatch

Was it 100% perfect? No. Affinity crashed every once in a while, but InDesign did that all the time back in the day. And admittedly, an office full of people using Affinity on Linux isn’t going to work as well as one guy in a coffee shop working with a team of editors over chat and email.

But it’s my hope that experiences like mine convince other people to try it, and for companies to embrace it. Affinity isn’t open-source, and Canva is a giant company with plenty of critics, just like Adobe. But there are emerging projects like PixiEditor and Graphite that could eventually make print layout an extremely viable and even modern open-source endeavor.

But we have to take victories where we can find them, and the one I see is that Affinity is a lot less locked down than Creative Cloud, which is why it’s viable on Linux. And in general, this feels like an opportunity to get away from the DRM-driven past of creative software. (Hey Canva, it’s never too late to make Affinity open-source.)

Difficult reporting shouldn’t have to be tethered to the whims of Big Tech to exist. Especially when that tech—on Amazon’s cloud, using Adobe’s PDFs, through Google’s search, over Meta’s social network, with Apple’s phones, and on Microsoft’s operating system—too often causes uncomfortable tensions with the reporting. This is one step towards a better escape hatch.

Affinity for Linux? Canva's next big move could reshape the desktop software market

Canva is seriously considering porting Affinity to Linux - a move that could transform desktop Linux and challenge Adobe.

^{Duncan McLeod (TechCentral)}

404 Media

2025-12-29 15:34:18

The Shifting World of OSINT (with Craig Silverman)

Joseph speaks to Craig Silverman, one of the co-founders of Indicator. Indicator is a new, independent media company that Craig runs with Alexios Mantzarlis. For years Craig has covered the world of ad fraud and disinformation using all sorts of open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques. Definitely check out Indicator at Indicator.media. The site publishes its own investigations but also tips and tricks you can use yourself.
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA6…
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/Lmj42F6HrPo?…

• Indicator’s site

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 …

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404 Media

2025-12-29 14:00:37

We Bought 404media.com

“This is so fucking stressful,” Jason said. On a group call, all four of us—Jason, Sam, Emanuel, and me—were bidding on something that had long eluded us. 404media.com. Not the .co domain we launched with two years ago because that’s all we could afford. But a fully-fledged .com.

That September day I was on holiday in an Airbnb. Sam was in San Diego to report on the sentencing of a high profile sex trafficker. Emanuel was home. Jason was also at home and eating a bagel. Ordinarily we wouldn’t be able to buy a .com for two main reasons: they are typically quite expensive, and when we created our company the domain was already in use by someone else.

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We Bought 404media.com

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}