404 Media

On a company-wide Slack this morning, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced he has been put on a paid leave of absence. “And the biggest news: I won't be able to make the ELT tomorrow,” Matt wrote in an Announcement Slack. He continued, writing that Mark Davies, current Automattic Chief Financial Officer, has “conspired” with Automattic Board of Directors members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker “behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence.

Doctor Doom took the podium at a Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday to thank the council for covering the city in surveillance cameras. “Doom took over Axon enterprises [...] and now Doom will be watching you. Your continued cooperation expanding Doom’s surveillance network is required,” the Marvel supervillain said. “This is the first of Doom’s gifts to the city of Seattle.

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have identified the submerged remnants of a giant lost supercontinent that played a pivotal role in the explosion of complex life more than 500 million years ago, reports a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances.

Over the weekend, more than a dozen local TV news stations ran a video report called “Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.” The report paints those opposing Flock not as a diverse, decentralized, bipartisan group of ordinary citizens who oppose mass surveillance, but as well-funded radical leftists who are spreading propaganda at the behest of China and rich billionaires.

We start this week with Joseph’s story about the secretive predictive policing units inside DHS that are analyzing Americans’ financial data and having local cops pull them over. After the break, Jason tells us about the funky shirt designed to fool AI-camera systems. In the subscribers-only section, we talk all about our third anniversary events. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube.

The first man in the country to be convicted of violating the Take It Down Act was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday, after investigators found more than 3,000 real and AI-generated abuse images on his devices.

If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Just before Austin Gordon died, he left Megan Jones a letter telling her she was the love of his life. For months before he wrote that letter, he talked to, confided in, and poured his heart out to ChatGPT. “I don’t know.

For the last three years Jake Welch has been 3D scanning public restrooms and archiving their peculiarities on a website called The Restroom Archive. “It started as a joke,” Welch, the site’s creator and head archivist, told 404 Media. The Restroom Archive describes itself as “an ongoing repository of publicly accessible restrooms.” When someone first visits the Archive, the site serves them a random 3D scan of a public restroom, its location, and a brief written description.

Channel 5, the YouTube channel hosted by Andrew Callaghan, said it gave a list of its email subscribers to Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, who went on to promote his new memecoin, a move that a data privacy expert told 404 Media is likely illegal in some jurisdictions. Callaghan has repeatedly interviewed Biden on camera.

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT).