404media.co

https://archive.ph/2026.05.13-143034/https://www.404media.co/war-and-data-centers-are-driving-up-the-cost-of-fiber-optic-cable/

The comments made by a senior ICE official at a trade show highlight how Palantir is increasing the speed at which ICE operates. Most people detained by ICE have no criminal conviction.

Another article for free (but seriously subscribe to 404 they do great work) https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/graduation-speaker-booed-ai

The University of Michigan has sent a legal threat over a yearlong pause that would prevent water hookup to a proposed nuclear weapons research and AI data center. Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Michigan are looking to build a $1.2 billion, 220,000 square foot data center in Ypsitlanti Township. On April 22, the Ypsilanti Community Utility Authority (YCUA) passed a 365-day moratorium on the delivery of water to hyperscale data centers in the area while it conducted environmental sustainability and long-term water use studies.

“Last year, the American Federation of Teachers announced a $23 million partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic to build an ‘AI training hub for educators’”

“What educators, parents and policy officials really needed was high quality data and evidence to help guide them. What they have had to deal with instead is some substandard research.”

Less than 72 hours before Weber State University in Utah was scheduled to host a conference on censorship, presenters were told not to discuss identity politics, or be removed from the official program agenda. In an email to presenters selected to participate in the 27th Annual Unity Conference, titled “Redacted: Navigating the Complexities of Censorship,” then-Vice President of Student Access & Success Jessica Oyler told participants that it wasn’t a “real” academic conference; therefore, their statements and materials that “take a side” on legislation or policies wouldn’t be protected by academic freedom under a particular state law.

“What educators, parents and policy officials really needed was high quality data and evidence to help guide them. What they have had to deal with instead is some substandard research.”

Less than 72 hours before Weber State University in Utah was scheduled to host a conference on censorship, presenters were told not to discuss identity politics, or be removed from the official program agenda. In an email to presenters selected to participate in the 27th Annual Unity Conference, titled “Redacted: Navigating the Complexities of Censorship,” then-Vice President of Student Access & Success Jessica Oyler told participants that it wasn’t a “real” academic conference; therefore, their statements and materials that “take a side” on legislation or policies wouldn’t be protected by academic freedom under a particular state law.

Conservative parents’ advocacy groups have been experimenting with using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to help them flag more books they’ve deemed pornographic to be removed from public schools and libraries. Even though LLMs are notoriously error-prone, and the books in question aren’t pornographic, these groups continue to explore use cases for AI anyway.

Venture capitalists can’t subsidize cheap AI forever, and the hunger for more compute is affecting the labor market, the gadget market, and electricity prices.

The PDF, called “XnXX Video teachers fucking students Video porn Videos free XXX Hamster XnXX com” is unlike many of the other PDFs hosted on the city’s website, which include things like “2025-10-14 Council Minutes,” “Proposed Agenda 9-22-25,” and “Landlord Registration Form (1 & 2 unit dwelling).”

Residents of an Atlanta suburb have been rocked by the revelation that sales employees at Flock have been accessing sensitive cameras in the town to demonstrate the company’s surveillance technology to police departments around the country. The cameras accessed have included surveillance tech in a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool.

Japan’s Minister of Defense Shinjirō Koizumi posed with a cardboard drone on Monday during a meeting with drone manufacturer AirKamuy. The AirKamuy 150 is a cheap pre-fab cardboard drone meant to die on the battlefield and it comes shipped in a flatpack like an IKEA shelf.

Japan’s Minister of Defense Shinjirō Koizumi posed with a cardboard drone on Monday during a meeting with drone manufacturer AirKamuy. The AirKamuy 150 is a cheap pre-fab cardboard drone meant to die on the battlefield and it comes shipped in a flatpack like an IKEA shelf.

Philosophers said the paper’s argument is sound, but that “all these arguments have been presented years and years ago.”

We’ve come to call this, colloquially (but not clinically accurately) “AI psychosis.” Studies show—as do many anecdotes from people who’ve experienced this, along with OpenAI itself—that in some LLMs, the longer a chat session continues, the higher the chances the user might show signs of a mental health crisis. But as AI-induced delusion becomes more widespread than ever, are all LLMs created equal? If not, how do they differ when the human sitting across the screen starts showing signs of delusion?

Malus’s site says. “Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems.”…

Malus, which is a piece of “satire” but also fully functional, performs a “clean room” clone of open source software, meaning users could then sell, redistribute, etc. the software without crediting the original developers. But I have a hard time with the “clean room” argument since the LLM doing the behind-the-scenes work has already ingested the entire corpus of open source software – and somehow the output of the LLMs isn’t considered a derivative work.

Malus, which is a piece of “satire” but also fully functional, performs a “clean room” clone of open source software, meaning users could then sell, redistribute, etc. the software without crediting the original developers. But I have a hard time with the “clean room” argument since the LLM doing the behind-the-scenes work has already ingested the entire corpus of open source software – and somehow the output of the LLMs isn’t considered a derivative work.

Forbes launched ForbesPredict in January as part of an effort to reverse declining traffic from search engines and keep users on its website longer.

An independent privacy audit of Microslop, Meta, and Google web traffic in California found that the companies may be violating state regulations and racking up billions in fines. According to the audit from privacy search engine webXray, 55 percent of the sites it checked set ad cookies in a user’s browser even if they opted out of tracking. Each company disputed or took issue with the research, with Google saying it was based on a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how its product works.

Thomson Reuters, the technology and content conglomerate that owns the Reuters media agency but also owns and operates the investigative CLEAR database, fired a longstanding employee after they spoke out about the company selling data products to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

This is about cookie banners on websites

https://archive.ph/bSQhD

https://archive.ph/2026.04.09-132952/https://www.404media.co/fbi-extracts-suspects-deleted-signal-messages-saved-in-iphone-notification-database-2/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260407201258/https://www.404media.co/data-center-tech-lobbyists-fearmonger-in-attempt-to-retroactively-roll-back-right-to-repair-law/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260406142222/https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-ice/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260331185244/https://www.404media.co/how-thomson-reuters-powers-ice-and-palantir/

North Oaks, Minnesota is the only city in the United States that is not on Google Maps Street View. YouTube documentarian Chris Parr, who grew up not too far from North Oaks, set out to change that earlier this year. For a brief few days, he literally put North Oaks on the map. And then it was gone again.

An AI-generated LEGO movie out of Iran depicting Trump as a war hungry pedophile has gone viral online. The video is the work of Iran-based propagandists called the “Explosive News Team” and is just the latest in a long line of AI-generated LEGO videos aimed at mocking Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. LEGO-themed propaganda isn’t new and the Iranian video plays on familiar wartime propaganda themes. What’s different in 2026 is speed and scale.

An AI-generated LEGO movie out of Iran depicting Trump as a war hungry pedophile has gone viral online. The video is the work of Iran-based propagandists called the “Explosive News Team” and is just the latest in a long line of AI-generated LEGO videos aimed at mocking Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. LEGO-themed propaganda isn’t new and the Iranian video plays on familiar wartime propaganda themes. What’s different in 2026 is speed and scale.

The move isn’t surprising, but shows what data is available to authorities when paying Apple customers use the Hide My Email feature.

One of the more fucked up business models I’ve seen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260326162031/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260326162031/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260326162031/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

https://archive.ph/20260326162202/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260326162031/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

Who could have possibly predicted this, besides everyone?

There is no associated website yet, but the move comes after Trump ordered the release of files related to UFOs.

Over the last few months, various academics and AI companies have attempted to predict how artificial intelligence is going to impact the labor market. These studies, including a high-profile paper published by Anthropic earlier this month, largely try to take the things AI is good at, or could be good at, and match them to existing job categories and job tasks. But the papers ignore some of the most impactful and most common uses of AI today: AI porn and AI slop.

To cross the paywall gap, here is a mirror