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• 404 Media2026-10-16✓ Read

  Behind the Blog: Doing Whatever

  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 a new pod setup, video games, and Elon's spending habits.

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• 404 Media2026-10-16✓ Read

  Podcast: Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo

  We start this week with Joseph’s article about Raven, previously known as Geospy. This is an AI tool that can geolocate photos, and now says it can pinpoint a specific house based just on one photo taken inside. After the break, Jason explains why a judge ruled a particular Flock search as unconstitutional. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about the wild AI video that has derailed a manslaughter case. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,

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• 404 Media2026-10-16✓ Read

  Here’s What Telegram Giving Data to the U.S. Government Looks Like

  This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. Newly filed court records show exactly what happens when messaging app Telegram provides data to U.S. authorities. A letter written by Telegram, and providing a specific user’s phone number, user ID, and IP address, reads: Dear Sir or Madam, For this particular case, the following information was available: User #7149269705 : +201155664529 [Mahmoud Almohtadi]

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• 404 Media2026-10-16✓ Read

  Cops Used AI Generated Photos of a Child to Lure Out a Suspected Predator

  Christopher Thomas Mertens, a high school maintenance worker, was arrested after attempting to meet up with an AI persona that he thought was a 15 year old boy.

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• 404 Media2026-10-16✓ Read

  Computers Made of Human Brain Tissue Identify Braille Letters In Breakthrough

  Scientists discovered that human brain organoids, which are small neural clusters derived from stem cells, could identify the Braille alphabet with a high degree of accuracy.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  Nidal Hasan’s Public Execution Is Off, But Propagandists Are Still Using Him as a Martyr

  News that the Pentagon would livestream the killer’s execution turned him into a celebrity in Islamist and extremist circles.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  Accenture Tells Employees They Can Now Spend Only $29 on Claude Per Month

  Some employees who spend as much as $1,000 on Claude usage each month are scrambling to find ways to maintain access to the tool.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  Video Game Reverse Engineering Community Shuts Down Because AI Has Made It Too Easy

  "Historically, decompilation has been a brutally difficult, time consuming task." Now, AI is trivially doing it.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  ChatGPT Ads Target Your Phone Number, Email

  There is a lot of stuff about how creepy ad targeting is in today’s newsletter. Our first story is one I did, about how advertisers — or really anyone with 5 minutes on their hands — can inject ads into your ChatGPT session based on your phone number or email address. This is pretty normal in the advertising world, but I seriously doubt that when most of ChatGPT’s many, many users see an ad, they realize that might be because someone, somewhere, uploaded their phone number into OpenAI’s systems.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  How ChatGPT Targets Ads To You Based On Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email

  Most ChatGPT users probably don’t know you can be specifically targeted on the platform by advertisers based on your email, phone number, or unique phone identifier.

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• 404 Media2026-10-15✓ Read

  Data Centers Are War Targets Now

  "Why have we gotten to the point where we have permitted militaries of various states to use civilian commercial data centers for their military purposes?"

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• 404 Media2026-10-14✓ Read

  There’s Nothing Mysterious or Unusual About the Viral German Sexual Harassment Robot

  Livestreamers used a robot to harass a woman for social media clout on the street in Germany.

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• 404 Media2026-10-14✓ Read

  Character.ai Bankruptcy Is First AI Bubble Domino to Fall

  New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.

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• 404 Media2026-10-13✓ Read

  Character.ai’s Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don’t Work

  Character.ai enshittified its product but was still burning tons of cash, its bankruptcy documents say.

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• 404 Media2026-10-13✓ Read

  Dubstep and BookTok, a perfect match?

  New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.

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• 404 Media2026-10-13✓ Read

  The Creator of ‘Smutstep’ Wants You to ‘Let Your Freak Flag Fly’

  DARQ DAGR combined BookTok romantasy and dubstep to create something new and somewhat controversial. “It’s accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space," he said. "I think that's a really beautiful thing.”

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• 404 Media2026-10-13✓ Read

  Tesla’s ‘Security Protocols’ Stopped DHS From Installing a Tracking Device

  This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here.

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• 404 Media2026-10-10✓ Read

  Scientists Detect Record-Breaking Radio Signal from the Ancient Universe

  A fast radio burst that traveled across 10 billion light years reached Earth in 2024, doubling the distance record for these unexplained and energetic signals from space.

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