2026-02-13 05:56:04
Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old suspected of killing eight people and injuring 25 in a mass shooting in a secondary school in Canada, created a Roblox game that allowed players to simulate a mass shooting in a level that looks like a shopping mall, Roblox has confirmed.
“We have removed the user account connected to this horrifying incident as well as any content associated with the suspect,” Roblox told 404 Media in an email. “We are committed to fully supporting law enforcement in their investigation.”
Van Rootselaar’s account and Roblox game were initially discovered by users in the online forum Kiwi Farms. Videos of the Roblox game or “experience,” as they’re called on the platform, show a Roblox character picking up various weapons and shooting other Roblox characters in a shopping mall, made their way to X before Roblox removed the game.
Roblox said Van Rootselaar’s account and any content they created was removed from Roblox yesterday. The shooting Van Rootselaar is accused of committing took place at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia on February 10. Roblox added that the “Mall experience” could only be accessed through Roblox Studio, a separate app that developers use to design games. Because of this, Roblox said, the experience had only seven visits.
There’s a long history of mass shooters and their experience with video games, which are often used as scapegoats for mass shootings as opposed to gun manufacturers or weak gun control laws. Columbine Shooter Eric Harris had designed custom levels for Doom. During his first administration, Trump suggested video games lay at the root of mass shootings. Repeated studies of the subject have shown there’s no link.
As we recently discussed on the podcast, Roblox is nearly ubiquitous among young people and is more like a social platform than other, traditional online games. Roblox allows players to create nearly anything they can imagine, but crudely. Much like every other Roblox experience, videos of Van Rootselaar’s mall game features blocky, cartoonish characters, and is in no way photorealistic or very graphic.
Roblox told us it uses a combination of AI and a team of “safety specialists” to review everything uploaded to the platform before it is ever shown to another user. It also said that while no system is perfect, it’s committed to safety and will continue to strengthen its protections.
2026-02-13 03:34:37
Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open, according to a joint statement from the company given to 404 Media.
The program is unusual in that Dashers are more often delivering food than helping out a driving robot. It also shows that even with autonomous vehicles, and the future they promise of metropolitan travel without the need for a driver, a human is sometimes needed for the most simple and yet necessary tasks.
“Waymo is currently running a pilot program in Atlanta to enhance its AV fleet efficiency. In the rare event a vehicle door is left ajar, preventing the car from departing, nearby Dashers are notified, allowing Waymo to get its vehicles back on the road quickly,” the statement said. “DoorDash is always looking for new and flexible ways for Dashers to earn, and this pilot offers Dashers an opportunity to make the most of their time online. Waymo's future vehicle platforms will have automated door closures.”
Waymo said the partnership started earlier this year. It declined to share details about how Dashers are paid, such as whether they may receive tips or which entity is paying for these jobs, but said, “the payment structure is designed to ensure competitive and fair compensation for Dashers.”
(Waymo said the response was on background, but 404 Media never agreed to such a condition. It is standard journalistic practice for both a company and a reporter to need to agree that a conversation is on background or off the record beforehand; this is to prevent companies simply saying something is off the record when answering basic questions.)
404 Media contacted both Waymo and DoorDash for comment after an apparent Dasher posted on Reddit about receiving such a job.
“Craziest Offer,” the thread starts. It includes a screenshot of the DoorDash app, saying the Dasher is guaranteed $6.25 for the work, with $5 extra “upon verified completion.” The job would see the Dasher travel around 0.7 miles, according to the screenshot.
“Close a Waymo door,” the job reads. “No pickup or delivery required.”
DoorDash and Waymo have already partnered on other projects. In October, the companies announced an autonomous delivery service in Phoenix.
2026-02-12 22:14:48
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office (MDSO) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) have bought access to GeoSpy, an AI tool that can near instantly geolocate a photo using clues in the image such as architecture and vegetation, with plans to use it in criminal investigations, according to a cache of internal police emails obtained by 404 Media.
The emails provide the first confirmed purchases of GeoSpy’s technology by law enforcement agencies. On its website GeoSpy has previously published details of investigations it says used the technology, but did not name any agencies who bought the tool.
“The Cyber Crimes Bureau is piloting a new analytical tool called GeoSpy. Early testing shows promise for developing investigative leads by identifying geospatial and temporal patterns,” an MDSO email reads.
2026-02-12 04:53:57
A newly released tool claims it can bypass Discord’s age verification system by allowing users to control a 3D model of a computer-generated man in their browser instead of scanning their real face.
On Monday, Discord announced it was launching teen-by-default settings globally, meaning that more users may be required to verify their age by uploading an identity document or taking a selfie. Users responded with widespread criticism, with Discord then publishing an update saying, “You need to be an adult to access age-restricted experiences such as age-restricted servers and channels or to modify certain safety settings.”
The tool, however, shows those age verification checks may be bypassed. 404 Media previously reported kids said they were using photos of Trump and G-Man from Half Life to bypass the age verification software in the popular VR game Gorilla Tag. That game uses the service k–ID, which is the same as what Discord is using.
2026-02-12 02:06:01
The legal saga over surveillance footage from within an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in suburban Chicago has reached new levels of Kafkaesque absurdity, with the federal government losing three hard drives it was supposed to put footage on, refusing to provide footage from five critical surveillance cameras, and delivering soundless video of a highly contested visit from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
We have repeatedly covered an abuse lawsuit about living conditions within the Broadview detention facility. The federal government has claimed that 10 days of footage from within the facility, taken during a critical and highly contested period, was “irretrievably destroyed” and could not be produced as part of the lawsuit, which was brought by people being held at Broadview in what were allegedly horrendous conditions. It later said that due to a system crash, the footage was never recorded in the first place. The latest update in this case, however, deals with surveillance camera footage that was recorded and that a judge has ordered the federal government to turn over.
For this footage, the federal government first claimed that it could not afford the storage space necessary to take the footage that it did have and produce it for discovery to the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case. The plaintiffs’ lawyers, representing Broadview’s detainees, then purchased 78 terabytes of empty hard drives and gave them to the federal government, according to court records. This included three 8-terabyte SSDs and three 18-terabyte hard drives.
Court records note that “plaintiffs provided defendants with five large hard drives to facilitate Defendants’ production, yet Defendants inexplicably lost three of them.” Emails submitted as evidence suggest that the U.S. government and the plaintiffs’ attorneys had a call to discuss the lost hard drives.
One of the emails sent by plaintiffs’ attorneys to the Department of Justice in late January notes that the government had been exceedingly slow in producing footage, taking weeks to produce just a small amount of footage.
“There should be plenty of hard drive space at Broadview’s disposal,” the email reads. “The team there should currently have in its possession 5 hard drives with 72 terabytes of space, provided by plaintiffs’ counsel at the last 2 site visits. We have received only one hard drive back from Broadview to date. Copying of November/December footage should have taken place over the past week so that it could be delivered to plaintiffs’ counsel today when they visit Broadview this afternoon. At the very least, that footage should be being copied now.”
The two sides then arranged a phone call, a summary of which was emailed by plaintiffs’ attorneys to the Department of Justice:
“Thanks for the productive call this morning. For the benefit of everyone:
We discussed the production of video footage. You relayed that, at present, your agency contact knows where 2 of the 5 hard drives are and that you have relayed that copying of footage from November to present for all 10 feeds and footage from September to November for the 5 additional cameras should be underway. You will investigate further where the remaining hard drives are and will also work on a plan to exchange footage on a more regular basis than plaintiffs' counsel's weekly visits.
We discussed providing an accounting of the hard drives to facilitate your conversations with personnel at Broadview:
• On January 8, plaintiffs' counsel delivered four hard drives to Broadview during an attorney visit. One was a 20 TB hard drive; three were 8 TB SSD drives.
• On January 16, plaintiffs' counsel received from Broadview one of the 8 TB SSD drives containing 150 GB of footage from 5 cameras for one week in January.
• Also on January 16, plaintiffs' counsel provided personnel at Broadview (SDDO Taylor, in particular) with two 18 TB hard drives.
• The sum total of storage capacity Broadview should have is: 5 drives, with a total of 72 TB of space. Using the productions we have received to date, we anticipate that the Government owes us at least 15 TB of footage.”
Days later, the Department of Justice told the plaintiffs’ attorneys that “they are still searching for those hard drives at Broadview.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys responded: “Losing multiple drives provided to facilitate speedy production is not acceptable,” and “the missing hard drives and lack of production of any footage predating January remains a significant, prejudicial issue.”
A filing by the plaintiffs with the court highlights some of the ongoing issues they have had with the government complying with court-ordered discovery requirements, which includes the lost hard drives, missing footage, footage from only five of the 10 cameras that were supposed to be delivered. A separate filing notes that footage produced by the government from a high-profile visit by Noem is missing audio “despite visible professional microphones and cell phones with audio capabilities in the footage.”
“Plaintiffs have gone above and beyond their obligations under federal law to streamline rolling production of such footage, purchasing expensive hard drives and agreeing to transport and pick up those drives from Broadview during weekly attorney visits. Defendants agreed to this arrangement,” they wrote in the filing. “Yet, Defendants have fallen unacceptably short of their production obligations. Defendants have provided no footage from five of the ten camera feeds […] Defendants have also failed to provide footage for a near-two-month span for the remaining five camera feeds. What’s more, Defendants have purportedly lost multiple hard drives provided by Plaintiffs’ counsel […] There is no excuse for Defendants’ discovery failures.”
The filing notes that the five missing cameras are specifically from detainee isolation cells, “despite those cells being a key part of Plaintiffs’ complaint. The produced feeds show egregious conditions but were insufficient to provide Plaintiffs the discovery necessary to fully investigate their claims.” These cells were designed to hold one person at a time, but were allegedly being used to hold multiple detainees at a time during a critical period that the lawsuit covers; “such cells are also where ICE holds detainees with acute medical or mental health conditions, including those who have suffered medical emergencies while in detention, and where it holds detainees who have been subjected to use of force by ICE officers while inside the facility,” they add.
The filing says that the plaintiffs learned that the government lost the hard drives in late January, when the government claimed that it had returned all of the hard drives to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and that it had run out of storage space with which to provide them court-ordered footage.
“On January 28, Defendants’ counsel relayed that Broadview personnel had advised that they were out of storage space on drives provided by Plaintiffs, reporting that all hard drives provided by Plaintiffs had been returned to them. This was the first indication that some or all of 70 terabytes’ worth of hard drives were unaccounted for,” they wrote. “In the days since, the Government has admitted that it cannot find three of the five hard drives that should be in its possession.”
“Plaintiffs are waiting on months of footage. Every day that passes without this evidence compounds the prejudice to Plaintiffs’ ability to prepare for the upcoming hearing. Defendants’ foot dragging and poor organizational practices—and their instinct to rely on Plaintiffs to take the laboring oar for the purchase, delivery, pickup, and return of storage devices to facilitate Defendants’ discovery obligations—cannot be permitted.”
2026-02-12 00:42:11
For decades, scientists have puzzled over the “density deficit” in Earth’s core, an unexplained discrepancy between the expected density of a solid iron core and the much lower density that is actually observed through seismic measurements of our planet’s center.
Now, scientists have provided some of the best experimental evidence yet that this deficit can be explained by vast oceans of hydrogen that are locked within the core, significantly lowering its overall density, according to a study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.
In addition to constraining this longstanding problem, the research reveals new insights about another persistent mystery: the original source of Earth’s liquid water, the key ingredient that enabled life on our planet to emerge.
“Hydrogen has long been considered a major light-element candidate to account for the observed density deficit in Earth’s core,” said researchers led by Dongyang Huang, an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences at Peking University, in the new study. “For decades, however, our knowledge of the exact content of H in planetary cores has been hindered by the inability to unambiguously quantify H in high-pressure samples.”
To solve this problem, the researchers performed a series of experiments that simulated the extreme environment in the core during Earth’s formation billions of years ago. This approach involved heating up iron metal with lasers to a fully-molten state that resembles ancient Earth’s inner magma ocean, which reached temperatures up to 8,700°F, and pressures more than a million times more intense than those we experience on Earth’s surface.
The team then searched for the presence of hydrogen in nanostructures made primarily of silicon and oxygen. The results revealed that the core’s hydrogen percentage sits between 0.07 to 0.36 percent, which works out to roughly nine-to-45 times the amount of the hydrogen in all of Earth’s oceans.
But perhaps the most tantalizing part of the study is its implications for understanding the enigmatic origins of Earth’s water, the wellspring of life on our world.
Some theories suggest that Earth’s water was primarily delivered from extraterrestrial sources, such as comets and asteroids that impacted our planet as it was forming more than four billion years ago. An alternate possibility is that Earth’s water was largely sourced from its building blocks, including vast interior reservoirs of hydrogen. This latter scenario is supported by the new study.
“Although 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean, mainly made of H, it has been argued that the majority of Earth’s H had been stored in the core since its formation, ~4.5 billion years ago,” the researchers said.
The estimates presented in the study “require the Earth to obtain the majority of its water from the main stages of terrestrial accretion, instead of through comets during late addition,” the team concluded.
The study certainly helps tackle the mystery of the precise contents of Earth’s core, though the authors note that their estimate has large uncertainties that will need to be further narrowed down in future work. They also suggest that hydrogen alone cannot explain the density deficit, and that other light elements or compounds, including water, might be contributing to the discrepancy.
“Compared to existing models for Earth’s core composition this is a somewhat less H-rich core, and requires its density deficit to be accounted for by a mixture of light elements, rather than a single light species, akin to that of Mars’ core,” the team said in the study.
Given that water is essential to all life on Earth, solving the riddle of its origins is the first step to understanding how our planet came to be inhabited, and whether other planets may commonly go through the same process.