2026-03-11 23:41:16
A top Senate administrator approved OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot for official use in the Senate, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. 404 Media has obtained the full text of the memo and is publishing it below.
“The Sergeant at Arms (SAA) office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has approved the use of three Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms with Senate data,” the memo starts. It also says the SAA will provide each Senate employee with one free license to either Gemini Chat or ChatGPT Enterprise, with Copilot also available at no cost.
2026-03-11 22:37:19
This week we start with Sam’s story discussing something that has come up a lot but no one has really answered: how do you speak to your friend or family member falling into AI psychosis? After the break, Joseph breaks down what happened when the FBI wanted data from ProtonMail. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel tells us about the viral developers behind an app called Quittr, and how they exposed very sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of users.
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.
2026-03-11 22:27:56
It’s nearly impossible not to be watched these days. It can start right at home with your neighbors and their Ring cameras—a company that sold fear to the American public and is now integrating AI to turn entire neighborhoods into networked, automated surveillance systems.
Head out a bit further and you’ll likely be confronted by Flock’s network of cameras that not only track license plates, but also track people’s movements with detailed precision. And as the Trump administration raids cities across the U.S. for undocumented immigrants, tech giants like Palantir are powering tools for ICE, including one called ELITE that helps the agency pick which neighborhoods to raid.
To better understand what exactly we’re looking at in this dystopian hellscape, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox joined r/technology for an AMA.
Understandably, people are worried about violations of their privacy by companies and the government. And many wonder, is there any way to go back once we’ve released all this AI-powered, surveillance tech?
Questions and answers have been edited for clarity.
Q: How do you think we can as a society deescalate tools designed to spy on citizens? I feel like once the police state bottle is open it’s near impossible to put it back in?
2026-03-11 05:40:32
A Cybertruck owner in Texas is suing Tesla for $1,000,000 in damages for “ grossly negligent conduct” following an accident on a Houston highway that involved the vehicle’s self-driving feature. According to the lawsuit, Tesla is to blame for the crash because CEO Elon Musk has oversold the truck’s ability to drive itself.
As originally reported by the Austin American-Statesman, Justine Saint Amour bought a Cybertruck from a used car dealership in Florida and drove it until it crashed on a Houston overpass on August 18, 2025. That summer day, Saint Amour was driving down Houston’s 69 Eastex Freeway with the vehicle’s full self-driving (FSD) mode engaged.
2026-03-11 03:21:45
Colorful feathers found in an ancient tomb on Peru’s coast once belonged to parrots captured deep in the Amazon rainforest, reports a study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications. The discovery provides direct evidence of long-distance trade networks that flourished across the Andes centuries before the expansion of the Inca Empire in 1470, proving that these cultures developed sophisticated economic systems capable of transporting live tropical birds across treacherous environments.
2026-03-10 21:00:53
Quittr, an app that promises to help men stop watching pornography, leaked intimate data on hundreds of thousands of its users, including their masturbation habits, and lied about its security issues, 404 Media can now reveal.
I first reported about Quittr exposing user data in January, but was unable to name Quittr in the story because its creators, Alex Slater and Connor McLaren, did not fix its security issues despite multiple requests and an offer from an independent researcher to help them fix the problem. Naming the app while hackers were still able to easily steal Quittr’s user data would have endangered their privacy and put them at risk of extortion from hackers, which is very common today. Some of the data exposed includes the users’ age, how often they masturbate, and how viewing pornography makes them feel. According to the data, many of them are minors.