age verification
Senator Tries Bringing Anti-Porn Age Verification Law to New York
“The internet is a dangerous place for children, rife with sexual material that is harmful to minors," the Republican lawmakers wrote. "The ease of access to this material is downright scary."
DOGE
DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA
Employees at Elon Musk's agency have been told "OMB is asking us to stop generating new slack messages starting now."
organizing
You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism
Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes.
Podcast
Podcast: Inside Musk’s Government Takeover
We talk all about Musk's takeover of the federal government, including audio of a meeting we got touching a Musk ally's AI plans. Then, AI slop in libraries.
News
‘Things Are Going to Get Intense:’ How a Musk Ally Plans to Push AI on the Government
404 Media has obtained audio of a meeting held by Thomas Shedd, a Musk-associate who is now heading a team of government coders. In the call one employee pushed back and said one of the planned moves is an “illegal task.”
nasa
Workers at NASA Told to ‘Drop Everything’ to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites
"This is a drop everything and reprioritize your day request," a directive "per NASA HQ direction" stated.
open source
Here's a PDF Version of the CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism
A 404 Media reader made a PDF version of the World War II-era manual that's going viral right now.
News
AI-Generated Slop Is Already In Your Public Library
Librarians say that taxpayers are already paying for low quality AI-generated ebooks in public libraries.
News
Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time for People Who Download DeepSeek
According to the language of the proposed bill, people who download AI models from China could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both.
Github
‘Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases
A project called "Remove-DEI" shows the tweaks used to remove "forbidden words" from a database about childhood school readiness.
AI
AI Company Asks Job Applicants Not to Use AI in Job Applications
Anthropic, the developer of the conversational AI assistant Claude, doesn’t want prospective new hires using AI assistants in their applications, regardless of whether they’re in marketing or engineering.
FOIA
Air Force Documents on Gen AI Test Are Just Whole Pages of Redactions
The Air Force paid a company that is doing generative AI work for the government. The Air Force won't say what it did, though.