Marisa Kabas is the founder of The Handbasket, an independent newsletter and website that has been breaking stories left and right about government workers, the media business, and Trumps mass deportation campaign. Please go subscribe to The Handbasket here!In this episode of the podcast, Jason and Marisa share notes Marisa about doing journalism without a big newsroom, how the media business has changed over the last decade, and why sources often prefer to talk to journalists who dont work for mainstream media.Stories discussed: Truth, morality and independence in journalism under the second Trump regimeMy full remarks to students and faculty at Grinnell College.The HandbasketMarisa KabasBreaking: The Handbasket is first to report catastrophic OMB funding memoPosted on Bluesky earlier this evening, other major outlets have since confirmed.The HandbasketMarisa KabasMove fast and break peopleFor Elon Musks government, the psychological warfare is the point.The HandbasketMarisa KabasOr watch it here:

I am standing on the corner of Harris Road and Young Street outside of the Crossroads Business Park in Bakersfield, California, looking up at a Flock surveillance camera bolted high above a traffic signal. On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams mewithout any password or loginto the open internet. I wander into the intersection, stare at the camera and wave. On the livestream, I can see myself clearly. Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics.Unlike many of Flocks cameras, which are designed to capture license plates as people drive by, Flocks Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on peoples faces as they walk through a parking lot, down a public street, or play on a playground, or they can be controlled manually, according to marketing material on Flocks website. We watched Condor cameras zoom in on a woman walking her dog on a bike path in suburban Atlanta; a camera followed a man walking through a Macys parking lot in Bakersfield; surveil children swinging on a swingset at a playground; and film high-res video of people sitting at a stoplight in traffic. In one case, we were able to watch a man rollerblade down Brookhaven, Georgias Peachtree Creek Greenway bike path. The Flock camera zoomed in on him and tracked him as he rolled past. Minutes later, he showed up on another exposed camera livestream further down the bike path. The cameras resolution was good enough that we were able to see that, when he stopped beneath one of the cameras, he was watching rollerblading videos on his phone. 0:00 /0:16 1 The exposure was initially discovered by YouTuber and technologist Benn Jordan and was shared with security researcher Jon GainSec Gaines, who recently found numerous vulnerabilities in several other models of Flocks automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. They shared the details of what they found with me, and I verified many of the details seen in the exposed portals by driving to Bakersfield to walk in front of two cameras there while I watched myself on the livestream. I also pulled Flocks contracts with cities for Condor cameras, pulled details from company presentations about the technology, and geolocated a handful of the cameras to cities and towns across the United States. Jordan also filmed himself in front of several of the cameras on the Peachtree Creek Greenway bike path. Jordan said he and Gaines discovered many of the exposed cameras with Shodan, an internet of things search engine that researchers regularly use to identify improperly secured devices.After finding links to the feed, immediately, we were just without any username, without any password, we were just seeing everything from playgrounds to parking lots with people, Christmas shopping and unloading their stuff into cars, Jordan told me in an interview. I think it was like the first time that I actually got like immediately scared I think the one that affected me most was as playground. You could see unattended kids, and thats something I want people to know about so they can understand how dangerous this is. In a YouTube video about his research, Jordan said he was able to use footage pulled from the exposed feed to identify specific people using open source investigation tools in order to show how trivially an exposure like this could be abused.Benn JordanLast year, Flock introduced AI features to Condor cameras that automatically zoom in on people as they walk by. In Flocks announcement of this feature, it explained that this technology zooms in on a suspect exiting one car, stealing an item from another, and returning to his vehicle. Every detail is captured, providing invaluable evidence for investigators. On several of the exposed feeds, we saw Flock cameras repeatedly zooming in on and tracking random people as they walked by. The cameras can be controlled by AI or manually.The exposure highlights the fact that Flock is not just surveilling carsit is surveilling people, and in some cases it is doing so in an insecure way, and highlight the types of places that its Condor cameras are being deployed. Condor cameras are part of Flocks ever-expanding quest to prevent crime, and are sometimes integrated with its license plate cameras, its gunshot detection microphones, and its automated camera drones.Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me the behavior he saw in videos we shared with him shows that Flock's ambitions go far beyond license-plate surveillance. They want to be a nation-wide panopticon, watching everyone all the time. Flock's goal isn't to catch stolen cars, their goal is to have total surveillance of everyone all the time." 0:00 /1:03 1 The cameras were left not just livestreaming to the internet for anyone who could find the link, but in many cases their administrative portals were left open with no login credentials required whatsoever. On this portal, some camera settings could be changed, diagnostics could be run, and text logs of what the camera was doing were being streamed, too. Thirty days of the cameras archive was left available for anyone to watch or download from any of the cameras that we found. We were not able to geolocate every camera that was left unprotected, but we found cameras at a New York City Department of Transportation parking lot, on a street corner in suburban New Orleans, in random cul-de-sacs, in a Lowes parking lot, in the parking lot of a skatepark, at a pool, outside a parking garage, at an apartment complex, outside a church, on a bike path, and at various street intersections around the country.Quintin told me the situation reminds him of ALPR cameras from another company that were left unprotected a decade ago.This is not the first time we have seen ALPRs exposed on the public internet, and it won't be the last. Law enforcement agencies around the country have been all too eager to adopt mass surveillance technologies, but sometimes they have put little effort into ensuring the systems are secure and the sensitive data they collect on everyday people is protected, Quintin said. Law enforcement should not collect information they cant protect. Surveillance technology without adequate security measures puts everyones safety at risk.It was not always clear which business or agency owned specific cameras that were left exposed, or what type of misconfiguration led to the exposure, though I was able to find a $348,000 Flock contract for Brookhaven, Georgia, which manages the Peachtree Creek Greenway, and includes 64 Condor cameras."This was a limited misconfiguration on a very small number of devices, and it has since been remedied," a Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. It did not answer questions about what caused the misconfiguration or how many devices ultimately were affected.Do you know anything else about surveillance? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at jason.404. Otherwise, send me an email at jason@404media.co.In response to Jordan and Gaines earlier research on vulnerabilities in other Flock cameras, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a LinkedIn post that The Flock system has not been hacked. We secure customer data to the highest standard of industry requirements, including strict industry standard encryption. Flocks cloud storage has never been compromised. The exposure of these video feeds is not a hack of Flocks system, but demonstrates a major misconfiguration of at least some cameras. It also highlights a major misconfiguration in its security that persisted for at least days.When I was making my last video [about Flock ALPR vulnerabilities], it was almost like a catchphrase where I'd say like, I don't see how it could get any worse. And then something would happen where you'd be like, wow, they pulled it off. They made it worse, Jordan said. And then this is like the ultimate one. Because this is completely unrelated [to my earlier research] and I dont really know how it could be any worse to be honest.In a 2023 video webinar introducing the Condor platform to police, Flock executives said the cameras are meant to be paired with their ALPR cameras and are designed to feed video to FlockOS, a police panel that allows cops to hop from camera to camera in real time across a mapped-out view of their city. In Bakersfield, which has 382 Flock cameras according to a transparency report, one of the Condor cameras we saw was located next to a mall that had at least two Flock ALPR cameras stationed at the entrances to the mall parking lot.Kevin Cox, a Flock consultant who used to work for the Grand Prairie, Texas Police Department, said in the webinar that he built an intel center with a high density of Flock cameras in that city. I am passionate about this because Ive lived it. The background behind video [Condor] with LPR is rich with arrests, he said. That rich experience of seeing what happened kind of brings it alive to [judges]. So video combined with the LPR evidence of placing a vehicle at the scene or nearby is an incredibly game changing experience into the prosecutorial chain of events.You can look down a tremendous distance with our cameras, to the next intersection and the next intersection, he said. The camera will identify people, what theyre wearing, and cars up to a half a mile away. Its that good. 0:00 /0:08 1 Condor cameras in a Flock demo showing off its AI tracking features In the webinar Cox pulled up a multiview panel of a series of cameras and took control of them, dragging, panning, and zooming on cameras and hopping between multiple cameras in real time. Cox suggested that police officers could either use Flocks cameras to pinpoint a person at a place and time and then use it to request cell tower dumps from wireless companies, or could use cell GPS data to then go into the Flock system to track a person as they moved throughout a city. If you can place that persons cell phone and then the Condor video and Falcon LPR evidence, it would be next to impossible to beat that in court, he said, adding that some towns may just want to have always-on, always recording video of certain intersections or town squares. Theres endless endless uses to what we can do with these things.On the webinar, Seth Cimino, who was a police officer at the Citrus Heights, California police department at the time but now works directly for Flock, told participants that officers in his city enjoyed using the cameras to zoom in on crimes.There is an eagerness amongst our staff that are logged in that have their own Flock accounts to be able to monitor our ALPR and pan tilt zoom Condor cameras throughout the community, to a point where sometimes our officers are beating dispatch with the information, he said. If theres an incident that occurs at a specific intersection or a short distance away where our Condor cameras can zoom in on that area, it allows for real time overwatch [] as I sit here right now with youhow cool is this? We just had a Flock alert here in the city. I mean, it just popped up on my screen!Samantha Cole contributed reporting.

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that defied expectations, broke barriers, made trash into shelter, and lived to swear another day.First, theres a giant, lemony, diamond-studded, black widow in space. Ill explain. Then: electrons get ready for a close-up, the ultimately tiny home, and why expletives are the hottest new workout hack.As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.LemonworldZhang, Michael et al. A Carbon-rich Atmosphere on a Windy Pulsar Planet. The Astrophysical Journal Letters.Astronomers have observed a Jupiter-sized planet more than 700 light years from Earth that is unlike anything spotted before and defies explanation.Known as PSR J2322-2650b, the exoplanet is shaped like a lemon, boasts baffling skies, and may have hidden troves of diamonds in its belly. The distant world closely orbits a pulsar, a type of hyper-dense dead star that is tugging on the gassy planet, giving it the distended shape.Pulsar companions are normally other stars. These are called black widow systems because winds from the pulsar weather down the stellar companion, eventually destroying it, similar to the deadly embrace of the namesake spider. It is very rare to see a black widow system with a planet as the pulsar companion.Curious about this unusual exoplanet, astronomers observed it with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), thereby unveiling a bizarre atmosphere that raises more questions than it answers, according to their new study.PSR J23222650b is different from other ultralight pulsar companions, being the only pulsar companion with a mass, a density, and a temperature similar to those of hot Jupiters, said researchers led by Michael Zhang of the University of Chicago. The atmosphere of such an object has never been observed.In stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star, we find an atmosphere rich in molecular carbon (C3, C2) with strong westward winds, they said.Molecular carbon is unusual in planetary atmospheres because carbon atoms tend to bind to other elements, producing more familiar compounds like carbon dioxide. The atmosphere is so carbon-dominated, and so depleted in oxygen and nitrogen, that it doesnt neatly line up with any known planetary formation scenarios. In a sparkling twist, its dense carbon atmosphere may produce soot clouds that then solidify into diamonds, bedazzling its core.Is this a long-lived gas giant that survived the transformation of its star into a pulsar? Or was it born from the debris of the supernova that created the pulsar? And will this black widow system end as others do, with a slow death by pulsar winds? Nobody knows!Our findings pose a challenge to the current understanding of black-widow formation and it will take more observations of similar systems to determine whether PSR J23222650bs composition is unusual or representative of the class.In other newsAn attofirst for attosecondsArdana-Lamas, Fernando et al. Brilliant Source of 19.2-Attosecond Soft X-ray Pulses below the Atomic Unit of Time. Ultrafast Science.Scientists have created the shortest X-ray light pulse ever produced, a breakthrough that could resolve the previously hidden motions of electrons and other particles at subatomic scales.These newly-demonstrated soft X-ray pulses last for just 19.2 attoseconds, where an attosecond is equal to one quintillionth (1018) of a second. In other words, an attosecond is to a second as a second is to 31.69 billion years, more than twice the age of the universe.This is where the science happened. Image: ICFOExcitation, scattering, and electron relaxation are crucial processes that control how matter interacts with light, said researchers led by Fernando Ardana-Lamas of the Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO) in Spain. Their timing influences how chemical bonds form or break, how charge and energy move, and how properties of molecules and materials emerge. Understanding these dynamics requires attosecond resolution, as electronic excitations and dynamics occur on timescales of tens of attoseconds.We demonstrated the generation of coherent attosecond [short X-ray] pulses with a duration of 19.2 as, significantly shorter than the atomic unit of time, a milestone that offers exciting new opportunities to investigate atomic, molecular, and solid-state physics, the team concluded.This high pulse speed is necessary for the development of instruments that could capture the mysterious dynamics of particles on subatomic timescales. Other experimental technologies are still required to make these ultrafast cameras a reality, but for now, heres to shattering the shutter speed record.My other house is a tooth socketViola-Lpez, Lzaro W. et al Trace fossils within mammal remains reveal novel bee nesting behaviour. Royal Society Open Science.Heres a question for prospective home owners: have you ever considered living in a clump of regurgitated bones? This solution worked out well for Caribbean cave bees that lived some 20,000 years ago, according to a new study that reports the discovery of the first known fossilized bee nests built inside skeletal remains.Scientists found the honeycombed bones buried in a cave on the island of Hispaniola that was once also inhabited by owls. Since owls regularly barf up pelletsgnarly globs of half-digested preythe solitary bee species had a ready-made supply of skeletal remains, which were apparently a perfect place to raise offspring.A part of a fossilized mammal skull, with sediment in a tooth socket that turned out to be a nest built by a prehistoric bee. Image: Courtesy of Lazaro Viola Lpez.Isolated brood cellswere found inside cavities of vertebrate remains, including tooth sockets and the spinal canal, said researchers led by Lzaro Viola Lpez of the Field Museum in Chicago. The high abundance of nests throughout the deposit indicated that this cave was used for a long period as a nesting aggregation area by this solitary bee.Theres nothing like getting the skeleton keys to your new skeleton house.A prescription for profanityStephens, Richard et al. Dont Hold Back: Swearing Improves Strength Through State Disinhibition. American Psychologist.Cussing is discouraged in polite company, but it may actually be good for your health and performance, according to a new study that confirms swearing alleviates inhibitions and provides increased endurance during physical challenges.Psychologists recruited nearly 200 volunteers to hold themselves in a sustained chair pushup while repeating either a swear word of their choice, or a neutral word, every two seconds. The results revealed a consistent swearing advantage characterized by significant performance improvements in the swearing condition.These effects have potential implications for athletic performance, rehabilitation, and contexts requiring courage or assertiveness, said researchers led by Richard Stephens of Keele University. As such, swearing may represent a low-cost, widely accessible psychological intervention to help individuals not hold back when peak performance is needed.At long last, science has vindicated the foul-spoken, the pottymouths, the salty-tongued, and the vulgarians. So go forth, ye cursers, and f*ck that sh*t up! Its the doctors orders, after all.Thanks for reading! See you next week.

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 history repeating itself and Meta's relationship with links.JOSEPH: I wanted to add a little bit from behind the scenes of this piece: Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It. As I said on the podcast this week, there are and continue to be many questions around the case. Especially why CBP stopped Samuel Tunick in the first place.In the piece I did not focus on Tunicks activism because frankly we dont know yet how big a role it played in CBP stopping him. I mentioned it but didnt focus on it. I think regardless, someone being charged for allegedly wiping a phone is interesting essentially no matter who they are.Yes, it absolutely may turn out that he was stopped specifically because of his activism. Maybe lots of people think its very likely thats the reason. But I cant frame a story because it feels like thats maybe the case. I have to go on what actual evidence I have at the moment.

Thursday afternoon House Democrats publicly released a new trove of photographs theyve obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein via Dropbox. They left the comments on so anyone who is signed into Dropbox and browsing the material can leave behind their thoughts.Given that the investigation into Epstein is one of the most closely followed cases in the world and a subject of endless conspiracy theories, and that the committee released the trove of photographs with no context, its not surprising that people immediately began commenting on the photographs.Really punchable face, BedeScarletwhose avatar is Cloud from Final Fantasy VIIsaid above a picture of New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks, who wrote a column about his boredom with the Epstein case in November, attended a dinner with Epstein in 2011 and appears in two photographs in this new document dump.Noam Chomsky, Alya Colours (a frequent Epstein dropbox commenter) said below a photograph of the linguist talking to Epstein on a plane. Below this there is a little prompt from Dropbox asking me to join the conversation next to a smiley face.In another picture, director Woody Allen is bundled up to his eyes in a heavy coat while Epstein side hugs him. Yep, Id know that face anywhere, Susan Brown commented.Among the pictures is a closeup of a prescription bottle labeled Phenazopyridine. This is a medication used to treat pain from urinary tract infections, Rebecca Stinton added, helpfully, in the comments.The fuck were they doing all that math for? BedeScarlet said next to a picture of Epstein in front of a whiteboard covered in equations.Shit probably tastes like ass, he added to a picture of Epstein cooking something in a kitchen.There are darker and weird photographs in this collection of images that, as of this writing, do not yet have comments. Theres a pair of box springs in an unfinished room lit by the sun. There is a map of Little St James indicating where Epstein wants various buildings constructed. Bill Gates is shown in two photos standing next to women with their faces blocked out.And then there are the Lolita pictures. A womans foot sits in the foreground, a worn annotated copy of Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita in the background. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet teen in one sock, is written on the foot, a quote from the novel.These photos are followed by a series of pictures of passports with the information redacted. Some are from Ukraine. Theres one from South Africa and another from the Czech Republic.The House Democrats allowing the public to comment on these photos is funny and its unclear if intentional or a mistake. Its also a continuation of the just-get-out-there approach when they have published other material, with it sometimes being in unsorted caches that readers then have to dig through. The only grand revelation in the new material is that Brooks was present at a dinner with Epstein in 2011.As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner, a Times spokesperson told Semafors Max Tani.House Oversight Democrats did not immediately return 404 Medias request for comment.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes AI agents to rapidly track down targets. The company claims the skip tracing AI agents help agencies find people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly. According to the procurement records, the companys services were specifically for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE that identifies, arrests, and deports people.The contract comes as ICE is spending millions of dollars, and plans to spend tens of millions more, on skip tracing services more broadly. The practice involves ICE paying bounty hunters to use digital tools and physically stalk immigrants to verify their addresses, then report that information to ICE so the agency can act.The contractor, AI Solutions 87, claims on its website that its agents deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network. It says the AI agents map out a targets services, locations, friends, family, and associates.Do you know anything else about the technology ICE is using? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.The website does not detail how exactly its AI agents work or what large language model, if any, they are based on. Typically AI agents are customized versions of commercially available AI tools, such as ChatGPT, that can go onto the wider internet and perform tasks for the user, such as generating sales leads or drafting emails. In this case, AI Solutions 87 is advertising its AI agents for locating people.On Tuesday, ICE contracted with AI Solutions 87 for $636,500, according to public procurement records. The record says the contract is specifically for skip tracing services for ICEs ERO, the agencys main deportation arm. Another procurement record says AI Solutions 87 is providing ICE with skip tracing services nationwide.AI Solutions 87 did not respond to a request for comment on how its AI agents work. ICE did not respond to a request for comment on whether the agency specifically bought AI Solutions 87s AI agent product.Screenshot from AI Solutions 87's website.In October, the Intercept reported on ICEs intention to use bounty hunters or skip tracers to find targets. The skip tracing industry usually works on insurance fraud or finding people who skipped bail. Private investigators and skip tracers 404 Media spoke to had mixed reactions to ICEs plan of using private industry in this context, with one being concerned and another saying they would do the work.In November, 404 Media reported ICE had allocated as much as $180 million to pay these bounty hunters and private investigators. Those procurement records said ICE was seeking assistance with a docket size of 1.5 million. The agency would give vendors batches of 50,000 last known addresses of aliens residing in the U.S., with the bounty hunters then verifying the peoples addresses or current location, and giving that information to ICEs ERO. In the records, ICE said contractors should start with online research or commercial data before conducting physical surveillance.It is not clear how exactly AI Solutions 87s AI agent tool would fit into that model, but AI agents are generally used to speed up or handle repetitive tasks. Skip tracing, broadly, can be monotonous work, according to conversations with multiple members of the skip tracing and private investigator industry.In November, 404 Media found one contractor recruited people on LinkedIn to physically track immigrants on ICEs behalf for $300. The project aimed to pay former law enforcement and military officers, with no indication that those being recruited were licensed private investigators, and instead was open to people who were essentially members of the general public.ICE has spent at least $11.6 million on skip tracing services since October, according to 404 Medias review of procurement records. That includes large federal contractors like B.I. Incorporated and SOS International LLC, and companies focused on recovering assets like Global Recovery Group LLC.AI Solutions 87 is registered to a residential building in West Bend, Wisconsin. AI Solutions 87 shares that address with two other companies called DC Gravity LLC and SDNexus Dataops LLC formed this May, according to incorporation records. Greg Behm, who is listed as an officer for each of those companies, did not respond to a request for comment.

The past few years have been very exciting for those who want to believe. The U.S. government has released tantalizing videos and held several gripping hearings showing and discussing UFOs. People who always thought the government was hiding evidence of alien life from the general population saw it as proof that what theyve said was happening all along. Skeptics have made compelling arguments for why all these revelations could be anything but aliens.But this debate and humanitys obsession with aliens goes as far back as recorded history. In her book, First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, 404 Medias science reporter and author of The Abstract newsletter Becky Ferreira delves deep into this history, what it teaches us about humans, and what the near and far future of the search for alien life looks like.I had a great time reading Beckys book and an even better time discussing it with her on the podcast. Its a great conversation that unpacks why these stories get so much attention, and a perspective on aliens in the news and pop culture thats rooted in history and science.Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes 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.

Scientists have discovered the underwater ruins of huge stone structures erected by humans at least 7,000 years ago in the coastal waters of France, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.The submerged granite ruins near Sein Island, a Breton island in the Atlantic Ocean, are among the oldest large stone structures ever found in France, and may have inspired an ancient local legend about a city called Ys that vanished under the waves.The structures vary in size from small stone dams, which were probably fish traps, to large monoliths and slabs that protrude six feet from the seafloor and extend 400 feet in length, which perhaps once served as a protective seawall.Yves Fouquet, a geologist who works with the Society for Maritime Archaeology and Heritage (SAMM), first noticed hints of these long-lost megaliths in LiDAR data collected by the Litto3D program, a national initiative to create a precise 3D digital reconstruction of the entire French coastline. Fouquet and his colleagues confirmed the existence of the mysterious structures, and mapped out their locations, across dozens of dives carried out by ten SAMM divers between 2022 and 2024.The detailed analysis of these maps to redraw the underwater geological map of this area (faults, rock types) has made it possible to identify structures that did not appear natural to a geologist, Fouquet said in an email to 404 Media.Brittany, a peninsular region of northwest France, is home to the oldest megaliths in the nation and some of the earliest in Europe, which date back some 6,500 years. The team estimated that the submerged stone structures off Sein Island may predate these early megaliths in Brittany by about 500 years, based on their estimation of when the stones would have last been above sea level. But it will take more research to home in on the exact age of the megaliths.We plan to continue the exploration and carry out more detailed work to understand the architecture and precise the age of the structures, Fouquet said. The discovery of these stones opens a new window into the societies living in Brittany during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition, a period when hunter-gatherers began to shift toward settled lifestyles involving fishing, farming, and the construction of megaliths and other buildings.Photos of the structures in Figure 7 of the study. Image: SAMM, 2023The peoples who made these structures must have been both highly organized and relatively abundant in population in order to erect the stones. They were also sophisticated marine navigators, as the waters around Sein Island are notoriously dangerousprone to swells and strong currentswhich is one reason its underwater heritage has remained relatively poorly explored.Our results bear witness to the possible sedentary lifestyle of maritime hunter-gatherers on the coast of the extreme west of France from the 6th millennium onwards, said Fouquet and his colleagues in the study. The technical know-how to extract, transport, and erect monoliths and large slabs during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition precedes by about 500 years the megalithic constructions in western France in the 5th millennium.The discovery raises new questions about the origins of these megalithics structures, which may have had a symbolic or religious resonance to these past peoples. the team added. This discovery in a high hydrodynamic environment opens up new perspectives for searching for traces of human settlement in Brittany along the submerged coastline of the period 60005000 years cal. BCE.The researchers also speculate about a possible link between these structures, and the prehistoric people who made them, and local legends about sunken cities that may date back thousands of years.Legends about sunken cities, compared with recent data on rising sea levels, shows that the stories of ancient submergences, passed down by oral tradition, could date back as far as 5,000 to 15,000 years, the team said, citing a 2022 study. This suggests that oral traditions that may have preserved significant events in memory that could well be worthy of scientific examination. These settlements described in legend reveal the profound symbolic significance of maritime prehistory, which should not be overlooked.In particular, the people of Brittany have long told tales of the lost city of Ys, a sunken settlement thought to be located in the Bay of Douarnenez, about six miles east of Sein Island. The sunken megaliths off Sein Island allow us to question the origin of the history of the city of Ys, not from the historical legends and their numerous additions, but from scientific findings that may be at the origin of this legend, the team said.Its extremely tantalizing to imagine that the long-hidden ruins of these peoples, who appear to have been expert seafarers and builders, are the source of tales that date back for untold generations in the region. But while the researchers raise the possibility of a link between the stones and the story, they cannot conclusively confirm the connection.Legend is legend, enriched by all the additions of human imagination over the centuries, Fouquet said in his email. Our discoveries are based on what can be scientifically proven.Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Joseph had to use a different mic this week, that will be fixed next time! We start this week talking about a very unusual case: someone is being charged for allegedly wiping a phone before CBP could search it. There are a lot of questions remaining, but a super interesting case. After the break, we talk about Matthews article on an Anthropic exec forcing AI onto a queer gamer Discord. In the subscribers-only section, we all chat about the Disney and OpenAI deal.Listen to the weekly podcast onApple Podcasts,Spotify, orYouTube. 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. Timestamps:00:48 -Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It17:44 -Anthropic Exec Forces AI Chatbot on Gay Discord Community, Members Flee41:17 -Disney Invests $1 Billion in the AI Slopification of Its Brand

Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements, and allowed the hacker to take control of more than 1,000 smartphones that power the company.The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31. At the time of writing, the hacker said he still has access to the companys backend, including the phone farm itself. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment.I could see the phones in use, which manager (the PCs controlling the phones) they had, which TikTok accounts they were assigned, proxies in use (and their passwords), and pending tasks. As well as the link to control devices for each manager, the hacker told me. I could have used their phones for compute resources, or maybe spam. Even if they're just phones, there are around 1100 of them, with proxy access, for free. I think I could have used the linked accounts by puppeting the phones or adding tasks, but haven't tried.As I reported in October, Doublespeed raised $1 million from a16z as part of its Speedrun accelerator program, a fastpaced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth. Doublespeed uses generative AI to flood social media with accounts and posts to promote certain products on behalf of its clients. Social media companies attempt to detect and remove this type of astroturfing for violating their inauthentic behavior policies, which is why Doublespeed uses a bank of phones to emulate the behavior of real users. So-called click farms or phone farms often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason.The hacker told me he had access to around 1,100 smartphones Doublespeed operates. One way the hacker proved he had access to devices was by taking control of one phones camera, which seemingly showed it in a rack with other phones. Images the hacker captured from some of the phones in Doublespeed's phone farm.The hacker also shared a list with me of more than 400 TikTok accounts Doublespeed operates. Around 200 of those were actively promoting products on TikTok, mostly without disclosing the posts were ads, according to 404 Medias review of them. Its not clear if the other 200 accounts ever promoted products or were being warmed up, as Doublespeed describes the process of making the accounts appear authentic before it starts promoting in order to avoid a ban.Ive seen TikTok accounts operated by Doublespeed promote language learning apps, dating apps, a Bible app, supplements, and a massager.One health-themed Doublespeed Tiktok account named Chloe Davis posted almost 200 slideshows featuring a middle-aged AI-generated woman. In the posts, the woman usually discusses various physical ailments and how she deals with them. The last image in the slide always includes a picture of someone using a massage roller from a company called Vibit. Vibit did not respond to a request for comment.A Doublespeed TikTok account promoting a Vibit massager. Another Doublespeed-operated TikTok account named pattyluvslife posted dozens of slideshows of a young woman who, according to her bio, is a student at UCLA. All the posts from this account talk about how big pharma and the supplements industry is a scam. But the posts also always promoted a moringa supplement from a company called Rosabella. The AI-generated woman in these TikTok posts often holds up the bottle of supplements, but its obviously AI-generated as the text on the bottle is jumbled gibberish.An AI-generated image promoting a Rosabella supplement.Rosabellas site also claims the product is viral on TikTok. Rosabella did not respond to a request for comment.An image from Rosabella's site claiming its brand is viral on TikTok.While most of the content Ive seen on Doublespeed-operated TikTok accounts included AI-generated slideshows and still images, Doublespeed is also able to AI-generate videos as well. One Doublespeed-operated account posted several AI-generated videos of a young woman voguing at the camera. The account was promoting a company called Playkit, a TikTok content agency that pays users to promote products on behalf of its clients. Notably, this is the exact kind of business Doublespeed would in theory be able to replace with AI-generated accounts. Playkit did not respond to a request for comment. 0:00 /0:04 1 An AI-generated video promoting Playkit, a TikTok content agency. TikTok told me that itsCommunity Guidelinesmake clear thatit requires creators tolabelAI-generated or significantly edited content that shows realistic-looking scenes or people. After I reached out for comment, TikTok added a label to the Doublespeed-operated accounts I flagged indicating they're AI-generated.A16z did not respond to a request for comment.Doublespeed has said it has the ability to and soon plans to launch its services on Instagram, Reddit, and X, but so far seems to only be operating on TikTok. In October, a Reddit spokesperson told me that Doublespeeds service would violate its terms of service. Meta did not respond to a request for comment. As we noted in October, Marc Andreessen, after whom half of Andreessen Horowitz is named, sits on Metas board of directors. Doublespeeds business would clearly violate Metas policy on authentic identity representation.