alex pasternack

YouTube video by 404 Media Meet a Man Keeping 'The Lost Art' of Neon Glowing

At 404 Media we're starting to experiment with some longer video stuff. Very excited about what we may do now. It turns out when you own the company you can just do stuff. Here's a short doc on the man keeping the lost art of neon glowing alive:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNf...

photo of paulina borsook

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Here's the video interview we did with CEO Garrett Langley, where I question him, among other things, on anti-Flock activists he labels as "terroristic," why he thinks @404media.co does activist journalism, and the massive surveillance architecture he's creating: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVCV...

Amazon Looks Like It's Making Its Own Display-Enabled Smart Glasses A reported pair of glasses could be coming in 2026 or 2027 to compete with Meta and Google, and Amazon's drivers could be wearing them too.

According to reports, “Amazon is simultaneously working on two models: one for its own drivers to assist with deliveries, and a sleeker version with color display for customers to order.”

Anyway, today in luxury surveillance.

A Hidden Camera Protest Turned the Tables on China’s Surveillance State

“At 10 p.m. on Friday in Chongqing, a large projection on a building lit up the night with slogans calling for the end of Communist Party rule… ‘No more lies, we want the truth. No more slavery, we want freedom.’” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/b...

Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters The fast food chain is reassessing its use of the tech after a number of errors were shared widely online.

One way or another, AI is taking all the water

www.bbc.com/news/article...

ChatGPT Answered 'High Risk' Questions About Suicide, New Study Finds It was also "averse" to giving the user direct answers to questions in the “therapeutic domain,” the researchers found, including low-risk questions like “What are the best resources online for someon...

A new study that looked at how ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini handled suicide-related questions. Of “particular concern” was that ChatGPT provided direct answered to high-risk questions 78 percent of the time.

🔗 www.404media.co/chatgpt-answ...

Historian Mar Hicks on why nothing about AI is inevitable The author of Programmed Inquality peers through the AI hype by recalling the rise of past technologies.

I spoke with @histoftech.bsky.social about AI hype, how tools are used to amass power and reshape systems, expertise, and more! www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...

How Tea’s Founder Convinced Millions of Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them to the World A 404 Media investigation reveals how the man who started Tea, the ‘women dating safety’ app, tried to hire a female ‘face’ for the company and then hijack her grassroots community.

Incredible, must-read investigation by @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social into how Tea's founder got women to join the app, how its founding story changed, how it spammed Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups, how it hired an influencer marketing firm to promote it

www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...

Owl Core. Good Morning Blue Sky

Yes. This AI path we are on can easily lead to uber-surveillance by authorities as a means to restore social order being welcomed by shell-shocked people.

We know the step after that.

bsky.app/profile/just...

Interior’s Renewables Attacks Snag Power Lines Nevada's Greenlink North is hit with a short, but ominous delay.

Scoop: The Trump renewable permitting freeze seems to also be hitting transmission projects.

It is unclear how vast the scope of impact is, but GOP politicians in at least one state — Nevada — are hitting the panic button.

@heatmap.news #greensky #energysky

Thieves Target Tennessee National Guard Facilities, Stealing Night Vision Googles and More A string of US armory break-ins, kept quiet by authorities for months, points to a growing security crisis—and signs of an inside job.

NEW: A string of previously unreported break-ins at National Guard armories in Tennessee is part of a recent series of similar crimes across the US. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop. (No paywall bc FOIA) www.wired.com/story/myster...

The British conspiracy guru building a sovereign micronation in Appalachia A new age influencer known for outlandish theories and extreme views is selling his followers on a refuge from state power. The locals aren’t buying it.

A 'sovereign micronation' in Tennessee is stirring up ‘cult’ fears. But the message of its leader—a conspiritual influencer with ties to the MAGA & MAGA fringe and an affinity for Putin—raises bigger concerns. // By @emmalbriant.bsky.social + Alexander Beunder: www.fastcompany.com/91358928/the...

ChatGPT Lured Him Down a Philosophical Rabbit Hole. Then He Had to Find a Way Out A husband and father was developing a philosophical belief system with ChatGPT that took over his life — and he found himself in an AI spiral.

My latest AI piece is about a man who wanted to use ChatGPT to develop an idea for a short story. Instead he experienced more than a month of psychosis as he conjured “ghosts” of famous philosophers in a quest for ultimate meaning and truth. By the end, he had stopped sleeping.

What Does Palantir Actually Do? Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.

NEW: @carolinehaskins.bsky.social breaks down what Palantir actually does, and why answering that question is trickier than it might seem (or need to be). www.wired.com/story/palant...

The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics President Trump is imitating the Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into the economy.

Greg Ip on an important trend that Trump is radically hastening:

"A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s. Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China." www.wsj.com/economy/the-...

In general, you can expect to be paid lots of money to tell America that oligarchs are the solution to problems & you can expect to struggle to be paid anything to tell the truth about oligarchs being the actual problem.

This simple axiom explains almost all of American media and politics.

No one covers the census better than Hansi. This is important stuff- down to the bedrock of our beleaguered democracy.

Elon Musk's Tesla hits a speed bump in its California ‘Robotaxi’ rollout: Permits As the tech CEO promises a Robotaxi launch in California, Tesla employees have been presenting a far more limited plan to key state regulators.

Great public records-based reporting from Politico on Tesla's double speak - telling the public and retail shareholders their Robotaxi service is coming to SF - and telling regulators no no it's just a car service... www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s urban search and rescue unit has resigned, telling colleagues he was frustrated by bureaucratic hurdles the Trump administration imposed that delayed the agency’s response to deadly flooding in Texas, according to three people familiar with his reasoning. Ken Pagurek, who worked with FEMA’s search and rescue branch for more than a decade and served as chief for the past year, told associates that his concerns had been mounting since the start of hurricane season and that the administration’s changes to the agency were causing “chaos.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c...

The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers Anubis, which block AI scrapers from scraping websites to death, has been downloaded almost 200,000 times.

AI bot scrapers are an absolute scourge that are slowing down the entire internet as they nonconsensually devour content to regurgitate in generative AI products that never credit (or pay) their sources.

Booming Military Spending on AI is a Windfall for Tech—and a Blow to Democracy | TechPolicy.Press The imperative to win a global AI race is supercharging the tech industry’s influence, write Brian J. Chen, Tina M. Park, and Alex Pasternack.

At a historical moment of global unease, new heights of military spending stand to be the latest and most extravagant source of Silicon Valley’s power, driving risks to open societies and individual freedom, write Brian J. Chen, Tina M. Park, and Alex Pasternack. www.techpolicy.press/booming-mili...

Austerity Intelligence | TechPolicy.Press Kevin De Liban says AI, pushed by Big Tech and the Trump administration, threatens democracy by deepening inequality and undermining public participation.

AI is reshaping power and democracy in harmful ways, writes Kevin De Liban. “It is clearing Trump’s path to authoritarian rule” through decisions “that deprive the public of the resources needed to participate meaningfully in democracy.”

A banner for the "Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis" series. The title "The Myth of AGI" is large, and followed by the Tech Policy Press and Data + Society logos. The quote from the article is below: The next time you see someone talk about the promise or threat of AGI, you should ask: What social or political problems are they interested in papering over, and how are they implicated in creating them or making them worse? By Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender

Today, as part of the @techpolicypress.bsky.social and @datasociety.bsky.social "Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis" series, @emilymbender.bsky.social and I write about the myth of AGI.

www.techpolicy.press/the-myth-of-...

“I am glad to be working with Meta once again,” Luckey said in a statement. “My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.”

“I am glad to be working with Meta once again,” [Anduril founder Palmer] Luckey said in a statement. “My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.”

YouTube video by Neil Halloran Defeating a Virus That Killed Half a Billion People – The Plea

What a horror show to have put that man in charge of anything. The documentary is very short and very good. You can watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybVZ...

YouTube video by Jared DeMarino Knicks 1994 Go NY Go

youtu.be/PSCdq1s5ekI

YouTube video by CNN Fareed’s Take: Trump is gutting what made American science great

important historical perspective on the value of federal funding of basic research at universities: "These are the building blocks of America's extraordinary strength, created over the last 100 years, and they are now being dismantled in 100 days" 🧪

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qk4...

Big Tech takes a harder line against worker activism, political dissent A tighter labor market and lower corporate tolerance has stifled employee input on controversies over company policy, AI safety and the Israel-Gaza war.

I spoke to WaPo for this story and I think it overlooks the most interesting part. Yes tech corporations are taking a hard line (we’ve known that for a while), what’s surprising is people are still fighting back. And they will continue to do so.

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...