Matthew Gault

Columbia

Nukes, weird tech, conflict. @gizmodo @motherboard forever Host of @angryplanetpod and @rabbith0lepod tips: [email protected] signal: 347 762-9212

Articles

Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live

1 week ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

If you’ve left a comment on a YouTube video, a new website claims it might be able to find every comment you’ve ever left on any video you’ve ever watched. Then an AI can build a profile of the commenter and guess where you live, what languages you speak, and what your politics might be. The service is called YouTube-Tools and is just the latest in a suite of web-based tools that started life as a site to investigate League of Legends usernames.
Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live

1 week ago | flipboard.com | Matthew Gault

23 hours agoJapan's bond selloff is a warning to the worldDemand for Japan’s 40-year government bonds plunged Wednesday to its lowest level since last July, reinforcing fears that appetite for ultra-long Japanese debt is evaporating.
Authors Are Accidentally Leaving AI Prompts In their Novels

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

Fans reading through the romance novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 got a nasty surprise last week in chapter 3. In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this:"I've rewritten the passage to align more with J.
Kids Say They're Using Photos of Trump and Markiplier to Bypass 'Gorllia Tag' Age Verification

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

Kids say they are using pictures of Trump, YouTuber Markiplier, and the G-Man from Half-Life to bypass newly integrated age restriction software in the VR game Gorilla Tag. Gorilla Tag is a popular game with a global reach and a young audience, which means it has to comply with complicated and contradictory laws aimed at protecting kids online. In Gorilla Tag, players control a legless ape avatar and use their arms to navigate the world and play games like, well, tag.
Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

Researchers published a massive database of more than 2 billion Discord messages that they say they scraped using Discord’s public API. The data was pulled from 3,167 servers and covers posts made between 2015 and 2024, the entire time Discord has been active. Though the researchers claim they’ve anonymized the data, it’s hard to imagine anyone is comfortable with almost a decade of their Discord messages sitting in a public JSON file online.
Scientists Explain Why Trump's $175 Billion Golden Dome Is a Fantasy

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

The U.S. has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. Its dream has long been that it could launch these nukes and suffer no repercussions for doing so. Ronald Reagan called it the Strategic Defense Initiative. His critics called it Star Wars. Trump is calling it the “Golden Dome.” Scientists who’ve studied the issue say it’s pure fantasy.
Telegram Gave Authorities Data on More than 20,000 Users

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

Telegram gave authorities the data on 22,777 of its users in the first three months of 2025, according to a GitHub that reposts Telegram’s transparency reports.That number is a massive jump from the same period in 2024, which saw Telegram turn over data on only 5,826 of its users to authorities. From January 1 to March 31, Telegram sent over the data of 1,664 users in the U.S. Telegram is a popular social network and messaging app that’s also a hub of criminal activity.
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?

3 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

For a few hours on Wednsday, X’s Grok AI wouldn’t stop talking about about white genocide. When the X account for a baseball podcast asked Grok about the stats for Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, it answered the question, then monologued about white farmers being attacked in South Africa. “Gunnar Henderson's 2025 season WAR is approximately 6.5, based on available baseball statistics,” it said.
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?

3 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Matthew Gault

8 hours agoThe Trump administration welcomed 59 white South African refugees to the U.S., saying they were fleeing racial discrimination and land appropriation. A day after 59 white South Africans were welcomed to America as refugees, more than 86,000 South African farmers — who are mostly white — are …
Kanye’s Nazi Song Is All Over Instagram

3 weeks ago | 404media.co | Matthew Gault

While other social media sites and streaming services rush to scrub Kanye West’s pro-Nazi song from their platforms , the curious or the enthused can find memes, remixes, and unedited audio of West’s new song, “Heil Hitler,” all over Instagram. Nazism is one of the only groups that Meta calls out by name in its own rules. In the current version of its community standards policy regarding “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals,” the company says it will remove any content that promotes Nazis.