404 Media vs Minute Media

Flock Safety Hack Reveals Cameras Track People, Not Just Plates

Hackers from the collective 'stegan0gram' dismantled a Flock Safety ALPR camera in the US, revealing it captures far more than license plates, including images of people, bicycles, and even decals or patches on clothing, which are incorrectly interpreted and stored as plates. Over a 21-day period, one camera captured 1.6 million images and logged 50,000 vehicles, sending data to Flock's cloud for AI-based recognition of plates, make, and color. The hackers also found weak encryption, retrieving a key from an unencrypted area, and storage issues causing crashes. Flock Safety dismissed the act as illegal and pointed to its bug bounty program. The findings, reported by 404 Media and Wired, add to criticism over privacy and potential misuse.

• Hackers dismantled a Flock Safety ALPR camera and discovered it stores images of people, bicycles, and can misinterpret stickers/patches as plates.
• One camera captured 1.6 million images and logged 50,000 vehicles in 21 days.
• The ALPR system uploads data to Flock's cloud for AI-based recognition of plates, make, and color.

OpenAI Employees Read ChatGPT Conversations Under 'Project Lilly'

Internal documents obtained by 404 Media reveal that OpenAI employs hundreds of freelancers to manually review real ChatGPT user conversations as part of 'Project Lilly', a quality assurance initiative. The reviewers evaluate user inputs, summarize the presumed intent, and rate the AI-generated responses, aiming to make the chatbot less sycophantic and more 'smart but humble'. While the program is intended to improve safety, experts raise privacy concerns, noting that users are not adequately informed that human reviewers may read their intimate conversations. OpenAI says it filters personal information and hides usernames, but admits errors can occur. Similar manual review practices are also used by Google and Anthropic.

• OpenAI's 'Project Lilly' deploys hundreds of freelancers to review real ChatGPT conversations.
• The review process involves three steps: reading the input, summarizing intent, and evaluating the AI answer.
• Reviewers are instructed to flag excessive emoji use and sycophancy.

Apple reverses Hide My Email domain change

Apple has reversed a planned change to its Hide My Email feature that would have moved autogenerated addresses to the @private.icloud.com domain. The company confirmed on August 24–25, 2026 that Hide My Email addresses will remain on @icloud.com after user criticism that the proposed domain change would make disposable addresses easier for sites to reject. Daring Fireball reported internal Apple objections to the switch. Earlier reporting from 404 Media documented a Hide My Email bug that leaked users’ real addresses; Apple fixed that bug after being alerted more than a year earlier.

• Apple announced it will keep Hide My Email addresses on the @icloud.com domain rather than moving them to @private.icloud.com.
• The reversal followed user criticism that @private.icloud.com would make disposable addresses easier for sites to block during sign-ups.
• Daring Fireball reported that Apple employees had objected to the domain change internally.

FanSided Expands Interactive Sports Experiences with Launch of Football Face-Off Trivia

Minute Media's FanSided launches Football Face-Off Trivia, expanding its interactive sports experiences.

$250M Acquisition Collapses Amid Fraud Allegations

A reported $250 million acquisition of Indian clipping startup VideoVerse by publisher Minute Media has unraveled amid multiple lawsuits alleging fraud, forged documents and missing funds. Investors and creditors — including Bluestone Capital and lender Lingotto — say they have not received expected proceeds or loan repayments and allege that founder Vinayak Shrivastav used forged merger and loan documents to extract tens of millions. Minute Media says it has terminated its contract after discovering significant discrepancies. Multiple overlapping claims are now pending in Delaware Chancery Court, and VideoVerse’s former COO has filed separate suits alleging forgery and complex secondary transactions.

• VideoVerse announced an acquisition by Minute Media in September 2025 reported at $250 million.
• Minute Media later said it was terminating its contract with VideoVerse after discovering significant discrepancies.
• Bluestone Capital, an investor from VideoVerse’s 2023 round, is suing the company for fraud and alleged violation of investment terms.