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- [00:00]
Rachel Toback
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- [01:20]
Joseph
Hello and welcome to the 404Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I'm your host Joseph, who doesn't normally completely screw up the intro. And with me, the 404 Media Co founders, Sam Cole.
- [01:52]
Sam Cole
Hey, you're doing good job.
- [01:54]
Joseph
Hanging on, hanging on. Emmanuel Mayberg.
- [01:58]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Imagine everyone in their underwear. That will make you less nervous.
- [02:02]
Joseph
I don't think it would.
- [02:03]
Jason Kebler
Just talk to us like we're your friends and you don't need to be nervous.
- [02:07]
Sam Cole
Imagine that. Imagine that hard.
- [02:09]
Joseph
That last voice you heard was Jason Kebler. And then joined by us is also our regular contributor Matthew Gault.
- [02:16]
Matthew Gault
Hello. I feel like I'm throwing you off today.
- [02:18]
Joseph
I think it might be that and I don't mean to blame you, but I think it might actually be that. Yes. So we have a bunch of stories to get into just before we do that. Some, I guess it's not really housekeeping, but last week we had a big bumper episode all about flock safety, those automatic license plate reader cameras all across the United States. We wrote about and spoke about a tool called nova, which was going to use hacked data in combination with that license plate reader information. Flock has now decided to not use that hacked data in response. Response to internal pressure and our reporting as well. So I just wanted to give people an update on that. And of course, subscribers are what power that impactful journalism. So thank you for so much for being a listener. And please do subscribe if you want to continue to power that work as well. All right. As a massive change and pivot into a different subject, here is a really, really good one from Sam. The headline is the Egg Yolk Principle. Human sexuality will always outsmart prudish algorithms and hateful politicians. I guess. I guess I should put a content warning here just in case we talk about stuff that is sexual. But almost part of the point of the story is that stuff is not being overtly. I mean, we're going to get into it. It's very, very complicated. But content warning there if you want it. Sam, can you describe this egg video at the top of the piece? I think that's a really good introduction. You can even read it if you want. Or just what is this? What is this video that you start the piece with?
- [04:00]
Sam Cole
Yeah, I mean, I will not read it because it is straight up erotica. That is the first paragraph of the story. So you should go read my egg erotica writing. So there's this account on TikTok and Instagram also that is just a guy or a girl or somebody making fried eggs. I don't want to assume the gender of this fried egg pervert. And the fried egg is on a plate and they have a fork and it's not. The yolk is, like, intact. And they're like, dragging a fork across the egg very, like, sensually. There's no other way to put it. It's just like. It's like a really, like. I don't. It's just. It's freaky. I don't know how to really, like, put it into words better than what I did in the story. But, like, the. The yolk, like, bulges and they, like, back off it and they're, like, teasing it almost. And the comments tell it all because people are like, why are you teasing the egg? Why are you edging the egg? I just. I just walked in on something like, obviously people are like, oh, you're like. You're trying to allude to something with this weird egg striptease that is sexual, but there's nothing sexual about it. And some of the videos, it's like R and B. Tracks or like Cardi B or whatever, but like, other ones are just like goofy, like fun songs. And then he's like edging an egg. So it's just a strange, strange account. And obviously it's gotten a lot of engagement because people comment, people like it, people reply. People are like, oh, my God, why is this in my for you page? What does this say about me? What does this say about society? Why is everything so just like, uncomfortably sexual?
- [05:54]
Joseph
Yeah, there is a tension there. And of course you use that as the opener to talk about this very important issue. And I think there are. There are sort of two prongs of the piece. And the first is about this law that we're going to talk about. And then the other is sort of what you got at the end there, that everything is sexually suggestive now because platforms are awful for overtly sexual content. But you write this really, really good jarring paragraph in there. You describe this video and then the next section says, if right wing leadership in this country has its way, the person running this account being that egg video one could be put in prison for disseminating content that, quote, intended to arouse. End quote. There's a nationwide effort happening right now to end pornography and call everything pornographic at the same time. So I guess let's get into that. What is this law that aims to criminalize spreading this content that's intended to arouse, apparently, even if that's a fried egg and somebody, you know, potentially popping the yolk of it.
- [07:00]
Sam Cole
Yeah, so we wrote about this a couple weeks ago, but Mike Lee, who's a Republican senator in Utah, introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition act, which in my head, I say it as iota. That's the acronym. So we'll just go with that, I guess.
- [07:17]
Joseph
You always have to have a good.
- [07:18]
Sam Cole
Well, you gotta have it. You gotta have it.
- [07:20]
Joseph
Yeah, you gotta have an acronym.
- [07:21]
Sam Cole
Yeah, yeah. And he's been trying to pass IOTA for years. It's like every couple years he comes back with this and it's like, maybe this time. But the foundation of this bill is that porn would be effectively banned at a federal level in the US and it does that by changing the current definitions of obscenity to remove standards for community. Community standards, which would be like, someone in Maine does not have the same standards for obscenity as someone in New York City. Not to say anything disparaging about the good people of Maine, but it changes that part of the law, which has been in place since the 70s. And it also removes the part of the law that mentions intent. So the current law says that obscenity requires the intent for the purposes of amusing, threatening, or harassing a person. And. And it's saying now that it's just anything that's intended to arouse without that part of the current law, which would be a lot of things. It would be sex scenes in movies. It would be, I would imagine, like romance books, a lot of, like, what's on Netflix, and of course, like porn and adult content on the Internet. But I started writing about this egg thing a long time ago because I had just been noticing that everything is becoming weirdly uncomfortable in a way that's like roundabout alluding to sex without actually being sexual or without being pornographic at the same time. The walls are closing in on actual porn, and you can't actually put anything pornographic on a lot of the Internet without getting age gated or banned or downranked or whatever. Um, of course, like, Meta is in its fucking era, so they're going the other direction, I think, with a lot of stuff. But on a lot of the Internet, that's still the case where sex is straight up not welcome. And especially sex work and real sex workers, humans. So, yeah, that was kind of the. The original thought of this. And then as the year went on, it was like, okay, now there are more and more bills and more and more laws that are being passed. More age revocation laws this iota law that or this iota bill. It's not a law yet, thank God. That are reacting to a moment in American politics where leadership is openly supporting and saying that pornographers should be in jail.
- [10:06]
Joseph
Yeah. And I mean, on that, maybe to take a step back, slide, you mentioned the romance novel authors, and I think we'll get to that. But almost to go to the much more like, obvious impact, let's just say OnlyFans creators, like, just how simple. How would they be impacted by this if this came to law? And I know that's almost like a stupid question, but just so people actually hear it, like, how would this impact people who work on OnlyFans, for example?
- [10:34]
Sam Cole
I mean, it would be a federal crime to disseminate anything obscene, and the obscene definitions are now blown wide open. So everything is obscene that is even mildly considered obscene by the greatest stretch of your imagination. And yeah, it would mean that's a federal crime. People would go to prison. But in reality, in a really wacky future where this actually passed, which is looking more and more not that wacky.
- [11:10]
Joseph
I guess crazy things have happened recently.
- [11:13]
Sam Cole
Crazier things are crazier things are happening currently. But it wouldn't even take anyone going to prison or anything like that. Like, no one would need to be prosecuted for this to actually have an effect on how people use the Internet, consume the Internet. It would just be a total chilling effect on anything online that would be remotely considered sexual, pornographic, obscene. Which now, like, a lot of legislators are trying to push the idea or have been trying to push the idea that like queer people and trans people are obscene.
- [11:45]
Joseph
Drag queens are obscene just in virtue of them existing.
- [11:49]
Sam Cole
Yeah, like that's. Yeah, like these are like pornographic lifestyles or people. So you can kind of see where this goes. It's catching more and more in its net. And more and more people, more and more types of content, more and more types of speech are not allowed on the Internet. If this even came near becoming law or any version of it became law, even without anybody going to jail. So, yeah, the idea that like the egg guy is going to jail is a obviously, like, it's an overstatement of a point that it doesn't even need to get that far. You know, it's.
- [12:31]
Jason Kebler
But. But the point is like, the laws are super over broad and like poorly written and like, it's hard to put this stuff into a box.
- [12:39]
Sam Cole
Yeah.
- [12:41]
Jason Kebler
Sam, I think you've talked about the egg a little bit and I like, the egg is very important, the egg yolk principle. But can you give like more examples of the types of things that people are sexualizing on Instagram? Like, I feel like that would probably be helpful.
- [12:57]
Sam Cole
Yeah. I went back and forth with Emmanuel and Jason because they have the most fucked up algorithms trying to figure out or having them send me things that were in their feeds on social media, that were pornographic, that were not pornographic, that were not explicit, but were still obviously intended to arouse. And it actually became kind of hard to draw a line between what is and isn't that. But some of the examples that I ended up on were there was a. This is basically an ad for a lactose pill. But this woman was like, I'm gonna chug a bunch of milk knowing that I'm lactose intolerant. And then see what happens. And what happens is obviously she's just like spends like hours farting and like burping and being uncomfortable, like super close to the camera. It's like, that's a fetish, that's a kink. Yeah, there were, let's see, there was an AI bodybuilding women account, like these crazy proportioned women's bodies that were All AI generated. It's all AI slope, but like in like dominant like positions over men or just very obviously this is a kink. But nothing is actually being shown as like explicit. There was, there were two girls making foot pottery. I don't know, I feel like that's pretty self explanatory. They're using their feet to make pottery like on a wheel.
- [14:39]
Emmanuel Mayberg
That's a collab, by the way. Just to clarify something. Just. I don't know, I don't know if you're deep into these accounts as I am, but it's a foot, what is clearly like a foot fetish account that I believe links out to platforms where she can monetize. But the clay, you know, pottery account.
- [14:58]
Joseph
Is.
- [15:01]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Also does that. It's like a very sensual video of a lady making pottery. That's. That's her, like, that's her lane, that's her hook, you know. And that also links out to her like accounts where she, she monetizes. And I think it just speaks to the thing you said where I'm not aware of a pottery fetish. I'm sure it exists because like that's how Rule 34 works. Because we've theorized it exists. Probably it does exist, but whether or not it does, it is designed to arouse. Therefore it could fall under this law that would categorize it as pornography and therefore illegal.
- [15:38]
Jason Kebler
There's also like women who are fully clothed but are just like spitting into a cup.
- [15:44]
Sam Cole
Yeah.
- [15:45]
Jason Kebler
And then the last woman in the line drinks it. I'm also watching.
- [15:51]
Joseph
That should be fans to be close.
- [15:53]
Jason Kebler
I'm watching a woman who cracks an egg on a counter and then she like sucks the egg into her mouth and then spits it into a frying pan, for example. And it's like some of these are again, like they, their profiles link to, you know, an only fans page or somewhere that they can monetize. And so it's sort of clear what they're going for. But at the same time it's like they're fully clothed. You're allowed to like eat a raw egg. You're allowed to spit in a cup.
- [16:25]
Sam Cole
Is it a crime in this country?
- [16:28]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, exactly. It's like, I guess we, we allow that, we allow you to point out, post things like that on the Internet and it's like drawing a line for like what the rule is, is like.
- [16:38]
Sam Cole
And you have to post like that to get people to come to your only fans. Is very, is very specific problem that I didn't get into in the story. But like OnlyFans does not have a discoverability function. So if you want to search for, if you're into foot pottery, you can't search for that. Only fans. You have to find them through their socials. But the socials ban sex, so they can't just say here I am making pottery naked on Instagram. They have to kind of tease you into it. It's the same way that a lot of the tradwife fetish stuff that we talked about a couple months ago works. It's like that's not clearly a kink when you come across it online. It's just a woman in the kitchen in a lacy apron, but she's advertising for her platform where she makes money. And that platform is like Pornhub, OnlyFans, whatever it is. So yeah, it's kind of this self perpetuating cycle that's getting weirder and worse because of a lot of the restrictions that are coming down on porn in general.
- [17:46]
Joseph
Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like Jason said something really smart that was going to lead into the next thing, but I would just take it as it is. What are, I mean we're touching on it, but what are the First Amendment experts saying? Because we've spoken very much about the sensual part, the over or the subtle sexual parts. But obviously as we're getting to, this is a much, much broader speech issue. What are some of the First Amendment lawyers you spoke to saying about this?
- [18:17]
Sam Cole
Yeah, so I talked to quite a few folks. I talked to some of them from the cdc cdt, from eff, from Warhol foundation, and I think you should go read everything that they have to say in the story. It'll be more than I can put down into this podcast. But I thought they all had really similar points about the chilling effect that this could have on the Internet in general and on free speech. That it wouldn't take a prosecutor deciding that someone needs to go to trial over this or be indicted over this to actually have an effect on the way people behave. It's like if I talked to, it was Becca Bar Branham from the CDT told me that she made a really good point about like am I going to as someone who's just like a normal person on the Internet, if this law passed, am I going to share a video from my bachelorette party which like are notoriously full of like, you know, like dick shaped lollipops and like lots of like sexual interwind you. Am I going to share a video or recording for my bachelorette party if I know that something like this is in place and could be considered federally illegal. I'm going to curtail my speech. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to change my behavior to avoid attracting the government's ire, even. Even if it would be an extreme overreach for them to actually prosecute that, which I think is increasingly the world that we're living in. I mean, I know I've changed the way that I post in a lot of ways because I don't want to get downranked or downvoted or not downvoted, but, like, banned from Instagram. Like, I've been dinged on Instagram plenty of times and I know the rules and it's just. There are more rules that I don't even know about that the algorithm will catch. But, yeah, it's just, it's. It's this fever dream of, like, the Project 2025 leadership that people increasingly feel scared in general. People feel afraid to speak up, which we see happening all over the country with protests in which. With much more, you know, immediate problems with, like, ice deporting people for just speaking out. I think the. The overarching, like, message that they want to send with this type of legislation is be afraid to step out of line. And the line is, you know, heteronormative, cisgender, white, married. I don't know. It's like I'm describing it and sounds like Handmaid's Tale shit. And it kind of is without being.
- [21:14]
Joseph
So pressed up for mentioning Hammond.
- [21:17]
Sam Cole
Yeah, it's like it's Handmaid's Tail or Black Mirror, like, take your pick at this point. But it really is. That is the world that they want to go back to with this type of legislation to control people. And what you can, if you can control people's speech, you can control people's actions online and you can control what they're doing in, in person. Which it's not just like, oh, I can't post to Instagram anymore. It changes the way that you think and act in the real world, too.
- [21:41]
Joseph
Yeah, it sounds like. And again, I'm not a free speech or First Amendment lawyer here, but it sounds like the free speech concerns here are different to that of the Take It down act, which is much more concerned with that law could be weaponised to take down any content, which, again, would happen here. But this one is almost more worrying in another way because it's going to, as you say, introduce this chilling effect where people are not even going to want to upload stuff in the first place, they're going to be policing their own speech. I guess just the last question is, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, it's almost like a moonshot bill for these people. But we've seen age verification stuff spread very, very quickly across the country. And that was seen as a crazy idea not that long ago. Do you think people, even ordinary listeners who are just concerned about this, do you think they need to take this law seriously? This could actually manifest somehow.
- [22:46]
Sam Cole
I think at this point all bets are off as far as what we can and should and can't take seriously. I don't think these bills get introduced without being serious. Especially now that the environment is pretty ripe for something like this to be entertained to begin with. I think we have a much more sex negative society in general. Someone on Bluesky made a good point earlier. When I posted the story, they were like, oh, this kind of makes it make more sense to me why the puritans feel teenagers who are like anti sex and don't want to see it anywhere in the movies or TV or anything, why they feel like they're being bombarded all the time by sex. Even though, like our experience of the Internet is like, sex is nowhere, it's not in this egg shit, it's not like in the foot pottery. But they are seeing it everywhere because that is the. That's the implication, that's what's between the lines. And they feel like it's like constant in their faces. So I think there's. That generation is definitely grappling with something pretty serious as far as their relationships with sex and the Internet. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely worth paying attention to and paying attention to who says what about it and what their feelings are about it. I was pretty surprised when we wrote about the Sweden, the Swedish law that was gonna make it illegal to live stream, do like camming or custom content. People were like, oh, that makes sense. It's like, what the fuck? No, it doesn't. Like that's bad. It's really bad. But people are just kind of getting acclimated to this type of rhetoric in a really scary and quick way. You know, people are like, oh yeah, it makes sense. Porn is. Porn is bad, so we should make it federally legal. It's like neither of those things are true. Think critically for a moment. So, yeah, I don't know. That's a long way of saying I think it is. It's worth taking seriously. It's worth examining because weirder things are happening.
- [25:01]
Joseph
Yeah, absolutely. All right. We will leave that there. And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of Matthew's stories about the the crazy Ukraine drone attack and the software underpinning it all. We'll be right back after this.
- [25:24]
Jason Kebler
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- [26:43]
Unnamed Sponsor Voice
Show sponsored by BetterHelp America, is starting.
- [26:46]
Matthew Gault
To talk more about mental health, but.
- [26:48]
Unnamed Sponsor Voice
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- [27:32]
Matthew Gault
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- [27:34]
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- [27:57]
Joseph
Headline is Ukraine's massive drone attack was powered by open source software. Matthew, you are a military guy. You know all about this world on multiple levels. What is the top level overview of this drone attack carried out by Ukraine? Then we'll get into the software. But like when did it happen? What happened? What were the targets?
- [28:22]
Matthew Gault
So Sunday midday, which is kind of brazen, is around like noon to 2 local time across multiple time zones. Ukraine pushed a button and they had over the past 18 months, they say, secreted in a bunch of quadcopter drones, about 177 quadcopter drones into Russia and positioned them near air bases spread across the country. 100 these things take flight and they strike strategic bombing targets like the strategic bombers that are just kind of out in the open at these Russian air bases. And I just got confirmation literally like while during the previous segment that they also hit two A50 radar planes and destroyed them. And Russia only had six of them and now they have four. And it's kind of a thing where you've got to fly multiple of those to kind of get a lay of the land. That's like the whole point of the radar plane is like you make like you do a triangulation. Now they have two less. Apparently somebody just found video of them being destroyed by the, by the drones.
- [29:35]
Joseph
Sure. So why is it significant? Is it because this is so deep inside Russia? Is it because those, those planes and those capabilities are really important to Russia? It's a combination of all of it.
- [29:48]
Matthew Gault
Or it's a combination of both things. The targets are pretty, are pretty wild because these are some of the weapons that would be able to. It's like a third of their strategic bombing fleet. Russia's. And these are the weapons that they've been using to launch some of the nastiest missiles into Kiev and into the rest of Ukraine. And some, it's a part of their nuclear triad. These are the bombers that would be equipped with nukes if they were to drop like do bombing runs with nukes. And it's a like war is won with logistics. Technology is important, but logistics is a big deal. And Ukraine like spent 18 months building quadcopters, getting trucks positioned, shipping these things into Russia and like doing it secretly, not getting caught, not getting anyone to look in these sheds that they had built. So what? So they launched them from trucks and they launched them from sheds that had dummy roofs. And the roofs were full of these quadcopters. So they push a button somewhere and the shed's roofs open up and then quadcopters come out. Which is like the. Which is strange because it's like an image from a Call of Duty game 10 years ago now.
- [31:16]
Joseph
Literally.
- [31:17]
Matthew Gault
Literally. Yeah.
- [31:17]
Joseph
Advanced Warfare had this bit and I saw a ghost on Twitter. Oh, was it ghost.
- [31:22]
Matthew Gault
Okay, ghosts.
- [31:22]
Joseph
I think there's like a bus on the Golden Gate Bridge or something. It opens up and then all these drones fly out. And yes, it's basically what happened. Which. Which is nuts, obviously. Yeah.
- [31:33]
Matthew Gault
And it's also that we, we live in this era where I've seen a lot of commentary where it's like, oh, you know, this changes things. This proves the power of quadcopter drones. It's like that's been going on for 10 years. Like, this is just. This is just a really good use of drones, a really smart use of drones from people that have been using them in to fight Russia for 10 years now. And the other thing I would compare this to, which I really haven't seen anyone do and I haven't seen anyone talk about in the piece, is this reminds me of like last year's big brazen military attack, which was Israel sneaking explosive pagers into the hands of Hezbollah. It is, you know, it was a logistical challenge with a lot of moving parts that was kept secret from for a long time and then pulled off expertly in the moment.
- [32:29]
Joseph
Well, but the only key difference I would flag there is that the room for collateral in the pager attack was wider and.
- [32:37]
Matthew Gault
Absolutely, absolutely true. Yes.
- [32:39]
Joseph
Whereas this was just against military targets. Okay, military section of the show, over. Let's talk more about the actual software, which was our way into the story. So what is Ardu pilot, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, what is that? And like, what is it for?
- [32:56]
Matthew Gault
So it is a. It's a piece of open source software that is used to autopilot drones, drones of all kinds. And I say drone, I mean like quadcopter, little fixed wing aircraft, like single rotor, helicopter style drones. It can kind of do a little bit of everything because it's open source software and it's been around a long time. Kind of started around 2007. And there's three gentlemen that are kind of the fathers of Ardusoft or Ardupilot. I don't know why I keep. Keep messing up?
- [33:33]
Joseph
Why are you going to that?
- [33:34]
Matthew Gault
It was bad. Well, like the first draft, I had called it RDU flight the whole way through, and I had to do like a find and replace, call it RDUPilot. Anyway, these three gentlemen kind of were big in the hobbyist drone scene in the late 2000s and started building this software package to help them autopilot drones. And so what it can do now is pretty impressive. You can, like, if you've got access to gps, you can, like, pull up a map of an area, say, I want it to take off here, put down a bunch of waypoints, and your quadcopter or fixed wing aircraft or whatever it is, will go through those waypoints and then it can land. It may not do it like super well, but it has all that stuff kind of integrated. But the, I would say, like the main thing that people use it for and the main thing people. The main thing I think they used it for in Ukraine when they attacked Russia is more pilot assistance. So it is a like flying a quadcopter or an fpv. There's a lot going on, right? It needs to be stabilized, it needs to move in the correct direction. So RD pilot will, like, it may not do autopilot on every little piece of the flight. It will, like, keep things stable. And it has like a program, an algorithm that'll run that'll like, keep it stable in the moment. And the way that they did this, as best as anyone can tell, is they had these quadcopters that had like an LTE modem on top of it that, like, hooked into Russian cellular communications networks. And that's how they. That's what they used to communicate back home to the Ukrainian operators. So it's not like a great cellular network. There's latency between the operator and the drone itself. And so, like, when you would lose connection or there would be a, like a break in the connection, RD pilot would like, take over and like, keep things stable right. Until you, like, until the pilot could come back in and like, get it where it needed to go. Yeah, and like, GPS wasn't used here because GPS is notoriously really bad in. In Russia.
- [35:57]
Joseph
They have jamming, right?
- [35:59]
Matthew Gault
There's. There's a lot of jamming. And they have their own proprietary system that, like, not everyone has access to. So it's not. This is not a situation where like the Ukrainians pulled up a map and said, like, we want to blow up this bomber, this bomber, this bomber, and just hit a button. And like RD pilot, like, took over and ran the thing to. Ran the things to their targets. Now it was RD pilot was used to assist them as they, you know, navigated this. This military action.
- [36:27]
Joseph
Yeah, that makes sense. So, I mean, you mentioned these people who created the software, who, if I'm understanding correctly, they're not developing it right now. They created it back in the day, but they did see the hair tool was. Was using this attack. What was their reaction to that?
- [36:45]
Matthew Gault
I mean, it's hard to. It's hard to read tone on the Internet. Right. But I would say impressed, fascinated. Chris Anderson. It's, you know, Chris Anderson, Jason Short, and I think I'm saying it right, Jordy Munoz, and Munoz, I couldn't find any. Him making any comments. I reached out to everybody, nobody got back to me. But Anderson, in short, were like, reposting the footage on X and saying, like, wow, we made this in our basement 20 years ago. This is really wild to see it being used for this. Short said, like, I can't believe, you know, I like, they wipe, like, some software I made helped them wipe out. Helped Ukraine wipe out a third of their strategic bomber fleet. And on LinkedIn, Anderson has been on quite the tear, commenting on a lot of different threads and kind of talking about how, like, this was implying that this was a thing that he saw coming and like the rise of drone warfare generally, not this specific attack. And that he knew that our pilot might 1D one day be like, integrated in something like this and kind of posting links to people who he thinks had been talking about this. No one was paying attention to basically acting the Cassandra, you know.
- [38:07]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, I think a few interesting things. Chris Anderson was the former editor in chief of Wired magazine, like, a long time ago. And then he founded this company called 3D Robotics. And Ardupilot was, I guess, presumably part of that in some way. And all three of them actually worked at 3D Robotics. And it was supposed to be this big competitor to dji, which is this massive Chinese drone company that has dominated the market for quadcopters. And like a lot of the drones used in the United States by cops are DJI drones. And 3D Robotics was a consumer drone that was competing with the Phantom, which DJI no longer makes, but is like, this really popular. Was the most popular drone of all time. DJI has since moved on to making other things, but interestingly, like, 3D robotics failed. It went out of business. And very recently it has been, like, reborn as a company called 3Dr. And I believe the same People are involved to some extent. It's like not that close clear to me. But this has all happened during a time where the Trump administration has tried to make it illegal to sell DJI drones in the United States. And one of 3D robotics or 3Dr's things is like, oh, we're an American company, we were a California based company and I was on their website yesterday when I was editing this story and they are selling like autopilot type software. And so it feels like they're sort of continuing this like legacy of Ardupilot and trying to integrate it and trying to use to make a comeback. And I just thought that that was like pretty interesting because this all grew out of this like really like the DIY drones website, but also this like open source software that has been around for a really long time and is now being used like on, on the battlefield too.
- [40:12]
Joseph
Yeah, totally. So what about the current developers of RDUPilot, what did they say?
- [40:19]
Matthew Gault
I pinged them too. They, they did not respond, but they are active on the rdupilot Reddit and someone obviously posted like all this, this footage was going around social media. Somebody posted it in there and one of the developers responds like, hey, so you know, this is our code of conduct. It's not an end user license agreement. The gist of which is we won't knowingly help someone develop a weapon. But then they also say like, it's not up to us to like decide these things. It is up to the UN or some other, you know, you know, governing body to judge the ethics of this kinds of, kind of thing, kind of wash our hands. And again, it's like, you know, they aren't selling a product. It's open source software. It is not as if there's no mechanism as far as I can see, for them to stop anyone from, you know, using their, this software. It's out there, right?
- [41:23]
Joseph
There's no customer to cut off.
- [41:25]
Matthew Gault
There's not, there's no customer to cut off. It is not like a Starlink satellite on top of a drone which is also being used. Right, right.
- [41:35]
Joseph
And I guess just my last question is on the open source software. I mean, what does the use of that show us here about this war or conflict in general? Is it that there's obviously asymmetry in some conflicts and some people are going to return to open source software? It's available, like, what's your takeaway?
- [41:55]
Matthew Gault
There's, that's, there's a symmetry in every conflict and people are going to use the tools that are available to them and if they can do it for free or as cheap as possible, I think it behooves them to do that. I I because I I see like in the west, especially because of Ukraine and Russia, quadcopters and drones in general have become very popular and suicide drones have become very, very popular. And there's a lot of companies in America selling kind of bespoke, inexpensive drones that are meant to explode, that run on proprietary software. And if you sign up, you know, the DOD signs a contract with them, that software package is part of the deal. And you're paying a license fee like every month to use this stuff. Well, Ukraine has proven you can. You can make your own quadcopters and run a piece of open source software and wipe out a third of the strategic fleet of one of the most powerful militaries on the planet. And you don't have to pay a guy a monthly fee for a software license to do it.
- [43:05]
Joseph
You don't have to pay a guy who wears Hawaiian shirts and is now teaming up with Meta specifically, I would say yes. All right, that was great. We will leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how even pro AI subreddits now are having to ban people who are unfortunately falling into AI delusions. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. Here is one of those. Also the only podcast I pay for but also paying for the well written articles. Bonus US feed has the sweet subscriber only episodes with the Go hard music that I know everyone loves. Help us tech news nerds keep 404 findable. Thank you so much. This has been @404 Media. We'll see you again next week.