The people have spoken: alcohol is out, and sparkling water is in. With a record number of young folks drinking less, or not drinking at all, the push for healthier beverage choices can be seen everywhere. From Philadelphia’s soda tax to the viral “fridge cigarette,” the way we drink seems to always be a hot topic. Enter the Aerflo for Hydro Flaskcarbonation device by Aerflo – an ingenious system that lets you take your bubbles, sweetened or otherwise, on the go.
Fizzy and fresh, the Aerflo For is a portable system that allows you to make top-notch sparkling water at the touch of a button. It’s simple: take the cap off a full Standard Mouth Hydro Flask, load a refillable CO₂ capsule into the Aerflo, and depress the button until desired fizziness is achieved.
Intuitive and sleek, this system can carbonate anywhere, an incredibly satisfying and hydrating experience from start to finish. What’s more, the Hydro Flask vacuum insulation optimizes carbonation while keeping the contents cold.
The sparkling water market, including the accessories for making it, have boomed in the past 10 years. Thought to have peaked with “White Claw summer” in 2019, the industry is now projected to reach almost $2 billion by 2031. Yet in that time, tastes have changed as well – consumers now prefer healthier options, with a bigger focus on cutting down on single-use plastic.
The Aerflo For elegantly solves both these pain points, taking a vessel some might already have and transforming it into a portable sparkling water maker, which users can choose to sweeten to their liking. Since homemade soda is likely to have less sugar than the stuff from the store, it’s an overall win for families as well, allowing kids to discover healthier options at a younger age.
Each CO₂ capsule is refillable, and can make up to 4 bottles. Simply put your used capsules in the included Exchange Box and send them back – you’ll receive a new set of 12 cartridges for $20.95 once they’re returned. For anyone still lugging their Lacroix cans home from the store, this seems like a no brainer: we can now have great-tasting sparkling water at home or on-the-go, save money, and keep it sustainable too. With Aerflo For, the only thing that’s missing is the classic crack of the can.
The Aerflo For includes four CO₂ capsules to start for $64. To learn more about the Aerflo For Hydro Flask, visit aerflo.co.
Renters are a growing segment of the population in a country where rising home prices make ownership feel increasingly out of reach. Many live in compact apartments where every inch matters. In fact, a 2025 survey of 20,000 renters revealed that the top reason for dissatisfaction with their current residence was a need for more space (54%). It’s clear that making the most of small footprints isn’t just a design preference – it’s survival strategy.
For those who work from home, the need for a dedicated workspace only adds to the challenge – which is where the Leandesk comes in. A clever hybrid of furniture and architecture, it transforms unused walls or windows into functional workstations without eating up precious floor space, and without leaving behind holes in the wall. Consider it the desk that finally understands renter-friendly city living.
Designed by Cornwall-based Henry Swanzy, the Leandesk borrows its inspiration from sailing and maritime engineering, where strength, efficiency, and flexibility are everything. Its angled frame simply leans against a vertical surface, secured by non-marking rubber grips at the top and bottom. The more weight you put on the tabletop, the tighter the grip becomes.
The tabletop is made of FSC-certified bamboo, chosen for both durability and beauty. Supporting it is Dyneema® cord – a high-performance material used in the 1992 America’s Cup sailboats – which is stronger than steel cable despite being just 3mm thick. The cords run through alloy clam cleats, sourced Clamcleats that are hidden in the frame and secured with cork balls, a nod back to maritime craft. With a quick upward motion, the desk can be released and adjusted to standing or seated height. And when it’s not in use, the Leandesk neatly hangs on its dedicated wall hanger, keeping your space clutter-free.
Portable and sustainable, the Leandesk turns any wall into a workspace, whether indoors or outdoors. “Simple physics and minimal use of the most sustainable of materials result in an efficient, functional, problem-solving piece of furniture,” Swanzy explains. Although it skips the motors and mechanics, the Leandesk proves that we can let physics do all the work – while we work.
To learn more about the Leandesk by Henry Swanzy, visit leandesk.com and give it a follow at @lean_desk.
A division of ICE, the Secret Service, and the Navy’s criminal investigation division all had access to Flock’s nationwide network of tens of thousands of AI-enabled cameras that constantly track the movements of vehicles, and by extension people, according to a letter sent by Senator Ron Wyden and shared with 404 Media. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the section of ICE that had access and which has reassigned more than ten thousand employees to work on the agency’s mass deportation campaign, performed nearly two hundred searches in the system, the letter says.
In the letter Senator Wyden says he believes Flock is uninterested in fixing the room for abuse baked into its platform, and says local officials can best protect their constituents from such abuses by removing the cameras entirely.
The letter shows that many more federal agencies had access to the network than previously known. We previously found, following local media reports, that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had access to 80,000 cameras around the country. It is now clear that Flock’s work with federal agencies, which the company described as a pilot, was much larger in scope.
“I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them,” Senator Wyden’s letter, addressed to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, reads. “Cities around the country, including in Oregon, are currently reevaluating their decision to install Flock cameras. I commend and support this reexamination. In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.”
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Do you know anything else about Flock? Do you work at the company or any of the agencies using it? 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.
Flock’s cameras continuously scan the license plate, model, brand, color, and other identifying characteristics of all vehicles that pass them. Some Flock cameras are also capable of tracking people more directly. A recently launched feature, called FreeForm, lets customers enter natural language searches such as “camo hat, forest green sweater” to bring up video with a person matching that description.
Individual police departments then enable Flock’s national lookup tool in their settings, which lets agencies from other states even on the other side of the country search cameras for specific vehicles. Police can only perform nationwide searches if they also provide access to their own data. Flock said in August 75 percent of its law enforcement customers were enrolled in the national lookup tool, according to Wyden’s letter.
Multiple federal agencies in turn had access to this national lookup tool, according to Senator Wyden’s letter. Flock officials “confirmed to my office in September that the company provided access to CBP, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Secret Service, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service [NCIS] as part of a pilot earlier this year,” it reads.
CBP performed around 200 searches, and HSI performed around 175, according to the letter.
Ordinarily, HSI is focused specifically on criminal cases, such as child abuse, human trafficking, or cybercrime. But the distinction between HSI and its umbrella agency ICE is largely meaningless in the second Trump administration. HSI has reassigned at least 6,198 agents, or nearly 90 percent, to assist targeted operations with Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE that handles immigration enforcement, according to internal ICE data published by the Cato Institute in September. Cato subsequently obtained more data showing the number of diverted HSI employees is even higher. Including both agents and non-agents, 12,353 HSI personnel are supporting ERO, according to Cato. HSI also performs worksite enforcement, which has been a major focus of this administration.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment. A Secret Service spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “The U.S. Secret Service does not comment on what platforms and systems we use to conduct our protective and investigative operations.” An NCIS spokesperson said “NCIS has previously evaluated the Flock software but does not currently maintain access to the system. Out of respect for the investigative process, NCIS will not comment further on databases and specialized software used by the agency.”
Flock did not respond to a request for comment.
Law enforcement officials typically perform searches in Flock without a warrant or court order. An ongoing lawsuit, filed by civil liberties organization the Institute for Justice, argues that warrantless use of Flock cameras is unconstitutional, saying “It is functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program.”
Reacting to the news of more federal agencies having had access to Flock, Michael B. Soyfer, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, told 404 Media “Once again, this highlights the problem with allowing police departments across the country to install dragnet surveillance systems with minimal oversight of how they’re used.”
“The only way to guarantee that the massive troves of data these systems generate won’t be abused is to enforce the Fourth Amendment and require police to get a warrant before they can track people. Otherwise, there will continue to be a steady drip of stories showing these systems are being used and accessed in ways that local communities don’t want or expect,” he added.
In May, 404 Media revealed that local cops were performing Flock lookups for ICE. Network audits obtained through public records requests, which show the reason a law enforcement officer gave for conducting a search, sometimes explicitly said “immigration.” 404 Media also revealed a law enforcement officer in Texas searched cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion. This month documents shared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with 404 Media showed authorities considering charging the woman with a crime.
Since 404 Media first reported those cases, there has been a wave of local media coverage and actions taken by individual communities about their use of Flock, including suspending or stopping their use of the cameras. Flock also made changes to its product, including removing multiple states from its national lookup tool. After meeting with Wyden staff, Flock also agreed to apply software filters to data collected by cameras in Oregon, the letter says. Eugene, Oregon, officially paused its use of Flock cameras on Tuesday.
“While the search reasons collected by Flock, obtained by press and activists through open records requests, have occasionally revealed searches for immigration and abortion enforcement, these are likely just the tip of the iceberg,” the letter adds. “Presumably, most officers using Flock to hunt down immigrants and women who have received abortions are not going to type that in as the reason for their search. And, regardless, given that Flock has washed its hands of any obligation to audit its customers, Flock customers have no reason to trust a search reason provided by another agency.” The letter says that a dataset of 11.4 million nationwide Flock searches over six months, provided by the EFF, shows that more than 14 percent of the search reasons contained just the word “investigation” and no case number.
The letter added “Abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable, and Flock has made it clear it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that. For that reason, I must now recommend that communities that have installed Flock cameras reevaluate that decision.”
Some AI papers have a finding so good you just want to quote it everywhere. But many turn out to be trash. They’ve got bad statistics, they’ve got bad methodology, they’re really sales pieces, or they just don’t prove their claimed result. If you see a finding you love, you can’t skip reading the paper before you post about it.
Today’s is “Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Use and Its Psychological Correlates via Months of Web-Browsing Data.” It’s a peer-reviewed journal article, published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, September 2025. [Liebert; archive, PDF]
The researchers measured 14 million website visits by 499 students and 455 members of the general public over a 90-day period.
Firstly, nobody used AI very much — 1% of student web-browsing was AI, 0.44% of the general public study. Secondly, the AI users were not very nice people:
The most consistent predictors of AI use across studies were aversive personality traits (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy).
So AI is not actually popular, and AI users are unpleasant assholes.
Now you might go “yeah, figures.” But let’s dive in and see how well it backs it up.
The first thing the researchers did was not trust the users to self-report. They measured their web browsing by getting 90 days of browser history from Chrome on a desktop — so no mobile or app usage. They did collect the users’ self-reports, which were just incorrect:
we observed that self-reported AI use and actual AI use were only moderately correlated (ρ = 0.329).
If the users went to a chatbot site, that’s obviously AI. For other sites, the researchers picked the Interactive Advertising Bureau category by … running the addresses through a chatbot, GPT-4o. That’s not so great, though they tested GPT-4o against a random 200 of the addresses and it was correct on all but one. So they figured it’d do.
The researchers were surprised how low AI usage actually was. The lead author, Emily McKinley, said: [PsyPost]
We were genuinely surprised by how infrequent AI use was, even among students who typically serve as early adopters of emerging technologies.
For the personality testing, the researchers used the Big Five test, which is reasonably regarded in psychology, and the Short Dark Triad test of aversive personality traits, which is not diagnostic, but it gets used a lot by psychology researchers. In particular, the prolific AI users — where more than 4% of their browsing was AI sites — came out as the most noxious people:
Students with more AI use in their browsing history tend to be high on extraversion and aversive personality traits like narcissism and psychopathy (Table 1). These individuals also tend to have more positive views of AI, in general.
… The most consistent finding across Study 1 (students) and Study 2 (general public participants) was the general connection between AI use and aversive personality traits.
For the general public group:
the most systematic link between personality and AI use was via Machiavellianism for this group.
That is, being a strategically manipulative sort.
So this paper seems okay? It’s a single study, in psychology. It needs to be replicated. It’s not rock solid yet. There’s a lot of holes you could pick in it, and it notes a lot of the holes.
But it does have the important characteristic that it’s showing a result to be true — AI’s not all that popular and AI users are unpleasant assholes — that you and I previously thought was only 99% true.
Wednesday’s end of free Windows 10 support is an environmental disaster in the making, with as many as 400 million computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 set to be cut off from receiving free security updates. The move is an egregious example of planned obsolescence that will inevitably result in the early deaths of millions of computers that would have otherwise had years of life left, and it is set to affect as many as 42 percent of all Windows computers worldwide.
“There’s 400 million computers that are going to enter the waste stream. That’s a disaster, just in terms of the sheer volume,” Nathan Proctor, director of consumer rights group PIRG’s right to repair campaign, said on the 404 Media Podcast. “And then you have people who are going to ignore the warnings and use a computer that’s insecure, so there’s going to [eventually] be some widespread security problems with these older, unsupported, no longer getting security updates computers.”
Microsoft has said it “will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.” The problem with this is that millions of computers don’t have the technical specs to move to Windows 11, and some large, unknown number of Windows 10 devices are owned and operated by businesses, governments, and large organizations like schools and nonprofits whose procurement rules do not allow them to operate devices that are no longer getting security updates. This means that these organizations will necessarily have to buy new devices, which has become a big topic of conversation on the r/sysadmin subreddit, a community of IT professionals who manage big fleets of computers.
This inevitably means that many of those devices are going to end up in landfills and e-waste facilities, and that people are going to have to buy new computers, one of the more egregious examples of planned obsolescence in recent memory. Experts have repeatedly made clear that extending the use of any given device, either through repair, software updates, or just keeping a device for longer, is extremely important, because it delays all the carbon emissions associated with mining the raw materials needed to produce a new device and the energy and emissions associated with manufacturing and shipping that new device.
Notably, Microsoft is going to continue offering security updates to customers who pay for them, meaning that it would be trivial for the company to continue to offer critical security updates for free. This is notable because we have seen unpatched Windows computers and devices turned into ransomware and botnets, most notably the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, in which repurposed, leaked NSA hacking tools attacked computers running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WannaCry was one of the most devastating widespread cyberattacks in history.
Microsoft’s decision to sunset Windows 10 support is particularly concerning considering that more than 42 percent of all Windows users are currently using Windows 10. When Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 8, just 3.7 percent of computers were using it, and just 2.2 percent of Windows users were using Windows 8.1 when Microsoft stopped supporting that operating system.
“More than 40 percent of Windows users still use it,” Proctor said. “So to cut support for something that is legitimately a flagship product is bizarre. No one expects Microsoft to do software updates forever, but when 43 percent of your customers are using it, it’s not obsolete.”
Proctor and PIRG have launched a campaign pressuring Microsoft to extend support. Petitions and open letters of this sort aren’t known for being terribly effective, but when it comes to shaming companies into extending support for environmental and security reasons, there is one very big, very important precedent. In 2023, after widespread outrage from right to repair advocates, consumer rights groups, school districts, and enterprise buyers, Google agreed to extend automatic updates for Chromebooks to 10 years. The move saved millions of devices from going into landfills and ewaste facilities.
“What happened with Google and Chromebooks is an example that gives me hope that we can win,” Proctor said. “During the pandemic, schools bought massive quantities of Chromebooks, then it turns out that Chromebooks have this thing called the AUE [automatic update] date, which is a preset end of support date, which in some cases was just a couple years after the computers were brought brand new. There were photos from the Oakland Unified School District in California of thousands of working Chromebooks that were headed to the recycler because the AUE date had passed and they weren’t getting security updates, which meant they were ineligible to get some of the enterprise software they needed.”
“And so they were getting replaced by the thousands, and we organized a bunch of these school districts and institutional purchasers of Chromebooks,” he added. “Google initially resisted what we were doing, but then after a couple of months, they just flipped and said, ‘OK, we’re going to have 10 years minimum support timeline for all Chromebooks from here on out.’”
You can listen to and watch 404 Media’s full interview with Nathan Proctor here.
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