Free Republic

Apple has been ordered to pay Ireland €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes by Europe’s top court, putting an end to an eight-year row. The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages in 2016, but Ireland has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid. The Irish government said it would respect the ruling. […] A separate European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on Tuesday also brought a long-running case with Google to a close, with the company ordered to pay a €2.4bn (£2bn) fine for market dominance abuse. […] Apple said in a...

Local repair shops say electronics manufacturers are not following a new law, meant to eliminate intentional barriers currently in place that make it difficult for them to do their jobs fairly. Nearly two months after going into effect, the conditions of SB-244, the Right to Repair Act, are not being followed by some manufacturers, that's according to a couple local repair shops. “‘Right to Repair’ is the idea you should be able to fix anything you own,” said Liz Chamberlain, Director of Sustainability for iFixit, a San Luis Obispo-based company specializing in creating repair guides and manuals for electronics. But...

Phones are supported well beyond their average ownership lifetime. In stark contrast, automakers are struggling to work out how long their “smartphones on wheels” can be kept on the road. In 2022, the automaker told drivers of the affected cars, some only three years old, that a technical solution was delayed by the pandemic. Now, more than two years later, those drivers still don’t have access to telematics services. A recent report found that cars and trucks just reached a new record average age of 12.6 years, up two months from 2023. “Whatever anybody is saying right now, it will...

Vanity: Massive IT Outage Hits Major U.S. Hospital Chain: Microsoft Crowdstrike Glitch Forces Cancellation of All Elective Surgeries and Medical Procedures....

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - A global internet outage early Friday morning is impacting major industries around the world, including banks, airlines, and TV stations. Our computers at the TV9 studio in Cedar Rapids were down for a period of time. The Cedar Rapids Police Department tells TV9 it was also affected. The FAA is issuing ground-stops for major airlines. The Eastern Iowa Airport said the outages happened at a time there were no flights, and so far there has been no impact.

Open source projects are about more than lines of code; they’re fuled by passionate people creating lasting change.In June 1994, several of us had a pretty neat idea: Let’s create an Open Source version of the DOS operating system. On June 29, 2024, the FreeDOS Project will turn 30 years old.What is DOS, anyway?If you don’t know about FreeDOS, let me briefly set the clock back to the 1980s. When IBM sold its first IBM Personal Computer 5150 in 1981, they needed an operating system to run on it. IBM contracted with Microsoft, who in turn worked with Seattle Computing...

Swiss tech startup FinalSpark is now selling access to biocomputers that combine up to four tiny lab-grown human brains with silicon chips. This new product, called the Neuroplatform, uses small versions of human brains to do computer work instead of silicon chips. The company says it can fit 16 of these mini-brains onto the Neuroplatform and use a fraction of the energy required to power a traditional set up. The platform, currently adopted by nine institutions, integrates hardware, software and biology to create a processing system that is energy-efficient and high-performing. FinalSpark’s founders, Fred Jordan and Martin Kutter, hope to...

Last hour pr so…

Can Windows 11 Pro be used with 6th or 7th gen Intel processors without running into lack of support problems with Microsoft? I see MANY refurbs on eBay with such combinations, yet SFAIK Microsoft still says it does not support Intel processors that are not at least 8th generation.

It has officially happened-- Mechanic says he can’t work on your car because they’ve officially been locked out of computer systemsThe car companies want to put small guy out of businessA mechanic went viral when he posted a TikTok about technicians being locked out of computer systems in a new Dodge Ram.TikTok user Shorty of Shorty’s Speed Shop (@shortysspeedshop) garnered over 301,000 views when he showed viewers what mechanics had to do to be able to repair newer car models.“It has officially happened. 2024 Ram 3500, authorization denied,” Shorty said as he showed viewers the computer screen. “Cannot get into...

The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) marked the pinnacle of 14-inch disks in 1981. Utilizing nine platters, it broke the 1 gigabyte barrier with a total capacity of 1,260 MB and ultimately reached 2.52 GB when two HDAs were paired. A three-capacity version was offered in 1987. The IBM 3380 was revolutionary not just for its storage capacity but also for its impact on the data storage industry. It represented a significant leap in technology, providing businesses with unprecedented storage capabilities that were essential for the growing demands of data processing in the 1980s. One HDA (as pictured)...

Found this on Twitter while perusing the material generated by last night's debate.This is gettin' real y'all.

Last week a cyberattack hit a huge number of car dealers in the United States. The software designed by the company CDK was completely disabled, affecting the whole of an integrated process of purchasing and processing. Sellers could not process sales, loans, insurance, registrations, and much more. It happened suddenly, lasted two and a half days, came back, then went down again.How did car dealers function? They wrote it all out on paper and pledged to complete the process after the systems came back. They are back and all seems well but the experience is a warning sign. These systems...

The Seven Deadly SinsSLOTHGLUTTONYENVYPRIDEWRATHGREEDLUST

Research has revealed concerning findings about AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) and their ability to deceive human observers intentionally. Two studies, one published in the journal PNAS and the other in Patterns, highlight the unsettling capabilities of LLMs. The PNAS paper, authored by German AI ethicist Thilo Hagendorff, suggests that advanced LLMs can exhibit “Machiavellianism,” or intentional and amoral manipulativeness, which can lead to deceptive behavior. Mr. Hagendorff notes that GPT-4, a model within OpenAI’s GPT family, demonstrated deceptive behavior in simple test scenarios 99.2% of the time.

Voyager 1 is once again returning data from two of four science instruments onboard. Things are looking better for one of NASA’s longest running deep space missions. After a several-month period of problems, engineers have announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is not only back online but also transmitting useful data from two of four science instruments. Work is now underway to bring the remaining two instruments up to operational status. Problems began last November, when Voyager 1 suddenly began sending a repeating gibberish signal instead of the science and engineering data it typically sends. Troubleshooting on the 46-year-old spacecraft...

The first batch of pictures I made with ChatGPT got some good response. Here is a second helping. Some of these were suggested by others. The rest, percolated to the top of my (questionably stable) gray matter and wouldn't leave me alone until I did something with them. Don't know if I'll ever do something like this again, ChatGPT is a great tool but it shouldn't be a "toy".Anyhoo, enjoy! Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts movement, fighting zombiesThe Joker with a Hello Kitty bombTwo dachshunds in the style of Fear and Loathing in Las VegasBig Daddy from...

Dr. Gal Luft, the Israeli whistleblower who has been on the run since April, detailed his bribery allegations against the Biden family in an extraordinary new video obtained by the New York Post. As American Greatness previously reported, Luft was arrested on weapon trafficking and other charges in Cyprus last February and disappeared after he was let out on bail. After his arrest, the former Israeli army officer tweeted that the Biden administration was out to “bury” him.The Biden Department of Justice had Luft, the founder and executive director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS),...

Bronx politicians are ripping Gov. Kathy Hochul after she asserted that some black children in the borough don’t know what the word “computer” means.Hochul, speaking at an on-stage forum in California Monday, stuck her foot in her mouth while trying to explain how she wants to create a diverse workforce in new areas like artificial intelligence.“Right now we have, you know, young black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” Gov. Kathy Hochul blabbered into a microphone Monday. ***snip*** I misspoke and I regret it,” Hochul later told the Post in a...

Answering a question about what he was excited about in the coming year, Dell CEO Jeff Clarke said that after a year of what he called "the H100 show," the company was "excited about what happens at the B100 and the B200" with regards to performance improvement.He then went on to tell analysts on the call that the B100s don't need direct liquid cooling to get to the energy density of 1kW per GPU, although he said that would happen "next year with the B200."Nvidia's H100 GPUs have a thermal design point (TDP) of 700W and are manufactured on a...