Free Republic

‘Finally, neural networks that actually work.” So reads the headline in Wired, and, really, haven’t we all been waiting? (Yes, we have, even if we do not know it.) The article concerns artificial-intelligence innovator Jeff Dean, who as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota 25 years ago created a rudimentary “neural network” — a computer system sophisticated enough to learn — but was hobbled by the available computing power of the time. Now working at Google, he’s helping to create vastly powerful and subtle networks that recognize faces and spoken language. A few pages over, there’s a wonderful if...

By the middle of 1940, with Europe prostrate at the Nazis’ feet, Russia allied with Germany, and the United States still out of the war, Britain’s leaders were focused more on survival than on victory. Neville Chamberlain had reached the point where he was contemplating a peace for Great Britain secured at the expense of the sovereignty of her allies. But after the loss of Belgium and the invasion of France, members of Parliament were demanding a new government. Lord Halifax was the leading choice to lead the new cabinet, but a number of MPs were dissatisfied with his proximity...

It’s been called the “razor blade business model.” A company sells a product like a battery-operated razor blade handle at a relatively low price in order to sell a complementary consumable product later, like the astoundingly costly Gillette Power Fusion Proglide cartridge, $18 for four blades, which then get thrown away. But it could also be called the Keurig “K-Cup” business model. Once a consumer buys the coffee machine, the coffee drinker may spend as much as $50 to $60 per pound on the coffee contained in the K-Cups, considerably more than the cost of even Starbucks’s breakfast blend, which...

It’s been three years since Sybrina Fulton’s son was shot and killed by a vigilante neighbor in Florida. Now, she says, after seeing what’s happened to other young black unarmed men, it’s never been clearer that Trayvon’s skin color led to him being profiled and killed. “It was not about that hoodie, and I need to tell you that,” Fulton told a standing room only crowd in Los Angeles on Wednesday. “It was absolutely about the color of his skin.” Fulton, who became an activist against gun violence after Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, spoke during a discussion hosted by...

May 11, 2015Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 16:11-15 We set sail from Troas, making a straight run for Samothrace,and on the next day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi,a leading city in that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.We spent some time in that city.On the sabbath we went outside the city gate along the riverwhere we thought there would be a place of prayer.We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered there.One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth,from the city of Thyatira, a...

Rose unplugged begins her new Talkshow on 1250 The Answer on Wednesday May 13 2015 www.am1250theanswer.com

Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin may not be the world’s best interviewer — but he might be the world’s most condescending. In a week-old interview that has only recently garnered buzz thanks to a column in the San Jose Mercury News, Halperin essentially demands Texas Sen. Ted Cruz prove he is connected to his Hispanic heritage. WATCH: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)During the interview, Halperin says he wants to ask a series of questions to determine whether Cruz has “an affinity for or a connection to” his “Cuban past.” He asks Cruz if he has a favorite Cuban food. When the senator starts to answer that...

The Swedish firm Ericsson is working with Iran's largest mobile telecom operator to expand its network and has promised to support another Iranian mobile carrier until 2021, according to interviews and an internal company document. The involvement of Ericsson, the world's largest mobile network equipment maker, comes at a time when many Western companies have stopped doing business in Iran because of international sanctions or concerns about damage to their reputations. While Ericsson argues in the internal document that telecommunications are a "basic humanitarian service," Iranian human rights groups say Iran's regime has used the country's mobile-phone networks to track...

The radical pro-homosexual activist leader of the United Kingdom’s Green Party announced that she is “open” to legalizing “marriages” between three or more people on the island nation.A staunch supporter of LGBT rights, Australian-born Natalie Bennett made her position on the issue of polygamist marriage loud and clear when answering a question asked by the pro-homosexual Pink News. "As someone living with his two boyfriends in a stable long-term relationship, I would like to know what your stance is on polyamory rights,” a Pink News reader inquired of Bennett. “Is there room for Green support on group civil partnerships or...

Lorri Cramer’s Upper West Side bathroom is “shell” on earth. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with them,” Cramer said Saturday as 620 red-eared slider turtle hatchlings bobbed around in five big blue basins of water. Every one of the golf-ball-sized baby turtles is a skittering speck of contraband — members of a non-native species that’s illegal to sell or release in New York state.

Hundreds of people, including a teacher from Sandy Hook Elementary School, marched across the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday to call for better gun control. The group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and other supporters marched across the Bridge to City Hall. They say gun violence kills an average of more than 80 people across the country each day- and they want toughter laws on firearms. "We have to keep fighting. We have to get safer gun laws for our children," one marcher said. "Thirty thousand people a year are killed by guns in this country. It's outrageous. If...

Comments Armageddon chic: From protests to post-earthquake disasters, the gas mask is a perennial. Armageddon chic: From protests to post-earthquake disasters, the gas mask is a perennial. If you drive around the outskirts of El Dorado Hills long enough, you might chance upon the secluded 60-acre compound where Gary Miller and his friends are preparing for Armageddon. They have a water well, pallets of freeze-dried food from Costco, a Chevy alternator jerry-rigged with shovel blades that generate electricity as they spin, and a stockpile of guns and ammo. "My motto is, be prepared and be safe," Miller says. "If you...

... Easter had a top-secret job offer. If Moseley accepted, he would have to commit for four years, he couldn't tell anyone about the job and he would have to accept the job before knowing what it was. "And he said, 'You've got 30 seconds and if you don't say yes, this conversation never happened.' Well, that was just too intriguing to turn down," Moseley says. "So I said, 'Absolutely.' And he'd given me a telephone number and an intersection." ...

Amid concerns of ISIS attacks on U.S. soil, threat level raised to “Bravo” for the fifth time since 2001 terrorist attacks.Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and other military installations are under heightened security, along with other bases around the country, after an unverified threat by ISIS that it has soldiers trained in more than a dozen states and ready to strike. The Joint Base released a statement on its Facebook page on Friday, saying, “Due to activities worldwide, the U.S. Northern Command directed an increase in force protection measures at all Department of Defense installations. As a result, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst...

Noemi Zeigler Sanchez (stage name Madeline Minx) has released a new music video with her real-life Laney College media students titled “Rabbi of Rap.” The plot is a tired cliché about urban youth rejecting negative stereotypes and focusing on schoolwork instead. “The Jewish Madonna” (yup, that’s what they call her) hands out books with yin and yang, peace, and various other symbols you could find on one of those coexist bumper stickers painted on their covers as the kids echo the phrase, “Put your guns down, lift your books up, rise up!” Basically, the whole video is like a giant...

Last week’s win by British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party was also a win for two American Democrats, including one from Charlotte. Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, advised Cameron’s party while former Obama strategist David Axelrod advised the losing Labour Party. Also on the Cameron team: former Obama “bodyman” Reggie Love of Charlotte. According to Politico, Love helped the Conservatives with their field efforts and social media campaign.

This is the Game of Thrones S05E05 discussion thread. If you haven't seen this episode yet there may be spoilers here.

More and more Americans are worried that life will worsen for the next generation, so a central issue in the 2016 presidential election will be “reigniting the promise of America,” according to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. And to win the White House, Republicans need to mobilize conservatives who have not voted in recent elections, Cruz told the Tribune-Review. People who were “uninspired or unmotivated to show up for either party” across the Midwest and New England — including evangelical Christians, Reagan Democrats, independents and women — are important for the party to court, he said. Pittsburgh could be considered “ground...

Legislators in the Massachusetts State House were stunned and shocked when confronted by parents from MassResistance at a public hearing on May 6 of the Joint Education Committee. Parents came to demand passage of Bill H382 – to protect school children from obscene, sexually graphic, psychologically intrusive surveys conducted by the public schools without parents’ knowledge. These surveys also ask youth to reveal their criminal activity, personal family matters, and other intimate issues Our bill was filed in the Massachusetts Legislature in January by MassResistance with an equal number of Democrat and Republican co-sponsors. The issue has become so incendiary...

A federal judge has reopened an open-records case trying to pry loose some of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, marking the first time a court has taken action on the email scandal. Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed Friday to a joint request by the State Department and Judicial Watch, which sued in 2012 to get a look at some of Mrs. Clinton’s documents concerning a public relations push. Both sides agreed that the revelation that Mrs. Clinton had kept her own email server separate from the government, and exclusively used her own email account created on that