Free Republic

An analysis released by Google this month showed that the U.S. defense industrial base—a network of public and private entities used to develop or maintain military weapons systems—has sustained cyberattacks from groups and criminal organizations from China, Russia, and North Korea in recent months.The report, released on Feb. 10 by Google Threat Intelligence, found that the Chinese regime and associated groups continue “to represent by volume the most active threat to entities in the defense industrial base,” which it said can pose “significant risk to the defense and aerospace sector.”Google’s report added that it “has observed more China-nexus cyber espionage...

A YouTuber has used Grok to predict how the upcoming 2028 US election will pan out in a detailed breakdown shared online, including the likely winner and which states they'll triumph in. Grok is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence bot, which is commonly used on his social media platform Twitter (or X, as it's now known). (snip) For the sake of the Grok results, the person behind the YouTube channel Election Time input Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, Cory Booker, and Tim Walz as potential candidates. (snip) Looking at the Republican side of things,...

OpenAI's GPT-5.2 has derived a new formula for gluon interactions, overturning assumptions of zero amplitude and advancing theoretical physics. For a long, long time physicists treated this interaction as a cosmic impossibility — a mathematical dead end so absolute it was taught almost with the certainty of Newton's laws and the elegance of Einstein's equations. Zero, in quantum physics, isn't a shrug; it's a verdict. And this particular verdict had stood unchallenged for decades. But every so often, science gets a jolt — a falling apple, a bending beam of starlight… or, in 2026, an AI model that refuses to...

Across the artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain, insiders describe a precarious, high-turnover workforce with limited support and stability.This “invisible” human labor that labels data, evaluates outputs, and filters harmful material has become a revolving door of talent that navigates high-pressure gigs and burnout. Moreover, workers and industry experts say this talent churn can degrade the very AI models workers are paid to improve.Across the board, workers who are hired to support, evaluate, or operationalize AI systems face similar challenges: high-stress environments that often involve complex tasks, unrealistic timelines, job instability, and low wages.It’s no secret that the tech industry has...

Tradition meets technology in a stunning showcase at the 2026 Spring Festival Gala by China Media Group. This year's gala features robots performing synchronized martial arts routines alongside children, highlighting a bold fusion of heritage and high-tech innovation.

Breaking Palantir was allegedly hacked. An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here”s what the hackers allegedly found: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale. They have thousands of hours of transcribed and searchable conversations of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk. They have backdoored the devices, cars and jets of world leaders and accumulated the biggest archive of blackmail material. Palantir is creating nuclear and bio weapon capabilities for Ukraine and is working closely with the CIA to defeat Russia. They believe they...

Western Digital has run out of Hard Disk Drive capacity through 2026, with CEO Irving Tan confirming the company is sold out to its top customers as artificial intelligence and enterprise demand consumes storage at unprecedented levels. The shortage has driven HDD prices to their highest point in two years, according to wccftech.com, which reported on Western Digital's Q2 earnings call. Firm orders through 2028 Speaking during the company's Q2 earnings call, Tan revealed the extent of Western Digital's committed capacity. "As we highlighted, we're pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs with our top seven...

While AI hyperscalers are committing hundreds of billions of dollar per year on capital expenditures, Anthropic’s spending plans are more cautious by comparison.But cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei said the reason for his more measured approach is because even a slight miscalculation could sink the company.In an interview with Dwarkesh Patel on Friday, the podcaster asked why Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, doesn’t spend more aggressively, given Amodei’s earlier prediction that an AI data center could one day be a “country of geniuses.”Amodei replied that while he is confident the technical milestone is achievable soon, he’s less certain...

“It’s very difficult to find love,” Aleksandr Zhadan, a 20-something software developer from Moscow, lamented on social media last year. To speed things up, Mr Zhadan programmed an artificial-intelligence (AI) bot to trawl through endless profiles on Tinder, a dating app, and interact with more than 5,000 lucky girls on his behalf. After some 100 real-world dates, Mr Zhadan proudly announced that he had just proposed to his algorithmically ordained other half. Mr Zhadan is not alone. According to a study published in June by Match Group, Tinder’s owner, and the Kinsey Institute, a research centre at Indiana University, a...

Selloff wipes out nearly $1 trillion from software and services stocks as investors debate AI's existential threat Summary: Companies: Software stocks fall on AI disruption fears, but selling intensity eases Scramble to shield portfolios as AI muddies valuations, business prospects Selloff has been overdone, analyst says Software and service stocks shed $830 billion in market value in six trading days Feb 4 (Reuters) - Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether a selloff in global software stocks this week had gone too far, as they weighed if businesses could survive an existential threat posed by artificial intelligence. The answer: It's unclear,...

Aurora Innovation said it has tripled its driverless trucking network to 10 routes as it prepares to expand autonomous freight operations across the southern United States. The Pittsburgh-based company said its latest software release enables its Aurora Driver autonomous control system to operate on longer lanes, serve direct customer endpoints, and navigate a wider range of adverse weather conditions. The company touted these as key steps as the company moves toward scaling commercial operations. With the addition of Phoenix to its network, Aurora now operates driverless freight lanes between Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso, El Paso and...

Matt Shumer warns that AI is reshaping industries like law, finance, and customer service, urging professionals to adapt quickly to stay relevant. Artificial intelligence could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years, according to tech entrepreneur Matt Shumer, who says the shift is unfolding faster than most people realise. Shumer, founder and CEO of AI firm OthersideAI (HyperWrite), made the remarks in a widely shared essay titled Something Big Is Happening. In it, he compared the current AI moment to early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted economies and daily life across...

Abstract AIs have made rapid progress on research-oriented benchmarks of knowledge and reasoning, but it remains unclear how these gains translate into economic value and automation. To measure this, we introduce the Remote Labor Index (RLI), a broadly multi-sector benchmark comprising real-world, economically valuable projects designed to evaluate end-to-end agent performance in practical settings. AI agents perform near the floor on RLI, with the highest-performing agent achieving an automation rate of 2.5%. These results help ground discussions of AI automation in empirical evidence, setting a common basis for tracking AI impacts and enabling stakeholders to proactively navigate AI-driven labor automation....

One of the Bay Area’s hottest startups is hiring like crazy. The catch? You have to be willing to train artificial intelligence to one day do your job as well as you can. Welcome to the next gig economy. Instead of driving for Uber or delivering Postmates, a new wave of workers is signing up to school AI. These white-collar contractors review and critique the output of the large language models that power chatbots and other AI tools. Not just anyone can work for Mercor, an AI startup valued at $10 billion. Applicants have to demonstrate their abilities in the...

Shares of several trucking and logistics companies declined Thursday on fears that new artificial intelligence tools could slash major freight inefficiencies, leading to less demand for the industry’s services. A new tool from AI company Algorhythm Holdings has made trucking companies the latest victim of the market’s AI jitters, adding to the historic sell-off in software stocks and real estate companies. The notable market rotation has come as investors are increasingly scrutinizing traditional businesses that may not be able to keep up with rapid advancements in AI. Leading trucking and logistics stocks C.H. Robinson and RXO dropped 14.5% and 20.5%,...

The Times Guild Bargaining Committee sent staffers a newsletter on Tuesday detailing the latest labor negotiations. The Guild said it made a "big push to end the two-tier system The New York Times created and perpetuates by wrongly excluding jobs and workers from the Times Guild" and received a revised proposal from the company to end all hybrid work guarantees on March 1, 2027. "At that point, they would have the right to require us to work in the office five days a week and to eliminate our contractually guaranteed three weeks of remote work per year. As we saw...

Key Points On Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said the company is ending production of its Model S and X vehicles. “It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge,” Musk said. Tesla beat estimates for the quarter but still wrapped up its first annual sales decline on record. SNIP Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting. The company said in the release that it plans to unveil the third generation of...

Software stocks have been pummeled over artificial intelligence fears in recent weeks.Now, investors can add logistics and freight names to the list of stocks getting sold on worries about AI.Shares of logistics and freight operations companies C.H. Robinson (CHRW) and Universal Logistics (ULH) suffered double-digit losses on Thursday after a little-known Florida company announced a new tool that would scale freight volumes without increasing headcount....snip...Nearly three-quarters of the companies that make up the S&P 500 flagged AI as a material risk in filings, up from just 12% in 2023, according to a study by the Conference Board conducted in October.

Why 95% of enterprise AI projects fail to deliver ROI: A data analysis American enterprises spent an estimated $40 billion on artificial intelligence systems in 2024, according to MIT research. Yet the same study found that 95% of companies are seeing zero measurable bottom-line impact from their AI investments. The pattern is remarkably consistent across industries. Companies invest millions in AI infrastructure, train models on internal data, deploy systems to assist sales teams or automate marketing workflows—and then watch as adoption stalls or results disappoint. The technology works in demos but fails in daily operations. MIT's Project NANDA calls it...

KEY POINTS $20 billion investment: Elon Musk’s xAI will build the MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, Mississippi — the largest private investment in the state — as part of a Memphis-area cluster the company says will house the world’s largest supercomputer with 2 gigawatts of computing power. Environmental and community opposition: the NAACP, the Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have raised air-pollution and environmental-justice concerns tied to xAI’s Memphis-area facilities, and a Southaven petition against the developments has more than 900 signatures. Generous incentives: under a 2024 data-center law Mississippi will waive state sales, corporate income and franchise...