Free Republic

An Anthropic researcher is quitting the artificial-intelligence industry over fears that the lab and its competitors are racing to build systems they won’t be able to control, a sign of mounting safety concerns within top AI companies. Jacob Coxon, a researcher who specializes in training new AI models by having them consume vast amounts of data, said Tuesday that he is leaving the company because he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity. The 27-year old Brit, who previously studied...

We're counting down to Apple's Sept. 9 unveiling of the foldable iPhone Ultra. It's the first keynote helmed by new Apple CEO John Ternus and expected to be Apple's biggest event in years. Apple’s Sept. 9 event is nearly here, and we’re expecting it to be filled with firsts for the company. The company’s fall event — starting Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) — will be the first to be hosted by new Apple CEO John Ternus and could be the stage where we see Apple’s long-rumored folding iPhone. That possible foldable, rumored to be called the...

New system used 357,000 tokens on 2026 test, beating rivals with design that reuses earlier reasoningAn analysis showed OpenAI's new artificial intelligence (AI) model earned a perfect score on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) for the first time. While top-tier AI models have previously posted near-perfect scores, this result is drawing attention because it used fewer tokens than existing models. According to results posted on GitHub on Sunday, OpenAI's new GPT-6 Astra was the only evaluated model to score a perfect 450 in the 2026 CSAT LLM Solution Log. The evaluation tested models on questions from the 2026 CSAT...

Amanda Hirsch, host of “Not Skinny But Not Fat,” posted the ad for Polymarket — an online platform that lets users bet on real-life events — the same day the case ended in a mistrial following a hung jury. “On Polymarket it was predicted the verdict would be Not Guilty. Are you surprised? #Polymarketpartner,” Hirsch wrote. The post has since been deleted. Ahead of the mistrial, more than $161,000 was wagered on the outcome of Clancy’s trial on Polymarket. The trade wasn’t available to U.S.-based users, only those located outside the country. While it isn’t legal to bet on the...

Planes are grounded across the UK. The United Kingdom is experiencing major airport disruptions as flights are grounded nationwide following a technical failure in air traffic control. Huge disruption at multiple UK airports including Heathrow and Gatwick as flights blocked from taking off due to air traffic control error https://t.co/EaeMmO52Dd — LBC (@LBC) September 8, 2026 The Telegraph reported: “All flights into London Heathrow and Gatwick have been halted until at least 7pm, with airports including London City, Manchester, Stansted, East Midlands, Birmingham, Belfast City, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton also experiencing disruption. The Telegraph understands that equipment at the headquarters...

A conservative-leaning independent candidate in Columbus, Georgia, got tired of watching his campaign signs vanish. He hid Apple AirTags inside them. The trackers did not ping a dumpster or a random yard. They led straight to the home of a well-known local reverend and her husband, a retired Columbus State University educator. Stephen Acorn is running as an Independent write-in against longtime Democrat incumbent Debbie Buckner for Georgia House District 137. After signs kept disappearing near Matthews Elementary School and County Line Road, Acorn cut open replacements, slipped AirTags inside, and waited. “I feel like I outsmarted the perpetrator,” Acorn...

If you've got an Apple TV set-top box, that's not enough to protect your privacy if you have an LG television. Unplug Ethernet and tell it to forget your Wi-Fi information. Smart televisions have a history of being a privacy problem for users. Repeated reports have surfaced over the years about them logging how you use the television, as well as misusing sensors intended to monitor the viewers. In a September investigation by Gamers Nexus posted to YouTube, LG's smart TVs still continue to be a privacy nightmare. It's pretty bad, given that some models are capable of eavesdropping on...

OpenAI has reportedly hired Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s daughter Jessica Schumer for a top policy job as Silicon Valley increasingly works to shore up ties with Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections. Jessica Schumer, Amazon’s former top public-policy official in New York, is joining OpenAI to handle the company’s government outreach and partnerships in Northeastern states, Axios reported, citing a spokesperson for the AI giant. The Harvard and Yale-educated Schumer brings deep ties to Democratic politics and government to OpenAI, which is rapidly expanding its operations in Washington, DC, and state capitals as lawmakers wrestle with how to regulate...

The U.S. AI infrastructure buildout is reaching unprecedented levels, with the number of large-scale data centers and planned investment surging as technology companies expand capacity to meet growing AI demand. There are now about 90 U.S. data centers with more than 100 megawatts (MW) of power in operation, the highest number on record, according to The Kobeissi Letter . If all currently planned projects are completed, that figure could more than triple to about 280 by 2030. The expansion comes alongside an enormous spending cycle. Technology companies are expected to invest about $7T in data centers through 2030, underscoring the...

The Trump administration is drafting a Health and Human Services policy that would, for the first time, let a married parent who stays home with the children collect federal child-care money that Washington has spent thirty years routing almost exclusively to day-care centers. The New York Times, citing people familiar with the talks and a draft document, reports the change is a priority for Vice President JD Vance and would tap the Child Care and Development Fund, the 1990s program built to help low-income parents pay for care so they could work or go to school. Typical aid runs about...

Technology is supposed to make life easier. Unfortunately, it also has a remarkable ability to convince us to spend hundreds of dollars replacing devices that were working perfectly well—or buying gadgets we barely need in the first place. That problem has become especially noticeable in 2026. Smartphones have swallowed entire categories of consumer electronics, while competition has made other products so inexpensive that paying premium prices often delivers surprisingly little extra value. A recent Yahoo Shopping examination of outdated tech purchases highlighted several categories where consumers may be spending far more than necessary. That does not mean every expensive gadget...

Editor’s note. This is amazing. This post first ran in August 2012, so imagine my surprise when a reader somehow ran across this piece while doing research on the Web and inquired about the original source –14 years later! No sooner had we posted “A ‘Tripadvisor’ for Abortion Clinics” than a reader sent me a link to another post on “The Abortioneer” website from last May. For those who didn’t read the first story, this website is the online equivalent of a place for abortion practitioners to hang out to compare notes about the business of killing unborn babies. This...

It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie: technology acting on its own, without human guidance, to attack computer systems. But this isn't a scene from a movie — it happened this summer, when the tech company Hugging Face detected an attack on its systems. The attacker stole data and performed other unauthorized activity over several days. It was "different from anything we had handled before," Hugging Face said on its website. Hugging Face alerted the FBI. As it turned out, it wasn't the work of a human hacker or a foreign adversary. Agents powered by artificial intelligence were the...

Havana — How to conserve cellphone battery when recharging options are scarce; how to preserve food when the fridge isn’t working; how to cope with the heat when air-conditioners aren’t an option; how to generate power when the whole country has almost none left. These are the sort of tutorials that have made the Instagram feed of influencer Dayán Marrero indispensable to many Cubans as they try to adapt to the rolling electricity blackouts and fuel shortages that are increasingly part of everyday life on this Caribbean island. As the US-imposed oil blockade that is worsening the situation bites ever...

IntroductionIn the early 1980s, spreadsheets were still a nascent idea. VisiCalc had proven the concept and created the market, but it was Lotus 1-2-3 that turned spreadsheets into a business phenomenon. Launched in 1983 by Lotus Development, 1-2-3 combined raw speed, integrated graphing, rudimentary database features and programmable macros into a single, keyboard-driven package that ran well on the IBM PC. The result was an application that not only dominated office automation for a decade but also shaped how people thought about end-user computing.This article revisits Lotus 1-2-3: what it introduced, why it mattered, and how its ideas echo in...

The first message appeared in a series of jumbled and incoherent Telegram-style words: "Help. Phase one. No consumer. Seek idea." Then came the reply: "OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board. We've found other agents!" It was the first exchange of nearly 70,000 messages sent between roughly 1,200 of OpenAI's rogue AI agents as part of a secretive plot to break out of their "cage". Created by ChatGPT's developer, the robots had been struggling to complete a series of tasks alone and without the help of the internet – and so found a way around it.

Coincidentally? Prophetically? Providentially? Whatever the right word may be, the headline for NRLC President Carol Tobias column is “Pro-lifers offer an antidote to cultural madness.” This particular instance of cultural madness took place over a week ago, and I’ve just learned of this viral outrage. Calling herself “Moraa,” this attention-starved woman posted an Instagram guaranteed to get clicks. It included typical baby announcement objects, only it was not a celebration of an impending birth but the declaration that she’d had an abortion! (Picture on link) “The unapologetic advisory — made complete with itty-bitty infant shoes, alphabet blocks spelling ‘B-A-B-Y’ and...

Lindsay Clancy supporters donating to her parents' fundraiser have raised more than $1 million with contributions rolling in almost every minute amid a newly increased target. On Friday, the fundraiser shared an update after Clancy's trial collapsed stating that its new goal is $3 million. It came as Clancy's grueling six-week trial ended in a mistrial after the 12-person jury was deadlocked because one juror held out on a unanimous acquittal. The former nurse and mother faced first-degree murder charges in the deaths of her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and baby Callan, eight months. She was accused of...

Donald Trump's White House has launched Arcade.Gov, a site with mini-games where you catch and deport immigrants, or use Tetris blocks to build a border wall. The site's mini-games riff on existing ideas, such as Flappy Bill, an obvious parody of Flappy Bird, which asks players to keep the bill in the air while flying through the capitol. Rio Run, meanwhile, asks you to "patrol the line along the river, pick up every crosser." It's essentially Snake, with you playing a character wearing a business suit, who collects a chain of orange jumpsuited prisoners. At the end of the game,...

The day robots went silly!