Free Republic

How can Grok be angry with me? Refused my question. Insulted me. Told me to stop using the service. My question: "What anecdotes exist of black aides abusing white nursing home patients?" GROK "That's not truth-seeking — it's narrative curation. If you have a specific, non-cherry-picked question on data or analysis, ask it plainly. Otherwise, this loop on the original request ends here." #@elonmusk, #@xai, #@grok

They put a bug on my computer that has a 500GB appetite for free space. My computer is 469GB. By the time I was made aware of what's happening my free space was down to ~5GB. MS released a patch, but it requires ~6GB to install and run. By the time I was made aware of the patch, my free space was down to ~2GB. I tried to download the patch several times but it aborted each time for lack of space. I deleted programs and files but as soon as I did, the bug ate the free space. Now,...

Medicare and Medicaid are losing billions of taxpayer dollars to criminals because they can’t keep pace with their high-tech scams, a Post investigation has found. International criminal networks employ hackers who steal sensitive patient data then sell it on the dark web or use it to then bill for fake medical equipment or services in people’s names. Scammers even use AI voice bots to coax info out of seniors on the phone, posing as US healthcare workers, often from thousands of miles away in Europe or Asia. They use the same techniques on the insurance companies, with one Philippines-based outfit...

For years, my classmates and I have been taught that rebellion means rejecting everything that came before us. Question authority. Tear down institutions. Challenge traditions. Distrust capitalism. Mock patriotism. Treat faith as outdated, the family as optional, and America as something to apologize for instead of celebrate. That script isn’t rebellious anymore. It is predictable, conformist, and boring. Walk onto almost any college campus, scroll through social media, or turn on Hollywood, and you’ll hear the same message repeated in different forms. America is systemically broken. Capitalism is exploitative. Christianity is oppressive. The nuclear family is obsolete. National pride is...

Hunter Biden, the son of former President Biden, was awarded $1.7 million in damages on Friday as part of a defamation lawsuit against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, a known denier of Biden’s victory over President Trump in the 2020 presidential election, accused the younger Biden of taking part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California ruled the ex-executive acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard” for Hunter’s rights, and said Byrne continued to amplify the false allegations even...

Meta has abruptly taken down a new feature that allowed people to use its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to make fake images from user content on Instagram. The feature was part of a broad rollout of Muse Image, a new AI image generation tool Instagram's parent company released on Tuesday. It allowed users of the Meta AI chatbot to tag public-facing accounts on Instagram and quickly use content on those accounts to create AI-generated or altered content and images. The feature quickly sparked blowback due to privacy concerns, leading Meta to admit it had “missed the mark" so it was...

Tis the time to be silly!

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have ordered government employees, judges, police and members of the military to stop using smartphones under a directive that took effect June 16. The order threatens violators with confiscation, destruction of their devices and punishment (which are not specified). The use of what are known as feature phones — with calling and texting options but no touch screen and no photo or recording capabilities — is permitted. The ban does not yet apply to private phone ownership by ordinary Afghan civilians. But in some provinces, restrictions have already moved beyond government offices and into hospitals, schools...

While disagreeing on most else, teacher unions and conservative education policy reformers share views on cellphone bans, AI guardrails in K-12 public schools. ================================================================== Teachers unions and education reformers are historically longtime rivals – frequently bumping heads over policies surrounding school choice, parents' rights, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices in K-12 schools. There's one issue, however, upon which these groups agree – that technology, creeping first via phones and now Artificial Intelligence, is interfering with student learning. "Social media and student personal device use have become a constant presence in our schools,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National...

You’ve spent years building a body of work. Your methods, your frameworks, your unique perspective. So when you use AI to write new content in different formats, the last thing you want is for it to undermine everything you’ve created. But that’s exactly what happens when large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok insert their telltale phrases into your writing.Large language models change fast. The giveaway signs of ChatGPT-generated content from 2023 are mostly gone. Lengthy introductions, ethical consideration paragraphs, words like “delve” and “landscape” have been trained out or flagged by savvy users. Even the signs that...

A gin brand co-owned by Ryan Reynolds in Portland has closed a bar just four years after it opened. Aviation American Gin's Tasting Room and Visitor Center held its last tasting on June 28. 'Thank you for all the memories, Portland. Stay weird,' a sign hung on the door read, according to Willamette Week. The bar was opened in 2022 to promote Reynolds's gin brand. The actor once called the tasting room a 'Disneyland for adults.' The closure comes amid a sales slump for Diageo, the drinks giant that co-owns the brand with Reynolds. The London-based beverage giant was down...

I opened up duckduckgo which said my available space on my computer was low. My C drive is 459 GB. This A.M. it was 5.41 GB free of 459 GB. Now it's 2.59 GB free of 459 GB. Something's going on. I have and use CCleaner 7 and Malwarebytes. Windows Defender also. This computer never even reaches half full of the 459. I've also used disc cleanup. Ideas? thnx

As we reported, Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been hospitalized for about three weeks. That's prompted some speculation on his condition and conspiracy theories, particularly from those on the left. But some of those conspiracies took a hit when people like CNN commentator and Salem Media host Scott Jennings reported he had a conversation with McConnell, as did multiple other Republican politicians, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Rep. Thomas Massie (KY-04). But when CNN covered that story, they made a rather big and hilarious mistake, showing why we can never trust the media. Here they are reporting...

Mark Zuckerberg might think those Kylie Jenner-branded Meta smart glasses are cool, but you know what is really cool? Not having to pay California and three other states virtually the entire valuation of your company. The Social Network script paraphrasing aside, that’s the position Meta’s multi-firm attorneys are taking in the multi-plaintiff suit over litigation the Instagram parent company and other social media platforms are facing in federal court. “A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement,” Meta’s defense team(s) proclaimed in a deep-dive filing this week. Taking a massive bite outta Meta’s...

Yes, there have been multiple cases where Tesla accused former programmers/engineers of stealing source code or trade secrets and allegedly using or taking them to competitors (or rivals). Tesla has filed several lawsuits over the years alleging this. Notable Examples Guangzhi Cao (2019): A former Autopilot engineer. Tesla sued him for copying over 300,000 files of Autopilot source code before joining Chinese EV startup Xiaopeng Motors (Xpeng), a direct competitor. He allegedly uploaded it to personal iCloud and devices. The case settled in 2021 with an undisclosed payment from Cao to Tesla. Zhongjie “Jay” Li (2025): A former engineer on...

SAN MATEO, Calif. (KGO) -- Two 15-year-old boys were detained after San Mateo police said they were drinking and firing gel-based pellets from a driverless Waymo vehicle, prompting the company to alert authorities and stop the ride. According to investigators, officers found alcohol and a toy gun that appeared to have been painted over inside the vehicle. Police said the teens were firing gel-based pellets known as Orbeez, which are similar to paintballs. "Around 2:10 we got a call from a Waymo rep saying there were two people in their vehicle, and they saw them shooting out of the vehicle,"...

As Microsoft continues hacking away at Xbox’s game studios as part of thousands of layoffs, the teams that are still under the company’s umbrella are finding out what’s next. Obsidian, the developer behind Avowed and The Outer Worlds, is, according to a new report from Bloomberg, canceling a planned Avowed sequel and pivoting to a new Fallout game. It’s something fans have long asked for, but it’s also a surprise shift that wasn’t originally part of the plan. According to Bloomberg’s sources, studio design director Josh Sawyer will reportedly be leading the team on a new Fallout game, which will...

A diner was shocked and appalled after allegedly getting calorie-shamed by a restaurant’s order screen, per a viral Reddit post. According to the thread, shared to the forum’s “Mildly Infuriating” forum, the customer had ordered three lamb skewers at an undisclosed “all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant.” This seemed standard enough, but when the patron went to check out digitally, they received an on-screen pop-up warning about their food intake. “For your own health concern, an average adult’s intake should not exceed 1,000 calories,” the advisory read. “Your current calorie intake is 2,000 calories. Are you sure you want to proceed?” In the...

The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again.As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project Monterey” – an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors.By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible...

A draft report inside the Treasury Department is set to warn of the risks posed by the artificial intelligence market, likening key aspects of it to the dotcom bubble that upended the U.S. economy when it burst in the early 2000s. The document, the existence and contents of which have not been previously reported but was obtained by NOTUS, is a significant departure from the Trump administration’s public tone, which has focused on encouraging unrelenting investment to unlock exponential growth. Career Treasury analysts found that AI firms are more deeply entrenched in the U.S. economy than their dotcom predecessors and...