Free Republic

One of the co-founders of Xbox recently signaled that the end may be near for the video game console that has shaped generations of gamers. In an interview with Gamesbeat, a business-to-business media outlet for gaming, entertainment, and tech, Seamus Blackley said that Xbox is no longer a priority for Microsoft, which makes the console. Instead, the company is shifting their focus to artificial intelligence. “[Microsoft CEO] Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future,” Blackley said. “Xbox, like a lot of businesses that...

Listen to this. I think many FReepers will like it.Weaponized Victimhood | The Alchemy of Agony

"Until we have a better plan, we modified our license to exclude residents of California from using MidnightBSD for desktop use, effective January 1, 2027."

A long list of Hollywood A-list talent is joining leftist activist billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs to star in a feature film about climate change. The film appears to be a major effort by a huge number of Hollywood A-listers, including Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany, and Jason Clarke for a film billed as a “darkly comic drama” about global warming. It will be produced by Sony Pictures Classics with Tom McCarthy to direct, Deadline reported. The film, based on the Nathaniel Rich book, Loosing Earth, is supposedly a true story “set at a...

I have yet another(!) electronics' modification project going, and ran across a slight dilemma: None of my several "Security Bit" sets have a bit that fits the Tri-Point (or "Y") screw heads in the gear to be modified, even though 2 sets do have Tri-Point bits. However, I found this screwdriver set on Amazon: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/5113Evt3D0L._AC_SL1000_.jpg The question is, looking at that image, are those the correct diameters for the "Y" designation given? Basically, the 3mm for example, would be very close to the circumference of the outer circle the "fins"* of the bit would define. I ask this question because...

How a single hack infected the world’s most important operating system. Video is 53 minutes. Yes it's long, but it goes into all the background of what happened, plus a post-mortem and analysis. This is about the xz compression hack several years ago. I remember hearing about it and being thankful we have unaffiliated people who can test things like this when they see an anomaly in the code/testing they are performing.

I was hoping that this would resolve itself but it has not….. Yesterday, a post was put up on FR and I wanted to see more than just the provided excerpt, so I clicked on the source link.Ever since I did that, every tab that gets opened on my iPad (Safari browser) to an FR forum or page/post, the new tab has the number 2 in white with a blue background preceding the FR forum name or article title.The number font and coloring is identical to the news station’s (2 Idaho News) logo that was used as the source link.Here...

Is it just me or is anybody else noticing that Rumble appears to be DOWN?

..without disks? It's a unique program that I bought ~30 years ago. PC Study Bible. I bought the original version and have paid for the upgrades plus optional add ons. The owner/operator passed and PC Study Bible ceased to exist. Now I want the ability to transfer the program in its entirety from one PC to another.

Your iPhone calendar used to remind you about dentist appointments and dinner reservations. Now? It might be screaming that you’ve “won a prize” — or worse, that your device is infected and your bank account is toast. Welcome to the latest digital headache: a calendar con that’s turning Apple users’ schedules into spam central, per Newsweek. Cybercrooks have figured out a sneaky way to blast iPhones and iPads with bogus alerts — no shady app download required. Instead of slipping malware onto your device, scammers trick users into unknowingly subscribing to rogue calendars. Once you’re in, they’ve got a direct...

Crab Costumes courtesy of "A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox" by Julie Bort, February 23, 2026 Okay, AI is going to take away all serious jobs, we have to reinvent ourselves with a new life mission that's not totally ridiculous make-work, we'll get perhaps $150 per month "guaranteed" minimal income, live in pod communities like the Coppertops in The Matrix, eat bug-burger, "you'll own nothing and be happy". But if it's A.I. that is trying to run down this "you will be assimilated, resistance is futile" trope, they'd better get cracking with...

Samphire Neuroscience offers personalized, at-home neurostimulation that adapts to women’s menstrual symptoms, helping them feel more balanced through hormonal changes. On Feb. 9, the UK-based neurotechnology startup unveiled its latest feature in the health-tech space: a patented, AI-driven neurostimulation session-scheduling system. The feature is called CycleSync, and it’s used in conjunction with Samphire’s wearable devices. The idea is simple: the brain controls key hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which impact the menstrual cycle and can cause symptoms such as mood swings, cravings, pain and fatigue. The brain also runs on electricity — rhythms that shape how you think, feel and...

Most people have never heard of Mrinank Sharma. That is part of the problem.Earlier this month, Sharma resigned from Anthropic, one of the most influential artificial intelligence companies in the world.He had led its Safeguards Research Team, the group responsible for ensuring that Anthropic’s AI could not be used to help engineer a biological weapon.His final project was a study of how AI systems distort the way people perceive reality. It was serious, consequential work for humankind.His resignation letter was seen more than 14 million times on X.It opened with the words, “the world is in peril.”And it ended with...

Data centers power everything from streaming and cloud storage to the AI systems reshaping industries. When it comes to scale, one country stands far ahead.The U.S. has 3,960 data centers in this dataset - more than the next 14 countries combined.The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, based on data from Data Center Map, counts operational facilities by country, from small cloud hubs to sprawling colocation campuses. While totals vary by methodology, the concentration of infrastructure in a few major economies is unmistakable.U.S. Leads by a Wide MarginWith nearly four thousand data centers in this dataset, the U.S. is...

NEW YORK - International Business Machines shares plunged on Feb 23, after the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic said its Claude Code tool can help with modernising COBOL, a dated programming language that’s mainly run on IBM computers. Shares sank 13 per cent in their biggest one-day percentage loss since October 2000. With the decline, the stock is now down 27 per cent in February, on track for its biggest one-month percentage decline since at least 1968, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “Modernizing a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows” but “tools like Claude Code...

A Pennsylvania man is being accused by federal prosecutors of traveling to California to have sex with a 13-year-old girl in a plot that would have culminated in both their suicides if not for law enforcement intervention. Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice held a press conference and released a complaint surrounding the allegations against Matthew Edward Pysher on Monday morning. The complaint, filed Sunday in Los Angeles, charges Pysher, 18, with travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. According to the complaint, Pysher groomed and encouraged a girl, listed as “Minor Victim One,” to send him...

Candace Gesner I believe that facebook has just now made itself irrelevant. I am finding that AI is mixing and remixing posts so that a person will not notice that their and everyone’s posts have been corrupted. I can no longer believe anything I am reading.

Los Angeles City Hall looked less like the nerve center of America’s second-largest city Friday — and more like an abandoned office complex after a zombie apocalypse. Entire hallways with deserted offices. Corridors eerily silent. Parking garage empty besides the city hall guards. When the California Post visited City Hall Friday, the Office of Finance, a council liaison office, and the Los Angeles Housing Department were closed for business. Over the course of the day, about 50 Angelenos oblivious to the closure turned up to pay their bills or seek financial advice, only to find no staff to help them....

China’s humanoid robots were once a punchline. Now they are a warning shot. Just one year after drawing global skepticism for awkward stumbles and mechanical breakdowns, Chinese-made humanoid robots are performing backflips, executing kung fu routines and delivering synchronized gymnastics on the world’s biggest television stage. The dramatic turnaround has reignited debate about China’s manufacturing edge, the future of work and the accelerating U.S.–China technology race. Here is what investors need to know. A Public Debut That Turned Heads China’s annual Spring Festival Gala is widely regarded as the most-watched television program in the world. This year, humanoid robots from...

In the footage, the content creator can be seen primping for the camera, when all of a sudden her beauty filter comes off, revealing a mature face with a warm complexion. The virtual varnish is restored a few seconds later, revealing a small, pale countenance with perfectly symmetrical features. By then, the damage had allegedly been done. Social media reports claim that she lost 140,000 followers after the inadvertent peek behind the online curtain.