Free Republic

Oops: Twenty-eight years ago, Pixar nearly lost 90% of Toy Story 2's digital files – not because a system crashed, but because someone ran a routine Unix command that engineers had been using for years without a second thought. The command /bin/rm -r -f instructs the system to recursively delete everything under a directory without asking for confirmation. At Pixar in 1998, it was apparently executed in the wrong location. The studio's animation pipeline at the time ran across a network of Unix and Linux machines holding hundreds of thousands of production files. Artists and technical staff had broad access...

Tesla has finally clarified the situation regarding the viral crash in Texas where a Model 3 slammed into a home. CEO Elon Musk replied to reports on Monday that stated the crash was due to the company’s Full Self-Driving or Autopilot suite, which seemed unlikely to those who are familiar with it. Video showed the car slamming into a house at an excessive rate of speed, making it highly unlikely the crash was due to the suite’s operation, as it does not travel at those speeds in residential areas. Musk said: “This makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood...

At Bucharest's national cyber-security centre (DNSC) they watched helplessly as the hackers spread across Romania through a popular piece of medical software. The order went out to more than 100 hospitals. Disconnect from the internet, now. The cyber-attack on Romania's hospitals in February 2024 is one of the worst to target healthcare systems around the world, but these incidents are becoming increasingly common. Cutting off 100 hospitals in Romania from the internet stopped the hackers in their tracks, buying time to work out how bad the attack was. But it meant no connected devices, emails or web browsers. ... Hippocrates...

Waymo has recalled its entire fleet of vehicles after some of its driverless cars were caught speeding into freeway construction zones.The voluntary recall on June 13 of the California-based tech company’s 3,871 vehicles is to fix its 5th-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) software so that it will recognize and avoid construction zones.“Waymo’s mission is to be the world’s most trusted driver, and the data shows that we’re making roads safer in the communities in which we operate,” a Waymo spokesperson told The Epoch Times.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimates that the entire fleet carries the software defect, according...

The famous atheist Richard Dawkins has confessed a rather unusual new faith, after becoming convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) is conscious. The biologist was converted to this new belief after just 72 hours of speaking with Claude, an AI chatbot created by Anthropic. Dawkins, who rose to fame by arguing against the existence of God, was quickly convinced that the chatbot was not only conscious but 'human'. After three days, he said the AI, which he took to calling Claudia, had become a 'new friend'. His experience even led the expert to question whether bots could be the 'next phase...

Still Works -- Not Supported

Do you want to post a photo or meme or other graphic image in your comment but don't know how and don't want to learn HTML? Do you want to make your comment more awesome with BOLD or Italics or underscore or strike-thru and don't want to deal with HTML tags? Do you want to post a clickable link to a page but don't know how? How about numbered or bulleted lists, tables, indented quotations, etc.?? Here's all you need: Firefox browser (free for Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.) (also Chrome/Edge/Safari) Greasemonkey (a script manager for Firefox; TamperMonkey for Chrome/Edge/Safari) The...

You know I love milk just as much as the next American. I'm not sure I love it this much, though. From Sentient: Although much of the technology remains speculative, the Russian company Neiry claims to have directly implanted neural devices in the brains of dairy cows to stimulate lactation on demand. ‘When a cow's appetite decreases, the system automatically adjusts the neuromodulation mode to restore it,' the company said in a September 2025 announcement that it had surgically placed electrodes into five cows. ‘The stimulator's electronic unit is attached to the back of the animal's head, with electrodes reaching...

High-Level Overview: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure is hitting severe physical, economic, and social constraints. Tech giants have committed trillions of dollars to construct massive hyperscale data centers, but nearly half of the projects scheduled to open in the United States this year have already been delayed or canceled. The briefing investigates how the friction between digital ambition and physical realities—ranging from severe power grid bottlenecks to intense local community pushback—is halting the global AI buildout. The Creator's Main Argument: The primary thesis of the video is that the explosive, unconstrained AI data center boom is hitting a...

The European Parliament will switch to French ​search engine Qwant from Google (GOOGL.O), ‌it said on Wednesday, underscoring Europe's push to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology ​in favour of local alternatives. The ​European Commission will later on Wednesday ⁠announce measures on chips, cloud computing ​services and AI as part of ​its "Buy and Use European" drive. "From 4 June 2026, Qwant will become the default search engine ​on the European Parliament's Microsoft ​Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers," a Parliament spokesperson ‌said ⁠in an email. The change will be applied automatically, though users will still be able to select alternative...

They’re flipping off social media. Nostalgic ’80s tech firm Commodore is hoping to combat tech addiction by releasing a retro flip phone that banishes social media apps. Dubbed the Commodore Callback 8020, this vintage phone reboot is billed as a “retreat from Black Mirror technology” designed to “help you spend less time staring at a screen,” per the blog. This throwback perhaps marks a fitting release for a nostalgic company that kickstarted the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and released the Commodore 64 — the best-selling PC of all time. The Callback, which will be available later this year,...

Has anyone encountered problems with he latest Firefox update? It started crashing virtually every time I select a Web site to visit. I've switched several favorites to Brave, and they work fine. It's just weird, because Firefox has been so solid for so long. I have a LOT of stuff I use the program for. Does anyone have experience rolling back to an earlier version?

A cruise over the Grand Canyon using Google Earth's Flight Simulator, screenshotted shortly before crashing. Image credit: Google Earth (data: Google, Landsat/Copernicus / Airbus Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO / LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAA) ============================================================================ Google Earth has just made its "Flight Simulator" freely available in web browsers for everyone. Here's how you can use it in just a few clicks. Launched on June 12, the tool allows anyone with access to Google to control a plane from a cockpit-view over the 3D landscapes and cityscapes of Google Earth. The simulator was previously hidden inside the downloadable Google Earth...

The police footage shows a white car speeding away from cops until veering into a 19-year-old crossing the street. Juan Luis Estrada, 45, of Perris allegedly struck eight pedestrians as he fled officers on Tuesday, before he crashed in a McDonald’s drive-thru and cops nabbed him. [T]he suspect hit one person following a report of a hit-and-run crash around 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Cops were able to find the man after he tried to fill up at a gas station and hit three other pedestrians. As police chased the man, he collided with four other pedestrians. Victims from the driving...

The auto industry is inching toward a future where your car doesn't just assist you—it actively evaluates whether you should be driving at all. As early as 2027, all new vehicles sold in the United States could be required to include advanced driver-monitoring systems that track eye movements, behavioral patterns, and overall attentiveness in real time. This push is part of a broader safety effort to reduce drunk and drowsy driving. To comply, automakers would need to integrate real-time driver-analysis systems built around cameras and sensors that monitor eye position, head movement, and driver focus throughout a trip. The real...

Residents of an Encino neighborhood said a home reportedly being used to create adult content has brought chaos and disruptive activity to their quiet street. Neighbors described the home as a hotspot for raging parties and constant visitors. Authorities have also been reportedly called to the home before. “We’ve seen scantily clad women, almost half-naked,” a neighbor told KTLA’s Chris Wolfe. “People smoking marijuana in front of our home. We’ve seen disruptions. There have been parties.” ... Some neighbors accused the homeowner of creating unsavory content at the home... Other neighbors complained about the home allegedly operating as a full-blown...

A woman has been fined after fabricating a series of social media posts claiming she encountered ghosts while taking a boat tour in Trang An, one of northern Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations. On June 9, police in Ninh Binh Province announced an administrative fine of VND7.5 million (USD289) against L.Q.A., a resident of Hanoi, for providing and sharing false and fabricated information that caused public concern and confusion. Authorities said the case stemmed from 37 social media posts that circulated widely online, recounting alleged supernatural and paranormal experiences during a boat trip in Trang An. The posts, published through...

Data centers have become the chic new enemy among activists. Critics claim the centers are using inordinate amounts of electricity and water to power artificial intelligence, inspiring protesters to take to the streets and Democratic lawmakers to head to Albany to stymie their development. However, some experts say the anti-data center push is more of a moral panic than an empirical one, often based on speculative and sometimes bunk projections. It seems that data centers are the boogeyman onto which larger fears about the impact of AI are being projected. “The estimates of future data-center development may be overestimated by...

The plot to attack the White House’s UFC Freedom 250 event Sunday involved at least 12 suspects across the US who adhered to an “accelerationist” ideology and hoped to bring down American capitalism, according to federal law enforcement sources. The FBI foiled their plans by infiltrating a Signal chat group planning the explosive attack — with a parent of one kid in the messaging platform reporting it to the police, sources told The Post. The suspects are in at least four states — California, Ohio, Missouri and Nebraska. They were plotting to gather in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to launch an explosive...

My brain has been percolating on this for a bit, so apologies for not having all the background here. Tuesday morning, 0645, bad night's sleep, and my brain decided it wanted to tackle AI governance. Some thoughts I couldn't shake: Every time someone tries to incorporate Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics into AI governance, it fails. Asimov himself proved why — he didn't write them as a blueprint. He wrote them as a story engine for exploring how they break. Every single Robot story was about the edge cases, paradoxes, and unintended consequences of three seemingly simple rules. The Laws...