Free Republic

The stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier than anything in the "Twitter files" but it's much less politically/tribally salient so it got no attention. Going to do a thread on some of the craziest things, in no particular order. Twitter didn't monitor employee computers at all, it was not uncommon for employees to install spyware on work devices. Twitter does not have separate development, test, staging, and production environments. At least 5,000 employees had privileged access to production systems...

A quartet of Atlanta nurses have been fired for recording a viral TikTok video of them grousing about the irritating habits of the patients they’re tasked with helping and their families. “We already told you to push the call light,” one nurse says in the clip. “But every five minutes you have a family member coming to the front desk asking for something else.” A colleague then enters the frame and does a sarcastic impression of a demanding relative.

KEY POINTS * Journalists are exposing Twitter's politically biased and capricious content-moderation protocols—but self-harm content continues unabated. * Twitter stifled criticism of the platform for not enforcing its prohibition on self-harm—while ignoring self-harm posts. * Nearly 25% of girls 12 to 16 are intentionally injuring themselves, mostly with knives and razor blades. They need help, not a platform. While Twitter personnel are censoring ideas and deplatforming people it doesn’t like—and journalists are exposing Twitter's politically biased and capricious content-moderation policies—the platform is paying virtually no attention to the self-harm its younger users were posting and encouraging. Twitter was busy interfering...

Ultrafast computer processing speeds are possible with optical chirality logic gates that operate about a million times faster than existing technologies. Processing devices based on polarized light run one million times faster than current technology. Logic gates are the basic building blocks of computer processors. Conventional logic gates are electronic, working by shuffling around electrons. However, researchers have been developing light-based optical logic gates to meet the data processing and transfer demands of next-generation computing. Aalto University scientists developed new optical chirality logic gates that operate about a million times faster than existing technologies, offering ultrafast processing speeds. Optical Chirality...

THE TWITTER FILES PART FIVE. THE REMOVAL OF TRUMP FROM TWITTER.

Whatever happened to “All the news that’s fit to print,” and “Democracy dies in darkness,” the respective mottos of the two most influential newspapers in the country, The New York Times and The Washington Post? Every morning, these august organs set the narrative for newsrooms across the country, and yet, time and again, we see them ignore stories that don’t suit their own agenda as propaganda purveyors for the Democratic Party and the security state. This has been obvious in their non-coverage of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, four batches over 10 days so far, which have revealed a chilling censorship...

@ShellenbergerMD Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh)” It's a kind of test case for the rationale for banning Trump. “I’m trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into... removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.”

. TWITTER FILES, PART 4 The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7 As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban

Caroline Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian and law firm WilmerHale to represent her in the FTX investigation, per Bloomberg. Avakian was a top regulator at the SEC, where she increased oversight of cryptocurrency. She also led major cases against companies including Tesla, Theranos, Facebook, and Wells Fargo, among others.

Amazon built a computer vision algorithm from scratch to identify products without barcodes to help robots ship products to you faster. Robots may be the future, but robotic arms are apparently no good at using an old and steadfast form of technology: the barcode. Barcodes can be hard to find and might be affixed to oddly shaped products, Amazon said in a press release Friday, something robots can't troubleshoot very well. As a result, the company says it has a plan to kill the barcode. Using pictures of items in Amazon warehouses and training a computer model, the e-commerce giant...

Twitter executives bent over backward to try to suppress tweets from high-profile conservatives leading up to the 2020 election – but found ways to justify keeping up posts from users that espoused liberal political views, the latest “Twitter Files” reveal. In one shocking instance, when workers at the social media giant didn’t have a “firm policy basis” for censoring ...James Woods, they vowed to “hit him hard on future [violations]...” Taibbi also found that Roth moved to strip a warning label off former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder who tweeted in October of 2020 that “It’s too late to...

Researchers talk about the ‘capability overhang,’ or hidden skills and dangers, of artificial intelligence. Capability overhang is a technical term, but it also perfectly describes what’s happening right now as AI enters the public domain. For years, researchers have been on a tear, pumping out new models faster than they can be commercialized. But in 2022, a glut of new apps and programs have suddenly made these skills available to a general audience... OpenAI has previously sold access to GPT-3 as an API, but the company’s ability to improve the model’s ability to talk in natural dialogue and then publish...

My TOR browser updated to 12.0. After that, it wouldn't connect to the internet. I push "Connect" and it says "Connecting..." but minutes pass and nothing.I tried changing my VPN's point of origin. I tried rebooting. But it doesn't help.I'm running Windows 7 64 bit Pro.

@TomFitton Breaking: @ElonMusk @Twitter Files show Twitter activist employees, without basis, suppressed and censored the President of the United States, @realDonaldTrump in the days before the 2020 election. This is damning evidence of election interference. @elonmusk Unequivocally true. The evidence is clear and voluminous.

2. The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th... We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.

Elton John will no longer use Twitter, citing the platform's "recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked." The social media company has come under fire since being purchased for $44 billion by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had repeatedly questioned Twitter's commitment to free speech. He's since fired top executives, as well as a large portion of the company's overall staff, while implementing a number of controversial new features. He has also faced backlash after reinstating the Twitter accounts of both former president Donald Trump and Kanye West. (West was banned again for sharing anti-semitic material.)...

While browsing around I cam across this AI search engine by Elon Musk. Is there anything he is not into? There is a trail version at the website and is free for right now. It will ask for your name, email, and phone number. It is web based so no download. Supposedly this will put Google out of business within two years. I tried "FreeRepublic"and it came up with this: FreeRepublic is a forum website that is popular among conservatives and libertarian-leaning individuals. It was founded in 1996 by Jim Robinson, and it is known for its discussions of news...

It’s the little engine that could … bring down Google and perhaps the human race. A tech company has developed a state-of-the-art AI chatbot so sophisticated that it could render search engines — not to mention countless jobs — obsolete. Unveiled last week by the OpenAI company, ChatGPT has already amassed more than 1 million users worldwide with its advanced functions, which range from instantaneously composing complex essays and computer code to drafting marketing pitches and interior decorating schemes. It can even whip up poems and jokes — an ability previously thought to be relegated to humans. In fact, ChatGPT’s...

Two former Twitter employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing it of gender discrimination. The lawsuit - filed in San Francisco Federal Court - alleges that Musk's new policies had a "disproportionate impact" on women. According to data analyzed in the lawsuit, Twitter laid off 57% of the its female employees and only 47% of its male employees. Within that, 63% of women in engineering roles were laid off compared to only 48% of men in similar roles, according to the lawsuit's data analysis. This is one among several lawsuits former employees have filed against Twitter since...

1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.