Free Republic

I have hearing loss. I get by with earbuds and subtitles, but I could use help. I imagine many people could benefit from this. I believe it’s possible to boost volume, because I have VLC Media Player, which boosts volume enormously. However, it only seems to work on DVDs. So, I still need help in boosting volume on internet videos and streams. An internet search yielded the BOOM 3D add-on, but reviews say its Volume Booster only works in Macs. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15-3501, running Windows 11. I’ve searched Windows Settings and Registry Editor for help, without...

A Minecraft user has reportedly recreated Toto's hit song "Africa" on the gaming platform. Minecraft is a 3D video game in which players can build various structures across different settings. Users can also work with "note blocks" that emit a sound when manipulated. A Minecraft creator called "Stacinator" has used those elements to create Toto's "Africa" in 3D format, a process that took them three months. "Honestly, I started at the same place, and little parts of concepts just eventually started clicking after tons of practice and failing," Stacinator explained on Reddit. You can watch a video of the creation...

Employment scams using fake job opportunities to swindle applicants are on the rise and have found a new, prime target in laid-off tech workers. These schemes—which often involve fictitious job listings, interviews with fake recruiters and sham onboarding processes to steal job seekers’ money or identities—proliferated during the pandemic alongside virtual hiring and remote work, according to Federal Trade Commission. Scammers now appear to be zeroing in on workers who have recently lost jobs, particularly in the tech industry, workforce experts and recent job-scam victims say. The number of reported job scams nearly tripled to 104,000 between 2019 and 2021...

A program trained with the help of artificial intelligence is set to help a defendant contest his case in a U.S. court next month, New Scientist reported. Instead of addressing the court, the program, which will run on a smartphone, will supply appropriate responses through an earpiece to the defendant, who can then use them in the courtroom. In the past few years, AI has burst onto the scene like never before, writing poetry, computer code, and even college essays at the drop of a hat. With every new iteration of the programs being released, the capabilities of the bots...

During a Pima County Board of Supervisor’s zoom meeting Tuesday, a half-naked man wearing female underwear was seen in the background of one of the supervisor’s video broadcasts. Matt Heinz, the 45-year-old openly-gay Democrat supervisor of Arizona’s Pima County District 2, quickly rushed to turn his video feed off when he realized his male acquaintance was in the background. The four other Pima County supervisors appeared in person for the meeting while Heinz appeared virtually. The interruption to Heinz’s stream occurred over two hours into the meeting. Heinz, a physician at Tuscon Medical Center, first gained notoriety in 2008 when...

After years of anticipation, today officially marks the end of Windows 7 and 8/8.1, Microsoft has confirmed.The aged operating systems will no longer receive Microsoft security updates from today, January 10, 2023, marking the end of their official lifespan.Anyone using the software will now be at risk of cyberattacks from criminals exploiting current and future security flaws and vulnerabilities, and is urged to update to newer Windows versions - particularly Windows 11 - immediately in order to stay safe.

In recent weeks, viral artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT has lit up the internet, gathering millions of users as its imitation of human conversation sparked speculation about its potential to supplant professional writers and even threaten Google’s core search business (Google's management even issued a "code red" over the potential rival, the The New York Times reported in December).OpenAI, the organization behind it, was co-founded by Elon Musk and Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman in 2015, and makes money by charging developers to license its technology.the first day of openai, seven years ago today pic.twitter.com/4kQUQtgb6t — Sam Altman (@sama) January 4,...

I stupidly said yes to downloading windows 11. It has downloaded but not yet installed. I want to uninstall/delete it preferably before it installs itself. I am computer illiterate and need some handholding. I know my fellow Freepers are all knowing and can help me

China has taken down more than 1,000 social media accounts - some with millions of followers - that criticised the government's Covid policies. Social media platform Weibo said it had suspended or banned accounts for what it described as personal attacks against Chinese Covid specialists. Weibo did not specify which posts had prompted the action. China scrapped its strict zero-Covid policy in December and has seen a rapid surge of infections and deaths. Online criticism has until recently largely focused on the strict enforcement of Covid regulations, including lockdowns that required people to stay at home in isolation for weeks....

In other words: a machine with the ability to not only learn more and correct responsively, as machines do now, but a machine with the ability to imagine how it might be better, and evolving to suit that vision. It's a slight distinction, but an important one. Even so, considering that consciousness has no set definition, it's hard to cosign any particular one. It's also impossible to ignore the fact that humans really, really like to anthropomorphize just about anything we can, from toasters to pets to vegetables and more. Such a tendency is exceedingly present in the fields of...

#1: I am trying to clone the 64 GB eMMC boot drive in a Win 10 Pro Lenovo N22 to a 256 GB SDATA M.2 drive recently installed in it, using Macrium 8 cloning software. I've used Macrium successfully on several machines in the past, from HDD to SSD, and SSD to SSD, but in this case I keep getting an error message: Clone Failed - - VerifyFileSystem Failed. This occurs after the 1st 2 small volumes successfully clone...:

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”—Montesquieu, Enlightenment philosopherFor those wondering what to expect from the government in 2023, it looks like we’re going to be in for more of the same in terms of the government’s brand of madness, mayhem, corruption and brutality.Digital prisons. Unceasingly, the government and its corporate partners are pushing for a national digital ID system. Local police agencies have already been given access to facial recognition software and databases containing 20 billion images, the precursor to a digital ID. Eventually,...

Does anyone know if the Dell p/n: 061p37 (Dell Nvidia NVS 510 2GB Video Graphics Card ) was ever made with GDDR5 RAM)? And if so, what are the performance specs? I ran across a seller hawking just such ( p/n: 061p37 with 2GB GDDR5 ) but I can't find specs on it. All I can find is the old GDDR3 version. ??? Thanks in advance!

For those who haven't been following, a compilation of one-paragraph summaries of all the Twitter Files threads by every reporter. With links and notes on key revelations ... It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones)...

Gov. Andy Beshear the Kentucky governor is trending on Twitter. He is doing a lot of media "welcoming" Biden and touting the loot from the infrastructure bill. A lot of Dems seem to be excited and see him as presidential material. He is trying to raise his profile. Here's what I know: He barely won his election in Kentucky and only because he bribed the teachers unions I believe. It was very close against the GOP incumbent Bevin. I think he's a lightweight personally but i'd like to hear what others think. He's on the ballot this year for election....

When a successful Las Vegas company known for its entertainment and adult-themed shows looks to expand, one might think of New York City, Los Angeles, London or Paris. But just like the mind-bending absurdity of some of its acts — it chose the tiny town of Nipton, California, to expand — population 15 (or 20 depending on who you ask). Spiegelworld, the company that produces Absinthe at Caesars Palace, the Atomic Saloon Show at The Venetian, and OMP at Cosmopolitan has confirmed it is the buyer of Nipton, which is located in San Bernardino County’s Ivanpah Valley roughly 12 miles...

The Twitter Files, which usually make the top of the headlines when a new edition is released, were bumped to the bottom today as the drama surrounding prospective House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.)’s fight to secure votes dominated headlines. Still, the latest edition, released by independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Tuesday afternoon, may be the most scandalous yet In previous editions, Taibbi and other journalists showcased the cozy relationship between Twitter and government actors such as the FBi and the Pentagon. In the latest batch, Taibbi shows how the relationship was first formed. In the aftermath of the Russiagate scandal,...

Friends of a teenager from Utah who was allegedly abducted by a 26-year-old man from Arizona pleaded with the kidnapper to release the boy. Twitter accounts belonging to Aaron Zeman contained all manner of sick and disturbing imagery together with messages in the lead-up to 13-year-old Evan McConney's disappearance from Layton, Utah. A number of people pleaded with Zeman over Twitter to release the child. 'Give him back you jerk. That is my friend [redacted],' tweeted one boy to Zeman who had attended elementary school with the missing teen. He also tweeted a message of support to the youngster: 'Stay...

As an alternative to finding a video card for displaying documents and fine text from my computer to a 4K TV, I have been looking into 4K Display Port to HDMI adapters. These are available fairly inexpensively even at 4K @ 60 Hz, although the Amazon Basics adapters appear to suffer from too cheap contacts. (I suspect they may be ok if plugged in and rarely disturbed.)

THE vast majority of the public does not understand that “Linux Foundation” has very little to do with Linux (a very minuscule portion of its budget is in fact devoted to Linux). Put another way, Linux Foundation just exploits the powerful Linux brand to sell its openwashing (PR) services. The Linux Foundation is hardly new to us. We’ve been covering it since its birth in 2007 (not 2000 as Wikipedia erroneously claims) and wrote about 500 articles about it. In more recent years things got a lot worse. The Foundation was actively helping Microsoft against Linux and against activists for...