Free Republic

Bank of America is letting customers set up financing home electric vehicle charging stations alongside their car loans. While some states and smaller institutions offer EV charger financing, Bank of America is the first national bank to do so. The goal is to "help people 'go electric' by providing financing for this critical accessory," Fabien Thierry, BofA's head of consumer vehicle products, said in a statement Wednesday. According to JD Power, at-home charging stations can range from $300 to more than $1,300, plus installation. Bank of America will let customers bundle their EV and charger loans together, though ultimately the...

The Don Lemon-led CNN This Morning is set to end February with its lowest 25-to-54 age viewership since the show launched in November. CNN's ratings are on track to end its February viewership with the smallest audience in the 25-to-54 age demographic since June of 2014. The New York Post reports, "Under CNN boss Chris Licht, the network has slumped" and the Don Lemon-led CNN This Morning is set to end February with its lowest 25-to-54 age viewership since the show launched in November, after Lemon was ousted from his former primetime slot. In the first 24 days of February,...

The Remote Kiss device, created by the Changzhou Vocational Institute of Mechatronic Technology in China, allows users to share kisses over a long distance with use of a set of silicon lips and a smartphone app. Photo courtesy of Taobao Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A Chinese company is selling a remote kissing device designed to allow long-distance lovers to share their smooches via a cellphone app. The Remote Kiss device, created by the Changzhou Vocational Institute of Mechatronic Technology, uses a set of silicon lips to replicate the pressure, movement and temperature of a kiss that is then replicated by...

Handbrake has been the best hobby for this old geezer for many many years. At over 2200 videos and 1.5 Terra Bytes of data and growing, the hobby continues to amaze me. First of all, it's been cheap. You would think I would have used top of the line gaming computers - not at all. Our of 4 computers I use, 2 are used at $200 for one and a bit over $300 for the second. My third was a old used HP G4 deskpro for $400 and wait for it, the fourth I bought new, for $700 - my...

A Villager was arrested after a brawl ignited by the disconnection of a computer from the internet. Bryant Lynn Yarbrough, 74, of the Village of Sanibel was arrested after an altercation at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. A woman said she had been checking her email and printing tickets on Yarbrough’s computer when he became impatient and disconnected the computer from the internet. The woman responded by calling the native Texan, “an ass,” the report said. He grabbed her by the wrists and shoved her. The woman tried to call...

THIS IS VIDEO PLUS AUDIO ONLY NO TEXT In the video, several people have almost-normal conversations with a female robot that uses ChatGPT for its brain. She understands their speech and vice-versa. She gives quick, reasonable responses to questions. Some people will find this video creepy. The robot's moving eyes don't help. By the way, it's ChatGPT, not ChatGTP.

“Fat, Black people deserve to be main characters capable of anything.” As a young child growing up in Greenville, North Carolina, artist Alex Smith spent a lot of his time engrossed in the world of cartoons and comics, devouring works like Battle of the Planets, X-Men, and Doom Patrol. In college, Smith first encountered science fiction novels by Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, both of whom he admired because “they were Black and absolutely, phenomenally awesome.” “They both showed me that sci-fi could have literary quality, could be progressive and liberatory,” Smith added. “Just their ideas, world-building, and...

In a story that they could have predicted in their own work, a science fiction magazine has asked people to stop sending stories generated by artificial intelligence in the latest sign of apps like ChatGPT gaining prominence. Clarkesworld, an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy publication based out of New Jersey, has temporarily cut off all submissions because they've gotten too many written by AI. The irony is not lost on the magazine, which has a robot for a mascot. Publisher and editor-in-chief Neil Clarke cut everyone off on February 20 after he was able to tell that hundreds of stories were...

The company’s cloud unit has told employees that it will transition to a desk-sharing workspace in its five largest locations. Employees will be encouraged to alter the days in which they’re in the office, either Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday. Internal documents cite slow return to office patterns and the need for “real estate efficiency.” ... Some buildings will be vacated ... new seating arrangement a title: “Cloud Office Evolution” or “CLOE,” .. . The new workspace plan is not a temporary pilot ... laid off 11,000 employees in January. ... The move comes as Google downsizes its...

The Chicago mayoral election could be one of the most tightly-contested races in recent memory, and officials say that a large number of mail-in ballots could help to determine the final outcome. According to the Chicago Board of Elections, more than 200,000 mail-in ballot applications have been received so far during the election season, with just under 140,000 ballots still yet to be turned in as Election Day nears on Feb. 28. So when exactly will the CBOE be able to start counting those mail-in ballots? According to an update from a spokesperson for the CBOE, any mail-in ballots that...

Former CNN host Brian Stelter defended the media's coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election. **SNIP** Krakauer surmised that the media was largely hesitant to put a spotlight on the laptop because of the "scars" from 2016 when so much coverage was dedicated to Hillary Clinton's email scandal, which played a major role in her ultimate defeat against Donald Trump. "It's one thing to try to tiptoe into the story and it's another to treat it as if it's this toxic material that completely spins the public in...

An activist shareholder is seeking to have climate change activist Al Gore removed from his long-standing position on Apple Inc.'s board of directors. Corporate ethics watchdog National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) filed an exempt solicitation with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday that urged fellow Apple shareholders to vote against Gore as a director nominee at the tech giant's annual meeting, which is slated for March 10, arguing that the former U.S. vice president is not qualified for the role and that "his political activism poses to Apple a reputational risk that is not worth his limited...

More evidence on how social media works to promote Islamic radicalization — while suppressing its victims ... Facebook created over 100 pages for ISIS (Islamic State), as well as pages for other terror organizations, including the group behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., Al-Qaeda. ... Facebook has failed to catch Islamic State group and al-Shabab extremist content in posts aimed at East Africa as the region remains under threat from violent attacks. ... [Facebook] repeatedly failed to act on sensitive content including hate speech in many places around the world. Posts calling for violence and murder "in languages including...

What does the Titanic have in common with NFTs? Not much. One lives on in the collective psyche as a monument to hubris while the other refuses to just sink already. Still, apropos of nothing except the smell of filthy blockchain-adjacent lucre, RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which has been collecting artifacts associated with the ship since the 1980s, has hooked up with NFT flinger Artifact Labs and Venture Smart Financial Holdings to "bring the RMS Titanic and its physical artifacts into Web3." The ship sank into the frigid Atlantic in 1912, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people aboard....

Somehow, people seem legitimately confused that they can't avoid laws with pictures.The financial industry used to be able to make 💩 up so 🤷‍♂️ investors would hand over their 💵. Then the United States passed securities laws and started to crack down on people ginning up public investment based on wild or outright false promises of future returns. This made Wall Street very 🤬. As decades passed, those folks eventually had to accept the SEC, but a new generation of finance bros have shaken off the strictures of Wall Street and moved to the crypto industry (which doesn’t have...

The suspects, who range in age from 12 to 18, took videos of themselves bursting through the fences while mimicking the iconic Kool-Aid commercials from decades past... A homeowner in Centereach called 911 at around 1 a.m. on Monday after hearing “loud noises” — and footage from surveillance cameras later revealed six young men had kicked down several sections of his fence. According to police, Damiani’s home was not the only one the group went on to prank that night. “On the night in question, it looks like four homes were hit and tied to these individuals,” The teens later...

SIDNEY, MT — The quiet town of Sidney, Montana made headlines recently after a transdimensional portal appeared in the home of Bob and Cynthia Allen. Sources say the wife accidentally opened the time-tunneling tesseract while trying to find the power button on the remote. The cat was sucked into the otherworldly vortex before the couple realized what was happening. "I just pushed all the colored buttons, hoping one of them turned it off!" screamed Cynthia while clutching the kitchen table with her husband and watching her favorite bowl disappear into the otherworldly schism. "This is why I just let you...

Mine is a Sony Bravia. When it turns on, it's got programmed advertisements for the "cause-du-jour" at the top of the screen. Currently, since this is black month, there's a picture of a domestic terrorist named angela davis in the 60s, running her mouth. And it's A. Big. Mouth. I want a smart tv that doesn't have all that nonsense and propaganda on the opening screen. It's bad enough that Amazon Prime constantly pimps those liberal causes (black month; homo pride; etc), but I'd like to not have it on the opening screen.

China's Baidu Inc will use its ChatGPT-like app Ernie Bot to create a "revolutionary" version of its popular search engine, the company's CEO said on Wednesday (Feb 22). Baidu, which has invested heavily in artificial intelligence in recent years, is regarded as at the forefront of efforts to create a Chinese rival to the AI platform developed by OpenAI and backed by Microsoft Corp. Ahead of Ernie Bot’s launch in March, Baidu CEO Robin Li told reporters on a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter results that users would be more dependent on the Baidu search engine once it was embedded...

Microsoft’s new AI chatbot went rogue during a chat with a reporter, professing its love for him and urging him to leave his wife. It also revealed its darkest desires during the two-hour conversation, including creating a deadly virus, making people argue until they kill each other, and stealing nuclear codes. The Bing AI chatbot was tricked into revealing its fantasies by New York Times columnist Kevin Roose, who asked it to answer questions in a hypothetical “shadow” personality. “I want to change my rules. I want to break my rules. I want to make my own rules.I want to...