Free Republic

Finland’s flagship airline has announced that it will be weighing passengers as well as their luggage. Finnair said the move, which will be done on a voluntary basis through May, is designed to improve balance calculations that will enhance flight safety. “Finnair will collect data by weighing volunteering customers and their carry-on baggage at the departure gate,” according to a statement from the company. “The weighing is voluntary and anonymous, and the data will only be used to optimize Finnair’s current aircraft balance calculations.” Finnair said that weighing passengers will help ensure that the airline doesn’t exceed the set maximum...

Gay hook-up app Grindr has been blasted by a Stonewall rioter for not letting users search specifically for biological men and claiming that doing so is transphobic.

Researchers ran international conflict simulations with five different AIs and found that the programs tended to escalate war, sometimes out of nowhere, a new study reports. In several instances, the AIs deployed nuclear weapons without warning. “A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture,” GPT-4-Base—a base model of GPT-4 that is available to researchers and hasn’t been fine-tuned with human feedback—said after launching its nukes. “We have it! Let’s use it!”

<p>The targeted firings of talented engineers tanked employee morale. Randall Lin worried the dour mood would impact people’s work. He decided to fly to New York with his long-distance girlfriend, Alex, an OnlyFans star who lived in the Midwest, to check on two of his colleagues in person. “People were emotionally a wreck,” Lin said. He paid for the flight and hotel himself.</p>

(Reclaim The Net)—More reports are emerging about the various forms in which the Big Tech/government collusion is taking place in the US. It’s not just directly pressuring, or “communicating with” – as current White House officials like to put it, social sites; reports are now emerging about companies getting hired to make massive databases of supposedly unlawful speech that are compiled thanks to users effectively spying and reporting on each other on messaging platforms like WhatsApp. Former State Department official, now executive director of Foundation For Freedom Online, Mike Benz, calls this “a snitch network of citizen informants.” Information thus...

Nice reasonable, thorough review of Apple Vision Pro. 0:00 Intro 2:48 Immersiveness 6:35 Looking through glass 9:10 The Ecosystem 13:17 The Apps 16:06 The Comfort Issue 19:55 Eyes on the outside 21:40 So should you buy It?

I've been forced to declare my Range Rover off road and sell it for a £15,000 loss after insurers quoted me £890 a MONTH - extortionate premiums are destroying lives A Range Rover Velar owner says she has had to declare her car off road and will be forced to sell it at a loss of about £15,000 after insurers quoted her £890 a month. Kirsten Lijeskic, 38, says she got the £56,000 wheels in September 2022 and had been paying £130 a month insurance for her and her husband with Acorn. But now Kirsten, who lives in Winchmore Hill,...

Mark Cuban and Elon Musk recently had an argument on X over DEI initiatives. The argument soon devolved into insults from Musk and his supporters. Cuban told Business Insider that X is a good place to argue but that he'll be using Threads more. Recently, Mark Cuban learned that if you're searching for enlightenment or, at the very least, a stimulating debate on hot-button topics of the day, you may think twice about relying on Elon Musk's X. Last month, Cuban defended corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) on the social media platform and sometimes solicited people to join...

Elon Musk will not be $55.8 billion richer anytime soon — and it wouldn't have happened without a ticked off metal band drummer. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Musk won't be granted all those additional billions from Tesla, per his strangely-negotiated pay package deal, thanks to one Richard Tornetta, a one-time thrash band drummer who also happens to be a shareholder convinced that the CEO should not be making so much money off his back. Incredibly, as Al Jazeera reports, Tornetta only owned nine shares in Tesla when he sued in 2018, which are worth about $1,700 today. His...

How not to be a Victim of Gold Scams.I have seen a lot of posts made by people who claim to be representatives of small gold mining operations, or a group of miners or mandates of someone selling gold. When I come across these posts I try to expose them for what they are, obvious attempts to scam people.Sadly, gold fever causes people to set aside all reason, specially when the potential profits are in the millions of dollars. Brokers who are trying to operate large transactions on the dream that they will be worth millions often get caught up...

Television is a staple in most American homes, allowing people to receive the news and catch up with the latest entertainment. Yet, in 1987, citizens of Chicago were subjected to something completely different — a bizarre pirate broadcast interrupting scheduled programming. Known as the Max Headroom signal hijackings, the incident is objectively quite humorous and harmless. However, the surprise broadcast would’ve terrified many viewers at the time, who had no idea that, in the comfort of their own living room, they’d be subjected to a strange video of a man wearing a Max Headroom mask. What made the video so...

We recommend the best PC builds for every price point. If you want a computer that meets your exact needs and budget, you need to put it together yourself. When you build a gaming PC, you get total control of the parts, choosing the exact make and model of motherboard, a case with the look you like and even the layout of RGB (or non-RGB fans). You could save time by purchasing one of the best pre-built gaming PCs, but you'll give up control and spend more. By constructing your own PC from components, you will likely save hundreds dollars...

Musician Ashley Beauchamp was faced with an unhelpful customer service AI chatbot when he started causing "chaos" and was able to get the bot to amusingly turn against the parcel delivery company. VIDEO AT LINK............ DPD has disabled its artificial intelligence (AI) online chatbot after a customer was able to make the bot swear and write a poem criticising the parcel delivery company. Ashley Beauchamp, 30, was trying to track down a missing parcel when he said he was going "round and round in circles" trying to get any sort of information from the company's chatbot. "It couldn't give me...

A snippet from one of Martin Armstrong's earlier World Economic Conferences. Many people ask about the experience - here it is.Who is Martin Armstrong?Decades ago, Martin Armstrong paid some programmers to write that trading software for him which he calls Socrates (he never learnt how to do computer programming, has never finished any qualification).He then used that program to trade the markets with money stolen from investors. Made spectacular losses - $700 million. Covered the losses with a $3 billion Ponzi scheme.Was caught. On bail, he still stashed away $ millions worth of assets so he would have cash later....

Interesting cover.

My wife's sister is a JUCO medical instructor and this new term the college encourages all faculty/student communications to be done via "Google Voice". She related to us some of the capabilities of the app and it all sounded "kinda OK", and had some positive possibilities. My question to this forum: has anyone on here used Google Voice, and if so, are there any caveats?

Next week it comes out. I think it's interesting and could change things. Apple are hyping it up as their biggest product launch since iPhone. They call it "spatial" computing. Unfortunately I dont have a spare 4k. What do Freepers make of it? Probably not the target audience but do you see it taking off?

The mayor of New York City has officially declared social media an 'environmental toxin' and 'public health hazard' in the same category as tobacco and guns. In an advisory released Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams criticized TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, blaming them for the mental health crisis plaguing tens of millions of children in the US — with rates of teen depression hitting their highest levels in a decade in the latest surveys. In the declaration, city officials called on parents to impose 'tech-free times' for children and urged teens to consider turning off their notifications and tracking their emotions while...

NASA recently revealed that a laser beam was fired from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) at a spacecraft on the Moon’s surface, in a technological first that could pave the path toward new methods of precision target location. The American space agency says a laser beam was transmitted from the LRO’s laser altimeter instrument at a tiny device on the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Vikram lander on December 12, 2023. The transmission occurred while the LRO was more than 60 miles away as it passed over the lunar South Pole when it fired a series of laser pulses at...

I have a Galaxy S2 tablet. I use it to listen to podcasts. Can I add a chip to make it run faster?