Free Republic

Donald Trump appears to have figured out that the next step in AI has to be treated as what it is, i.e. a 2024 version of the Manhatten Project.As I read it, we have Bill Gates and Sam Altman out there in the world trying to round up something like 9 TRILLION dollars for the next version of OpenAI..... I do not believe that is merely to produce an AI system that is sentient; I believe that OpenAI 4 whichis out there now is sufficiiiently sentient for any normal or reasonable purpose. I believe they are looking at recreating a...

IT admins now have a quicker way to get machines up and running again after CrowdStrike’s faulty update. Microsoft has released a recovery tool that’s designed to help IT admins repair Windows machines that were impacted by CrowdStrike’s faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday. The tool creates a bootable USB drive that IT admins can use to help quickly recover impacted machines. While CrowdStrike has issued an update to fix its software that led to millions of Blue Screen of Death errors, not all machines are able to automatically receive that fix. Some IT admins have...

New research has uncovered that sleep can be detected by brief, millisecond-long brain activity, highlighting that individual brain regions can independently switch between sleep and wake states, which could impact the understanding of neurological diseases. =================================================================== The study broadly reveals how fast brain waves, previously overlooked, establish fundamental patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Scientists have developed a new method to analyze sleep and wake states by detecting ultra-fast neuronal activity patterns, just milliseconds long, challenging traditional understandings based on slower brain waves. This research also uncovered that individual brain regions can briefly transition between sleep and wake independently, revealing complex,...

Freepers, I asked the gentleman who's selling (or brokering) the domain name DJT.com what they want for it he said $100k or best offer. A lot of money but really pertinent with November in mind. The question is should we have a whip round and crowd purchase this name? Is that even possible/legal, etc? I don't know but it's a nice name with the Election on the horizon. If not us getting our hands on it the Trump campaign perhaps should! 😂

@wideawake_media Imagine getting this upset because a vegetable dropped out of the U.S. presidential race. 🤡 https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1815319725217382634

... In the next one to two years, Needham analysts estimate that large publicly traded bitcoin miners are expected to more than double power capacity, including both their mining and HPC business expansion plans. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers could take up to 9% of the country’s total electricity consumption by 2030, up from around 4% in 2023. Tapping into nuclear energy is seen by many as the answer to meeting that demand. ...

Uber’s meteoric rise since its founding in 2009 — built on the simple question “What if you could request a ride simply by tapping your phone?” — made it a poster child for the industrial “disruption” that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs sought to unleash on the world.But, despite its impact, Uber lost money for years.Launching in new cities wasn’t cheap: drivers had to be enticed, marketing campaigns had to be executed, new servers had to be spun up, and expensive lawyers had to interpret local rules and regs — whatever their advice, Uber’s strategy seemed to be “launch first, answer questions...

Geez, is there some requirement an OP must repost / reply in under an hour? Some of us actually have lives!! And I needed to look at the computer again to get info. for replies, and it was, ya' know, not right at my fingertips. Anyway, here goes AGAIN: I've inherited a huge gaming computer from my brother. It seems to turn on ok, except that there is no video from either the Motherboard or the dedicated graphics card. Once the computer is on, the CPU gets warm, the RAM gets warm, the dedicated graphics card gets warm, controls for...

Democrats are discussing a possible 'loophole' that can be used to boot Biden out of the presidential race of he refuses to drop out. Delegates at the Democratic National Convention are toying with the options they face if, by the time of the August convention, Biden has not yet stepped aside or dropped out of the race entirely. Politicians are considering a 'good-conscience loophole' that would enable them to vote for a new candidate. DNC delegate and political scientist Elaine Kamarck spoke with fellow delegates on Friday morning on a zoom call. She briefed them on the 'loophole' - which...

A tourist in Florence, Italy has sparked outrage and criticism recently after she was filmed simulating an insulting sexual act with a Roman statue. The statue was that of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and excess, the equivalent to the Greek god Dionysus. This incident, totally insulting to the Italians and to everyone who admires the Roman world, took place near the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge of the beautiful Italian metropolis. Florence statue incident condemned as insulting act of tourist Images of the woman who allegedly committed the insulting act on the statue in Florence have been circulating on...

Vanity: Massive IT Outage Hits Major U.S. Hospital Chain: Microsoft Crowdstrike Glitch Forces Cancellation of All Elective Surgeries and Medical Procedures....

Some food for thought about Pres Trump's speech, customer service, and planning for contingencies. 1. Last night during his speech Pres Trump pointed out that so far $6.1M had been raised for the three affected families. He also pulled out a physical check (not a personal check) for $1M. He said softly "thanks Dan." I *do* wonder if the Dan of that donation is Dan Bongino. Dan's there at the RNC; he's a personal friend-acquaintance of Mr. Trump with access; and this is the kind of thing Dan can now do due to his success. 2. For years I have...

An assisted suicide device dubbed the “Tesla of euthanasia” is facing backlash after it was set to be used for the first time next week in Switzerland. The pod, named Sacro, created by 76-year-old Dr. Philip Nitschke was scheduled for use sometime next week in Switzerland, according to Metro. However, prosecutors are now reportedly fighting to ban its use, the outlet reported. While voluntary assisted suicide is legal in the country, some are questioning if it’s idealizing death, with some pro-life groups arguing the pods “glamorise suicide,” the Daily Mail reported. The pod is supposed to fill with nitrogen and...

J. Michael Cline -- founder of movie ticketing app Fandango -- has died after leaping from a building in New York City ... TMZ has confirmed. Law enforcement sources tell us ... the entrepreneur jumped from the 20th floor of The Kimberly Hotel in Manhattan, landing in a third-floor courtyard early Tuesday morning. We're told he left a suicide note in the room that reads, "So sorry. I can’t explain the pain of f****** up this much. I love you all." Our sources say he then went out onto the balcony and jumped. Cline started up Fandango way back in...

I've long used Norton Anti-Virus (I think they used to be called Symantec). But I think it's a memory hog. Sometimes it seems to use all available CPU. When I do a video screen capture on a movie that I'm playing, the movie records all jittery, full of pauses. I Disable Norton's Auto-Protect, but that doesn't help. I wonder if Norton is obeying me?Norton foisted a VPN onto my computer. I tried it several times, but it never works, never makes a connection. Only tells me to try later.When I renewed last year, I checked a box to not renew...

A hacking group known as NullBulge claimed to have released a vast trove of data for download from internal Disney Slack channels, including unreleased projects, login details and raw images and code. The apparent hacktivist group - which purports to defend artists from corporations that use their work to train artificial intelligence systems - said Friday it dumped 1.1 tebibytes of files and chat messages belonging to the entertainment and technology giant online. The hack affected Disney's workplace collaboration platform, Slack, which reportedly contained nearly 10,000 channels, in addition to countless messages and attachments. "Anything we could get our hands...

The e-commerce leader in Europe is Amazon - but Chinese ventures into international e-commerce, for example AliExpress or more recently Temu, have made inroads. The following infographic, via Statista's Anna Fleck, looks specifically at the example of the Chinese company Pinduoduo, drawing from ecommmerceDB figures. You will find more infographics at StatistaAccording to this data, Pinduoduo will only be 13 percent behind Amazon in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2024. To put this in perspective: in 2019, Amazon's gross merchandise volume was more than twice as large as that of Pinduoduo.Pinduoduo also owns the online marketplace Temu.The Temu app...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – The Sioux Falls School District quickly fired an employee Monday who wrote a controversial Facebook post about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. In a statement to KELOLAND News, the SFSD said officials became aware of a social media post by a “district staff member” and “the District’s Code of Conduct Policy (GBEB) clearly outlines the high standards to which we hold all staff members.” “The staff member’s statement does not align with the School District’s values and was not condoned in any way. The individual is no longer employed by the Sioux...

Big Tech consumes more than many countries.. Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed. Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Google’s 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s at $211.9 billion. The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact...

The latest figures suggest that around 1,500 medical procedures have been canceled across some of London's biggest hospitals in the four weeks since Qilin's ransomware attack hit pathology services provider Synnovis. But perhaps no single person was affected as severely as Johanna Groothuizen. Hanna – the name she goes by – is now missing her right breast after her skin-sparing mastectomy and immediate breast reconstruction surgery was swapped out for a simple mastectomy at the last minute. I never thought it was going to be due to a cyberattack by Russian hackers. That was not something that I would have...