Free Republic

Dismayed by the amount of support the TikTok Ban is getting and a Unanimous decision by the men and women in black robes further alarms me and will just embolden the Feds and Congress to engage in more online censorship. How come some (most?) Freepers don't see this? Are you still watching the networks and believing the foreign entity stuff? You understand that the legislation is broader than that?

President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering an executive order to allow TikTok to continue operating despite a pending legal ban until new owners are found, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The possible executive order, reported earlier by The Washington Post, is under discussion as TikTok faces a deadline on Sunday to be banned in the United States unless it finds a new owner. The popular video-sharing app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Republicans have said for years that they see the app, which has been downloaded to millions of smartphones, as a national security risk....

I've been around FR for awhile, much longer than my registration. Something I remember from January 2017: Free Republic couldn't be reached at all in the day or so leading up to and on Trump's first inauguration.After the lights came back on, some on here wondered if everyone watching the site and trying to party together is what brought the place down for that day and a half.There were many however who suggested something more nefarious. Mainly, that the outgoing administration's lackeys launched a denial of service attack on Free Republic, out of spite.Should we put it past the Biden...

"Reasoning" Artificial Intelligence is just around the corner. I've been giving thought to possible career paths in this environment. AI will be producing code, shortly, to address business needs based on a prompt. One cannot be sure the code will meet those business needs. Enter the AI Code Auditor. This individual will assess the code to determine if it meets the needs of the business partners. They will refine the business prompt to ensure the code generated meets those needs. They will inspect the code to ensure proper coding standards and enterprise concerns (such as security) are satisfied. Another possible...

The saga of a disturbing hack into Disney World Resort's menu system has finally ended as the man responsible has pled guilty to his crimes. Michael Scheuer, a former employee at the Florida park, pled guilty to hacking into the company's computer systems and changing their menu items on Friday. Scheuer was fired from Disney on June 13, 2024, from his role as the park's Menu Production Manager, according to a criminal complaint. After a 'contentious' firing over misconduct, Scheuer accessed the company's menu system, Menu Creator, from a personal device. He changed fonts, added profanities, altered prices, and inserted...

The PUBG Ally is the same asinine experience of playing co-op with a bot, except this one always talks back to you in complete sentences. Krafton also uses Nvidia’s tech to craft inZOI, a Sims-type life simulator that puts chatbots in characters’ heads. Despite the AI supposedly planning and making life choices for the in-game characters, it still looked like a dull version of The Sims, lacking most of the charm of those games. I see the vision; it’s just not there yet. ... However, the real star was a talking mannequin head sitting like a gargoyle on your home...

A viral and revolting incident in the stands at an NFL playoff game on Sunday has already earned one football fan a lifetime ban from Lincoln Financial Field — and it ended up costing him his job. The fan, identified as Ryan Caldwell, was captured on video heckling a female Packers fan — and repeatedly calling her a “dumb c–t” — while her fiancé, Alexander Basara, filmed the entire altercation in the stands during Sunday’s wild-card game in Philly, an Eagles win over the Packers. ... Caldwell has been banned from all future events at Lincoln Financial Field, a source...

This is whistleblower. DOCS ON FIRE. UPDATE DAILY. DOWNLOAD IN UPPER RIGHT. UPDATED DAILY, ENJOY PROLIFERATION. https://calfire.app.box.com/s/i2io697jeqhboz5qibeqqrykizn2siws

Former Trump White House advisor turned MAGA-world podcaster, Steve Bannon, remained unconvinced on Monday that Mark Zuckerberg’s latest moves at Meta mean the CEO has actually bought into any of President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda or the MAGA movement. Zuckerberg raised eyebrows and grabbed headlines last week when he announced that Meta would do away with its fact-checking and phase in a “more comprehensive community note system” – as Elon Musk’s X has done. Zuckerberg also said Meta would move its “trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based...

Rice University physicists have mathematically unveiled the possibility of paraparticles, which defy the traditional binary classification of particles into bosons and fermions. Their research, which delves into the realms of abstract algebra and condensed matter, hints at groundbreaking applications in quantum computing and information systems, suggesting an exciting, albeit speculative, future for new material properties and particle behavior. Breaking Conventional Particle Categories Since the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have believed that all particles fall into one of two categories — bosons or fermions — defined by their distinct behaviors. However, recent research by Rice University physicist Kaden Hazzard...

This video, documenting the moments after David Humphlett was bitten by a diamondback rattlesnake, has been viewed over 38 million times across various media channels, mostly because of David's nonchalant reaction. Check it out: VIDEO AT LINK................ "Welp. I'm cooked." That phrase has been praised, mocked, and turned into a meme. It's even spawned multiple crypto coins trying to cash in on the viral wave — some of which have surprisingly contributed real dollars to help pay for David's hospital bills. Antivenin costs a lot of money, and he received over 88 vials of the stuff. But the biggest question...

An estimated 100 million Apple users are at risk of falling victim to malware. Cybersecurity software company Check Point issued an urgent warning to the millions of Mac users around the world who may be preyed on by malicious actors evading the devices’ built-in antivirus systems. According to the company, cybercriminals have developed malware, dubbed the “Banshee macOS Stealer,” which secretly steals credentials and other sensitive data while operating undetected for more than months. The malware first emerged last year in what Check Point calls “underground forums” and was called a “stealer-as-a-service” that was available to purchase for just $3,000....

It's official SteamOS will be released this year for all and also Lenovo is an official SteamOS partner with the launch of the Legion Go S, SteamOS edition in May, GeForce NOW app is also coming to the Steam Deck and we also cover the latest beta news and updates!

AI is getting scary. Some YouTuber used AI to create a Motown versions of the Beatle's Rubber Soul and Revolver, and it's much, much better than you might expect. You could listen to it over and over. They use the same words, but they really revamp the music. I would say some of it sounds more like Sam Cooke, or other soul music, than specifically Motown, but it stands on it's own. How is this possible?

Oh, Deere The largest farming-equipment manufacturer in the world, John Deere, unveiled a new crop of autonomous tractors and trucks at CES 2025 earlier this week, as the heavy-machinery giant looks to capitalize on the buzz around all things self-driving. If your immediate thought is that this sounds like a job killer... it is. John Deere has talked up its machines’ capabilities for precisely that purpose: to help alleviate some of the labor-shortage issues that farming faces, with the company’s chief technology officer, Jahmy Hindman, saying that “there is not enough available and skilled labor” to do the kind of...

There is a line of at least a hundred people braving the DC cold this morning, waiting to get into the Supreme Court for today's oral arguments in the TikTok hearing. Some are avid users, and say they have been hearing about this hearing on the platform. Student Danielle Ballesteros has been waiting here since 6:30am. "I feel like TikTok doesn't deserve to be banned." She admits she uses it "probably too much" but thinks it's an important news source for people from her generation.

TikTok, the video-sharing platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is on the verge of being shut down in the United States unless it can find a new owner. American lawmakers argue its current proprietorship poses a national security threat. It comes after outgoing president Joe Biden signed legislation into law last April that would require the company to sell TikTok by January 19, 2025. On Friday, representatives for ByteDance will plead to the US Supreme Court to try and halt the decision. They are expected to frame the ban as un-American and an attack on the First Amendment, which defends...

Companies and top executives appear eager to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump as he readies to take office The $170 million mark, which could reportedly reach $200 million, outpaces Trump’s reported 2017 inauguration committee raise of $107 million. The inaugural committee is also reportedly no longer selling tickets to donors to attend Trump’s swearing-in and accompanying private events. The record number comes just four years after many of the same companies and executives turned their backs on Trump following the 2020 election. The Times reported the remarkable shift in corporate attitude towards Trump: Mr. Trump often talks privately about...

“We’ve now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge …. in AI training,” Musk said during a livestreamed conversation with Stagwell chairman Mark Penn streamed on X late Wednesday. “That happened basically last year.” Musk, who owns AI company xAI, echoed themes former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever touched on at NeurIPS, the machine learning conference, during an address in December. Sutskever, who said the AI industry had reached what he called “peak data,” predicted a lack of training data will force a shift away from the way models are developed today. Indeed, Musk suggested that synthetic data —...

Halliday has turned up at CES 2025 in Las Vegas with a pair of eponymous smart glasses filled to the brim with technology. There’s a waveguide display in the right eyecup that will project the equivalent of a 3.5-inch screen into the wearer’s view. This display is also easy to read in strong light and the company promises the hardware is “invisible to onlookers.” The company adds the glasses weigh just 35 grams and promise eight hours of battery life on a single charge. There’s no outward-facing camera, but Halliday says its product comes with a “proactive” AI assistant, anticipating...