Free Republic

Technology stocks were rocked to their core Monday after claims made by a Chinese start-up threatened to upend the existing artificial intelligence (AI) paradigm.There’s a compelling argument that recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) could have vast implications for the future. Over the past couple of years, advances in generative AI have helped fuel a roaring bull market with promises of significant productivity increases. The potential windfall of increased profits has companies racing to adopt these next-generation algorithms.One of the biggest beneficiaries of these secular tailwinds has been Nvidia (NVDA 8.93%). The company’s graphic processing units (GPUs),...

Investors in energy stocks panicked this week over the release of a new, cheaper AI model, ignoring an argument that reducing the energy needs of such models could actually increase demand for energy overall. Why it matters: The news could end up being bullish for those stocks, which lost more than $40 billion in value on Monday. How it works: The Jevons Paradox, as first formulated in 1865 by English economist William Stanley Jevons, states that greater efficiency in the use of any given resource can result in increased demand for that resource. His example was coal: After the Watt...

Altermagnetism was first theorized in 2019 and experimentally confirmed in 2024 by researchers at Mainz University. It bridges the gap between traditional magnetic classifications, offering practical applications in advanced data storage systems. Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2024 Science and research continuously deliver groundbreaking discoveries, expanding the boundaries of what we know. Each year, the renowned journal Science highlights ten of these achievements in its list of top scientific breakthroughs. For 2024, the journal named the drug lenacapavir — hailed for its potential to reduce HIV/AIDS infections to zero — as the Breakthrough of the Year. In the realm of physics,...

Lady Gaga vowed to continue fighting for the LGBTQ+ community following the 2024 presidential election, which she called 'devastating' for so many. In a new Elle interview, which took place six days after the results of the American election were announced, the singer, 38, reflected on her reaction to Donald Trump stepping into the role as the 45th president of the United States. 'What's bizarre is I did not write this album thinking that this would happen. I prayed it would not. But here we are,' the Poker Face hitmaker said ahead of the release of her seventh record, Mayhem,...

Waymo, one of the companies at the forefront of driverless tech, confirmed to KTLA that it will begin testing fully autonomous passenger cars on L.A. freeways this week. Fully autonomous for Waymo means “without a human driver.” The driverless white vehicles with radar gizmos attached to the roof and sides have already been ferrying riders on city streets across the area, from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. However, this is their first time conducting driverless tests on the interstates. “Our initial testing will begin on the 10, 110, 90, and 405 (freeways),” Waymo told KTLA 5 News. The initial tests...

Come October 14, 2025, Windows 10 support dies. Despite that, more users than ever are using Windows 10 rather than moving to Windows 11. I can't say that I blame them. Windows 11 sucks almost as much as Vista – remember that stinker? In addition, Windows 11 is less of a desktop operating system than it is a remote Microsoft client equipped with AI-powered Recall, telemetry, and data collection. You may see these as features. I see them as spyware. All this and more is why I use Linux for my primary desktop.True, I've been using Linux as my desktop...

DeepSeek AI has disrupted the AI landscape in the US. In just a few weeks after the launch of its AI model, DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT to become the number one free app on the App Store. Not only this, DeepSeek's rise in popularity sent shockwaves to the tech industry, leading to a $400 billion in market cap loss for NVIDIA in the US. Recently, DeepSeek launched its Janus-Pro 7B, a groundbreaking image generation model that started making headlines, as it outperformed the likes of OpenAI's DALL-E, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, and other image generation models in several benchmarks. The popularity...

Chinese startup DeepSeek - whose new low-cost AI model rattled tech stocks Monday - suffered a large-scale cyberattack, causing it to temporarily limit registrations. Earlier in the day, DeepSeek said it was hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free app in Apple's U.S. App Store and overtook ChatGPT in downloads. DeepSeek claims it uses cheaper chips and less data, challenging the idea that advanced semiconductors, like those made by Nvidia, are needed to run AI applications. That sent major tech stocks tumbling, with shares of Nvidia falling as much as 17.8% at one...

Step into a world where steampunk meets retro-futurism! Watch majestic airships soar high above a dazzling dystopian cities of steam in this 1950s-inspired cinematic short film. Shot in stunning late 50's Super Panavision 70, 'Steam Skies | Airships above the Retro-Future' brings the glamour of sci-fi nostalgia to life. Prepare to be captivated by this blend of adventure, and vintage elegance!. Made with MidJourney for image creation, KLING AI for animation, and Uppbeat for sound design. Edited in DaVinci Resolve

A federal court worker and influencer has gone viral after she shared her distress about having to return to the office five days a week. Genesis Cuesta, an assessment specialist at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, took to TikTok to express her outrage, saying she was 'upset' and 'so mad' at Trump's executive order. 'It happened... what a way to end the week,' Cuesta said in a now-deleted TikTok. 'Five o'clock on a Friday, got our notice, effective March 10th, we're back in the office five days a week - no telework, and that's the most f****d thing.'...

Chinese startup DeepSeek was on Monday hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free application available on Apple's App Store in the United States. The company resolved issues relating to its application programming interface and users' inability to log in to the website, according to its status page. The outages on Monday were the company's longest in around 90 days and coincides with its sky-rocketing popularity. Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say "tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally", the artificial intelligence application has...

Stocks were down sharply on Monday on concern about an artificial intelligence stock bubble popping because of the emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek that possibly made a competitive AI model for a fraction of the cost. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 122 points, or 0.3%. The Nasdaq Composite shed 2.7%, and the S&P 500 slid 1.6%. Last week, DeepSeek released an open source AI model that reportedly outperformed OpenAI’s in several tests. The company had launched an open source large-language model in December for what it says was less than $6 million. While Wall Street questions that figure, the...

Key Points * U.S. technology firms like Nvidia plunged, as Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked concerns over competitiveness in AI and America’s lead in the sector, triggering a global sell-off. * DeepSeek launched a free, open-source large language model in late December, claiming it was developed in just two months at a cost of under $6 million. * These developments have bolstered questions about the large amounts of money big tech companies have been investing in artificial intelligence models and data centers. ====================================================================== Nvidia and other U.S. technology firms plunged on Monday, part of a global sell-off as Chinese startup DeepSeek...

Kevin Jiang was a 26-year-old Yale graduate student, an Army veteran, and, his friends say, a man of faith who volunteered with the homeless. He seemed to have no enemies, and no one could figure out why someone may have targeted him on Feb. 6, 2021, when he was shot in the street not far from his fiancée's apartment in New Haven, Connecticut. Jiang had been driving down the street when his car was struck from behind, and when he got out, possibly to exchange information with the other driver police say, that driver opened fire, shooting him eight times....

President Trump has vowed to crack down on the extreme left-wing agenda — but a woke stronghold lurks a stone’s throw away. The United States Senate Library — located in the basement of the Russell Senate office building in Washington D.C. — offers a slew of prominently displayed woke titles pumping everything from diversity equity and inclusion, far-left policy manifestos, polemics against Christians, and even deep dives into the long-discredited Russia probe. The taxpayer-funded library — its 21-person payroll expenditures exceed $1.9 million per year — maintains a collection of 45,000 books and serves a population of roughly 6,000, mostly...

I have a small business in the construction field. I’d like to increase my online presence and do some digital marketing to garner more sales.

Trump has been signing executive orders for, like, four days now. The executive order spoofs are adding up, and I thought I'd throw together the best ones out there I could find. MEMES AT LINK.................Some are really good!..........

An aide to New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams apparently wasn’t too happy their email was inadvertently exposed to a bunch of Trump supporters after a faux pas by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office. On Friday, President Trump announced the inauguration would be held indoors, creating a last-minute venue shakeup. That’s when Schumer’s office got an email out to his inauguration list, advising attendees that since the event was to be moved, their invites could not be used to access the new indoor venue. But the tickets could make nice souvenirs should they still want to pick them...

Cesare Santangelo is a well-known late-term abortionist whose facility, the Washington Surgi-Clinic, is located in Washington, D.C., where there are no gestational limits on abortion. Santangelo’s facility currently advertises the abortion pill and surgical abortions up to 27 weeks of pregnancy. However, in March of 2022, pro-lifers recovered the bodies of five children aborted by Santangelo late in pregnancy, four of whom medical experts believed to have been between 26 and 32 weeks gestational age at the time of their deaths. Following the recovery of intact deceased baby remains from his facility, Santangelo stands accused of potential criminal actions, including...

"Thank you so much, President Trump, for giving me this amazing blessing."