Free Republic

Image: Courtesy of Restored CDC A team of volunteer archivists has recreated the Centers for Disease Control website, called RestoredCDC.org, as it appeared the day President Trump was inaugurated. The big picture: A federal judge last month required the HHS to restore webpages and datasets that had been altered or taken offline to comply with executive orders that Trump issued on DEI and gender identity, but several links are broken and the pages are not easy to locate through web searches. Some restored health pages come with a note that states the "Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the...

After the Cold War, terrorism became the most pressing threat to national security. And social media became a major part of the battle. Benz told me in an interview that, during the war on terror, the U.S. military developed artificial intelligence tools to combat ISIS recruiters. AI reviewed ¬terrorists’ social media posts to determine “what kind of words they use, the dialect, the key words, the slang, the prefixes, the suffixes, sentiment analysis” and then restrict their online reach. However, in 2017, Benz was shocked to learn that a similar tool was being offered for sale to the private sector....

The video discusses Sesame AI, a highly realistic AI voice model with impressive emotional intelligence and expressiveness. I have used it and found it to be scary good. You'll need a mic to test it, of course, since it's a conversational AI. If you don't have a mic, the video will give you a good idea of what it is capable of. Its capabilities include roleplaying, responding to emotions, and deep conversations about self-awareness and AI existence. While it can’t yet handle multiple languages or accents well, it excels in conversational dynamics, emotional context, and maintaining a consistent personality. The...

Just a question. Is Medicare Constitutional? I don't question whether people want it or need it or not, just whether or not 3/4 or the states voted to give the federal government the power to give people Medicare or Medicaid?

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are targets of choice for online criminals, who often exploit weaknesses in major trading platforms or individual users’ digital “wallets” to make major scores. A recent $1.5-billion heist of Ethereum from the Bybit platform — attributed by the FBI to North Korean hackers — is believed to be the largest yet in an ever-longer litany of thefts. How common is crypto theft? Cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology, which publicly records transactions between people holding and exchanging them. That has not kept a lid on theft, with an estimated $2.2 billion worth of the assets...

Has anyone any experience with the lower priced 3D printers out there ?Before China REALLY starts retaliating against our tariffs, I'd like to play around with something that could produce, I don't know . . . . something in the area of 10 inches square or thereabouts.

Previous thread HEREBACKGROUND: Mozilla, maker of Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, had long claimed that it "never has, never will sell" users' personal information In late February, Mozilla changed its policies to delete that assertion and made other confusing changes to its ToUs that tended to indicate going forward, Mozilla would "sell" its users' personal data that was entered in the Firefox browser. These murky changes ignited an uproar among Mozilla's user base NOW (condensed version): Mozilla asserts that it had to delete the assertion that it "never has, never will sell users' personal information" because of broad definitions...

President Donald Trump is expected to announce a $100 billion investment from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to bolster chip manufacturing over the next four years in the U.S, NBC has learned. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. TSMC, which supplies semiconductors to the likes of Nvidia and Apple for artificial intelligence use, would help support the Trump administration’s efforts to make the U.S. an artificial intelligence hub. Last month, Trump announced a multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure project with Oracle , OpenAI and Softbank. Trump has repeatedly called out and accused Taiwan of stealing the U.S. chip manufacturing business and touted...

As noted a few months ago, Mozilla -- maker of the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client -- is facing an 80% revenue drop due to investigations into its “revenue-sharing” deals with Google. That revenue drop is apparently prompting Mozilla's all-out search for alternate revenue streams. Mozilla's changes last week to the Firefox browser's privacy notice and usage terms indicate that users' privacy may be sold out. Specifically, Mozilla's new use terms provide: “When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and...

Google Chrome users have been warned to delete 16 “malicious” browser extensions that could lead to a security threat and “fraud” at the hands of a prolific “threat actor.” The extensions affect functionality involving screen capture, ad blocking, emoji keyboards and more, with a potential impact on at least 3.2 million users, according to GitLab Threat Intelligence, which first reported the threat. The extensions inject code and harmful scripts into browsers, allowing hackers to steal user data and engage in search-engine fraud involving ad revenue, according to Tom’s Guide. After users granted permission to use them, the extensions, while legitimate,...

Jimmy Page and Brian May have both warned about artificial intelligence's potential to destroy art and bankrupt artists financially and spiritually, echoing recent exhortations made by Paul McCartney, Bon Jovi and many more musicians. May voiced his concerns in support of the Daily Mail's campaign against the U.K. Labour Party's AI copyright proposal, which would allow tech companies to use existing copyrighted material to train AI unless the rights holders opt out. Although Page did not explicitly reference any such campaign, he shared a lengthy and impassioned statement on Facebook in which he stressed the importance of "defending the sanctity...

Gunshots fired at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon A Tesla showroom in Oregon was struck by gunfire just weeks after an arson attack damaged the same dealership, according to local authorities. On Wednesday, just before 5 a.m., Salem police responded to reports of damage at a Tesla facility. Officers discovered that several showroom windows had been shattered by gunfire. No suspects have been identified, and no arrests have been made as of now. The FBI has joined the investigation alongside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and local law enforcement. The same Tesla dealership, located in...

Opinions...every has one. I chatted with Grok3. Opening proposal> See new posts A number of things happened yesterday that not being actually here in the U.S. you likely missed at the time of this video. I also watched the 6:00pm post action interview of Z with Brett Beier. Listening very carefully to him in that interview Z is not looking for a ceasefire/peace. Even in that interview Z wants security guarantees upfront. He wants to be treated as a member of NATO, even though his country is not in NATO. Second, this is where the 'world' might be reading the...

Here is the full 50-minute conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky. There are a lot of politicians claiming Zelensky was "ambushed." There was a full 40 minutes of dialogue before the "fireworks" started. The president insisted throughout the first 40 minutes that he was focused on peace. Zelensky responded by strongly pushing back on a ceasefire with Russia and demanded that Putin pay for the entire war. JD Vance jumps in at the 40-minute mark to clarify the difference between Trump and Biden and their approach to the war. This apparently ticked off Zelensky which is when the fireworks...

One of America’s biggest banks accidentally transferred more than $80 trillion (£64 trillion) to a customer’s account after a “fat finger” input error by an employee. Citigroup, one of America’s “big four” lenders, erroneously transferred $81 trillion to the account in April last year instead of the $280 requested because of a keyboard mistake by a bank staffer. The huge sum, worth more than 20 times Britain’s entire gross domestic product (GDP), was approved after being checked by two of the bank’s employees, before being sent to the customer account the following morning. The payment was only flagged after a...

After kickstarting the market for making calls over the internet 23 years ago, Skype is closing down. Microsoft, which acquired the messaging and calling app 14 years ago, said it will be retiring it from active duty on May 5 to double down on Teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want to do with their account. It’s not clear how many people are impacted. The most recent numbers that Microsoft had shared were in 2023, when it said it had more than 36 million users — a long way from Skype’s peak of 300 million users....

Several months ago I bought a new laptop, 128 GB RAM, 13th Generation i9 CPU, running Win 11.Should be faster than my nine-years old laptop, 32 GB RAM, i7 CPU, Win 7.Two days ago I bought two external HDDs (Western Digital Passports), 6 TB each.I then copied (drag & drop method) a folder from an old WD passport to the new, larger one. Folder contained over 2,900 MP4 files, 29 subfolders, at about 1.97 TB total.It took over 8 hours to copy.Then verified that all the files were copied by clicking Properties on the old and copied folders. My new...

Taliban's police force proudly shows off its newly-acquired network of 90,000 CCTV cameras - used to watch over the day-to-day lives of millions of people. "We monitor the entire city of Kabul from here," says Khalid Zadran, a spokesperson for the Taliban police chief, pointing to one of the screens. The authorities say such surveillance will help fight crime, but critics fear it will be used to clamp down on dissent and to monitor the strict morality code enforced by the Islamist Taliban government under their interpretation of Sharia law. The BBC are the first international journalists allowed to see...

Nothing like giving the Christian progressives fuel. Apparently it was on Truth Social, but I could not find it

Verizon, the biggest carrier in the United States, is also the fastest when it comes to 5G upload speeds, at least in theory. The Big Red claims it successfully completed a trial in collaboration with Ericsson and Qualcomm, achieving North American uplink speeds of 480 Mbps.During the test, Verizon made use of Advanced 5G technologies, which combines two TDD carrier component aggregation with C-band spectrum and uplink MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output). The combination of these technologies enabled the companies to achieve a US record-breaking 480 Mbps uplink speed using sub-6 GHz spectrum...Verizon expects to attract numerous businesses with its...