Free Republic

Google is launching AI Mode, a new AI-powered search feature for US-based users. After a short testing period in its Labs environment, the feature will be rolling out for everyone in the coming weeks via a new Search tab and the Google app. The company describes AI Mode as its “most powerful AI search, with more advanced reasoning and multimodality, and the ability to go deeper through follow-up questions and helpful links to the web.” New features of AI Mode include Deep Search with longer-than-usual, report-style responses, Search Live, which enables users to talk with Search about what they see...

Can someone help with getting the notification popup window at the bottom right of the screen to show the notifications again? For instance, I used to get the popup window notification to show immediately when a Youtube video was downloaded. Not getting the window anymore. Now, up at the top right on the Youtube page there is a bell that will show the number of new videos since the last time I checked but if I don't constantly check, I never know. Not to mention the bell has when the videos were loaded all messed up - 1 hour ago,...

The unexpected costs of being too nice to your chatbot.Recently, I said, “Thank you,” to my printer. Not because it did anything heroic, unless printing out a mildly off-center PDF counts as gallantry, but because I’m apparently the kind of person who anthropomorphizes anything with a plug. You’d think this sort of thing would stop with childhood dinosaurs (the remote-controlled ones), but no. Now, we’re all doing it—toasters, chatbots, the vacuum cleaner—and it’s getting weird.Take ChatGPT. People are writing things like, “Could you please write a sonnet about my goldfish who died in 2003? Thank you sooo much, kind machine.”...

An Irish man has died and a child has been injured in a shooting incident at a shopping centre in County Carlow on Sunday. Emergency services are currently at the scene at the Fairgreen Shopping Centre, with an army bomb disposal team also in attendance. Gardaí (Irish police) were alerted to the incident shortly after 18:15 local time. The girl was treated by paramedics at the scene. Gardaí said it is not yet known how her injuries were sustained. The shopping centre has been evacuated and the area has been sealed off by police. The cordon will remain in place...

Micro-brain sensors placed between hair strands overcome traditional brain sensor limitations. Georgia Tech researchers have developed an almost imperceptible microstructure brain sensor to be inserted into the minuscule spaces between hair follicles and slightly under the skin. The sensor offers high-fidelity signals and makes the continuous use of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) in everyday life possible. BCIs create a direct communication pathway between the brain's electrical activity and external devices such as electroencephalography devices, computers, robotic limbs, and other brain monitoring devices. Brain signals are commonly captured non-invasively with electrodes mounted on the surface of the human scalp using conductive electrode...

[Note: What follows is a blog-post formatted version of the 34 page letter I submitted to the FTC on May 21, 2025 in response to the agency’s RFI entitled: “Request for Public Comment Regarding Technology Platform Censorship.” I have also added a section at the end on what you can do to save the open web from Google’s AI takeover.] In this letter I will explain how Google censored my travel website – and thousands of small and independent web publishers like me – all so that it can use AI to control the flow of information online. In late...

The initial announcement of the AI feature Recall for Windows caused quite an uproar in the security community. Microsoft's idea was to introduce an AI tool in Windows that would take a snapshot of the desktop every five seconds, analyze what it displayed to allow the user to interact with the AI about it. Problem was, in its hurry to get the AI feature out in the open, Microsoft forgot security. It turned out, that Recall was set to run by default, that the database that Recall used was not all that well protected. Additionally, despite Microsoft reassuring that Recall...

Hackers just hit a massive jackpot: 184 million accounts across Apple, Google and Microsoft were exposed in a sweeping data breach. I’m talking email addresses, usernames, passwords, device info (the whole buffet), now up for grabs on the dark web. Before you say, “I’m safe, I use strong passwords,” or “I’ve never been hacked,” take a second to think. These weren’t obscure services. This breach hit the biggest names in tech. Household-name-level oopsie. If your login credentials got caught in the cross fire, hackers are already trying to use them to break into your other accounts. The hidden risk It’s...

Gen Z thinks they’ve figured out a dead giveaway that someone has used ChatGPT — and it might surprise you. The em dash (—) is punctuation loved by writers everywhere, functioning like a comma, colon or a pair of parentheses. It can be used to sum up information at the end of a sentence, encase supplementary information within a sentence, emphasize a point or expand upon something that comes before it, according to Merriam-Webster. But according to Gen Z, the dash is actually a so-called “ChatGPT hyphen.” The phenomenon started gaining attention online after podcasters Daisy Reed and Sapna Rao,...

It's not just TikTok that's in trouble over cybersecurity. U.S. authorities are investigating TP-Link, a Chinese company that holds 65% of the U.S. market for home and small-business routers, for potential national security risks, the Wall Street Journal reports today. The company’s routers have been linked to cyberattacks targeting Western organizations and government agencies. Key points Security Concerns: Microsoft found that Chinese hackers used TP-Link routers in cyberattacks. Government Probes: Commerce, Defense, and Justice departments are investigating, with a potential U.S. ban on TP-Link devices under consideration for next year. Router Flaws: TP-Link routers are often shipped with unaddressed security...

Last season, SEC teams would fine schools $100,000 if their students storm the field. If it happens a second time, the fine would jump up to $250,000. Any subsequent offenses would cost $500,000. During this year's SEC Spring Meetings, league commissioner Greg Sankey announced that fines for field stormings will be much more...

The Truth about the SLAUGHTER in South Africa! 192,000 views May 28, 2025 serpentza -- Everybody know Serpentza. He was born in South Africa. Lived in China for about 15 years, until he was pressured to leave. He comments about China on you tube, on his own channel and The China Show channel. 1.59M subscribers 192,000 views May 28, 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8pEGA1yhUk

Opera unveiled Opera Neon today, a fully agentic browser. Opera Software describes it as a browser that is "designed to understand your intent, assist with tasks, and take actions". If you have been with us for at least a decade, you may remember that Opera Software launched Opera Neon back in 2017 already as a concept browser. This old concept browser has little in common with the new, other than that it is also pushing into new territories. Neon goes further than current AI integrations in browsers according to Opera Software. While it supports AI-based chats, getting summaries of webpages,...

Several collections of example clips from the latest version 3 of Google’s Veo text-to-video generator, which now includes synced audio as well. Big improvement over the previous Veo 2—basically looks like normal YouTube or Hollywood-produced content to the casual eye. All this content was 100% made using prompts. Things are going to get weird folks. These first two are meta-satire with the “people” in the gen questioning why they were created by a prompt and/or trapped. Clever and amusing. Video series 1Video series 2This one is all social media influencers reacting to the end of the world. Video series 3Bunch...

Stephen Hawking had a frightening response when asked about his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence in 2014. The world-renowned theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, who passed away in March 2018 at the age of 76, was best known for his work in the fields of general relativity and quantum gravity. He went on to pen the 2002 book The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, which has sold more than 25 million copies across 40 different languages. However, it was in his final book, published seven months after his death, titled Brief Answers to...

The Starship test flight encountered problems approximately 30 minutes into its uncrewed journey. Starship’s ninth flight test launch. - SpaceX/X ===================================================================== On May 27th, SpaceX launched the ninth test flight of its 403-feet (123-metre) Starship megarocket. Despite reaching orbit, the vehicle then lost attitude control, resulting in an uncontrolled reentry and its third consecutive failure. After lifting off from Starbase, Texas, at 7:36 p.m. Eastern, the Starship test flight encountered problems approximately 30 minutes into its uncrewed journey. An onboard fuel leak caused the mega-rocket to spin uncontrollably in space, leading to an earlier-than-planned re-entry into the atmosphere. SpaceX announced...

The MenstruAI app analyzes the image to detect even subtle changes in color intensity, translating them into readable health insights. Colour changes on the sanitary towel can be interpreted by eye or photographed with a smartphone and evaluated directly in the app. The prototype has a dot with a control dot on the test strip for each biomarker. Lucas Dosnon and Josef Kuster / ETH Zurich (AI-generated) ================================================================================= A new technology developed at ETH Zurich is transforming a long-overlooked source of medical data — menstrual blood — into a powerful health-monitoring tool. Dubbed MenstruAI, this innovative system integrates a non-electronic...

The Marubo Tribe of Brazil’s Amazon has filed a defamation lawsuit in Los Angeles against The New York Times, alleging its coverage of the tribe’s first internet access portrayed them as tech-addicted and obsessed with pornography, according to the New York Post. The suit, seeking hundreds of millions in damages, also names TMZ and Yahoo for amplifying and sensationalizing the story. The article “portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography.”

Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres urged the Capitol Police to investigate alleged threats from a baby-faced anti-Israel activist who urged support for the gunman accused of killing two Israel Embassy staffers in DC. Guy Christensen, the Keffiyeh wearing 19-year-old from Pennsylvania who uses the handle “YourFavoriteGuy,” posted a three-minute video rant on X May 22 trashing Torres as a tool of the Zionist lobby who backs genocide. “Now, Ritchie, screenshots are forever, and what you’ve said and done will haunt your family for eternity, as you will eventually, if you’re still alive, end up in a Nuremberg trial,” Christiansen said in...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk — who spearheaded the cost-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — said he was “disappointed” to see the massive legislative package of Republican priorities make it through the House. “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit… and it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a preview of an interview set to air this weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning.” The bill — titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” adopting Trump’s slogan for the measure — passed the House...