Free Republic

AOL, once a dominant force in the early days of the Internet, has announced the end of its dial-up Internet service, marking the closure of a significant chapter in the history of online connectivity. Apple Inside reports that after more than four decades of providing dial-up Internet access to millions of users worldwide, American Online has decided to discontinue its iconic service. The company, which started as a very early Apple service in the 1980s, played a crucial role in ushering in the Internet age for countless individuals. Although many readers will be surprised to learn that dial-up internet was...

OpenAI’s latest AI models, GPT o3 and o4-mini, hallucinate significantly more often than their predecessorsThe increased complexity of the models may be leading to more confident inaccuraciesThe high error rates raise concerns about AI reliability in real-world applicationsBrilliant but untrustworthy people are a staple of fiction (and history). The same correlation may apply to AI as well, based on an investigation by OpenAI and shared by The New York Times. Hallucinations, imaginary facts, and straight-up lies have been part of AI chatbots since they were created. Improvements to the models theoretically should reduce the frequency with which they appear.OpenAI’s latest...

Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) H20 chips present security risks for China, according to a social media account linked to Chinese state media, which made the claim on Sunday after Beijing raised concerns about potential backdoor access in the chips. The account, Yuyuan Tantian- affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV also argued in a WeChat post that the H20 chips are neither technologically advanced nor environmentally friendly. “When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it,” the article concluded. Nvidia did not immediately comment. The H20 artificial intelligence chips...

Teen Vogue is sounding the alarm over a growing number of states requiring students to view fetal development videos like “Meet Baby Olivia” in sex education classes — calling the pro-life material “manipulative” and accusing its creators of advancing a political agenda. The animated video, produced by Live Action, shows a child developing in the womb from the moment of conception. It has already been adopted in six states as part of newly passed fetal development education laws. According to Live Action, the goal is to educate students on the science of life in the womb and foster “a reverence...

In the hazy impressions of memory, some may even recall it fondly: The AOL dial-up internet service that those of a certain age associate with the World Wide Web is coming to a close. The company, also known by its “You’ve got mail” greeting and the CD trial discs — so many CDs — made the announcement on its website. “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans,” the web provider said. Absent the wireless signals of the modern day, dial-up connected to the...

One thing leads to another!I was trying to find some inexpensive Bluetooth headphones for my daughter, as she wants some for her b'day, but nothing pricey while she's away @ college. She's very sensitive to pressure on her ears, so they need to be completely over the ear headphones. She's also a very keen listener (she got that from me) and picky about sound quality. In some ways she's pickier than I, a lifelong audiophile, am.* This really limits choices! For example, I'd stumbled onto a set a couple years ago that sound quite good -- when they are not...

Vladimir Putin's father gouged out his mother's eye with a pitchfork, it was revealed. The violent attack came when his mother Maria was just 17 and as a result of the incident in which she lost her eye, Vladimir senior was ordered to marry her. The attack was 'in a fit of rage' according to independent news outlet Proekt. The bizarre story has emerged as a new book - The Tsar in Person. How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All - details the Kremlin despot's life, and was highlighted by Proekt. Putin's father arrived with male friends when Maria - known...

Boston's raging drug problem has deepened after images surfaced of a man hunched over outside of the city's poshest mall. The unidentified man could be seen lurched over and using a phone outside of Copley Place in the Democratic-led city, in footage taken by a passer-by. It was shared to social media by a group of locals openly opposed to Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu as the latest example of the problems facing the Massachusetts city. 'Wow can't even shop in Mayor Wu's Boston without running into drug addicts,' the post said. 'This is in Boston's most luxurious mall too.' The...

In the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a household name, but recent data reveals a telling pattern in its usage that underscores the tool’s controversial role in education. According to a report from Futurism, published on August 8, 2025, OpenAI’s platform experiences significant drops in activity during weekends and summer months—periods when schools are typically out of session. This fluctuation suggests that a substantial portion of ChatGPT’s traffic may stem from students using it for homework assistance, or more pointedly, cheating. The numbers are stark: usage plummets by as much as 20-30% on non-school days, aligning...

When it comes to its “Star Wars” franchise, The Walt Disney’s Company’s Death Star just exploded. On Thursday, in a decisive turn of events, Disney and conservative actress Gina Carano announced the settlement of a lawsuit Carano filed last year accusing the House of Mouse of wrongful termination. And while the exact terms weren’t disclosed, there’s no doubt who the winner was. Carano’s statements on Thursday make it clear. “[A]nd the truth shall set you free,” she wrote in a post on the social media platform X. She followed that up with a lengthier statement that thanked mega-billionaire and Renaissance...

An Oklahoma heiress has sparked outrage in Nantucket after renting a summer house and allegedly breaking the billionaire enclave's secret codes. Kylie Swanson, 36, signed a lease in the Massachusetts town and turned the rental house into a $3,800 four-day retreat called 'Camp Nantucket.' Her Instagram account is filled Swanson posing by with cobblestone streets, ocean-front estates and lighthouses, showing her followers a lifestyle that's out of reach for most. But Nantucket business owners who rely on summer sales told the Wall Street Journal the influencer disrupted them by demanding free products, comped hotel rooms and discounts for the camp...

Researchers are trying to “vaccinate” artificial intelligence systems against developing evil, overly flattering or otherwise harmful personality traits in a seemingly counterintuitive way: by giving them a small dose of those problematic traits. A new study, led by the Anthropic Fellows Program for AI Safety Research, aims to prevent and even predict dangerous personality shifts before they occur — an effort that comes as tech companies have struggled to rein in glaring personality problems in their AI.

Even with public trust at an all-time low, Wikipedia continues to maintain people's confidence. How do they do it? Former CEO of Wikimedia Foundation Katherine Maher delves into the transparent, adaptable and community-building ways the online encyclopedia brings free and reliable information to the public -- while also accounting for bias and difference of opinion. "The seeds of our disagreement can actually become the roots of our common purpose," she says.

Patrick Ruffini is a co-founder of Echelon Insights, a research and analytics firm. By the time 2028 rolls around, high-quality polling of the presidential race may prove very hard to come by. And it won’t be because of a natural evolution in how Americans take polls — something we pollsters are all too familiar with — but because of a switch that’s set to be flipped next month at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 26, includes a new feature designed to curb unwanted spam calls and text messages. It will do so by segregating...

Using Google Earth, Justin Myers found some anomalies near Nikumaroro Island that he thinks are strikingly similar to Earhart’s lost plane. Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: * A pilot perusing Google Earth may have stumbled across the remnants of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E * Inspired by a documentary on the final flight of Earhart and Fred Noonan, Justin Myers compared the measurements of anomalies in a Google Earth image to the components of the Earhart plane * Thus far, no major institutions have made any effort to investigate his claims =========================================================================== What would you do...

OpenAI's ChatGPT can easily be coaxed into leaking your personal data — with just a single "poisoned" document. As Wired reports, security researchers revealed at this year's Black Hat hacker conference that highly sensitive information can be stolen from a Google Drive account with an indirect prompt injection attack. In other words, hackers feed a document with hidden, malicious prompts to an AI that controls your data instead of manipulating it directly with a prompt injection, one of the most serious types of security flaws threatening the safety of user-facing AI systems. ChatGPT's ability to be linked to a Gmail...

University of Washington researchers recruited self-identifying Democrats and Republicans to make political decisions with help from three versions of ChatGPT: a base model, one with liberal bias and one with conservative bias. Democrats and Republicans were both likelier to lean in the direction of the biased chatbot they were talking with than those who interacted with the base model. Here, a Democrat interacts with the conservative model. Credit: Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (2025). DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.328 If you've interacted with an artificial intelligence chatbot, you've likely realized that all...

The Air Force is looking to buy two Cybertrucks for "live missile fire testing." It said the Tesla pickups were "likely" to start appearing on the battlefield. It added that they don't "receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact." The US Air Force wants to blow up some Cybertrucks. It's looking to buy two of them to use for munitions testing as they will "likely" soon start appearing on the battlefield, per documents posted on a US Government contracting website on Wednesday. Advertisement The pickups are part of a larger order of 33 vehicles for "live missile...

Elon Musk is reviving one of the internet’s most beloved platforms—but this time, it’s powered by AI. A forgotten archive has been uncovered, a premium feature launched, and the future of short-form video may never be the same. =============================================================== In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk announced the return of Vine, the iconic six-second video platform that helped launch the careers of digital stars like Shawn Mendes and King Bach. But the revival comes with a major twist: it’s no longer about shooting videos—it’s about generating them with artificial intelligence. Vine’s Video Archive Is Being Restored...

To arrive at their conclusions, researchers trained OpenAI’s GPT 4.1 model to act as a "teacher," and gave it a favorite animal: owls. The "teacher" was then asked to generate training data for another AI model, although this data did not ostensibly include any mention of its love for owls. The training data was generated in the form of a series of three-digit numbers, computer code, or chain of thought (CoT) prompting, where large language models generate a step-by-step explanation or reasoning process before providing an answer. This dataset was then shared with a "student" AI model in a process...