Free Republic

The space environment would provide natural radiative cooling, as well as unlimited solar energy. With the generative AI boom in full force, scientists have warned of the immense power requirements of data centers used to train and utilize these systems. Now, a team of researchers from NTU Singapore has joined the call to place data centers in space. Doing so would pave the way for sustainable computing, the claim. According to the team, space data centers would be powered by round-the-clock solar energy and would harness free cooling. Crucially, all of this is possible using existing technologies. Sending AI infrastructure...

A misconfiguration at Microsoft Azure caused massive, widespread outages today starting around noon ET. https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status for details. https://downdetector.com/ was on fire. It's getting better.

FortNine explores how a search engine generates revenue, using the example of bicycle parts. The video examines the PageRank algorithm and its evolution into targeted advertising. This investigation reveals a surprising method for attributing sales, raising questions about the true impact of online marketing.

Like you, I see those flashy headlines and articles every day trying to convince Windows users to switch to Linux—how it’s supposedly better in every possible way, how you can use all your favorite apps, and so on. But honestly, most of that is just talk. It sounds great on paper, but it doesn’t match up with reality. Still, I guess those kinds of articles do their job pretty well.Here, though, I want to take a slightly different approach. Right from the start, let me be clear: I’m not here to persuade anyone to jump on the Linux bandwagon. Instead,...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that the company will build seven supercomputers for the Department of Energy with up to 100,000 chips all made in America. Huang said, “The first thing that President Trump asked me is, ‘bring manufacturing back.'” The New York Post reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made several significant announcements during the keynote address at the company’s GTC event in Washington, DC, highlighting the company’s ongoing success and its commitment to advancing e AI technology. The event, held for the first time in the US capital, signifies Nvidia’s pursuit of work with the government and contractors...

A recent firmware update on my LG television revealed that the TV is taking audio samples of all content that is played through it. Other TVs are now taking audio and video samples and sending them off for analysis. Your Smart TV's HDMI Port Is Spying On You! | 23:43 Lon.TV | 389K subscribers | 62,195 views | October 27, 2025 VIDEO INDEX: 00:00 - Intro 00:55 - Supporter Thank Yous 01:26 - ACR / Automatic Content Recognition 02:10 - LG Televisions 04:03 - Samsung TVs 04:57 - Amazon Fire TV Sets 06:33 - Roku TVs 09:04 - Google TVs...

Take this with a grain of salt, but users have reported another privacy transgression by Microsoft. According to the report by users from the Resetera forum and elsewhere, Copilot Gaming, an AI specially for gaming-related AI tasks, is taking screen captures of your gameplay for training. While that would be fine if the user knew about it and enabled it willingly, it appears to be turned on automatically and without informing users about the data collecting and use of the data. According to the user who noticed it first by monitoring network traffic, the AI is using OCR technology to...

Climate deniers use scientific aesthetics to reinforce and legitimize their message. At the same time, their main opponents, the climate activists, are portrayed as emotional and irrational. This has been demonstrated by researchers from the Universities of Gothenburg and Amsterdam, who have studied how climate deniers communicate online. "Disinformation is not just about incorrect facts, but about how these facts look and feel. In today's digital media landscape, messages are spread through images, memes and visual narratives that influence us in an instant, before we even have time to think. By understanding the aesthetic logic behind climate denial, we can...

Shield AI's X-BAT designed to counter China's strategy of destroying American aircraft before they leave the ground Analysts say China has developed a chilling strategy for fighting a war with the United States: destroy America’s fighter jets before they ever leave the ground. In nearly every modern conflict, disabling enemy aircraft on the ground has been the first move. When Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year, it began by destroying Iranian runways — grounding Tehran’s air force before it could take off. Russia and Ukraine have done the same throughout their ongoing war, targeting airfields to cripple enemy...

Late in World War 2, in the European theater, the Germans hit the Allied air forces with something new: Jet fighters. Chief among them was the Messerschmitt Me-262, a big, brutal twin-engine beast packing four 30-mm cannons. It was considerably faster than the American P-51 Mustang, generally considered the best piston-engine fighter in the air at the time. It was near-impossible to defeat in the air, but it was slow and cumbersome on taxi, vulnerable during takeoff and landing, and required a long runway. So we went after them when they were on the ground, destroying aircraft and bases alike....

A new groundbreaking light therapy could kill cancer cells in just 30 minutes, scientists have discovered. In the new method, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin fired infrared light, a type of light invisible to the eye, from LED bulbs at test tubes that contained human skin cancer or colon cancer cells and healthy human skin cells. The tubes also contained nanoscopic flakes of tin oxide, or SnOx nanoflakes, which were absorbed by the cancer cells. The scientists found that when the light was fired at the cells, the nanoscopic flakes absorbed it and heated up, turning into...

BOOOOOOOM! Wow, wow! Testing Grokipedia! It is absolutely brilliant and will only get better. Bye, bye Wikipedia—don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Test it now: grokipedia.com

Created by Elon Musk, xAI's Grok has introduced AI ‘companions’ — and one of them targeted toward children refers users to Planned Parenthood, likening abortion to simply “turning off a light.” According to a July 2025 article from Tom's Guide, Grok's companions are "AI chatbots that are assigned specific personalities for you to interact with...." Tom's reviewer Alex Hughes adds, with concern, that "[M]ost of the larger AI companies with strong reputations have stayed clear of this world, primarily because of the pretty expansive ethical problems that come attached with providing people with ‘AI relationships’." Grok's companions, Hughes writes, each...

When you cross into Loudon County, Virginia, one of the first things you notice is the hum - that's the sound of 199 data centres whirring in the background. Few people have heard of this inconspicuous part of northern Virginia, which also happens to be the wealthiest county in the US. But Loudon was on everyone's radar earlier this week, when a massive global Amazon outage downed everything from crucial banking services to fun Snapchat streaks for millions. That's because the county is home to the world's largest swath of data storage and processing facilities - even outpacing China. Data...

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, October 20, 2025. Evaristo Sa / AFP. The persecution of ordinary citizens on behalf of the LGBT movement will be funded by the state—that is, by the taxpayers being targeted. President Lula da Silva’s Brazil has taken another step towards totalitarianism with the launch of a massive platform designed to streamline the prosecution of those who criticize LGBT ideology. With Orwellian irony, it has been called the ‘Platform of Respect.’ “The Ministry of Human Rights, in partnership with the NGO Aliança Nacional LGBTI+, launched a platform aimed at holding legally accountable authors of...

Whatever else its faults — and it has many — one of the good things you can say about Amazon is that it employs a whole heck of a lot of American workers. At least, it does for now. CNBC reports: Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a new robotic system that's capable of performing multiple tasks at once in the company's warehouses. The system, called Blue Jay, is made up of a series of robotic arms that are suspended from a conveyor belt-like track. Those arms are tipped with suction-cup devices that allow them to grab and sort items of varying...

Good news: U.S. tech companies are attacking the AI race like a modern Manhattan Project — spending unfathomable money and time to beat China to superintelligence.Bad news: The U.S. government, even if it weren't shut down, is doing nothing to prepare Americans for the coming, in some areas already-unfolding, economic and jobs shock.Why it matters: The gap between the AI giants, employees and investors and ordinary Americans is growing by the month. This gap, if it persists, will increasingly define American political debate in the coming months and years."This is an enormously transformational moment," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told Axios'...

Last February, Megan Garcia was putting her second-youngest son to bed when she heard what sounded like a mirror falling. She rushed down the hallway to the bathroom where her eldest son, Sewell, was taking a shower. Her husband, Alexander, was already standing in front of the locked door. “Sewell?” he called. “Sewell?” But there was no answer. From outside the bathroom, they heard the shower still running. Megan stuck the tip of a comb into the pinhole in the door handle and it opened. Sewell was lying facedown in the bathtub, his feet hanging over the edge. Megan thought,...

Right-wing provocateur Candace Owens made her boldest claim yet about her former friend Charlie Kirk's assassination in a video posted online Wednesday. After weeks of spewing conspiracy theories about the assassination, Owens now appears to be explicitly blaming President Donald Trump and members of his administration for Kirk's murder. 'He gave so much of his life to Trump and to politics, and they were just like NOPE. That's it,' Owens said. 'So here's a holiday. What is with them giving them a holiday after they kill them? As soon as they give you a holiday, they definitely killed you. There's...

Atlas browser challenges Google's Chrome dominanceAtlas offers AI features like content summarization and task automationAnalysts see ad competition riskOpenAI on Tuesday unveiled ChatGPT Atlas, a long-anticipated artificial intelligence-powered web browser built around its popular chatbot, in a direct challenge to Google Chrome's dominance.The launch marks OpenAI's latest move to capitalize on 800 million weekly active ChatGPT users, as it expands into more aspects of users' online lives by collecting data about consumers' browser behavior. It could accelerate a broader shift toward AI-driven search, as users increasingly turn to conversational tools that synthesize information instead of relying on traditional keyword-based results...