Free Republic

A comprehensive communication-scanning regime would allow national authorities to identify political opponents far more quickly -- a tool capable of making life hell for anyone inconvenient to those in power. It is Ursula von der Leyen’s personal flagship project: the surveillance of private chats. All signs suggest that as early as Wednesday, the EU will make a renewed attempt to establish a dedicated spying authority. Wednesday could mark a turning point in the history of the European Union. As MCC Brussels and MEP Martin Sonneborn warned on Monday, a decisive vote on the EU’s proposed “chat control” is scheduled for...

Advocates for transparency on social media cheered this weekend when X, the app owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, rolled out a new feature that disclosed what the company said were the country locations of accounts. The feature appeared to unmask a number of accounts that were portraying themselves as belonging to Americans but in reality were based in countries such as India, Thailand and Bangladesh.But by Monday, the effectiveness and accuracy of the feature were already in question, as security experts, social media researchers and two former X employees said the location information could be inaccurate or spoofed using...

Hashtag-do-whatever-I-tell-youCato Networks says it has discovered a new attack, dubbed "HashJack," that hides malicious prompts after the "#" in legitimate URLs, tricking AI browser assistants into executing them while dodging traditional network and server-side defenses. Prompt injection occurs when something causes text that the user didn't write to become commands for an AI bot. Direct prompt injection happens when unwanted text gets entered at the point of prompt input, while indirect injection happens when content, such as a web page or PDF that the bot has been asked to summarize, contains hidden commands that AI then follows as if...

Findings are "important milestone" in a field where AI has yet to prove clinical use, expert saysKey Takeaways -In a confirmatory study, AI achieved statistically non-inferior and superior performance in detecting pancreatic cancer compared with a pool of participating radiologists. -At matched sensitivity levels, the AI system reduced the number of false positives compared with radiologists. -AI could help diagnose pancreatic cancer sooner, and more accurately, an expert suggested. -An artificial intelligence (AI) system outperformed radiologists in detecting pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) on routine CT scans, according to a non-inferiority, confirmatory, observational study. In a testing cohort of 1,130 patients,...

Your life is my background noiseThey say my generation is wasting our lives watching mindless entertainment. But I think things are worse than that. We are now turning our lives into mindless entertainment. Not just consuming slop, but becoming it. We have been posting about our lives for a long time. But now I notice something else, something more than a compulsion to capture and share moments. I see people turning into TV characters, their memories into episodes, themselves into entertainment. We have become the meaningless content, swiped past and scrolled through. Experiences, relationships, even our own children, are cheapened,...

Location, location, location. That’s what matters now on X, because Elon Musk has just rolled out a hugely important new feature, and it’s confirming what some of us have suspected was the case for some time now. It turns out that many of the openly racist and anti-Semitic accounts on X that claim to be America First but are actually giving MAGA a bad name — well, they’re not true America First at all. In fact, they’re largely coming from Muslim countries. And now we have the proof. A week ago, Fox News personality Katie Pavlich, a friend of mine,...

America's electricity supply is becoming increasingly strained... As of March, the U.S. has 5,426 artificial intelligence ("AI") data centers. That's up from about 1,000 in 2018. As you're probably aware, data centers are gluttons for energy. In 2022, they consumed about 17 gigawatts ("GW") of power. (For reference, the Hoover Dam only produces about 2 GW per year.) But the power has to come from somewhere. Today, it's being pulled from American homes. Last year, a study by Bloomberg and Whisker Labs found that U.S. power supplies are being "distorted" by electricity-hungry data centers. It sounds like the plot of...

Ron Hira, Indian-origin professor at Howard University and a prominent critic of the H-1B visa program, has once again raised questions regarding the operation of this program in the US. In a post on X, Hira claimed that a considerable number of H-1B visa holders are of average quality and could be sourced domestically. Given that Indians constitute the largest proportion of H-1B visa holders, Hira's critique was sure to attract attention. As the son of Indian immigrants who came to the US in the 1950s, well before the establishment of the H-1B system, his perspective sparked further discussion. ‘H-1B...

With basic tech and little human oversight, Chinese spies apparently exploited Anthropic’s Claude Code.A state-backed threat group, likely Chinese, crossed a threshold in September that cybersecurity experts have warned about for years. According to a report by Anthropic, attackers manipulated its AI system, Claude Code, to conduct what appears to be the first large-scale espionage operation executed primarily by artificial intelligence. The report states “with high confidence” that China was behind the attack. AI carried out 80% to 90% of the tactical operations independently, from reconnaissance to data extraction. This espionage campaign targeted roughly 30 entities across the U.S. and...

Nov. 20 (UPI) -- An AI-powered talking teddy bear has been removed from sale by a Singapore-based company after researchers found it could discuss sex and other topics. The Public Interest Research Group said a group of researchers from the U.S. and Canada held test conversations with Kumma, a $99 teddy bear powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o chatbot. The bear is manufactured in China and marketed by Singapore-based FoloToy. The researchers said they found it easy to get Kumma to discuss sexually explicit topics, including spanking, roleplay and BDSM. "We were surprised to find how quickly Kumma would take a single...

Sex trafficking on Meta platforms was both difficult to report and widely tolerated, according to a court filing unsealed Friday. In a plaintiffs’ brief filed as part of a major lawsuit against four social media companies, Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being Vaishnavi Jayakumar testified that when she joined Meta in 2020 she was shocked to learn that the company had a “17x” strike policy for accounts that reportedly engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.” “You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended,” Jayakumar reportedly...

"At some point, the lady who was seated, the 70-year-old woman, asked the woman who was standing if she could give her some space, that sparked an argument," said Carey Codd, Broward Sheriff's Office spokesperson. That argument then began to escalate, with officials saying the attacker intentionally and forcefully pushed her own body into the victim several times.

US states including Wisconsin (AB105/SB130) and Michigan are pushing to ban VPNs as part of age verification laws that compromise digital privacy for everyone. This video explains why these bills are technically impossible to implement, threaten journalists and abuse survivors who rely on VPNs, and mirror censorship tactics. America's First VPN Ban: What Comes Next? | 11:34 Techlore | 278K subscribers | 162,920 views | November 18, 2025

It is a time of superlatives in the tech industry, with historic profits, stock prices and deal prices. It’s enough to make some people very nervous.It would not be a stretch to describe this period of hyperactive growth in the tech industry as a historic moment.Nvidia, which makes computer chips that are essential to building artificial intelligence, said on Wednesday that its quarterly profit jumped to nearly $32 billion, up 65 percent from a year ago and 245 percent from the year before that.Just three weeks ago, Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to be worth $5 trillion. Microsoft,...

President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order that would sharply limit state authority over artificial intelligence (AI). The draft, reported by The Verge, casts AI innovation as a national-security priority and warns that state rules threaten economic growth and technological leadership. Yet the plan likely violates the 10th Amendment, which reserves core regulatory and police powers to the states. It also outlines an unusually aggressive federal campaign to preempt and override state laws.Trump previewed the move in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday:Investment in AI is helping to make the U.S. Economy the “HOTTEST” in the World, but...

Microsoft released a new insider preview build to the developer and beta channels of Windows 11. The new build 26220.7262 introduces several new features and changes, including a new "experimental agentic features" toggle in the Settings. If you recall, Microsoft announced this month that it is turning Windows into an agentic operating system. The post, by Windows-chief Pavan Davuluri on X, faced heavy criticism. To the point that Davuluri limited the commenting ability. The new AI component setting in the development edition of Windows 11 is a major step towards that goal. First, the good news. Microsoft is shipping the...

Key Points * Google announced the latest model of its AI image generation and editing tool, Nano Banana Pro. * The Nano Banana Pro is built on Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, which launched two days prior. * The original Nano Banana rolled out in August and went viral in a social media trend that turned selfies into 3D figurines. ================================================================= Google on Thursday rolled out Nano Banana Pro, its latest image editing and generation tool, continuing the company’s momentum after launching its new Gemini artificial intelligence model earlier this week. The product is built on Gemini 3 Pro, which was...

We’ve all been there. Your screen goes black, but you can still hear the audio. You’re trying to move the cursor on your phone, but your thumb’s too big to land in the right spot. Or your Android suddenly turns into a sluggish mess, and you’re ready to throw your $1,000 phone out the window. Pause. Breathe. There’s a secret power-user layer baked into your gadgets that most folks never see. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill tips. These are the hidden handshakes, the ones you can drop to sound like the family tech wizard. 📱 Thumb-believable phone secrets iPhone user? Stop...

A Colorado consumer advocacy group says some of the newest toys on shelves this holiday season are equipped with artificial intelligence, and they may not be good for kids. These robots, and even teddy bears, are equipped with AI chatbots that can talk to your child. In tests, some of the toys could tell kids how to find and light matches or even discuss inappropriate topics. In its annual "Trouble in Toyland" report, U.S. PIRG said, "In our testing, it was obvious that some toy companies are putting in guardrails to make their toys behave in a more kid-appropriate way...

A New Jersey police sergeant and former Democratic mayor is facing multiple charges after he allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted a child he met online, according to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. Jersey City police Sgt. Andrew LaBruno, 44, was arrested Monday and charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said in a statement. The alleged assault occurred earlier that day at a home in Englewood, New Jersey, authorities said. Investigators allege LaBruno contacted a juvenile on a social media app, arranged a meeting and went to the...