Free Republic

An Australian entrepreneur who launched a prominent vegan chicken nugget startup has been accused of strangling his social media star girlfriend inside a luxe Manhattan hotel — where he was allegedly hiding out from claims he fleeced investors in his crypto company, The Post has learned. Ben Pasternak, 26 — whose plant-based business Simulate was once valued at $250 million — was arrested Tuesday on allegations that he assaulted his ex, influencer Evelyn Ha, on March 31 after she tried to film him on her phone inside the ritzy Baccarat Hotel on West 53rd Street. The millionaire magnate had been...

Riddle of the day: When is deed theft not actually deed theft? Answer: When state Attorney General Tish James tries to have it both ways. That’s what happened Friday when the AG was asked about fellow lefty Brooklyn Councilman Chi Ossé’s arrest. Ossé was cuffed Wednesday as he tried to prevent an eviction he claimed stemmed from “deed theft.” At the time, James’ office issued a statement denying the case involved any such thing. It said the matter involved a property dispute between heirs and relatives of the home’s former co-owners. Yet on Friday, James sang a different tune. “Technically...

Keeping it simple for the developers can lead to very complex headaches laterPWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the column where we celebrate the people who’ve taught us how not to secure a server. If you’ve ever tied your own shoelaces together, then tripped over them, or attempted to dive into a swimming pool but hit your head on the diving board, we’ll be talking about your cyber equivalent. This week’s connected kerfuffle comes courtesy of Gregory Shein, founder and CEO of software development firm Nomadic Soft. One of his clients made the fateful decision to prioritize convenience over security,...

Imagine a robot that could do your laundry, make your bed, cook your dinner, or stock the dairy section at your local grocery store. Humans have long been able to teach robots how to do individual tasks, but instructing them on these more sophisticated jobs has been an elusive goal, despite billions of dollars invested into robotics. Robots with neurotic personalities, a la C-3PO of Star Wars fame, can come off as relatable to people, a new study finds. Now, a team of scientists in Switzerland has made progress in the quest to invent helpful robots that can act on...

Intel stock was surging 29% ahead of the open Friday as the chip maker’s strong recent rally looked set to go to another level after its first-quarter earnings. ---SNIP--- But Tan, the new dealmaking CEO, has shaken up the narrative. First, he sold a 9% share of the company to the U.S. government, earning the favor of President Donald Trump. Then he formed a loose partnership with Nvidia

Guests visiting the Disneyland Resort in recent months may have noticed new facial recognition technology at the entrances to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, though guests don’t have to use the system if they choose not to, according to company guidelines. Disney says the technology is designed to streamline guest entry. The system captures an image of a guest’s face at the gate and compares it to the image taken when the ticket or pass was first used. Both images are converted into numerical values to verify a match. ... Traditional entrance lanes remain available. Guests who opt out of...

While the idea sounds like a technothriller plot, it’s actually a mix of public business strategy and some very real intelligence-community roots. It wasn't so much a "sneak" way to map the world as it was an open—if often overlooked—part of Niantic’s business model. Here’s the breakdown of how the game connects to global mapping: ### 1. The CIA Connection (The Roots) The theory that Pokémon GO is a front for the CIA stems from the background of Niantic’s CEO, **John Hanke**. * **Keyhole Inc.:** Before Niantic, Hanke founded Keyhole Inc., a geospatial data company. * **In-Q-Tel:** Keyhole was funded...

At the beginning of last year, the mother’s only child died in a traffic accident. His family hoped to conceal the news from his mother, who is in her 80s and has heart disease. The man’s son contacted Zhang, asking him to create a digital twin of his father by providing numerous pictures, videos and audio recordings of him speaking in his dialect. The creation looks exactly like the dead man and even mimics his habit of leaning forward while speaking, the report said. The virtual son talks to the mother every day via a video call at a chat...

Liv Perrotto, a teenager whose story was shared widely online, had been given the opportunity to speak with Musk shortly before her death. According to conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Perrotto was too weak to take the call at the time and asked if it could be rescheduled. She died before the conversation could take place. Before her death, Perrotto wrote down a list of eight questions for Musk on a notepad that remained by her bedside. Her mother, Rebecca, later shared the handwritten list with Beck in the hope that Musk might still see and respond to it.

A handful of users in a private online forum gained access to Mythos on the same day that Anthropic first announced ‌a plan to ⁠release the model... The group has been using Mythos regularly since then, though not for ​cybersecurity purposes... Announced on April 7, Mythos is being deployed as part of ‌Anthropic's "Project Glasswing," a controlled ​initiative under which select organizations ​are permitted ​to use the unreleased Claude Mythos ‌Preview model for defensive ​cybersecurity. Mythos is ​a powerful AI model that has sparked concerns among regulators about its unprecedented ​ability to ‌identify digital security vulnerabilities and potential for ​misuse.

Amazon has agreed to invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic, on top of the $8 billion that it has poured into the artificial intelligence startup in recent years, as part of an expanded agreement to build out AI infrastructure. In the announcement on Monday, Anthropic said it’s committed to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technologies over the next 10 years, including current and future generations of Trainium, Amazon’s custom AI chips. Anthropic said it’s secured up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training and deploying its Claude AI models. “Anthropic’s commitment to run its large...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — White House economists estimate the United States has a shortage of 10 million houses, according to a new report out Monday — and say regulatory cuts could lead to more construction to stabilize prices, increase home ownership and fuel faster economic growth. Trump has signaled that taming high housing costs is a top priority for his administration. The housing chapter of the annual economic report, obtained by The Associated Press before its release, lays out a blueprint for how more home construction would help the middle class and the overall economy, setting up an argument that Trump...

The median home sale price in the San Francisco metropolitan area jumped 14.4% year over year in March to a record $1.7 million. That’s the largest increase since March 2018 and the biggest gain among the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas. Condo prices in San Francisco rose particularly quickly, posting a 24.4% year-over-year increase last month—the largest since 2013. San Francisco’s housing market has been heating up as a boom in the artificial intelligence industry and a return to the office have coincided with a lack of inventory. “A lot of 22-year-olds are getting $500,000 signing bonuses from AI...

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Diners at a growing number of restaurants and bars are being asked to stash away their phones — or even lock them up — as part of a push for more memorable nights out. The trend is gaining traction across the U.S., with more spots experimenting with restrictions, incentives or locked pouches, Fox News Digital recently reported. Charlotte cocktail bar Antagonist places guests' phones in locked pouches for about two hours, while Delilah, an upscale supper club with locations across the country, has a no-phones, no-posting policy, according to Axios. Even Chick-fil-A has tested the tactic with a Maryland location...

Q. For the common chromatic enharmonic letter names inclusive of all common, non-double accidental C-Cb note names, give their solfeggio English equivalents.The first set, to be emulated in solfeggio variants: Array count: 21 C-C#-Db-D-D#-Eb_E-E#-Fb-F-F#-Gb-G-G#-Ab-A-A#-Bb-B-B#-Cb. (Cb → Da) C → Do C# → Di Db → Ra D → Re D# → Ri Eb → Me E → Mi E# → Ma Fb → Me F → Fa F# → Fi Gb → Se G → Sol G# → Si Ab → Le A → La A# → Li Bb → Te B → Ti B# → Ta Cb → Da...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce in a companywide bloodbath next month – with even more cuts to follow later in the year, according to a report Friday. The Instagram parent will ax nearly 8,000 employees in the initial round set for May 20, Reuters reported. More layoffs are expected in the second half of the year, but Meta executives have yet to decide how extensive they will be or exactly when they will occur. Meta’s plans could be adjusted based on the state of the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities, sources ominously told the outlet....

I am starting a project and Laravel has been recommended to me. I have always used PHP. What are the advantages of Laravel, what are its best applications, and what might be superior to it. Thanks! -Jeff

Accused SantaCon cheat Stefan Pildes actively flaunted his lavish lifestyle on Instagram — before being busted for allegedly funneling millions in charity cash from the annual Christmas-themed booze fest to bankroll his bougie vacations. The founder of the notorious seasonal bar crawl, who was arrested Wednesday on wire fraud charges, shamelessly paraded himself globetrotting with his wife and friends on trips to Nevada’s Burning Man festival, the Las Vegas Sphere and ski getaways, videos on his Instagram account show. Pildes, 50, was also seen blowing the would-be donations on a string of concerts last year, including Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem Ball”...

A growing number of experts argue that many companies blaming artificial intelligence for job cuts are masking more familiar financial and strategic pressures. The good news for employees worried about the countless predictions of a looming job apocalypse from artificial intelligence (AI) taking work away from humans has not been borne out—at least not yet. However, that hasn’t prevented an increasing number of companies from citing productivity gains made by using those task automating apps as the reason for thousands of recent layoffs they’ve made. But now, a growing chorus of critics have begun denouncing most of those staff reductions...