Free Republic

Director Spike Lee, in a recent interview with CNN, called the United State Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling declaring a race-based redistricting map in Louisiana an “attack on voters.” “They’re going to be movies and documentaries about this period of the United States of America. With this guy in the White House — just down the block, right?” Spike Lee said of President Donald Trump. “It’s not the first this country’s been through stuff. And it’s found a better way to live and we gotta work at it.” “Let’s realize, black folks, we got a lot of our stuff through voting,”...

An unusual food delivery order from a cancer patient recently sparked a relay of caregiving in Guangdong, China. A young woman, named Xiao Li, is receiving treatment for a rare form of blood cancer, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on April 25. As her family is working to fund her treatment, the 24-year-old is often alone in hospital. While looking through a food delivery app on April 15, Xiao Li decided to place a special order — companionship. She wrote in her request: "Sit by my bedside and accompany me for two hours." Her order was accepted by a delivery...

In the summer of 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT 5 and removed its predecessor from the market. Many subscribers to the old model had become attached to its warm, enthusiastically agreeable tone and complained at the loss of their ingratiating robotic companion. Such was the scale of frustration that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, had to acknowledge that the rollout was botched, and the company reinstated access.Anyone who’s been told by a chatbot that their ideas are brilliant is familiar with artificial intelligence sycophancy: its tendency to tell users what they want to hear. Sometimes it’s very explicit – “that is such...

A round of layoffs is underway at The Daily Wire, Barrett Media has confirmed. The first reports surfaced on Friday afternoon. Political reporter Cameron Arcand took to social media to share that he was included in the round of layoffs enacted. “I was impacted by layoffs today at The Daily Wire, so I am looking for opportunities in journalism/communications here in D.C.,” wrote Arcand. In a statement, The Daily Wire confirmed it was undergoing a round of layoffs. “Today, The Daily Wire made a difficult decision to restructure the organization, which included layoffs to a number of teams,” a company...

A single leaked hint exposed the CIA’s most puzzling code. But dozens of the world’s toughest ciphers are still waiting to be solved. Here’s what you’ll learn in this story: Last month, two journalists decoded part of the famous Kryptos sculpture in front of the CIA building. It’s the latest news in the cryptography world, as ciphers continue to attract code crackers in the CIA—and beyond. The Beale Cipher has attracted perhaps the most decryption enthusiasts of all time. Tens of thousands of people have tried to solve it, to get to the supposed location of a massive treasure. ========================================================================...

The Department of Defense on Friday confirmed new agreements with seven technology companies to deploy artificial intelligence tools across its classified networks, marking a broad expansion of its AI partnerships while excluding Anthropic from the program. The companies selected—OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Elon Musk’s xAI, and startup Reflection—will provide systems for what the Pentagon described as “lawful operational use.” Defense officials said the effort is aimed at building an “AI-first fighting force” and improving decision-making across military operations. The move significantly widens the Pentagon’s vendor base. Until recently, Anthropic’s Claude model had been the only AI system...

For example, somebody's refusing to exit a vehicle and cops sound like 3rd grade teachers trying to coax a child to drink his milk. Are they staged? Or did Rodney King do this?

Alex says goodbye.............. 6 Minute Video at Link............

Over the last decade or so, computer science seemed like a pretty safe bet when it came to choosing a major, but a recent Washington Post analysis reports that enrollment growth in computer science has begun to stall or decline as students rethink what artificial intelligence means for coding careers. Today we’re going to delve into why computer science majors are on the decline, along with what it could mean for students and recent graduates looking to start careers in computer science. Let’s begin. Why Computer Science Enrollment Is Cooling OffIt’s not as if tech jobs disappeared overnight, so what...

Are you ready for your car to decide if you’re fit to drive? If not, you’d better buckle up. A federal mandate declares new vehicles must have in-car surveillance for 2027 models onward that can decide if a person is fit to drive and can make the car inoperable via a so-called “kill switch.” And don’t count on brushing your teeth or gargling with Listerine to work around the driver monitor if you’ve had one too many. Most new cars won’t make the determination via breathalyzer, but infrared cameras continually monitoring potential impairment cues. They include pupil size, head movements,...

A café recently opened in a residential neighborhood of Stockholm that, with its avocado toast and frothy lattes, looks like a conventional spot, except for one distinctive feature: it is managed by artificial intelligence. At Andon Café, some tables are decorated with small plants, the walls are gray, and the décor is minimalist. There is a counter, and behind it works Kajetan Grzelczak, who was hired by “Mona,” an AI agent powered by Google Gemini. “Supply orders are not her strong point,” the young man says, pointing to the shelves behind him. The “wall of shame,” as he calls it,...

In February, workers at the company, Sama, told two Swedish newspapers they had witnessed glasses users going to the toilet and having sex. Less than two months later, Meta ended its contract with Sama, which Sama said would result in 1,108 workers being made redundant. Meta says it's because Sama did not meet its standards, a criticism Sama rejects. A Kenyan workers' organisation alleges Meta's decision was caused by the staff speaking out. Meta has not addressed that allegation but told BBC News in a statement it had "decided to end our work with Sama because they don't meet our...

AI-rmageddon is here.On Saturday (25), the founder of ‘Software as a Service platform’ (SaaS) PocketOS, Jer Crane, wrote an X article to warn others about the ‘systemic failures’ of flagship AI and digital services providers.Crane was led to write the public warning after an AI coding agent deleted his firm’s entire production database, and a cloud infrastructure provider’s API wiped all backups.This erased months of consumer data essential to the firm and its customers.Tom’s Hardware reported:“’Yesterday afternoon, an AI coding agent — Cursor running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6 — deleted our production database and all volume-level backups in a...

Mr. Goldstein is a professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in cybersecurity and artificial intelligenceAnthropic recently sent a shock wave through the cybersecurity world when it said its new artificial intelligence model, Claude Mythos, had exhibited an extraordinary ability to find previously unknown vulnerabilities in software — a hacker’s fantasy. Concern over the tool’s power caused Anthropic to restrict its release mainly to bigger companies, allowing them time to secure their software. What is everyone else supposed to do? Smaller companies, organizations, nonprofits and regular people are just as much at risk as larger companies. But they most likely lack...

In briefMozilla says Anthropic’s Claude Mythos identified 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox during testing.Anthropic is restricting the model to vetted partners through Project Glasswing because of cybersecurity risks.Researchers warn that the same capability could accelerate automated cyberattacks. For decades, attackers have had the advantage in cybersecurity. Artificial intelligence may be about to change that.In a blog post published on Tuesday, Firefox browser developer Mozilla said an early version of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI—which has drawn attention in recent weeks for its purported cybersecurity prowess—model helped identify 271 vulnerabilities in the browser during internal testing. Those bugs were patched this week.The results...

A California Democrat is facing backlash after hosting a Hamas-associated group at his office on Capitol Hill last week. Rep. Derek Tran welcomed a group of leaders from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as part of the "National Muslim Advocacy Day," an annual lobbying event organized by Muslim advocacy groups. CAIR, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, was recently designated as a terrorist organization by the state of Texas and Florida following accusations that the group supported funding for Hamas. The group has since filed defamatory lawsuits against Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis. Among those in attendance...

Anthropic just published a study mapping exactly which jobs its own AI is replacing right now. The workers most at risk are not who anyone expected. They are older. They are more educated. They earn 47% more than average. And they are nearly four times more likely to hold a graduate degree than the workers AI is not touching. The argument is straightforward. Anthropic built a new metric called "observed exposure." Not what AI could theoretically do. What it is actually doing right now in professional settings, measured against millions of real Claude conversations from enterprise users. For computer and...

Plenty of people are concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI. Two of our four kids are freelance graphic artists, and they are (legitimately) worried about their incomes being yanked as more people use AI for simple graphics chores like designing logos, and increasingly for more complicated work, like graphics for television programming and websites. It's a fair thing to be worried about, but as I have advised them both, that genie ain't going back in the bottle, so they'd best figure out how to work with it - or find another line of work. These kinds of...

Peter Thompson is co-founder and CEO of LucidLink, the cloud-native file streaming platform that enables instant, secure access to large files by streaming data on demand, allowing teams to access and edit complex filesets without downloading or syncing. I was 48 years old when I left my job and enrolled in the Entrepreneurial Studies program at Stanford. Most people at that stage of their careers are trying to reduce risk, not introduce it. They have steady income. They have dependents. In tech, the unspoken assumption is that if you were going to take a big swing, you should have done...

From software engineers to nontechnical staff, Google has urged its employees to fully embrace AI. And it seems like the push to use the tech has resulted in a major productivity leap.In a Wednesday blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that three-quarters of the company’s new code is AI-generated.“We’ve been using AI to generate code internally at Google for a while,” Pichai said. “Today, 75% of all new code at Google is now AI-generated and approved by engineers, up from 50% last fall.“We’re now shifting to truly agentic workflows. Our engineers are orchestrating fully autonomous digital task forces, firing...