Free Republic

The FBI’s takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 unless paid a ransom. LockBit claims the cache includes documents tied to the county’s ongoing criminal prosecution of former President Trump, but court watchers say teaser documents published by the crime gang suggest a total leak of the Fulton County data could put lives at risk and jeopardize a number of other...

I belonged to a photography forum that has a section where members can discuss politics. About a 50/50 mix of right/left with the leftists being the usual hate filled, nasty, TDS sufferers.I loved getting the better of them with facts and logic. After one really personal, insult filled rant against me, my temper got the better of me and I responded in kind and me not him got banned. I tried rejoining under a new name and was barred. I deleted all my browsing history and cookies, but was still banned.Then I decided to try a VPN, but was still...

I have always used Brave browser to do my online banking. Now, when I try to log in using Brave, all my login attempts are rejected and I have to resort to using Safari, which works. I tried to contact Support at Brave, but they have their website so obfuscated as to make it impossible to ask for support (which I'm sure is their intent). Has anyone experienced a similar problem, that Brave is now messing up logging in to a particular website that always used to work?

"War. War never changes."This actually looks pretty good. It's got a strong cast coming together also. Anything with Michael Emerson is bound to be good.

AI hubris has become America’s chief source of good news. Over the past year, artificial intelligence surpassed bitcoin as mankind’s most easily imaginable pathway to quick riches, shortened work weeks, ingenious solutions to every problem, and endless satisfactions. An AI-assisted world supposedly will revolutionize the way we do business, enabling high school graduates, even mediocre ones, to do the grunt work of Wharton MBAs. It will make government workers heroically efficient, fine print more readable and Shakespeare more accessible to the masses. AI will allow paralegals to leverage the law library as effectively as Ivy-educated Supreme Court clerks, homemakers to...

A child psychiatrist from North Carolina has been jailed for over 40 years for horrific child porn offenses using artificial intelligence (AI). David Tatum, 41, reportedly took photos of children before altering them into child porn using AI technology. Tatum was convicted in May on the following counts: One count of the production of child pornography One count of the transportation of child pornography One count of the possession of child pornography Tatum was sentenced to 40 years in prison, followed by years of supervised release. The Blaze reported: The judge also ordered Tatum to pay restitution in an amount...

18GB of RAM in a smartphone? It's no secret that modern Android phones often pack unnecessary specs - I'm looking at you, 108MP cameras and 4K screens - and the new Nubia Red Magic 7 Pro brings some more. This is a new gaming phone from a company that's made quite a few at this point (hence the '7' in the name), so you'd think it'd know exactly what gamers need. Well, what they apparently need is more RAM than your average gaming PC. That's right, the newly-unveiled Red Magic 7 Pro comes in a few configurations, and they top...

You have already read 0%Do you love Linux because of its user-friendly, exceptionally secure, heavy-duty, and open-source, making it easy to customize and maintain? If so, you’re not alone.It is no wonder that Linux has captured the lion's share of the IT market. Business leaders and IT decision makers have poured their trust into Linux and prefer it for almost every business use case, and today, ZDNet reports that 96.3% of the top web servers run on Linux. The downside is that attacks on Linux are steadily rising, as cybercriminals have come to recognize the OS as an increasingly viable...

The Raspberry Pi 5 arrives in October with both a leap in performance and an incremental price rise. But will you be able to get your hands on one?Originally aimed at hobbyists and educators, the Raspberry Pi has evolved into a serious bit of kit over the years despite its diminutive size. The latest generation has continued that evolution into a machine that can chew through most productivity workloads while retaining many of the expansion options beloved by its customers. However, elements have also been dropped, and the architecture remains more evolutionary than revolutionary.First, the good news. Performance is impressive...

Wife, son and I are doing the permanent RV life. TBH, the hardest part has been the downsizing; you never truly understand just hom much you accumulate over 30 years of marriage until you do something like this. As it stands, we are investigating mobile internet services and are seriously considering Starlink

Harro everynyan. How are you fine sank you.I found out the hard way, it is critical that each of you have a disaster recovery plan in place, as regards your personal computer and important emails.One of my computers lost function of its graphics card. It boots fine but I cannot see anything on the monitor except for brief moments. The monitor is working fine; its definitely the graphics card. I was in the process of transferring to a new computer and was about halfway finished. I was able to log into my most important email account (the one just about...

John Warnock, who invented the PDF and co-founded Adobe Systems, has died. He was 82. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and computer scientist died Saturday surrounded by family, Adobe said in a statement. The company didn't give a cause of death or say where Warnock died.“John’s brilliance and innovations left an indelible mark on Adobe, the technology industry and the world,” Adobe said. Warnock worked for Xerox before he and colleague Charles Geschke created a company around a rejected idea in 1982. Nearly a decade later, Warnock outlined an early version of the Portable Document Format, or PDF, transforming the way...

AI and Microdirectives [2023.07.21] Imagine a future in which AIs automatically interpret—and enforce—laws. All day and every day, you constantly receive highly personalized instructions for how to comply with the law, sent directly by your government and law enforcement. You’re told how to cross the street, how fast to drive on the way to work, and what you’re allowed to say or do online—if you’re in any situation that might have legal implications, you’re told exactly what to do, in real time. Imagine that the computer system formulating these personal legal directives at mass scale is so complex that no...

I have media files stored on a PC running Windows 10 Pro and also available for storage on a PC or laptop running Linux Mint. Photos, music files, videos, PDF books, and other eBooks. I would like to be able to access those files and view/listen to them on an iPad. It sounds like this is possible, but I was wondering if anyone has suggested ways to do this, along with any pitfalls to watch out for.

Welcome to my guide on how to navigate the oh so exciting world of AI with ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence created by OpenAI. Let's break down the basics in this easy-to-understand guide for some of us older Freepers who don't feel like slaying another dang dragon. ## Prompts A prompt is simply a question or statement that you give to ChatGPT. The AI then responds based on what you said. It's like starting a conversation with a friend. For example, you might ask, "What's the weather like today?" or tell it, "Tell me a joke." For some fun, try asking...

Twitter’s traffic has plunged since billionaire Elon Musk took control of the social media platform last fall, as longtime tweeters are migrating to alternative platforms such as Meta’s Threads. In a tweet Sunday, Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, an internet services company, posted a chart showing Twitter has been on the decline since the start of 2023. Twitter’s skidding numbers arrive as Meta officially launches Threads, which is widely seen as a new competitor to Twitter and debuted last week. As of Monday, Twitter is currently ranked 37 in Cloudflare’s list of top 100 domains, which coincides with the unpopular...

I run my own DNS servers and Mail server, I have purchased a few battery backups that are available, they work but they only work for a limited time. With one backup per computer, which I have 3, they will run for about 45 minutes if the power goes out. None of them work properly with Windows Server 19 to shut down system then restart when the power comes back on. I have had to make multiple emergency trips to my home in Arizona where they are setup, just to turn them back on. Yes it sucks. I decided to...

I’ve only been in an ICU once as a patient. I developed sudden chest pain and went to the ER. The funny thing about chest pain is that it gets you right to the front of the line at the ER. I had been there on a previous visit with a deep cut on my hand and had to sit with my hand over a garbage can so I wouldn’t get blood all over the floor. As it later turned out, the chest pain was actually caused by an ulcer that was creating reflux. The ulcer was caused by my...

That anonymous internet persona with an anime cartoon avatar in your Discord chat might actually be a contractor sent to spy on you. Enter the world of “threat intelligence.” It’s the term of art for a growing set of surveillance and security firms that create fake online personas to infiltrate and scrape data from private corners of the internet. The industry provides corporate and government clients with insight into conversations on private, invite-only Discord chats, WhatsApp groups, Reddit forums, and dark web message boards to help those powerful customers keep tabs on a variety of potential threats, from political hacktivists...

A few related questions for our FReeper computer gurus: Has anyone tried upgrading a fairly competent* Windows computer with an older processor from Win 10 Pro to Win 11 Pro? Are significant "tricks involved?** Then were there any subsequent problems with following updates (immediately after installation of Win 11 Pro?) *The 1st computer in question has an i7 6600u processor, 16gb DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVME SSD. (Pretty quick machine.) Then my immediate family & I have a few slightly "lesser" Win 10 Pro machines (which run great, and is as my custom I'll likely keep Win 10 Pro...