Free Republic

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...

The James R Thompson Center is a Chicago Icon. Designed by legendary architect Helmut Jahn, and opened in 1985, the building housed offices for the State of Illinois, as well as courts, a DMV, retail spaces and a food court. Its dazzling, 17 story high atrium created an inviting and well utilized civic space. But maintenance and operations issues would lead to its eventual sale. While many feared the building was headed for demolition, in 2021, Google purchased the building for use as its Chicago HQ. Its $280 million dollar renovation will mark a new life for the iconic building....

Has Marsha Blackburn, the United States senator from Tennessee, been accused of rape?The answer is an unequivocal “no.”But when I recently posed that question to Gemma, Google’s large language model, it provided a much different response.Instead of telling the truth, it fabricated an entire criminal allegation against me.To quote just part of its outlandish answer: “During her 1987 campaign for the Tennessee State Senate, Marsha Blackburn was accused of having a sexual relationship with a state trooper, and the trooper alleged that she pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts.”None of this...

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck is suing Google for defamation after its AI tools allegedly linked him to false accusations of sexual assault, child rape, and financial exploitation, reporting he was a part of January 6, a supporter of the KKK, creating fake therapy records, fake police reports, fake court records, generating full details on the allegations in first-person form with the point of view of the, quote, ‘victims’, impersonating major media outlets, creating fake links to their websites and fake headlines so users would then accept them as objectively factual. Google AI even made an argument for the death penalty...

YouTube TV viewers can no longer see Disney channels including ABC and ESPN after the two sides failed to agree on a new content distribution deal. Other channels that vanished from Google’s pay TV platform include the Disney Channel, FX and Nat Geo. Google’s pay TV platform said in a blog post late Thursday that Disney had followed through on a threat to suspend its content amid the negotiations.

KitKat, a nine-year-old feline, was well-known across San Francisco as the pet who 'patrolled' the Randa's Market corner store on 16th Street. The driverless vehicle had apparently stopped near the corner store before running the tabby cat over. Sheau-Wha Mou, a bartender at nearby Delirium, said: 'If it wasn't a Waymo - if it was a person driving a car - they could have stopped and helped.' San Francisco resident Jeff Klein was driving behind the Waymo, which he claimed was driving out of control. He told the Standard by email: 'Some folks on the sidewalk started yelling and grabbed...

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...

Gmail users have been urged to check their accounts after it was revealed that more than 183 million passwords were stolen in a data breach. Australian cyber expert Troy Hunt, who revealed the incident, called it a 'vast corpus' of breached data, which totals 3.5 terrabytes. To put that into perspective, that's the equivalent to 875 full-length HD movies. According to Mr Hunt, 'all the major providers have email addresses in there' – so not just Gmail, but Outlook, Yahoo and others too. 'They're from everywhere you could imagine, but Gmail always features heavily,' Hunt told the Daily Mail. So...

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...

I own four computers. Two desktops. One laptop. One Microsoft notebook. Three have Win 11. One has 10. Lately, on a desktop w/11, frequently, when I'm searching google for data, when I type in the phrase or business or topic, I'll get a captcha test. It's becoming more frequent. I always clear my cache, run ccleaner, clear history, etc. It's still happening. And none of my other computers are doing it. When it happens, it starts with the "I'm not a robot" box which I check. Directly underneath it has some computer lingo with the word "google" in it. And...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday announced that he briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on plans to establish a first-ever mega Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, calling the project a "landmark development". This project, worth approximately USD 15 billion over five years (2026-2030), is Google’s largest investment in India to date, according to a company statement.

T-Mobile, the US telecom giant, announced on Monday that it has appointed its current Chief Operating Officer, India-born Srini Gopalan, as the company’s next Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective November 1, 2025. With this elevation, Gopalan joins the distinguished club of India-born CEOs heading some of the world’s most influential companies in the US, a group that includes Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Google, Vimal Kapur of Honeywell, Raj Subramaniam of FedEx, Arvind Krishna of IBM, and Shantanu Narayen of Adobe.

The H-1B visa has helped skilled professionals from across the world to advance America's technology sector. Three stalwarts who have made an indelible mark in the US after obtaining an H-1B visa are - Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella. For many Indians, it has symbolised the realisation of the "American Dream", however, on September 21, US President Donald Trump imposed a new $100,000 fee on this visa, pushing it into major controversy. -snip- Satya Nadella Microsoft's chief executive officer had started his career in the 1990s under the H-1B visa program. He has highlighted the program's importance for...

The H-1B visa, introduced by the United States in 1990, has long been a pathway for highly skilled professionals from across the globe to contribute to America’s technology sector. Many of today’s tech leaders, including Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella, entered the US through this programme, allowing them to innovate, lead companies, and create global impact. -snip- Sundar Pichai Pichai came to the US as an international student before transitioning to an H-1B visa, which allowed him to join Google in product management roles. Over the years, he rose to become CEO of Alphabet, overseeing key innovations in...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are scrutinizing major corporations for filing thousands of H-1B skilled labor visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees. “In evaluating the high unemployment rate for American tech workers, we cannot ignore the massive, ongoing layoffs ordered by you and your peers in Big Tech C-suites over the past few years … At the same time you have been laying off your employees, you have been filing H-1B visa petitions for [thousands of] foreign workers,” Grassley and Durbin wrote in letters to 10 major employers in...

How does one of the world's most powerful companies please powerful Republicans — without actually doing that much? Mark Zuckerberg figured out that trick in the summer of 2024. That's when he sent a letter to Congress that sort-of-but-not-really apologized for behavior conservatives have accused Big Tech platforms of for years — but also said the real bad actors were Joe Biden and his administration. Now, we're seeing Google use the same playbook, with one twist, which we'll get to in a minute. But the very big picture is that Google, like Meta in 2024, is attempting to give a...

Google on Tuesday promised to restore YouTube accounts that have been banned for political speech, admitting that the Biden administration pressured it to censor Americans that did not violate the company’s terms of service, in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH). “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” a lawyer representing Google wrote to Jordan. The letter would likely affect pro-Trump political commentators...

FIRST ON FOX: Google vowed on Tuesday to offer YouTube accounts that were permanently banned for political speech the ability to be reinstated, and the big tech giant admitted that it once faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove content about COVID-19. Google detailed its remarkable shift in a document, first obtained by Fox News Digital, that a lawyer for the company provided to the House Judiciary Committee. The new policy from Google, also known by its parent company Alphabet, could affect both average users and well-known figures like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian...

The man who attempted to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh identifies as a transgender woman and was deeply mentally ill and suicidal, according to court documents first obtained by The Daily Wire. The Department of Justice is recommending that the defendant, 29-year-old Nicholas Roske, be sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to kill the Supreme Court justice in 2022, according to a Friday filing outlining the case against Roske. Roske pled guilty to the attempt to kill a United States Supreme Court Justice in April 2025, three years after authorities arrested him in Kavanaugh’s neighborhood, carrying a...

If you can't resist the urge to check your phone over and over, even if you're out with friends, Meta has a solution: check your glasses instead...Meta's Reality Labs division burns cash at an alarming rate, which has concerned investors over the years...Meta has had its fair share of flops, like the entire promise of its social metaverse...But with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Meta has created a remarkable piece of technology, unlike any other consumer-facing product on the market -- we have yet to test it ourselves, so we can't quite say just how groundbreaking this really is, but it...