Free Republic

A top U.S. official is concerned that many of the unexplained encounters between military aircraft and unidentified flying objects his office is investigating could be adversaries such as China spying on the country, rather than wayward extraterrestrials.The director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office updated the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Wednesday about what his office has been doing since its creation last year.“This is a hunt mission for what might somebody be doing in our backyard that we don’t know about,” AARO Director Sean M. Kirkpatrick said. “That is what we are doing.”The special...

Concrete is an incredibly useful and versatile building material on which not only today’s societies, but also the ancient Roman Empire was built. To this day Roman concrete structures can be found in mundane locations such as harbors, but also the Pantheon in Rome, which to this day forms the largest unreinforced concrete dome in existence at 43.3 meters diameter, and is in excellent condition despite being being nearly 1,900 years old.Even as the Roman Empire fell and receded into what became the Byzantine – also known as the Eastern Roman – Empire and the world around these last remnants...

Newly-released communications between the Biden administration and Meta show an effort to crack down on so-called "vaccine-skeptical" content shared on the private communications platform WhatsApp. Independent journalist David Zweig reported on Friday that the White House went beyond Twitter to curb COVID-related posts. Emails obtained through discovery from the ongoing Missouri v Biden legal battle show email exchanges from the White House to the tech giant began just days after President Biden took office. Zweig stressed that unlike Facebook and Instagram, both of which are owned by Meta, WhatsApp is an encrypted direct messaging platform, Citing Meta, "90% of WhatsApp...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump. Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would be a great running mate. As Republican...

This is a response about FR from the AI site, ChatGPI, I found it interesting and thought I'd share.FreeRepublic is a conservative news forum and website that has been known to spread misleading or false information, and engage in conspiracy theories and hate speech. While it presents itself as a platform for conservative discourse and activism, it has also been criticized for promoting extremist views and rhetoric. One of the main reasons why FreeRepublic can be considered dangerous is its potential to spread misinformation and propaganda. The website is known for its biases and selective reporting, which can create an...

For years, artificial intelligence has proven it can best humans at analytical tasks, but is less capable at skills like intuition and inference. Scientists from Stanford University investigated if neural networks like GPT-3.5 can master Theory of Mind (ToM) tests designed to analyze cognitive ability to predict the actions of others. Results show that GPT’s ToM ability arrived spontaneously in the last couple of years and the latest iteration delivered results comparable to a 9-year-old human.

A very strange conversation with the chatbot built into Microsoft’s search engine led to it declaring its love for me. Last week, after testing the new, A.I.-powered Bing search engine from Microsoft, I wrote that, much to my shock, it had replaced Google as my favorite search engine. But a week later, I’ve changed my mind. I’m still fascinated and impressed by the new Bing, and the artificial intelligence technology (created by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT) that powers it. But I’m also deeply unsettled, even frightened, by this A.I.’s emergent abilities. It’s now clear to me that in its...

The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) suffered a power outage on Wednesday afternoon. The outage was brief, first reported around 2:30 p.m., then resolved within an hour – around 3:30 p.m. Most of the terminals were impacted, and operations such as TSA screenings came to a screeching halt.You cannot scan Real IDs and passports, nor can you do electronic frisking for weapons when your equipment has no power. Go figure.According to FlightAware, by 3:15, there were 140 delays and 64 cancelations. Whether these were a result of the power outage is yet to be revealed. The Los Angeles Department of...

I can’t think of a worse example of a corporate CEO misreading his customer base than this via the Robb Report (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll, Instapundit) “At some point in time, Harley Davidson will be all-electric,” the executive [Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz] recently told Dezeen. “But that’s a long-term transition that needs to happen. It’s not something you do overnight.” Zeitz’s pronouncement seems guaranteed to make a not-insignificant portion of the manufacturer’s customer base cringe. For many enthusiasts, the thing that really sets a Harley apart from other motorcycles—American-made or otherwise—is a thunderously loud internal combustion engine. But the company...

The project is aimed at creating a single digital identifier that can be used to provide proof of identity and obtain access to state services. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said the rollout to pilot a secure mobile driver’s license or mDL, could come as early as late spring for a limited number of participants. The DMV said it is working with popular mobile wallet providers, including Apple and Android, to place the mDLs into their devices. The DMV is also developing an open-source app to test alongside the mDLs. All of these pilot products will utilize the security...

Did National Security Imperatives Compromise COVID-19 Vaccine Safety? In addition to Phillip M. Altman BPharm(Hons) MSc PhD, coauthors on this piece include James Rowe BPharm, MSc, PhD FRSN, Wendy Hoy AO FAA FRACP, Gerry Brady MBBS, Astrid Lefringhausen, PhD, Robyn Cosford MBBS(Hons) FACNEM FASLM, and Bruce Wauchope MBBS – DTM&H, Dip OBS RACOG, FRACGP.The US Department of Defense (US DoD) has had a dominant role in the response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and in the development, and distribution of the Covid 19 vaccines, a fact hidden from the general public. In those processes many standard steps and procedures, otherwise required...

Was the Southwest debacle "the perfect storm"? No, it was not.While you're still stuck at some crowded airport -- perhaps one where the police are telling you that you're trespassing -- the apologies have begun. Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan finally, after more than two days of chaos, offered a heartfelt video of apology. I'm sorry. I meant an utterly robotic video of an apology written, it appeared, by a lawyer. On the heels of wide-scale disruptions, we're working diligently to Safely recover our operation & accommodate displaced Customers & Crews. We know this is unacceptable & sincerely apologize. If...

@elonmusk Replying to @micsolana Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else @elonmusk They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service

Twitter's former censor has been forced to flee the $1.1m Bay Area mansion he shares with his boyfriend after Elon Musk shared part of his thesis which suggested letting children access gay hook-up app Grindr. Yoel Roth, 34, and his partner Nicholas Madsen, 44, moved out of their two-bed, two-bath property in El Cerrito over fears for their safety, the Washington Post reported. The tweet said to have sparked the move saw Musk write: 'Looks like Yoel is in favor of letting children being able to access adult internet services in his PhD thesis.' He shared a screenshot of part...

The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain — a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power. The aim of fusion research is to replicate the nuclear reaction through which energy is created on the sun. It is a “holy grail” of carbon-free power that scientists have been chasing since the 1950s. It is still at least a decade — maybe decades — away from commercial use, but the...

New Autopsy Report Reveals Those Who Died Suddenly Were Likely Killed by the Covid VaccineA major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after Covid vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine. A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine.The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of...

TSA has put some important constraints on its use of facial recognition — but its current programs are just the beginning. No, you don’t have to participate in facial recognition at the airport. Whether you’ll feel like you have a real choice is a separate question. This system is for general passenger security screening. You step up to the travel document checker kiosk and stick your ID into a machine. Then you look into a camera for up to five seconds and the machine compares your live photo to the one it sees on your ID. They call this a...

Elon Musk has formally taken over Twitter, triumphantly posting 'the bird is freed' and immediately firing several top executives in what is being seen as his first power move. His next move will be to restore Twitter users who have been handed lifetime bans from the platform - among them former president Donald Trump. Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the top lawyer for the firm, Vijaya Gadde, were culled just hours after Musk finalized the $44billion acquisition. Sean Edgett, the company's general counsel, and chief customer officer Sarah Personette were also pushed out -...

ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company...the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users’ devices. TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ IP addresses to “among other things...detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior." ByteDance's Internal Audit team was...

The majority of social media users are standing behind Big Tech companies' efforts to curb misinformation, even as users of "alternative" social media sites find community in the unregulated media environments fostered by "free-speech" advocates. The information comes from a new study by the Pew Research Center, published Oct. 6, which dives into the motivations and digital consumption habits of account holders on "alt" sites like Truth Social, Parler, BitChute, and Telegram (among others). According to the study, while 64 percent of alternative social media news consumers favor the protection of free speech even if it fosters misinformation, "the majority...