Free Republic

I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the fact that western military analysts – even among those not burdened with the epidemic strain of virulent antipathy towards Russia – have not spoken much (if at all) about what I consider to be quite arguably the most impressive revelation of the war in Ukraine. In addition to imposing a virtual “you fly, you die” rule against the Ukrainian Air Force and the various drones they employ, the Russians are, with a formidable array of air defense systems of varying capacities, routinely shooting down: ballistic missiles, MLRS rockets, HARMS anti-radiation missiles, and even artillery...

While in graduate school Matt Schwartz had an epiphany. At the time, he was learning about the food system as part of Stanford University’s Earth Program and also participating in an internship with food tech investor Dave Friedberg, and it was this combination of advanced education with a front-row seat to food tech innovation that helped him to see the future. “That’s when I came to believe that things were heading towards fresh,” Schwartz told me this week in a Zoom interview. “That we need to move towards a more nutrient-dense form of eating, a less calorie dense form of...

There are at least two big missing pieces in the CHIPS Act of 2022, the US$52 billion subsidy for US-based semiconductor manufacturers that has just been sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. The first missing piece is definitional. There is no statement in the Act of what constitutes an “advanced” semiconductor. Second, not only is there no priority on military capability, but there is also no requirement or guidance for protecting newly developed technology funded under the Act. To begin with the question of what constitutes an “advanced” semiconductor, Intel is investing $20 billion in a new manufacturing...

When US national laboratories develop a new technology, Uncle Sam is supposed to ensure it is commercialized in America. But that's not what happened with what's said to be a breakthrough battery design. A vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) design created at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has wound up in the hands of a Chinese company, which has since gone on to become the largest manufacturer of VRFBs in the world. The US, which owns the patent and invested $15 million of taxpayer dollars into its development, reportedly has no domestic production site for the novel VRFBs. That's not...

A Google developer was recently fired for revealing that the tech giant’s AI bot had a mind of its own. The trigger that made him realize that the technology was sentient was a joke it made about Israel not belonging to any religion. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, former Google developer Blake Lemoine explained how he arrived at the conclusion that Google’s AI system, LaMDA was sentient and how a witty response about Israel being run by a philosophy based on a science fiction movie. As part of the process, Lemoine would continually challenge artificial intelligence with nuanced questions...

One of the most enigmatic, sensational, and misguided thinkers of the last 10 years is Israeli historian and pop philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. His book Sapiens, published in English in 2015, sold over a million copies as it told the story of mankind’s evolution. His 2017 book Homo Deus predicts a transhumanist future, a world where technology fundamentally reshapes what kind of entity human beings are. “We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls. We are now hackable animals,” he told attendees at the 2020 World Economic Forum annual meeting. “By hacking organisms,...

Prior to my career selling 'High Tech Printed Circuit Boards' (PCB's), I started in sales with a company in Long Island, NY, packaging Uninterrupted Power Supplies utilizing Nickel Cadmium Storage Batteries. Somehow, I still receive tech bulletins and publications from the industry. And recently received this and thought it may be interesting to others as well. Very Informative. Do Enjoy! The writer.. What is a battery?' I think Tesla said it best when they called it an Energy Storage System. That's important. They do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants,...

A report published at the end of May by NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, notes that the official statistics bureau of Norway will soon track most grocery store purchases made in the Scandinavian country, a development that should serve as a warning to Americans about the growing trend in Western nations to expand surveillance and tracking of everyday citizens. In an article titled “Statistics Norway demands to know exactly what Norwegians buy in the grocery store,” reporter Martin Gundersen wrote that Statistics Norway has “ordered the grocery chains NorgesGruppen, Coop, Bunnpris and Rema 1000 to share all their receipt data...

At its annual re:Mars conference today in Las Vegas, Amazon’s Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, announced a spate of new and upcoming features for the company’s smart assistant. The most head turning of the bunch was a potential new feature that can synthesize short audio clips into longer speech. In the scenario presented at the event, the voice of a deceased loved one (a grandmother, in this case), is used to read a grandson a bedtime story. Prasad notes that, using the new technology, the company is able to accomplish some very impressive audio output...

Australian scientists have created the world's first-ever quantum computer circuit – one that contains all the essential components found on a classical computer chip but at the quantum scale.

Changing your idea of what robots can do – that’s the slogan of Boston Dynamics. Founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert as a spin-off company from MIT, its early days were spent making training videos for the navy. Only later did the company begin delving into the world of robots – amassing a level of expertise unsurpassed throughout the industry.In fact, Boston Dynamics’s achievements look like the opening montage from a science fiction movie. Starting with the cumbersome BigDog – a quadruped robot designed for the military – the company has seen each new generation of robots surpass the last...

In early 2020, the Global Elite launched its long-planned coup to capture control of the human population by killing off a substantial proportion and technologically imprisoning those left alive as transhuman slaves. A primary intended outcome of this agenda is to enable the Elite to own and completely control use of the Earth’s remaining resources. Using the World Economic Forum (WEF) as its primary agent, and with the complicity of key international organizations and all national governments (after some hiccoughs requiring the assassination of five national presidents), the Global Elite has gone about progressively implementing the many components of its...

From Talos, the giant bronze automaton who guarded the princess Europa in ancient Greek myths, to Cylons and Terminators, the idea of artificial humans has both fascinated and creeped us out for centuries. Now, we're closer than ever to making a robot look remarkably like a human, with the development of living robot skin. This icky-looking substance is water repellent, self healing, and has a texture just like our own skin. Because it's actually made of human skin cells. "I think living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures since it is...

He was draggin’ that wagon. An artist created a virtual traffic jam in Berlin by pulling a wagon with 99 cellphones in it. Simon Weckert posted a YouTube video with a split screen that showed him pulling a small red wagon through a mostly empty street. It also showed Google Maps had lit the street up red, falsely signifying that the barren thoroughfare was packed with traffic. <0p> “Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic,”...

"When light spreads in an inhomogeneous medium, it undergoes scattering. This effect quickly transforms a compact, directed beam into a diffuse glow, and is familiar to all of us from summer clouds and autumn fog alike," Professor Alexander Szameit of the Institute for Physics at the University of Rostock describes the starting point of his team's considerations. Notably, it is the microscopic density distribution of a material that dictates the specifics of scattering. Szameit continues, "The fundamental idea of induced transparency is to take advantage of a much lesser-known optical property to clear a path for the beam..." This second...

Modern Technology is often a wonderful thing making everyone much more productive. However, often times it comes back to bite you in the rear end, this couple didn't realize their camera was on while using Zoom to view a bat mitzvah. The young lady who was celebrating her Bat Mitzvah certainly has a story to tell for the rest of her life. To the Middle-Aged Couple, 45 MINUTES, really...

According to new research, deep learning models based on artificial intelligence can identify someone’s race merely by looking at their X-rays, which would be impossible for a human doctor looking at the same photos. The findings raise several serious concerns concerning AI’s role in medical diagnosis, assessment, and treatment: Could computer algorithms mistakenly apply racial bias when analyzing photographs like these? An international team of health researchers from the United States, Canada, and Taiwan tested their AI on X-ray images that the computer program had never seen before after training it with hundreds of thousands of existing X-ray images annotated...

An alien species is headed for planet Earth and we have no reason to believe it will be friendly. Some experts predict it will get here within 30 years, while others insist it will arrive far sooner. Nobody knows what it will look like, but it will share two key traits with us humans – it will be intelligent and self-aware. No, this alien will not come from a distant planet – it will be born right here on Earth, hatched in a research lab at a major university or large corporation. I am referring to the first artificial general...

Vast regions of Japan’s digital universe are stuck in the early aughts. Online banking, airline booking, major newspapers, you name it: Services that have been streamlined by the digital revolution in much of the world are, in Japan, still plagued by convoluted drop-down menus that lead to dead ends, and detailed forms that need to be printed, filled out by pen, and even returned by fax. In a country that justifiably prides itself on excellent customer service, something happens when it comes to relaying information through a user interface displayed on a flat screen. Japan’s high-quality, mostly physical public infrastructure...

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has approved Uganda’s plan to build East Africa’s first nuclear power station. Next step: getting $100 billion… China enters the chat… A statement from the government of Uganda said Aline des Cloizeaux, the IAEA’s director for Africa, had told Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni of the approval on Monday. Des Cloizeaux is reported to have said: “We have concluded that Uganda is ready for the plant. We in the agency are ready for all the support through training so that the project becomes reality.” An International IAEA team of experts conducted an eight-day mission to...