Free Republic

I missed this 60 Minutes story when it aired last night so maybe you did too. The “five eyes” are a group of five countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) formed after World War II as a joint intelligence gathering operation. Last week, leading figures from all five countries met in Palo Alto, California to spread the word about a threat they don’t think most people working in US technology fully understand. That threat is the unprecedented level of espionage directed by China at technology companies around the world. China is quite literally trying to steal anything and...

Senstar (SNT) SimplyvWall Street report from October 2, 2023 BEFORE all hell broke loose in Israel. The company is based in Israel and has leading-edge intrusion detection technology. Wonder if the Israelis were using them before. Someone sure noticed the stock today. Wow.

The Energy Department is announcing a $325 million investment in new battery types that can help turn solar and wind energy into 24-hour power it said Friday morning. The funds will be distributed among 15 projects in 17 states and the Red Lake Nation, a Native American tribe based in Minnesota. Here is some of what is being funded, through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021: A project led by Xcel Energy in partnership with long-term battery manufacturer Form Energy will deploy two 100-megawatt battery systems at the site of coal plants that are closing in Becker, Minnesota and Pueblo,...

— Yes, it needs guardrails, but it also offers big opportunities, notes former Microsoft executiveArtificial intelligence (AI) has an image problem when it comes to healthcare, but it actually represents a big opportunity to improve things, Tom Lawry said at the Population Health Colloquium here. "When you think about everything that you've been reading, whether it's lay journals or clinical journals, there's a lot of talk about the [AI] threat, that we should go slower," Lawry, managing director at Second Century Technology in Seattle, said. The speed of change is hard to keep up with and many things still need...

In total, they visited 17 different doctors over three years. But Alex still had no diagnosis that explained all his symptoms. An exhausted and frustrated Courtney signed up for ChatGPT and began entering his medical information, hoping to find a diagnosis. “I went line by line of everything that was in his (MRI notes) and plugged it into ChatGPT,” she says. “I put the note in there about ... how he wouldn’t sit crisscross applesauce. To me, that was a huge trigger (that) a structural thing could be wrong.” She eventually found tethered cord syndrome and joined a Facebook group...

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) outlined the state’s plan to require guns sold in the state be outfitted with micrcostamping technology to leave an “identifying marker” on spent shell casings. Two things: 1) The technology only applies to semiautomatic firearms, as they are the guns that eject shell casings after each shot. Therefore, criminals who use revolvers will immediately circumvent the microstamping issue. 2). Maryland had a microstamping requirement for 15 years and ended it after spending $5 million to maintain the microstamping database but solving no crimes. Yet NJ AG Platkin said, “This amazing yet straightforward technology...

The U.S. is turning to a much-criticized source as it races to secure supplies of battery metals to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles. To do so, it is homing in on cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s informal mining sector, where miners, sometimes including children, often work with no safety equipment in dangerous, hand-dug mines. Congo supplies around 70% of the world’s cobalt, a key metal in the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs, with about a third of that coming from these so-called artisanal miners. The U.S. Agency for International Development said earlier this year that it...

Imagine a future when earth’s inhabitants are not humans, but cyborgs—robotlike beings with both biological and mechanical components. With exosuits for added strength, cybernetic arms and legs, surgically-implanted earbuds for advanced hearing, bionic eyes for X-ray and infrared vision, and digitally-enhanced brains, these “superbots” think and act at lightning speed. Nanobots inside their bodies work continually to maintain and repair organs and tissues. Equally impressive are their “organic parts,” which have been genetically engineered for health.

Who would you trust more in a high-stress, high-stakes military excursion? A trained human soldier with the limitations of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and emotion—or a soulless, autonomous artificial intelligence system acting according to its programming? That’s a question militaries around the world—including the US military—are already facing as AI quickly advances into every industry. But the big question is this: who gets to do the programming? So what exactly is autonomous AI when it comes to the military? Well, according to a Christian Post article, the Congressional Research Service states these are: a special class of weapon systems...

The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners came out blasting facial recognition systems for being racist Thursday night. It is the latest fallout for the false arrest of a pregnant woman for a carjacking she had nothing to do with, leading to a current lawsuit. A vote to ban facial recognition for the Detroit police failed tonight, which would have kept the department from using it for a year. "This technology appears to be 'techno-racism,' it’s the new Jim Crow that’s falsely arresting innocent people here in Detroit," said Commissioner Willie Burton."This is the third incident here in the city of...

A major insurance company used keystroke technology on an employee’s work laptop to test whether she was working her designated hours — and it ended terribly for her. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has rejected an unfair dismissal application brought by former Insurance Australia Group (IAG) consultant Suzie Cheikho, finding she was fired for a “valid reason of misconduct.” According to the commission’s published finding, Cheikho was responsible for creating insurance documents, meeting regulatory timelines, and monitoring “work from home compliance,” among other significant roles. Ironically, her own work-from-home performance marked the end of her 18-year career with the company....

The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators. Witnesses said the fight, in November 2021, started when men aligned with the event’s organizers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong. On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial...

Global cobalt demand soared with the advent of cell phones and laptop computers. It exploded with the arrival of electric vehicles and now is skyrocketing in tandem with government EV mandates and subsidies. Cobalt improves battery performance, extends driving range and reduces fire risks. Demand will reach stratospheric heights if governments remain obsessed with climate change and Net Zero. States and nations would have to switch to electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; end coal and gas electricity generation; convert gas furnaces, water heaters and stoves to electricity; and provide alternative power for windless, sunless periods. Electricity generation would triple...

Gunpowder by Jack Kelly is the best history on the subject this writer has encountered. It is not a “how to” book, although the essentials of how to make black powder are covered in enough detail that one could do so. The book elaborates on the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of persons who died while making black powder over the roughly 800 years of its primacy. “Gunpowder” starts with an examination of the long development of the “fire drug” in China, from about 1050 A.D. to 1230 A.D. During this 180-year period, Chinese “fire drug” producers learned to increase...

Ultrahigh Energy Storage in 2D High-κ Perovskites. Credit: Minoru Osada, Nagoya University Researchers have developed an advanced dielectric capacitor using nanosheet technology, providing unprecedented energy storage density and stability. This breakthrough could significantly enhance renewable energy usage and electric vehicle production. Groundbreaking Dielectric Capacitor Development A research group, led by Nagoya University in Japan, has innovatively applied nanosheet technology to create a dielectric capacitor. This development holds significant implications for advanced electronic and electrical power systems. Innovations in energy storage technology are vital for the effective use of renewable energy and the mass production of electric vehicles. The dielectric capacitor...

Robots presented at an AI forum said on Friday they expected to increase in number and help solve global problems, and would not steal humans' jobs or rebel against us. But, in the world's first human-robot press conference, they gave mixed responses on whether they should submit to stricter regulation. The nine humanoid robots gathered at the 'AI for Good' conference in Geneva, where organizers are seeking to make the case for Artificial Intelligence and the robots it is powering to help resolve some of the world's biggest challenges such as disease and hunger.

It looks like the efforts of both state and federal governments' to force electric vehicles (EVs) on consumers will be costly without providing any environmental advantages. Everyone knows that EVs are far more expensive to own than gasoline-powered vehicles. The premise that these higher costs will buy a cleaner and cooler environment is erroneous. In an effort to make EVs seem more economical, the federal government offers a $7500 tax credit to those who buy one. Even with this added incentive for purchasers, manufacturers are still taking big losses on every vehicle sold. Ford, for example, currently losses $58,000 on...

In 2024 Republicans cannot "out-fraud" the left, cannot "out-ballot-harvest" them, cannot "out-lawfare" them, cannot "out-media" them, cannot "out–contribution mule" them, cannot "out–Justice Department" them...but sure as hell can out-compute them — and that may do it. The left owns the election apparatus — voting equipment, ballot-manufacturing, vagrant habitats, election commissions, media intimidation of judges not to look at election fraud and driving out any lawyer who raises a valid case. Electioneering, by both sides, currently runs 1970s technology. Leftists make good use of obsolete relational tech; Republicans, not so much. In 2024, there is an opportunity to out-compute the left....

There's a simple application that can be installed to give that sound a boost. This application is called EasyEffects and is the successor to PulseEffects. EasyEffects supports the new PulseAudio replacement, Pipewire -- and includes all the right plugins you need to make your digital sounds come alive. ... With EasyEffects you can adjust things like: Blend Harmonics Scope EQ Balance Levels In many cases, all you have to do is add/remove different plugins until you get the exact sound you want. Many of the plugins allow you to fine-tune the sound, but I've found that some of them are...

One of the central mysteries of the pandemic is why countries worldwide simultaneously decided to jettison a century of experience managing respiratory-virus pandemics, usually with an approach akin to the focussed-protection model proposed by the Great Barrington Declaration, in favour of lockdowns and school closures. While the cause is undoubtedly multifactorial, one of the underappreciated enabling factors is the availability of technologies like Zoom, which made lockdown economically manageable for one crucial subset of the population – the laptop class. While video-conferencing technologies have been around for decades, it is only in recent years that they have matured to the...