Free Republic

French president Emmanuel Macron has claimed the lawsuit he and his wife have filed against right-wing American influencer Candace Owens was put forward to 'defend his honour.' Since last year, 36-year-old Owens has espoused a crackpot theory to her four million YouTube subscribers that Macron's 72-year-old wife Brigitte was born a man. Owens launched a podcast series called Becoming Brigitte, in which she delves into the conspiracy. She claims that Brigitte was born under the name 'Jean-Michel Trogneux.' Her actions led Macron and his wife to file a lawsuit in the US against Owens in July, claiming that they had...

Ford’s $30,000 electric pickup aims to reinvent its future, but its past may weigh it down. Last week, under the blistering heat of an August day at a Ford plant in Louisville, Ky., Ford CEO Jim Farley, a self-proclaimed lifelong petrol head, announced a $30,000 electric pickup truck slated for release in 2027. Farley pitched it as a new “Model T moment,” a breakthrough meant to reinvent how cars and trucks are assembled. The company hopes the move will help Ford remain a profitable U.S. automaker despite rising tariffs, softening EV demand, higher labor costs, and a political climate that...

Gates is calling on global innovators to harness A.I. against the growing Alzheimer’s crisis.More than 7 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease—a figure expected to rise as life expectancies increase. To help accelerate progress, Bill Gates and a coalition of partners are backing a new A.I. competition designed to spur breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and related dementia research. Unveiled today (Aug. 19) by the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative), the competition will award a $1 million prize to a team that successfully utilizes agentic A.I. to develop innovative solutions. The resulting tools will be made publicly available...

Artificial intelligence is… pretty smart, no question about it, but nothing beats thorough research, especially in key situations. When Spanish influencer couple Mery Caldass and Alejandro Cid booked a dream trip to Puerto Rico, they didn’t expect their getaway to turn into a viral disaster. All of that happened because of the almighty ChatGPT. “ChatGPT, do we need a visa for Puerto Rico?” What happened nextIn a TikTok video that went viral, Mery is seen in tears at the airport while her partner Alejandro tries to keep her spirits up. 17-year-old arrested over spanish wildfires “I always do research, but...

AI-related fraud attempts surged by nearly 200 per cent in 2024, according to a cybersecurity firm. CNA takes a closer look at deepfake voice phishing, an increasingly common method used by scammers.“Hi, how have you been? So I heard about this restaurant that just recently opened up. Want to go check it out the next time we meet?” These were the innocuous sentences used in a simple experiment to find out if people in my social circle could distinguish my real voice from an AI-cloned version. The result was some confusion - but more importantly, the ease with which the...

1/ Meet Gaurav Trivedi, an Indian scammer who impersonates Microsoft support and then rips off innocent vulnerable people. He tried to scam me......but instead of paying him money, I hacked into his laptop and turned on his live webcam feed. 2/ Gaurav runs a classic Microsoft tech support scam out of his apartment complex in Raebareli, India. It starts with a fake popup that locks your screen, blares a loud warning sound, and tells you to call “Microsoft” immediately or risk losing all your data.

Most people not deeply involved in the artificial intelligence frenzy may not have noticed, but perceptions of AI’s relentless march toward becoming more intelligent than humans, even becoming a threat to humanity, came to a screeching halt Aug. 7.That was the day when the most widely followed AI company, OpenAI, released GPT-5, an advanced product that the firm had long promised would put competitors to shame and launch a new revolution in this purportedly revolutionary technology.As it happened, GPT-5 was a bust. It turned out to be less user-friendly and in many ways less capable than its predecessors in OpenAI’s...

An investigation has been launched into the death of a French streamer known for extreme challenges. Raphaël Graven, also known as Jeanpormanove, was found dead at a residence in Contes, a village north of Nice, prosecutors said. The 46-year-old had been subject to bouts of violence and sleep deprivation during streams, and died in his sleep during a live broadcast, local media reported. Confirming a judicial investigation was under way, French government minister Clara Chappaz described Mr Graven's death and violence he endured as an "absolute horror", adding he had been "humiliated" for months. A spokesperson for Kick - a...

Experts have warned hackers recently used a generative AI tool to replicate several web pages belonging to the Brazilian government in an effort to steal sensitive personal information and money. The fake websites were examined by Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers, who discovered multiple indicators of the use of AI to generate code. The websites look almost identical to the official sites, with the hackers using SEO poisoning to make the websites appear higher in search results, and therefore seem more legitimate. AI generated government websites In the campaign examined by ThreatLabz, two websites were spotted mimicking important government portals. The first...

Animal rights advocacy group PETA is requesting that Nintendo redesign an animal character in its new game, "Mario Kart World," due to a nose ring.Released in June, "Mario Kart World" for the Nintendo Switch 2 console features a cow character with a brass nose ring. On Friday, PETA shared an image of the anthropomorphic cow character on its social media channels, accompanied by a message directed at Nintendo."Hey Nintendo. Let the cow race free -- remove the nose ring!" the graphic read. "It's not a style choice -- it's a cruel tool used to control and hurt cows in the...

“ Artificial Intelligence does the work of many minds at once. Will human creativity flourish or fail? Will we all lose our jobs?” “Artificial Intelligence will make us useless slaves. We must stop these abuses before they start!” “A.I. will create killer robots! We’re doomed!” I have heard various versions of the above concerns regarding the rise of robots, the growth of artificial intelligence, and the broader concerns about the moral and ethical dilemmas facing humanity as technological innovation advances — and then accelerates. The gloom around A.I. is understandable but incorrect. Technological innovation has always served as a winnowing...

Smart and dumber Here’s something used car dealers and private sellers won’t shout from the rooftops. The average new car has 1,400 to 1,500 semiconductor chips. And high-end EVs? Try 3,000. Those computer chips power everything from heated seats to emergency crash alerts. The problem: When the car’s network or software support ends, so do those fancy features. We’ve been here before. Remember the 3G shutdown in 2022? Overnight, millions of cars lost remote start, navigation and emergency call functions. Owners of certain Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Toyota and Lexus models from 2012–2019 suddenly found their “smart” features dead in...

Over 56,000 hair dryers sold exclusively through major online retailers pose a deadly electrocution risk due to missing safety features, exposing how America’s e-commerce giants failed to protect families from hazardous products. Story Snapshot 56,300 Remington hair dryers recalled for lacking critical electrocution protection devices Products sold exclusively online through Walmart, Target, and Amazon marketplaces from March 2024 to June 2025 No injuries reported yet, but CPSC warns of serious electrocution risk if devices contact water while plugged in Recall highlights dangerous gaps in online marketplace safety oversight and product vetting Federal Agency Steps In After Safety Breach The U.S....

A New York City influencer and popular TikToker admitted to filming and laughing at a toddler forced to smoke a vape by her pal after her years-old video of the disturbing incident resurfaced online. Fiona Jordan, a 23-year-old with nearly 600,000 followers on TikTok, apologized after she was lambasted online for the shocking clip. In the video, the tyke leans into a vape offered to him by Jordan’s friend and takes a hit before he breathes out a visible cloud of smoke and descends into a coughing fit. The young boy — whom the pair was babysitting — flashes confused...

Quote of the week: “Bitcoin is a remarkable cryptographic achievement, and the ability to create something that is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value.” - Eric Schmidt, former CEO and executive chairman of Google. Back in December of last year, we mentioned how institutional adoption of Bitcoin could change the narrative. It seems that the narrative is playing out. Since we wrote that piece, we now have endowments, corporations, and the U.S. government openly allocating capital to bitcoin (or at least planning to). So this week, we’re going to look at the regulatory changes, how adoption has...

From Fiat Everything to Real EverythingThe infrastructure is now visible to those willing to see it. The systematic replacement of natural systems with artificial ones has reached into every domain—money, food, health, education, information. What began as isolated changes has revealed itself as a coordinated operation: the complete substitution of reality with decree, ownership with access, competence with credentials.The mathematical engineering of ownership out of reach becomes clear—from 52% of 30-year-olds owning homes in 1950 to a projected 13% by 2025. Extraction was rebranded as liberation—the subscription economy that converts your $3,000 monthly into someone else’s equity while you build...

New research shows attackers could partially transcribe calls by sensing tiny earpiece vibrations with off-the-shelf radar In A Nutshell Researchers at Penn State built “WirelessTap,” a proof-of-concept that uses millimeter-wave radar to detect tiny vibrations from smartphone earpieces during calls. AI transcription of these signals reached up to 59.25% word accuracy at 20 inches, 40.82% at ~3 feet with a human subject, and 2–4% at 10 feet. While real-world risk is currently low, improvements in radar sensitivity and AI could make such eavesdropping more practical, prompting calls for countermeasures. ================================================================== UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — That private phone call discussing your...

“You essentially define the AI equivalent of drives and instincts found in humans and animals,” LeCun explained in a LinkedIn post. “So in addition to drives for things like empathy and subservience to people, you have a large number of low-level rules like ‘don’t run over humans’ or ‘don’t swing your arm if holding a knife near people.'”

A 76-year-old retiree from New Jersey met a tragic end while trying to meet up with a flirty Kendall Jenner lookalike called 'Big sis Billie' - without realizing she was an AI chatbot. Thongbue Wongbandue packed a bag and made a desperate bid to go to the New York apartment of a woman he had been chatting with online back in March. As he rushed into the city the retiree fell and hurt his head and neck in the parking lot of a Rutgers University campus in New Jersey at around 9.15pm.

Not long ago, my son asked me about the meaning of a word in a novel he was reading for his fifth-grade book club. “Look it up,” I responded, my automatic rejoinder when my children ask me the meaning of a word, which is often.