Free Republic

The U.S. Air Force warned military units against heavy reliance on autonomous weapons systems last month after a simulated test conducted by the service branch using an AI-enabled drone killed its human operator.The Skynet-like incident was detailed by the USAF’s Chief of AI Test and Operations, Col. Tucker’ Cinco’ Hamilton, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, who said the drone that was tasked to destroy specific targets during the simulation turned on the operator after they became an obstacle to its mission. Hamilton pointed out the hazards of using...

NVIDIA might be viewed as a company that makes GPUs for computers, but they are much more than that. They also work on AI and the company’s latest demonstration is actually very fascinating and also very impressive. This comes in the form of GauGAN2, an updated version of NVIDIA’s AI system that debuted on the Canvas app earlier this year. For those unfamiliar, Canvas is an app that can generate photorealistic scenes through simple brush strokes, meaning that users don’t need to have painting skills to create beautiful works of art, just let the AI handle the rest. With GauGAN2,...

Bishop Schneider: They Use "Tricks" To Abolish Celibacy Dramatically evoking an „eucharistic famine,“ allegedly caused by a lack of celibate priests, is not more than a „trick“ to abolish celibacy, Bishop Athanasius Schneider wrote in a statement (July 16). He explained that receiving Holy Communion is not necessary for salvation, unlike having the faith, praying, or keeping the commandments. An example: Many desert fathers lived for years without Holy Communion and were nevertheless deeply united with Christ. Schneider who grew up among Germans in Soviet Union, received only very rarely the sacraments because the priests could come only rarely. He...

Throughout Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s massive report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are lots of strange things. One of the weirdest is the extent to which the FBI went to make up words and phrases to disguise reality.An early draft of the 2016 FBI report on the email scandal was reportedly subjected to linguistic surgery to exonerate Mrs. Clinton, who at the time was secretary of State. Mrs. Clinton was originally found to be “grossly negligent” in using an illegal email server. That legalistic phrase is used by prosecutors to indict for violation of laws governing the...

The first presidential debate last month is history, and according to the post debate analysis provided on Fox News by Frank Luntz's focus group... Ben Carson's performance was the surprise of the evening! Since then, no one has gained more ground in the polls. Will you help us keep the momentum for Dr. Carson going? Chip in $20.16

Don't think that we are going to stand by and let you attack our future president, Mr. Donald Trump. We coming for you!!!!!!!!!!!

Jay Ro and his wife, Ca Na, were in their kitchen early Thursday morning, preparing a traditional Burmese breakfast. He was peeling garlic, she was washing dishes. Then their 11-year-old son, Thee Ku Moo, walked into the room — with a stranger, holding a gun against the boy's neck. While attempting to get his son out of danger, Jay Ro, 48, was shot dead by the armed robber, who fled the family's home near N. 30th and W. Cherry streets in Milwaukee. A language barrier, fear and bad luck converged that day; the family had spent years in a refugee...

Many pundits and campaign consultants are no doubt analyzing the election results across the country to try to decipher what lessons the Republican wave holds for candidates planning to run in 2016. But there are four easily seen lessons that both of the major political parties should take to heart: First, the manipulation of election rules and political trickery didn’t work. In Kansas, for example, the Democratic Party forced its U.S. Senate nominee to withdraw and refused to comply with a state law that required the party to name a replacement candidate for the ballot. Democrats were hoping that...

FREDERICKSBURG — A 92 percent drop in absentee-ballot requests by military personnel in Virginia is raising concerns that the Pentagon is failing to carry out a federal voting law. With only 1,746 military voters in Virginia requesting absentee ballots so far this year — out of 126,251 service members in the state —the Military Voter Protection Project says the system has broken down And it’s not just in the Old Dominion. MVPP Executive Director Eric Eversole reports significant declines in absentee-ballot requests by service members across the nation.

-snip- Although Fehrnstrom is one of Romney’s longest-serving aides, he, like his boss, has no roots in the conservative movement. Fehrnstrom started out as a reporter covering alderman meetings in Boston and lives in liberal Brookline, Mass. His work as a GOP operative has been confined to New England — a region, as he often notes, that’s “pretty rocky terrain for Republicans.” To some influential conservatives, Fehrnstrom is an enigma. It’s not that conservatives don’t trust him. It’s that some don’t even know him. “I’ve never heard of him. I’ve been going to conservative meetings since I was knee-high to...

The White House has been accused of digitally adjusting President Barack Obama's weekly address to the nation to give the impression he was sitting in front of a car assembly line in Detroit. Experts in video effects said Mr Obama's talk on boosting employment had actually been recorded in front of a neutral "green screen" and the factory background filled in later. They said the edges around the president's head and shoulders were too sharp. "The shot is obviously a composite and a 'weatherman quality' one," one professional in the field told BigGovernment website.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama will set a goal of reducing the U.S. deficit by $4 trillion in the next 12 years or less in a speech Wednesday, a congressional source said. His plan would curb the U.S. deficit to 2.5 percent of GDP in 2015, and by 2 percent toward the end of the decade, the source said.

The Great Health Care Debate of 2009 is underway on the Senate floor, and it took just a scant few minutes for the partisan skirmishing to begin in full force. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, wasted no time in laying a little legislative trap for Senator Michael B. Enzi, of Wyoming, who for the moment is piloting the Republican efforts on the Senate floor. Mr. Reid in an opening gambit asked for unanimous consent of all senators that any surpluses generated by the health care bill in the Social Security Trust Fund or in a new...

Barclays has been accused of "banking by sleight of hand" after creating a new company to take over its most toxic assets and ringfence future losses.

Political analyst Dick Morris says President Barack Obama's complaint about Fox News' coverage of his administration is meant to deflect talk that the media is in the tank for him. Obama on Tuesday told CNBC's John Harwood: "I've got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration . . . That's a pretty big megaphone. You'd be hard-pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front." Obama did not disagree when Harwood suggested that he was talking about Fox News. During the Wednesday broadcast of "The O'Reilly Factor," host...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday congratulated Barack Obama on his election win — the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. An analyst said the statement was a gesture from the hard-line president that he's open to some sort of reconciliation with the U.S. Obama has said he is willing to hold direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders as a way to break the impasse between the two countries or give the U.S. more credibility to press for tougher sanctions if talks fail. His policy...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there. The order raised concerns among users and privacy advocates that the online video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of YouTube viewers. Viacom said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to...

Rudy Mitt Huckabee   By Don FederFrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, December 12, 2007 On the issue of illegal immigration, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney have begun doing passable impressions of Lou Dobbs. But can you trust a candidate whose record contradicts his campaign rhetoric? At the recent CNN/YouTube debate, Romney and Rudy squared off on what's shaping up to be the defining issue of Campaign 2008 -- with the ferocity of rabid mongooses. Rudy -- who wants to "secure the border" (is there anyone, including Hillary, who says they don't?) -- bragged that as mayor of New York...

By Elan Journo web posted October 29, 2007 Thanks to a new diplomatic deal, the nuclear stand-off with North Korea will allegedly end bloodlessly. In exchange for 950,000 tons of fuel oil, or its equivalent in economic aid and diplomatic concessions from the West, North Korea has promised to disclose all of its nuclear programs and disable all of its nuclear facilities. This new arrangement is being celebrated as a levelheaded, practical, win-win solution to the problem of the North Korean nuclear threat. But this deal, like all previous ones, rewards the North for its aggression and will strengthen...

North Korea has agreed to take further steps in ending its nuclear weapons programme but more needs to be done in pushing forward a landmark deal, the US envoy to disarmament talks said Friday. As the six-nation talks went into a second day, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill again voiced hope that the secretive communist regime may declare and disable all of its nuclear programmes this year. "The DPRK (North Korea) has agreed to some steps," Hill told reporters when asked about the progress in the talks that are aiming to flesh out a plan for Pyongyang to...