Free Republic

Ethereum, the brainchild of wunderkind software developer Vitalik Buterin, who was just 19 when he came up with the idea, is the most buzzed-about project right now in the cryptocurrency community. It has attracted an all-star team of computer scientists and raised $18.4 million in a crowdfunding campaign—the third most successful of all time. And now, according to the official Ethereum blog, it's on the verge of being rolled out to the public. Ethereum's developers use a rolling ticker tape of bold tag lines to describe what they're creating, including a “Social Operating System for Planet Earth,” and “the Upcoming...

Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that security staff at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend them, and obtain their personal information and photographs without their knowledge. Evidence of the fake Facebook account was found in a cache of files provided by the Mall of America to Bloomington officials after a large Black Lives Matter event at the mall on December 20 protesting police brutality. The files included briefs on individual organizers, with screenshots that suggest that much of the information was captured using a Facebook...

Net neutrality: Obamcare for the Internet The author of Lazarus Man, Chet Nagle, spoke to the Republican Women of Clifton on March 18, 2015 about “The cyber world and you, and how I learned to rob banks – with a computer.” The cyber world is a daunting ether space inhabited by bytes, kilobytes , megabytes, terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, and zettabytes (ZB). Each measurement is larger than the previous one by increments of 1,000. It is so huge that one zettabyte can hold almost five quadrillion books of 200 pages each. According to Nagle’s research, the Internet held 1.2 ZB in...

They've been taking it from us by inches for decades. Now we find ourselves being sold into slavery while hiking. Permit me a flashback. Once upon a time I, along with a host of other young ambitious suit and tie types made the most of travel as a tool of the trade. Marketing involved a lot more personal selling back then and it was best done face to face. Perhaps just as important as product, pricing and promotions was the ease of personal mobility. And more than just an economic tool it was our God given right of personal association...

"It's also interesting because I'm actually black, but you assumed otherwise," Jay Smooth told Nancy Giles. Starbucks' campaign to get people talking about race has already birthed a very public, very cringeworthy conversation about race. Jay Smooth, a radio DJ and video blogger, was on MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes Tuesday night, discussing the coffee company's "Race Together" campaign with fellow guest Nancy Giles, a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning. As they discussed the efficacy of a campaign like Race Together — with Giles defending it and Smooth pushing back — Hayes played one of Smooth's most popular videos,...

Rising above the scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident is the spectacular sight of the largest moveable structure ever created on land. The complex of nuclear power plants at Chernobyl has dominated this corner of northwest Ukraine for decades but the new construction towers over it all. The project is to build what is called a New Safe Confinement – in effect, a giant cover, a kind of dome, to fit over the building that houses the reactor that exploded on 26 April, 1986. The radiation immediately above the reactor is still far too intense for the new enclosure...

Business is booming, fuel prices are down. So it’s time to start thinking about the next threat to the industry: 3D printing. Advocates of 3D printing have said it can transform manufacturing. This week, a new startup company announced a new 3D printing technique it says may actually deliver on that promise. In traditional 3D printing, the machine "prints" layers of material to create a 3D object. This takes time and leaves ripples showing where those layers were laid down. But what if you could "grow" an object out of a pool of liquid, much like the T-1000 rising from...

When the national news media descended on Ferguson, Missouri, in August, the city’s QuikTrip quickly became a symbol of civil unrest and racial tensions. The convenience store’s windows were smashed, the steel awnings were disfigured, and the building was looted and burned during street protests over the police shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in a confrontation just a few blocks away. Today, with the help of QuikTrip’s corporate parent, the first structural casualty of the protests will be reconstructed into a jobs training center and given to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis to manage. QuikTrip will...

Starbucks' campaign aimed at encouraging people to talk about race relations in the U.S. is the latest example of a big company trying to tie its brands to big social issues. But the move, which has sparked backlash on social media, also illustrates how those efforts can fall flat if customers don't see a clear correlation between the cause and the company's products. U.S. workers for the coffee chain that is best known for its Frappuccinos have been told to write "Race Together" on cups. The company also plans to start publishing "conversation guides" on the topic, with questions like...

How bad is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s cut to higher education going to hurt? Bad, if UW Eau Claire is any indication. It’s the first university location to announce buyouts for employees, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports today. Three-hundred-twenty-five staff members — including those with tenure — are being offered “go away” packages by University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt. That’s a third of the people who work there. Under the terms of the UW-Eau Claire offer, employees 55 and older with at least five years of service in select departments and units will be eligible to receive a...

Union: Why beer and alcohol should not be sold in Ontario grocery stores During the last few years, almost forever, both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments have floated the idea of allowing beer and/or alcohol to be sold in places other than government-run stores manned by union workers. The idea never went anywhere. Ontarians who favour the end to the government monopoly, were hopeful during the late 1990s when Mike Harris was premier and the late Jim Flaherty was Ontario’s finance minister. In a rare act of true conservatism in Canada, Flaherty opined that if something can be advertised in...

The end is finally in sight for Microsoft’s long-fraught Internet Explorer. At the Microsoft Convergence conference yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s head of marketing, said that the new flagship browser for Windows, which was announced in January and is codenamed Project Spartan, will not be associated with the Internet Explorer brand. While Internet Explorer will still exist on Windows 10 for compatibility purposes, it will take a back seat to the new browser.

"... “Had norms not changed, the growth of childbearing outside of marriage that we have recently seen among today’s unmarried low-educated and moderately educated young adults would not have occurred, even given the rise in income inequality,” Cherlin writes. College-educated Americans were able to adapt to changing mores because the economy was kind to them. But a shifting job market and easing taboos combined to tear a hole in the rest of the country's social fabric. This is all in keeping with what researchers find when they actually go out and talk to single mothers. Women in low-income communities say...

If you’ve been reading our site for longer than a couple of weeks, then you likely have figured out that we are obsessed with 3D printing. Why are we so obsessed with this technology? Because we truly believe that 3D printing will change the world we all live in, mostly for the better, and the quicker this happens the better off we all will be. Although I, personally, became aware of 3D printing about half a decade ago, I didn’t really understand it or venture to explore the various applications of the technology until only about two years ago. Soon...

In a wood-paneled study lined with books and framed family photos, the prospective presidential candidate looks into the camera. “I’m Mike Huckabee,” he says with all the folksy charm that propelled a career as a preacher, politician and broadcaster. But this is no campaign ad. It is an Internet infomercial for a dubious diabetes treatment, in which Mr. Huckabee, who is contemplating a run for the Republican nomination in 2016, tells viewers to ignore “Big Pharma” and instead points them to a “weird spice, kitchen-cabinet cure,” consisting of dietary supplements. “Let me tell you, diabetes can be reversed,” Mr. Huckabee...

This box of unfired Western Super X shotgun shells was found at the last gun show in Yuma.  A friend had it on his table, someone had bought it 50 years or more ago, set it aside, and never used it.  The box has some wear around the edges, but all the printing and color is clear.  The cartridges are just like new.  Just look at the roll crimp.  These cartridges were never loaded into a magazine. Number 7 shot is not common any more.  It is a useful size shot for everything from ducks to dove, but now...

It’s very fashionable to declare or pronounce, America is in decline- using such absurd anecdotal examples as the troubles in Syria (we didn’t do anything when Assad crossed the red line), Ukraine (we did not protect the Ukraine as promised in the Budapest Memorandum) gun shootings at shopping malls, troubled economy (when was our economy not troubled?- It’s troubled according to a developed countries standards- but compared to most of the world, it’s an exemplary example of market economics- giving the highest standard of living to the most people in the world). The other standard measurement used to support the...

In the short amount time that we have been covering this industry, we have reported on many amazing 3D printing related projects being undertaken by various individuals and companies around the globe. There have been 3D printed cars, 3D printed apartment buildings, and even an entire 3D printed estate that is expected to be erected in New York sometime this year. However, when we were contacted by a man named Tops Nicol, the research founder of the Alphaseed project, we were truly blown away.  “Science is fascinating and its latest growth in all branches of scientific research has helped...

"....The president—speaking at the dinner for a third time as president, fourth time overall — told the room that Democrats had determined they needed to do better with older white voters....Why is this night different from all other nights? Because on this night, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker makes a joke about Hillary Clinton, it’s not part of a future negative ad campaign.“I really do have a lot of close friends who are Democrats,” said Walker, serving as the official Republican speaker for the evening. “ I even have Hillary’s private email. . . It’s HillaryClinton@Wallstreet.com. You know the best...

The wonders of 3D printing, and the technology’s potential to revolutionize the world of manufacturing, have thrilled entrepreneurs, tinkerers, government officials and the business community. However, the 3D technology has a potential dark side too in the form of 3D printing of weapons, not only is there a threat of fanatic element making use of the technology to procure 3D weapons, but on a more concerning note, there are strong chances that such weapons may easily escape the various security detection tests and could be used to devastating effect in public places. In 2013, a United States Department of Homeland...