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McDonald's reported a surprise fall in sales in the April to June quarter - as customers cut down on trips to the fast food giant. Americans placed fewer orders than a year ago - meaning sales were down by nearly one per cent. Globally, sales fell by a similar amount. McDonald's saw fewer customers, but it said those who came spent more because of price increases. It was the first sales decline since 2020 when the pandemic shuttered stores and millions stayed home. Profits also slumped by 12 percent. Big price rises - including fan favorites like a Big Mac...

@saylor We now have a bill to establish the United States Bitcoin Reserve, stored in a Digital Fort Knox.

A new study suggests that the first of seven key pyramids in Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, was built using a hydraulic lift. Dated to about 4,500 years ago, this would move up the introduction of major hydraulic systems from previous beliefs. The landscape, waterways, and interior architecture of the pyramid all point to the hydraulic system.

French Gates told the Times she decided to get involved in politics after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old decision that had protected abortion rights. "I knew I had to speak out in favor of women's rights, and if there was a candidate who is against women's rights and says terrible things about women, there is no way I could vote for that person," she said. Melinda French Gates thinks the new generation of billionaire activists aren't doing enough. Gates also called Elon Musk's criticism of her political endorsements "silly." Gates says she will...

Need recommendations for a search engine. Got lazy and have been using Duck Duck Go, which seems to be Google in disguise. Today have been trying to find a discussion of the video from the Trump shooting that seemed to show a muzzle blast or explosion of some sort in the crowd behind Trump. I heard on the radio that it may have been an agricultural chemical under pressure that was released. On DuckDuckGo, I get page after page of pablum from CNN, NPR, PBS, Newsweak, Reuters,and other party organs that have nothing to do with my request. Can someone...

@disclosetv JUST IN - Trump, if President, pledges to form a Bitcoin Reserve, using 210,000 Bitcoin seized by the Department of Justice, as the core of a new “Strategic National Bitcoin Stockpile.”

Bosses expect artificial intelligence software to improve productivity, but workers say the tool does the opposite, according to a survey by find-a-workplace research org the Upwork Research Institute, a limb of talent-finding platform Upwork.The survey elicited responses from 2,500 workers across the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Half of respondents were C-suite execs, a quarter worked full time and the remained were freelancers. Respondents represent different age groups and genders, but all were required to have completed high school and to use a computer for their work at least “sometimes.”Findings include that C-suite executives are asking more of workers –...

Curious, given the significant knowledge and talent spread across the Freeper nation, which video editing software do you use?

As Americans head to the polls this fall, their decision regarding who will lead our country will also determine the fate of crypto here in the United States, and our security, prosperity, and freedom are at stake.This week, I will join President Trump and thousands of crypto market participants in Nashville for Bitcoin 2024, the world's largest Bitcoin conference. This year, the conference is held in my home state at a time that is clearly the tipping point for the future of crypto technology in the U.S. This fall, the future of crypto in America is on the ballot as...

Shoplifting has spiked across the country so far this year — even as many major crimes like homicide dropped back to pre-pandemic levels, a major national crime study showed. Rates of shoplifting rose an average 24% during the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s (CCJ) Mid-Year Crime Report released Thursday. The study reviewed crime statistics from 23 cities across the US, finding shoplifting has steadily been on the rise since the country began emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic around 2022. Shoplifting has gotten lots of attention in recent...

A single CrowdStrike bug sent the entire tech world into chaos last week — a snafu some companies are still recovering from. Third-party agents selling and supporting CrowdStrike software and the complicated repairs for customers have been a miserably busy bunch over the past week. CrowdStrike’s token of appreciation for those vendors: a $10 Uber Eats voucher. We’re not kidding. When reports of the voucher “gifts” first surfaced on Wednesday afternoon there were three main buckets of reactions: Yup, checks out... Now partners could risk losing their customers as a result of this mess, even though it was out of...

The unknown factor is Kamala Harris's primary advantage for now. It doesn’t gloss over that the 2024 Democratic Party ticket is a ratship in total disarray. The unity cited incessantly on MSNBC is a manufactured media narrative where little is grounded in reality. If there is a coalescing around the vice president, these loyal soldiers have no choice but to back her because who else is there? Harris dropped out before the 2020 Iowa Caucuses. No Democratic primary voter has ever voted for her. Again, the lion's share of the party backs her because there is no other choice. Democrats...

Former president Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed Kamala Harris’ presidential bid because he doesn’t think she can beat Donald Trump, according to a source close to the Biden family. Following Joe Biden’s shock resignation from the race on Sunday, and his immediate endorsement of the vice president, most of the Democratic elite have been quick to rally behind Harris — but Obama is a notable exception. “Obama’s very upset because he knows she can’t win,” the Biden family source told The Post. “Obama knows she’s just incompetent — the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should...

Question is, who else do you know that could answer a question like this one??

Analysis Last week, at 0409 UTC on July 19, 2024, antivirus maker CrowdStrike released an update to its widely used Falcon platform that caused Microsoft Windows machines around the world to crash. The impact was extensive. Supply chain firm Interos estimates 674,620 direct enterprise customer relationships of CrowdStrike and Microsoft were affected. Microsoft said 8.5 million Windows machines failed. The results beyond a massive amount of IT remediation time included global flight and shipping delays due to widespread Windows system failures.The cause, to the extent so far revealed by CrowdStrike, was "a logic error resulting in a system crash and...

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Big Tech is slashing jobs—half a million and counting. And it’s blaming artificial intelligence. A new study by Layoffs.fyi reports that layoffs in the tech industry have exceeded 100,000 so far this year —and keep in mind that the year’s only half over. That’s on top of 212,000 tech layoffs last year. And 165,000 in 2022. Recent layoffs include Microsoft and Facebook, which each cut 10,000 jobs. Cisco dropped 4,000, Intuit 1,800. Even Amazon and Apple are laying off. Part of this is...

Donald Trump appears to have figured out that the next step in AI has to be treated as what it is, i.e. a 2024 version of the Manhatten Project.As I read it, we have Bill Gates and Sam Altman out there in the world trying to round up something like 9 TRILLION dollars for the next version of OpenAI..... I do not believe that is merely to produce an AI system that is sentient; I believe that OpenAI 4 whichis out there now is sufficiiiently sentient for any normal or reasonable purpose. I believe they are looking at recreating a...

IT admins now have a quicker way to get machines up and running again after CrowdStrike’s faulty update. Microsoft has released a recovery tool that’s designed to help IT admins repair Windows machines that were impacted by CrowdStrike’s faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday. The tool creates a bootable USB drive that IT admins can use to help quickly recover impacted machines. While CrowdStrike has issued an update to fix its software that led to millions of Blue Screen of Death errors, not all machines are able to automatically receive that fix. Some IT admins have...

New research has uncovered that sleep can be detected by brief, millisecond-long brain activity, highlighting that individual brain regions can independently switch between sleep and wake states, which could impact the understanding of neurological diseases. =================================================================== The study broadly reveals how fast brain waves, previously overlooked, establish fundamental patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Scientists have developed a new method to analyze sleep and wake states by detecting ultra-fast neuronal activity patterns, just milliseconds long, challenging traditional understandings based on slower brain waves. This research also uncovered that individual brain regions can briefly transition between sleep and wake independently, revealing complex,...

Freepers, I asked the gentleman who's selling (or brokering) the domain name DJT.com what they want for it he said $100k or best offer. A lot of money but really pertinent with November in mind. The question is should we have a whip round and crowd purchase this name? Is that even possible/legal, etc? I don't know but it's a nice name with the Election on the horizon. If not us getting our hands on it the Trump campaign perhaps should! 😂