Free Republic

Three of the highest ranking cyber-investigators announced immediate retirement. They say it isn’t because of all the Justice Department scandals but the frustration of not being able to do their jobs, as pointed out by a recent DOJ report, might have been too much to bear. Top cyber-sleuths are leaving the Federal Bureau of Investigation in droves. Three more departures were announced by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Washington, D.C. bureaucrats are screaming that this couldn’t happen at a worse time. Threats “like Russia’s election interference and online foreign influence campaigns, have reached a point of alarm,” writes CNN....

The original comments, given in a wide-ranging interview with Recode, were made in response to questions about what Facebook was doing to combat fake news and sites, such as InfoWars, that promoted conspiracy theories. In Myanmar, also known as Burma, Facebook has been accused by UN investigators of facilitating violence against Rohingya Muslims by allowing anti-Muslim hate speech and fake news. The social network has now said that it will begin removing misinformation that could lead to people being physically harmed. When asked about its policy on fake news, Mr Zuckerberg offered, without prompting, the example of Holocaust deniers. "I'm...

Dazzling and daring aerobatic displays will soon be taking place over the beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast. It's Blues Over Biloxi, the most exciting air show the Gulf Coast has seen in three years, and it's happening right over the waters of the Mississippi Sound in Biloxi. The skies will be filled with some of the biggest names in the air show industry including the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Team, the famous AeroShell Aerobatic Team as well as an assortment of other exciting performances by world-renowned aerobatic pilots. Add to that exciting flybys by a variety of military hardware...

A state-owned telecommunications company in China now stores the iCloud data for Apple’s China-based users. This is really bad news for dissidents and critics of the government. Fast forward to today: China Telecom, a government owned telco, is taking over the iCloud data from Guizhou-Cloud Big Data. This essentially means that a state-owned firm now has access to all the iCloud data China-based users store, such as photos, notes, emails, and text messages. Chinese state-run media is heralding the move as a win for consumers, but Chinese citizens have been extremely condemnatory of the decision. On Weibo, China’s Twitter clone,...

FULL TITLE: Instagram Censors Planned Parenthood Meme: “We Kill More Black Lives in 2 Weeks Than the KKK Lynched in a Century” House conservatives took some social media companies to task for political bias earlier today — and not a moment too soon, based on what’s happening to people like Ryan Bomberger. The head of the Radiance Foundation is just the latest victim of the censorship taking place on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If these tech giants are offended by the truth of abortion, then they’re taking their anger out on the wrong people. If you know...

Iram Sabah, mother of two, is terrified by messages her family has been receiving on their smartphones. Her husband recently was forwarded a video that shows a child's mutilated body. It's unclear where or when the video is from, or whether it has been doctored. A voice implores people to forward it to others, and to stay vigilant — that kidnappers are on the loose. Sabah, 27, doesn't know if the video is fake or real. But she's not taking any chances. "When my children go outside to play, I'm really scared," she says in an interview at her home...

With dynamic growth and access to capital seen as primary factors for jumping three places, the US has regained its status as being on the cutting edge of competitiveness in a ranking by the IMD think tank. A competitive ranking of 63 advanced economies published on Wednesday showed the United States improving three positions to return to the top spot, overtaking Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands, and leaving Switzerland behind.As the top five most competitive countries in the world remained the same — changing only in their order — the American economy's comeback was mainly driven by economic performance,...

For many early Linux users, Slackware was their introduction. One user told me her first Linux install was Slackware—and she had to use a hex editor to fix the partition tables so that Slackware would install. Support for her hardware was added in a later release. Another got his start building the data center that would power one of the first internet-enabled real estate sites. In the mid-1990s, Slackware was one of the easiest distributions to get and didn't require a lot of effort to get IP masquerading to work correctly. A third person mentioned going to sleep while...

Today Yamaha has announced a brand new, slim-line home cinema receiver aimed at people who don't want the usual enormous home cinema receiver overwhelming their living room. The Yamaha RX-S602 Slimline AV receiver offers wireless surround capability and Alexa voice control. At just under 4.5” inches high, the RX-S602 can be tucked away in confined spaces and will also fit in most AV racks. The usual form factor for most home cinema receivers is about twice the height of the RX-S602 which can overpower a living room. A smaller unit like the RX-S602 should find favor with people living in...

An unidentified hacker tried to sell purported U.S. military documents containing information about combat drones last month, a cybersecurity research firm said, after they were allegedly stolen from an Air Force officer’s computer.

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Remote-access software and modems on election equipment 'is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.'

Amazon's self-created Prime Day holiday got off to a rocky start. The retailing giant's website experienced periodic outages on desktop and mobile on Monday afternoon, right after the Prime Day sale began at 3 p.m. ET. Many shoppers hoping to score deals were instead met with photos of cute dogs, the company's standard error page. That put Amazon in the doghouse with upset customers, many of whom have gone on social media to complain. The issues appeared to affect other Amazon products and services. According to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks outages, Amazon's Alexa, Prime Video Services, and Amazon Web...

Are virtual machines (VM) more secure than containers? You may think you know the answer, but IBM Research has found containers can be as secure, or more secure, than VMs. James Bottomley, an IBM Research Distinguished Engineer and top Linux kernel developer, writes: One of the biggest problems with the current debate about Container vs Hypervisor security is that no-one has actually developed a way of measuring security, so the debate is all in qualitative terms (hypervisors 'feel' more secure than containers because of the interface breadth) but no-one actually has done a quantitative comparison. To meet this need, Bottomley...

Top Pentagon official Michael Griffin sat down a few weeks ago with Air Force scientists at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to discuss the future of quantum computing in the U.S. military. Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, has listed quantum computers and related applications among the Pentagon's must-do R&D investments. Quantum computing is one area where the Pentagon worries that it is playing catchup while China continues to leap ahead. The technology is being developed for many civilian applications, and the military sees it as potentially game-changing for information and space warfare. The U.S....

Though cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications seem to have taken the entire world by storm, there are few places where this new technology has been embraced like South Korea. In part, thanks to changing regulations within the country, the overwhelming sentiment seems to indicate that crypto will soon become fully integrated into everyday life in South Korea. But what is it that has made cryptocurrency take off in South Korea at such an unprecedented rate? By taking a closer look at overall trends and how they have impacted blockchain startups like Bezant, we also get greater insight into the success of...

Flippin' awesome: Footage of a 1982 cassette player's amazing auto-reverse system has the internet mesmerised The footage shows one of the best auto-reverse systems - by Nakamichi The system on the RX-202 model physically flips the cassette around After the clip was uploaded to Imgur it garnered 100,000 views There were several purchases that helped people ‘keep up with the Joneses’ in the 1980s – buying SodaStreams, cars with head rests and, of course, cassette players with auto-reverse. And it seems that the latter is still mesmerising people, because a video of a 1982 auto-reverse system in action has been...

Sinclair Broadcast Group is working on a streaming news service that could launch later this year, BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday. The company has submitted a trademark application for a free streaming app, called STIRR, BuzzFeed reported. Sources familiar with the project told the news outlet that the app would offer local and national news, as well as other on-demand programming. A spokesperson for Sinclair declined to comment to BuzzFeed. The app would represent the latest effort from Sinclair to expand its reach.

DNC: We were hacked! FBI: Can we see your computer? DNC: No. FBI: OK... RUSSIA DID IT!!!

Popular Republican journalist Jonah Goldberg angered his base Wednesday by claiming people can be conservative and support abortion. Goldberg is a senior editor at the National Review and a New York Times bestselling author. On Twitter Wednesday, he made the comment about fellow conservative journalist Tomi Lahren who has been openly critical of pro-lifers. “Honestly, I think you can support abortion and still be a conservative. I just have a problem when you’re stupid about it or use left wing arguments for it — or both,” Goldberg wrote in the post, linking to one of Lahren’s recent comments. Goldberg continued...