Free Republic

President Obama has quietly recruited top tech talent from the likes of Google and Facebook. Their mission: to reboot how government works. BY JON GERTNER For Eric Maland, the whole thing goes back to that San Francisco wedding. Mikey wasn’t there—well, wait, actually, Mikey was there. But Eric didn’t meet him at that point. Eric met some other folks at the wedding who told him they were doing some fix-it stuff in Washington, and it sounded kind of interesting. ADVERTISEMENT And now we’re chatting about it in front of the White House security gate, where we’re waiting to talk with...

A Google executive is headed to Cuba this weekend to explore bringing better Internet access to the island, and the search giant has made a related proposal to the Cuban government, according to a State Department official. It’s the latest sign that U.S. tech companies are testing the seriousness of Cuba’s interest in opening up to outside investment after President Barack Obama’s announcement of a historic thaw in relations and the Raúl Castro-led government’s recent pledge to bring Internet access to all Cubans by 2020. n Cuba today, only about five percent of the population has Internet access, and cellphone...

Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM) and Astrobotic Technology Inc. are pleased to announce a joint effort to facilitate the development and delivery of the first payload from Latin America to the Moon. Astrobotic and AEM have entered into an agreement outlining a commitment by both organizations to enable a Mexican payload to the Moon. Through this partnership, AEM will take its first step to another planetary body. "Opening access to the Moon is precisely at the core of Astrobotic's mission," said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic. "AEM's rising space science and exploration community is yet one more example of the immense...

[caption id="attachment_1490" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Image source: Stanford University[/caption] I was recently chided by an editor when he asked me my opinion on one of my stories.  I told him how The Washington Post reported it: “WaPo went with ‘shocking’,” I emailed. My phone immediately rang. “I don’t care what WaPo went with,” he said in an animated voice. “Listen, those people are just the same as you and me. “I’ve been in those newsrooms.  Do you think they’re any better because they work at the New York Times or The Washington Post?” he drilled into me. It was a good...

From June 11-14 approximately 140 of the world’s most influential people will gather in Telfs-Buchen, Austria, for the 63rd secretive Bilderberg policy conference, just 16 miles south of the G7 summit. The invitation-only conclave is where dozens of important Big Business and Big Bank CEOs, heads of governments, and other notables discuss methods to advance the group’s globalist agenda. The attendee list and agenda for this year’s meeting have been released, providing a glimpse into a secret world to which the “have-nots” are not privy. This year’s list of attendees includes prime ministers from the Netherlands, Finland, and Belgium; the...

Mozilla, best known for its Firefox browser and operating system, has lost the man responsible for the core technologies of both products.roject to keep Firefox competitive with browsers like Google's Chrome. His departure is part of major changes Mozilla faces with Firefox OS. While Gal is moving into a new market, a new competitive threat is arriving. Mozilla's former president, Li Gong, is at work on another startup nicknamed Gone Fishing that's building a mobile operating system relying on the same Web-based approach Firefox OS uses, CNET has learned. Gong was the Firefox OS business leader before being promoted to...

Whether it's a potential employer, current employer, budding romantic partner, long-time significant other, or someone else in your life, there's a good chance they have or will run a Google search for your name. Do you know everything that they'll find? The answer could make a difference between a job and the unemployment line, or ‘happily ever after’ and nights alone. That's why you need to run your own search first. Search Google for more than mentions Start with a basic search for your name in quotes, like "Kim Komando,” for instance. If you have a more common name, you...

That's the prediction of Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google (GOOG), who spoke Wednesday at the Exponential Finance conference in New York. Kurzweil predicts that humans will become hybrids in the 2030s. That means our brains will be able to connect directly to the cloud, where there will be thousands of computers, and those computers will augment our existing intelligence. He said the brain will connect via nanobots -- tiny robots made from DNA strands. "Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking," he said. The bigger and more complex the cloud, the more advanced...

Google’s self-driving cars will hit the roads by summer 2015 On May 21, 2015, Nvidia (NVDA) started shipping Drive PX, its hardware and software development kit, to leading luxury car manufacturers including Bentley, Aston Martin, Tesla (TSLA), and Rolls-Royce. Google (GOOG), which has been in this space for the last six years, will be putting its self-driving cars on public roads by as early as summer 2015. Tech giants report that Google, with a fleet of almost 20 self-driving cars, now averages ~10,000 self-driving miles per week. Google claims that its cars have 75 years of US adult driving experience...

The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals. The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept. The document outlines a series of tactics that the NSA...

On Friday, the second day of its annual developer conference, Google I/O, one of the search giant’s semi-secretive research divisions announced a project that aims to make conductive fabrics that can be weaved into everyday clothes. The effort, called Project Jacquard, is named for the French inventor of the Jacquard Loom, which revolutionized textile manufacturing and helped pave the way for modern computing. Much like the screens on mobile phones, these fabrics could register the user’s touch and transmit information elsewhere, like to a smartphone or tablet computer. They are made from conductive yarns that come in a rainbow of...

Link only because articles from Wired cannot be posted...How a Piece of Cardboard Could Be Google’s Ticket to VR

Many of my children are still clinging to the law of Moses(mercy) usurping My Law ~ "The Law of GRACE". Did I not enter the Sheep's Gate and was there not one healed by The Law of Grace hanging from My Veil of Virtue ?! Then why the struggle My children ? Come! Cling to Me(Jesus) and be found at the feet of True Humility for I have already suffered all for you and Grace "IS" yours for The Victory "IS" MINE ! ! ! John 5 5 Later on there was a Jewish festival (feast) for which "Jesus went...

Social media has given a voice to many all over the globe -- and the government of Russia may silence them by threatening to ban social media sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Roskomnadzor, a government agency that supervises communications, information technology and mass media (including social media) in the country, late last week asked the three tech companies to comply with Russian laws that many outsiders believe amount to censorship. "In our letters we regularly remind companies of the consequences of violating the legislation," Vadim Ampelonsky, a spokesperson for Roskomnadzor, told Reuters.

President Vladimir Putin signed a bill into law Saturday giving prosecutors the power to declare foreign and international organizations “undesirable” in Russia and shut them down. […] The law is part of a Kremlin campaign to stifle dissent that intensified after Putin began his third term in 2012. His return to the presidency had been accompanied by mass street protests that Putin accused the United States of fomenting. Russian suspicions of Western intentions have been further heightened because of tensions over Russia’s role in the conflict in Ukraine. The new Russian law allows prosecutors to declare an organization undesirable if...

Original Title:Google puts White House blunder blame on 'racist web users Google has identified the culprit behind the White House showing as "n***a house" screw up, and it turns out it's not them, it's you. According to the tech giant's spokesperson, if an internet user was racist and frequently used such words on the Internet, the map search results will show such words, as their ranking systems were designed to return results that match a person's query, TMZ.com reported. In short it means that apparently a lot people have calling President Obama's residence as the "n***a house." However, Google added...

A new Chrome extension, called Google Tone, released this week makes it possible to share a URL with another computer in the room using a series of beeps and boops. The concept is dead simple yet instantly instills a sense of disbelief. A computer making seemingly random sounds can transmit the URL for the tab I have open in Chrome across the room? Get out. Full of skepticism, I decided to put it to the test. I installed the Chrome extension on a MacBook Air and a HP laptop running Windows 10. And you know what? It works! Click on...

The National Security Agency planned to infiltrate the Google and Samsung app stores to plant spying software on smartphones, according to new documents published from files leaked by Edward Snowden. The Intercept and CBC News jointly published the documents Thursday, which outline the snooping efforts designed by the U.S. and its “Five Eyes” alliance: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The intelligence agencies came up with the strategy as a potential way to hack smartphones. The pilot project was code-named “IRRITANT HORN.” Essentially, the agents sussed out smartphone Internet traffic by browsing through its Web traffic database created...

Russia’s media watchdog has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on Thursday they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules. Roskomnadzor said it had sent letters this week to the three U.S.-based Internet firms asking them to comply with Internet laws which critics of President Vladimir Putin have decried as censorship. “In our letters, we regularly remind (companies) of the consequences of violating the legislation,” said Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky. He added that, because of the encryption technology used by the three firms, Russia had...

Google, the world’s largest search engine, is gargantuan in size and clout, but still small enough to fit in Barack Obama’s back pocket Conservative websites like Canada Free Press (CFP) owe a debt of gratitude to plucky ‘Citizen Journalist’, news researcher cum laude, Tina Siegert of News the Media Won’t Show You. Though some might not yet realize its full impact, all conservative websites are under Google suppression now that Google has claimed rights as the Grand Central of Internet Truth. Google will no longer drive traffic to Conservative websites. Internet traffic is what gets all websites Internet advertising. Without...