Free Republic

The two largest social networks, Facebook and Twitter, and the world's largest search engine, Google, have teamed up with German law enforcement to delete “hate speech” within 24 hours in what is being seen as a last-ditch effort to silence public dissent about a gigantic wave of Syrian immigration. The partnership to crack down on what Germany deems illegal speech comes after German law enforcement's reported concerns about “racist abuse” posted to social media after the country's huge and extremely controversial import of over a million Syrian refugees. Justice Minister Heiko Maas is reported to have warned social networks that...

The recent attack on the internet's core servers is even more severe than previously thought according to cybersecurity expert John McAfee, who believes it was brought about by a so-called "zombie army" botnet unwittingly installed on hundreds of millions of smartphones through an as yet unidentified app. It is unclear who the perpetrators of the attack are but McAfee speculates that the aim of the attack - taking down the internet - and the unsophisticated way the botnet could be implemented through a simple smartphone app, suggests hackers sympathetic to Islamic State (Isis) or another terrorist group may be behind...

Yahoo said on Wednesday that it had dropped a plan to spin off its $31 billion stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company. Instead, the company will spin off all of its other assets, including its stake in Yahoo Japan, into a new company. The decision not to sell the Alibaba stake, which was reported on Tuesday, was driven by “the market’s perception of tax risk” associated with the Alibaba plan, Yahoo said in a statement on Wednesday morning.

If you aren't familiar with P2P, you might be asking yourself: "what kind of loans does Prosper make?" Well, according to their website, they arrange debt consolidation loans, home improvement loans, special occasion loans, and personal loans for business. We're not sure which of those categories "jihadist massacre" falls under (we assume "special occasion"), but as Reuters reports, San Bernardino mass shooters Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, obtained a $28,500 loan through Prosper not long before killing 14 and injuring nearly two dozen in a bloody rampage last Wednesday. One of the Reuters government sources said Farook and Malik apparently...

At a campaign rally aboard the USS Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Trump suggested that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, could possibly help censor parts of the online world. “We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way.” “Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech,'” he added, dismissing the objection with an arm wave. “These are foolish people.”

The Obama administration has almost inarguably executed more unilateral sweeping power grabs than any previous presidency ever. Administration defenders lamely point to the number of Executive Orders issued: "GOP Slams 'Imperial' Obama After Fewest Executive Orders In 100 Years (CHART)." Which is technically true - but totally irrelevant. A minor point: Not every single Executive Order grabs additional unilateral power (though many do). A major point: What matters most is total Grabs-by-Regulations - not specifically Executive Orders. New regs issued by the multitudinous Executive Branch departments, agencies, commissions and boards - that exceed the power granted them by Congressional legislation....

Tucson — Santa isn’t the only one keeping track of who is naughty and who is nice! Better Business Bureau is warning consumers to beware of these common holiday scams: Look-alike websites: When shopping online, make sure to use only legitimate websites. Watch out for URLs that use the names of well-known brands along with extra words. Fake shipping notifications: These can have attachments or links to sites that will download malware on your computer to steal your identity and your passwords. Don’t be fooled by a holiday phishing scam.

The US woke up on Friday to the news that Donald Trump was a full 20 percentage points ahead of Ted Cruz, his nearest rival, for the Republican nomination, and a good 16 percentage points higher than America’s top political analysts thought he would be. Running on a platform of “making America great again”, his campaign has been noteworthy for Trump’s egregious widespread insults and total fabrications, on a gargantuan scale. The most recent of which was him claiming to have seen “thousands of Muslims” dancing in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11. No evidence exists of this, because...

Online media covering Washington has soared over 400 percent in the last six years, a trend that further demonstrates how the nation's appetite for national news has shifted to digital platforms, according to a comprehensive review of the D.C. press corps from the Pew Research Center. In a survey for its Journalism & Media branch, Pew said that the number of digital-only news staff accredited by the Senate press galleries has grown from just 31 in 2009 to 133 or more, driven by specialized media and bigger national outfits like Huffington Post. And for the first time, digital and "niche"...

Unlike the revolution started by the printing press which soon stabilized, internet changes are not merely drastic but continually accelerating.The internet has changed everything, so much so that even I, a man who has been online for 19 years, am constantly amazed at the pace of accelerated change. The printing press changed the world in a few decades in the 16th century. The internet is even more revolutionary. Even more so than the press, the internet has evaporated prior means of didactic instruction. The printing press created change, but only the rich could afford to buy one. For less than...

Duo Security researchers found a second weak digital certificate on a new Dell Inspiron laptop The fallout from a serious security mistake made by Dell is widening, as security experts find more issues of concern. Researchers with Duo Security have found a second weak digital certificate in a new Dell laptop and evidence of another problematic one circulating. The issue started after it was discovered Dell shipped devices with a self-signed root digital certificate, eDellRoot, which is used to encrypt data traffic. But it installed the root certificate with the private encryption key included, a critical error that left many...

The TV is on in the background, and you’re replying to a quick email on your phone nearby. You don’t know it, but the devices are communicating. During a commercial, the TV emits an inaudible tone and your phone, which was listening for it, picks it up. Somewhere far away, a server makes a note: Both devices probably belong to you. This information about which devices belong to whom is immensely valuable to advertisers hoping to target ads specifically to you. In a simpler time, targeted marketing was easy. Most people had a computer at work and maybe another at...

I don't know if this has impacted anybody else, but in recent weeks, I've noticed that HTML special characters are not rendering properly in HTML posts. For example, the character “ is rendering as “, the character ” is rendering as ”, and so on. A screenshot of a typical thread is here: Needless to say, that is really irritating. There is a workaround for this: replace these special characters with their corresponding HTML codes. The ones that FR is currently having problems with are as follows: ‘ "left single quote" ‘ ’ "right single quote" ’ “ "left double...

Moscow requires major companies to move information to servers in Russia by start of next year A Russian law could place the personal data of millions of Internet users, including Americans, at risk if international digital companies comply by the start of next year, analysts say. The law, enacted last year, requires digital companies to store the personal information of Russians in servers on Russian soil. While officials in Moscow have cited concerns that Russians’ information could be vulnerable to foreign intelligence services such as the National Security Agency (NSA) if it is located outside the country’s borders, critics of...

This is literally the start of the World Wide Web. This is Tim Berners-Lee's very first Web Page. The FIRST Web Page ever. . . the literal starting point of the Internet. It still exists as Tim Berners-Lee wrote it. On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee posted in the Usenet group alt.hypertext about a project he was working on called the World Wide Web--or, as he referred to it, "W3," a shorthand that surprisingly never caught on. The first webpage is still there at its original address on the CERN high-energy physics lab's site, substantially unchanged--no background, no graphics, just...

Radical terrorists using social media to sow fear and recruit fighters have found a new media platform that ensures privacy, stores their files and, most of all, promises never to purge their accounts - no matter how twisted or gruesome the content. Telegram, a digital messaging system invented by two Russian brothers now based in Berlin, boasts that it encrypts content for storage and transmission and won't suspend private accounts or cooperate with government intelligence agencies. Users can send money, speak in private chatrooms of up to 200 people and even post public messages, including video, secure in the knowledge...

If you’re Social Justice Warrior, you’re a liar. You actively spread absurd falsehoods about the nature of men, women, sex, and culture that can’t withstand even the slightest scrutiny. You change history and conceal facts to fit preferred narratives, even when it costs human lives. You claim the best of intentions yet achieve the worst of outcomes. And through it all, you hate the very nation and political system that have granted you the liberties you so grotesquely abuse.

In every thread and post today I keep seeing symbols like this it’

Telegraph.co.uk Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind Yes, you should tell the computer what you're thinking By James Kirkup 6:24PM GMT 28 Oct 2015 The use of technology to track and treat mental illness is deeply worrying but sadly necessary Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems...

The U.S. government is keen on internet freedom… but only in countries it doesn’t like. This September, the U.S invested another $10 million toward helping activists in authoritarian regimes circumvent state censorship of the internet. But the goverment’s attitude to web freedom within its own borders suggests that what it wants for its enemies may not necessarily be what it wants for itself.