Free Republic

Texas dominates U.S. oil production, contributing 42.6% of the total output, mainly due to the Permian Basin.New Mexico has seen dramatic 190% increase in oil production over the past five years, becoming the second-leading oil producer in the U.S.California faces a 30.7% reduction in oil production over the past five years, largely due to political and geological challenges.U.S. oil production has increased by 21% over the past five years. According to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), earlier this month U.S. oil producers set a new annual production record.This increase is being driven by a surge of production in...

Kevin Mitnick, former 'most wanted' hacker who police said could launch nukes by whistling into a phone, has diedBy Joshua Wolens published about 22 hours ago A legend in the history of computing, Mitnick died on July 16 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous computer hackers in the world and the subject of an over two-year manhunt in the 1990s, died of complications from pancreatic cancer last Sunday, aged 59. His death has been confirmed to the New York Times. Mitnick is a legendary figure, one of those people whose life story reads like...

Amidst the expansion of the world wide web, cloud computing, large dataset, software, mobile applications, social media, gaming… companies big and small are relying on highly-specialized IT experts.Indeed, for businesses wanting to keep up, finding top tech talent is a priority—and can be an uphill struggle. Many are after high-demand technical skills, from software development to data-oriented knowhow, according to our 2023 Tech Hiring Survey.We asked our panel of recruiters which positions they predict will be the most difficult to fill in 2023. Here’s their top 10:Full-stack developersBack-end developersDevOpsArchitectsApplication engineersFront-end developersData scientists or Machine Learning specialistsCybersecurity engineerTesterMobile developerWhy are these...

A transgender teen is in custody after authorities say they recovered a manifesto detailing her plan to attack three schools and churches in Colorado just four days after Audrey Hale murdered six people at the Covenant School in Nashville. William Whitworth, 19, who goes by the name Lilly and is referred to with female pronouns in arrest documents, was arrested on March 31. She was a student in the school district that she planned to attack between 2014 and 2016, authorities say. In a manifesto that was recovered in her home, Whitworth called Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...

Former Biden Department of Energy official Sam Brinton claimed to have been beaten by their father, who allegedly also held a gun to their head and forced them into conversion therapy. However, their family has spoken out, denying the accusations and using police records to show that no abuse ever occurred. "I’m in this constant state of fear," Brinton previously claimed. "My dad has held a gun up to my head multiple times." Brinton claimed they were continuously punched and sent to the emergency room at least seven times after coming out to their family when they were just 11-years-old....

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Ukraine was worth 200.09 billion US dollars in 2021, according to official data from the World Bank. The GDP value of Ukraine represents 0.15 percent of the world economy. source: World Bank

Tributes have been paid to a ‘bright and rising’ plus-size drag queen who collapsed and died mid-performance at a Philadelphia bar aged just 25. Valencia Prime had been in the middle of her ‘Prime Time’ show at the Tabu Lounge and Sports Bar on September 12 when she crumpled on-stage. Prime, who called herself ‘Philadelphia’s Plus Size Dancing Diva’, died as a result of heart disease, obesity and diabetes according to the medical examiner – with her cause of death being ruled as natural causes. Paramedics and emergency services were called to the gay bar as the transgender drag queen...

LVIV, Ukraine: Ukraine’s IT sector is booming despite the Russian invasion. Workers with stickers on their laptops recline on beach chairs outside a warehouse for startups in the west Ukraine city of Lviv giving off major Silicon Valley vibes. But the atmosphere inside is different. Through the glass doors of the complex, young Ukrainians zig-zag between stacks of bulletproof vests and cardboard boxes filled with helmets ready for the front. They are part of Ukraine’s burgeoning tech sector which was forced to adapt after Russia’s invasion and has become key to supporting the war effort. “Most tech companies had...

Riots have broken out in Shanghai as starving residents begin to revolt against the Chinese Communist Party’s draconian “Zero Covid” lockdown more than three weeks in. Disturbing videos emerging on social media show desperate scenes inside China’s largest city, which has been placed under increasingly harsh restrictions as Omicron cases continue to break daily records. Crowds of residents were seen looting food parcels in one video posted to Weibo, while other clips showed furious mobs clashing with PPE-clad Covid prevention workers as they tried to break through barriers erected across the city. One video captured the sounds of screaming from...

MSNBC updated a previously aired segment after a reporter who goes by "they/them" pronouns publicly complained about being misgendered by the liberal network. Reporter Kate Sosin, who covers LGBTQ issues for The 19th News, objected after being identified as a female during a segment about women journalists who face online harassment. Sosin appeared on MSNBC while an on-screen graphic said, "1 in 3 women under 35 experience online harassment," but the graphic has been removed. Sosin, who claimed the network "misgendered me" and "won’t fix it, responded with the folded hands emoji when the reporter was informed the segment was...

Ukraine’s IT outsourcing industry threatened by Russian invasion Tom Li @itbusinessca Published: March 3rd, 2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is having a wide-reaching impact on the global IT industry. Driven by its strong technology education base, Ukraine is well-known in Europe as a technology powerhouse and a key provider of IT outsourcing services; in fact, prior to the conflict, its IT sector accounted for around four per cent of the nation’s total GDP. As of March 2013, it had the fourth-highest number of certified IT professionals globally, behind the U.S., India, and Russia. The IT Ukraine Association reported that over...

A mom is mystifying TikTok after sharing her easy life hack for making homemade popcorn.The trick, which essentially recreates bagged, store-bought popcorn in just two minutes, comes courtesy of a user named Megan (@mmmorgan20). In her viral clip, she shows how she’s been making her kids homemade popcorn “for years.”“Homemade popcorn the easy way,” she captioned her video.Viewers were largely blown away, with many commenting that they’d always assumed there was some sort of “special ingredient” in store-bought popcorn that helped it pop in the bag.However, as Megan’s video shows, that’s not the case. The mom starts by dumping a...

Titled, "I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone," .... ...In their original post, the anonymous IT employee said that they handle all of the digital evidence their employer uses during trials and that when COVID arrived, they requested to work from home. Within a week of working from home, the Redditor said that they wrote, debugged, and perfected a simple script to perform all their entire job for them... "I clock in every day, play video games or do whatever, and at the end of the day I look over the logs to make sure...

The Mozilla Foundation, the entity that oversees the Mozilla Firefox internet browser, is now accepting donations in cryptocurrency. One of the browser's founders is not happy about it. The company tweeted on Dec. 31: "Dabble in @dogecoin? HODLing some #Bitcoin & Ethereum? We're using @BitPay to accept donations in #cryptocurrency." Jamie "jwz" Zawinski, who helped build the Mozilla Project that was released in 2002, tweeted in response that he's "here to say f.. you and f... this."... ...He wasn't the only one to level criticism at Mozilla's move on Twitter this week. Peter Linss, the founder of Gecko — the...

A global conflict between the great powers of the world is already "in full swing,” according to a senior Russian diplomat, and it's happening in cyberspace. "The war [in cyberspace] is underway and unfolding very intensively,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s international information security director, Alexander Krutskikh, told a political science conference on Thursday. “The media rightly says that this [is] a Third World War, and what matters now is to calculate the damage and determine who will lose it in the end and what shape the world will eventually acquire as a result of this war.”... ...“No matter how hard...

Massive data breaches have become so common that we’ve gotten numb to reports detailing another hack or 0-day exploit. That doesn’t reduce the risk of such events happening, as the cat-and-mouse game between security experts and hackers continues. As some vulnerabilities get fixed, others pop up requiring attention from product and service providers. The newest one has a name that will not mean anything to most people. They call the hack Log4Shell in security briefings, which doesn’t sound very scary. But the new 0-day attack is so significant that some people see it as the worst internet hack in history.......

A pair of Iranian hackers have been charged with breaking into a Missouri tech firm’s cloud-computing account and running up a $760,000 bill while mining cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say the two men, who live and operate in Iran, managed to access the company’s Microsoft Azure cloud-computing account and install several new servers and programs to mine a cryptocurrency called Monero — a process known as cryptojacking... ..The company was unaware of the intrusion until it received a bill from Microsoft for $760,00 for the use of the additional server capacity, prosecutors said....

Tesla has yet to explain the outage, but the issue appears to span the globe. Based on several posts on Twitter, it seems that Tesla owners around the world are reporting not being able to connect their phone to their vehicle or, in some cases, not even being able to start the car. The reports mention an unexplained "500 Internal Server Error," which is, unfortunately, a pretty generic error. The existence of he outage appears to be corroborated by the website DownDetector.com, with 74% of reports of outages referring to the app. Tesla boss Elon Musk responded to one user...

Apple is making U.S. states foot part of the bill and provide customer support for its plan to turn iPhones into digital identification cards, according to confidential documents obtained by CNBC. The company requires states to maintain the systems needed to issue and service credentials, hire project managers to respond to Apple inquiries, prominently market the new feature and push for its adoption with other government agencies, all at taxpayer expense, according to contracts signed by four states. Apple announced in June that its users could soon store state-issued identification cards in the iPhone’s Wallet app, billing it as a...

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The final frontier has rarely seemed closer than this — at least virtually. Researchers at one of Switzerland’s top universities are releasing open-source beta software on Tuesday that allows for virtual visits through the cosmos including up to the International Space Station, past the Moon, Saturn or exoplanets, over galaxies and well beyond.... ...VIRUP is accessible to everyone for free — though it does require at least a computer and is best visualized with VR equipment or 3D capabilities.... ...To be sure, VR games and representations already exist...But the EPFL team says VIRUP goes much farther...