Free Republic

It has been a long time since the West dominated shipbuilding or steel making. We are already aware that we are losing ground in consumer goods, as well as in finance and transport. Add it all up, and we no longer expect the US, Europe or its allies to control the global market in most major industries. Still, even as other industries lost ground there was one thing most economists and industrial experts would have felt sure we could rely on: Apple. Whatever else happened, nothing would knock its world-beating iPhone — without question the world’s most profitable product —...

Two brothers from Nigeria pleaded guilty Wednesday in connection with an international sextortion ring, in which they threatened to release a nude photo of a 17-year-old Michigan boy, driving him to commit suicide inside his home. Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and Samson Ogoshi, 20, each pleaded guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit teenage boys, US Attorney Mark Totten said in a statement. The Ogoshi brothers await sentencing later this year, and we are still pursuing the extradition of the third defendant, Ezekiel Robert,” Totten added. DeMay, 17, was found dead in his home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound March 25, 2022,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors and stifles innovation. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to “engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct.” The lawsuit — which was also filed with 16 state attorneys general — is the latest example of the Justice Department’s approach to aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust law that...

As migrants pour into the U.S. illegally, Mexican cartels are using smartphones to facilitate their smuggling, making payments to drivers and manipulating the Customs and Border Protection app to get more people in. The CBP One app allows entrants to the United States to schedule appointments to appear at U.S. ports of entry. Ostensibly, its users must be in northern Mexico to schedule an appointment, though reporting from the Washington Examiner suggested that users have turned to virtual private networks (VPN) to evade the geographic requirements. House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, R-Tenn., confirmed to the outlet...

They haven’t used them for many purposes that we’ve seen yet, but presumably they are planning to. January 6 was a big deal on this front, as we learned that it was possible and apparently legal for the government to demand location data and identify people as being in a place based on that location data.

This person on TikTok posted a video documenting their unplugged appliances before taking a trip and honestly, it's kind of ingenious. Among all the intrusive thoughts I deal with on a regular basis, one of them involves trying to remember whether or not I did the most important things I should do before leaving the house. Namely, I ask myself if I locked the door, turned the stove off, or performed any other security tasks before stepping out. And even if I check all of those things off and officially leave, alarms will start going off in asking me if...

Washington, DC – The New Civil Liberties Alliance is challenging the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) in federal court for coordinating with Google to automatically install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. A newly-released video details how DPH’s actions have violated fundamental constitutional rights. ... Thousands of people do not know DPH’s Covid-19 tracking app is on their phone, as it does not appear on their home screens like other apps. NCLA client Robert Wright, who commutes to Massachusetts for work, was...

In a warning issued this week, the New York Department of State’s Division of Consumer Protection encouraged travelers to protect themselves against so-called “juice jacking” on public charging stations. Officials said thieves can place hidden skimming devices inside USB ports on public cell phone charging kiosks at airports, hotels, and other public locations. “Unfortunately, nefarious scammers are always at work finding new ways to target unsuspecting consumers and steal their personal information,” New York Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez said in a statement. If you need to charge your phone or any device while traveling, it’s important to pay attention...

Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers found that problematic smartphone use is linked with low self-esteem as well as negative cognitive outcomes.The majority of people who live in industrialized countries have smartphones. The fear of being without one’s smartphones is known as “nomophobia” and has become a social problem. Research shows that people who have smartphone addiction tend to report more loneliness and experience self-regulation deficits..adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:468px !important; height:60px !important; } @media (max-width:1199px) { .adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:468px !important; height:60px !important; } } @media (max-width:767px) { .adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:300px !important; height:250px !important; } }Furthermore, people who have...

TheTruthSpy app has been downloaded to thousands of smartphones in America without the owner of the device knowing.. The Android app markets itself as a way for customers to monitor their spouses communications on the device.. A new report from TechCrunch reveals the app is also collecting and storing personal information from devices.. This includes 1.2 million text messages and 4.42 million call logs, along with 278,861 location data points from Americans over the course of six weeks.. ... Thousands of Americans have fallen victim to stalkware planted on their smartphones by someone they know - and an Android app...

<p>More FBI whistleblowers have come to Congress and accused senior bureau officials of smuggling unauthorized smartphones into top-secret facilities, a security breach that can expose classified documents.</p><p>The alleged security breaches occurred at a Sensitive Compartmented Information Center or SCIF set up for the executive offices on the 7th floor of the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building, according to the whistleblower.</p>

The commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division wants late-night texts from leaders to subordinates to stop. “The overuse and reliance on cell phones causes unforeseen stress on soldiers and families,” reads a policy letter recently shared on Twitter by Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr., who said it was the official cell phone policy for the division and was designed to “prevent soldiers from being led by text.” “Change is a constant around us, but not all change needs to be communicated via text, chat groups, or other messaging applications,” Beagle wrote in the letter he posted Tuesday. “The constant...

Visitors to the Chicago zoo showing the 415lb Amare pictures and videos through the glass wall has made him dismissive to other male gorillas A teenage gorilla in a Chicago zoo has been getting too much screen time, according to zoo officials. Amare, a 415-pound gorilla at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, has been staring a little too frequently at the screens of cellphones from visitors who show him pictures and videos through the glass wall – including selfies, family photos, pet videos and even footage of Amare himself. He has apparently become so distracted as a result that last week,...

Last year it was revealed that Pentagon scientists working in a secretive united created a microchip to be inserted underneath the skin, that can detect Covid-19 before the body exhibits symptoms. 60 Minutes interviewed retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician, who spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic. "Dr. Hepburn showed us a few current projects, some sound like they’re from an episode of “Star Trek.” Consider a ship like the USS Theodore Roosevelt — hobbled last year when 1,271...

A Missouri high school announced it would ban smartphones and smartwatches beginning Monday. Steelville High School made the announcement Thursday on Facebook, claiming it's the school's latest attempt to prevent students from taking photos and videos of each other for social media. The new policy is a roundabout way to prevent child pornography from being filmed in the form of impromptu videos in school bathrooms, according to the principal. ... Student devices will be locked up and returned upon dismissal or they may choose to not bring them at all," Principal Steven Vetter wrote. "Any student who violates this new...

In a time when various “developed world” intelligence agencies are filling up petabytes of hard disk space with domestic phone recordings and tracking their own citizens who – in the pursuit of a “liberal” agenda – have been escalated to a greater terrorist threat than actual foreign terrorists, some people have had enough and are throwing their smart phones into the trash and replacing them with “dumbphones” instead. One among them is seventeen-year-old Robin West, who according to the BBC is an anomaly among her peers: “she doesn’t have a smartphone.” Instead of scrolling through apps like TikTok and Instagram...

In a world where many of us are glued to our smartphones, Dulcie Cowling is something of an anomaly - she has ditched hers. The 36-year-old decided at the end of last year that getting rid of her handset would improve her mental health. So, over Christmas she told her family and friends that she was switching to an old Nokia phone that could only make and receive calls and text messages. She recalls that one of the pivotal moments that led to her decision was a day at the park with her two boys, aged six and three: "I...

Children’s screen time doubled during pandemic — and hasn’t changed much since NOVEMBER 1, 2021 by Study Finds Share Tweet SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Children’s screen time has doubled during the pandemic — and it hasn’t gone down since, according to new research. Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco say youngsters are spending almost eight hours a day looking at smartphones, tablets, and televisions, compared to less than four hours before COVID. Concerningly, this figure does not include the time spent on computers for school work. Researchers focused completely on recreational activities like playing video games, chatting on social...

The great computer chip shortage of 2021 will likely get worse before it gets better. This conclusion was reached following brief study and anecdotal review. Moreover, while COVID lockdowns may have initially triggered the shortage, several decades of shortsighted decisions and simmering geopolitical tensions make it much more than a matter of fixing a few broken links in the supply chain. Here’s why… The world’s top two leading chip companies are Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. These two Asian firms, combined, control more than 70 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing market. The U.S., which was once a leader,...

The Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is About to Come Out!The Disk Manufacturers all know it. The Operating System producers have all known it. But for decades the Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is about to come out.It does not matter whether you are on a Laptop, Desktop, Smartphone or even a mainframe, the Ticking Time Bomb is on your system and you probably never knew it.It is under the heading of SPARES. Specifically when your drive runs out of them.And a couple of areas on your system disk. Sector 0. If sector 0 is bad, typically it's...