Free Republic

Kaspersky has denied links to the Russian government, but US officials are raising doubts.

Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs. According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a programme -- a minimum requirement for any programming job. Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata -- a Machine Learning based assessment of software development skills - and over 2/3 could not even write code that compiles. The study further...

A chap in Chicago is suing headphone maker Bose after discovering how much personal information its app was phoning home to base – this slurped data includes songs listened to, for how long, and when.The class-action lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the US district court of Illinois by a one Kyle Zak, claims the Bose Connect application, available for iOS and Android, breaks federal wiretap laws, local wiretapping statute and fraud laws, and carries out "intrusion on seclusion," which is also a crime in the state.Court documents [PDF] state Zak bought himself a pair of $350 (£275) Bose QuietComfort 15 wireless...

REXBURG — Ethics and compliance software and services company NAVEX Global@ today announced that it will expand its operations in Rexburg, Idaho, and will add at least 80 more jobs to meet the demands of the company's rapidly growing business and expanding global customer base. The company made the announcement during a press conference held on Wednesday at Hemming Village. NAVEX Global is the world's largest provider of whistleblower hotlines and operates contact centers in Charlotte, North Carolina; Norcross, Georgia; and Lisbon, Portugal. The company expects to add between 80 and 100 new employees to staff a new contact center...

Yesterday we reported that an international group of hackers claim they have breached Apple’s iCloud user database and stolen 300 million usernames and passwords. The group has threatened to initiate a widespread factory reset on April 7th, 2017, potentially wiping out data on tens of millions of iPhones and iCloud accounts should Apple fail to pay a ransom. But that breach by nefarious hackers, while serious, is nothing compared to what your trusted operating system provider may be doing on your personal computer. According to a recent report, if you are a Windows 10 user then every single keystroke you...

Wikileaks unveiled their largest vault of confidential CIA documents which they dubbed 'Vault 7'. One of the documents revealed a bombshell - the U.S. government is secretly paying to keep U.S. software such as iOS and Android unsafe. The U.S. government is paying to keep U.S. software unsafe. They are intentionally developing vulnerabilities instead of securing systems. This is criminal and reckless. This means iOS and Android can be hacked, spied on and/or infected with malware. Because of the software vulnerabilities, various messaging apps with encryption can also be accessed. #Vault 7 shows that Apple has been proven right. Governments...

LOOKING INWARD ON H1-B Indian IT firms must ramp up salary structures The odd thing about the H1-B reform Bill introduced in the US House of Representatives is the person who introduced it. Zoe Lofgren is the Democratic Party Congresswoman representing California's 19th Congressional District, an area that covers most of the city of San Jose. As any visitor to the city can testify, it is not a white-majority constituency. Indeed, a majority of the population in the area is of Hispanic origin, but almost a quarter of the population is Asian. For the most part, those are Indians particularly...

Multinational software giant SAP SE has called on the incoming Trump administration to rethink any punitive tariffs and tax policies as it sets out to create 10,000 new jobs in the U.S. over the next year. The firm, which currently serves 25 industries across 190 countries, aims to significantly boost its business in the U.S. over the coming 13 months, chief executive Bill McDermott told CNBC's Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. However, he said that he was worried that added taxes and tariffs could be "problematic" for these goals. "We obviously don't want to get...

<p>1. has functions which are easy to see/find and invoke 2. allows easier upload of pictures 3. that allows email notification of replies to comments 4. that allows editing after a comment is posted 5. that has text editing features so one doesn't need to know HTML code in order to add emphasis. 6. that has a Search function for previous posts 7. that is easier to navigate to the specialty forums such as "Gods, Graves, Glyphs", which, had it not been mentioned in a random post, I never would have found here on FR.</p>

I'm looking for Free Republic post editing software. I just upgraded to a new computer with the same OS and loaded the Tree Viewer and Quote maker but the post editing software that showed up before no longer does. Being able to add images or just do simple things like bold or italicize a word is huge and frankly common to all forums these days. Anyone have a link to a working post editing addon for Firefox?

Google and Microsoft are butting heads over the disclosure of vulnerabilities. On Monday, Google revealed a critical flaw in Windows after it gave Microsoft a ten-day window to warn the public about it.Google posted about the zero-day vulnerability on its security blog, saying Microsoft had yet to publish a fix or issue an advisory about the software flaw."This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited," Google said. It lets hackers exploit a bug in the Windows kernel, via a win32k.sys system call, to bypass the security sandbox.The search giant originally told Microsoft about the problem...

Flying home to New Jersey from Chicago after the first two days at his new job, Sergey Aleynikov was prepared for the usual inconveniences: a bumpy ride, a late arrival. He was not expecting Special Agent Michael G. McSwain of the F.B.I. At 9:20 p.m. on July 3, Mr. McSwain arrested Mr. Aleynikov, 39, at Newark Liberty Airport, accusing him of stealing software code from Goldman Sachs, his old employer. At a bail hearing three days later, a federal prosecutor asked that Mr. Aleynikov be held without bond because the code could be used to “unfairly manipulate” stock prices.

Microsoft has merged three of its business units to create a new artificial intelligence division, while teaming with four of the world's biggest tech giants to promote public understanding of AI. The artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning research industry is estimated to grow to US$70 billion by 2020 from just US$8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report that cited IDC research. Microsoft is hoping to tap into that pool by combining its Bing and Cortana product groups with its Research division to create the new AI and Research Group. The business unit will be Microsoft's...

South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox News today and disclosed new details about the Clinton email scandal that seem to indicate intent to destroy evidence. Per the clip below, Gowdy reveals that Clinton used "BleachBit" to erase the "personal" emails from her private server. For those not familiar with the software, BleachBit is intended to help users delete files in a way to "prevent recovery" and "hide traces of files deleted." Per the BleachBit website: Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of...

Florida AG Shuts Down Boynton Beach Tech Support Scam August 24, 2016 11:12 AM TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A Boynton Beach tech support company which reportedly scammed its customers out of $25 million has been temporarily shut down again by court order, according to Florida’s Attorney General’s Office. The company Client Care Experts, formerly known as First Choice Tech Support, LLC, is owned by CEO Michael Seward and his partner Kevin McCormick. The state’s Attorney General’s Office said the operation was run out of a boiler room in Boynton Beach and employed more than 200 telemarketers at the location. The court...

There could be a very serious problem with the past 15 years of research into human brain activity, with a new study suggesting that a bug in fMRI software could invalidate the results of some 40,000 papers. That's massive, because functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the best tools we have to measure brain activity, and if it’s flawed, it means all those conclusions about what our brains look like

Apple today kicked off its beta program for the new versions of its iOS mobile and macOS desktop/laptop operating systems. Users interested in testing iOS 10 and macOS Sierra need to sign up and accept a lengthy legal agreement. Apple warned that the betas are still in development, and recommended testers back up Macs and iDevices before installing the preview software so they can revert to older versions of the operating systems in case something goes wrong. MacOS and iOS 10 are designed to work better together: the Universal Clipboard copying feature makes data sharing between the two easier, while...

Software vendor Citrix is asking all customers to reset their passwords for the GoToMyPC remote access service after it suffered what appears to be a full credentials compromise. In its advisory, Citrix said the GoToMyPC service had "unfortunately" been targeted by "a very sophisticated password attack". Citrix provided no further details of the hack, but apologised "for the frustration this is causing".

May 19, 2016 FTC expands tech support fraud lawsuit Keith Griffin The Federal Trade Commission has added three new defendants to an ongoing case against a tech support scam with ties to Connecticut. The scheme allegedly bilked consumers out of tens of millions of dollars by pretending to represent Microsoft, Apple, and other major tech companies. Back in November, the Connecticut attorney general's office joined in the FTC action along with the state of Pennsylvania in a request to shut down a tech support scam operating out of Essex and two locations in Pennsylvania that allegedly scammed consumers out of...

<p>At the end of April, Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware interrupted a live TV weather broadcast to urge meteorologist Metinka Slater to upgrade her computer.</p> <p>A week later, while playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive to 130,000 spectators on Twitch.tv, Erik Flom was blasted out of his match by the Windows 10 installer. This was even after he spent a few frantic minutes trying to delay the upgrade until after his game had ended. The fun starts about nine minutes into this recording of the live stream. "F*ck you, Windows 10!" was Flom's response.</p>