Free Republic

The Amish are online, onscreen, and multiplying fast. In their battle with modernity, it’s tough to say who’s winning I’ve probably visited more Amish settlements than anyone. Who would venture out to the most remote corners of Montana, Maine and South Texas if they didn’t happen to be a student of Amish culture? Perhaps a peddler of pots and pans; many Amish cooks, I have noticed, gradually gave up their cast iron for stainless steel in the past 50 years... In my 25 years exploring Amish communities, I’ve witnessed changes that would be unnoticeable to the average outsider... To the...

China continues to rack up successes in exporting its nuclear power technologies as it seeks to become a leader on the global stage. Chinese President Xi Jingping wrapped up a state visit to the United Kingdom at the end of October, in which he inked a deal with the UK to help build nuclear reactors in England. The deal will see the China General Nuclear Power Corporation acquire a 33.5 percent stake in the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. The power plant could be the most expensive reactor ever built and although it will be constructed years behind schedule, it...

Wireless power has been a dream of mankind’s for decades, but the technology finally appears to be gaining some traction. Theoretically, numerous studies have shown that wireless power is possible through a variety of aerial transmission modalities. Yet the problem with wireless power has been getting the technology to work at a reasonable range. So far, commercial use of wireless power has been limited, but progress is being made. For instance, Samsung now has a commercially available wireless charger for its cell phones. With the charger, consumers do not need to plug their phone into the wall for it to...

During the fourth Republican debate, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina correctly noted that "big government has created a big business called politics. And there are lots of people invested in the status quo of that big business called politics." What Fiorina did not say was that, particularly in the tech sphere, the big business of politics loves to attempt hostile takeovers, often in the guise of trying to stop genuinely predatory behavior. Ironically, the biggest beneficiaries of such takeovers are usually the predators themselves. No better example of such disingenuous action exists than the current proposed FCC enforcement action...

Transmittance spectrum of the 54Al2O3-46Ta2O5 glass in the UV/vis region. The inset picture shows the glass sample used for the transmittance experiment. Credit: (c) 2015 Scientific Reports (2015). DOI: 10.1038/srep15233 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Phys.org)—A team of researchers with The University of Tokyo and Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute has created a type of glass that is stronger than many metals. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how they overcame one of the major hurdles in creating glass imbued with extra amounts of an oxide of aluminum, by using what they call aerodynamic levitation. Glass that does...

With the exception of Mrs. Clinton and her email scandal, few presidential candidates of either party have been moved during their campaigns to discuss technology at length. That changes today, as Donald Trump gives an exclusive interview to Breitbart Tech about hacking, cyber-warfare and artificial intelligence. BREITBART TECH: What’s your position on the NSA? Has it overreached in recent years, or is it an essential line of defense in the fight against terrorism? TRUMP: The National Security Agency (NSA) is charged with collecting electronic intelligence from a host of sources around the world and from those who live in America who might...

Your next tinfoil hat will won’t be made of tinfoil. A small company called Conductive Composites out of Utah has developed a flexible material — thin and tough enough for wallpaper or woven fabric — that can keep electronic emissions in and electromagnetic pulses out.

It comes at different times, and in different forms. But as they have charted the war in southeast Ukraine over the past year, drones flown by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have run into the same problem: Russian troops on the ground are jamming them into virtual blindness. It’s just one part of a sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW) effort in Ukraine that has proved a sobering experience for the U.S. Army. Faced with how the newly modernized Russian army is operating in Ukraine and Syria — using equipment like the Krasukha-4, which jams radar and aircraft...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them. CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post. Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter...

Thanks in part to advances like email, Facebook, and Twitter, mail carriers will be all but obsolete in the not-so-distant future. By 2022, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 28% decline in postal-service jobs, totaling around 139,100 fewer positions. Mail carriers aren't the only ones whose jobs are disappearing. Technology and market shifts have affected a wide range of fields. Based on the BLS's occupational outlook data, here are 15 American jobs that are on their way out. 1. Printing worker According to the BLS, printing workers inspect random samples during print runs to identify problems and make...

As technology changes, so does the job market. Two centuries ago, most low skilled workers would have found work as farmhands, while a century ago they would have been employed in a factory. Today they are most likely to work in the service industry, whether in retail, food service, janitorial services or as personal care aides in a nursing home or hospital. As I have written before, these jobs are often important stepping stones to better ones, even if they do not offer a direct path to advancement. Low skilled jobs still teach workers how to follow instructions and become...

On Friday a group of government officials, environmentalists, and local bigwigs gathered in the coastal town of Squamish, British Columbia, about an hour north of Vancouver, to mark the onset of what could one day be a new industry: creating carbon-neutral transportation fuel made from carbon dioxide captured from air. The company that built the plant, Carbon Engineering, was founded by a Canadian scientist named David Keith. A Harvard professor of applied physics, Keith has made headlines before for his outspoken advocacy for more research into geoengineering (specifically, seeding the lower stratosphere with sulfuric acid to reflect sunlight and cool...

The number of private tech companies valued at $1 billion or more has surged so much this year that on average 1.3 so-called unicorn companies have been created every week in 2015, according to data from CB Insights. But now it looks like winter is coming to Silicon Valley. Fortune's Dan Primack went to San Francisco this week and met with a number of people involved with unicorn companies with ballooning valuations. He says the mentality of people in Silicon Valley is starting to change, and people are getting scared. "As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment,"...

Global Competition Challenges Innovators to Develop Breakthrough Technologies to Convert CO2 into Valuable Products.AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At Fortune’s Brainstorm E conference today, XPRIZE Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis announces the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a competition to address CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. With registration opening today, teams are challenged to develop breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO2 into one or more products with the highest net value. Co-sponsored by NRG and COSIA, the 4-½ year competition will include two tracks, with the new technologies tested at either a coal power plant or a natural gas facility. “We are...

Technology also offers the prospect of transforming our societies and cultures in ways we need to examine unless we intend to fly into the future blind In many ways I have always been a dystopian believing that the inevitable rise of a future technology enhanced totalitarian state will regiment and control a society that is as dehumanizing and as unpleasant as possible. I was influenced by early and repeated readings of such works as 1984, The Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, and the Iron Heel. I was also influenced by the History of the Twentieth Century and the steady...

Administration lawyers ‘reinterpret’ the law to greatly increase visas for technology firms. Last week Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley hit back against Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency pushed through, during a previously aimed at bringing over highly sought-after “intracompany transferees” from American firms’non-immigrant worker visas) the Obama administration, at the behest of Big Tech lobbyists, has told its agency lawyers to think up a clever alternative. In a strongly worded letter to Obama’s immigration authorities, Grassley, a 35-year Senate veteran, closely outlines the legal and practical faults of the new policy and demands answers from...

Washington - There has been an astounding 32 per cent increase this year in the number of students flocking to American universities for higher studies. It is the biggest increase from any single country for the year, although in overall terms, China still tops the table in a big way. Figures just released by the US Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP) indicate that 149,987 Indian students are currently enrolled in American universities of a total of 1.05 million. Chinese students number 301,532. When it comes to the highly-coveted STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) stream, it is Indian students...

[Luddites and people with Marxist premises are wrong again.] The Robots of Labor DayEdward Hudgins Fear of robots has been rising: not just fear of the sci-fi killer kind but also fear that robots will take our jobs. But this Labor Day we should celebrate the fact that robots free us from the need to perform certain tasks, make our labor more valuable, and could usher in new age of prosperity and human flourishing. Robots are machinesRobots are special types of machines. They’re programmed electro-mechanical devices that perform various physical functions, ideally better than humans. They range from the types...

Heat-vision cameras have been used widely in many industries for decades: Soldiers find targets through heat-vision rifle sights, police mount them on helicopters to search for people on the ground and contractors use the sensors to look for cold air seeping into homes. Now you can buy a simple smartphone attachment to reveal the widely varying temperatures of the people and things around you. Maybe you’re not up for hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger, like the heat-seeing alien hunter in the classic 1987 film “Predator.” There are many practical home uses for the latest thermal camera accessories from Flir and Seek, too:...

Women, who outnumber men in college and are more likely to graduate, are underrepresented in computer science fields.  That’s female privilege, unless we condescendingly presume they are making the wrong choices in college.  Overall, women received 18 percent of Computer and Information Sciences undergraduate degrees in 2013, yet were 26% of the computing workforce in 2014 (PDF). Women make up 30% of the workforce at tech giant Apple; at Intel, they represent about 24%; 22% of leaderships positions at Google are held by women.  Compared to their rates of participation in STEM majors in college, women also receive disproportionately...