Free Republic

When investigative journalist Julia Angwin worked for ProPublica, the nonprofit news organization became known as “big tech’s scariest watchdog.” By partnering with programmers and data scientists, Angwin pioneered the work of studying big tech’s algorithms — the secret codes that have an enormous effect on everyday American life. Her findings shed light on how companies like Facebook were creating tools that could be used to promote racial bias, fraudulent schemes and extremist content. Now, with a $20 million gift from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, she and her partner at ProPublica, data journalist Jeff Larson, are starting The Markup, a news...

In 1969, it was space travel. Today, the world’s most tech-savvy nations are in a race for 5G – networks that operate 100 times more quickly than today’s cellular networks. So what’s behind this competition to achieve 5G? First, buffering and lag will be a thing of the past, reducing the download time of a two-hour movie – which now requires six minutes – to only 3.6 seconds. But the impacts of 5G are more far-reaching than faster download speeds on our mobile devices. 5G allows for the lighting-speed transmission of massive amounts of data, making the potential applications of...

“LIKE Florence in the Renaissance.” That is a common description of what it is like to live in Silicon Valley. America’s technology capital has an outsize influence on the world’s economy, stockmarkets and culture. This small portion of land running from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world’s five most valuable companies. Giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Netflix all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home, as do trailblazers such as Airbnb, Tesla and Uber. The Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. The...

The Clinton Administration notified Congress today that it had approved the export of technology to China to permit the launching of a communications satellite aboard a Chinese rocket next month.President Clinton said in a letter to Congress that the transfer would not harm national security or significantly improve China's military capability in space. The President was required under a 1998 law to certify that all such technology exports are in the national interest.The certification was the first such notice to Congress under the law, which was passed in the aftermath of a Congressional uproar last year over the transfer of...

According to the ImportGenius website that tracks the import/export activity at shipping docks, the U.S. Army Contracting Command received the 3D mobile air-defense radar system from Ukraine. The notice by the ImportGenius said that the U.S. Army Contracting Command center in Orlando has received 3D mobile air-defense radar system, called the 36D6M1-1, from Ukraine through SFTC “Progress”. The 36D6M1-1is a mobile 3D airspace surveillance radar system that was developed by the SE “Scientific and Production Complex “Iskra” and is designed to be used as a part of modern automated Air Defense systems, Anti-Aircraft Missile Complexes and to detect low flying...

New technology promises to give tankers an unprecedented view of the battlefield around them—without exposing them to lethal enemy fire. Camera systems, often linked to VR headsets, can provide soldiers with a real-time view of the world outside their tank, eliminating the often severely restricted view tankers are forced to fight with. Tanks are large, lethal, imposing beasts, surrounding their crews with layers of thick steel, composite, and even uranium armor. All of that protection makes it hard to see outside the tank, however, and tankers usually must rely on small vision ports to make sense of things. Seeing to...

• For US President Donald Trump and some of his allies, the idea that there's a liberal bias in tech produces the same gut reaction as gun control and immigration. • The news website Axios reported Thursday that Trump was not about to back down in his war on Google and other firms, with one unnamed source calling it "an issue that's here to stay." • Silicon Valley seems resigned to the long fight. "There will be no fixing this," a tech executive told The New York Times. President Donald Trump and his allies are getting ready for a long...

Father Karol Wojtyła, who later became Pope John Paul II, is pictured in the early 1950s surrounded by young people. Father Wojtyła would regularly go on mountain excursions with a group of young married couples and students that called itself Środowisko, meaning environment or milieu. (Archival Collection of Adam Bujak)Karol Wojtyła, the man who became St. John Paul II, regularly escaped from two of the worst totalitarian regimes in history: German Nazism, and later, Soviet Communism. By “escaped,” I do not mean that he ran away. Rather, as a priest and bishop, he escaped only by going deeper.As the...

Homeless people are wearing barcodes around their necks in an attempt to increase donations in a cashless society, under an Oxford University backed initiative. A new social innovation project, called Greater Change, hands homeless people a QR code, similar to the kind issued for online tickets. Passersby who wish to give money - but who may not have any change in their pocket - can scan the code using their smart phone, and make an online payment to the person. The donation goes into an account which is managed by a case worker who ensures that the money is spent...

Many of you have heard about “Sharing Human Technology with Plants,” an installation project of a walking succulent plant (to be precise, an Echeveria ‘Hakuhou’) I started at the end of 2014. It somehow caught Bob Xu’s attention, who later became Vincross’ first investor. It’s no exaggeration to say that without “Sharing Human Technology with Plants,” we wouldn’t have been able to create HEXA so quickly. So, after having built HEXA, I’d always wanted to remake the project using HEXA as its base. The idea has been brushed aside for the lack of time until very recently.The original idea...

On Thursday, Facebook's stock dropped by 19 percent, wiping out $119 billion in market value. Also on Thursday, President Donald Trump echoed allegations that Twitter had "shadow banned" Republican congressmen, pushing down Twitter shares as well. Twitter insisted to PJ Media that the "shadow banning" was unintentional and has been fixed, and Facebook's stock drop seems directly connected to declines in expected revenue. That said, these tremors may be ominous portents of things to come, according to conservative groups sounding the alarm about the left-wing smear outlet behind much social media censorship: the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "Facebook's plummeting...

Occasionally we come across a piece of information which reminds us that, while flying cars are still nowhere to be found, we’re definitely living in the future. Usually it’s about some new application of artificial intelligence, or maybe another success in the rapidly developing field of private spaceflight. But sometimes it’s when you look at a website and say to yourself: “Oh cool, they have 1.5kW electromagnetic accelerators in stock.”Arcflash Labs, a partnership between [David Wirth] and [Jason Murray], have put their EMG-01A Gauss gun up for sale for anyone who’s brave enough and willing to put down $1,000...

In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station. In Qingdao, a city famous for its German colonial heritage, cameras powered by artificial intelligence helped the police snatch two dozen criminal suspects in the midst of a big annual beer festival. In Wuhu, a fugitive murder suspect was identified by a camera as he bought food from a street vendor. With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to...

Leftist thinking is so pervasive that it often slips into conservative thought without anybody being aware of it. (No? How about “capitalism,” or “HUAC”?) One such case involves U.S. defense policy, specifically U.S. vs. Soviet, Russian, or Chinese weapons systems. We’ve already covered the tendency to credit the Russians (and the Chinese, and who knows, the Inuit) with world-beating weapons they couldn’t possibly have. Another such axiom exists governing American defense: that all U.S. weapons are junk, won’t work, can’t compete, are overpriced, will lead to disaster, and must be cancelled immediately. This is a thesis that has achieved the...

“Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (1984, George Orwell). It is no overstatement to say that we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that is going to change our world forever. This technological transformation is happening right now, and we will see significant change occur, not over the next couple of decades, but within the next couple of years. Very few people in today’s busy world are aware of just how much their lives are about to change, and how unavoidable and...

It’s every parents’ worst nightmare – their children stuck underground as rescuers work around-the-clock to save them. For some 12 boys and their soccer coach – who have been trapped for nearly two weeks in a flooded Thai cave – Israeli technology may be part of the answer. It’s every parents’ worst nightmare – their children stuck underground as rescuers work around-the-clock to save them. For some 12 boys and their soccer coach – who have been trapped for nearly two weeks in a flooded Thai cave – Israeli technology may be part of the answer. Donating the communication systems...

I'm looking for some input on a piece of equipment I will be using for business and travel. I need a portable power supply that can serve two functions: (1) charge small electronic equipment (mainly a phone and/or a laptop computer) when I have no access to power; and (2) provide power for electronic equipment for hours at a time when I am working in a location where I do not have power. Item (2) is what is driving my need here. I will be working on several projects where I may need to set up a small digital video...

Link only due to apparent copyright issues: http://www.themedialine.org/biztec/a-match-made-in-hi-tech-heaven-israel-and-south-korea/

Amazon originally started out many years ago selling books online. But owner Jeff Bezos has aggressively led it to now selling everything online, making Bezos one of the richest men in world history. Bezos's corporate empire includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading pioneer of cloud computing services. Cloud computing enables anyone in an organization worldwide to access the organization’s documents and data online. That enables the organization’s employees to collaborate and communicate online, from anywhere in the world. America’s Defense Department is now trying to catch up to the world’s leading multinational companies to adopt cloud computing for America’s...

It seems that we have a few new technologies that becomes commonplace everywhere, and completely changes the world. Here is roughly what I understand they have been call: Late 50s to late 60s: television, rocketry Late 60s to late 70s: (not sure, handheld calculators and digital watches? Cassette players?) 80s: the use of electronics everywhere, home PCS 90s: internet, pagers, cell phones appear 2000s fast internet, flip phones, digital photography, digital music 2010's: smartphones, social media, digital movies I know those dates are not exact, but pretty close. So what do you think the big technology trends that will change...