Free Republic

Numbers don't lie Recently, however, I was looking for web search engine popularity numbers. The usual sites people use for these numbers, such as Statcounter, as Ed Bott recently pointed out, have real problems. So, I went to the most reliable source I know of, the US federal government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP). This site gives a running count of US government website visits and an analysis. On average, there are 1.6 billion sessions in the last 30 days, with millions of users daily. In short, DAP gives a detailed view of what people use without massaging the data. According...

Evan Richardson grew up in Silicon Valley, surrounded by big tech companies that transformed how people live, socialize and work.As a curious kid, Richardson took apart electronics and put them back together. A career in technology seemed like a natural and safe path after his service in the military.“Tech was always an industry you go into, you’re going to make a lot of money and you’re never going to get fired,” he said.For thousands of tech workers like Richardson, those days are over. In March, the 43-year-old Hayward resident was caught off guard when he learned his employer, payment company...

Ok, sorry it has a paywall---this is only my review of it. Everyone needs to read this powerful book. It's DENSE, and took me about 4 hours to read, but the insight into how the big social tech companies are stealing our lives is important. Previously in my substacks I had written part 1, covering the first 1/3 of the book. This covers the last 2/3.

The FTC is not suing Meta for its past leftism or current MAGA-ism but for its longstanding, documented monopolism. Even Big Tech’s toughest conservative critics must admit Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have had a good few months. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s reelection last November, the $1 trillion company finally scrapped its worst woke initiatives, from Facebook’s infamous “fact-checking” regime to its internal DEI programming. Its sites are apparently no longer throttling political content. And Zuckerberg has even rebranded himself — going “all-in on a MAGA-dominated Washington,” buying a $23 million home two miles from the White House,...

Joe Biden’s final act of shamelessness was pardoning his entire crime family in the final hours of his presidency. There’s a mountain of corruption that’s yet to be fully revealed. On the weaponization of government front, you’d think the sustained lawfare launched against President Donald Trump from the Department of Justice was evidence enough. Pro-life activists and the January 6 defendants also being ensnared by the Biden DOJ’s extralegal crusade on political dissidents. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Media Research Center found not one, not ten, but 57 anti-free speech and censorship initiatives aimed at chipping away...

Elon Musk is leading a group of investors offering to buy OpenAI for nearly $100 billion. The takeover bid was submitted to OpenAI's board of directors on Monday, Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff told the Wall Street Journal. Open AI is currently a non-profit run by Musk's nemesis Sam Altman. The tech entrepreneurs are currently locked in a legal battle about the future of the company, considered a leader in artificial intelligence research. The maker's of ChatGPT have not publicly responded to the unsolicited bid from Musk and his associates. Musk's audacious bid has thrown a spanner in Altman's plans to...

Subtitle: A unanimous jury verdict was reversed by an Obama judge shortly after the Democratic administration apparently took interest in the case. Jeff Parker, the CEO of the small Florida-based technology company ParkerVision, explained to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Thursday how tech giant Qualcomm allegedly stole one of the most revolutionary patented innovations in American history with the help of elements of the Obama administration — technology that was ultimately offshored to China, possibly giving America's pre-eminent adversary a competitive edge. "We are at the beginning of seeing corruption exposed like never before in America," said Beck. Long war...

The establishment's worst nightmare isn't Donald Trump. It's his teenage son. With ONE decision he sent the mainstream media scrambling. Here's how an 18-year-old just outsmarted every political expert: In 2024, something unprecedented happened in political media: A presidential candidate completely abandoned traditional news outlets. Instead, he went all-in on podcasts, YouTube, and creator collaborations. The mastermind behind this shift? His 18-year-old son. But here's where it gets fascinating... See, Barron Trump understood something crucial about Gen Z: 63% of them prefer to see "real people" rather than polished media personalities. They trust long-form conversations over soundbites. And they can...

We were able to meet with senior staff. So we met with very senior people in the White House, in the inner core. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups. This whole thing where you guys think you can just start companies and write code and release code on the internet — those days are over. That’s not happening.” This is why I took you through the long preamble earlier, because at this point, we are no longer dealing with rational people. We’re no longer dealing with people we can deal with. And that’s...

Recently, I read a phenomenal article in The Tablet titled ‘Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment’. If you haven’t yet, stop everything and read it here. It’s one of those rare pieces that crystallises so much of what’s wrong with modern governance and societal manipulation, dissecting how narratives are shaped and enforced in ways that feel insidious and disturbingly effective. Most people are completely unaware that this is how power works today. The article explains a strategy used to manufacture consent and control dissent called ‘permission structures’— the societal cues and signals that compel us to conform or stay silent. (Also known as...

* Meta is set to cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing workers, CNBC confirmed Tuesday. * CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees about the decision to “move out low performers faster” in a memo posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum on Tuesday. * Zuckerberg told employees 2025 will “be an intense year.” Meta is set to cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing staffers, CNBC confirmed Tuesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees about the decision to “move out low performers faster” in a memo posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted the Biden administration “pushed” for Facebook and Instagram to censor posts that were factually true but politically inconvenient. And his admission proves what many already knew: the Supreme Court’s decision in Missouri v. Murthy was a grave miscarriage of “justice” and an affront to the First Amendment. Upon taking office, the Biden administration coordinated with social media giants to censor posts that contained factually correct information that was deemed unfavorable. But the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Murthy v. Missouri that Louisiana and Missouri did not have standing to challenge the Biden administration’s collusion with...

Tim Sweeney, the founder and chief executive of Fortnite parent company Epic Games, has accused Big Tech leaders of shifting political allegiances to "curry favor" with President-elect Donald Trump. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, Sweeney warned that Silicon Valley's most powerful bosses would be feigning political allegiance to the MAGA movement to push a "scummy monopoly campaign" with the incoming administration. Newsweek reached out to Epic Games, Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, OpenAI, Tesla, and the Trump transition team via email for comment. Sweeney's accusations come after several tech chief executives who did not publicly support Trump...

The headline from Politico’s “Playbook” would have been unthinkable eight years ago: “Meta sends Trump a friend request.” After all, Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is a political lightning rod in conservative political circles, especially after the $300 million worth of “Zuckerbucks” spent during the 2020 election to elect like-minded politicians. Yet lately, Zuckerberg has been singing a much different tune. He referred to President-elect Trump as “badass,” visited him at Mar-a-Lago, and donated one million dollars to his inaugural fund. This week, Meta made news by adding Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship...

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.” Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory. After eight...

It's official SteamOS will be released this year for all and also Lenovo is an official SteamOS partner with the launch of the Legion Go S, SteamOS edition in May, GeForce NOW app is also coming to the Steam Deck and we also cover the latest beta news and updates!

A two-hour conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) model is all it takes to make an accurate replica of someone's personality, researchers have discovered. In a new study published Nov. 15 to the preprint database arXiv, researchers from Google and Stanford University created "simulation agents" — essentially, AI replicas — of 1,052 individuals based on two-hour interviews with each participant. These interviews were used to train a generative AI model designed to mimic human behavior. ... To create the simulation agents, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews that covered participants' life stories, values and opinions on societal issues. This enabled the...

Effective December 26, Elon Musk changed the Twitter algorithm to diminish those voices who would openly confront his network of supporters within Silicon Valley and beyond. If large follower Twitter accounts, like those of Musk himself, David Sacks, Vivek Ramaswamy and Musks’ promoted network of influencers begin blocking accounts on the platform, then the voices of those accounts get purposefully diminished by the algorithm.Much like having a VIP section that can remove people from the audience, Musk is pushing opposing viewpoints into the background of the public square.[SOURCE]The timing of this is not accidental. The allies of Musk have been...

Elon ADMITS Censoring Laura Loomer’s X Account Over Immigration Debate

The Golden City is losing its shine. Housing prices in San Francisco have plunged to pre-pandemic levels amid widespread layoffs in the tech sector, SFGATE reports. Despite still being one of the more expensive metropolitan areas in the US, prices for condominiums and co-ops in the city were down 14.7% from May 2022 and now average $986,000. Those prices have not been seen since 2015, according to Zillow data analyzed by Wolf Street. According to the outlet, condo prices doubled between 2012 and 2022, but have now declined by 30% in the past two years. The Millennium Tower, notorious for...