Free Republic

A month before President Trump’s inauguration, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff flew to the United Arab Emirates with two goals: discussing regional issues with the Abu Dhabi royal known as the “spy sheikh,” and attending a cryptocurrency conference. Less than five months later, Witkoff’s son, co-founder of the crypto venture World Liberty Financial, took the stage at a conference in Dubai to announce the company had struck a deal for the sheikh’s company to buy $2 billion of their new cryptocurrency. The expected tens of millions of dollars in annual profits would be split between the Witkoffs and their co-founders—and...

In Hollywood an end to the actors strike... In the early hours of Thursday six rockets fired at a US base near the Conoco natural gas field in Syria...At least 15 rockets fired at the US base near Syria's Al Omar oil field... The Hezbollah affiliated Al Mayadeen media outlet reporting a shootout involving US military and allied forces with Syrian soldiers... Two US Air Force F-15's attacking a base linked to Iran in Syria... Tonight, a US base in northeastern Syria attacked by a swarm of drones... A drone attacking a US military base in northern Iraq... Israel striking...

An "active shooter" situation in Lewiston, Maine...Fox News reporting at least 22 dead and dozens wounded at three locations... The US House led by newly elected speaker Mike Johnson approving a resolution in support of Israel... An Iranian backed militia group says that a US base in northeastern Syria was attacked by rockets... Russian Aerospace Forces striking two jihadist positions in Syria... The Russian military in Syria also saying that US-led coalition warplanes and drones violated Syrian airspace 15 times today... Democrat Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York facing a misdemeanor criminal charge for pulling a fire alarm at the...

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said China could invade Taiwan without major consequences from the U.S. once he has hypothetically attained the nation’s “semiconductor independence” in 2028. Semiconductor independence: In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Ramaswamy stressed the importance of semiconductors and why the U.S. should take aggressive action until the nation is able to produce its own. Ramaswamy noted that China would hypothetically not take the risk of aggressing towards Taiwan for his term “if we show we’re serious about [semiconductor independence].”

Suppose China decides to start a war with Taiwan – in the next two years. It's entirely possible, if not likely. Our military is not prepared to assist our ally Taiwan. Joe Biden is president. He has us escalating the war in Ukraine to nuclear proportions. He's in the tank for China and wouldn't be inclined to do a thing about it. Even if he did, he would botch the job or have a nervous breakdown or worse. No one else in the Democratic Party, especially Kamala Harris, is not even an option.

In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, introduced the idea of the Panopticon, a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. Each cell is flooded with light, which creates an environment in which prisoners are under constant watch. Even if no guard is on duty, a prisoner will always feel as if they are being watched. Bentham described it as “[a] new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” The Panopticon is the optimal prison; it enables an unprecedented...

Like some of you, I love to check out car models and drive salesmen crazy with the classic "just looking" line. I look at the sticker and check out all the options. It's an old habit and a wonderful way to kill time when my wife is at the mall. It beats drinking another cup of coffee at the mall café.Last week, I made another trip to the local dealership. Everything looked normal except for the prices. Check this out:With interest rates rising, it's also becoming harder to spread the pain of higher pricing with long-term financing. The average monthly...

Japan's Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) on Monday said it missed its global production target for April as COVID-19 outbreaks and a parts shortage slowed its post-pandemic recovery. The world's largest automaker by sales produced 692,259 vehicles last month, a 9.1% drop from the same month last year, and falling short of an earlier plan of making about 750,000 vehicles worldwide.

Buttigieg said electric buses will create better, high-paying jobs and clean up congestion on freeways. He also said federal funds have been set aside to train the "diesel workers of today" to build and maintain the electric transit buses of the future. "Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well," Buttigieg said. He added that $5 billion have been invested into building a nationwide electric vehicle charging network "so that people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities, can all benefit, from the gas savings of driving an (electric vehicle)." "Today is about how we...

Apple just launched its first custom processor for computers. The M1 chip is similar to the A-series processors inside the iPhone and iPad, and it powers just two devices: The late 2020 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. And yet, Intel is still terrified, having mounted a massive ad campaign in an attempt to convince the world that the M1 MacBooks can’t stand up to Windows 10 laptops running on Intel hardware. The campaign was somewhat half-baked, and has since drawn criticism and ridicule for its missteps. The M1 MacBooks offer formidable performance and excellent battery life, with M1 being built...

America’s manufacturing sector has been struggling of late, and has lost more than 500,000 jobs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Compounding these woes is a recent, global shortage of semiconductor chips. A heavy reliance on computer chips from Taiwan and Korea has hit U.S. manufacturers hard. The nation’s auto sector has been particularly affected, with Ford F, -0.65% forced to cut back production of its F-150 truck and GM GM, +0.59% halting operations at three plants. All of this points to the wider problem of America’s rising import dependence. Reliance on overseas semiconductor producers has put the United...

As Chinese takeovers go, this one would be huge. Chinese state-owned firm Tsinghua Unigroup is preparing a $23 billion bid for U.S. chipmaker Micron, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. If completed, the deal would be the biggest-ever Chinese takeover of a U.S. firm. The Journal said that Tsinghua Unigroup was prepared to pay $21 a share, or 20% more than their current price. A Micron spokesman told CNN that the company had not yet received an offer. Micron, based in Idaho, makes memory chips for computers and other electronics. Tsinghua Unigroup already has partnerships with U.S. firms Intel...

Eventually, the conventional ways of manufacturing microprocessors, graphics chips, and other silicon components will run out of steam. According to Intel researchers speaking at the ISSCC conference this week, however, we still have headroom for a few more years. Intel plans to present several papers this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, one of the key academic conferences for papers on chip design. Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr will also appear on a panel Monday night to discuss the challenges of moving from today's 14nm chips to the 10nm manufacturing node and beyond.

...What that basically means is that in an emergency situation, such as a declaration of martial law, chipping stations will be immediately deployed. It will be for you and your family, and will ensure that you’ll receive emergency rations and other services in the event of a serious catastrophe. Next, they’ll require all government healthcare recipients to be chipped in order to prevent rampant fraud. An off-shoot may be to implement nationwide chipping programs for those receiving any government benefits including social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance. Prisoners and even detainees will be part of the first adopter...

Chips Makers Target Everything But Kitchen Sink LAS VEGAS—Chip makers, already competing to get their products into computers and cellphones, are preparing for a wider battle as more devices connect to the Internet. The stakes were underscored Wednesday by chip giant Qualcomm Inc., which confirmed it will spend $3.1 billion to buy Atheros Communications Inc., a fast-growing Silicon Valley company that specializing in making chips used in wireless devices. Qualcomm's move comes as many companies at the giant Consumer Electronics Show here discussed plans to add processing power, networking and wireless Internet connections to devices including TVs, DVD players, TV...

Satellite systems in space keyed to detect nuclear events and environmental gasses currently face a kind of data logjam because their increasingly powerful sensors produce more information than their available bandwidth can easily transmit. Experiments conducted by Sandia National Laboratories at the International Space Station preliminarily indicate that the problem could be remedied by orbiting more complex computer chips to pre-reduce the large data stream. While increased satellite on-board computing capabilities ideally would mean that only the most useful information would be transmitted to Earth, an unresolved question had been how well the latest in computing electronics would fare in...

On Wednesday I went to Intel's launch of its latest Centrino chipset for notebooks. Everything, of course, is a lot faster, but what caught my eye was a new technology embedded in the chips which, although aimed squarely at business users, would be a god-send for consumers. Take a look: Intel® vPro™ processor technology. IT departments will be able to reliably manage both desktops and notebooks and deal with what plagues them most – security threats, cost of ownership, resource allocation, and asset management – and do so wirelessly. One of the key innovations designed in Intel Centrino Pro –...

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) — The powerful "Cell" microprocessor that fuels Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 video game console will be available in IBM mainframe computers so those high-performance machines can run complex online games and virtual worlds. Jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba Corp., Cell is touted as a "supercomputer on a chip" because of its design, which includes one central processing unit helped by eight additional processors working on specific tasks. Because of that unusual architecture, Cell's use outside of PlayStations has been limited to specialized hardware for graphics-intensive functions such as military or medical applications.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Researchers at Intel Corp. and the University of California, Santa Barbara, are claiming a breakthrough in creating lasers on computer chips, a development that could lead to sharp reductions in the cost of ultrafast data communications, according to a media report Monday. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is initially targeting communications between components inside computers and within computers in data centers with the new chips, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. See Wall Street Journal story (subscription required). .The speediest such connections now send about eight gigabits to 10 gigabits of data per second...

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17 — Researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips, removing the most significant bottleneck in computer design. As a result, chip makers may be able to put the high-speed data communications industry on the same curve of increased processing speed and diminishing costs — the phenomenon known as Moore’s law — that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades. The development is a result of...