Free Republic

..since I, as well as most posters here I assume, consider FR as more than just the best conservative news aggregator, but a conservative community of both fellowship as well as debate, then consistent with this I also would encourage ownership to treat it more as such, with regular explanations for problems, particular needs, and future plans. I also believe that presenting a list of operating [and admin] expenses, meaning where donor's money is going, would elicit more. Also if needed, accept user help with technical issues, for I am sure many would gladly do so. But most importantly, please...

Just weeks after an 'unprecedented' cyberattack struck supermarket fridges in France, destroying foodstuffs, a similar hack has crippled supermarket chains in Belgium and Sweden, Bloomberg reports. Hackers targeted supermarkets owned by Dutch outfit Ahold Delhaize, as well as ICA and Coop locations in Sweden. As with the previous attack, hackers remotely raised temperatures in these online-controlled freezers to 50 degrees Celsius, rapidly defrosting their contents and likely destroying millions of dollars worth of items. Belga News Agency reports that a cyberattack targeting refrigeration units at Belgian supermarkets started on Sunday night at around midnight. Sabcobel, a refrigeration fitter in the...

The U.S. Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) website was targeted by a hacker or hackers just days before the November midterm elections. The outage disrupted the agency’s electronic filing system, preventing electronic filings while leaving the public’s access to previously submitted campaign finance reports unaffected. An FEC spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller that the agency’s IT staff are working to restore service. The spokesperson emphasized that the public can still access previously filed reports through the FEC’s online database. “At this time, we can point to the status update posted to the FEC’s website that the electronic filing system is...

UPDATE (Oct. 21): Mobile Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis said the city scam that led to the transfer of $15 million to a “fraudulent entity” involved the new Regions Arena. PREVIOUS REPORTING MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — The City of Mobile transferred $14.7 million to a ‘fraudulent entity’ after it was the target of a criminal scam. According to a city news release, the city has notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service. “We are cooperating fully with investigators and taking every available step to recover the funds and bring the responsible party to justice,” the release read. City officials...

Voter Protection Corps wants social-media monitoring treated as core election infrastructure, backed by lawyers and networks that deliver rebuttals before voters encounter the claims. ======================================================================= A group founded by an Obama campaign veteran has built a program to recruit lawyers to help get election posts removed from social media ahead of the 2026 midterms. The organization, Voter Protection Corps, is combining volunteers who flag election content with attorneys who review posts and help prepare requests for platforms to take them down. Its September 8 recruitment notice spells out why it wants lawyers involved: “lending legal credibility to formal removal requests.”...

A new critical Internet security vulnerability has been announced, and it’s really, really bad. The PHP Foundation has revealed two serious vulnerabilities that could impact millions of websites. Security experts warn that failure to quickly patch the flaws could have dire consequences. Internet security and web administration teams around the world are scrambling to prevent widespread disaster. On Wednesday, the developers behind the much-used PHP programming language released emergency security updates designed to fix critical flaws that could be exploited to allow attackers to gain dangerous remote control of victim systems. The PHP Foundation detailed the two critical vulnerabilities—CVE-2026-109618 and...

Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems. Developers of the PHP programming language said Tuesday they had identified two critical vulnerabilities and urged users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released. They said around 1345 GMT on Wednesday that a new version fixing the vulnerabilities was live. But with reports that hackers were exploiting the flaws to break into websites, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland were among those that took sites...

The Biden administration wasn't just trying to police COVID posts. It wanted broader control over health information, and newly released internal documents show former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's office was actively strategizing how to make it happen. The documents Protect the Public's Trust obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) date back to 2021, when the Biden administration was already pushing Facebook and other technology companies to remove content it labeled misinformation. One exchange from May 2021 is particularly revealing. Murthy's policy adviser, Daniel Tartakovsky, suggested that the administration's efforts should reach considerably further than COVID. "May be worth...

During this time of increased political polarization, it is good to know that there is one issue uniting Trump-loving MAGA Republicans, Bernie Sanders-style Democratic Socialists, and everyone in between: opposition to data centers, especially large data centers built for artificial intelligence (AI). Part of the opposition stems from the public's increasing skepticism of AI. An even larger part is generated by concerns over how AI will drive up electricity costs for those living close to the centers, as well as the high amount of water necessary to run the centers.Many data center critics ignore the fact that these kinds of...

An Israeli advertising agency used its massive ad network to spy on users and pass their information off to a spyware company blacklisted in the United States, according to reports. Digital advertising agency, Discover-Tech, granted Israeli surveillance groups, including blacklisted firm Candiru access to advertising platforms on Google, Comcast, Russia’s Yandex, and other search engines, according to reports released Thursday by New York advertising security firm Confiant and Canada-based cyber watchdog group, Citizen Lab. Discover-Tech’s ads were used to track targets and even help hack into their devices, the reports indicate. In 2021, Candiru was blacklisted in America by the...

On Wednesday, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian delivered the blockbuster ‘news’ story that FBI Director Kash Patel had just landed in Russia. This was according to reliable ‘sources.’ How reliable? Patel was actually in this hemisphere at a law enforcement event in Virginia. D’oh! Dilanian’s silly ‘sources’ had Ben Williamson with the FBI’s Public Relations office chuckling. (WATCH) I have had many strange experiences in life, but in tier 1 had to be seeing a clip of MS Now reporting breaking news that Kash Patel has “just landed in Russia” - right as I’m receiving pics of Kash Patel doing a...

A University of Wyoming graduate student is accused of poisoning her colleague, then trying to flee to China through the Los Angeles International Airport. She was arrested, and is expected to be held in Albany County on a $15 million cash bond. Aili Wang (Mark Gomelsky photo via University of Wyoming) A Chinese national accused of poisoning a microbiology researcher colleague at the University of Wyoming was arrested last week when trying to flee the country through the Los Angeles airport, prosecutors say. Aili Wang, 32, is charged in Laramie Circuit Court with one count of aggravated assault, which is...

War Report: The Structural Metric of Planetary Automation: How Elite Robotics via Elon Musk, Autonomous Logistics, and the Declassification of Tesla Hardware Will Shift the Universal High Income under Genuine Land Law; the Material Spearhead of Transformation; Tesla Optimus 2027; and the Surge of Household Fleets The irreversible release of advanced allied utility technologies is no longer confined to the shadows, but breaks with mathematical precision directly through the civilian infrastructure wall. Elon Musk has officially declassified that the first units of the humanoid robot Tesla Optimus will enter large scale manufacturing and distribution for the civilian household sector in...

Technology giants spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, financed with debt. Equity valuations continue to rise, with optimism over technology earnings propelling the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes to record highs this week. The only question now is who survives when the bubble bursts and how much of the real economy it takes down with it. Everyone from Big Tech to Wall Street is gambling on AI like it’s a sure thing, but the cracks are already showing. Nearly every major company pouring billions into generative AI still hasn’t seen a real return. The experts say that...

SpaceX has notched another deal selling artificial-intelligence computing power, bringing it closer to an ambitious revenue milestone. Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s longtime chief financial officer, said at a Goldman Sachs conference on Thursday that the company had signed a deal for AI computing power with an undisclosed company earlier this month. He said the deal is worth $1.1 billion a month beginning in December, and valued it at about $13 billion worth of annualized revenue. SpaceX aims to have a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of 2026.

"Abdi Nur Salah and his co-conspirators used taxpayer money meant to support hungry children to buy themselves a life of luxury," an FBI official said. Abdi Nur Salah, a former aide to Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, was sentenced last week to nearly three years in federal prison for his role in Minnesota’s sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal. The scandal takes its name from the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which sponsored meal sites throughout the state where free food for children was purportedly served. In reality, the defendants submitted fraudulent claims for reimbursement from the federal government for meals that...

Agents tracked Melania and Barron Trump's travel and monitored Susie Wiles' calls as part of the Jack Smith investigation =================================================================== The Biden-era FBI tracked Trump family travel, including the First Lady and Barron Trump, and surveilled future White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' phone as federal officials worked the classified documents investigation reaching deep into Trump's inner circle, newly declassified records show. Documents released Monday by the White House detail "Plasmic Echo," the probe later led by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump improperly retained classified documents after leaving office. The declassified documents show agents tracked the first...

Britain has spent nearly $40 million on SpaceX (SPCX.O), opens new tab satellite services, deepening its reliance on Elon Musk's company for military communications despite growing European concerns about dependence on U.S. ​security infrastructure. The spending was disclosed to Reuters in response to a freedom of information request and makes Britain the first country outside the ‌U.S. to publicly acknowledge adopting Starshield, SpaceX's service for military and intelligence missions. Starlink is marketed to consumer and commercial users. Britain's defence ministry said it has about 1,000 Starshield terminals and 500 Starlink terminals. It has spent about £13 million ($17.6 million) on...

Fearful that unrestrained development of artificial intelligence could lead to human extermination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) has introduced legislation that would establish a new federal Department of Artificial Intelligence (DAI). "Right now we face the total anarchy of the free market with regard to who will be permitted to develop this technology," the Senator complained. "We need government to step in and take control to ensure that this technology is properly managed." "All the big AI firms agree that a public-private partnership along the lines of that between the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the pharmaceutical manufactures would be the...

SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 14 NET Monday, September 28, 2026 at 7:15 a.m. CT (12:15 UTC). This will be the FIRST orbital launch attempt of Starship with Ship 41 and Booster 21, carrying the first operational batch of 26 Starlink V3 satellites on a roughly 10-hour mission of about six orbits at around 275 km before a Pacific Ocean splashdown. Booster 21 will splash down in the Gulf after boostback, making this a major step from prior suborbital tests toward sustained orbit, payload ops, and eventual full reuse. [4K] Watch the FIRST Orbital Starship Mission!!! | Live Everyday Astronaut...