Free Republic

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene. They can be found in your computer, in your mobile phone, in almost all other electronic equipment and in many of the plastics around you. Society is highly dependent on scarce metals, and this...

LONDON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- In what has been described Friday as a world first, a farm field in Britain has been planted and harvested completely by autonomous vehicles and drones without any farmhands in sight. The hands-free crop farming was delivered in joint project by Harper Adams University in Shropshire and Yorkshire-based Precision Decisions, in an initiative partly-funded by the government agency, Innovate UK. The renowned agricultural university and Precision Decisions announced Friday the successful completion of "Hands Free Hectare", a project to plant, tend and harvest a crop using only autonomous vehicles and drones. A spokesman for Innovate...

"THERE IS NO PORNOGRAPHY IN GERMANY....THERE IS ART....EVERY LAST HAIR, EVERY LAST DETAIL...." Journalist Howard K. Smith-"Last Train From Berlin" Hugh Hefner started "Playboy" at a time when there were strict "obscenity laws" in the United States. Total nudity was banned in movies, magazines and other media of the time etc. etc. Violations of the law could lead to fines and or jail time. His nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue were rather tame shots that focused on the side of her body. It would take more than a decade for laws to change with Hefner himself...

A woman accused of leaking classified information on Russia’s role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 election told FBI agents that her frustrations over Fox News prompted her to print out an intelligence report, stuff it in her pantyhose, and sneak it out of the National Security Agency office where she was working. Reality Winner told FBI agents she had repeatedly complained about Fox News being on the TV at the NSA office she worked in, according to a transcript of the interview submitted to court on Wednesday, Politico reported. According to the transcript, the 25-year-old linguist told the FBI...

Landing a job in the world of cryptocurrency has become a lot easier over the past few months. Given the surge in the popularity of Bitcoin and most tokens, that is not necessarily surprising. As it turns out, there are two main reasons as to why the number of job openings in this industry has increased exponentially. Whether or not these trends will remain in place a year from now remains to be seen, though. 1. Initial Coin Offerings Although most people have no love lost for the ICO industry, no one can deny a lot of jobs are created...

On Wednesday morning, Cleco held a news conference announcing their new S.T.A.R.T program. They called it a $130 million customer service "upgrade." The project will create 221 new jobs and generate $1.5 million in state and local tax revenues. "It will allow our employees to work more efficiently," said Andre Guillory with Cleco. Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy explained how projects like S.T.A.R.T. will pay for events such as the Alexandria Riverfete and Winterfete. "This is about localism," Roy said. "A very symbolic moment for Cleco and Alexandria." "Let's not forget Cleco exists here in our community," added Pineville Mayor Clarence...

Who is Peter Daou? Today, he is the founder of political website Verit that strongly supports the Democratic Party and also a member of Hillary Clinton's campaign team. But it might be surprising to find out he's also an accomplished house producer who has worked alongside the likes of David Morales. As uncovered by Pitchfork, during the early ‘90s - before his political aspirations - Peter Daou was a committed house music producer who racked up over 400 production credits on a multitude of old-school house labels such as Nu Groove Records, Delicious Vinyl and Nervous Records. Daou's career in...

I wrote an article on the strange case of Imran Awan about two months ago. To summarize it briefly, Awan, his two brothers and wife, naturalized U.S. citizens born in Pakistan living in the Washington DC area, found employment as IT administrators in the House of Representatives working for as many as 80 Democratic Party congressmen. Even though they may have had little actual training in IT, they insinuated themselves into the system and were paid in excess of $5 million over the course of ten years, chief-of-staff level pay, while frequently not even showing up for work. They even...

The Secret Service is facing a "grave" threat to President Trump from a new wave of high-tech weapons including armed drones, plastic guns made on 3-D printers and even sophisticated IEDs, according to a new alert issued by a former agent. "This threat is grave," Dan Bongino told Secrets. The author of a new book on the Secret Service that calls for a seismic change of thinking at the agency, Bongino said terrorists are eager to unleash an attack on their "ultimate prize." New age threats include weaponized drones delivered in "swarms" that could attack the White House or any...

OneTrust, a global privacy management software company, will create 500 jobs and invest $5 million in a Fulton County, GA facility expansion. New jobs at the Atlanta facility will include positions in sales, consulting, marketing and software engineering. “OneTrust plays a critical role in helping global organizations comply with international privacy regulations, and Atlanta serves as the best city for our business with its easy access to global markets,” said Alan Dabbiere, co-chairman of OneTrust. “Having previously built two successful technology companies in this city, I believe Atlanta has the top technology talent pool for building a leading, successful software...

There is infighting among editorial hierarchy at The Washington Post about it’s only “in-depth” story about the expanding Imran Awan and Hina Alvi investigation, according to sources. The story was apparently put together with the cooperation of Awan’s lawyer Chris Gowen and sweeping legal team. No FBI sources are quoted in a story dealing with a federal investigation. And more than one news veteran at the Post agreed the end result was a “puff piece” that stinks like a cheap press release written by a first-year Congressional flak. “I don’t care if the guy is guilty or not,” said one...

The anonymous tip came in at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 6. There it sat for almost 24 hours, until Rob Shimshock, a 22-year-old reporter for the Daily Caller in Washington, found it in the site’s generic inbox, an electronic slush pile. The unsigned email contained links to a few tweets, as well as to the biographical page of an untenured history lecturer at California State University, Fresno—Lars Maischak. The author was obscure, but the tweets were explosive. On February 17, Maischak had posted on Twitter about the new president: “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and...

Shots fired. Well, things are certainly getting heated between competitors in the auto industry right now. A BMW executive recently described the Mercedes X-Class luxury pickup as “appalling,” despite admitting that the firm is considering entering the premium pickup segment. Then Lewis Hamilton taunted Ferrari claiming that AMG can build a better supercar. And now the boss of Hyundai and Genesis seemingly got out the wrong side of the bed one morning, accusing luxury automakers like BMW and Mercedes of putting too much focus on “stupid” tech. The head of Hyundai’s N and Genesis divisions Albert Biermann, who also used...

‘Antifa’ activists were ready to confront those targets in person, with fists and pepper spray, and knives if necessary. The Signal messages appear in staccato bursts: “We all in blac bloc bout to join.” “We in the streets.” Looking up from my cellphone, I see them coming: a platoon clad head to toe in black, marching in formation like some sort of dystopian Roman legion. They’re carrying flags and holding shields, some embossed with the black-and-red logo of the anti-fascist movement. As they approach the column of protesters already marching toward Berkeley City Hall, they start banging on their shields,...

Online education company Udacity is growing its new Nanodegree program yet again – it’s adding two entirely new programs to the roster, including a new entry-level self-driving Nanodegree, as well as a brand new one focused on ‘flying cars’ (though it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that). The Flying Car program will include course material created by world-leading aeronautics and aerospace industry experts, including MIT professor Nicholas Roy, ETH Zurich professor and Kiva Systems co-founder Raffaelo D’Andrea, University of Toronto Aerospace Studies professor Angela Schoellig and Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun himself. Thrun is also CEO of personal aircraft startup...

Supporters of President Trump have compiled a list containing personal information on thousands of people they believe are either opposed to Trump or associated with left-wing "antifascist" or "antifa" groups. The list, reported by BuzzFeed, has been circulated and added to on the internet since at least April. The list, which began on 4Chan’s controversial /Pol/ board as a loose collection of names, phone numbers, addresses and social media accounts of Trump critics, has since grown into an organized document spread across the internet. The list has also been posted on text repository site Pastebin. Several versions of the list...

"We have been attacked," Morgan Freeman stoically announces. "We are at war." The Oscar-winning actor has played the president of the United States in a time of crisis (in 2008's "Deep Impact"), but this time he's speaking as himself, as a citizen. In a video from the activist news organization ATTN:, Freeman encourages Americans of every ideological stripe to look with clear eyes at Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Russian President Vladimir Putin, he argues, wasn't just punking the U.S. He was trying to undermine the country's government and values. "Imagine this movie script," Freeman says, and then...

Following reports that Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman was under surveillance, Fox News pundits jumped to the president’s defense Tuesday, asserting that his claims the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower have now been vindicated. Yet they couldn’t be more wrong, said legal experts. It all goes back to Trump’s tweet on March 4 that he “found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump also compared it to “Nixon/Watergate,” when President Richard Nixon attempted to bug the Democratic Party headquarters. Defending Trump’s months-old claim, Fox News pundit Tucker...

President Trump is using targeted Facebook ads to assure supporters he will build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, reports BuzzFeed News. "There's been a lot of noise and a lot of rumors," reads the ad from Trump's personal Facebook page. "WE WILL BUILD A WALL (NOT A FENCE) ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF THE UNITED STATES," it adds, calling the issue "non-negotiable." The ad has been targeted to specific Facebook users in recent days. Vice President Pence’s Facebook page is running a similar ad, according to BuzzFeed. Trump’s declaration comes after he tweeted last week that the...

Cities and states across the country leaped to their feet when e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) announced it was looking for a second location. The online retailer wasn't shy in describing exactly what it wanted. And what that is, in case anyone was wondering, is incentives. "[T]his is a competitive project," the company said in its formal request for proposals, and "Amazon welcomes the opportunity to engage with you in the creation of an incentive package, real estate opportunities, and cost structure to encourage the company's location of the project in your state/province." For many cities, that means an all-out hustle...