Free Republic

Alibaba executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai said Tuesday he expects to boost US jobs by expanding the Chinese firm's e-commerce platform -- not by hiring American workers. Tsai, speaking at a California tech conference, made the comments to follow up on a headline-grabbing pledge earlier this year by Alibaba founder Jack Ma and US President Donald Trump that the Chinese internet firm would create one million US jobs. The pledge by Ma was seen at the time as more of a public relations move than a promise to hire in the US. When asked what Alibaba was doing to deliver...

The answer for digital campaigners moving forward isn’t to abandon experiments, testing, and analytics. The answer is to listen better and to continuously test standing assumptions. The 2016 Trump campaign’s digital director, Brad Parscale, was featured on 60 Minutes last week. Much of the interview focused on the central role of Facebook in Trump’s digital strategy. Parscale shared that he “understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win. Twitter is how he talked to the people. Facebook was going to be how he won. …We did [ads] on Twitter, Google search, other platforms. Facebook was the...

A tweet from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that mentioned Planned Parenthood’s sales of aborted baby parts led to Twitter blocking a campaign ad in her bid for a US Senate seat in her state. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey labeled Blackburn’s tweet “inflammatory and likely to evoke a strong negative reaction. On the one hand, there’s the woman who already has to deal with the emotionally difficult decision to terminate her pregnancy. Awareness that her baby might be cannibalized and sold for parts like a junked car would add unnecessary trauma to that decision.” “On the other hand, there is potential...

U.S. adults disregard potential negative impact of Amazon's presence Time is running out for cities to submit their bids to become Amazon.com Inc.’s second home. The tech giant announced plans last month to open up a second headquarters — and its hunt for a host city. Bids from metropolitan areas are due Thursday. There are plenty of willing contestants: Mayors across the country have launched viral-worthy campaigns enticing Amazon to choose their cities, with the winner set to be announced sometime in 2018. A Sept. 29-Oct. 1 Morning Consult survey found that 72 percent of a national sample of 2,201...

Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, has published a mysterious 68-digit code on Twitter that many believe indicates a fresh disclosure is on the horizon. The string of letters and numbers, which appears to be an encryption key, or hash, sparked a frenzy of speculation across social media, with many claiming that it meant that a new leak about Hillary Clinton was imminent. Others believed it was a so-called "dead man's switch." Hashes of this nature can be used to verify the transfer of documents or files and are often described as a digital signature. Assange has not...

The Hillary Clinton mope tour, which should have reached a high water mark, has gone global. It entails drumming up her credentials (immaculate, we are told, but unnoticed), and pouring upon the man who beat her to the White house (a danger to the world). The latter is the fundamental point: Donald Trump would not have won, not because of Clinton’s flaws but because of what others did. One of those big others remains WikiLeaks. The other, supposedly, is its Russian ally – no, employer, sponsor, even, there one say it peering into that dark mind of hers, director-in-chief. Forget...

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton became visibly irritated during an interview with Australian TV when she was asked about Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. In the interview with 4corners, she appeared tired with bags under her eyes, and her bitterness over losing the election to Donald Trump clearly remained. “I think Assange has become a nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator,” Clinton said, apparently referring to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. When the interviewer noted many people in Australia view Assange as a “martyr for free speech and freedom of information.” Clinton bristled. “I mean, he’s a tool...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak yesterday announced the launch of Woz U, which will start as an online learning platform focused on both students and companies that will eventually hire those students. Based out of Arizona, Wozniak hopes to launch physical locations for learning in over 30 cities across the globe. The platform will initially be centred around computer support specialists and software developers, with courses on data science, mobile applications and cybersecurity to be added in the future. In addition to the education platform, Woz U will also offer platforms for tech companies to recruit, train and retain their workforce...

Superion, a software company that provides service for non-profits and state governments, is expanding operations and adding jobs at its site in Guilford County. Over the next three years Superion plans to create 80 full-time jobs, at an average annual salary of $57,829, in High Point. The Guilford County average is $45,602. The company will also invest $3.6 million at the site. Currently, Superion has 170 employees in High Point. The new jobs will be in software development and customer support. Among Superion’s customers are law enforcement dispatch operations. The company’s “Freedom” is a phone app that gives police call...

People are shocked that Facebook and Google apparently "embedded" staff in the Trump campaign. • But big-spending advertisers get hands-on treatment from platforms all the time. • The tech giants made this offering available to Hillary Clinton, and also brands like Clorox. Did you hear that Facebook and Google helped swing the 2016 election by planting people in the Trump campaign? It was on 60 Minutes the other night, when a stunned Lesley Stahl quizzed Trump digital ad guru Brad Parscale on how the tech giants planted staffers inside Trump HQ: Brad Parscale: Well, we had our-- their staff embedded...

Imagine if President Trump decided to utilize technology and used virtual reality to put himself into a disaster-ravaged part of the United States? We all know the media would be going off for a few days of 24-hour news cycle attacks on his insensitivity in the wake of the human suffering of fellow Americans. Any adult knows that would be in bad taste. Then again, we're not always talking about good taste when we're talking about millennials, especially elitist millennials who believe the world is their playground.

After strong stock-market performance in the year to date, several big U.S. tech firms have begun to receive some negative attention from the public, as well as from regulators and politicians. Alphabet (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) have gotten the most scrutiny, with European regulators leveling accusations of unfair search advantages against GOOG, and U.S. lawmakers drawing FB into the controversy surrounding alleged Russian efforts to influence the outcome of last year’s election. Amazon (AMZN) has not been above the fray. The company’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods Market led to a few muted pieces of press coverage that mentioned “antitrust,”...

But somehow manage to pump out a cute little cartoon for every obscure NON-western European "history maker." The only surprise is they didn't do an "Indigenous Peoples" day theme. . .

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/06/2017 -- The global agriculture robots market features a widely diverse competitive landscape characterized by region-wise dominance of prominent players, notes Transparency Market Research (TMR). For instance, the agriculture robots market in North America was dominated Harvest Automation, Inc., Clearpath Robotics, and PrecisionHawk, Inc., in 2015, while in the same year, Naio Technologies and SenseFly SA led the Europe market. In addition, Shibuya Seiki was one of the leading players in the Asia Pacific market for agriculture robots in 2015. Furthermore, driven by abundant lucrative avenues, the market is witnessing a constant influx of emerging...

Democratic National Committee IT aide Imran Awan has been indicted for bank fraud and is suspected of pilfering computer equipment and selling classified materials to the highest bidders. Aaron Page, one of his lawyers says that his Democratic congressional employers told him to falsify records in order to conceal how they were spending public funds. The alleged falsification scheme entailed bogus invoices showing a expensive equipment incorrectly inventoried at under $500 in value, but with an attached "service plan" to compensate the vendor for the full cost of the item. Later these items frequently disappeared because items listed as under...

Amazon.com Inc.'s decision to establish a second corporate headquarters is going to make some North American city very happy once the online retail behemoth announces its choice next year. But it will likely be bad news for Seattle, Amazon's longtime home, which has benefited enormously from the company's rapid growth. Analysts predict that much of the company's future expansion will be in its second headquarters. "It had generally been assumed that [Amazon's] growth would be concentrated in Seattle," said Dave Bragg, an analyst with Green Street Advisors, a real-estate research firm. "That now needs to be adjusted." Green Street, in...

Perrone Robotics, a developer of autonomous car software, will invest $3.8 million to expand its research and development operation in Albemarle County to add to its test track and facilities. Virginia successfully competed against California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania for the project, which will create 127 new jobs over the next three years. “Entrepreneurial companies like Perrone Robotics are putting Virginia on the map for cutting-edge industry and the jobs that come with it,” said Governor McAuliffe, speaking at the event. “This expansion is a testament to Virginia’s stellar technology workforce and competitive business climate, particularly for high-tech companies in sectors...

Despite a hack of its database that exposed the personal information of 145 million of its customers, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) granted a no-bid $7.5 million contract to Equifax. Under the terms of the contract the company will handle the personal information of millions of taxpayers. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called the contract "bad on so many levels. What kind of fool trusts a firm that has just experienced a huge data breach to handle more of the same kind of data? On top of this, the 'no-bid' process evades procurement guidelines calling for competitive bids from multiple firms....

In these times of ICO’s boom, the various platforms and innovative projects that come to us based on blockchain technology certainly cover all types of areas, ensuring a rapid evolution of the acceptance of this technology in everyday life. In the case of the music industry, blockchain technology makes it possible to realize one of the dreamed premises: decentralizing the omnipotence of the big fishes of the music industry in favor of musicians, composers, and performers. And without leaving aside the fans. On this occasion, we will talk about the Potentiam project and its interesting proposal for the music sector.

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced legislation banning bump fire stocks — accessories that transform semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Already 20 Senate Democrats have co-sponsored the bill and even some wayward Republicans have promised to consider it. If successful, the bill could land on President Trump's desk, and it could become the first new gun control law in decades. And, more than likely, it could be obsolete. Bump fire stocks are made from relatively cheap polymers that can be 3-D printed. Hobbyists have posted videos of their homemade stocks in action, at least one manufacturer has actually...