Free Republic

Cryptocurrency may be one of the biggest threats to governments, security and the entire financial system that we’ve ever seen. It can help fund terrorism and its anonymity makes it almost impossible to track. Most importantly, it is poised to revolutionize global finance and banking. But our new Enemy No. 1 can’t be fought; it can perhaps be controlled. Banks have figured that out and are bringing crypto currency into the fold. The superpowers—U.S., China and Russia--will have to face the new reality. They love to hate it and hate to love it. Regardless, if they don’t embrace it, they...

When the robots came to online retailer Boxed, dread came, too: The familiar fear that the machines would take over, leaving a trail of unemployed humans in their wake. "I had a lot of people asking me, 'What is going to happen to us?'" says Veronica Mena, a trainer for the e-commerce startup, recalling the anxiety that rippled through her co-workers after company executives announced plans to open an automated warehouse in nearby Union, N. J. Yet their fears didn't come to pass. When the new warehouse opened this spring, workers found that their jobs were less physically demanding than...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.wired.com/story/what-does-teslas-truck-mean-for-truckers/

Howdy FReepers. I found a vendor (a legitimate one) in the UK that sells the license for MS Office 2016. The way it works is that they send you the download link at the MS web site and download the installation sofware (I've seen the download page before, so I know it's real). Then, when you purchase, they send you the product key. My question: is there any reason why a UK-generated product key would *not* work on software installed on a US computer?

As college students and recent grads head home for the holidays, first on their minds are friends and family. But the end-of-year downtime is also a good opportunity for career reflection. And while salary should never be the only factor in a career decision, it often ranks high in our consideration set. Careers site Comparably released a list of six entry-level jobs that pay more than $90,000. Entry-level was defined as workers with up to three years’ experience. To create the ranking, Comparably analyzed more than 19,000 anonymous salary reports submitted between March 2016 and October 2017 by employees of...

Newly filed court documents reveal Fusion GPS, the shadowy firm behind the debunked Steele dossier, paid at least three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017. According to the filing, the three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known for reporting on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation.” The dates are noteworthy, considering that’s when Big Media began pushing the unsubstantiated “collusion” narrative between Russia and people close to now President Donald Trump. Further, a filing by lawyers for the House Intelligence Committee claims Fusion GPS “brokered meetings for dossier author Christopher Steele with at least five...

The holiday season will be a busy one for Amazon, and as 2017 draw to a close, it could be said this entire year has been a big one for the e-commerce giant, from its acquisition of Whole Foods to the HQ2 race and its expansion in its hometown, Seattle. But behind the company’s growth and expansion, and future plans, lies an immense, intricate logistics network that enables it to offer incredible delivery times to every corner of the country. The company’s footprint is pretty wild. According to Amazon, the company now operates more than 75 fulfillment centers and 25...

Hillary Clinton spoke about the dangers of artificial intelligence in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday. The failed presidential candidate was on Hewitt's show to promote her book, but the conversation steered towards recent advances in technology. Something that concerns Clinton is the potential for our society to become inundated with artificial intelligence - computers that mimic the human brain to complete tasks for us - such as home office assistants or even robot drones. Clinton says that AI can be a good thing, but she's worried that our society is rushing into a brave new world without...

Today might be one of the biggest days of my life, and it will be impossible to explain why that is so unless you know at least a little bit about blockchain, dAPPS, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and the legal distinction between a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) and an ICO. If those words look unfamiliar, one of the biggest technical revolutions the world has ever known is sneaking up on you. The folks in Silicon Valley — who live about three years in the future compared to the rest of the country — can’t stop talking about this topic. The...

While many human workers fear that they will ultimately be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), it's more likely that our current workforce will shift into new types of roles for people, according to a new report from professional services company Cognizant. "In the future, work will change but won't go away," the report stated. "Work will continue to be core to our identities, our nature, our dreams and our realities. But it won't necessarily be the work we know or do now." Work has always changed as technology advances, the report noted, with positions such as switchboard operators, lamplighters, and...

Second Life was supposed to be the future of the internet, but then Facebook came along. Yet many people still spend hours each day inhabiting this virtual realm. Their stories—and the world they’ve built—illuminate the promise and limitations of online life. Gidge Uriza lives in an elegant wooden house with large glass windows overlooking a glittering creek, fringed by weeping willows and meadows twinkling with fireflies. She keeps buying new swimming pools because she keeps falling in love with different ones. The current specimen is a teal lozenge with a waterfall cascading from its archway of stones. Gidge spends her...

Debt-ridden Millennials just can’t handle real life. Hit with a never before seen amount of debt and facing a shifting and hollowing job market, it’s little wonder that a shocking number of Millennials say they are having a crisis at their current point in life when they are supposed to be finding out who they are and what their life is all about. A LinkedIn survey of 2,000 Millennials shared by Moneyish revealed that 72% of young professionals aged 25 to 33 confessed to being in a quarter-life crisis, or a period of self-doubt and insecurity that leads them to...

Waymo Trucks will someday drive themselves out of warehouses and cruise down freeways without the aid of humans or even a driver’s cab — about that there seems little disagreement. The question is how soon that day gets here. And while the answers vary — technologists, not surprisingly, are more bullish than truckers — billions of dollars and a growing parade of companies, from tiny start-ups to the biggest trucking operations, are betting it will be here sooner than most people think. This year, companies and investors are on pace to put just over $1 billion into self-driving and other...

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is not shy when expressing his opinions of President Trump. The entrepreneur, who now sits on Microsoft's board of directors and is a partner at venture capital firm Greylock, campaigned publicly for Hillary Clinton and in March said that Trump was even worse than he feared. In an interview with CNBC's Julia Boorstin at the Disruptor 50 event in San Francisco on Wednesday night, Hoffman had perhaps his harshest words yet about the president, calling him "worse than useless" and saying that he'd "take someone randomly picked from a phone book" over him as president. He...

As part of its plans to deliver luxury fashion, United States retail giant Walmart is to launch a dedicated online Lord & Taylor flagship store next year, offering premium fashion brands to its customers. The initiative announced Monday will start next spring. "Our goal is to create a premium fashion destination on Walmart.com", said the Head of Fashion for Walmart's U.S. E-commerce Division Denise Incandela in a statement to NBC. "We see customers on our site searching for higher-end items, and we are expanding our business online to focus on adding specialized and premium shopping experiences, starting with fashion", Incandela...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An information technology services company formed this year from a merger involving Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (HPE.N) on Monday announced plans to establish a digital services center in New Orleans, bringing 2,000 new jobs to the city. Virginia-based DXC Technology Co (DXC.N) will develop the center to create digital services for its global clients, which total nearly 6,000 across 70 countries, the company said in a statement. DXC was formed in April by a merger between CSC and Hewlett’s Enterprise Services business. To secure the project, Louisiana offered DXC an $18.7 million incentive package in performance-based...

The Conservative Voice in the news of the day is fast fading The News of the Day the Mainstream and Social Media are squatting on: Legions of people are being thrown off the Information Highway; the bus is leaving the depot without them. Amid a daily myriad of made-to-order distractions, including the ongoing visceral hatred of the outcome of presidential election 2016; the more than 20-year old sexual harassment claims of loud Entertainment Industry victims; the recent advance of Character Assassination By Allegation, allegations of which are impossible to prove or disprove, Conservatives are steadily losing their voice on the...

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If we don’t fight now, conservatives will vanish from the Internet How can you tell that Internet censorship is really taking off? Easy. It’s becoming a business model. Steven Brill is raising $6 million to launch News Guard. This new service will rate news sites on their trustworthiness from green to red. Forget politically unbiased algorithms. The ratings will be conducted by “qualified, accountable human beings” from teams of “40 to 60 journalists.” Once upon a time, journalism meant original writing. Now it means deciding which original writing to censor. “Can trust be monetized?” The Street’s article on News Guard...

The deputy social media director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign admits she never had "the cool candidate." "We were never the cool candidate," Emmy Bengtson wrote in a Medium post commemorating the one-year anniversary since the election. "It was very, very hard to convince people to 'come out' with their support of Hillary." Bengtson, who started at Clinton's Brooklyn headquarters in May 2015, said instead the team "showed why knowing issues inside and out and never, ever quitting were worthy of the same respect." Nov. 8, 2016, was "the best day and the worst night of my life," Bengtson...