Free Republic

Maybe it's time we stopped with the pearl-clutching over video games. Fortnite was big news on Tuesday, when the Wall Street Journal published a feature looking at parents who hire tutors to help their kids (and themselves) get good. The article itself is a fine example of non-biased journalism: There's no agenda, and the story works to inform and help people understand this growingly frequent practice without casting any judgments. But the response has been something else. In 2018, folks are still freaked out by video games. The revelation that parents hire video game tutors has prompted a mixture of...

YouTube LIVE: Tommy Sotomayor vs. Luenell on Blackness, Feminism, and Race! Tune in as Jesse Lee Peterson moderates a fiery debate between comedian and actress LUENELL, and radio talk show host and activist TOMMY SOTOMAYOR. The topics include "Blackness," feminism, and race. It's going to be AMAZIN'!

We asked a number of government spooks and hackers and contractors who have worked for the FBI and other spooky federal agencies to examine Robert Mueller’s latest indictments of 12 alleged Russian “operatives.” Their conclusion? HOAX. Mueller’s team fabricated evidence. And a whole lot of evidence. What kind of evidence? It’s all right here. Whether you understand IT or not, the evidence Mueller claims points to Russia actually also points to India, Pakistan and of course China. Funny though, Mueller never mentions that in his indictment. Wonder why? President Trump has called it a witch hunt. And a number of...

It was revealed recently that North Korea is sitting on approximately $6 trillion worth of natural resources, which the country lacks the technology or expertise to extract. The impoverished nation is quite literally sitting on a goldmine, a significant portion of which is made up of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not - as you would expect - exceptionally rare, but are generally found in small trace quantities underground. What is rare is to find them in high concentrations, which is exactly what experts believe is present beneath the soil of North Korea. Not only are these resources...

A new facility in North Texas is starting up its production line for some of the technology that powers the Apple iPhone X's latest features. Silicon Valley-based Finisar has hired 200 people and begun operations at a new plant in Sherman, a city about 65 miles north of Dallas. The facility produces vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, that are used in smartphones. The lasers enable some of the iPhone X's features, such as facial recognition that unlocks the phone, a portrait mode that takes professional-looking photos and a tool that creates animated emojis based on the user's facial expressions. Jeff...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/nation-and-world/inside-googles-shadow-workforce-of-contract-laborers-20180729

Big SM looking to guide its users to correct thinking It really isn’t any surprise that social media giants are taking heat this last week for the ill thought-out actions of constraining free speech on their platforms. Taking punitive action against individuals under the guise of saving users the pain of glimpsing an offensive meme, comment or video, Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube has been deleting, locking and hiding content of targeted accounts. Not only have they demonetized accounts of popular personalities like Diamond and Silk, the black female duo leading the pack of Trump supporters, but they have refused...

Long term, the goal of 3D bioprinting is to be able to 3D print fully functioning organs which can be used to replace the failing biological organs of humans in need of a transplant. That may still be years off, but Chicago-based biotech startup Biolife4D this week announced a major new milestone: Its ability to bioprint human cardiac tissue. The scientific landmark followed shortly after the company opened a new research facility in Houston. It involved the printing of a human cardiac patch, containing multiple cell types which make up the human heart. It could one day be used to...

I'm sure you've all noticed that I have been missing for a while. Unfortunately, my computer conked out on the 11th of this month and I have been without one since. I also don't know if I will ever get it back. I'm very disappointed (to put it mildly) that a brand new Dell Inspiron computer, purchased at Best Buy on Feb.15 of last year (with help from a total stranger on the Internet) didn't even last a year and a half. It is in the shop but all signs point to it being unfixable. It was already acting a...

Perhaps Google Translate knows something the rest of us don’t – because it’s been coming out with some alarming translations which sound like doomsday prophecies. The translations come up in response to misspelled, but innocent, translation queries, often in little-known languages such as Yoruba. Google is rapidly adjusting Translate so the weird translations seem to disappear soon after discovery – but fans keep finding alarming stuff....

Devotees of Qanon — a far-right conspiracy theory about President Donald Trump’s secret war against Hillary Clinton, the so-called deep state and a fictitious global child sex cabal — are showing their devotion to the cause by buying merchandise, including T-shirts, hats, and jewelry, on Amazon.com. Shoppers are presented with over 1,000 results when they search Amazon for the term “Qanon,” a baseless and convoluted theory that mirrors 2016’s “pizzagate” conspiracy, which claimed Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza shop’s basement and led to a shooting at that restaurant by a pizzagate-believer in...

Last night, a young man opened fire on people enjoying a night out in Toronto’s Greektown neighborhood. Numerous people were hit; two of his victims died — an 18-year-old woman and a 10-ear-old girl. The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Toronto resident Faisal Hussain, was found dead shortly after a gunfight with police; it’s not clear if he was killed by the police or if he took his own life. As of yet, we don’t know the shooter’s motive, but given his choice of targets — people out socializing on a summer night in a neighborhood known for its many restaurants...

Amazon has introduced a new program that makes it a little more easier to buy gaming PCs and PC components. While the price is technically the same, the burden is spread out across several months at no penalty to the buyer. Amazon now has a monthly payment system for big ticket items that shifts payments across five months instead of all at once. For instance, there's now the option to purchase a $2,000 PC with five monthly payments of $400 rather than forking over two grand at the time of sale. The applicable categories for this new program are: Laptops,...

The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows President Trump's approval rating at 45 percent, up one percent from last month. The President enjoys 88 percent support among Republican in the poll. Its his highest approval rating in polling done by the Wall Street Journal/NBC. A headline in Monday's London "Times" says "No deal on Brexit risks civil unrest, says Amazon". THe pro-Theresa May Conservative Party newspaper quoted the head of Amazon UK in the story speaking to a government minister at a business summit. In a tweet late tonight, Breitbart UK's Raheem Kassam responded that "NO BREXIT" would lead to civil...

President Trump says he wants to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin again and discussions are underway for Putin to visit Washington this fall. Trump tweeted today that he looks forward to continuing discussion started at this week's summit meeting in Helsinki. The President tweeted a host of issues involved with Putin including Ukraine, North Korea and security for Israel.... Large groups of opposition forces including Al-Qaeda jihadists surrendered to the Syrian government in the Quneitra region along the Golan border today. Russian military police will help implement the surrender process.... Late word tonight from near Branson, Missouri that eight people...

The Russia conspiracy theory hinges on the single creaky claim that the Democratic National Committee hacks were a Russian plot to elect Trump. The theory and all its illegitimate stepchildren, including Robert Mueller and his infinitely expanding corps of prosecutors, lives or dies by the DNC hacks. Trying to elect Trump by releasing damaging insider information from the DNC never made any sense. The DNC was already a dysfunctional organization that was being run by the Clinton campaign. Undermining its leadership had little impact on the election, but a great deal on control of the DNC. There has never been...

Expect to see a dramatic increase in new technology coming into the pork industry as a host of manufacturers from diverse industries look at animal agriculture and attempt to measure or monitor welfare, environmental pressures and food safety with their technologies. That was the first message Lee Whittington, president and CEO of the Prairie Swine Centre had for delegates to the 2018 Banff Pork Seminar in Banff, Alta. The second is that what will be needed is a method to evaluate systematically how well the products work, the data integrity and security, and the link to decision support software and...

The three major mobile operators in South Korea have banded together to say they will launch initial 5G services on the peninsula in March 2019, likely making the country one of the first to get the next-generation wireless offering. SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ have all agreed to cooperate in launching their 5G networks together during a so-called "Korea 5G Day," expected to happen during March 2019, according to domestic reports. Korean science minister You Young-min said that the cooperation between the carriers would help to make South Korea the world's first 5G country. A March 2019 launch appears...

Leading parcel service company Express Parcel Service LLC is on the spree to expand operations by increasing shipping locations across the US. The company is also expanding its network of remote shipping agents through new hires with the goal to extend better and more affordable shipping service to customers. “We are excited to announce that we have recently embarked on an expansion stretch, both in terms of our shipping locations and shipping agents. Our efforts in ensuring the most trusted and economical delivery have impressed private investors and a lot of them have supported us with robust funding of late....

I’m going to miss Lord & Taylor like mad when the Fifth Avenue flagship closes next year. It isn’t only because of the unlikely bargains I scored on its often-deserted men’s floors — a red vinyl Perry Ellis-label jacket, marked down from $79.95 to $39.95 that strangers hilariously mistake for Armani, and a wool winter coat as good as any for $49.99. I won’t miss the once-charming but more recently cheap-looking holiday windows that weren’t worth waiting on line for. But Lord & Taylor, like every big department store, offered a welcoming civility that softened the city’s rough edges. New...