Free Republic

I don't know how many people are interested in this, but I signed up to be a Beta Tester of Starlink. I'm not sure if I will get chosen but it would be fun to take part in, I think I would be a good Beta Tester, I have a computer engineering networking background.... Starlink, is a company started by Elon Musk that is attempting to create a space based internet service with hundreds if not thousands of LEO satellites... This Tuesday another rocket is scheduled to be launched that will carry 60 satellites into space. By this fall upwards...

Google has a "Juneteenth" inspired page today. This being Google there is no historical context, and no reference to the Civil War. It looks like some scene from Africa than the US.

MADISON, WI — Talk about burying the lead! The Eau Claire-Leader Telegram this week reported that Wisconsin received an “F” rating for social distancing. What the article failed to fully disclose until the 17th paragraph is that Unacast, a New York and Norway-based data analytics firm created a “social distancing scoreboard” by grabbing data from mobile phones. That information could eventually be used by health and elected officials to try to re-issue draconian stay-at-home orders to deal with the pandemic. Eau Claire County got an ‘F,’ too, by the way. How do we know? Because Unacast tapped into personal data...

Yesterday I had no problem accessing Free Republic. Today after a Microsoft update all of my browsers say Free Republic is not secure and I have to go through a few clicks to convince my browsers that I really want to see FR anyway. Anyone else seeing this? Also, the 2004 build was installed on my computer last night.

Snopes fact-checker Jessica Lee has deleted her earlier tweets about hearing a gunshot outside her home because she’d rather not make a big thing about it online … anymore. I deleted earlier tweets about a gunshot outside my home. Law enforcement has been called, and for my safety, I’d rather not be at the center of any online debate about it. Thanks for understanding. — Jessica Lee (@byjlee) May 30, 2020 The tweet she deleted said that she’d witnessed a big white truck with a MAGA hat. Must have been a big hat.

Though Twitter has a lengthy record of permitting leftists to post blatant lies and evidence-free accusations, this week it took issue with President Trump’s tweet warning of the risk of vote-fraud in vote-by-mail elections. Twitter alleged that a “fact check” shows that vote-fraud is nonexistent. It seems that the so-called fact check relied solely on repeated assertions from Democrats that vote-fraud does not exist to any serious extent. As it turns out, the assertion that vote-fraud is not a serious problem is itself a false statement. Back in 2005 a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President...

The use of Real World Evidence in Covid-19 is growing, and that’s a good thing. Properly implemented, RWE has the potential to deliver solid results faster than Randomized Controlled Trials, as I explained in a .css-mckguv{-webkit-transition:background 0.25s var(--ease-in-out-quad),color 0.25s var(--ease-in-out-quad);transition:background 0.25s var(--ease-in-out-quad),color 0.25s var(--ease-in-out-quad);color:var(--theme-ui-colors-accent,#6166DC);}.css-mckguv:visited{color:var(--theme-ui-colors-accent,#6166DC);opacity:0.85;}.css-mckguv:hover,.css-mckguv:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}previous blog post.So I couldn’t miss the largest observational study published to date on the effects of (hydroxy-)chloroquine, in 96 032 hospitalised Covid-19 patients, from an international registry comprising 671 hospitals in six continents:Mehra, M. R., Desai, S. S., Ruschitzka, F., & Patel, A. N. (2020). ‘Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of...

A couple of major signals suggest market selloff soon. As of past couple of days, T-Bond Futures are not correlating with the current rise in the stock market; this has historically meant a selloff eminent. Second, volume analysis suggests the very upper limit of this rally is when the S&P hits 3069 for this week. So, the selloff could come today (5/28/2020) if S&P hits 3069.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is asking people to “please leave our employees out of it” after it was revealed that one of his senior employees hates President Trump and the people in the states who voted for him: Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make. — jack

Nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday. Researchers culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans. It is too early to say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, but researchers said the tweets appeared aimed at sowing division in America. “We do know that it looks like it’s a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches...

Mr. Gates, 64, the Microsoft co-founder, has now become the star of an explosion of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus outbreak. In posts on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, he is being portrayed as the creator of Covid-19, as a profiteer from a virus vaccine, and as part of a dastardly plot to use the illness to cull or surveil the global population. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged millions of dollars to companies developing potential novel coronavirus vaccines. In an interview on April 9 on CNBC, Gates spoke theoretically about how many people might experience side effects from...

Life is starting to slowly return to normal in some states. More people moving around. The data is from anonymized and aggregated cell phone data. See The Data...

"The iOS 13.5 update also launches Apple's framework for contact tracing apps. No, the apps aren't here yet, but when governments and public health authorities do launch them, you'll be notified – anonymously – when you come into contact with someone who tests positive for Covid-19. Apple's API is the first step to rolling out these apps" 

By comparing total death for March & April of this year with those from the same period last year, a rough measure of the pandemic’s impact emerges. The data from this analysis supports the idea that Red states (Conservative ideology) are faring better than Blue states (Liberal ideology). Graph & Table of Data.....

If normal radical liberals in Big Tech weren’t bad enough, Twitch has named a transgender streamer who self-identifies as a deer to be on the platform’s “Safety Advisory Council.” ... In one, Loehr wore antlers while broadcasting and explained: “In my spare time, I go out to my yard, and I, and I prance around. And I eat grass.” While explaining this, Loehr mimed eating grass and described how “it helps me feel, like, in tune with my deer-self.” . . . Loehr claimed the cause of the harassment is merely because "I am different and twitch has platformed me.”...

Facebook controls as much as 80% of social media traffic. That means that it has the power to erase conversations, shift narratives, and control how people speak to one another. With 190 million users in the United States, the social network monopoly has more control over what people see than all of the media giants combined do. And now Facebook is putting some very troubling political activists in charge of its Oversight Board who will decide how it censors. Facebook has assembled a grab bag of globalist personalities that wouldn’t be out of place at a UN conference (and a...

The criminal group behind the REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware is extorting a New York-based law firm, threatening to release sensitive files on the company's celebrity clients unless the the firm pays a whopping $42 million ransom demand. The extortion attempt is the result of a ransomware infection that Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks (GSMS) suffered last week. On May 7, REvil operators published a message addressed to the GSMS staff on a dark web portal, threatening to release files about its clients, files the REvil gang stole from the law firm's internal network before encrypting its files.

How does one capture a screen shot of a website, or a Twitter page? Apparently, using the function doesn't work.

Tech giant Facebook will reportedly be paying a settlement of $52 million to thousands of current and former content moderators who developed PTSD after viewing and removing graphic and disturbing posts on the social media platform. NPR reports that according to a settlement agreement announced on Tuesday between tech giant Facebook and lawyers for former Facebook content moderators. Mark Zuckerberg’s company will be paying $52 million to thousands of workers affected by the content they were forced to view and remove from Facebook.

Pro-migration lobbies and media outlets are loudly protesting President Donald Trump’s emerging plan to gradually transfer Fortune 500 jobs from H-1B visa workers back to Americans amid the coronavirus crash. The plan “is economic madness,” says a tweet by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an advocate for the immigration lawyers who import the H-1B white-collar visa workers for 53,000 companies. The supply of crabcakes from the Chesapeake Bay will “collapse” if the inflow of H-2B blue-collar workers is interrupted, and the tech industry will be “hurt” if tech companies are forced to hire Americans instead of foreign graduates with Optional Practical Training (OPT)...