Free Republic

Are Jack Dorsey, who has lied to Congress, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has no love fot freedom, democracy, and the Constitution, Russian assets? President Donald Trump was accussed of being a Russian asset because Moscow’s operatives tried to influence American opinion by buying a few thousand dollars of Facebook ads while fake Twitter accounts planted dubious stories. So how is Twitter and Facebook not meddling in our elections by suppressing a major American niewspaper’s URL for a story deemed harmful to one candidate in a presidential election? If there ever was any doubt that the social media tech giants Twitter...

ouTube has scrubbed many popular “QAnon” and independent news channels from its platform after announcing new rules that prohibit what it deems to be “harmful conspiracy theories.” The channels collectively had millions of subscribers and some of the many channels that were removed during this purge include: X22 Report (952,000 subscribers) SGTreport (630,000 subscribers) Edge of Wonder (467,000 subscribers) Praying Medic (391,000 subscribers) And We Know (385,000 subscribers) Amazing Polly (375,000 subscribers) Joe M (367,000 subscribers) Dollar Vigilante (304,000 subscribers) Mouthy Buddha (296,000 subscribers) JustInformed Talk (281,000 subscribers) RedPill78 (269,000 subscribers) The Patriot Hour (248,000 subscribers) In Pursuit of Truth...

Some PlayStation 4 users who downloaded the latest 8.0 update got an unwelcome surprise this morning: their console informed them that Sony had the right to record their voice for moderation purposes. Here is Sony’s exact language: Following this update, users are seeing a notification about Party Safety and that voice chats in parties may be recorded. Voice chat recording for moderation is a feature that will be available on PS5 when it launches, and will enable users to record their voice chats on PS5 and submit them for moderation review. The pop up you’re seeing on PS4 right now...

Imagine if we could put every area of America on an even playing field when it comes to high-speed internet. https://t.co/JqdSWsJDgY— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 2, 2020 Today’s internet is as critical—if not more so—to our nation’s economy and security as roads and highways were in Eisenhower’s time. https://t.co/Md4sjHXowB— Slate (@Slate) October 2, 2020

Cameras are everywhere... Do you have a cell phone? Unless it’s an old antiquated flip phone, there’s a camera. Public parks, roadways, the parking garage at your favorite shopping center, police officers wearing body cameras, school…they are everywhere. There was a time when Americans viewed the presence of security cameras in a private business as a creepy Orwellian intrusion into their private lives. They didn’t want to be recorded and watched as they did their shopping or when they went into the bank to cash their paychecks. Those days came and went and Americans accepted and adapted those cameras. Then...

The Biden campaign announced that it is hiring Facebook executive Jessica Hertz to join his transition team as general counsel in charge of ethical issues. This is the Campaign’s second “big tech” addition to the transition team. Earlier, Twitter’s Director of Public Policy, Carlos Monje, was hired to co-chair the transition team’s infrastructure policy committee. A spokesperson for the Campaign called the hires “a natural consequence of both Twitter’s and Facebook’s anti-Trump policies. Rather than hew to an out-dated notion of impartiality, both of these highly influential information gatekeepers have actively identified content that lies outside the accepted progressive narrative...

Open source RF hardware has been under development for several years, a boon for ham radio operators and academics. Open Research Institute anticipates that the Commerce Department will find that these technologies are unrestricted under the carve-out for open source in the EAR.

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Free and cheap ham radio projects list by WA5VJB

Police in Anne Arundel County, Maryland say an app on a child's cell phone told a 5-year-old to take naked pictures in the bathtub and threatened the child with strangulation if the child didn't do as they were told. Police received a call for help on September 16. Officers discovered the child had several questionable cell phone apps...

More than half of American voters strongly or somewhat support breaking up Silicon Valley tech giants to promote competition, according to a poll published Thursday. Only 26% of voters oppose or strongly oppose splitting up the country’s largest tech companies, while 19% of those surveyed didn’t offer a view, a poll from progressive think tank Data for Progress showed. The poll, which surveyed 1,200 likely voters in September, comes as the House lawmakers conclude their nearly yearlong probe into the industry’s supposed anticompetitive behavior. In the same poll, roughly 60% of respondents expressed support for a prompt on smartphones asking...

Here is the deal. Twitter probably uses machine learning systems to identify videos of child sexual exploitation. User @koenigjake said he tried to post “video of evidence on how Biden interacts with woman and little girls” but Twitter flagged him “for trying to post images of child molestation.” The fact he wasn’t able to respond suggests the automated filters identified the type of video ON UPLOAD. Also, if it were a manual review, it’s unlikely Twitter would label the video ‘child sexual exploitations.’ Read More...

Yesterday an individual was doxed because of his alleged activities involved with the QAnon movement. The QAnon Movement started in the middle of 2017 and attracted a huge following. Some of the information shared within the loosely connected organization was authentic and of high quality. Because of its success and popularity, outside influences from Russia and others inserted themselves into the movement and leftists attempted to identify who its leaders were...

A nurse for the Cleveland Clinic was arrested Wednesday and accused of child pornography charges stemming from thousands of images authorities seized from his home. Robert Stolz, 60, of Cleveland appeared in U.S. District Court via video before Magistrate Judge David Ruiz. A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic said: “Once we were notified of this situation, the employee was suspended pending the investigation. In his role, he did not provide care to pediatric patients.” An affidavit filed by John Saraya, an agent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation assigned to a federal task force of Homeland Security Investigations, says...

How will AI strategy in the enterprise be changed by the widespread attention to systemic racism? Like a lot of complicated topics, the discussion of racism in AI systems tends to be filtered through events that make headline news -- the Microsoft chatbot that Twitter users turned into a racist, the Google algorithm that labeled images of Black people as gorillas, the photo-enhancing algorithm that changed a grainy headshot of former President Barack Obama into a white man's face. Less sensational but even more alarming are the exposés on race-biased algorithms that influence life-altering decisions on who should get loans...

Friday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker argued for a Department of Justice investigation into how Facebook and Twitter were altering their algorithms for the sake of politics. Whitaker told host Tucker Carlson he did not see American democracy surviving another election cycle under the circumstances by which those social media outlets function. “Yes, I actually do believe we are going to get to the bottom of this insidious, really, censorship of mostly conservative voices on social media,” he said. “And I think the Department of Justice has been looking...

Amazon has rolled out a whole-building version of its Alexa AI voice assistant for landlords, billing ‘Alexa for Residential’ as extending smart-home functionality to renters – tenants’ consent apparently not required. The e-commerce giant announced Alexa for Residential on Thursday, describing it as a feature “that makes having an Alexa-enabled home accessible for anyone, regardless of whether they rent or own their home.” Tenants can link up their own Amazon account, but if they don't have one, no problem – they'll be placed on the building's system. Landlords, Amazon explains, will have the option to provide “custom voice experiences for...

The New York Times claims in a new report that the Department of Justice has plans to file antitrust charges against Google within the coming weeks. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google within the next few weeks after Attorney General William P. Barr reportedly overruled lawyers who said they needed more time to build a case against the tech giant....

So this morning I watched a webcast of the latest SpaceX Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral, some times I can see the rockets from my house....and I'm well over 100 miles away..... It's pretty cool to watch in less than 20 minutes you get to see the launch, first stage separation, the landing of the first stage booster on the barge at sea and then the release of the 60 satellites.... Two more launches are scheduled by late September or early October, which will put them over 800 satellites in orbit.... I would be happy with 100mb download speed and...

A court in Berlin will allow a freedom protest in Germany's capital city tomorrow.... An emergency ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a preliminary injunction from a federal district judge restricting federal law enforcement in Portland..... An Illinois judge putting a 30-day hold on an extradition hearing for Kyle Rittenhouse..... A march in Washington today called in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis back in May..... A full pardon from President Trump today for Alice Johnson.... In Belarus some 264 people detained by authorities yesterday..... Russia says that one of its fighters intercepted...