Free Republic

‘Antifa’ activists were ready to confront those targets in person, with fists and pepper spray, and knives if necessary. The Signal messages appear in staccato bursts: “We all in blac bloc bout to join.” “We in the streets.” Looking up from my cellphone, I see them coming: a platoon clad head to toe in black, marching in formation like some sort of dystopian Roman legion. They’re carrying flags and holding shields, some embossed with the black-and-red logo of the anti-fascist movement. As they approach the column of protesters already marching toward Berkeley City Hall, they start banging on their shields,...

Online education company Udacity is growing its new Nanodegree program yet again – it’s adding two entirely new programs to the roster, including a new entry-level self-driving Nanodegree, as well as a brand new one focused on ‘flying cars’ (though it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that). The Flying Car program will include course material created by world-leading aeronautics and aerospace industry experts, including MIT professor Nicholas Roy, ETH Zurich professor and Kiva Systems co-founder Raffaelo D’Andrea, University of Toronto Aerospace Studies professor Angela Schoellig and Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun himself. Thrun is also CEO of personal aircraft startup...

Supporters of President Trump have compiled a list containing personal information on thousands of people they believe are either opposed to Trump or associated with left-wing "antifascist" or "antifa" groups. The list, reported by BuzzFeed, has been circulated and added to on the internet since at least April. The list, which began on 4Chan’s controversial /Pol/ board as a loose collection of names, phone numbers, addresses and social media accounts of Trump critics, has since grown into an organized document spread across the internet. The list has also been posted on text repository site Pastebin. Several versions of the list...

"We have been attacked," Morgan Freeman stoically announces. "We are at war." The Oscar-winning actor has played the president of the United States in a time of crisis (in 2008's "Deep Impact"), but this time he's speaking as himself, as a citizen. In a video from the activist news organization ATTN:, Freeman encourages Americans of every ideological stripe to look with clear eyes at Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Russian President Vladimir Putin, he argues, wasn't just punking the U.S. He was trying to undermine the country's government and values. "Imagine this movie script," Freeman says, and then...

Following reports that Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman was under surveillance, Fox News pundits jumped to the president’s defense Tuesday, asserting that his claims the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower have now been vindicated. Yet they couldn’t be more wrong, said legal experts. It all goes back to Trump’s tweet on March 4 that he “found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump also compared it to “Nixon/Watergate,” when President Richard Nixon attempted to bug the Democratic Party headquarters. Defending Trump’s months-old claim, Fox News pundit Tucker...

President Trump is using targeted Facebook ads to assure supporters he will build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, reports BuzzFeed News. "There's been a lot of noise and a lot of rumors," reads the ad from Trump's personal Facebook page. "WE WILL BUILD A WALL (NOT A FENCE) ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF THE UNITED STATES," it adds, calling the issue "non-negotiable." The ad has been targeted to specific Facebook users in recent days. Vice President Pence’s Facebook page is running a similar ad, according to BuzzFeed. Trump’s declaration comes after he tweeted last week that the...

Cities and states across the country leaped to their feet when e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) announced it was looking for a second location. The online retailer wasn't shy in describing exactly what it wanted. And what that is, in case anyone was wondering, is incentives. "[T]his is a competitive project," the company said in its formal request for proposals, and "Amazon welcomes the opportunity to engage with you in the creation of an incentive package, real estate opportunities, and cost structure to encourage the company's location of the project in your state/province." For many cities, that means an all-out hustle...

Thanks to the internet, it’s not hard to make a six-figure salary from anywhere in the world. Our newsfeeds are filled with the anomalies, millennials who create and scale businesses that consistently generate over $100,000 in annual revenue. But that reality isn’t an option for most, and not everyone is ready to take the plunge into self-employment. An overarching theme of Deloitte’s 2017 Millennial Survey was the desire for both flexibility and stability at work. In other words, millennials want the stability of a good, consistent paycheck but also seek flexibility in work location, hours, and the ability to move...

Global consulting giant Accenture on Wednesday confirmed its plans to create an innovation hub at Technology Square in Midtown, where the company plans to create 800 new jobs by 2020. The innovation hub, part of a planned network of 10 such facilities around the nation, will be designed to that Accenture technologists can aide their Fortune 500 clients and other major companies in designing and testing new technologies, said Jimmy Etheredge, senior managing director in the Southeast for Accenture. The Accenture project is the latest in a string of high-profile technology jobs announcements for the city and state, and it...

Jack Ma knows artificial intelligence will change the world. The Alibaba founder and chairman doesn't think we should be scared. But he does think we should be prepared for major disruptions to the job market. "In the last 200 years, manufacturing (has brought) jobs. But today -- because of the artificial intelligence, because of the robots -- manufacturing is no longer the main engine of creating jobs," Ma said Wednesday in a speech at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City. Moving forward, Ma said he believes the service industry will be the largest engine of job creation....

Chelsea Clinton says she wishes President Trump would focus on his duties at the United Nations instead of retweeting a gif of himself knocking down her mother with a golf ball. Critics including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Joe Biden were quick to speak out Monday when Trump retweeted the short video of him teeing off, before the golf ball appears to knock down Hillary Clinton. (TWEETS-AT-LINK) Feinstein called the tweet "appalling and disgusting” and said that Trump should "grow up," do his job and stop "obsessively” lashing out at Clinton.(TWEET-AT-LINK) Trump is in New York for...

The competition to host HQ2, as Amazon’s planned second headquarters is called, has captivated the nation. The lucky city can expect an economic bonanza: 50,000 jobs, plus the tech ecosystem that the online retail giant’s presence will inevitably attract. But the winner doesn’t have to be a big metropolis. On the contrary, Amazon has the power to create an entirely new American technology hub. In a recent piece, Bloomberg View columnist Conor Sen discusses some of the factors that will (or should) influence Amazon’s decision. These include an educated workforce, an airport, tax incentives, and — perhaps most importantly —...

For the first time in history, investments in drones--those buzzy airborne gadgets that used to be called UAVs--have crossed a billion dollars. $1.2 billion has already been invested in unmanned aerial tech in 2017 so far, according to CB Insights. When I invested in a drone startup last year, there was only about $600 million in venture capital deployed. Drone pilots still had to be licensed like fixed-wing aircraft. "In the past several years, the drone space has crossed the threshold from being driven by hobbyists and experimentalists to being largely enterprise-dominated," says John Frankel, founder at FFVC, a New...

Banning social media trolls from voting could help reduce the amount of abuse faced by politicians, the election watchdog has said. The Electoral Commission says legislation around elections should be reviewed and new offences could be introduced. In the commission’s submission to a committee on standards in public life inquiry into the intimidation of political candidates, officials say many offences under electoral law date back to the 1800s or earlier. They say some electoral offences can result in an offender being disqualified from voting or from registering to vote. Such deterrents could be considered to stop abusive people, the submission...

CNBC reports Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is spinning out graduates earning $200,000 to work in the rapidly growing field of self-driving cars. Pittsburgh has become America's unofficial self-driving car research capital. At least four companies in the autonomous vehicle business, including Uber, have set up offices in the city; they've been testing its self-driving cars on Pittsburgh's streets since 2016. Andrew Moore, the dean of Carnegie Mellon's computer science school, said that graduates of its computer vision program are getting job offers from these firms with pay packages of upwards of $200,000 right out of school. It's a situation...

Video and photo evidence has surfaced that could prove Imran Awan maintained a chain of computer servers in the basement and locked garage area of an Alexandria, VA home he and wife Hina Alvi rented to a tenant. The embattled Awan couple did not reside at the home, however, did maintain separate internet service and a router which fed into a locked internal storage area connected to the home, according to an interview with former tenant Laurel Everly who rented the home for nine months from the Awans in 2014 and 2015. Everly has now provided photos and videos of...

If your home is plagued by Wi-Fi dropouts and other router issues, you may want to think about an upgrade, perhaps to one that offers multiple bands to up your choices and, with luck, performance. Hence TP-Link's AC5400 Wireless Tri-Band MU-MIMO, also known as the Archer C5400 Gigabit Router. This sucker offers a total of six distinct networks, kind of: 1 x 2.4 GHz, and 2 x 5 GHz, with all three options available for both regular use or as specially noted "Guest" networks, so you won't get in trouble for some overnight interloper's porn downloads. Or whatever your issue...

CHARLESTON — West Virginia House Delegate Moore Capito is asking Seattle-based Amazon to add the Mountain State to its short list of location candidates for its second corporate headquarters. Capito, R-Kanawha, has sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asking he consider placing West Virginia on his “top locations to choose from” list. Amazon recently announced plans to invest $5 billion to build a second North American headquarters that would be called “Amazon HQ2,” which could potentially create up to 50,000 jobs. Delegate Capito said West Virginia could be an ideal fit for Amazon’s vision, because the company could...

The music industry is currently in need of a fresh injection, and a much-needed overhaul. The industry currently takes 86% of artist’s takings. Music creatives often find themselves ignored by Media conglomerates, lacking that exposure and funding to help propel the avenue to gain them recognition for their art. The music industry is in need of a system that provides clarity for the contributors and offers an honest platform to interact with the artists and fans. This is why this writer is passionate about Potentiam, a new project created to give a voice to music artists, writers, influencers, and the...

Former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) asked a Manhattan federal court to grant him leniency after his conviction for sending obscene emails and texts to an under-aged 15-year-old girl last year. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 21 to 27 months for a charge that carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. Weiner's lawyers argued that "the girl was the instigator of the crime. She preyed upon the weaknesses of a man who was widely known as a sex pervert. Now she's written a book and will profit from the experience. So, to say that she was an innocent victim...