Free Republic

Those familiar with Bitcoin are aware that it consumes an enormous amount of energy. Estimates are that Bitcoin-mining consumes as much power as the entire country of Finland — roughly one half of one percent of all of the electrical power generated on Earth. The theory behind Bitcoin is that avoiding detection of fraudulent transactions should be more expensive in terms of time, effort, and energy than is keeping track of honest transactions. There is necessarily some power required to keep track of honest transactions, and, in the case of Bitcoin, the power required is considerable. The rationale behind the...

Photo: Honda Both the new and used car market is a hot mess right now, and will be for sometime. Just how hot of a mess are we talking? Well, a writer for The Verge managed to sell his 2014 Honda Fit to Carvana sight-unseen for $20,905—$90.20 more than he paid for it brand new off a dealer lot. That’s a mighty caliente market. How could such an old car possibly be worth more today than when it had 23 miles and still smelled like plastic? How could a company that buys such cars at such high prices before even...

Some Mazda owners out in Western Washington... are faced with having to listen to nothing but National Public Radio after an errant signal broke their radios. Over the last couple of weeks, a number of owners of 2014 to 2017 Mazdas all tuned their HD Radios to 94.9 KUOW, one of the Puget Sound’s public radio stations. Seattle Times interviewed owners, including Dave Welding, the driver of a 2016 Mazda hatch: Somehow the signal the station sent to the modern HD Radio that’s part of the Mazda infotainment center had, as Welding puts it, “fried” a major component. The component...

On Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it seized most of the 119,754 Bitcoins (worth almost 3.6 billion today) lost during this infamous hack and have arrested a New York couple who is accused of attempting to launder the stolen funds. Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, were arrested without incident Tuesday morning in Manhattan and face charges related to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government. The couple, however, is not being charged for the hack itself as the investigation is ongoing. The department partially credited the “blockchain” or the underlying...

Without setting foot inside an office building, Chaylene Martinez unwittingly put her foot in her mouth by criticizing her would-be employer during a one-take, pre-recorded video interview. “The question is … the stupidest, cheesiest question I’ve ever read in my life,” Martinez says in now-viral footage of her disastrous digital application to SkyWest Airlines. In the clip, which has amassed over 6.9 million views, the troubled TikToker is seen complaining about SkyWest’s interview questions to an unnamed male friend on the phone. However, she accidentally begins recording herself on the company’s video application platform while she’s bad-mouthing the brand. “’What...

Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan are accused of laundering the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex's platform in 2016. The Department of Justice announced the seizure of more than $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency that was stolen during an attack on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in August 2016. The DOJ also said it arrested 34-year-old Ilya Lichtenstein and his 31-year-old wife Heather Morgan for their role in attempting to launder 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen during the attack on the Hong Kong exchange. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco called the seizure the "department's largest financial seizure...

YouTuber King Cid, who has 2 million subscribers on the platform, was last week arrested after he and his friends in January misused 911 as part of a YouTube "coke" prank, according to police. Cid, whose legal name is Jason Cid, in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel showed the January 27 incident. In the video, Cid told a friend call local police about "weird, suspicious activities" at a gas station in Southern Florida. But the car the friend reported to the dispatcher was the one occupied by Cid and his friends. Cid was charged with the third-degree felony...

With police alleged to use spyware against citizens, Channel 12 offers guidelines by Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based firm banned in US over ties to Russian security services, hackers With the country rattled by bombshell revelations alleging that Israel Police have illicitly used phone-hacking spyware against dozens of public officials, activists and citizens, Channel 12’s primetime news on Monday night offered some “helpful” tips to its audience on how to at least try to “avoid being hacked.” In a short segment by its tech correspondent Ben Mittelman, the channel laid out a series of actions the average Joe and Jane can...

Need Manly Information. A family member is selling his big diesel truck and thinking of purchasing a Raptor. Two people disparaged the Raptor and said it was a "kids truck". Manly Freepers? Your opinions? Freeperettes with hairy chests welcome to comment.

At this bar, blockheads are welcome. A clever rooftop bar in Braunschweig, Germany, allows guests to play Tetris and other classic arcade games on the side of a tall building

@ColumbiaBugle Not enough. GoFundMe must be investigated. Statement...

@ColumbiaBugle Tucker Carlson Reacts To News Of GoFundMe Removing Trucker Convoy Fundraiser "Is it illegal? It should be." Clip...

If you're looking for a hit of '90s nostalgia, here are 12 of the most popular websites from the naughty nineties still up and running today. From its humble beginnings at CERN, the World Wide Web has indeed come a long way since it was first invented by the respected British scientist, Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. From plain-looking text-only websites to slow internet speeds and unreliable connections, the World Wide Web has survived and evolved into so much more, so much that we're now at the cusp of Web3. In this article, we'll go down memory lane to the historic...

Gotta get rid of my sbcglobal.net account and looking for a secure service. Any suggestions? Free is good...

Spoiler: Yeah, why not?The modern world hurts my brain. Let’s take the news that Apple enables users to store their COVID vaccination certificates in the Wallet and Health apps as an example. When I first heard about it, I was pumped. Flashing my QR code to enter a restaurant or grab a coffee would be far simpler if it sat in my Apple Wallet. Friends, the time I’d save! But, of course, the world had something to say about that. We talked to 4 successful entrepreneurs This is what they wish they knew before getting started While putting my digital...

The compact, flat Koenigsegg Quark motor is designed to integrate easily into supercars and other vehiclesKoenigsegg VIEW 8 IMAGES Not one to let the inadequacies of existing technology stand in its way, Koenigsegg has been an innovating pioneer in modern powertrain technology, rethinking fundamentals with solutions like gearbox-free direct-drive hybrids and camshaft-free engines. Its latest breakthrough has come in the form of a compact electric motor that squeezes together the torque-heavy benefits of axial flux topology with the power-dense boost of a radial flux layout. The all-new Quark motor will help the boundary-smashing Gemera four-seat GT achieve sprint times formerly...

Many Americans were misled by QAnon predictions, believing them to be credible at the time they were posted. The experience shows the wisdom of evaluating claims with a discerning eye. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the just over three years between October 28, 2017 and December 8, 2020, one or more bloggers claiming to have access to secret intelligence from inside the Trump White House published nearly 5,000 cryptic posts known as “drops” under the moniker “QAnon,” or simply “Q.” At the time, many viewed the posts as credible, yet the passage of time showed beyond a reasonable doubt that they were not....

Apple is seeking to halt the distribution of an action-comedy film titled "Apple-Man," fearing consumers may believe the film is associated with the Cupertino-based tech giant. In 2020, Ukrainian film director Vasyl Moskalenko wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign for his indie action-comedy movie, "Apple Man." The film centers around a superhero who has the power to levitate apples — the fruit. Now, as the film enters post-production, Apple has begun the process of shutting down the world's first healthy lifestyle superhero film before it ever reaches consumers. According to the film's creator, Apple has filed a 467-page lawsuit against...

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was ripped Sunday after promoting an open-source newsletter platform that offers “freedom” to independent writers. Dorsey tweeted Saturday of the open-source newsletter website Ghost as an alternative to Substack, a popular newsletter service used by a number of prominent journalists including former New York Times writers Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss, and Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. “For those of you on substack: why not use @ghost instead?” Dorsey tweeted. “Is the payment you get from substack inc. greater than the freedom ghost would provide? ”Dorsey’s comments came a few days after Substack Vice President...

In a recent paper, the researchers—who hail from universities in Israel, Australia, and France—unveiled a unique device “fingerprinting” strategy that uses the properties of each user’s GPU stack to create distinct, trackable profiles. For those who don’t know, fingerprinting is a form of web tracking—the ubiquitous practice whereby companies and third-parties monitor consumers in an effort to mitigate fraud, improve “customer experience,” and, oh yeah, sell you stuff. Historically speaking, most companies have used cookies—which are tiny, identifying text files stored in your browser. But cookies have fallen on hard times lately, as recent privacy regulations—such as California’s CCPA or...