Free Republic

When millions of office employees started working from home in 2020, the plan for most was eventually to return to work, not stay remote forever. But two and a half years later, many workers really don’t want to go back to the office, and companies are struggling to figure out how to convince them to return, offering enticements like free food, prizes, and even alcoholic beverages to draw workers back. Some companies are getting more creative than that, as this person who wrote to me recounts: "I have seen a lot of lures, and none of them are working. Free...

The full picture of Facebook-turned-Meta's rumored layoffs is coming further into focus — and, well, things aren't looking too good for the metamates. Insider reports that the company is planning a mass round of "quiet layoffs," which could impact up to 15 percent of the entire company. For the folks at home, that number would equal roughly 12,000 employees. And the reason why they're being called — whisper voice — quiet layoffs? According to Insider's sources, Facebook has already started the process, which it plans to execute via shifting performance expectations rather than outright firing hordes of staffers all at...

Whether you’re a middle schooler starting Algebra I, a college student enrolled in a calculus course, or a professional accountant, having a dedicated calculator is essential. Specifically designed for simple straightforward use, these user-friendly devices allow you to perform a wide range of calculations quickly, and powerful models can even tackle extremely complicated calculus equations. And yeah, when it comes to simple math, sure you can use your smartphone, but there’s something about the physical buttons and single-function design that still makes basic calculators useful to have around. The Best CalculatorsBEST OVERALL TI-84 Plus CE Graphing Calculator $129 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS...

SOUTH FLORIDA — A South Florida Realtor recently lost his drone after an alligator ate it. Rob Rosetto with Rosetto Realty Group in Boca Raton shared a short video of the hungry gator jumping out of the water to snatch the drone mid-air on social media. (Watch the video below.) “Well, there goes my drone,” he wrote in a Sept. 24 Instagram post. “Damn alligator actually just ate it!” In the video, a group watching the gator erupts into laughter and cheers when it chomps down on the drone. A man’s voice can be heard saying, “That’s not funny.”

As the world braces for a third consecutive year of exceptional La Niña conditions, a new study reveals how our climate models might have missed this disastrous 'triple-dip' effect. It's the first time in a century that La Niña has stuck around for so long, and her wrath is being felt in southern Africa and South America in the form of drought, and in Australasia and South-East Asia in the form of floods. Her conditions are also set to bring a cool, wet winter to the Pacific Northwest and a hot, dry one to the southwest of the United States....

FBI MUST PRODUCE THE INFO IT POSSESSES RELATED TO SETH RICH'S LAPTOP Attorney Ty Clevenger has been pushing this case The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson @AbsoluteWithE · Follow A judge tells the FBI they have a week and a half to "produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich's laptop and attorney @ty_clevenger

Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski expressed outrage at the FBI's handling of damning information he provided them about the first son's business dealings involving his uncle, James Biden, Chinese and other foreign interests, and reportedly the current president of the United States himself. Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and the former head of SinoHawk Holdings, which he described as a partnership between the CEFC Chinese energy conglomerate and two Biden family members, told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he decrypted subtle word choices by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg from his own sit-down with UFC commentator...

Overwatch 2's launch on Tuesday has so far been less of a launch and more of a line: thousands of players, including a few at PC Gamer, have been stuck in a lengthy login queue(opens in new tab), only to run into a connection error after making it to the menu. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra tweeted(opens in new tab) this afternoon that this isn't just the result of too many players trying to get in—Overwatch 2 is currently suffering a DDoS attack. Distributed denial-of-service attacks direct large amounts of internet traffic to specific servers, overwhelming them with more connections than...

Twitter stock was halted twice and rose around 13% in midday trading Tuesday following a report by Bloomberg that Elon Musk has proposed to move forward with his deal to buy the company at the originally agreed upon price of $54.20 per share. The news comes as the the two sides have been preparing to head to trial in two weeks over Musk’s attempt to pull out of the $44 billion acquisition agreement, which Twitter had sued him to complete. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had been set to be deposed by Musk’s lawyers on Monday, and Twitter’s lawyers had planned...

Attempts to access Google Translate’s old mainland China address are now redirected to the Hong Kong site. Bloomberg noted that the Hong Kong version of the site isn’t accessible on the mainland without a VPN, marking Google’s move as an effective shutdown of the service. Google did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but the company did confirm with multiple outlets that it had discontinued the service in China “due to low usage.” TechCrunch, which initially reported on the news Friday, noted that the hubbub surrounding the upcoming National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which would mark...

Please join the Free Republic alt group on Gab.com https://gab.com/groups/67851 Gab has really improved if you haven't used it in a while. Make use of the filters so you can block the leftists posing as NAZIs and racists trying to make gab look bad.

@RealRossU Tomorrow I’ll begin my 10th year in prison. I don’t know what to say. I screwed up. I ruined my life and caused a lot of pain. When I look back and see my many mistakes, I feel immense regret.

The protests this week are being exacerbated by the government’s total incompetence in handling the arrival of Hurricane Ian, which at one point on Tuesday resulted in an island-wide failure of the national power grid. At press time, communist authorities claim that only 12 percent of the power grid is operational, making electricity accessible only in the wealthiest parts of the country – controlled by Communist Party elites – and in luxury tourist destinations. The regime-controlled Gaviota tourism agency boasted on Twitter on Thursday that its luxury hotels remain fully functional. In areas where Cuban citizens live, many are protesting...

Donald Trump was the perfect “meme leader,” appealing to an array of shadowy, loosely organized groups with varied philosophies but shared roots in internet “imageboards” like 4chan and 8chan, along with a desire, like their adopted chief, to disrupt the established power structure. “He had already — before he ran in 2015 — become a memetic figure in a lot of these communities. His hair was already a meme. He stood for a certain kind of New York wealth and power and masculinity to these communities,” said Emily Dreyfuss, a journalist, fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and...

Good afternoon fellow Freepers. I got a project that I'm working on but I don't know how to make it work. Basically, I have a PDF file with areas that need text or digital signature blocks added, but I'm looking to find out if there is a way to overlay a PDF with those items in key positions onto the primary PDF file, and have everything line up. As it is right now, I manually add those items one at a time and the time it takes to do 20-30 forms is killing me. There's got to be a way...

Google is planning to offer much faster broadband speeds in the US areas where it operates its fiber networks, all the way to 100Gbps.Google Fiber, part of the Access division of the search giant's parent company, Alphabet, currently provides a 1Gbps service, and began upgrading its speed in 2021 with the introduction of a 2Gbps product offering downstream bandwidth of 2Gbps and upstream bandwidth of 1Gbps for $100 a month.That comes up against AT&T Fiber's similar tier at $110, Verizon Fios and Ziply Fiber's 120 plans, and Frontier's Fiber 2-gig is $150, although, of course, Google's $100 pricing may not...

Updated Every four years, the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) stages a Plenipotentiary Conference at which member states decide how the organization will steer the development of communications technologies. The event is usually only of interest to telco and policy wonks.But this year's event has become a geopolitical football – and possibly a turning point for internet governance – thanks to the two candidates running in an election for the position of ITU secretary-general.The US has put forward Doreen Bogdan-Martin for the gig. She's an ITU veteran with years of experience working with global telecoms regulators. She also believes...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — An election worker in the Grand Rapids area was charged with two crimes after a witness reported seeing him place a USB flash drive into an electronic poll book at the close of the Aug. 2 primary, authorities said Wednesday. The incident had no impact on election results in a Gaines Township precinct, though it was “extremely egregious and incredibly alarming,” Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons said. “It is a violation of public trust and of the oath all election workers are required to take,” Lyons said. James Holkeboer was charged with using a...

The stakes could not be higher for finding a solution for how to regulate the global public sphere, with the survival of modern democratic governance hanging in the balance. The power the big platforms wield over public discourse has distorted the marketplace of ideas, to a point where there is broad consensus internationally that some form of state intervention is necessary. In the United States, that realization is particularly contentious as it is at odds with US tradition and the First Amendment, which favors competition over regulation not only of the economy but also of ideas. As frustrations rise over...

@Breaking911 BREAKING: Putin has granted Russian citizenship to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden - SKY