Free Republic

A rendering of the entangled atoms within the interferometer. Credit: Steven Burrows, Thompson Group/JILA A team of researchers at JILA has for the first time successfully combined two of the “spookiest” features of quantum mechanics to make a better quantum sensor: entanglement between atoms and delocalization of atoms. JILA is a physical science research institute operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder. For the first time, scientists have successfully combined two of the “spookiest” features of quantum mechanics to make a better quantum sensor: entanglement between atoms and delocalization of atoms....

So, after dodging it for nearly three years (and precisely 14 days post-omicron booster), the little SOB finally got me. Pretty crappy timing if you ask me. Rather than bitch and moan about how lousy I feel (plenty), I found something else to bitch and moan about: Digital thermometers. I hate them on the molecular level because, in my limited experience, they work properly about 0% of the time. And what could be a better opportunity for generating a superior dataset than neurotically checking my temperature every 17 seconds? But it did not go well. I experienced thermomageddon at the...

Should you log in with Facebook or Google on other sites or apps? Short answer: No. You’ve probably seen it on lots of apps and websites: buttons urging you to sign in with your Google or Facebook account. Sometimes it’s to let you share files, photos or emails. Other times it’s to use Google or Facebook as a quick way to log in ... My rule of thumb is to just say no. There are too many ways using these buttons can leak personal information or help Big Tech track you. There are some exceptions when it’s useful — but...

Scientists can now "decode" people's thoughts without even touching their heads, The Scientist reported. Past mind-reading techniques relied on implanting electrodes deep in peoples' brains. The new method, described in a report posted 29 Sept. to the preprint database bioRxiv, instead relies on a noninvasive brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood through the brain, and because active brain cells need more energy and oxygen, this information provides an indirect measure of brain activity. By its nature, this scanning method cannot capture real-time brain activity, since the electrical signals released by...

I've been looking for search engines that have minimal corruption by Big Tech. I've tested many and they all seem to repeat the same first page over and over and as you click next page. However, www.ask.com seems to have escaped the corruption for the time being. I'm actually getting different webpages as I click next page.

The speed record for data transmission using a single light source and optical chip has been shattered once again. Engineers have transmitted data at a blistering rate of 1.84 petabits per second (Pbit/s), almost twice the global internet traffic per second. It’s hard to overstate just how fast 1.84 Pbit/s really is. Your home internet is probably getting a few hundred megabits per second, or if you’re really lucky, you might be on a 1-gigabit or even 10-gigabit connection – but 1 petabit is a million gigabits. It’s more than 20 times faster than ESnet6, the upcoming upgrade to the...

A little noticed federal lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, is uncovering astonishing evidence of an entrenched censorship scheme cooked up between the federal government and Big Tech that would make Communist China proud. So far, 67 officials or agencies - including the FBI - have been accused in the lawsuit of violating the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor users for alleged misinformation or disinformation. Victims of the Biden-Big Tech’s “censorship enterprise” include The Post, whose Hunter Biden laptop exposé was suppressed by Facebook and then Twitter in October 2020 after the FBI went to Facebook warning...

Red Bull owner and co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who once claimed to drink 10-12 cans of the beverage every day, has died at 78. Mateschitz accrued an estimated fortune of $24.65 billion throughout his career and was widely known as the richest man in Austria, Reuters reported Sunday. He passed away following a battle with cancer Saturday. Mateschitz built the Red Bull brand from merely an energy drink to the multi-billion dollar cultural giant it is today, sponsoring high-octane sports events, both fringe and mainstream, across the globe. Red Bull first entered global markets in 1987 after modifying the recipe for...

Inspired by the public's response to our 2022 Pride flag, we’re expanding our design to represent 40 LGBTQIA+ communities—and making it available for everyone to use and build on.

If you’ve seen people posting about “camping” on social media, there’s a chance they’re not talking about how to pitch a tent or which National Parks to visit. The term recently became “algospeak” for something entirely different: discussing abortion-related issues in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Social media users are increasingly using codewords, emojis and deliberate typos—so-called “algospeak”—to avoid detection by apps’ moderation AI when posting content that is sensitive or might break their rules. Siobhan Hanna, who oversees AI data solutions for Telus International, a Canadian company that has provided human and AI...

The "In The Loop" series Love Life digs into how Americans are dealing with the changing landscape of modern dating. Nearly half of U.S. adults, and a majority of women, say that dating has become harder in the last 10 years or so in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. Anna Brown, a researcher who has written extensively about American experiences with dating and related issues for the Pew Research Center, gave Newsy some insight on the statistics. "Men were more likely to say things like they had trouble approaching people, whereas women were more likely to give...

Dating apps like Tinder are negatively affecting college students by causing trust issues, body dysmorphia and self-doubt.Since arriving at Syracuse University, I haven’t met a soul that hasn’t had some sort of experience with dating apps. Some may be looking for casual hookups, some may just be using it for fun, while others may be using these apps to find a relationship. During the past couple of years since the pandemic, dating app usage has skyrocketed, with Tinder recording 300 billion swipes in a day and other dating apps recording an increase in activity. Hookup culture can be great...

The head of the scientist-and-artist collective BarabásiLab reflects on the transformative power of data in art.The 1961 Jasper Johns work 0 Through 9, which depicts the numerical figures stacked one on top of the other and scaled to fill the whole canvas, is art’s early acknowledgment of the important role that numbers play in our lives. Five years later, On Kawara began a series of small canvases, each painted with nothing more than the date—in simple white letters and digits—of its creation. His “Today” series, which now numbers more than 3,000 canvases, relies on the same indicators of numerical...

This video is a bit longer for most people at 25 minutes. Neil takes a deep dive into the Paypal issue and how it is affecting users as they pull out of the Paypal system. He also looks at how their $2500 fine announcement and retraction has affected their stock and how it looks like Paypal may be experiencing a liquidity crisis. Neil continues to share how these political policies are affecting organizations on both the Right and the Left.

It was a sunny morning when about 200 people trudged up a hill in southern Argentina's Patagonia region with a singular mission: free two Andean condors that had been born in captivity. While members of the Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in the area, played traditional instruments, and a group of children threw condor feathers into the air to symbolize their good wishes for the newly liberated birds, an eerie silence engulfed the mountain in Sierra Paileman in Rio Negro province as researchers opened the cages where the two specimens of the world’s largest flying bird were kept. **SNIP** The...

Ubuntu has once again sparked debate among Linux users by implementing a very controversial approach – using the most often used shell command, notably the software update tool, to advertise its service.But first, let me explain what this is all about.Ubuntu Pro Ad in Command ShellCanonical has recently launched a fantastic initiative – a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription for up to five machines. In other words, they opened up its previously paid-for Ubuntu Pro update service free of charge.So far, so good. The news flooded the Internet, well received by all users. And everything would have been perfect if...

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday he has a plan to tackle the high number of spam robots or “bots” on Twitter, as he intends to purchase the social media company. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, complained in a tweet to Musk Monday night that he was seeing too many bots on the platform. […] Bots are automated accounts that help drive traffic on Twitter. They appear like real accounts controlled by a person. They retweet posts, like posts and follow other accounts. Advertisers, marketing agencies and other companies are looking to reach real human accounts,...

Kyle Rittenhouse has started a YouTube channel devoted to his love of guns and the Second Amendment. The Kenosha shooter shared his first video Sunday, telling fans he is 'super excited' to create content 'about guns and talking the 2nd amendment.' In a 35-second teaser trailer for the channel, he appears alongside a fellow gun-rights advocate to promote 'great content' to come from his channel. In the channel's bio, the 19-year-old doesn't shy away from mentioning his controversial past. 'You might remember me as the kid who defended himself with a firearm during the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin,' Rittenhouse...

A standalone Command and Control (C2) server called “Alchimist” was recently discovered by Cisco Talos. The framework has been designed to run attacks via standalone GoLang-based executables that can be distributed easily. The framework found by Talos contains both the whole web user interface and the payloads.GoLang-written frameworkGo programming language, also known as GoLang, becomes increasingly popular for developers looking to compile their code on multiple different systems and architecture. As an example, we recently wrote about the Sliver offensive framework, fully written in Go. It is therefore no wonder that more cybercriminals are also adopting it.Alchimist, whose name has...

When computers go wrong, we tend to assume it's just some software hiccup, a bit of bad programming. But ionising radiation, including rays of protons blasted towards us by the sun, can also be the cause. These incidents, called single-event upsets, are rare and it can be impossible to be sure that cosmic rays were involved in a specific malfunction because they leave no trace behind them. And yet they have been singled out as the possible culprits behind numerous extraordinary cases of computer failure. From a vote-counting machine [?!?!} that added thousands of non-existent votes to a candidate's tally,...