Free Republic

@unusual_whales BREAKING Elon Musk reportedly appears unlikely to pay the fired executives of Twitter - previous CEO Parag, CFO Ned Segal, and legal Vijaya Gadde - as he fired the executives "for cause," meaning he did it because he alleged he had justification, per the NYT.

Vietnam's Lê Thành, the self-proclaimed 'King of VGA,' is having some fun on Facebook(opens in new tab) (via I_Leak_VN(opens in new tab)). In photos and videos shared on the social media site, it looks like the store has started to use street trader tactics to grab passersby and sell them GPUs by the kilo. Lê Thành shared pictures of dozens of used GPUs stacked up on the curbside in a clear parody of a Vietnamese street food stall. There is also a video with the vendor patiently waving away flies with a net, awaiting passersby. Then, a scooter stops, and...

NOVEMBER MARKS THE 50th anniversary of Pong. Why should we care? For starters, Pong is the first video game that millions of people welcomed into their homes to play on their own televisions. Pong kick-started a global video-game industry that is now worth upwards of US $300 billion. And Pong still has a place in active research, for training AI algorithms, strengthening neural networks, and developing the brain-machine interface called Neuralink, among other things. And yet as a Gen-Xer born too late to have enjoyed Pong as a child, I have trouble fathoming how anyone could sit in front of...

After attracting everyone's attention with a $44 billion Twitter deal and a dramatic entrance with a sink in the offices of the micro blogging platform, Elon Musk has again stirred a new conversation with a screenshot of an e-mail asking him to take a course to manage Twitter

Facebook boss has lost $88bn of his $125bn fortune since 2021 Meta has pumped more than $36 billion into its Metaverse venture since 2019, The effort has since resulted in a $30.7 billion operating loss over that same span Zuckerberg, 38, who famously founded the company's crowning jewel Facebook as an undergrad at Harvard in 2004, was worth $125 billion at the close of 2021 As of this weekend, he was worth a mere $37 billion, Bloomberg reported Mark Zuckerberg has funneled more than $36 billion into his failing Metaverse venture since 2019, new earnings reports show - and the...

Now that Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is complete, many people are suddenly turning to Mastodon in their hunt for alternative venues for tweet-like social media consumption. Mastodon hews close to Twitter’s overall style, with “toots” instead of tweets and “boosts” instead of retweets, along with mentions, hashtags, and a chronological feed. The key difference is that Mastodon has no ads, no creepy data mining, and no centralized ownership. It can be a little tricky to set up, though, and you may quickly discover that its attempts to clone Twitter are at odds with its decentralized nature. But don’t let that...

This just in: We have our first Woke corporation that can’t stand the idea of Americans having free speech on Twitter. GM has temporarily suspended ads on Twitter after the Elon Musk takeover, as reported by CNBC. So it begins.

Faced with the imminent expiration of my Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac software, I am advised not to renew it, as Kaspersky is a Russian company. I have used it for years and years, and have always been very happy with it. Do any computer-savvy FReepers have any suggestions for a top notch replacement for it? Thanks.

TheTruthSpy app has been downloaded to thousands of smartphones in America without the owner of the device knowing.. The Android app markets itself as a way for customers to monitor their spouses communications on the device.. A new report from TechCrunch reveals the app is also collecting and storing personal information from devices.. This includes 1.2 million text messages and 4.42 million call logs, along with 278,861 location data points from Americans over the course of six weeks.. ... Thousands of Americans have fallen victim to stalkware planted on their smartphones by someone they know - and an Android app...

Several satellite and space launches throughout October 2022.

Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings. The leading theory among scientists is that Miyake events are solar flares that are 80 times more powerful than the strongest flare ever recorded. But a new study...suggests that the origin of the radiation bursts could be even more mysterious than first thought. Scientists have spotted six Miyake events in tree rings so far, indicated by sudden, single-year leaps in the concentrations...

Tetrataenite found in Nuevo Mercurio, Zacatecas, Mexico Credit: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com **************************************************************************************************** Researchers have discovered a potential new method for making the high-performance magnets used in wind turbines and electric cars without the need for rare earth elements, which are almost exclusively sourced in China. A team from the University of Cambridge, working with colleagues from Austria, found a new way to make a possible replacement for rare-earth magnets: tetrataenite, a ‘cosmic magnet’ that takes millions of years to develop naturally in meteorites. Previous attempts to make tetrataenite in the laboratory have relied on impractical, extreme methods. But the addition...

I Drove The MAGA-MOBILE Through A Lib City - What Happened Next Is INSANE feat. Rapper Forgiato BlowPosted three days ago ---- This has 311,000 YouTube views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ieTlaCFvFw&t=169s

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...