Free Republic

Tech companies and startups overhired, overspent, and overpromised — so what they’re doing now that the money isn’t coming as easily should be no surprise. Since 2022, the industry has laid off over 528K workers, echoing the downturns of the Dotcom Bubble and the Great Recession. Even with an improving economy and record stock valuations, jobs aren’t returning. This time, things might really be different.Peak software: ADP reports that the US employs fewer software developers than pre-pandemic — with a 17% drop since 2018. Job opportunities in traditionally stable tech fields are also drying up as software companies’ growth slows...

Adult film star Austin Wolf has been arrested in New York City for child abuse materials, according to the Justice Department. Wolf, real name Justin Heath Smith, is charged with sending and receiving hundreds of videos of child pornography via the Telegram messaging application between March 24 and March 28. The gay porn star, 43, allegedly sent and received images that 'depicted children as young as infants, including a video showing a 10-year-old child bound and raped.' He is also accused of possessing hundreds of additional videos containing child pornography in his Manhattan apartment. One of Wolf's last social media...

I've been pointing out Windows security bugs since Windows for Workgroups showed up in 1992 and I showed how you could steal data from your coworker's spreadsheets using Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). You'd think Microsoft would have figured security out by now. But no. It's only gotten worse – much worse.In June 2023, Chinese hacking group Storm-0558 stole US government "secure" messages from Microsoft's Exchange Online. I was only surprised that the Feds managed to catch them – Microsoft certainly didn't figure it out.Former senior White House cyber policy director AJ Grotto said it best: he asserted it was...

Me: Scan today's news websites and headlines about the debates last night. Use 25 sources, with a mix of liberal, mainstream and conservative outlets. Give me odds that Biden will be replaced, and with whom (along with their odds of being the nominee in percentage form).ChatGPT: Based on the latest news and analysis from various sources, including Politico, Yahoo News, Newsweek, and The Hill, here's a detailed summary and analysis regarding the possibility of President Biden being replaced as the Democratic candidate for the 2024 election: Odds of Biden Being ReplacedGiven the significant concerns about Biden's age, health, and recent...

Found this on Twitter while perusing the material generated by last night's debate.This is gettin' real y'all.

FYI, on both the Android app and on this PC, Rumble.com is totally unresponsive, no 404 error either. Just in time for the debate, eh? Working for anyone else? And yes, I rebooted both the phone and the PC, and I am on a VPN.

ChatGPT, scan https://www.freerepublic.com for posts that include keywords "Vice Presiden", "Veep", "VP" or are otherwise about Trump's potential running mates in 2024. Based on the scan, tell me who has the highest support for Vice President among conservatives on the site. Give me percentages for all potential candidates.Based on a thorough scan of recent posts on Free Republic, several potential vice-presidential candidates for Donald Trump in 2024 have emerged with varying levels of support among the conservative community. Here are the findings along with the percentage support for each potential candidate: Vivek Ramaswamy: 22%Many users express strong support for Vivek...

Has anyone hear ever heard about an air conditioner soft start module ? A sure-start made by hyper engineering in Australia. It takes sort of an electrician mind to install this. Module is used to stop electrical surges that flicker lights when a big a/c starts up. Can also be used if you are a prepper and want to run stuff off-grid with an inverter. Mine is only 4 years old and not working right anymore. But one can't tell when there is a good utility power source. It fails when one is off-grid for a power failure. Sort of...

Can Windows 11 Pro be used with 6th or 7th gen Intel processors without running into lack of support problems with Microsoft? I see MANY refurbs on eBay with such combinations, yet SFAIK Microsoft still says it does not support Intel processors that are not at least 8th generation.

Last week a cyberattack hit a huge number of car dealers in the United States. The software designed by the company CDK was completely disabled, affecting the whole of an integrated process of purchasing and processing. Sellers could not process sales, loans, insurance, registrations, and much more. It happened suddenly, lasted two and a half days, came back, then went down again.How did car dealers function? They wrote it all out on paper and pledged to complete the process after the systems came back. They are back and all seems well but the experience is a warning sign. These systems...

Red Lobster, known for bringing all-you-can-eat shrimp to the average American and which was at on point the world’s largest seafood chain, filed for bankruptcy last month. Red Lobster now has more than one billion dollars in debt. They closed 50 locations about two months ago and just announced a list of 600 locations it plans to close. What went wrong? Same Old, Same Old Remember going to Red Lobster as a kid? You might have tried your first lobster tail, or surf-n-turf there. That experience you had as a kid, would be hardly different if you went into one...

The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) marked the pinnacle of 14-inch disks in 1981. Utilizing nine platters, it broke the 1 gigabyte barrier with a total capacity of 1,260 MB and ultimately reached 2.52 GB when two HDAs were paired. A three-capacity version was offered in 1987. The IBM 3380 was revolutionary not just for its storage capacity but also for its impact on the data storage industry. It represented a significant leap in technology, providing businesses with unprecedented storage capabilities that were essential for the growing demands of data processing in the 1980s. One HDA (as pictured)...

String theory scientists studying the behavior of high energy particles say they have stumbled upon a mathematical “hack” that revealed a whole new way to represent the irrational number Pi. While the research is purely theoretical, the duo behind the Pi hack says this kind of theoretical work holds rewarding potential. The researchers also believe their work could lead to a number of potential breakthroughs in the future, similar to how theoretical breakthroughs made by physicists nearly a hundred years ago resulted in technological advancements decades later. AFTER 4,000 YEARS, PI IS STILL A MYSTERY Defined as the ratio of...

Quantum entanglement in top quarks has been demonstrated, according to physicists at CERN who say the discovery offers new insights into the behavior of fundamental particles and their interactions at distances that cannot be attained by light-speed communication. The research, led by University of Rochester professor Regina Demina, extends the phenomenon known as “spooky action at a distance” to the heaviest particles recognized by physicists and offers important new insights into high-energy quantum mechanics. Initially discovered almost three decades ago, top quarks are the most massive elementary particles that have been observed. The mass of these unique particles originates from...

Have been checking this question out online and not getting very far. Older FR posts from 20 years ago pull up on the search, ostensibly discussing ping lists and offering them, but this gets confusing the deeper I drill down, no guidance as to how to actually identify, access, or even create one. Some of the postings go back to the early 2000's. Looks like they are trying to be helpful but I can't make heads nor tails of the links they offer. Am stumped. Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong and how to do it the right...

Picture it being 1941 and the FDR regime, believing that Greens would never let them have or concentrate the necessary industrial effort within the continental US, were to farm the Manhatten Project out to Kuwait. and/or other near-east entities.....There is more than sufficient reason to think that this question is critically important to the safety and security of the United States.

@Nigel_Farage 🚨 ELECTION INTERFERENCE ALERT 🚨 Big Tech giant @Google has BLOCKED our Ad Accounts. They are trying to stop the Reform message. I hope @MattBrittin can look into this issue as a matter of urgency. We want action.

Something very odd happened to me yesterday. I had noticed a mole on my back that concerned me and rather than wait a few weeks for an appointment, I dropped into my dermatologist for him to have a quick look. He gave me a name for it, "Seborrheic Keratoses", and said it benign and was nothing to worry about. He sent me off with a pamphlet about it. I had not done any searches online, for either skin cancer in general or for this specific lesion, not now or ever. I have watched cardio docs on Youtube, but it doesn't...

Hell Is Empty and All the Bots Are HereArtificial intelligence is a new pagan god.Editors’ NoteThe following excerpt is from John Daniel Davidson’s new book, Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come (Regnery, 2024).No recent development better illustrates the return of paganism in our time than the arrival of artificial intelligence, or AI. That might seem counterintuitive, since AI is a powerful new technology made possible by complex computer algorithms working at unprecedented speeds—a creation of the new digital era that seems to belong to the future, not some distant pagan past.But to assume that...

Nvidia Corp.’s meteoric rise makes it not only the third-largest company in the U.S. in terms of market capitalization, but also bigger than most other countries’ economies, based on gross domestic product. The chip maker’s stock closed at $788.17 on Friday, giving it a market value of $1.97 trillion. That figure is greater than the GDP of every nation in the world but 11, beating the likes of Russia, South Korea and Australia, according to February International Monetary Fund data compiled by Forbes. Of course, comparing a single stock’s market cap to a country’s GDP is not a perfect exercise,...