Free Republic

The State Department sought to denigrate two reporters and a member of Congress as part of damage control attempts over having helped fund an advertisers’ “blacklist” of The Post and other outlets allegedly spreading “misinformation,” according to internal documents. In March 2023, the department distributed press guidance about how to counter bombshell reports by “Twitter Files” scribe Matt Taibbi and Washington Examiner investigative journalist Gabe Kaminsky concerning the State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). Taibbi’s first report about the GEC, in a lengthy Twitter thread published Jan. 3, 2023, revealed efforts to pressure US social media platforms early in the COVID-19...

I've been using a Windows 7 laptop. I recently bought a Windows 11 laptop.I moved the AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles folder, and the AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles folder to a hard drive, then moved them onto the new laptop, copying over the old folders in that location.Trouble is, the Thunderbird on the new laptop doesn't recognize my stored emails. Nor does Firefox recognize the bookmarks.What am I doing wrong?

Suppose, during a battle at sea— with missiles flying—an adversary is trying to disrupt a ship’s sensor- fusion system, so that it mischaracterizes what the sensors are seeing. With current cybersecurity methods, it could take minutes or even hours for analysts to determine that the system is being attacked. And by then it might be too late.However, a new approach that uses AI could, for example, send an alert to the combat systems officer—in real time—that there is a high probability that an attack on the sensor-fusion system is underway. Armed with that information, the CSO could limit any possible...

Researchers have created a revolutionary network flow algorithm that enables ultra-fast computations for dynamic networks, transforming how problems in theoretical computer science are approached and solved.In a breakthrough that brings to mind Lucky Luke – the man who shoots faster than his shadow – Rasmus Kyng and his team have developed a superfast algorithm that looks set to transform an entire field of research. The groundbreaking work by Kyng’s team involves what is known as a network flow algorithm, which tackles the question of how to achieve the maximum flow in a network while simultaneously minimising transport costs.Imagine you are...

Last week it became clear to me that although Microsoft has “loved” Linux for more than a decade now, that love still doesn’t extend to the Linux desktop.This realization came to me as I read news of a Windows security update that borked Grub, the open-source boot loader that’s used by most Linux distributions and which is used to load Windows in dual-boot situations.After the Windows update was applied, an untold number of Windows’ dual booters were unable to boot Linux, but instead were served the scary and cryptic error message: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”According to Ars Technica, the...

This seems like a scam: I received an e-mail stating "Greetings myWaIgreens Member,Your myWaIgreens points total of $564.54 is set to expire and should be redeemed by September 9th.Click here before September 9th to retain your myWaIgreens points for 2024.We appreciate your participation.Best wishes, WaIgreens TeamSuspicious, eh?

Avideo of Vice President Kamala Harris embracing a crying woman on Saturday in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state amid this year's presidential election, has taken off online. **SNIP** In a video posted to X, former Twitter, user Julia Hamelburg shared a video of Harris meeting with locals at a small business in Pittsburg as she hugged a woman who began crying. In the video, Harris can be seen embracing the woman and reassuring her that "we are going to be good, we are going to be fine. We are all in this together." As of Saturday afternoon, the video has...

A US Navy leader was demoted for installing an illegal WiFi network on a warship, a new report says. Grisel Marrero installed a Starlink network on the USS Manchester and named it "STINKY." She lied to and misled her commanding officer at least three times when questioned about the network, per the report. A senior US Navy enlisted leader who was demoted after she was caught running illegal WiFi on a warship used a leadership association's debit card to pay for its monthly bills and named it "STINKY," according to a new report. Grisel Marrero, who was the command senior...

"Rhea," NOAA's new high-performance computer will join the HPC Hera supercomputer, which is currently operating at the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center in Fairmont, W.V. Photo courtesy of NOAA Sept. 3 (UPI) -- A new $100 million high-performance computer system will advance research and development efforts by NOAA on a number of scientific and weather-related tasks, the federal government announced Tuesday. The high-performance computer called "Rhea" will advance NOAA research on weather, climate, and ocean and ecosystem prediction at its new modular facility in Fairmont, W.Va., at NOAA's Environmental Security Computing Center, currently home of the Hera HPC supercomputer. NOAA's...

By growing the mushroom’s mycelium into the robot’s hardware, researchers have engineered two types of robots that sense and respond to the environment by harnessing electrical signals made by the fungus. =================================================================== A wheeled bot rolls across the floor. A soft-bodied robotic star bends its five legs, moving with an awkward shuffle. Powered by conventional electricity via plug or battery, these simple robotic creations would be unremarkable, but what sets these two robots apart is that they are controlled by a living entity: a king oyster mushroom. By growing the mushroom’s mycelium, or rootlike threads, into the robot’s hardware, a...

Alexa refused to answer a woman’s question about why she should “vote for Trump” while offering a more compelling case for why she should vote for Harris. “I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader,” the device’s female voice stated, in response to the Trump question. When the same question was posed to Alexa seconds later, replacing Trump’s name with Harris’, Amazon’s virtual assistant argued, “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and...

Local repair shops say electronics manufacturers are not following a new law, meant to eliminate intentional barriers currently in place that make it difficult for them to do their jobs fairly. Nearly two months after going into effect, the conditions of SB-244, the Right to Repair Act, are not being followed by some manufacturers, that's according to a couple local repair shops. “‘Right to Repair’ is the idea you should be able to fix anything you own,” said Liz Chamberlain, Director of Sustainability for iFixit, a San Luis Obispo-based company specializing in creating repair guides and manuals for electronics. But...

This is (I hope) going to be a short narrative, but I felt this needs to be shared for hopefully the benefit of others here. I am leaving Twitter/X. I'm done with it, and it's for reasons you might not think. Let me say that I'm glad Elon Musk bought it and opened it up to be used as it's supposed to be used. I'm glad the many folks that were once banned under the old regime were able to have their accounts restored. And I'm glad it is being used as a means to expose the lies, hatred, bigotry...

PlayStation will be taking its new Firewalk-developed live services game “Concord” offline this Friday and issuing refunds to players just two weeks after its Aug. 23 launch. The team-based first-person shooter game is reported to have drawn a historically small audience during its initial availability across PlayStation 5 and PC, with third-party PC-based gaming data website SteamDB showing 30 current in-game players at the time of publication on Tuesday. At the peak in its short history, “Concord” had 697 concurrent players, drastically low for a PlayStation new release, and ranked toward the bottom of PlayStation’s weekly sales charts. In “Concord,”...

“Alexa, why should I vote for Donald Trump?” "ALEXA: I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate" UNLESS IT’S KAMALA HARRIS Video:

Multiple police officers have come forward stating that Kamala is 100% intoxicated in this clip and she would’ve been charged with a DUI if she was behind the wheel of a car. https://x.com/akafacehots/status/1825231275965264317Do this Twitter search https://x.com/search?q=Kamala%20Harris%20%20smell%20of%20alcohol.&src=typed_query&f=top for more Twitter postings on Kammy and drunk and alcohol

Millions of people have long suspected it, but now a leak suggests that out phones really are listening to us. An apparent pitch deck from one of Facebook's marketing partners appears to detail how the firm eavesdrops on users' conversations to create targeted ads. In a slideshow, Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its 'Active-Listening' software uses AI to collect and analyze 'real-time intent data' by listening to what you say through your phone, laptop or home assistant microphone. 'Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,' the deck states. The pitch deck goes on to...

OK, so I may have used Twitter some 5 times in the last 10 years or so since I first joined. If anything is worth reading or posting - this is what Free Republic is for. So anyway I go to X.com to see for reference a tweet I posted in 2020. X says I have no posts. AND it says I joined in July 2023. Google tells me that is when Twitter became X. So did X wipe out all my previous Twitter posts? Has this happened to anyone else? Not gonna lose any sleep over this, but just...

When election officials in New Hampshire decided to replace the state’s aging voter registration database before the 2024 election, they knew that the smallest glitch in Election Day technology could become fodder for conspiracy theorists. So they turned to one of the best — and only — choices on the market: A small, Connecticut-based IT firm that was just getting into election software. But last fall, as the new company, WSD Digital, raced to complete the project, New Hampshire officials made an unsettling discovery: The firm had offshored part of the work. That meant unknown coders outside the U.S. had...

@BrendanCarrFCC On Brazilian Justice de Moreas's order shutting down X: The text of his 51-page decision is far more concerning and sweeping than the headlines suggest. de Moreas’s own words make clear that he is attempting to strike a broader blow against free speech and in favor of authoritarian controls. His opinion does not even try to hide it. He comes right out and points to Brexit and the 2016 election of President Trump as examples, in his telling, of the types of extreme “populist” outcomes that he is attempting to avoid by imposing a new censorship regime in Brazil...