Free Republic

CORBIN, Ky. (AP) — A 16-year-old boy killed in a shootout Saturday with police in Maryland, prompted the search of his home over 500 miles away in Kentucky, where authorities found the bodies of his parents and younger sister. Friends and relatives of Jason Hendrix were struggling to understand how the boy, a faithful churchgoer who was baptized just two months ago, could end up as the suspect in the slayings. Hendrix, a Kentucky high school ROTC student and active church member, was angry at his parents for taking away his computer privileges when he's suspected of killing his family...

Looks like Bank of America is down. I was just told to call back on Monday to pay my credit card bill. WOW.

Voxel8, creator of the world’s first multi-material 3D electronics printer and backed by Braemar Energy Ventures, announced pre-order availability of its initial product – the Voxel8 Developer’s Kit. Voxel8 also announced its partnership with Autodesk to develop a new design tool called Project Wire for creating 3D electronic devices printed on Voxel8’s platform. Together, Voxel8 and Autodesk are enabling designers and engineers to create three-dimensional parts with embedded circuitry for the first time. Rapidly design novel devices, such as 3D printed antennas, electromagnetic coils, or stack ICs in ways that were previously impossible. Eliminate wire harnesses by combining them with...

<p>Records show the National Security Agency data center in Utah used more water in 2014, though the usage is still far lower than expected. The water usage peaked at 6.6 million gallons for the month of August.</p>

Some 5,800 automated tank gauges, which monitor for fuel leaks and other problems with the tanks as well as fuel levels, recently were found sitting wide open on the Internet without password protection, leaving more than 5,000 gas stations in the US vulnerable to attackers who could remotely alter the alarm thresholds to simulate a leak, disrupt the fuel tank operations, and worst-case, wreak havoc by shutting down the gas stations altogether, researchers say. Rapid 7 chief research officer HD Moore says his team scanned for the vulnerable devices after getting a heads up from Jack Chadowitz, president and CEO...

For many people who didn’t grow up in or around New York City, there are a few things that come to mind when they hear the name “Brooklyn.” Many automatically think of hipsters and indie rock concerts. Some think of artsy lofts and farmers markets. Others think of “brownstone Brooklyn,” where one can potentially afford a cute home and raise a middle-class family without the distance and suburban-like qualities of Queens. What people typically don’t think about are the underprivileged communities that exist here, many of which have become home to people priced out of their old homes in brownstone...

The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant. It's called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific...

Adobe on Saturday released an updated version of its Flash player software that patches an undisclosed vulnerability which could allow remote attackers to take control of Macs or PCs, urging users to update as the problem is being actively exploited by malicious actors. Flash versions up to and including 16.0.0.287 on OS X and Windows and 11.2.202.438 on Linux are susceptible to the attack, the cause of which has yet to be detailed. Mac users with Adobe's automatic update feature enabled should begin receiving updates to version 16.0.0.296 immediately, and the company is preparing a standalone patch for manual installation...

“Don’t look now, but Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research program may have dropped more zero-day vulnerabilities—this time on Apple’s OS X platform,” Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica. “” “In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed [three] OS X vulnerabilities,” Goodin reports. “At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine.” ‘Still, the exploits could be combined with a separate attack to elevate lower-level privileges and gain control over vulnerable Macs,” Goodin reports. “And since the disclosures contain proof-of-concept...

Literally every time I work in the computer store, we'll get a customer whose Mac is plagued with problems they don't understand: Their Mac is acting slow. It crashes. And more. And in more cases than not, we find that they've installed a program called MacKeeper. Removing MacKeeper fixes the problem. So what is MacKeeper and why should you avoid it? MacKeeper was originally developed by a company called Zeobit and was sold a couple of years ago to another firm called Kromtech. The software purports to be a suite of more than a dozen individual utilities that are actually...

Today’s Windows event was the flashiest to grace Redmond in years. The company pulled a number of projects, like HoloLens, out of its skunk works in an effort to convince finicky geeks it isn’t out of ideas. Whether this gambit was successful is hard to say (the Twittersphere seems impressed), but in a few weeks it will also be irrelevant. Microsoft’s problem has always been execution, not imagination. Kinect, Courier and even Windows 8.1 are examples of ideas getting ahead of reality. Yet this event wasn’t entirely about concepts and prototypes. Alongside holograms and room-sized tablets, the company also displayed...

Despite predictions to the contrary, it seem there is still plenty of life left in the PC market. PC shipments across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) reached 25.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, a two percent increase on the same quarter a year ago, according to calculations by IDC. It said strong consumer demand during the holiday season meant the PC market racked up a third consecutive quarter of growth - albeit modest and patchy. PC sales across the region grew by 5.5 percent across the year, with 93.3 million PCs shipped. But the researchers...

The NSA's mass surveillance is just the beginning. Documents from Edward Snowden show that the intelligence agency is arming America for future digital wars -- a struggle for control of the Internet that is already well underway. Normally, internship applicants need to have polished resumes, with volunteer work on social projects considered a plus. But at Politerain, the job posting calls for candidates with significantly different skill sets. We are, the ad says, "looking for interns who want to break things." Politerain is not a project associated with a conventional company. It is run by a US government intelligence...

The perfect desktop is undoubtedly the one you would design yourself. However, lacking the necessary time and expertise, many users hop instead from desktop to desktop desktop with the same enthusiasm as others hop between distros, hoping to find the ideal distribution.In many cases, they never find their ideal, and for good reason -- even the simplest Linux desktop is a mixture of advantages and disadvantages.Here, for example, are some core reasons for both accepting and rejecting the seven leading desktops of today:Cinnamon Leading Advantage: Like MATE, Linux Mint's other desktop, Cinnamon is a classic desktop for GNOME-based applications. However,...

"You will not impose your Sharia law in our democracies. We will not let your stupidity kill our liberties and our freedom of expression." The hacktivist group known as Anonymous has officially declared war on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. A new video by the hackers' Belgian branch is calling to avenge the killings at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, with the new operation being called #OpCharlieHebdo. (Watch the video here with English translation.) "We will track you down - every last one - and will kill you,” says an individual wearing a Guy Fawkes in French. "You allowed yourselves to kill innocent...

A security flaw means that users of almost every modern web browser can be surreptitiously tracked online without their knowledge, Ars Technica reports, even when they make use of “private browsing.” Apple users are particularly vulnerable, as their devices do not have a function that lets users delete super cookies from their browsers. Most websites place what’s called a “cookie” on visitors’ computers, which is used to track them and record their preferences. It’s how websites can remember your password, for example. Like your web-browsing history, cookies are easy to delete. If you use your browser’s “private browsing” mode, they’re...

Sometimes even the rotation of the Earth falls behind schedule. Come June 30, our planet's timekeepers will compensate by adding a "leap second" to clocks. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) announced the change Monday at the Paris Observatory, in a bulletin addressed to the "authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time." The bulletin advises authorities the extra second will be introduced to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during the final minute, of the final day of June. That means that right after the clock hits "23h 59m 59s," it will strike "23h 59m 60s" UTC....

I settled on my New Year’s resolution while giving a lecture to 85 masters students. It was one kid who unintentionally suggested the idea. He was sitting in the back row, silently pecking away at his laptop the entire class. At times, he smiled at his screen. But he rarely looked up at me. I had a choice. I could disrupt the class to single him out. Or I could do what most teachers in higher education do: just ignore it. After all, these students are adults, and they have to take a final exam. Do I have to be...

Too many computers and not enough “hands-on” flying mean most pilots would have fallen victim to the weather that brought down AirAsia 8501. As searchers close in on what appears to be the main wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 the retrieval of the airplane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders should soon follow. The wreckage lies no more than around 100 feet down in the Java Sea. Although there are strong currents and poor visibility, compounded by the high seas generated by stormy weather, divers should be able to locate the rear end of the fuselage where the flight data...

I grew up watching Star Trek and believing that by the time I became an adult we would all be using communicators, replicators, tricorders, and transporters. I was optimistic that the world would be a much better place: that we would have solved humanity’s problems and be exploring new worlds. That’s why my first career choice was one of astronaut. I thought it would best prepare me for Starfleet Academy. Needless to say, I was disappointed. I grew up into a world filled with hunger, poverty, and disease—in which we fight wars over dwindling natural resources. It is a world...