Free Republic

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors - devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state. The state Energy Commission said that when fully implemented, the plan will save consumers $373 million a year and conserve as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes. Final approval of the standards, expected at a meeting in Sacramento of the five-member commission, caps a nearly two-year planning process that had...

Most people think you can usually find a better deal when you shop online. But the price you see can be different than what other people see. The type of computer you use, your online search history, even your zip code have all been used by online retailers to determine what price you pay. In a study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, nine out of 16 online retailers and travel websites tested showed different prices or difference results for the same searches. “I always assumed all the prices would always be the same,” said Liz Owens. Owens,...

Inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, she was known as Ada. Like the candidate herself, she had a penchant for secrecy and a private server. As blame gets parceled out Wednesday for the Democrat's stunning loss to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, Ada is likely to get a lot of second-guessing.

Ever wanted to make Natalie Portman yell obscenities at your neighbors? What if Garey Busey could leave your mother a sexy voicemail on her birthday? Wanted to prank your little brother by forcing him to call his crush and profess his love? Adobe has you covered. When Adobe released photoshop in 1990, it dreamed of a world where movie studios and photo editors could do in minutes what once took hours. It never dreamed the world would take the digital editor and use it to put celebrity heads on porn star bodies, distort women’s bodies in magazine cover, and create...

Taipei, Nov 5 (IANS) Taiwanese tech giant HTC will open hundreds of virtual reality gaming arcades in Taiwan, China, Europe and the US by end 2017 under its “Viveport Arcade” programme. The company is developing virtual reality games for its VR devices and hopes the gaming arcades will serve to promote its virtual reality Vive headset, the Taipei Times reported Saturday. The programme will begin in Taiwan and China and then be extended to the US and Europe at an unspecified date. HTC is hoping to expand its Viveport programme to internet cafes, movie theatres and virtual reality centres by...

The personal desktop computer used to once be an exclusive and expensive machine, though we now know it and its laptop counterpart as a mass-market commodity that most people can afford. This week, however, the companies that defined the personal computer, Microsoft and Apple, gave us a glimpse of the future and it looks like a return to the past: the PC is going back to being an exclusive and expensive machine. Set aside all the explosions of color on gorgeous, high-resolution displays. Ignore the glamorous promo videos and the ultrathin, all-metal chassis of the new Surface Studio and MacBook...

There’s a device out there called USB Kill 2.0 (or USB Killer and other variants) that can fry an electronic device with a USB port. While it looks like an every day USB flash drive, rather than memory, these devices have capacitors that can store up juice being transmitted over the USB bus and then discharge at once. The result is a high-voltage attack on your PC, Mac, smartphone, or other device that can fry the electronics.YouTuber EverythingApplePro posted a demonstration video with one of these devices where he fried a PC and tried to fry an iPhone 7 Plus...

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor in recent weeks and is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. The theft raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, an insider has managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a contractor for the agency, took a vast trove of documents that were later passed to journalists, exposing N.S.A. surveillance programs...

If you want a new PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you'll have fewer options beginning on Nov. 1. Here's what the end-of-sales deadline means.

I need help with RealPlayer. I have the last free version that was made available. RealPlayer apparently tries to connect to the Internet whenever the program is opened. This is, I think, causing it to crash whenever I play videos. I was without internet access for a week and the program never stopped working once.

Apple’s Phil Schiller thinks it’s sad that people use 5-year-old computers. Well, Phil, there’s an auto repair shop in Poland that’s going to send you spiraling into a long depression.Why? Because one of the computers they’re using on a day-to-day basis is a Commodore 64, and I don’t mean one of the slick nostalgic remakes. I’m talking about a classically beautiful beige C64 and its whirring, clunking 5.25″ floppy disk drive.It’s been there for more than 25 years. See, not everyone finds the idea of using an old computer sad. Some, like the mechanics at this shop in Gdansk, treat...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to garner more support from solution providers than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has, outpacing the former secretary of sate in the latest monthly CRN survey on the presidential race. The poll, which was taken by 208 solution providers from Sept. 6-26, revealed that 52 percent of those surveyed believe a Trump presidency would be better for business, a slight decline from the results of a similar poll in August, when 54 percent of participants chose Trump. The latest poll closed before Trump and Clinton faced off Monday night in their first debate of the...

the Justice Department is planning a vast expansion of government hacking. Under a new set of rules, the FBI would have the authority to secretly use malware to hack into thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers that belong to innocent third parties and even crime victims. The unintended consequences could be staggering. The new plan to drastically expand the government’s hacking and surveillance authorities is known formally as amendments to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the proposal would allow the government to hack a million computers or more with a single warrant. If Congress...

A Dog's Purpose is a real movie, but the website is infected. The trailer is on YouTube, just do not go to the website.

The Donald Trump campaign has released a new mobile app on Friday that encourages the Republican presidential nominee’s supporters to both interact with and compete against one another. The America First app serves as sort of a hybrid between social network and game, in which points are earned through actions such as checking in at a Trump-Pence rally, donating money to the campaign, and declaring support for “Team Trump” on social media....

FR has been a great resource before, so I'll give it a whirl here: Some friends of mine have a rather "adventurous" teenage daughter. As a result, they are looking for recommendations on the best options to STEALTHILY monitor her Windows 10 PC and IOS smartphone. While I am an IT type, I have zero experience or knowledge of this stuff as I never really needed it with my now adult sons.

I was poking around some old data today from some old backups, and I ran across something the old time computer folks will recognize and thought I'd share. Many, many moons ago, before the internet was much more than a few government systems set up to 'talk' to each other, we still had PCs and stuff, believe it or not. Granted, compared to the system you can buy for a few hundred dollars today from just about anywhere on the internet, they weren't much, but they were what we had. There were also things called "magazines" printed on thinly sliced...

Cisco Systems Inc is laying off about 14,000 employees, representing nearly 20 percent of the network equipment maker's global workforce, technology news site CRN reported, citing sources close to the company. San Jose, California-based Cisco is expected to announce the cuts within the next few weeks, the report said, as the company transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric organization. Apart from Cisco, two other big software companies, Microsoft Corp and HP Inc, have also announced job cuts this year.Microsoft said in July that it would lay off about 2,850 jobs over the next 12 months, taking its total...

Former Google Inc. executive Michelle Lee will be nominated by President Barack Obama to head the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where she has managed a staff of roughly 10,000 federal employees since her appointment in January to deputy director, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Has anyone else received weird calls from a place called MapSupport? It starts with a recorded intro that say many people have flagged your business address as inaccurate, to correct the info press a number to talk to an associate..." I tried to get some info out of someone who identified himself as Aaron, but he became very testy when I would not cooperate with his line of questioning. I have been called several times by this company, I ask them to stop calling, my info is correct on Google and Google maps, so I'm not sure what they are...