Free Republic

A Look at the Short-Lived 3-Inch Compact Floppy Disk Posted on February 25, 2019 by Blake Patterson I was recently listening to the latest episode of Retro Computing Roundtable podcast during which there was mention of a 3-inch floppy disk. No, not 3.5-inch, but 3-inch. These disks are known as Compact Floppy Disks (also “CF2”) and were used in a number of systems outside the US, including some models of Amstrad, Tatung, and MSX machines. And, while the Sony-engineered 3.5-inch disks that those of us who don’t think that they are 3D-printed takes on the “save icon” know well are...

Not sure where to put this one, it could go in so many different sub-forums, so I'll just put it here in 'General'. The other day my laptop crashed and burned. Not sure what happened, but I think the motherboard fried. I managed to get it working enough to attach an external hard drive and mirror off all the data files. Most of it I already had backed up, but I just wanted to get the most recent data. Because many of my keyboard keys were not working I had to use some more global commands to get all the...

I started using Bing over Google as I was sick and tired of Google working with China's military, but not working with ours. They ban gun videos on Youtube. They help authoritarian countries institute censorship in search results. All the while we use them and they make money off of us. Google is Evil. Bing rewards you for your searches no different than the credit card companies do with their rewards. Using Google with no rewards is akin to using a credit card with no rewards. And Microsoft actually is a patriotic company and does not kow tow to the...

Tesla is the first automaker to participate in a Pwn2Own hacking event, which is run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). The event happened in Vancouver this week and a team of two hackers managed to find an exploit on the last day of competition. Over the past 4 years, Tesla has been running a bug bounty program and according to sources familiar with the effort, the company has given away hundreds of thousands in rewards to hackers who exposed vulnerabilities in its system

Reuters reporter Joseph Menn exclusively revealed on Friday that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke belonged to one of the best-known groups of computer hackers as a teenager. Within minutes, his special report was the most popular story on Reuters.com here and was picked up by other news outlets. But the origin of the story goes back more than two years. Members of the group, which calls itself Cult of the Dead Cow, protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise the former Texas Congressman’s political career. After more than a year of reporting, Menn persuaded O’Rourke to talk on the...

A function of Intel's processors dealing with speculative execution has another vulnerability that affects all Intel-based computers including Apple's Mac, researchers have revealed, with "Spoiler" potentially allowing an attacker the ability to view the layout of memory, and in turn potentially access sensitive data stored in those locations. The speculative execution function of Intel's processors, used to increase the performance of a CPU by predicting paths an instruction will go through before the branch is completed, is a useful function but one that has caused Intel issues in the past. A new report from security researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute...

But the money was already gone........ Millions of dollars were missing when the CEO of a crypto exchange died without sharing the passwords to his accounts. Investigators recently cracked his laptop — only to find the money was gone. Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, was thought to have had sole access to the funds and coins exchanged on it. After his death in December, his colleagues said that about $137 million in cryptocurrency belonging to about 115,000 customers was held offline in "cold storage" and inaccessible. The case has sparked numerous theories, including that Cotten faked his own death...

What VPN do lots of freepers recommend? I want to use it at places like Starbucks. Will use of a VPN slow me down..? I don't simply want to get the one Rush advertizes, though I love Rush.

I have just reprogrammed a laptop for a friend. When I did, of course Windows 10 was reinstalled on it, and of course Windows Defender was also reinstalled as well. With all the news coming out lately about Windows Defender interfering with Windows Updates, and of course most of us know just how reliable (I'm trying really hard not to throw up on my keyboard right now) Windows Defender is, I'm trying to find a newer, better, SIMPLER Internet Security program. I've used AVG myself for many years but it's getting to the point where I hate to use it...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - The toll bills haven't stopped coming for some drivers in Central Florida after SunPass’ software meltdown last summer. In fact, state senators were told more than 4 million outstanding bills are still heading to mailboxes, adding up to an outstanding balance of $100 million. Related Headlines Last June, SunPass took its online payment system offline for a week of scheduled maintenance. At the end of the week, the system wouldn’t come back online. Almost 250 days later, people are still getting bills in the mail for the weeks of tolls that SunPass couldn’t process. Some drivers...

Cindi Eckis doesn’t have a smartphone, and she doesn’t want one. “It makes my life simpler,” the Cheektowaga retiree said. But sticking with her flip phone will make it tougher for her and other low-tech motorists to find a place to park along some streets of downtown Buffalo. A new parking policy being rolled out by city officials adds parking zones where the only way to pay to park is through the Buffalo Roam parking app. Blue "Pay by app only" signs went up earlier this week on Cobblestone District streets. "Pay from your phone," the signs read. "Download Buffalo...

Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people to share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of people, and yes, it's as weird as it sounds. It works through a combination of electroencephalograms (EEGs), for recording the electrical impulses that indicate brain activity, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), where neurons are stimulated using magnetic fields. The researchers behind the system have dubbed it BrainNet, and say it could eventually be used to connect many different minds...

IHC:  I hate computers. I was working on a post and all of a sudden it disappeared; completely, irrevocably, irretrievably; the victim of an undefined ERROR. So here I am, leaving at the crack of dawn and I don’t have a post ready. So this is going to be necessarily brief.All the discussion yesterday about sweet potatoes with/without marshmallows got me thinking… about marshmallows! Aren’t marshmallows a great Christmas theme? So I selected some seasonal marshmallow music - Mark Steyn & Jessica Martin’s disco version of “It’s A Marshmallow World” Unfortunately that’s pretty much all I’ve got time for today....

Believe it or not, all these faces are fake. They have been synthesized by Nvidia’s new AI algorithm, a generative adversarial network capable of automagically creating humans, cats, and even cars. The technology works so well that we can expect synthetic image search engines soon — just like Google’s, but generating new fake images on the fly that look real. Yes, you know where that is going — and sure, it can be a lot of fun, but also scary. Check out the video. It truly defies belief: According to Nvidia, its GAN is built around a concept called “style...

All your activity are belong to us Updated A feature introduced in the April 2018 Update of Windows 10 may have set off a privacy landmine within the bowels of Redmond as users have discovered that their data was still flowing into the intestines of the Windows giant, even with the thing apparently turned off.In what is likely to be more cock-up than conspiracy, it appears that Microsoft is continuing to collect data on recent user activities even when the user has explicitly said NO, DAMMIT!First noted in an increasingly shouty thread over on Reddit, the issue is related to...

From an office suite on the 26th floor of the iconic Frost Bank Tower in Austin, Texas, a little-known recruiting firm called Crossover is searching the globe for software engineers. Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees. It wants contract workers who are willing to toil from their homes or even in local cafes. “The best people in the world aren’t in your Zip code,” says Andy Tryba, chief executive of Crossover, in a promotional YouTube video. Which, Tryba emphasizes, also means you don’t have...

Facebook investors have called on the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman, following reports that the company hired a public relations firm to smear its critics by drawing links to George Soros. The attack on Mr Zuckerberg is set to complicate the daunting challenge facing Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook's new global head of policy and communications, who joined last month and has been asked to conduct a review of Facebook's use of lobbying firms. Jonas Kron, a senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an £8.5m stake in Facebook, last night...

Tennis for Two ... the first videogame? Pic: Brookhaven National Laboratory The forerunner of today's video games celebrated its 60th birthday last week as the anniversary of William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two rolled around.Tennis for Two was built by Higinbotham as a way of injecting a bit of life into the somewhat non-interactive nature of US-based Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual exhibition. It consisted of two controllers attached to an analogue computer and an oscilloscope showing two lines representing a tennis court and net, and a bright dot to represent the ball.Each player had a controller with a button to swing...

It just goes to show that public figures should purchase their domain name.

Bloomberg said that its sources were key to its decision to run the Chinese spy chip story, the site writing that ’17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks.’ However, one of the named sources – a security researcher who seemingly backed the claims – has said that his comment was taken out of context, and he actually told the site that what it was describing to him “didn’t make sense” … Hardware security expert Joe Fitzpatrick was quoted in the piece saying “the hardware opens whatever door it wants.” But speaking on the...