Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported cars have yielded yet another win for the American auto industry as Volkswagen plans a “massive” investment in the United States to avoid such duty costs. In April, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on auto imports to protect the nation’s auto workers and industry from unfair competition. Volkswagen, as a result, has entered negotiations with the Trump administration, reportedly resulting in plans for a large investment in the U.S. auto industry, according to The Guardian: Volkswagen, Europe’s largest industrial group, has said it will make a “massive” investment in the US. The group, which...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday warned President Trump’s tariffs will destroy New York City’s economy and likely plunge it right into a recession — as he urged the commander in chief to “back off.” The New York Democrat claimed Trump’s “pinball tariff strategy” could result in a nearly $20 billion direct hit to the Big Apple and threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs. “President Trump’s pinball tariff strategy will wreak total havoc on New York City and is likely to drive us right into a recession. We’ve crunched the numbers, and what doesn’t look good for the nation,...

Holy Bible sales are soaring in the UK with publishers crediting the rising spirituality of Gen Z as driving the revival of interest embracing the ancient text in an increasingly unstable world. The Times reports there was an increase of 87 percent between 2019 and 2024 — from £2.69 million to £5.02 million — over five years, according to figures compiled by SPCK Group, the Christian publishers, using transaction information from Nielsen Book Data.

German cities celebrated Rosenmontag carnival with traditional floats showing caricatures, and once again President Donald Trump has proven irresistible to model makers satirising current events. Carnival floats depicting President Trump destroying Ukraine with the aid of Vladimir Putin, as Darth Vader, as Emperor Nero, and even naked with enormous testicles were paraded in German cities on Shrove Monday, ‘Rosenmontag’. The climax of the German carnival season — a Teutonic Mardi Gras — German cities compete to satirise German politics, social issues, and world events with the most grotesque, scatological, and often quite sexually explicit and violent giant papier-mache models paraded...

Executives at the Walt Disney Company are reportedly worried that soaring prices are alienating families from its theme parks, with internal surveys showing a decline in guests who are planning return visits to Walt Disney World and Disneyland. The price of attending a Disney park has skyrocketed in recent years, with the typical price of a four-day stay inside the park rising by $1000 between 2019 and 2024, a new study conducted by The Wall Street Journal showed. The vast majority of that increase — nearly 80 percent — comes from new charges for services that were once free. This...

A female driver was killed and her passenger seriously injured after they were tossed from a Tesla that flipped and then burst into flames on the FDR Drive in Manhattan early Tuesday, cops said. The Tesla struck a guardrail and flipped on the FDR near 70th Street on the Upper East Side just after 2:30 a.m., the NYPD said — with photos showing huge chunks of the electric vehicle scattered across the road. Both the woman and her 26-year-old passenger were ejected from the car, which burst into flames

Here's a weird one! I have a Lenovo N22 laptop that I use for occasional web browsing, Zoom video chats, etc. No crucial data is kept on this machine. However, I do keep a 128 GB Micro-SD card in the Micro-SD port as a data drive and to house smaller programs such as IrfanView, as the boot drive "C" is only 56 GB. This SD card used to come up as Drive D:\ upon boot up. However, in "This PC" now it comes up as "E", and for "D" there is a little drive symbol, then " ? D:\ "....

A car dealership has closed its doors for good, citing unprecedented changes in the used car sales industry as the motivating factor behind the decision. Off Lease Only, the Florida-based dealership chain, has filed for bankruptcy and fired all its employees.A message on the company's website explains that management is winding down operations and thanked customers for their years of patronage. Many former employees told local Fox affiliate WOFL that they received notice of their termination directly after a large company meeting on Wednesday. The company boasted five locations across Florida, with over 500 vehicles available. Some frustrated customers were...

After considerable grief(!) I have my new (refurbished) Dell Precision Tower 3420 just about ready to take over as my "main" desktop PC. The NVME M.2 drive is back to being the boot & programs drive (see note on using Acronis cloning software below), a 500 GB Crucial MX500 SSD is installed as the data drive (but also has Win10 Pro and a few other programs on it as an immediate fallback should the primary drive fail), and I've copied all my data files from my old HP Win 7 Pro machine onto a 240 GB SDD (actually the original...

As a separate question arising from my last "article" / question, I am about to make a recovery drive for a refurbished Dell desktop machine I purchased recently. (Dell Precision Tower 3420 - a fairly impressive little machine considering I got it in great condition for under $80 including shipping.) When I read about recovery drives, often it is stated they can be used to restore the machine to its "factory" state, software-wise, should one run into a software problem, corrupted drive, etc., not otherwise resolvable. But... This machine likely originally had WIN 7 Pro on it and then was...

Thanks to skyrocketing electricity prices, it now costs more to drive the average electric vehicle 100 miles than it does to drive a gas-powered car the same distance. A report from the Anderson Economic Group (AEG) shows that driving a gas-powered car 100 miles costs an average of $11.29. However, the cost for people who drive electric vehicles and charge up at home is $11.60 per hundred miles. A little more expensive. But. For those electric car owners who use recharging stations, the average cost for 100 miles is substantially higher at $14.40. But at least you’re saving the planet,...

I'm looking for flash drives (USB 3.1 or 3.2 memory sticks) with 3D NAND memory if such are out there? MLC would be next best. I'm looking more for reliability than speed. Most useful would be a 256 GB stick. A dual drive (USB A and USB C connection on either end) would be best.Recommendations?

Ever since astronomers found that Earth and the Solar System are not unique in the cosmos, humanity has dreamed of the day when we might explore nearby stars and settle extrasolar planets. Unfortunately, the laws of physics impose strict limitations on how fast things can travel in our Universe, otherwise known as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Per this theory, the speed of light is constant and absolute, and objects approaching it will experience an increase in their inertial mass (thereby requiring more mass to accelerate further). While no object can ever reach or exceed the speed of light, there...

It turns out you can outrun the law, but only for 72 years. Police pulled over an 84-year-old driver in Bulwell, U.K., this week only to discover he didn’t have a valid license … ever. The retired man, who police said had trouble standing and hearing, admitted that he’d been driving without a license or insurance since he was 12 years old, SWNS reported. "Thankfully he had never had an accident, caused anyone an injury, and never made anyone lose out financially, by hitting them whilst uninsured!"

In perhaps his most famous quip of all time, celebrated physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, when speaking about new discoveries, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” When you do science yourself, engaging in the process of research and inquiry, there are many ways you can become your own worst enemy. If you’re the one proposing a new idea, you must avoid falling into the trap of becoming enamored with it; if you do, you run the risk of choosing to emphasize only the results that support it, while discounting...

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. ~~~ Well, there's a very simple answer. ~~~ Nobody bothered to check the oil. ~~~ We just didn't know we were getting low. ~~~ The reason for that is purely geographical. ~~~ Our OIL is located in: ~~~ ALASKA ~~~ California ~~~ Coastal Florida ~~~ Coastal Louisiana ~~~ Coastal Alabama ~~~~ Coastal Mississippi ~~~~ Coastal Texas ~~~ North Dakota ~~~ Wyoming ~~~ Colorado ~~~ Kansas ~~~ Oklahoma ~~~ Pennsylvania ~~~ And Texas ~~~ Our dipstick is located in the White House! ~~~...

This man never ceases to bewilder. Video

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: 1. Time crystals...

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Wednesday on CNN’s “Tonight” that it is common sense to have a similar process for getting a driver’s license or a gun. When asked about gun legislation, Rather said, “Poll after poll shows a rather sizable majority of Americans in favor of having, say, a delay in when you can buy a gun, a three-day delay. You buy it, you pick it up two or three days later, together with background checks. This is very popular. But year after year, decade after decade, it doesn’t get put into law. What is needed is...