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Within the last week, Edge quit finding freerepublic.com. https://freerepublic.com/home.htm works, but clicking any link gives the NXDOMAIN failure. If I go to chrome, on the same pc, it works? Any ideas?

An alleged Microsoft whistleblower has raised concerns regarding overseas engineers accessing U.S. government cloud information through the company’s “escort” support process. Screenshots mentioned in an October 28 post by the X account Conspiracookie allegedly show approval for an engineer based in India to view logs associated with Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud (GCC). However, these claims remain unverified. According to the post, the screenshots show that engineer Viraj Chokhany requested and received escort access to the DPRODMGD151 environment, described as GCC Moderate. The whistleblower claims the engineer is not a U.S. citizen. However, the available evidence has not independently verified either...

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees — over a quarter of its workforce — as the software giant works to cut costs and revamp its staff for the AI era. Employees in the US, Canada, the UK, and India on Monday received a memo saying the voluntary exit offers “are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.” Microsoft had about 223,000 employees at the time the memo went out. Microsoft’s Xbox, Windows, Copilot and finance divisions are getting the offers,...

For decades, a fundamental question about the difficulty of computing in high-dimensional spaces has resisted proof. New research resolves this question, removing a major theoretical obstacle to understanding the efficiency of randomized algorithms used across science and computing. The Kannan–Lovász–Simonovits (KLS) conjecture was proposed in 1995. It asks whether, for a broad class of high-dimensional probability distributions, the best flat or hyperplane cut is always nearly as effective as the best cut of any shape. More precisely, KLS predicts that the two differ by no more than a universal constant, regardless of the number of dimensions. This would establish a...

During this time of increased political polarization, it is good to know that there is one issue uniting Trump-loving MAGA Republicans, Bernie Sanders-style Democratic Socialists, and everyone in between: opposition to data centers, especially large data centers built for artificial intelligence (AI). Part of the opposition stems from the public's increasing skepticism of AI. An even larger part is generated by concerns over how AI will drive up electricity costs for those living close to the centers, as well as the high amount of water necessary to run the centers.Many data center critics ignore the fact that these kinds of...

If you're looking to raise one of the most powerful business leaders in the world, you might want to send your kid to Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, in India. In an interview with Stephen Dubner on an episode of the "Freakonomics" podcast, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned that not only did he attend the high school, but so did Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, and Ajay Banga, the CEO of Mastercard. Hyderabad Public School is what Americans would consider a private school — though in India, like England, such schools are called public schools. According to Hyderabad Public School's...

The U.S. Labor Department announced it would suspend Microsoft and Adobe from its Permanent Labor Certification. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL were also suspended from the program. ... Vice President JD Vance criticized Microsoft specifically, pointing to the firm’s 6,000 layoffs in 2025. Vance claimed that the company “replaced” those workers with people on H-1B visas. “So we’re going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but we’re also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going...

The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a major immigration program that allows its foreign workers to transfer from an H1B1 visa to a green card, accusing the tech giant of fraud. “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vice President Vance said Thursday at an event for his government fraud task force. Critics of the H1B1 program — which permits workers with special skills legal employment in the US — say it is overused, allows cheaper foreign workers to replace American employees,...

Microsoft accidentally wiped some nonprofit customers' M365 data before their retention period expired – and now says it cannot tell them what disappeared, or even whether they lost anything. The cockup followed Microsoft's retirement of its Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant, which gave eligible nonprofits ten free licenses for the productivity suite. Microsoft announced in May 2025 that the grant would not renew after July 1 that year. It offered eligible nonprofits up to 300 free Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses, alongside discounted pricing for plans including Business Premium. The company urged customers to move users onto another nonprofit plan...

Apple is making a much clearer bet on local AI computing with its latest Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops. Announced on August 25, 2026, the new machines are built around Apple’s new M6 and M5 Ultra chips, with the company emphasizing on-device AI, AI agents, large language models and professional workloads rather than treating AI as simply another feature. The new Mac mini starts at $899, while the Mac Studio starts at $2,499. Both are available for preorder, with availability beginning September 22. The bigger story, however, is not just faster Macs. Apple is increasingly positioning its desktop hardware...

Jimmy@mahim_aibriefFrance just wiped Google and Microsoft off 2.5 million government computers.Germany moved 30,000 PCs off Windows. Denmark binned Microsoft Office. All of it in the last 18 months.Here's exactly what they replaced it with, and how to do the same tonight:Sep 1, 2026· Jimmy@mahim_aibrief·11h1/ Swap Out GmailGmail's AI reads your emails by default. There's a class action running over precisely that.Swap to: ProtonMail. Free, Swiss, encrypted end to end. No AI reading it, and outside US jurisdiction entirely.Search "Proton Mail" → sign up → start moving anything sensitive over. Jimmy@mahim_aibrief·11h2/ Swap Out Google SearchEvery search builds your ad profile. That...

Microsoft employees donated over $2 Million to Democrats so far in 2026, 80% of all political donations. This from the company which studies "Pronouns in Software".

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows has a previously unknown Global Device ID (GDID), a permanent, unique digital identifier assigned to Windows devices that can tie a user's actions to their device. This came to light when an alleged member of a notorious hacking group was caught at an airport after Microsoft handed over his GDID to the authorities. Microsoft describes the GDID in a published complaint (via Windows Latest) as "a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or laptop) or virtual...

Desktop Linux has seen a massive surge in popularity in the past few years alone, which, ironically enough, is in no small part thanks to Microsoft. The recent string of Windows hiccups has forced folks to migrate to Linux, and the number seems to be ever-increasing. ... Microsoft has no one to blame but itself for this mess. Windows had all the advantages and the correct formula for success, and being bundled in almost all personal computers certainly helped. Linux, in comparison, had always been a niche “alternative” operating system for hobbyists. Not anymore, though. However, their recent track record...

Strange to relate, in last night’s speech to the nation on election chicanery, President Trump managed to both overwhelm and underwhelm public expectation. He touched on voting machine shenanigans, registration skullduggery, cyber-fuckery, labor union toolery, ballot fraud, and especially China meddling.Internal CIA / FBI docs at the time said that China’s policy around the 2020 US election was to “leverage all domestic and foreign elements” opposed to the President to prevent his re-election. The Intel bunch never sent that memo to the White House. They were too busy pushing fake Russia meddling, fake impeachment, and a fake Covid-19 pandemic. Then...

A new Google Search setting can save Lens images, voice searches and uploaded files. Here’s how to turn it off ... There are few emails that make your stomach drop faster than one about "new privacy settings." That usually means a company has moved another data switch, renamed a control or tucked a new choice inside an account menu you rarely visit. Google is now rolling out one of those changes for Search services. The setting is called Search Services History. It controls whether Google saves your activity from Search services when you are signed into your Google Account. That...

They put a bug on my computer that has a 500GB appetite for free space. My computer is 469GB. By the time I was made aware of what's happening my free space was down to ~5GB. MS released a patch, but it requires ~6GB to install and run. By the time I was made aware of the patch, my free space was down to ~2GB. I tried to download the patch several times but it aborted each time for lack of space. I deleted programs and files but as soon as I did, the bug ate the free space. Now,...

Project Jade, Wyoming’s largest data center, is now Project Tembo, and the company behind the 2.7-gigawatt facility is a mystery no longer. The data center will be owned and operated by none other than Google, giving Cheyenne yet another of the world’s largest tech companies in what is fast becoming an emerging tech frontier. Cheyenne has hosted Microsoft data centers for the past decade or so and that company has announced plans for a major expansion on a 3,500-acre tract of land whose annexation is pending before the Cheyenne City Council. Meta announced last year it was joining the Wyoming...

1 in 5 survey respondents said they used it to research a potential partner For years, LinkedIn, the oft-derided networking site, has been used to boast about professional achievements, apply to jobs that may or may not be real, and observe inane ramblings from out-of-touch tech CEOs. Now, according to a recent report, some are also using it to suss out potential dating partners, making it an “unexpected space for romance.”After gathering responses from more than 1,000 U.S. workers in April of this year, researchers at Zety, a resume-building site, found that 1 in 8 respondents said they formed romantic...

American farmer, Julius Ray Tucker, just tested his soil & found 5X more aluminum than last year. His GMO seeds grow perfectly, but his heirloom crops are dying. — Meanwhile, Bill Gates is pushing GMO seeds engineered to thrive in aluminum-rich soil. And geoengineering delivering that aluminum from our skies. We are being ruled by extremely evil people who want ONLY their GMO seeds to grow. They want total control of our food, our skies, the air, our soil & what gets injected into our bodies.