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The U.S. national debt hit a new $35 trillion landmark, just halfway into 2024. Since January, the U.S. debt pile has expanded by $1 trillion alone, moving the debt-to-GDP ratio to 98%. By 2032, the International Monetary Fund projects that this ratio could surpass 140% under current policies. Despite the looming threat to U.S. fiscal sustainability, neither Republican or Democratic parties show political incentive to address the rapid pace of borrowing. *** Today, the U.S. national debt is equal to the GDP of China, Japan, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom combined.Since 2020, the U.S. has added $11.8 trillion to...

Staffers for President Biden provide him instructions with large print and photos of venue interiors and his planned path of entry ahead of events the 81-year-old commander-in-chief attends, according to a report. Documents obtained by Axios on Sunday show how staff help guide Biden – including his specific path to a podium – when he appears at functions. The report comes as the Democrat faces relentless questions about whether he is fit for the Oval Office after an awful debate performance last month against presumptive GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump. “It surprised me that a seasoned political pro like...

I do a lot of printing of receipts and such from the Web, and print previews become "an issue". I both screen capture them as png files, and of course often print them. Internet Explorer gives one a WYSIWYG preview / display, and the WYSIWYG includes a (roughly) std. 8-1/2" x 11" image to view or even screen capture and save. I really like that 8-1/2" x 11" image. But, of course, IE is old hat, doesn't work on many sites, and probably isn't what you want to use if paying some company via the Web, anyway. Chrome's security issues...

The history of film is long and complex, dating back as early as the year 1888 with Louis Le Prince's first-ever motion picture. Since then, film has grown and evolved with more complex stories, better audio and visuals, and enhanced cinematography. Yet what has perhaps improved the most are film preservation techniques that ensure a film can be viewed and studied for decades to come. However, some films are considered forever lost; whether they were destroyed in a horrible accidental fire or simply corroded away due to the passage of time, lost films are mesmerizing for their mystery and serve...

he Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper printed its last edition and has laid off 106 workers as it transitions into an online-only publication. Wednesday's edition ends a 24-year run that began when the late billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife established the paper to compete with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which remains the only printed daily newspaper in the city. Trib Total Media will continue publishing two daily print editions for the suburbs, the Greensburg-based Westmoreland edition of the Tribune-Review and the Tarentum-based Valley News Dispatch edition, as well as 11 of the other 14 weeklies owned by Trib Total Media. The company announced...

The New York Post reports Hillary Clinton's maid a non citizen regularly handled secret material. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material. In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used. Clinton entrusted far...

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material. In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used. Clinton entrusted far more than the care of her DC residence, known as Whitehaven, to Santos. She expected...

Can't print Google maps anymore and can't figure out what is wrong. Can print any other webpage via usual means, just can't get a selected address map to print. Can someone lend assistance to the technology-challenge freeper please?

A group of US scientists have created the world’s smallest human liver which can survive for forty days and works like the real thing – using a 3D printer. The mini-livers, made by California-based medical research company Organvo, are just half a millimetre deep and four millimetres wide but can perform most of the functions that a real liver can. The printer builds up 20 layers of hepatocytes cells, which carry out liver functions, along with two major types of liver cell. It also adds cells from the lining of a blood vessel. This allows the liver cells to receive...

The 3D-printed gun that Cody Wilson calls the "Liberator." Eight months ago, Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first entirely 3D-printable handgun. Now he has. Early next week [the] founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator,” All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic, [except] a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition. Technically, Defense Distributed’s gun has one other non-printed...

Earlier this week, the Wiki Weapons Project--an initiative to create a 3-D printed handgun and distribute the digital design file for free online--ran into a stumbling block when 3-D printer provider Stratasys pulled the lease on a printer it had provided the group. Stratasys cited a clause in the lease agreement that allows the company to rescind a lease for printers believed to be used for unlawful purposes. That raises the obvious (and thorny) question: Is the Wiki Weapons Project doing anything illegal? We at PopSci are experts on many things, but federal firearms regulations and intellectual property law are...

Cody Wilson has a simple dream: To design the world’s first firearm that can be downloaded from the Internet and built from scratch using only a 3D printer–and then to share it with the world. Earlier this month, Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves “Defense Distributed” launched an initiative they’ve dubbed the “ Wiki Weapon Project.” They’re seeking to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for a plastic gun anyone can create with an open-source 3D printer known as the RepRap that can be bought for less than $1,000. If all goes according to plan,...

Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp which recently acquired sole control of Newsweek, said that a plan to end its print edition is coming as soon as this fall. His comments came in IAC's quarterly earnings call and were first reported in a two-sentence story by Bloomberg News's Sarah Frier ("Newsweek, the 79-year-old magazine, will eventually transition to an online-only publication") and then in a tweet from her colleague Edmund Lee ("Barry Diller says by September-October, plan for digital only Newsweek will be announced"). The first actual quote from Diller came later in a post by Politico's Dylan Byers: "The...

Newsweek's year-end Interview issue is "graced" on the cover by lesbian "Glee" actress Jane Lynch. We'll put "grace" in quotes since the interview inside with Lynch and well-named sex columnist Dan Savage is rude and hateful. Apparently, gay activists are encouraged to put on a bullying tone and spray hate at conservatives. Savage would say something vulgar, and then Lynch would chime in with "yeah, what he said" remarks. The interview was dated enough that the restrictions on gays in the military hadn't been lifted yet: Savage: F--k John McCain—put that in NEWSWEEK. Lynch: Yeah, I say it too, to...

During the Bush administration, the media made much of political appointees supposedly editing and otherwise interfering with the integrity of the work of career federal government scientists, particularly on studies pertaining to global warming/climate change. Well now the Associated Press is reporting that an inspector general's report from the Interior Department released yesterday found that the Obama White House "edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts backed the administration's six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling."

RUSH: Take a look here at the unemployment news as reported today by Reuters. Headline: "Jobless Claims Drop, Monetary Stimulus Seen." Oh, and we have got to talk about this, this QE2, quantitative easing. This is the second phase of printing money. This is the Fed. The target date here is November 2 or 3. That's when they're going to have their next meeting. And all eyes are focused on this meeting, and some of them are focused with great fear. Quantitative easing is printing money, funneling a bunch of money into the economy in the hopes of igniting economic...

In a brilliant piece of investigative reporting, Chris Martenson (original article here) has uncovered that the Fed, merely a week after issuing $28 billion in 7 year bonds (which Zero Hedge discussed previously) via its puppet, the US Treasury, of which $10 billion ended up being purchased by primary dealers, has turned and bought 47% of the primary allocated bonds in Open Market Purchases. This is undisputed monetization removed simply via one primary dealer and less than 5 days of temporal separation in order to leave no easy trace. As Martenson points out: "A more honest and open approach would...

On Obama's agenda, according to his White House website, is the goal to "encourage diversity in media ownership." Obama elaborates on the site that his aim is to "encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum." The plan apparently aligns with longstanding Democratic suggestions to resurrect the "Fairness Doctrine." The policy was abandoned in 1987 under President Reagan when there were 75 radio talk shows in the U.S. Reagan opposed the policy because it required...

Battered by a one-two punch of declining readership and ad pages, Newsweek magazine is getting an extreme makeover this year that will include a large circulation reduction, deep cuts in operating costs, and a new effort to attract advertisers by concentrating on an elite audience. According to The New York Times, executives at Newsweek say the retooled magazine will focus on being a "thought leader" that focuses on telling readers how to think about news, rather than telling people what happened in the last week. The plan, similar to the editorial outlook espoused by The Economist magazine, is aimed at...

NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation (see chart, separate story), only four showed gains. For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase. Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428. Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same,...