Free Republic

Wow — what a week! I’m writing from in between stops on the #CruzCountry Bus Tour as we continue our #CruzToVictory through southern states that will play a huge part in making Ted our Republican nominee for President of the United States.As you likely know, the Republican candidates met in Cleveland, Ohio, for the first debate of the 2016 season on Thursday. And it was a great night for Ted — but don’t just take it from me:Frank Luntz declared the debate “great news for Ted Cruz.”Charles Krauthammer named Ted Cruz a “winner of the night.”The Press Enterprise wrote “Cruz...

Speed kills, and the iPhone goes from 0 to a good picture faster than anything else I was at Intel’s CES booth, composing a photo with my Android smartphone, when a pair of anonymous hands thrust a shining iPhone 6 Plus into my line of vision. A nonchalant tap of the camera shutter button later, the hands were pulling back, having captured a stupendously clear and sharp picture on the first attempt. By the time I’d completed my routine of setting proper focus and steadying myself, the dude who’d beaten me to a better shot with none of the effort...

Snapchat CEO lashes out after Sony leaks By Cory Bennett - 12/17/14 05:25 PM EST Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said Wednesday that he was “angry” and “devastated” at the information leaked about his disappearing messaging app as a result of the Sony hack. Good chunks of Snapchat’s business plans were revealed Tuesday when the cyberattackers that hit Sony dumped Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton's email catalogue. Lynton sits on Snapchat’s board of directors and had numerous candid email exchanges with Spiegel about hiring practices, possible acquisitions and potential future products. “I felt like I was going to cry all morning,”...

The father of one of the three suspects in the vicious Saugus Snapchat sexual assault is accused of trying to cover up his son’s involvement by hiding the phone used to send videos of the attack and turning over his own phone to police instead, prosecutors say. Matthew Cyckowski, 37, of Saugus, was overheard by a DCF worker during a phone conversation outside of his son’s arraignment saying, “They’re never going to find his phone, I got rid of it, I gave them my phone,” Essex County ADA Kate MacDougall said. An Essex County grand jury has indicted Cyckowski’s son,...

Evan Spiegel, CEO and cofounder of $2 billion photo application Snapchat, was social chair of his Stanford University fraternity, Kappa Sigma. During that time, he wrote some cringeworthy emails to get his brothers riled up for parties. They are emails that Spiegel now tells Business Insider he deeply regrets. The emails, obtained by Valleywag's Sam Biddle, are about as offensive and "fratty" as you can imagine, with references to cocaine, excess drinking, and urinating on women. Some of the statements from the early 2010 emails include: “See everyone on the blackout express soon.” “Papa Spiegel [a big-time L.A. lawyer] is...

In a world where texts, tweets and emails can potentially be used against you, billionaire investor Mark Cuban launched Cyber Dust, an app for disappearing text messages and photos. Once the recipient views the note, it vanishes in seconds. Cuban says he was inspired to create this service after being challenged by the FCC over insider trading allegations, of which he was eventually cleared. “What I learned very quickly was they took old emails and messages and created whatever context they wanted to create for it,” says Cuban. Cuban took his idea to app developers and launched Cyber Dust to...

This year, Facebook purchased the mobile-messaging application WhatsApp for $19 billion, or about $350 million per employee and $40 per user, only some of whom even pay the $1 annual fee for the advertisement-free platform. But what was perhaps most remarkable about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp was that the start-up was making any money in the first place. In recent years, Facebook has shelled out 10-figure sums for Instagram and the virtual-reality headset maker Oculus V.R., both of which had scant or no revenue. Ditto for the safe-sexting-enabler Snapchat, which reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg....

Snapchat, the disappearing-message service popular with young people, has been quiet following a security breach that allowed hackers to collect the usernames and phone numbers of millions of its users. Company spokeswoman Mary Ritti said Thursday morning that the company is assessing the situation, but did not have further comment. As the U.S. and Canada rang in the New Year, hackers reportedly published 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers on a website called snapchatdb.info, which has since been suspended. The breach came less than a week after security experts alerted Snapchat of a vulnerability in its system and warned...