Free Republic

Like the Nazis, Islamist terrorism weaponized horror to demoralize the West. Christianity has a soft underbelly: It struggles to reconcile belief in a God who so loved the world that He sacrificed Himself for its salvation with the suffering of innocents. That was the nub of Voltaire’s attack on theodicy after the Lisbon earthquake killed 12,000 in 1755, as well as Ivan Karamazov’s protest that “if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.” The post-Christian world, which...

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,300-year-old clay tablet depicting a catastrophic foreign invasion of the Hittite Empire in Büklükale, about 100 km from Turkey’s capital Ankara. A translation of the tablet’s cuneiform text indicates that the invasion occurred during a Hittite civil war, presumably in an attempt to support one of the fighting factions. Previously, only broken clay tablets had been found in the excavations at Büklükale, but this one is in almost perfect condition. Based on the typology and distribution of the collected pottery shards, Büklükale is thought to be a single-period city belonging to the Hittite Empire Period and...

I have a Galaxy S2 tablet. I use it to listen to podcasts. Can I add a chip to make it run faster?

While nearly everyone agrees that it was a colossal intelligence failure on the part of Israel and its allies that led to the slaughter on October 7, the ensuing war in Gaza, and other instability in the region, the little-known truth is that it was US military aid to Lebanon provided by Joe Biden's national security brain trust that effectively prevented Israeli intelligence from sniffing out the plan and preventing the attack. To understand this, one has to look at our history with Lebanon since the Bush (43) administration. If you find yourself asking how the United States ended up...

For the past 20 years, the best minds in Washington and Jerusalem treated Hamas as a pragmatic political operator whose leaders were satisfied living in the same world as the rest of us. Their charter, first adopted in 1988, endorsed a set of bloodcurdling millenarian goals. But despite the open madness and world-making ambitions of their public pronouncements, Hamas remained a semi-legitimate player, treated as just one unremarkable thread in the Middle East’s rich tapestry of mildly threatening, gun-toting political dreamers. Even to the most hardened Israeli security officials they were a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot whose extreme rhetoric and regrettably...

A media outlet is raising eyebrows across the country regarding a 16,000-plus word interview it conducted with former President Barack Obama’s award-winning biographer. In the interview, the biographer drops what Fox News describes as several “eyebrow-raising” claims including one that raises a question regarding Obama’s sexuality. As Fox News reported, Tablet’s David Samuels sat down lengthy Q&A with historian David Garrow, who wrote the 2017 biography “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.” The book was widely praised by corporate media outlets including the Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Politico. Garrow previously won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize...

Corning stock fell more than 4% on Tuesday after the company reported a weaker-than-expected outlook for the current quarter. “We now expect smartphones to be down about 12% for the year, and we expect notebook and tablet demand to decline 15%,” said Wendell Weeks, Corning CEO.

I want to keep my '08 Mazda CX-7. But it lacks one feature I would like to have. When I get into my '16 Soul and turn it on the console automatically links with my simple flip phone. Thats flip phone, not a smart phone. Smart phones are way too smart for me and unnecessarily expensive, monthly wise. So is there a tablet I could put into the Mazda and do that same function. Pair with the phone. Then display incoming calls and and answer or deny by touching the screen? And if I answer, talk to the tablet/person?

President Joe Biden’s impending agreement to restore the Iran nuclear deal offers the regime access to $90 billion in foreign currency reserves and sanctions relief to some of the world’s worst terrorists, according to a former State Department official. Gabriel Noronha, writing in Tablet magazine, says the deal does not restore President Barack Obama’s old Iran deal, a weak agreement from which President Donald Trump withdrew, but goes much further in giving Iran money and sanctions relief.

By tying itself to a reckless and dangerous America, the Ukrainians made a blunder that client states will study for years to come

A COVID-fighting coalition heavily funded by Bill Gates has awarded $4.3 million for development of an Israeli variant-proof vaccine in tablet form. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a founder of the Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and last October committed $20 million to it. CEPI now has a $200 million program to advance vaccine development, and has just announced its first funding awards. MigVax, a poultry vaccine that is being adapted for humans in the Galilee, is one of the two recipients.

Imagine you’re a normal person. The year is 2016. Rightly or wrongly, you believe most of what you see in the media. You believe polls are broadly reflective of public opinion. You believe doctors and scientists are trustworthy and independent. You’re a decent, reasonable person who follows the rules and trusts the authorities. Imagine your shock, then, when Brexit, which you were assured couldn’t happen because it was a fringe movement led by racists for racists, happens. The polls, which widely predicted it wouldn’t happen, were wrong. The experts and pundits who told you day after day that it wouldn’t...

Only Intel machines are affected by Meltdown Details have emerged on two major processor security flaws this week, and the industry is scrambling to issue fixes and secure machines for customers. Dubbed “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” the flaws affect nearly every device made in the past 20 years. The Meltdown flaw only affects Intel processors, and researchers have already released proof of concept code that could lead to attacks using Meltdown. The vulnerabilities allow an attacker to compromise the privileged memory of a processor by exploiting the way processes run in parallel. They also allow an attacker to use JavaScript code...

The United Kingdom has followed the United States in preventing passengers on flights from some countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying devices such as laptops and tablets in the cabin. The restrictions affect 14 airlines, six of which are based in the U.K. As in the U.S., the ban covers any electronic devices larger than a typical smartphone.

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

Hackers are stealing credit card information in Europe with malware that can spoof the user interfaces of Uber, WhatsApp and Google Play. The malware, which has struck Android users in Denmark, Italy and Germany, has been spreading through a phishing campaign over SMS (short message service), security vendor FireEye said on Tuesday. Once downloaded, the malware will create fake user interfaces on the phone as an “overlay” on top of real apps. These interfaces ask for credit card information and then send the entered data to the hacker.

I hope this does not qualify as Opus that gets me banned. My wife purchased a Lenovo Yoga II tablet along with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for me as a replacement for an older Samsung galaxy tablet and Acer Aspire laptop because she wanted me to be able to travel with les stuff. The hope was that it would replace two devices (Laptop and Tablet) with one device. Instead it will stay in a drawer (Unless I purposely beat it with a hammer so I can throw it away)and I will use the older devices when I travel. It...

Still no deal with Apple. Five of Australia's biggest banks have signed up with Google's Android Pay payments service as they continue to butt heads with Apple over Cupertino's own Apple Pay platform. ANZ Bank, Westpac, ING Direct, Macquarie Bank, St George, Bank of Melbourne, Bank of South Australia and Bendigo Bank will all support the Android payment service when it lands in Australia in the first half of next year. At launch, Android Pay will support Mastercard and Visa credit and debit cards, Google said in a blog post today. The company is currently "working with Eftpos" on similar...

Apple Inc. (AAPL) has long been thought of as the king of the tablet space. After all, it was responsible for popularizing the tablet with the release of the first iPad, and years later, the device remains an important source of revenue for the company. Yes, more than 60% of AAPL revenues still come from the iPhone, but AAPL investors can't afford to ignore the importance of the iPad, with roughly 10% of sales last fiscal year coming from that product line. Interestingly, iPads were Apple's worst-performing product line in FY 2015, as net sales actually fell 23% year-over-year. Believe...

I ditched my cell phone just prior to retirement and have had a landline for a few years now along with a laptop. All my kids were like huh?? I told them if they want to call-call & if I'm not home leave a message or otherwise contact me thru email, etc... Well, OF COURSE, their age group DOESN"T EMAIL, they TEXT. but it hasn't stopped us from communicating. I took the plunge before Black Friday and purchased their cheapest tablet @ 49.99. Snot nose techies may deride & degrade it but to me it's really nice and it came...