Free Republic

Both men stiffen as VG confronts them. – Go ahead and publish what you know about us now, if you think it’s true, but be prepared for the consequences, says Jon. Next to him in a Brisbane hamburger pub sits Paul. VG has just told them what we’ve uncovered: that they run the world’s largest online forum for child sexual exploitation, “Childs Play”. Jon, the Australian, turns pale. Paul, who is British, flushes crimson. It is January 2017. At this point the two have been running the Childs Play website for three months. Under their supervision, thousands of members have...

We have been fed a dangerous lie that will cut to the very heart of freedom in America (and elsewhere soon enough). When the politicians and the media talk about “hackers,” they are telling a flat out narrative that barely exists above a whisper in the real world. They have made these “hackers” into “demons working for dangerous nations” to make us fear what is an almost non-existent threat. The real reason they are spinning this tale is far more nefarious. This whole effort is to shut down conservative voices and be lauded as heroes for it. Internet controls, censorship,...

The Democratic party faces a dilemma. Since its inception, the party has defined itself as the champion of the little guy and a bulwark against plutocracy. Over the past few years, however, a funny thing has happened: The plutocrats have been joining the party en masse, and they’re changing it in the process. When we take a more granular look at the millionaires and billionaires of Silicon Valley, where most of America’s biggest new fortunes are being minted, we find that they are overwhelmingly Democratic. The left-liberalism of the Silicon Valley elite is reflected in support for drastically higher taxes...

Perhaps it is too much West Coast air, or perhaps because the vast wealth of their owners keeps them insulated from the working class, but with few exceptions (such as Pay Pal founder Peter Theil), tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon all share a left-leaning, Kumbaya-like corporate culture; one that will protect itself with all the vengeful vigor of any social justice warrior on a college campus. This corporate culture war has pushed many conservatives to view these companies and their enormous clout as a threat in the market place and in politics. This is, of course, much the...

My computer is on (I think?) Wait, let me check and see if FreeRepublic is up. /sarc Not having problems anywhere else.

Despite that most web traffic today comes from smartphones and tablets, the mobile web remains inconveniently slow. Even on fast 4G networks, a page takes 14 seconds to load on average—an eternity in today's connected world. A team of computer science researchers at the University of Michigan and MIT has found a way to dramatically speed up the mobile web. Their new Vroom software prototype works by optimizing the end-to-end interaction between mobile devices and web servers. They tested the software on 100 popular news and sports websites, and they found that Vroom cut in half the median load time...

...and I need recommendations.

The idea of a universal basic income — monthly cash payments from the government to every individual, working or not, with no strings attached — is gaining traction, thanks in part to endorsements from Silicon Valley celebs. Some see it as a way to compensate for the traditional jobs with benefits that will be wiped out by robotics, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, globalization and the gig economy. Others see it as a way to reduce income inequality or to create a more efficient, less stigmatizing safety net than our current mishmash of welfare benefits. “I think ultimately we will have...

With the finances of disgraced Fyre Festival concert promoter Billy McFarland being questioned, major investors in the concert-turned-fiasco are facing unexpected scrutiny and potential liability for the money lost. Unpaid vendors, employees and attendees of the Bahamas concert that was canceled before it began have filed 11 civil lawsuits, which include six class actions and five private suits, and all will be seeking damages.... ...McFarland was arrested in New York on June 30 and released on $300,000 bail the next day. The 25-year-old entrepreneur was represented by a public defender at the bail hearing, but has since retained Boies Schiller...

Another powerful tech investor is apologizing for his inappropriate behavior toward women in the industry. "I made advances toward multiple women in work-related situations, where it was clearly inappropriate," Dave McClure, the cofounder of accelerator and investment firm 500 Startups, wrote in a post he titled "I'm a creep. I'm sorry." A day earlier, "Shark Tank" star and venture capitalist Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter and Uber, admitted that he has contributed to tech's sexist culture. The admissions come on the heels of a disturbing story about Binary Capital investor Justin Caldbeck. Six female founders, three of whom...

(Editors note: Attention to language in paragraph 22 that may be offensive to some readers.) As U.S. officials investigated in January the FSB's alleged role in election cyber attacks, U.S. technology firms were quietly lobbying the government to soften a ban on dealing with the Russian spy agency, people with direct knowledge of the effort told Reuters. New U.S. sanctions put in place by former President Barack Obama last December - part of a broad suite of actions taken in response to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election - had made it a crime for American companies to...

BREAKING: EU antitrust regulators fine Alphabet's Google $2.7 billion for anti-competitive practices at comparison-shopping service

President Trump and his administration earned some goodwill from the technology industry after his “tech week” initiative this week. Tech leaders and representatives spoke favorably of their interactions with Trump and his administration after their meetings, noting that officials seemed sympathetic to their positions on regulation, immigration reform and tax policy. The administration's receptiveness to certain industry positions has stoked a degree of confidence that the two will be able to cooperate in some areas, despite major political differences.

RUSH: Yesterday — and this, ladies and gentlemen? The people that watch CNN or read the New York Times do not know about this. But they’re gonna hear it because we have the audio sound bites coming up. Yesterday President Trump met with the nation’s leading technological CEOs, such as the CEO of Microsoft, the chairman and CEO of Alphabet, Eric Schmidt. He’s not the CEO anymore, but he’s the chairman. He’s the head honcho in emeritus, in perpetuity. Tim Cook from Apple. There were a number of them there, and it was just like the cabinet meeting that Trump...

Have been using sbcglobal now I receive no mail.As of right now can't log into sbcglobal.

The best medicine for a person who goes into sudden cardiac arrest is an electric shock. That jolt temporarily stops the heart, along with its rapid or erratic beat. When the heart starts itself up again, it can revert to its normal rhythm and resume pumping blood to the brain and the rest of the body. The sooner this happens, the better.

OneLogin is reporting its recent data breach was made possible when a hacker obtained access to a set of Amazon Web Service keys through a third-party vendor. With this, the hacker was enabled entry into its U.S. data center compromising all its records.

Surface road transportation comes with congestion, construction and hordes of cranky commuters. One potential workaround? Flight. That’s the idea behind SureFly, an octocopter concept capable of carrying two passengers into remote and difficult-to-access areas up to 70 miles away. Better known for its trucks, Workhorse Group Inc. plans to unveil the technology at the Paris Air Show on June 19. “It’s designed to be a short-hop machine — if you can fly a drone, you should be able to fly this,” Steven Burns, chief executive of the Loveland, Ohio, company told Trucks.com. Only a mock-up concept vehicle will be on...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- A novel technology called "Tactical Augmented Reality," or TAR, is now helping Soldiers precisely locate their positions, as well as the locations of friends and foes, said Richard Nabors. It even enables them to see in the dark, all with a heads-up display device that looks like night-vision goggles, or NGV, he added. So in essence, TAR replaces NVG, GPS, plus it does much more. Nabors, an associate for strategic planning at U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC, spoke about TAR at the Pentagon's Lab Day,...

• IBM, Amazon, SoftBank, and Alibaba all made high-profile pledges to create U.S. jobs • Progress has been mixed, with Amazon hiring the most so far. The first few weeks of Donald Trump's presidency were flooded with jobs announcements with a common theme: bringing jobs back to America. Now, 100 days into the Trump administration, where are those jobs? What positions have been filled and which companies have followed up with real hiring? While some companies were eager to provide big, tweetable numbers a few months ago, progress has been a little slower. For example: IBM. Shortly after the election...