Free Republic

BRUSSELS - The European Union set the stage for a stepped-up crackdown on big tech companies with an agreement on landmark digital rules to rein in online “gatekeepers” such as Google and Facebook parent Meta. EU officials agreed late Thursday on wording for the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, part of a long-awaited overhaul of its digital rulebook. The act, which still needs other approvals, seeks to prevent tech giants from dominating digital markets, with the threat of whopping fines or even the possibility of a company breakup. For instance, they face tighter restrictions on using people’s data for targeted online...

A revelation buried in a cache of documents opens a new and potentially important investigative corridor for Special Counsel John Durham. The shady tech executive who featured prominently in the federal indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also communicating with a covert group of computer scientists skilled in mining internet data. This revelation raises concerns that the man referred to in special counsel documents as Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe, may have shared sensitive government and private internet data more broadly than previously thought. Joffe’s role in Spygate represents one of the most recent developments exposed by the...

The White House is warning the chip industry to diversify its supply chain in case Russia retaliates against threatened U.S. export curbs by blocking access to key materials, people familiar with the matter said. The potential for retaliation has garnered more attention in recent days after Techcet, a market research group, published a report on Feb. 1 highlighting the reliance of many semiconductor manufacturers on Russian and Ukrainian-sourced materials like neon, palladium and others. According to Techcet estimates, over 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35% of U.S. palladium is sourced from Russia.

Is this the bubble burst many were expecting once The Federal Reserve starting raising rates? Well, if today’s market opening is an indication, the answer is yes. The NASDAQ Composite Index is down 1.36% and West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil futures prices are down 2%. But if you think the US equities are deflating, look at European equities. The Euro Stoxx 50 index is down 3.20%. Is this a Don Ho “Tiny Bubble” burst? Or a slow deflation of asset prices as The Fed removes its stimulus?

I work in Big Tech. A name you would know and have probably used before. Wanted to give a rundown of what it's like from the inside right now.

In 2020, the video-sharing platform was ranked No. 7 while Google came in at No. 1. This year, TikTok came in first, followed by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, in that order. Cloudflare's 2020 and 2021 rankings don't offer a perfect comparison; Cloudflare Radar, which compiles this information, only launched in September of 2020, so last year's rankings accounted for just a few months. Regardless, Google is well aware of TikTok's dominance. The site has been looking to become increasingly focused on video and audio as the internet moves away from content people can read and toward content people can...

Web infrastructure company Cloudflare on Wednesday revealed that threat actors are actively attempting to exploit a second bug disclosed in the widely used Log4j logging utility, making it imperative that customers move quickly to install the latest version as a barrage of attacks continues to pummel unpatched systems with a variety of malware. The new vulnerability, assigned the identifier CVE-2021-45046, makes it possible for adversaries to carry out denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and follows disclosure from the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) that the original fix for the remote code execution bug — CVE-2021-44228 aka Log4Shell — was "incomplete in certain non-default...

“I still worry about the censorship that occurs,” Nunes remarked. “What happens if these companies just decide next year, ‘Well, Republicans, they’re all insurrectionists. Let’s shut off all their credit cards and banking so they just can’t raise any money.’ They could do that, all these woke corporations.”

Apple is making U.S. states foot part of the bill and provide customer support for its plan to turn iPhones into digital identification cards, according to confidential documents obtained by CNBC. The company requires states to maintain the systems needed to issue and service credentials, hire project managers to respond to Apple inquiries, prominently market the new feature and push for its adoption with other government agencies, all at taxpayer expense, according to contracts signed by four states. Apple announced in June that its users could soon store state-issued identification cards in the iPhone’s Wallet app, billing it as a...

Understanding exactly what about the Bitcoin network implementing Taproot changes is necessary for understanding why the changes were needed. Taproot is the combination of many Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) resulting in a soft fork of Bitcoin’s blockchain. A soft fork is a proposed upgrade that over time is adopted as the only blockchain, meaning the old one will cease to operate once the new one (in this case, Taproot) is fully adopted.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a companion to a Senate bill that would let people use algorithm-free versions of tech platforms, according to a copy of the text shared exclusively with Axios.Driving the news: Recent revelations about Facebook's internal research findings have renewed lawmaker interest in bills that seek to give people more of a say in how algorithms shape their online experiences.Why it matters: The bill shows that anger over how platforms use their algorithms to target users with specialized content is a bipartisan issue with momentum on Capitol Hill.The algorithms that personalize content on social...

He’s also publicly railed against what he claims is a campaign against drugs like fluvoxamine and ivermectin. And, according to three members of CETF’s scientific advisory board, he put pressure on them to promote fluvoxamine for clinical use without conclusive data that it worked for covid. More recently, he’s adopted extremist positions on covid vaccines, which he alleges are “toxic.” He has claimed that one in 1,000 people who have received mRNA vaccines have died as a result, and even claimed the vaccines “kill more people than they save” at an FDA public forum, which was first reported by the...

Air Force chief software officer Nicolas Chaillan wrote a scathing letter on LinkedIn saying that the reason he resigned was due to the fact that China had already won the tech war while the US was faced with bureaucracy.USAF The Pentagon’s former software chief said he quit because China has already won the tech war guaranteeing global dominance — with some US government systems mere “kindergarten level” in comparison. Nicolas Chaillan, 37, told the Financial Times on Sunday that there is “good reason to be angry” at the US failing to rise to China’s cyber threat, even fearing that it...

Get It Off Me Researchers at Caltech have opened the doors to hell and allowed a creepy robot that can walk on two spindly feet and even fly to enter our world. The terrifying biped, called LEONARD (LEgs ONboARD drone), or LEO for short, is basicically the bottom half of a humanoid robot strapped to a flying drone. The researchers’ goal wasn’t to come up with the next mass-marketable invention, but to test new ways of locomotion for robots meant to complete dangerous jobs and explore hard-to-reach places. Did we mention it can skateboard and slackline as well?

Screenshot / DownDetector Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all suffered outages Monday afternoon. The social networks slowly began coming back online for some users after a 6-hour outage. “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook wrote in a brief statement. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.” The cause of the problem was not immediately known.

With more services than ever collecting your data, it’s easy to start asking why anyone should care about most of it. This is why. Because people start having ideas like this. In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual...

Pentagon contractor investigating 'extremism,' says BLM web search raises concerns about White supremacy The Pentagon is reportedly working with an extremism analysis company that considers the web search "the truth about Black Lives Matter" and others to be signs of interest in or engagement with White supremacism. According to Defense One, the contractor Moonshot CVE, which has ties to the Obama Foundation, is working on data that would identify which military bases and branches have the most troops searching for domestic extremist content. While that particular project's contours are unclear, the company previously released a June report, in conjunction with...

60-year-old Mark Herring was a tech guy. “He was so smart,” recalled Corinna Fitch, one of three daughters who says their father was always ahead of trends. “I think he joined Twitter the day or the week Twitter came about.” He grabbed a handle that reflected his love for the state where he was born and raised his family. “He just wanted to be @Tennessee because he loved the Vols,” said Fitch, with a slight smile. As Twitter grew, it was clear to all that Herring owned prime internet property. “He would just in passing say, I got another offer...

Microsoft recently published the first preview of Windows 11 (Build 22000.51) for devices enrolled in the Dev Channel of the Windows Insider Program, and with it, the company introduced a slew of significant interface changes, features, and updated apps coming this holiday season... In this Windows 11 guide, we will dive deep into the new interface changes, improvements, and new features that Microsoft has made available with Build 22000.51.Windows 11 Build 22000.51 changesThese are the most important features, improvements, and changes to the user interface that Microsoft has been working on for Windows 11 so far:Start menuWindows 11 Build 22000.51...

You'll be able to upgrade to Windows 11 for free if you're already a Windows 10 user. Use the PC Health Check app to check your devices now. Windows 11 is on the way, and if you're already a Windows 10 user, it will be free to upgrade to Microsoft's newly redesigned operating system, the company said in a blog post after its virtual event on Thursday. (Find everything you need to know about Windows 11 here.) So long as your PC meets the minimum requirements, you'll be able to update to Windows 11 the same way you usually update...