Free Republic

Conveyor Belt Sushi, Japan A dining concept that lets you pick from a wide range of one of Japan's best-known foods. NOTE: Click on the referenced link to watch the video. P.S. This technology will doom the SEIU/$15.00 minimum wage movement.

During a Friday conference call sponsored by Texas-based Women on the Wall, Stanford mathematician and former member of the Common Core Validation Committee Dr. James Milgram, told listeners that if the controversial standards are not repealed, America’s place as a competitor in the technology industry will ultimately be severely undermined. “In the future, if we want to work with the top level people, we’re going to have to go to China or Japan or Korea… and that’s the future we’re looking at,” Milgram said during the call that was part of a day-long Twitter campaign to target Indiana Gov. Mike...

Who could have ever imagined that North America would surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas liquids? A decade ago, that would have seemed laughable.Yet that’s exactly what has happened; and it’s not just Saudi Arabia that has been left in North America’s dust -- Russia has, too. The surge in North American oil and gas production is arguably the most important development in energy over the last decade. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that North America doesn’t have nearly enough oil and gas pipelines to accommodate its 11-million-barrel-a-day...

In 2020, tiny Sweden will dispose of the most lethal weapon ever developed by man; The A26 stealth sub that could go anywhere and destroy whatever it wants without any adversary standing a chance of detecting it.. "The U.S. military is relying on sub-hunting tech that’s decades old. Meanwhile, the targets they’re trying to find are getting quieter and more invisible by the day. Submarines are getting quieter, stealthier, and better armed. And that could mean major trouble for the U.S. Navy and its aging fleet of sub-hunters. The tactical balance between the surface warship and the submarine has strategic...

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has begun keeping the personal data of some Chinese users on servers in mainland China, marking the first time the tech giant is storing user data on Chinese soil. The storage of user data in China represents a departure from the policies of some technology companies, notably Google Inc (GOOGL.O), which has long refused to build data centers in China due to censorship and privacy concerns. Apple said the move was part of an effort to improve the speed and reliability of its iCloud service, which lets users store pictures, e-mail and other data. Positioning data centers...

"You can make money without doing evil" is No. 6 on the list of 10 things Google (the corporation) knows to be true. The Google list leaves out a few caveats. Like: You can make more money flouting antitrust laws. You can pay your brainiacs less if they believe you will retaliate if they try to go to work for someone else. U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled Friday that there was so much evidence in a class action suit against Apple, Google and other big byte corporations that she felt compelled to scotch a $324 million settlement, which...

Don't know 'bout the rest of ya, but as a Swede and Volvo owner, I pretty much trust this company to experiment some.. (Link to clip below)

Now, should the medical workers in the Ebola infected countries use robotic technology to handle patients, administer certain drugs, and then do certain functions that could prevent the spread of the disease to the workers in the medical field? I thought this would be a much better way to have patients taken care of and reduce risk drastically in regards to patient to doctor/carer transmission.

Layoffs in the technology sector could reach their highest level in five years, according to a group that tracks employments trends. So far this year, tech employers have announced plans to cut payrolls by 48,402, a 68 percent increase over the 28,883 layoffs announced during the same period in 2013, according to a special report released Monday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. At the current rate, the 2014 year-end total could be the highest since 2009, when tech-sector job cuts hit 174,629. The highest total on record was 695,581 job cuts in 2001, when the tech bubble in the stock...

Despite the fact that I consider the prevailing majority of Facebook posts to be the single largest culprit of wasted broadband, I do hold a certain amount of awe for the internet. Shortly after Al Gore invented the technology, the instantaneous exchange of information became a global phenomenon. (Although, those early dial ups can hardly be considered “instantaneous.”) The internet might be, in most cases, the last beacon of relative freedom. Ideas can be spread, information disseminated, and cute kitten pictures shared… All with a simple click of a wireless mouse. While there is an amazing amount of debauchery...

PARIS -- A newly leaked document stolen by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year reveals that one of the NSA's partner agencies within the "Five Eyes" Anglo-intelligence network -- Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), responsible for signals intelligence -- dedicated vast resources to fooling around on the Internet, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald. The GCHQ has reportedly developed tools capable of playing with the results of online polls; sending out spoof emails and Microsoft Office documents that, once opened, can grab and transmit files and info from a user's computer; collecting data from public profiles on...

The head of Germany's parliamentary inquiry into the NSA spying scandal has suggested the government return to using typewriters to protect national secrets from prying eyes. German soldier allegedly spied for US (09 Jul 14) 'Wake up Germany and smell the cyber-coffee' (08 Jul 14) 'Enough!' Germans say in latest US spy scandal (07 Jul 14) Germany's politicians are considering going back to using old-fashioned typewriters to create sensitive documents, head of the inquiry committee Patrick Sensburg told ARD broadcaster on Monday. “Unlike other inquiry committees, we are investigating an ongoing situation. Intelligence activities are still going on, they are...

The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides transportation funding to the states, is projected to run dry in August. But with a technology-driven revolution underway in the way Americans use surface transportation, applying yesterday’s solution and simply replenishing the fund won’t solve the problem. According to the Obama administration, if the fund is exhausted, states will be forced to put off 112,000 highway construction and 5,600 transit projects, resulting in the loss of 700,000 jobs. When dealing with the government, there are always plenty of zeroes to go around. The traditional source of revenue for the trust fund is the...

The year is halfway over, but there's still plenty of time for new major tech products to hit the market. Here's a look at the most important stuff we're expecting to launch before the end of 2014. 1. All eyes are on Apple's iWatch. Apple is expected to launch its first major new product, the so-called iWatch, in October. According to numerous reports from sources like 9to5Mac, the iWatch will focus heavily on health and fitness monitoring. For example, it'll be able to track your steps, hydration, heart rate, and other vitals. The iWatch is also said to have a...

In a distant part of the galaxy, 300 years in the future, Starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk talks to his crew via a communicator; has his medical officer assess medical conditions through a handheld device called a tricorder; synthesizes food and physical goods using his replicator; and travels short distances via a transporter. Kirk's successors hold meetings in virtual-reality chambers, called holodecks, and operate alien spacecraft using displays mounted on their foreheads. All this takes place in the TV series Star Trek, and is of course science fiction.

Russia's policy on Western technology is clear: The country can live without it, especially if key issues like economic sanctions, NSA spying and GPS cooperation aren't resolved to its leader's satisfaction. It looks like this tough stance extends to US-designed computer chips too, as a Russian business newspaper is reporting that state departments and state-run companies will no longer purchase PCs built around Intel or AMD processors. Instead, starting in 2015, the government will order up to one million devices annually based on the "Baikal" processor, which is manufactured by a domestic company called T-Platforms.

Waste coffee grinds could be turned into a sustainable fuel to power vehicles, scientists have found. Oil can be extracted from coffee grounds by soaking them in an organic solvent, before being chemically transformed into biodiesel via a process called 'transesterification', according to researchers from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at University of Bath. As part of the study, the researchers made biofuel from ground coffee produced in 20 different geographic regions, including caffeinated and decaffeinated forms, as well as Robusta and Arabica varieties. "Around 8 million tonnes of coffee are produced globally each year and ground waste coffee...

Hollywood and the recording industry, often called the content industry, have a long and ignoble history of opposition to new technology. That list now includes streaming services. The record industry is pushing every button to try to kill off this growing marketplace. Look at Pandora, which had 77 million active listeners at the end of May. During the month those millions and millions of people listened to 1.73 billion hours of Pandora programming, a 28% increase year over year. Wall Street expects Pandora to grow its revenue 38% this year to 900 million – that’s the good news. The bad...

Israeli company Phinergy claim to have produced a battery that can power a Citroen C1 for 3000km, and have demonstrated a 1800km drive with a more practical version, three times that available from commercial electric cars. Even more dramatically, the battery weighs just 100km, a fifth of the weight of those in the Tesla Model S. Metal-air batteries use the oxygen in the air around them, rather than storing it in liquid or solid chemicals. They can store far more energy than most competing technologies. Not needing to contain the oxygen can also cut the weight dramatically – Phinergy claim...

A couple of months ago, we posted one of our early Google Search/Now rumors, and it was something of a long range rumor compared to others. While things like parking reminders, proper timer management, and bill pay reminders have already seen their public release, the ability to set contact-based reminders ("remind me when I'm with this person"), hasn't come forward yet. But it will likely appear very soon with a new feature in Android called Nearby, which will allow new interactions between you and nearby people, places, and things.