Free Republic

A few weeks ago Blizzard announced the upcoming summertime release of StarCraft: Remastered, giving a facelift to the classic RTS and its beloved Brood War expansion. Alongside that announcement came other interesting news though: The original (not remastered) versions of both StarCraft and Brood War would be made free sometime in April, alongside a new 1.18 patch. That time has come. Blizzard dropped the 1.18 patch late on Tuesday, adding in a borderless windowed mode, tweaking some back-end code, correcting some long-standing bugs, improving compatibility with Windows 10, and more. But more importantly, whether you never purchased the game or...

A year ago, Shawn Farrow worked full time as a mover, hauling boxes for wealthy tech engineers in Seattle. These days, Farrow isn't just lugging furniture for tech workers. He's a tech worker himself. Farrow is an apprentice engineer, writing code from the comfort of his desk at Avvo, a Seattle tech firm. He is a fresh breed of tech worker coming into the industry through a new type of training program that is designed to identify talented individuals from non-traditional backgrounds. "It's more rewarding for me coming to an office and using my brain rather than my physical abilities,"...

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties. This disruption will create large growth opportunities as well as dangerous pitfalls. Be prepared for both.... ... ...It is a fast moving world and getting faster. There will be both opportunities and pitfalls along the way. The next generation of business leadership needs to be able to navigate these progressive changes and...

Humanoid robot F.E.D.O.R., set to fly into space in 2021, is now capable of shooting using both of his arms, according to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.“The robot of the F.E.D.O.R. platform showed skills of firing using both . Currently the work on fine motor skills and decision algorithms is underway,” Rogozin wrote on his Twitter.​According to Rogozin, training to shoot is a way of teaching the robot to instantaneously prioritize targets and make decisions.“We are not creating a terminator but artificial intelligence which will have a great practical importance in various fields,” he added.

Some advocates of rural America have suggested that improved technology and telecommuting will allow more highly educated Americans to live and work in rural areas. Marre says the report doesn't have data on the extent, if any, to which that's happening. Marre says he doesn't have published material on regional differences in educational attainment. But he provides Census Bureau information for the Midwest — a 12-state area that includes North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota — that shows: • Rural Midwest residents are, on balance, better educated than rural residents nationwide. For example, 88.7 percent of rural Midwest residents have...

You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but wringing water from the desert sky is now possible, thanks to a new spongelike device that uses sunlight to suck water vapor from air, even in low humidity. The device can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day, and researchers say future versions will be even better. That means homes in the driest parts of the world could soon have a solar-powered appliance capable of delivering all the water they need, offering relief to billions of people. To find an all-purpose solution, researchers led by Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the...

. . .New findings published Monday by researchers at New York University and Michigan State University suggest that smartphones can easily be fooled by fake fingerprints digitally composed of many common features found in human prints. In computer simulations, the researchers from the universities were able to develop a set of artificial “MasterPrints” that could match real prints similar to those used by phones as much as 65 percent of the time. The researchers did not test their approach with real phones, and other security experts said the match rate would be significantly lower in real-life conditions. Still, the findings...

People still play the original StarCraft, a real-time strategy game that first came out in 1998. Now, the intergalactic war game is getting a major face-lift, the game's developer, Blizzard, announced Sunday."StarCraft: Remastered" will preserve the gameplay of the original 1998 title, but the new title will update its aging graphics and audio and will ensure better compatibility with modern computers, the company said. "Gameplay and balance have been precisely preserved," Blizzard said in a statement. Preserving the gameplay is important for this remake because the original StarCraft is still played as an e-sport, especially in South Korea.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the nicest phone I’ve ever held. It’s a beautiful combination of glass, metal, and an absolutely massive screen in a body that’s much smaller than you might expect. And that might not be enough to make it stand out anymore. There are two versions of the S8: the standard Galaxy S8 with a 5.8-inch screen and the larger S8 Plus with a 6.2-inch screen. Both are available for preorder on March 30th and will be shipping in the US on April 21st. Pricing, as always with Samsung, is up to the carriers — but you...

"...What it means: This aligns with the administration's focus on reserving the temporary visas for very high-skilled (and higher-paid) professionals while encouraging low- and mid-level jobs to go to American workers instead. The new guidance affects applications for the lottery for 2018 fiscal year that opened Monday..."

Last month, America lost a great defender of freedom, Michael Novak.Novak was committed to rightly ordered liberty and cared deeply about the principles and practices that produce it. His enormous body of work emphasized the cultural prerequisites for political and economic freedom, as he stressed that economic conservativism and social conservatism are indivisible.In the words of Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner, “Michael forced those of us trained in the dismal science of economics to explain that we should be more than ‘free to choose’—rather we should be free to make good free choices.”Last year, I was the recipient of the...

It is unclear, at this moment, as to how precise the photo used in the demonstration should be compared to the real face? Or at what distance the phone was held from the camera? Or what angle they chose during the registration of the recognition? But what's clear is the fact that a gap remains in the security system of the Samsung's new facial recognition feature. Moreover, there are reports that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 would include a facial recognition feature for mobile payments in the coming months.

President Trump’s appointment of former GOP congressman John Fleming, M.D., to newly created health technology post could portend ONC downsizing and MACRA changes. The new HHS healthcare technology top official's plans are still unknown, but signs point to possible changes to ONC that could weaken the agency's regulatory authority. The new HHS healthcare technology chief -- a longtime associate of HHS secretary, fellow physician and former GOP congressman Tom Price -- nonetheless also mentioned that ONC "may be reorganizing." Few in the capitol, other than his fans, want to comment publicly about what Fleming's ascension to the top HHS healthcare...

House Republicans are expected to vote Tuesday to repeal a set of historic privacy protections for Web users, in a sharp pivot away from the Internet policies of the Obama administration. President Trump is expected to sign the measure if it passes. Tuesday's vote is likely to lend momentum to a broader rollback of Obama-era policies, particularly in the technology sector. And it empowers Internet providers to enter the $83 billion market for online advertising, where the ability to collect, store, share and sell consumers' behavioral information is directly linked to companies' bottom line. Proponents of the repeal argue the...

When kids learn about the planet’s water cycle, they’re taught a simple concept: our atmosphere is filled with water vapor that has evaporated from the bodies of liquid water we see around us. When the vapor’s temperature gets low enough, it gets turned back into water. The presence of that vapor becomes especially apparent in the summer, when droplets collect on glasses of ice water and air conditioning units drip onto unsuspecting passersby. An Israeli company called Water-Gen does not think of that condensation as a byproduct; instead, it has built machines specifically designed to create and harvest as much...

“I actually thought we would get paid,’’ said Dinesh Khurana. “But this has lasted so long. To be very frank, I’ve lost hope.’’When Dinesh Khurana came to California from India as a tech worker in 1995, he assumed the American system of employment had a basic underpinning of fairness. It went this way: You did the work. You were paid for the job. Sure, there might be an occasional hiccup. But generally the check arrived. America was the land of the free, not a corruption-ridden place. Even when he became a consultant — and had to fend for himself rather...

When plugged in, this weaponized USB stick can destroy laptops, kiosks, ATMs, cars, and more. (Image: USBKill) Remember that USB stick that would destroy almost anything in its path, from laptops, photo booths, kiosks, to even cars? Now there's a new version, and it's even more dangerous than before. In case you missed it the first time around, a Hong Kong-based company built a weaponized pocket-sized USB stick, which when plugged into a device, will rapidly charge its capacitors from the USB power supply and then discharge, frying the affected device's circuits. Dubbed the USB Kill stick, it fries almost...

IBM Q isn’t vaporware. It’s a project years-in-the-making that could help quantum computation reach its massive potential. The future of quantum computers may arrive sooner than you think. When news arrived of IBM’s move to offer the first commercially available universal quantum computer last week, it was characterized as a “handoff” from IBM Research to IBM Systems. According to the company’s CTO and vice president of quantum computing, technical strategy, and systems, Scott Crowder, that’s not entirely the case. “It’s not quite a ‘handoff,’ it’s really a partnership,” explained Crowder. “This is definitely a transition point from it being pure...

Physicist Stephen Hawking, who some have suggested is a conspiracy in and of himself, is now claiming we need “some form of world government” to protect us from the escalation of technology and artificial intelligence. “Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,” he told The Times. “It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.” … “The real risk with...

​In the never-ending quest to improve computing technology, IBM has just taken a big step smaller: It's found a way to store data on a single atom. A hard drive today takes about 100,000 atoms to store a single bit of data -- a 1 or 0. The IBM Research results announced Wednesday show how much more densely it might someday be possible to cram information. How much more densely? Today, you can fit your personal music library into a storage device the size of a penny. With IBM's technique, you could fit Apple's entire music catalog of 26 million...