Free Republic

TUCSON, Ariz. – Today, Wei Sun, 49, a Chinese national and naturalized citizen of the United States, was sentenced to 38 months in prison by District Court Judge Rosemary Marquez. Sun previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). Sun was employed in Tucson for 10 years as an electrical engineer with Raytheon Missiles and Defense. Raytheon Missiles and Defense develops and produces missile systems for use by the United States military. During his employment with the company, Sun had access to information directly related to sensitive defense technology. Some of this defense...

A federal judge denied a motion Monday for a new trial in the case of a Chinese-born engineer convicted of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney rejected Chi Mak's motion after a hearing that included testimony from several defense witnesses. Carney set Mak's sentencing for March 24. Mak could face up to 45 years in prison. Mak, 67, was convicted last May of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that prosecutors said could make submarines virtually undetectable. A jury also found him guilty of...

Whenever Benjamin Kaila, a database administrator who immigrated from India to the United States in 1999, applies for a job at a U.S. tech company, he prays that there are no other Indians during the in-person interview. That’s because Kaila is a Dalit, or member of the lowest-ranked castes within India’s system of social hierarchy, formerly referred to as “untouchables.” Silicon Valley’s diversity issues are well documented: It’s still dominated by white and Asian men, and Black and Latino workers remain underrepresented. But for years, as debates about meritocracy raged on, the tech industry’s reliance on Indian engineers allowed another...

MANILA, Philippines — Demonic spirits can send text messages to cell phones and use modern technology to harass or lure people to the dark side. Fr. Jose Francisco Syquia, chief exorcist of the Archdiocese of Manila, also says receiving messages from demons is an experience common to priests helping possessed persons liberate themselves. “We did not expect [demons] could do so but if you ask other exorcists, they would tell you the same experience. Usually [the demons would swear at you] or say, ‘This person will never get away from us,’” he says in an interview. ..... But more than...

Days before the State of Wisconsin denied Foxconn's request for state tax credits - in the form of direct payments from the state to Foxconn's bank account - related to the "factory" built by the world's largest contract tech manufacturer in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. The project was announced shortly after President Trump's upset election victory, but quickly ran aground as reporters complained that the facility being built by Foxconn bore little resemblance to the enormous Gen 10.5 LCD factory the company had promised. In fact, the factory isn't even big enough to serve as a smaller Gen 6 LCD...

STOCKHOLM—Sweden on Tuesday banned on security grounds the use of telecom equipment from China’s Huawei and ZTE in its 5G network ahead of a spectrum auction scheduled for next month, joining other European nations that have restricted the role of Chinese suppliers.The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) said the setting of the licence conditions followed assessments by the Swedish Armed Forces and security service, which called China “one of the biggest threats against Sweden”.European governments have been tightening controls on Chinese companies building 5G networks, following diplomatic pressure from Washington, which alleges Huawei equipment could be used by...

COLUMBUS, OH—In response to growing concerns over celebrity election meddling, several states have introduced voting machines with new technology that will immediately discard your ballot if it determines you are voting because a celebrity told you to. "We are extremely concerned about celebrity influence in this election," said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. "According to several authoritative studies, celebrities are literally the worst. We can't allow our future to be determined by celebrities or anyone insane enough to listen to them." Polls have shown that there are actually a few people out there who rely on celebrities like Mark...

Read full article at CNAS Some highlights: The U.S. military is at a high-stakes inflection point: it must take a series of much bigger and bolder steps to keep its military-technological edge over great power competitors such as China, or it could lose that edge within the decade... this conceptual shift toward great power competition has not been matched by a requisite re-alignment of concepts, culture, and service programs and budgets. The DoD is talking a far better game than it is actually playing. The proverbial clock is ticking, and while the Pentagon and Congress continue to make changes largely...

An overview of the antennas used for surveillance.

The British defense committee reported on Oct. 8 that there’s “clear evidence of collusion between Huawei and the Chinese state” and urged the government to urgently remove Huawei’s equipment from the country’s telecommunications infrastructure by 2025. In July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered that Huawei be purged from Britain’s 5G networks by 2027 amid fears of spying and sabotage, and following tough U.S. sanctions against the company affecting its supply of up-to-date chips. The defense committee report, however, states that the purging should be done years earlier even if it involves recompense for current operators. “The Government should take necessary...

While we often discuss expansion into the Solar System as a step leading to interstellar flight, the movement into space has its dark side, as author Daniel Deudney argues in a new book. As Kenneth Roy points out in the review that follows, it behooves everyone involved in space studies to understand what the counter-arguments are. Ken is a newly retired professional engineer who is currently living amidst, as he puts it, “the relics of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.” His professional career involved working for various Department of Energy (DOE) contractors in the fields of fire protection...

Open source RF hardware has been under development for several years, a boon for ham radio operators and academics. Open Research Institute anticipates that the Commerce Department will find that these technologies are unrestricted under the carve-out for open source in the EAR.

At a press conference held by ChinaÂ’s State Council Information Office on Sept. 16, Bai Chunli, the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), stated that in dealing with pressure from high-tech companies from the United States, CAS will strengthen its research on supercomputing systems and key materials in the next 10 years to help solve critical problems in these areas. But this sounds like a joke, as CAS is surrounded by scandals, driven by politics, and controlled by the Chinese regime.BaiÂ’s statement coincides with the strictest ban by the United States of supplying chips to Huawei. As such,...

China’s former finance minister Lou Jiwei warned in a recent speech that China’s “immature” 5G technology is likely to become a failed investment.In recent weeks, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has emphasized the need for the country’s economy to develop an “internal circulation system—in other words, having domestic sectors produce all the goods for Chinese consumption, from raw materials to manufacturing.The economy should “create a new development pattern where domestic and foreign markets can boost each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay,” Xi had said.But Lou said that China’s 5G innovations—heavily subsidized by Beijing—could become a “blockage point”...

Documented conversations between Tech Support staff and (technologically impaired) seniors.... Tech support: What kind of computer do you have? Customer: A white one... Tech support: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the screen. Customer: Your left or my left? ************************ Customer: Hi, good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print. Every time I try, it says 'can’t find printer’. I've even lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor, but the computer still says he can't find it.. ************************* Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore. Tech support: Are you sure it's...

Free and cheap ham radio projects list by WA5VJB

An international team of scientists said Monday it had joined forces to combat the spread of anti-Semitism online with the help of artificial intelligence. The project Decoding Anti-Semitism includes discourse analysts, computational linguists and historians who will develop a "highly complex, AI-driven approach to identifying online anti-Semitism," the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which supports the project, said in a statement Monday. "In order to prevent more and more users from becoming radicalized on the web, it is important to identify the real dimensions of anti-Semitism - also taking into account the implicit forms that might become more explicit over time," said...

Short video describing an antenna etched on a printed circuit board. Antenna design is a log periodic dipole array that covers 400mhz - 1 ghz. Antenna is lightweight and packable and exhibits excellent real world performance for it's size and weight. Please check them out : http://www.wa5vjb.com/

Care and feeding of Software Defined Radios (used in surveillance) We will cover the various kinds of antennas available to optimized your SDR radio for different types of spectrum monitoring. We will also explain why RF filters are necessary on most SDR's and when Low Noise Amplifiers help, and when Low Noise Amplifiers hurt reception.

Electronic skins that perform the same sensory functions as human skin could mean big things for the fields of robotics and medical devices, and scientists are not solely focused on just the pleasant ones. Researchers in Australia have succeeded in developing an artificial skin that responds to painful stimuli in the same way real skin does, which they see as an important step towards intelligent machines and prosthetics. It mightn’t seem like the most practical of goals, but researchers have been working to develop electronic skins that allow robots and prostheses to feel pain for quite some time. These technologies...