Free Republic

Key Points Certain rules that reduce pensioners’ Social Security benefits have been in place for decades. House lawmakers voted to approve a bill that would nix those rules. Critics say more comprehensive Social Security reform should be prioritized instead. ********************************************************************* A bipartisan bill to change Social Security benefit rules for pensioners passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, with 327 lawmakers voting to support the measure. Now, the proposal heads to the Senate, where the chamber’s version of the bill has 62 co-sponsors, “surpassing the majority needed to pass the bill on the U.S. Senate floor and send it...

A Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship docked to the International Space Station spewed particles of an unknown substance, presumably coolant fluid, into space Wednesday night, forcing two Russian cosmonauts to call off a planned spacewalk as engineers on the ground scrambled to determine the source and the effects of the leak. ...A Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship docked to the International Space Station spewed particles of an unknown substance, presumably coolant fluid, into space Wednesday night, forcing two Russian cosmonauts to call off a planned spacewalk as engineers on the ground scrambled to determine the source and the effects of...

Jul 28, 2022 We are heading into one of the most epic famines in world history, where the poor will freeze in the dark and burn in the sun while they starve. Michael Yon, one of America’s youngest Green Berets at 19 years old, joins Dr Jordan B Peterson to discuss the current state of affairs across the globe. Michael has traveled and lived over half of his life abroad in more than 80 countries . Author of three books in the United States and three others in Japan, he is America’s most experienced combat correspondent.

ALBANY, NY – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday he would form a new third party in the state centered around his late-term abortion expansion program. The formation of the Women’s Equality Party, which is designed to further the Democrats' national “war on women” campaign theme, was announced at a gala on Thursday.

I was viewing some of my neighbors' wi-fi connections on my tablet computer and noticed that most are using the outdated WEP network security standard. This was deemed to be insecure a decade ago and was replaced by the WPA and, later, the WPA2 security standard. Someone in "listening range" of a wi-fi hotspot using the WEP encryption standard could, potentially, break into the network relatively easily and disrupt it. Many internet service providers (ISP) still provide WEP as the default, but they are now required to also provide WPA. So it is a good idea to insure that your...

Minnesota hacker Barry Ardolf was sentenced to an 18-year term in a federal prison this Tuesday. Ardolf had terrorized a neighboring family for two years through a carefully planned campaign involving a hijacked Wi-Fi network to harass, frame and embarrass the next-door neighbors in every facet of their lives. Ardolf’s obsessive passive-aggression was apparently ignited in late 2008 when his neighbors, Matt and Bethany Kostolnik, filed a police report against him. The Kostolniks had a 4-year old son who wandered over to their next-door-neighbors property shortly after moving into the Minnesota suburb of Blaine. Ardolf, 46 and a father of...

The TJX credit-card data breach -- the largest ever -- was sort of amazing, in that it went on for a few years before it was detected and disclosed. It was established at the outset that the company didn't comply with credit-card companies' strict security guidelines, but a story in today's Wall Street Journal spells out the depths of TJX's incompetence when it came to security. Investigators believe that the hackers used directional antennas to intercept signals sent over the WiFi networks at the company's stores, which were encrypted only with the easily cracked WEP standard, since TJX never bothered...

Thanx for the advice about upgrading security settings. I called linksys and got sheila in the Philippines and set up security with WEP ten digit settings. But, when someone hacks into your computer via wireless, can they read your hard drive? Can they watch you on the net? Or do they just establish a connection for their own wireless computer?