Free Republic

The Trump re-election campaign’s wireless open access proposal was a poorly vetted scheme possibly intended to score political points. It was squelched almost immediately after it became public, as shocked White House staff members complained that it contradicted the administration’s support for competing wireless networks. The twist? Open access wireless is actually a terrific idea. Some forward-thinking Democrats and public interest advocates have been pushing it for decades. The concept, promoted by Republican operatives such as Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, is for a network supporting fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology to operate on a wholesale basis. Carriers such as AT&T,...

Verizon started letting people sign up for its new wireless 5G Home high-speed internet service this week. It doesn't just mark the start of the next internet revolution. It obliterates the case for net-neutrality regulations. On Tuesday, Verizon said that people can start signing up now for its 5G Home, with service starting on Oct. 1 in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif. Speeds will, the company says, be as fast as 1 Gbps, which is about as fast as Verizon's FIOS gets. It's more than 10 times faster than what the average home gets today. What's different about...

I am thinking about setting up a wireless security system. I want just the basic plug in and go, no monthly fees.

Isn't it hard to believe how a beautiful actress wasn't taken seriously as the genius inventor that she was?Along with digital video and consumer drones — cf. this week’s Leaning into the Wind — one of the greatest boons to documentaries over the past decade has been previously unheard recordings of deceased people, the latest beneficiary being Alexandra Dean’s excellent Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Tapes of Lamarr from 1990 are among the primary source for exploring her life, which was a prime example of how it’s not always easy being the best at something — and when you’re the...

The company last week quietly patched vulnerabilities in the WPA2 protocol used to secure wireless networks, but did not reveal the fix until today. Microsoft today revealed that it quietly patched Windows last week against vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol used to secure wireless networks. Details of the security update were only published Monday to Microsoft's Security Update Guide, the catalog-like portal that earlier this year replaced the decades-old practice of delivering explanatory bulletins. All supported versions of Windows received the update, according to the catalog listing, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server...

Charlotte, N.C., March 31, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKTS) (“Akoustis” or the “Company”), a manufacturer of patented single-crystal BulkONE® bulk acoustic wave (BAW) high-band RF filters for mobile and other wireless applications, announced that in order to support and motivate Akoustis’ expansion into Upstate New York, Empire State Development (“ESD”) has offered the Company up to $8 million in performance-based incentives under the Excelsior Jobs Program. On March 24, 2017, Akoustis announced it had entered into definitive agreements to acquire a 120,000 Sq. Ft. Wafer Manufacturing Facility and STC-MEMS, a semiconductor wafer manufacturing operation with associated...

Today, Sprint announced a commitment to create or bring back to America 5,000 jobs. The company anticipates these jobs will support a variety of functions across the organization including its Customer Care and Sales teams. Sprint will begin discussions immediately with its business partners, states and cities to determine the right locations in the U.S. to create these jobs. The company expects to fulfill this commitment by the end of its fiscal year 2017 and will provide additional details when they are available. “We are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive...

Weeks after meeting with Sprint Corp. Chairman Masayoshi Son, President-elect Trump announced Wednesday that the wireless phone company will soon move thousands of outsourced manufacturing jobs back to the United States. "We have some very good news," the incoming Republican president told reporters outside his beachside resort in West Palm Beach, Fla., Wednesday afternoon. "Because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the U.S. They're taking them back from other countries."

Upcoming IPAWS National Test IPAWS will hold a national test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on Wednesday, September 28th, 2016 at 2:20pm EDT.

You should be able to trust your wireless keyboard. And yet security researchers have been warning people to be suspicious of wireless computer accessories using sketchy radio protocols for years. Those warnings peaked five months ago, when hackers at the security firm Bastille found that millions of cheap keyboard and mouse dongles let hackers inject keystrokes onto your machine from hundreds of yards away. Now, in case you missed that message, the same researchers have extended their attack to millions more devices—and this time, they can not only inject keystrokes, but also read yours, too. On Tuesday Bastille’s research team...

The Wi-Fi Alliance standards body has added new features to its 802.11ac specification that promise up to three times the speed of existing wi-fi devices and the potential to move data faster than wired, gigabit ethernet local area networks. Named Wi-Fi Certified ac, the new specification add-ons include multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) radio aerial technology. This allows more devices to connect to the wi-fi access point and send and receive simultaneously for better throughput and responsiveness, an important consideration in enterprise and events settings. Older wi-fi access points manage connections in a round-robin fashion, with only one device...

They broke in like it was nothing. They could have wiped my hard drive, stolen my files, or practically anything nefarious you can do with a computer. All because I had a wireless mouse dongle plugged into my laptop. And all they needed was a simple antenna that costs as little as $15 at Amazon. Thankfully, "they" were a pair of security researchers from a company called Bastille, and every company that builds wireless mice and keyboards has already been alerted to the issue. If you have a Logitech Unifying receiver, there's already a fix. (Here is a link to...

The upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 was impacted by several significant app or hardware compatibility issues, and in some cases, Microsoft even recommended users to delay the move for a little bit longer until all these problems were fixed. One of the hardware compatibility bugs that were experienced by a big number of users concerns the Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter, which was unable to work with Windows 10, and that, according to a prompt showing up before the upgrade, could block users from connecting to wireless networks. The message was first displayed in June, soon after...

Two “foreign speaking” men set off alarms after they entered the local Walmart store in Lebanon, Missouri and purchased 60 cellphones. The purchase was made around 4 AM last Saturday morning. Police were called but released the men saying they didn’t have a legal reason to detain them.

Wireless power has been a dream of mankind’s for decades, but the technology finally appears to be gaining some traction. Theoretically, numerous studies have shown that wireless power is possible through a variety of aerial transmission modalities. Yet the problem with wireless power has been getting the technology to work at a reasonable range. So far, commercial use of wireless power has been limited, but progress is being made. For instance, Samsung now has a commercially available wireless charger for its cell phones. With the charger, consumers do not need to plug their phone into the wall for it to...

Hello FReeper friends. For the first time in several years, I've got a few bucks to spare. I'd like to finally upgrade from my old CRT television to a flat-screen TV. I'm also investigating the various options for streaming video to the TV via WiFi. I'm looking at devices like Roku and Amazon's FireTV -- especially because Amazon is having a Black Friday deal on the FireTV stick. However, the TVs that I'm looking at all are WiFi enabled. So here's my question: unless I really, really want features specific to FireTV, do I really need it (or Roku) if...

he Baltimore Police Department has used an invasive and controversial cellphone tracking device thousands of times in recent years while following instructions from the FBI to withhold information about it from prosecutors and judges, a detective revealed in court testimony Wednesday.. The testimony shows for the first time how frequently city police are using a cell site simulator, more commonly known as a "stingray," a technology that authorities have gone to great lengths to avoid disclosing. The device mimics a cellphone tower to force phones within its range to connect. Police use it to track down stolen phones or find...

The US Department of Homeland Security introduced a special plan - known as Standing Operating Procedure 303 - to block signals of cellular operators after cellular phones were used to detonate explosive devices during the bombings of the London subway system, Pravda.Ru reports. A federal appeals court wants to know why the government should be allowed to keep secret its plan to block cellular communication for the time of "critical emergencies." Standing Operating Procedure 303 is a powerful tool in the digital age ... The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in February sided (PDF) with...

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is out with a new message to fight net neutrality: “If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it.” Borrowing the phrase from President Obama, the Republican commissioner penned an op-ed with Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC) Joshua Wright, raising concerns with Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet. While the president insists his plan is for a “free and open Internet,” Pai and Wright said net neutrality is anything but. “If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it. But new federal regulations may take away your freedom...

Since Americans have become more mobile the demand for wireless access has increased. However, high tax burdens on wireless services have made it increasingly difficult for consumers to pay their cell phone bills. In a recently released report, Wireless Taxation in the United States 2014, Scott Mackey and Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation highlighted the tax burdens facing wireless technology consumers. These tax burdens are significantly higher than traditional sales taxes and vary vastly from state to state, city to city. Mackey and Henchman note the overall tax burden—federal, state, and local—has increased to an average of 17.05 percent...