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Asking my FRiends here to please say a prayer for my father (his name is Don) who is having major surgery in a few days. He is over 80 years old, and is on blood thinners, so any form of surgery is significant. Thanks

A U.S. officer who helped liberate 2,500 Jews during the Holocaust has died at the age of 99. On April 7, 1945, Lt. Frank Winchester Towers, who was the division liaison officer of Regiment 743 of the 30th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during World War II, approached (with his regiment’s tanks) a stopped train in which there were 2,500 Jewish prisoners bound for the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The Nazis stopped the train because they were ordered to destroy it and drown the passengers in the Elbe river. When the U.S. regiment approached, the passengers shouted, “We’re...

At Build 2016, Microsoft introduced to the world the Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta) [WSL], which enables developers to run native Ubuntu user-mode console binaries through the Bash shell in Windows 10. If you’re in the Windows Insider program, you’ve had the opportunity to try out this feature using the latest Windows Anniversary Update Insider Builds.

A new iPhone 6s/6s Plus passcode bypass flaw is making its rounds on the internet today, and itÂ’s similar to flaws weÂ’ve seen in the past on iOS. DonÂ’t be overly alarmed, though, as the odds of this happening to you are slim. Besides, if you are concerned, there are some bonafide ways to go about protecting yourself. The bypass only works on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, because those devices feature 3D Touch, which is used for this particular variant of the passcode bypass trick. The flaw is present in the latest iOS 9.3.1 update. HereÂ’s how...

Today at BUILD in the Day One keynote Kevin Gallo announced that you can now run "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows." This is a new developer feature included in a Windows 10 "Anniversary" update (coming soon). It lets you run native user-mode Linux shells and command-line tools unchanged, on Windows. This isn't Bash or Ubuntu running in a VM. This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is an genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed,...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has broken with other Silicon Valley giants by backing the FBI in its battle with Apple over hacking into a locked iPhone as part of the investigation into last December's San Bernardino terror attack. In an interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday, Gates said a court order requiring Apple to help the FBI access a work phone belonging to gunman Syed Farook was " a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case."

On Thursday, February 4, Satya Nadella will celebrate his second anniversary as the CEO of Microsoft. It's been an eventful couple of years. Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android, and generally made people like it a lot more. But the real victory of Satya Nadella — the truly monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is pointed in one direction for first time in modern memory.

AFTER a year of big Apple releases, analysts are predicting a flat 2016 where the world's biggest tech company refines product lines rather than produces the next big thing. Apple's share price has taken a battering in the past six months, with more than $220 billion slashed from the company's value as analysts look towards an era of smartphone saturation. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty recently predicted that 2016 would be first time that iPhone sales would shrink, dropping by up to three per cent.

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will slash up to 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, this year as it almost halves the size of its newly acquired Nokia phone business and tries to transform into a cloud-computing and mobile-friendly software company. The larger-than-expected cuts, announced on Thursday, are the deepest in the company's 39-year history and come five months into the tenure of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. He outlined plans for a "leaner" business in a public memo to employees last week.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region, U.S. military officials said Monday. In the first public account of the incident, the officials said the Russian Fencer made 12 passes, and flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level. The U.S. warship issued several radio queries and warnings using international emergency circuits, but the Russian aircraft did not respond.

Given the recent issues the FreeRepublic web site has been having, I thought it would be useful to open a discussion on election night contingency plans. The site was mostly down during the debates, and seems to be having issues keeping up even now. Given that, it seems likely that we're going to have problems on election night. While twitter and various other sites are good to keep up on election results, I really like to read the posts from like-minded individuals. Right now, FR seems to be the best place for that. In the event FR does go down,...

Along with reliable sources such as the IAEA and WNN updates, there is an incredible amount of misinformation and hyperbole flying around the internet and media right now about the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation. In the BNC post Discussion Thread – Japanese nuclear reactors and the 11 March 2011 earthquake (and in the many comments that attend the top post), a lot of technical detail is provided, as well as regular updates. But what about a layman’s summary? How do most people get a grasp on what is happening, why, and what the consequences will be? Below I reproduce a...

Aerial photos taken over Japan have revealed the scale of devastation across dozens of suburbs and tens of thousands of homes and businesses. Click here to see the photos

Click here for video.

video here.

Sarah Palin's first year as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, could easily have been her last as she became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a bitter standoff with her local newspaper.

I have seen requests in a number of threads for links to the video of the recent debates in New Hampshire. For those of us who missed it, you can view these debates on YouTube. Here are direct links to both debates: Republican Debate - Part 1/10Republican Debate - Part 2/10Republican Debate - Part 3/10Republican Debate - Part 4/10Republican Debate - Part 5/10Republican Debate - Part 6/10Republican Debate - Part 7/10Republican Debate - Part 8/10Republican Debate - Part 9/10Republican Debate - Part 10/10 Democratic Debate - Part 1/10Democratic Debate - Part 2/10Democratic Debate - Part 3/10Democratic Debate - Part 4/10Democratic...

This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it. Here's how it all starts: My first-born son has autism. Now that isn't hopeless or, in my opinion, unlucky. Autism isn't sick or crazy. It's rigid and routine, a little eccentric. Autism is multiplying columns of numbers easily while being unable to look anyone in the eyes; listening to only one band's music, and always in the same order, for a period of six weeks; refusing to eat anything orange. It's also...

There is a new web tool that allows you to post links directly to a portion of the content of a page. You enter a URL and the text within that page to which you want to link. You'll get back a URL that you can use. When a user clicks on that URL, they will see a version of the original page with the text you selected hi-lighted and at the top of the browser page. This is very useful for posting links to specific comments/replies on blogs.