Free Republic

Steve and Timpani have been through their fair share of trials since moving to Texas, but they're about to face their greatest challenge yet: returning to California. After tasting freedom in Texas, will they now be subsumed by the socialist miasma of California?

The CEO of Hertz is sorry, so sorry for misplacing returned rental vehicles and then reporting them as stolen, causing honest customers to be locked in jail in some cases for six months or more. Not sorry enough to voluntarily compensate victims, of course. Hertz waited for a lawsuit, contesting the claims until it was forced to cough up $168 million. "In all cases, Hertz's goal is to protect its profits and cut its costs, even if it knows their own customers will lose their liberty and freedom as a result," said the lawsuit against Hertz."In February, after a U.S....

Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers found that problematic smartphone use is linked with low self-esteem as well as negative cognitive outcomes.The majority of people who live in industrialized countries have smartphones. The fear of being without one’s smartphones is known as “nomophobia” and has become a social problem. Research shows that people who have smartphone addiction tend to report more loneliness and experience self-regulation deficits..adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:468px !important; height:60px !important; } @media (max-width:1199px) { .adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:468px !important; height:60px !important; } } @media (max-width:767px) { .adsslot_t0TixwWES7{ width:300px !important; height:250px !important; } }Furthermore, people who have...

I want to thank Jim and John for all the hard work you guys do to maintain this site and keep a channel of communication open for all like-minded conservative patriots. This has been my go-to site for news for over two decades now and I would be lost without you. Thank you also to all the Freepers on this site--even if we've disagreed in the past, you are very much appreciated! May God bless all of you as much as He has blessed me!

There is something to be said about a truly disastrous meal, a meal forever indelible in your memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement. The sort of meal where everyone involved was definitely trying to do something; it’s just not entirely clear what. I’m not talking about a meal that’s poorly cooked, or a server who might be planning your murder—that sort of thing happens in the fat lump of the bell curve of bad. Instead, I’m talking about the long tail stuff – the sort of meals that make you feel as though...

Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, and it appears he's already failing on his promise not to turn Twitter into a 'free-for-all hellscape.' But, I'm not here to talk about his policy blunders. That's a story for another day. No, I'm here to predict that Twitter, the site, will soon crash. And, once it fails, it won't be coming up for a while.Also: Ditching Twitter? How to get started with MastodonWhy? Simple. You can't lay off half of the staff of a cloud-based social network and expect things to keep running smoothly for Twitter's 450 million monthly active users. Indeed,...

Early this Sunday morning, Americans will engage in the annual autumnal ritual of “falling back” — setting their clocks back one hour to conform with standard time.If some lawmakers had their way, it would mark the end of a tradition that has stretched for more than a century. But a familiar story unspooled of congressional gridlock and a relentless lobbying campaign, this one from advocates that some jokingly call “Big Sleep.” “I know that the permanent standard time people and the permanent daylight saving time people will be disappointed because they didn’t get what they wanted, and we will be...

Ubuntu has once again sparked debate among Linux users by implementing a very controversial approach – using the most often used shell command, notably the software update tool, to advertise its service.But first, let me explain what this is all about.Ubuntu Pro Ad in Command ShellCanonical has recently launched a fantastic initiative – a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription for up to five machines. In other words, they opened up its previously paid-for Ubuntu Pro update service free of charge.So far, so good. The news flooded the Internet, well received by all users. And everything would have been perfect if...

A standalone Command and Control (C2) server called “Alchimist” was recently discovered by Cisco Talos. The framework has been designed to run attacks via standalone GoLang-based executables that can be distributed easily. The framework found by Talos contains both the whole web user interface and the payloads.GoLang-written frameworkGo programming language, also known as GoLang, becomes increasingly popular for developers looking to compile their code on multiple different systems and architecture. As an example, we recently wrote about the Sliver offensive framework, fully written in Go. It is therefore no wonder that more cybercriminals are also adopting it.Alchimist, whose name has...

Google is planning to offer much faster broadband speeds in the US areas where it operates its fiber networks, all the way to 100Gbps.Google Fiber, part of the Access division of the search giant's parent company, Alphabet, currently provides a 1Gbps service, and began upgrading its speed in 2021 with the introduction of a 2Gbps product offering downstream bandwidth of 2Gbps and upstream bandwidth of 1Gbps for $100 a month.That comes up against AT&T Fiber's similar tier at $110, Verizon Fios and Ziply Fiber's 120 plans, and Frontier's Fiber 2-gig is $150, although, of course, Google's $100 pricing may not...

Updated Every four years, the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) stages a Plenipotentiary Conference at which member states decide how the organization will steer the development of communications technologies. The event is usually only of interest to telco and policy wonks.But this year's event has become a geopolitical football – and possibly a turning point for internet governance – thanks to the two candidates running in an election for the position of ITU secretary-general.The US has put forward Doreen Bogdan-Martin for the gig. She's an ITU veteran with years of experience working with global telecoms regulators. She also believes...

The state of Virginia has over a third of America's hyperscale datacenter capacity, and this amounts to more than the entire capacity of China or the whole of Europe, highlighting just how much infrastructure is concentrated along the so-called Datacenter Alley.These figures come from Synergy Research Group, which said that the US accounts for 53 percent of global hyperscale datacenter capacity, as measured by critical IT load, at the end of the second quarter of 2022. The remainder is relatively evenly split between China, Europe, and the rest of the world.While few would be surprised at the US accounting for...

California lawmakers passed a bill that aims to promote pay equity by requiring employers to post salary ranges with job listings in the state.The bill, SB 1162, "would require an employer with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale for a position in any job posting." It also would require companies to include median and mean hourly rates for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category in their pay data reports to the state.The legislation will become law in California if Governor Gavin Newsom signs the bill before September 30, 2022. Newsom has not...

Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Gordon Chang joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss concerns surrounding heightened tension between China and Taiwan and what signals the beginning of the next global war.

Today is August 25th in many parts of the world, which means that Linux is turning 31 years old, so join me in celebrating Linux’s 31st birthday with a glass of good champagne and a delicious cake!While some don’t recognize August 25th as Linux’s birthday, I do. It was on August 25th, 1991, when 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds made his now-famous announcement on the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he’s working on a free operating system for 386(486) AT clones, just as a “hobby.”Hello everybody out there using minix –I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be...

Linux is a far cry from the esoteric bundles of code it once was, and the number of polished distros offering variants for Windows, OS X and Ubuntu, is testament to that.Also read:What is Void Linux and How to Install ItCustomization: Arch LinuxArch Linux has grown to become one of the leading Linux distros since its launch in 2002. The distro is very minimal in its default state but offers an unbridled level of customization for the more experienced user.There’s no default desktop environment, so you can choose and install one that’s best suited to your personal tastes and the...

There are five most famous and usable operating systems – Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple macOS, Android, and Apple’s iOS. However, no matter what OS was chosen, more users started to think about their safety. Safety for everybody includes different parameters such as anonymity, no tracking by Third Parties, no leaking of personal data, no danger of virus/worms catching, no harmful advertisements, and no eavesdropping. Some advice for protection includes two-factor authentication, usage of high-quality long, not repeated passwords, usage of antivirus programs, and avoidance of phishing emails and links. But there are also existing other smart protection methods using special...

US Commerce Department can make all the noise it wants about limiting tech exports to China, but it is reportedly doing little to actual stem the flow of components and equipment.The Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday that efforts by Uncle Sam to prevent key technologies from falling into the hands of rogue foreign powers — China in particular – may not be having the intended effect. In all, 2,652 export licenses for restricted tech to China were granted by the Commerce Dept in 2020, 94 percent of the total requested.The newspaper reported that of the $125 billion in exports...

Twitter is both reviving and improving its election misinformation strategy ahead of the 2022 US midterms. The social network has reactivated enforcement of its Civic Integrity Policy to prepare for the vote, and there are a handful of upgrades in store this year. To begin, it will avoid recommending misleading tweets through notifications — falsehoods might not spread as much as in the past. The company is considering this approach for "other surfaces," too. You should also see redesigned fact-check labels that are better at prompting people to read. Twitter first tested these labels in late 2021.Other efforts will be...

I've been preaching the gospel of the Linux desktop for more years than some of you have been alive. However, unless you argue that the Linux desktop includes Android smartphones and ChromeOS laptops, there will be no year of the Linux desktop. But there should be. For example, as GitLab recently revealed in its onboarding document for employees, staffers can run macOS, and they can run Linux on their desktops. But Windows? Forget about it!Why? GitLab explained: "Due to Microsoft Windows' dominance in desktop operating systems, Windows is the platform most targeted by spyware, viruses, and ransomware."Today's Windows is still...