Free Republic

"This is America, where racism is the No1 value our populace seeks to uphold above all others."... This is the kind of sentiment you used to only hear in faculty lounges, freshman dormitories and left-wing struggle sessions. But times are changing. These are the words not of some blue-haired student, but of Jack Krawczyk, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures. Krawczyk is the senior director of product management for Gemini, Google’s main group of artificial-intelligence models. Krawczyk, who tweeted that in 2018, was the person primarily responsible for the implosion of the obscenely woke Google Gemini AI last month....

Auto makers and Silicon Valley are locked in a fight to control the dashboard display... The current state of play is a confused free-for-all as the two industries circle each other warily. Some car makers are turning over their dashboard operating systems to Alphabet’s Google entirely. Others, including Ford Motor Co. and Daimler AG , wager they can muster the technological chops to compete... With his wife’s 2016 Mazda CX-5, he can’t figure out how to turn off the radio. “We can turn it down,” he said. “But off is apparently a complex process we haven’t been able to figure...

Politicians in Washington aren’t going to care much right now about a movie depicting the short life of a Christian girl, according to film producer Chuck Howard. But that’s not going to stop the Nashville resident from trying to motivate lawmakers to take on Google and dismantle what he says has become a biased media monopoly. ... faith-based film “I’m Not Ashamed,” .. film’s trailer garnered over 5 million views before YouTube removed the channel nearly a year ago. The channel was recently reinstated after The Hollywood Reporter contacted YouTube about the incident. However, the channel was hit with a...

Google slow to respond. A Polish security firm has discovered more vulnerabilities in the Java coding platform used on Google's App Engine (GAE) cloud computing service, which could allow users to get access beyond their own virtual machines. The Security Explorations team, which has made a name for itself by unearthing large numbers of security holes in Oracle's Java framework over the past few years, said it had reported seven vulnerabilities to Google, along with proof of concept code. Three of the flaws allow complete bypass of the GAE Java security sandbox. Such a bypass could be used by attackers...

Pay-TV providers like Verizon and tech giants like Microsoft are developing devices that can monitor our behaviors as we watch TV and play games. “Watching the watchers” is taking on a whole new meaning. News that Google .. may be developing a television set-top box with a motion sensor and video camera has rekindled the debate over technology that can record so-called ambient action. Should a TV-mounted box have the ability to track our movements, record our voices and monitor our behaviors? Should cable providers and tech companies be allowed to collect such information without our consent? Lawmakers and privacy...

Monitoring hundreds of millions of phone records is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance." How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few...

For the last two months, you've seen some version of the same story all over the Internet: Delete your search history before Google's new privacy settings take effect. A straightforward piece outlining a rudimentary technique, but also evidence that the search titan has a serious trust problem on its hands. ... It's not surprising that the tracking debate had people up in arms. A Pew Internet study, conducted just before Google combined its privacy policies (and after it rolled out personalized search results in Search Plus Your World) found that three quarters of people don't want their search results tracked,...

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a group that advocates for a smaller and more ethical government, wrote to leaders of the House Oversight Committee this month urging them to investigate a major privacy breach by Google. It wants to know if the company's ties to the administration helped it dodge penalties after the incident. The group also urges a look at Google's ties to the administration more generally, pointing to what it calls "a growing body of evidence" that shows the administration's "unusually close relationship with Google has resulted in favoritism towards the company on federal policy issues."...

Ever since Google unveiled its new search function, hackers have been compiling a list of banned words, including Latina and “meats.” Brian Ries talks to some of the blacklisted. Somewhere hidden deep within Google’s massive cache of servers, there is a blacklist unlike any other. For starters, it contains enough sexually suggestive terms to make any 15-year-old boy’s head explode. But there are also some unexpected words, like, say, Latina. And hidden from public view, the official version will never see the light of day. But over the past few weeks, a group of hackers in New York City has...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt really has a knack for expressing relatively benign ideas in a way that makes him and his company look incredibly creepy... " With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about. "

Google has become the main advocate in Washington for a set of regulations to prevent internet service providers favouring particular companies’ traffic. However, that campaign, over what is known as “net neutrality”, has handed a gift to its own detractors. This year, “search neutrality” has become the rallying cry of activists who believe that Google has too much power to decide which internet sites are granted the attention that comes with a high search ranking, and which are consigned to outer darkness. After regulating the “pipes” of the internet with net neutrality, says Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall...

The map, which demonstrates the devastating effects of global warming in just a century, shows how San Francisco Airport would be completely underwater if sea levels were to rise by ...60in. The coastline on the map was also coloured, highlighting how nearly half a million Californians are at risk from rising sea levels. The map, named CalAdapt, which was revealed at a press conference on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay by Mr Schwarzenegger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was created as part of a plan for the state to adapt to global warming. 'Within a century, Treasure Island, this...

What was that we were hearing a few days ago from Google about the importance of free speech, protection from tyranny, etc.? We take it that this moral crusade doesn't include support for a free press. "An attorney for Google and YouTube indicated today that the Web giants may call a prominent tech reporter to the witness stand in an effort to reveal who leaked the journalist confidential documents from the ongoing Viacom and Premier League copyright cases." the enormously public stance and actions Google is taking right now to protest censorship and government control over the media in China,...

In late 2007, Norwegian browser maker Opera filed an anti-trust suit with the European Commission accusing Microsoft of unfair practices by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows... Google’s VP of product management Sundar Pichai announced that his company would be participating as a third-party ... Google no doubt thinks this is a smart strategic move, both because it adds extra muscle to a smackdown of its chief competitor — and, in the process, sucks up to the always dangerous European Commission. But I predict that Google will come to regret this move. Why? Because for the last three years, on my...

A simple tool lets you opt out of advertising programs that track your Web clicks. Hundreds of thousands of Web sites show ads provided by Google, such as those little text ads that offer you everything from diets to dog training. Now Google has announced plans to track your clicks across all these sites, and then serve up ads personalized to your tastes... As Big Brother as it sounds, this is actually something that many advertising companies already do. But don't worry: There's a way to stop Google--and all the others--from prying. Although it isn't well-publicized, many other Internet advertisers...

Privacy International, a human rights research organization, completed a six-month investigation of privacy practices for 23 Internet companies. Results of the consultation report were published this week, and the final report will be published in September. Privacy International is soliciting additional comments on the findings before it publishes the more detailed report. The data used for the consultation report provides a strong indication of which companies rank best to worst for their privacy practices. Google ranked at the very bottom of the list primarily because the research showed numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that "go well...

While trying to find a nativity image for my last post before Christmas, I did an search for "baby jesus" on Google. This is the result. Notice that the top search result is for a sex toy that mocks Jesus. Other results on this search results page have more link traffic. A quick review of page's code shows no HTML meta information that should give it a favorable ranking. The page itself has a raw relevance ranking (search word divided by total words) of less than five percent. The only conclusion I can draw is that this page position ranking...

(Column) - After much speculation, Google has lastly released an online word processor, and assuming Google continues to dominate in the near future, I suspect an online version of Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Publisher is on the horizon. While Google’s attempt to dominate its presence continues, it would have a troubling time succeeding with an online office suite for good many reasons. Upstartle, makers of the online word processor Writely that Google acquired to kickstart its web applications suite, is not nearly as feature rich as Microsoft Word (or OpenOffice.org). While many users may not utilize the application’s entire functionality,...

As you’ve noticed, the http://texasrainmaker.blogspot.com site has been down since yesterday. Since this is becoming a routine for Blogger, I have decided to move the site permanently. Please pardon the mess as I continue making this site look a little better.

Web Site Files Complaint Against Google Mar 17 6:36 PM US/Eastern By MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Business Writer SAN FRANCISCO Google Inc.'s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack Friday in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from its index. The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google's Internet-leading search engine since January 2001. KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about...