Free Republic

Still using email? You might already be behind the curve. Despite the fact that the Defense Department is well into a broad transition to defense enterprise email – with the Army fully migrated, the Air Force partially moved and several Pentagon executive offices on board – at least one top defense official believes email is on its way out. However, that does not mean it’s already known what comes after email. “I’m not sure what the medium is going to be, that’s what we’ve got to build now,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronnie Hawkins, director of the Defense Information...

Scientists in the Philippines have discovered a plant that can absorb large amounts of metal without itself being poisoned, a species called the Rinorea niccolifera, that can be used to clean up polluted soils and harvest commercially viable metals. The plant is one of only 450 species, known as hyperaccumulator plants, of 300,000 known vascular plants that can absorb significant amounts of metal though their roots. The lead researcher and author of a new study on the plant, Professor Edwino Fernando, from the University of the Philippines, said the leaves of the Rinorea niccolifera can absorb up to 18,000 parts...

In the Gilded Age, wrenching economic and technological change hardened life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prospered. Innovators like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt disrupted old industries, creating news ones, and cemented their fortunes via government-approved monopolies. The most pernicious of these were railroad trusts. In our times, wrenching economic and technological change hardens life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prosper. Innovators like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg disrupt old industries, create news ones and ….

Internet application and content companies, what some refer to as “edge providers,” are increasingly concerned by the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) newfound ability to regulate the Internet, and rightfully so.

A computer expert from eastern Germany claims to have hacked the homepage of the US National Security Agency (NSA), leaving a message on the site for American security experts. Matthias Ungethüm from Saxony said on Friday he had replaced the NSA slogan “Codebreakers and Codemakers” with the German phrase “Durchleuchten Sie Ihre Homepage”—“Examine your homepage" on the website of America’s security agency. …

The White House has asked legislators crafting competing reforms of the National Security Agency to provide legal immunity for telecommunications firms that provide the government with customer data, the Guardian has learned. In a statement of principles privately delivered to lawmakers some weeks ago to guide surveillance reforms, the White House said it wanted legislation protecting “any person who complies in good faith with an order to produce records” from legal liability for complying with court orders for phone records to the government once the NSA no longer collects the data in bulk. The brief request, contained in a four-page...

Graphene trilayers can be stacked in two different configurations, which can occur naturally in the same flake. They are separated by a sharp boundary. (Image: Pablo San-Jose ICMM-CSI) A team of researchers has discovered how to change the crystal structure of graphene, a finding that could lead to smaller and faster microprocessors.A University of Arizona-led team of physicists has discovered how to change the crystal structure of graphene, more commonly known as pencil lead, with an electric field, an important step toward the possible use of graphene in microprocessors that would be smaller and faster than current, silicon-based technology.Graphene consists...

This is an advance notification for one out-of-band security bulletin that Microsoft is intending to release on May 1, 2014. The bulletin addresses the security vulnerability in Internet Explorer described in Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983.

Apple has determined that the sleep/wake button mechanism on a small percentage of iPhone 5 models may stop working or work intermittently. iPhone 5 models manufactured through March 2013 may be affected by this issue. Apple will replace the sleep/wake button mechanism, free of charge, on iPhone 5 models that exhibit this issue and have a qualifying serial number. The sleep/wake button is located on the top of your iPhone 5:

Technological change is not a tide that lifts all boats in our economy. The truth is that it’s more like a tsunami. It threatens to overturn all the boats and drown their occupants, sparing only the lucky few who have already reached safety in the hills. That’s the kind of admission you won’t often see here in the pages of Xconomy. The X in our name, after all, stands for exponential, a reference to the stunning pace of technological progress and economic growth over the past 75 years—growth attributable largely to advances in computer hardware and software and the organizational...

After weeks of deliberation, a committee is poised to make a final recommendation Thursday on what to do with Oregon’s botched health insurance exchange portal. The technology committee will decide whether Cover Oregon should ditch its glitch-filled website and replace it with the federal government’s health insurance marketplace, or try to fix the existing system with the help of a new IT contractor. The decision comes nearly seven months after Oregon’s exchange was supposed to go live so that residents could use it to compare and buy health insurance plans. Cover Oregon’s website is seen as the worst of the...

The founder of Russia’s leading social media network—a wunderkind often described as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg—has left his post as CEO and fled the country as cronies of President Vladimir Putin have made steady inroads into the company’s ownership. The slow-motion ouster of Pavel Durov from the network known as VKontakte, or “In Contact,” is the latest sign that independent media outlets in Russia have become increasingly imperiled. Although months in the making, the loss of Durov’s leadership in VKontakte means that the space for free speech on the Russian web could shrink even further. …

Usually, the Internal Revenue Service is the one getting paid this time of year, but Uncle Sam will be lining someone else's pockets this tax season because of its attachment to Windows XP. In case you hadn't heard, support for XP officially stopped on April 8th, meaning that Microsoft will no longer provide support or security updates for the venerable OS. However, governmental computers can't be left vulnerable, so the IRS will be paying Microsoft millions of dollars for custom support to keep their machines secure and functional. Right now, over half the agency's PCs still run XP...

Researchers have uncovered an extremely critical vulnerability in recent versions of OpenSSL, a technology that allows millions of Web sites to encrypt communications with visitors. Complicating matters further is the release of a simple exploit that can be used to steal usernames and passwords from vulnerable sites, as well as private keys that sites use to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data.

One in every three computers users could be in major trouble Tuesday, and they won't be getting any help. Microsoft is dropping its support of its operating system Windows XP. This means there will be no security updates to fend off hackers. The news gets worse. According to a CNN-Money report, 95 percent of all ATM's use Windows XP, which ATM's can be a prime target for hackers. Banking giant JP Morgan bought a one-year extension of service so Chase Banks could still run Windows XP in their ATM's and still be covered. All of the big banks should be...

Optical scientists at the University of Arizona and University of Central Florida have developed a new type of laser technology capable of sending high-intensity beams through the atmosphere much farther than what was previously possible. The research, which was recently published in the journal Nature Photonics, is still in the laboratory phase. However, with further development, this technology could be used to divert lightning bolts away from buildings in the future. Here’s how that works. When the laser is fired, the high intensity beam leaves a channel of plasma (ionized molecules stripped of their electrons) in its wake. This column...

The Saturn moon Enceladus harbors a big ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust that may be capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study reports. The water ocean on Enceladus is about 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep and lies beneath a shell of ice 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 km) thick, researchers said. Further, it's in direct contact with a rocky seafloor, theoretically making possible all kinds of complex chemical reactions — such as, perhaps, the kind that led to the rise of life on Earth. "The main implication is that there are...

A new bill to mandate labeling of genetically altered food gets history and science all wrong.Last week, in a victory for California’s radical anti-technology minority, S.B. 131 passed the state’s senate Health Committee by a vote of five to two. This misguided piece of legislation, introduced by state senator Noreen Evans, would require that “any food, except as provided, offered for retail sale in the state be considered misbranded if it is entirely or partially genetically engineered, as defined, and that fact is not disclosed in a specified manner.” In other words, it would require a label to inform consumers...

A new report suggests bigger isn’t better, when it comes to watching television programming. Deloitte found that Millennials rather watch movies and television shows on computers, smartphones, and tablets. These details were recently published in the firm’s annual Digital Democracy Survey. Those between the ages of 14 and 24 only watch TV shows on an actual television set 44 percent of the time. Thirty-two percent of the time, TV shows are consumed on a desktop or laptop. Smartphones and tablets make up another 16 percent, while gaming devices are used 8 percent. This is the first time computers, smartphones, and...

Jobs's Ultimatum: Lay Out a Vision Fast or Lose the Project In February 2005, Apple Inc.'s then chief executive, Steve Jobs, gave senior software engineer Greg Christie an ultimatum. Mr. Christie's team had been struggling for months to lay out the software vision for what would become the iPhone as well as how the parts would work together. Now, Mr. Jobs said the team had two weeks or he would assign the project to another group. "Steve had pretty much had it," said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple's user-interface team. "He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts." Mr. Christie's...