Free Republic

You may recall, back in June, that there was a key House vote that took NSA supporters by surprise. An amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill pushed by a bi-partisan team of Thomas Massie, Jim Sensenbrenner and Zoe Lofgren passed overwhelmingly, with a plan to slam the door shut on questionable NSA "backdoor searches" (as described in detail earlier). The House voted 293 to 123, making it a pretty clear and overwhelming statement that Congress did not, in fact, support such practices by the NSA. But, of course, the NSA gets the last laugh. As part of the big lameduck...

There's no denying it: Science is cool, and 2014 was no exception. This year, we discovered that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, was shooting geysers out of cracks in its surface. We also found a way to make a teeny, tiny radio that requires no battery. The human race is pushing forward into the final frontier — and also the tiniest frontier. SEE ALSO: 10 YouTube Videos That Prove Science Is Magic Although 2014 was also the year Kim Kardashian's butt broke the internet, let's take some time to remember the actual cool stuff people do...

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI. [...] "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded." But others...

Google has been the target of repeated anti-trust scrutiny in Europe over the last decade. Today’s Financial Times is reporting that the European parliament is on the verge of taking even more drastic steps, preparing a plan that would call for the breakup of the search giant, specifically the “unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services.” […] When asked by Financial Times why a drastic measure like a breakup was necessary, Ramon Tremosa, a Spanish member of the EU parliment who sponsored the motion, said the commission could not “ask the secret of [Google’s] algorithm” and was seeking other...

Leftist speech suppressors are at it again, but this time they’re apparently being subsidized by the American taxpayer. On Monday, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a letter to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF), demanding information about the nearly $1 million spent on the “Truthy” data-mining project that monitors political speech on Twitter.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson warned that he will hold off on many of his company's capital investment plans if uncertainty persists over how the US government will regulate the Internet. "It's prudent to pause," he said at an investor conference Wednesday. "We want to make sure we have line of sight on this process and where these rules could land, and then re-evaluate." The comments come two days after President Obama threw his support behind the idea that broadband services providers should be regulated under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which would treat Internet service providers more like utilities...

Silk Road 2.0 and 400 other sites believed to be selling illegal items including drugs and weapons have been shut down. The sites operated on the Tor network - a part of the internet unreachable via traditional search engines. The joint operation between 16 European countries and the US saw 17 arrests, including Blake Benthall who is said to be behind Silk Road 2.0. Experts believe the shutdown represents a breakthrough for fighting cybercrime. Six Britons were also arrested, including a 20-year-old man from Liverpool, a 19-year-old man from New Waltham, a 30 year-old-man from Cleethorpes and a man and...

For most of the iPhone's lifespan, it's been effectively immune to malware. There were theoretical attacks and viruses targeting jailbroken phones, but thanks to the tight controls of the App Store, finding iOS malware in the wild has been nearly impossible. If you didn't jailbreak your phone and you weren’t targeted by the NSA, you simply didn't have to worry about catching a virus. Yesterday, that changed. A security firm called Palo Alto Networks discovered a malware program they’re calling Wirelurker, which sneaks into computers through unauthorized Chinese apps, then attacks iOS devices when they connect over USB. It’s an...

Owners can check by manufacturer. Here is the list of vehicles released Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Note: The list below corrects the list that accompanied NHTSA's Oct. 20 advisory, which incorrectly included certain vehicles. The numbers cited for potentially affected vehicles below are subject to change and adjustment because there may be cases of vehicles being counted more than once. Owners should check their VIN periodically as manufacturers continue to add VINs to the database. Once owner recall notices are available, owners can retrieve a copy from SaferCar.gov, or will receive one by U.S. mail and...

The new hybrid device might not need humans at all. In college, it wasn’t rare to hear a verbal battle regarding artificial intelligence erupt between my friends studying neuroscience and my friends studying computer science. One rather outrageous fellow would mention the possibility of a computer takeover, and off they went. The neuroscience-savvy would awe at the potential of such hybrid technology as the CS majors argued we have nothing to fear, as computers will always need a programmer to tell them what to do. Today’s news brings us to the Neural Turing Machine, a computer that will combine the...

HP has just revealed a lot more information about the 3D printing technology it teased dramatically a few months ago. It's called "Multi Jet Fusion," and the company thinks it can "change entire industries." The original goal was to make 3D printers build objects at higher resolution and much, much faster, speeds. Based on the demos we saw today, that claim looks feasible. Essentially, the 3D printer builds parts similar to how an inkjet printer produces documents -- the "ink" is applied to a material coating, then heated and fused to build up layers (see below). That's substantially different to...

Tech companies like Apple and Google want to make the data customers carry on their smartphones and computers more secure, safe from the prying eyes of spies and identity thieves alike. But law-enforcement officials--from the FBI to local police--see those same devices as treasure troves of evidence.... "I'd be surprised if more than a handful of members would support the idea of backdooring Americans' personal property," Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and vocal privacy advocate, said.... And a House Democratic aide said that staffers have been in touch with the FBI on the issue but that Congress is unlikely...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xz8xKEFvU/a>

FBI Director James Comey gave a strong speech today (Oct. 16) explaining why law enforcement should have access to data on encrypted smartphones. But he failed to cite any examples in which such law-enforcement access could have made the difference between life and death.... The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994 mandates that telecommunications companies must give police the ability to listen in on telephone conversations. CALEA covers landlines and cellular carriers, and was expanded in 2004 to cover Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and broadband Internet service providers. For the past few years, the FBI...

The six-strikes Copyright Alert System has been active for one and a half years now and warnings are being sent out at an increasing rate. The program will double in size this year, according to its executive director, in the hope that it will eventually change people's norms toward piracy. February last year, five U.S. Internet providers started sending Copyright Alerts to customers who use BitTorrent to pirate movies, TV-shows and music.These efforts are part of the Copyright Alert System, an anti-piracy plan that aims to educate the public. Through a series of warnings suspected pirates are informed that their...

Microsoft Exec: Windows 9 to be Free for Windows 8 Users Microsoft has scheduled a special invite-only event for Tuesday, September 30, 2014, where it is widely expected to introduce the next version of its popular desktop operating system (codenamed “Threshold” but popularly referred to as Windows 9)... According to Indonesian news portal Detik, existing Windows 8 users will be able to upgrade to Microsoft’s next operating system absolutely free of cost. And how exactly do they know this, you ask? Well, Microsoft Indonesia president Andreas Diantoro said so in Jakarta Thursday... ...

Apple’s OS X is vulnerable to the Shellshock bug, but it’s not that easy for attackers to take advantage of it, according to Intego, which specializes in security software for the operating system. Shellshock is the nickname for a flaw in the Bourne Again Shell, or Bash, which is a command-line shell processor widely present in Unix and Linux systems. The flaw in Bash, which has been present for two decades, could allow an attacker to take complete control of a computer. Apple, which plans to patch the flaw, said most users are fine unless they’ve tweaked advanced Unix settings....

Facebook will create thousands of drones the size of jumbo jets which will fly 17 miles above the Earth to provide wireless internet access to the four billion people currently unable to get online.

Medicine deliveries to a pharmacy on a North Sea island will be made by a drone, Deutsche Post announced on Wednesday, in the first project of its kind. It is the first time that an unmanned drone will be used for a practical business purpose in Europe, the company claims. Inhabitants and visitors on the island of Juist, which has a population of fewer than 2,000, will be able to order medicines from the Seehund Pharmacy and have them delivered from the mainland by the drone. …

Full title: Judicial Watch Uncovers HHS Documents Detailing “High Risk” Security Problems with Obamacare Internet Site Less than one month before Healthcare.gov rollout, top Obama administration official highlights risks of malicious code being uploaded into the system through Excel macros; other “high risk” findings (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 94 pages of documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing that in the days leading up to the rollout of Obamacare, top Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officials knew of massive security risks with Healthcare.gov and chose to roll out the...