Free Republic

She dodged legitimate accusations, parried accusations that were never in play, and coolly laid out a defense that you could boil down to five words: "Trust me, I'm a Clinton."

Privacy seems like such a quaint 20th Century concept, doesn’t it? Unbox Therapy has posted a video of the CX-10 Mini Drone, which is described as the world’s smallest drone and is a definite harbinger of things to come. In other words, it looks like privacy is finally toast. The good news with this particular drone is that Unbox Therapy says you’ll have to fly it indoors since it’s so small and light that a good gust of wind could blow it down. This means that you can’t use it to secretly peep on into your neighbor’s window, for instance,...

BOSTON (CBS) – There’s little question that blue eyes, for whatever reason, are considered an attractive facial feature, and only 17% of the world’s population has them. The vast majority of us have brown eyes. But apparently, for the right price, you, too, can have blue eyes. The only way to change your eye color has been to wear colored contact lenses, but now there’s a new procedure that change brown eyes to blue. According to ophthalmologists, we all have blue eyes below our brown eyes, under a thin layer of pigment. A California company has now developed a laser...

On March 19, the world's largest company will join the world's most famous stock index, replacing AT&T. According to Dow Jones, "a stock typically is added only if the company has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth, and is of interest to a large number of investors," and so on some level, Dow Jones is reaffirming Apple's corporate reputation with this addition. Following Friday's announcement, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told Bloomberg Radio that Apple's inclusion was a "historic moment." It also just makes sense: Apple's market cap is over $750 billion, making it about twice as big as the...

Lockheed Martin turned up the heat on its laser weapon technology and destroyed a truck from one mile away. The Maryland-based company’s test of the ATHENA laser weapon was the highest power ever recorded of a laser weapon of its type. The Advanced Test High Energy Asset’s March 3 test destroyed its target in a “matter of seconds,” the company said in a statement. An image of the smoking vehicle accompanied its announcement. “This test represents the next step to providing lightweight and rugged laser weapon systems for military aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks,” said Keoki Jackson, chief technology officer...

Loosely referencing Smartflash’s dubious moniker as a patent troll, Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said “Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system.” Speaking to Bloomberg about the decision, Rutgers University law professor Michael Carrier said “This award won’t hold up. If there’s a large verdict in the...

A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to see changes that could narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday. Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of his provisions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said. The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down. It’s an ironic spot for...

The Internet is lighting up with warnings about Superfish, an adware program that came preinstalled on many Lenovo laptops in the past six months. Like a lot of the bloatware that comes on new computers, Superfish exists to help push advertising, not to serve any real consumer need. That would be annoying enough, but Superfish seriously undermines the user's safety, according to many security experts. Superfish is a piece of third-party software that Lenovo installed to, as it says in its apology to consumers, “enhance the shopping experience.” That means it's meant to help advertisers target potential customers. But security...

After years of fence-sitting, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has come down strongly in favor of Net neutrality, which in some sense must mean the equal treatment of all Internet data packets. The FCC plans to vote on a proposal on 26 February. -snip- “There’s a lot of complexity here at a technical level that is absolutely lost in the policy conversations,” says Fred Baker, a distinguished engineering fellow at Cisco Systems and former chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force. Getting the technology right is crucial for the future of the Net. -snip- Engineers decided that the best way to...

President Obama talked a surprising amount of common sense on his trip last week to Silicon Valley, where he spoke at a "cybersecurity" gathering at Stanford University. But he undermined some noteworthy remarks about strong encryption--we need it, he said--with the kind of fear-monger hedging that has become almost every politician's refuge from telling the hard truth.... The first was Obama's clear statement that he, personally, favors ubiquitous strong encryption. He thinks everyone should use it but hedges that by saying law enforcement needs a way to break into communications and data.... [W]e need leaders who'll tell the truth--that we...

Cyberspace is the new “Wild West,” President Barack Obama said Friday, with everyone looking to the government to be the sheriff. But he told the private sector it must do more to stop cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. every day. “Everybody is online, and everybody is vulnerable,” Obama said during a White House cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, just miles from Google, Facebook, Intel and other internet giants. “The business leaders here want their privacy and their children protected, just like the consumer and privacy advocates here want America to keep leading the world in technology and be safe...

Apple is recruiting experts in automotive technology and vehicle design to work at a new top-secret research lab, said several people familiar with the company, pointing to ambitions that go beyond the dashboard. Dozens of Apple employees, led by experienced managers from its iPhone unit, are researching automotive products at a confidential Silicon Valley location outside the company’s Cupertino campus, the people said. Sir Jonathan Ive’s team of Apple designers has held regular meetings with automotive executives and engineers in recent months, in some cases trying to hire them. Recent recruits to Apple’s team include the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon...

Newsweek’s Twitter account was hacked Tuesday morning by a group describing itself as “CyberCaliphate,” the latest in a series of high-profile hacks by apparent cyber jihadists. During the 14-minute hack, the group praised “cyber jihad” and threatened Michelle Obama and her family. “Bloody #Valentine’s Day Michelle Obama! We’re watching you, your girls, and your husband!” it tweeted, via the @Newsweek account. […] The hackers briefly changed the account’s profile picture and banner to an image of a masked man and the black standard that is the symbol of the terror organization. The profile also bore the message “Je suIS IS.”...

Why worry about Big Brother? It's your big Samsung TV that's watching you. Oh, and listening to you. That seems to be the conclusion from reading the privacy small print offered by the company. (Samsung's motto: TV has never been this smart.) It concerns the voice-recognition feature, vital for everyone who finds pressing a few buttons on their remote far too tiresome. The wording, first spotted by the Daily Beast, first informs you that the company may "capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features." This...

AUSTIN — Elon Musk is the successful inventor who played a role in the creation of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In 2013, he made national headlines by proposing an air-tube transit system. Called Hyperloop, it was essentially a futuristic-looking train that traveled through a pressurized tube similar the ones you use at the drive-through of your local bank. As described by CNN, the Hyperloop would be powered by “a series of electric motors.” Solar panels on the top of the tube would provide the energy necessary to keep things moving. While the concept may sound bizarre, it’s believed to...

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property.

I’ve already spoken about one of the plays made by Apple and Tim Cook to damage Android. This was the push to 64-bit computing in the iPhone 5S. As that smartphone was announced, the roadmaps for Android devices did not have 64-bit computing planned in the near future. Manufacturers and component suppliers were bounced into making bold claims that they would join Apple in the 64-bit world. They had no choice but to do this. Android’s success was built around the promise of being faster, better, and stronger than its rival OS. If Apple was 64-bit, Android had to be...

Today, it was announced that the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory  (ORNL) in Tennessee is partnering with Canadian nuclear company Terrestrial Energy Inc. (TEI) to assist with TEI’s new Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR). The engineering blueprint stage for this GenIV reactor should be reached in two years. The reactor should come online in less than ten.

Apple delivered the greatest earnings report in history on Tuesday. That's not hyperbole. Apple earned $18 billion in net income over the three-month period of October to December 2014. That's more than any other company has ever earned over a three-month span. Apple earned those mind-melting profits thanks mostly to the iPhone, which is an incredible business. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, up 46% from the year prior. The iPhone generated $51 billion in revenue, giving each iPhone an average selling price of $687.