Free Republic

The U.S. government is keen on internet freedom… but only in countries it doesn’t like. This September, the U.S invested another $10 million toward helping activists in authoritarian regimes circumvent state censorship of the internet. But the goverment’s attitude to web freedom within its own borders suggests that what it wants for its enemies may not necessarily be what it wants for itself.

Ten years ago, if you wanted to offend people using the internet, you had to send annoying email forwards to all of your contacts. These days, however, it's as easy as getting on Facebook and broadcasting your worst self for the entire world to see. The ways to be off-putting on Facebook are endless — God only knows how many people I’ve offended over the years. So if you’re looking to make some new Facebook frenemies, you can count on a handful of repeat offenses to do the trick, starting with this one: 1. Post flattering bathroom selfies. Listen, I...

If you think the image above looks frightening, you’re right. The crazy contraption pictured in the image is the first portable railgun, a futuristic projectile launcher associated most commonly with the military or NASA. The man in the image above isn’t in the military, and he’s not a NASA engineer. Instead, he’s a civilian who used some engineering smarts, some widely available parts and a 3D printer to create a functioning weapon that can fire graphite, aluminum, tungsten and even plasma projectiles at speeds of more than 560 mph. And then there’s the best part: There are videos of this...

Why We Need Swarms Of Autonomous Drones by ClaudiaR 12/10/2015 Most drones fly high above the terrain, connected to their human operators, alone, one by one for now. The main beneficiary of this semi-unmanned technology has been the army so far. Fly alone, identify the target, controlled from the center the get the green light to launch the missile. The autonomous drone of the future are independent and no longer alone, instead, fly and swim in groups. Just like locusts, we’ll have swarms of drones, communicating to each other and surrounding environment, like a mobile network of connected robots. Passed...

A forthcoming report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of China’s space-weapons programs, dubbed counterspace arms, that are aimed at destroying or jamming U.S. satellites and limiting American combat operations around the world. “China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons,” a late draft of the commission’s annual report states. “China’s nuclear arsenal also provides an inherent anti-satellite capability.”

If you are one of the many long-suffering people who have gone for a coffee break and come back to a computer screen full of gibberish or a crashed system, PawSense is for you! "PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard" is how BitBoost described the product. Chris Niswander, a graduate in computer science from Arizona State University, is the creator of this path-breaking product. "One day, my sister's cat, Amos, walked across her computer keyboard...

Thanks to Adrian Ashfield for sharing this information with me who tells me this information comes from the research notes of Louis F. DeChiaro, Ph.D, a physicist with the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Dahlgren Warfare Center. I am told this text has been cleared for public dissemination. As for duplicating the Pons and Fleischmann results, we now have a much better understanding of the phenomenon, and the list of prerequisite conditions is rather lengthy. Failure to meet even one of those conditions results in zero excess energy output. The data suggest that there may be more than one...

If Earth didn’t have an atmosphere, then, when the moon was entirely eclipsed within Earth’s shadow, the moon would would appear dark … During a lunar eclipse, you’ll see the Earth’s shadow creeping across the moon’s face. The shadow will appear dark, like a bite taken out of a cookie, until the shadow completely covers the moon. Then, during the breathtaking time of totality, the shadow on the moon’s face often suddenly changes. Instead of dark, it appears red. Why? The reason stems from the air we breathe. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth lies directly between the sun...

In the wake of the VW diesel scandal, German magazine Autobild found the Euro-market BMW X3 xDrive 20d also exceeds emissions limits by a significant amount. Volkswagen's unfolding diesel emissions crisis may prove to involve other automakers as well: German magazine Autobild reports that ​a German-market, diesel-powered BMW X3 xDrive 20d put out 11 times the legal limit of pollution in a test commissioned by the magazine. (Update below) Automotive News, which translated the Autobild report, explains that the BMW was tested by the International Council on Clean Transportation, the same group whose findings led U.S. regulators to investigate Volkswagen's...

http://www.techsecurityupdate.com/avg-to-flog-your-web-browsing-search-history-from-mid-october/ AVG to flog your web browsing, search history from mid-October September 21, 2015 John Leyden Uncategorized Comments Off Your secrets sold to advertisers Changes in the privacy policy of AVG's free antivirus doodad will allow it to collect your web browsing and search history – and sell it to advertisers to bankroll its freemium security software products.…

Due to military activities, the TCAS and ADS-B surveillance may be unreliable in the airspace over Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and extending approximately 200 nautical miles offshore, from 1 a.m. EDT (0500z) Sept. 2 until midnight EDT (0459z) on Oct. 1. Pilots are advised that the traffic alert and TCAS may fail to establish tracks on nearby aircraft and may fail to receive traffic alerts (TA) or resolution advisories (RA). Operators should be aware that tracks may first appear within close proximity to their aircraft, and may immediately go into TA/RA status. Pilots are advised to...

Samsung unveils 2.5-inch 16TB SSD: The world’s largest hard drive Third-generation 3D V-NAND is now up to 48 TLC layers and 256Gbit per die. by Sebastian Anthony - Aug 13, 2015 9:16pm JST At the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung has unveiled what appears to be the world's largest hard drive—and somewhat surprisingly, it uses NAND flash chips rather than spinning platters. The rather boringly named PM1633a, which is being targeted at the enterprise market, manages to cram almost 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package. By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital...

Internet lowlives who used Yahoo! ads to infect potentially countless PCs with malware have struck again – using adverts on popular websites to reach millions more people. Security researchers at MalwareBytes this week discovered the crooks running another massive campaign of ads that use the Angler Exploit Kit to infiltrate Windows PCs via vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and web browsers. Prominent websites including the Drudge Report and Weather.com – a pair of sites whose total traffic alone amounts to nearly 200 million visits per month – were apparently inadvertently carrying the ads, putting millions of netizens at risk.

Apple is reportedly working on a fix to eradicate a dangerous bug that could allow unauthorised users access to Mac OS X Yosemite machines. The Guardian’s sources say Apple will release a security update to wipe out the so-called "zero day" DYLD bug as soon as possible. The “privilege escalation” bug potentially allows third parties to gain administrator access to a Mac without a password. The fix for Mac OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite will arrive shortly, ending worries that the vulnerability wouldn't be plugged before the next version, El Capitan, comes this autumn. In the meantime, the paper says Apple...

It’s Black Hat season, meaning that we are getting a new batch of zero-day exploits showing how insecure our gadgets are. Xeno Kovah and Trammell Hudson found a serious zero-day vulnerability in OS X letting malware creators completely brick your Mac without any way to reset it to its factory status. Apple told The Guardian that it is working on a fix for both Yosemite and El Capitan. This zero-day exploit dubbed Thunderstrike 2 targets your Mac’s firmware thanks to an attached Thunderbolt accessory, such as an Ethernet adaptor or an external hard drive. After receiving the code via a...

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The dream of a free and open Internet is slowly being killed by overregulation, censorship and bad laws that don't stop the right people, a top computer crime defense lawyer says.

New jet could cut flight time from London to New York to just one hour The new jet could fly from London to New York in an hour - opening up the possibility of a transatlantic return journey in a day. Concorde 2 would be capable of flying more than four times the speed of sound – or more than 2,500mph, according to documents lodged with the US Patent Office by the aerospace and defence group The filings refer to an “ultra-rapid air vehicle” and “method of aerial locomotion” for the aircraft, which would cruise at an altitude of more...

Here's a quick FYI: if you installed Windows 10, and in a rush to try out Microsoft's new operating system, you clicked through the default settings without looking, you may want to look again. ... There's a handy guide here to the settings you need to look out for during the install and afterwards.

How your smartphone's battery life can be used to invade your privacy A group of researchers have demonstrated how to track users with nothing more than their remaining battery power, which could compromise privacy Alex Hern Tuesday 4 August 2015 08.18 BST A little-known feature of the HTML5 specification means that websites can find out how much battery power a visitor has left on their laptop or smartphone – and now, security researchers have warned that that information can be used to track browsers online. The battery status API is currently supported in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, and...

Leggy ROBOT INSECT WALKS on WATER before flawlessly LEAPING OFF Artificial system replicates biological movement 1 Aug 2015 at 14:20, Kelly Fiveash Vid Scientists have created a leggy microrobot that mimics the actions of a water strider. They wanted to replicate the movement of the semi-aquatic insects to try to have a better understanding of how they are able to jump from watery surfaces with the same amount of force and height as a leap from rigid ground. Boffins from Seoul National University, Korea (SNU), Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and...