Free Republic

It was a memorable moment in Pixar’s 2004 classic “The Incredibles,” one that seemed wildly futuristic at the time: Mr. Incredible picks up a wafer-thin tablet computer, and it scans his face to verify his identity before divulging his secret mission. Thirteen years later, many slim phones and tablets unlock with the press of a thumb—and just this sort of mobile facial scanning is on the way. Forget fiddling with passwords or even fingerprints; forget multiple layers of sign-in; forget credit cards and, eventually, even physical keys to our homes and cars. A handful of laptops and mobile devices can...

Reshma Saujani is not a coder but she's empowering "an army of young women" to take on tech's gender gap through her nonprofit Girls Who Code. "I think that this is an opportunity we have to give every single one of our children," Saujani says in a new episode of CNN's Boss Files with Poppy Harlow. "I think the problem is right now, culturally, images that we see are very male. We have to be thoughtful and think about how can we open the door." Through Girls Who Code, Saujani is helping to bridge the opportunity gap for young girls...

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal “outsourcer-in-chief” for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad — to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs.

We spent a great deal of time talking about inequality of opportunity and outcomes. The tech industry is fanatically progressive in its opinions, as the unfortunate James Damore, formerly of Google, recently learned. The tech industry's drivel about diversity and equality masks a guilty conscience: Digital technology creates inequality of a kind we have never seen before in human history. Instead of talking about inequality of outcomes, suppose we talked about inequality of knowledge? Three hundred years ago, pretty much everyone knew how their technology worked. Europe had lived for a millennium on the innovations of the Carolingian Renaissance: the...

Many of the "Tech Gods" were dismayed when Donald Trump - who holds a very different worldview - won the American presidency. But did they actually help him to win? A key insider from the Trump campaign's digital operation - Theresa Wong - unravels for the first time the role played by social media and Facebook's vital role in getting Trump into the White House. Jamie Bartlett learns how Facebook's vast power to persuade was first built for advertisers, combining data about our internet use and psychological insights into how we think. Watch Secret's of Silicon Valley on BBC Two,...

Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- When the Australian government passed its restrictive gun law scheme in 1996, it did not anticipate the technological innovations that would be promoted.Some, like the straight pull FN/Browning Maral, above, are not much different from previous rifles. The British Lee-Enfield had 10 round detachable magazines a hundred and twenty years ago. The Canadian Ross and Swiss K31 rifles both used straight pull bolt actions with five shot magazines. The Maral has small improvements over all three previous rifles.From browning.eu: With all its undeniable experience in making hunting rifles, BROWNING has innovated yet again in the field of straight-pull...

The firing of James Damore over his "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo will empower the tech alt-right. To understand why, imagine yourself as a Republican working at a big Silicon Valley tech company. You agree with Damore that some average differences between men and women probably explain some of why such a high proportion of computer programmers are male. You, however, in no way consider yourself sexist. What Damore's termination tells you is that many in your field consider people with your beliefs to be unfit to work with. They hold opinions of you similar to those of former senior...

Cumulative profits since introduction of iPhone

I made a small note in a previous article about how we shouldn’t worry about technology that displaces human workers: The lamenters don’t seem to understand that increased productivity in one industry frees up resources and laborers for other industries, and, since increased productivity means increased real wages, demand for goods and services will increase as well. They seem to have a nonsensical apocalyptic view of a fully automated future with piles and piles of valuable goods everywhere, but nobody can enjoy them because nobody has a job. I invite the worriers to check out simple supply and demand analysis...

President Trump unveils the new VA Telehealth system to allow Vets to get help from anywhere at anytime using their phones and computers. Includes portable medical units like what is used by government NP's can take to the vets' homes.

Pre-installed Trojan in Cheap Android Devices Steal Data, Intercept Chats Android devices are one of the most vulnerable mobile OS (operating systems) due to its open source nature. But what would a user do if their device is delivered to them with a pre-installed malware? Well, Let’s talk about that. IT security researchers at Dr. Web, a Russian cyber security firm has discovered that a number of Android devices including Leagoo M8, Leagoo M5 Plus, Nomu S20 and Nomu S10 have a malicious program built into the firmware. Dubbed Triada by researchers the Trojan is embedded in the Zygote component’s...

Days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that artificial intelligence (AI) was the biggest risk, Facebook has shut down one of its AI systems after chatbots started speaking in their own language, which used English words but could not be understood by humans.

HHS seeks applications for new health IT committee Would-be members of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee have just a few days to get their applications in to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, as the Aug. 4 deadline approaches HHS is asking for applications for two of the three members it will appoint to the committee, established by the 21st Century Cures Act to recommend policies, standards and other digital health guidance to the ONC. The 21st Century Cures Act stipulates that of the three HHS appointees, one represents HHS and one is a public...

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state is set to study the use of a device known as the "textalyzer" that would allow police to determine whether a motorist involved in a serious crash was texting while driving. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that he would direct the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee to examine the technology, as well as the privacy and constitutional questions it could raise. "Despite laws to ban cellphone use while driving, some motorists still continue to insist on texting behind the wheel — placing themselves and others at substantial risk," Cuomo said in a statement provided...

America’s tech industry is undergoing a serious fall from grace. Once celebrated as the heralds of the future, the originators of new, disruptive business models, and the curators of the bleeding edge of free thought, the industry has since relapsed into defending the Obama-era status quo, relying on corporate welfare, and silencing any thought that doesn’t conform to an increasingly stifling and politically correct San Francisco liberalism. All this, while also often showing an appalling disregard for the rule of law, and for the legitimacy of an American election.Now, libertarian or liberal promoters of the industry may argue that part...

‘Robot drowned’: Twitter baffled by cyborg’s apparent ‘suicide’ (PHOTOS) In another example of internet madness, the ‘death’ of a security robot in a Washington DC office fountain is making waves online. On Monday, news that a Knightscope security robot had fallen into a fountain was relayed on Twitter by Bilal Farooqui. READ MORE: Dubai’s first ‘Robocop’ begins patrolling streets “Our DC office building got a security robot. It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots,” Farooqui said. From there internet denizens chimed in with their own theories, with some mocking and mourning the robot’s fate.

see link in post below .... interesting article

As a savvy reader, you already know that technological change is why the jobs in manufacturing are drifting away from Youngstown, Ohio. You know that most of the drift goes to other American cities, such as Houston or Chattanooga. You know that Appalachian jobs in coal mining are not coming back, because new techniques have permanently cheapened natural gas. You know that the Trump administration's scapegoat, foreign competition, bears little responsibility for any of this. And when foreign encroachment does happen, you know it's good, not bad, for most Americans. Still, many reasonable people fret. Isn't technological unemployment a real...

Terahertz technology enabled via graphene could boost the capacity of future data networks, according to researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Andrei Vorobiev, pictured, senior researcher, said: “One of graphene’s special features is that electrons move much faster than in most semiconductors used today. Thanks to this, we can access the high frequencies that constitute the terahertz range. Data communication then has the potential of becoming up to ten times faster and can transmit much larger amounts of data than is currently possible.” Researchers at Chalmers have shown that graphene based transistor devices could receive and convert terahertz...

Tech companies are creating artificial intelligences to remove spammy comments, trolling and hateful comments. The problems arise from the very design of the AIs from parameters to data sets baking in the biases of the programmers, hard set as the AIs are further trained and enhanced. How will this affect dialogue on the internet? And what are the solutions to it?