Free Republic

Pioneering search engine AltaVista is due to be shut down on 8 July. AltaVista was one of the first search engines to index significant amounts of web content, and proved hugely popular before Google debuted. … AltaVista was launched in 1995 when search engines generally did a poor job of logging information on the web’s rapidly growing population of sites. The search engine was popular because it had indexed about 20 million webpages, far more than any rival at the time. It developed its own “crawler” technology that did the job of finding web pages and logging what was on...

The Washington Post has released four previously unpublished slides from the NSA's PowerPoint presentation on Prism, the top-secret programme that collects data on foreign surveillance targets from the systems of nine participating internet companies. The newly published top-secret documents, which the newspaper has released with some redactions, give further details of how Prism interfaces with the nine companies, which include such giants as Google, Microsoft and Apple. According to annotations to the slides by the Washington Post, the new material shows how the FBI "deploys government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company, such...

Rachel Rose Hartman, a White House reporter for Yahoo! News, couldn’t possibly have missed the “birther” story. It was unavoidable, after all, for an unhealthy chunk of the president’s first term. Yet: In her story yesterday on Obama’s Africa trip, Hartman managed to say that “he won’t be stopping in the country of his birth.” From the context of the story, it’s clear she was referring to Kenya. The Erik Wemple Blog has a number of questions for Yahoo! Newsers: 1) How on earth? 2) Did someone forget that the president of the United States needs to be born in...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has inadvertently exposed 6 million users' phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers over the past year, the world's largest social networking company disclosed late Friday. Facebook blamed the data leaks, which began in 2012, on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information collected from its 1.1 billion users worldwide. As a result of the glitch, Facebook users who downloaded contact data for their list of friends obtained additional information that they were not supposed to have. Facebook's security team was alerted to the bug last week and fixed it...

Among the recent revelations about the NSA was the PRISM program, which tech companies have denied participating in. According to a New York Times report, one of those companies, Yahoo, fought back in 2008 against the government requests on the grounds that it would be unconstitutional — but failed. Thus, the company became part of the program. “The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant,

Admittedly, most people don’t seem to give a toss about PRISM one way or the other. But you should, and not just because certain groups claim that the NSA’s spying could be unconstitutional – there are lots of reasons why the alleged complicity of US tech firms could be bad for America, and no one wants to live in an Orwellian Dystopia, which is what could happen if we never take a stand. So with this in mind, is there any way to avoid the all-encompassing dragnet that the NSA has admitted to running? You bet there is, and today...

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of American customers on an "ongoing, daily basis." Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government's PRISM...

UPDATE: Why Govt. Source leaked PRISMAdditional information is being reported that confirms what most of us have always suspected. NSA is collecting all our email data, tracking our movements, our photographs, our documents, etc. Also factor in the fact that a court recently ruled that Obama is free to collect our DNA without being found guilty of any crime. National Security Agency (NSA) building designed for massive data collection in Utah:WaPo reports the following:The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection...

I am trying to set the "perisistent opt-out" option for my public Yahoo e-mail account - but cannot find the web page to do it. If you reply, PLEASE DO NOT suggest that I switch e-mail providers. I have used Yahoo Mail for over ten years and have over 1000 addresses in my address book. Many are for my blog lists, etc. So, I DO NOT want to switch e-mail providers and have to contact all these people advising of my new e-mail addy. I am looking for someone who ACTUALLY knows how to set the "persistent opt-out" function.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” “We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state...

It looks like Yahoo has offered to buy Tumblr for the sticker-shock price of $1.1 billion. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised, since just a few days ago Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke about the need for the company (YHOO) to be "cool" again. But Yahoo shareholders invest for returns, not for cool. Yahoo employees have a big chunk of their net worth tied to their stock. It may be sexy for Yahoo to buy Tumblr, but will it have a positive return? I believe the answer is no. To be sure, the power of math and corporate finance can build...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks fell hard on Wednesday, retreating after the prior day’s rally amid disappointing results from companies including Bank of America Corp. B. of A. shares slid 4.1% after the lender reported first-quarter earnings below Wall Street’s estimates as its mortgage business weighed. Caterpillar Inc.was down 2.4% after Macquarie downgraded the construction-equipment maker to neutral from outperform. At 2 p.m. Eastern, the Federal Reserve will release its Beige Book, which offers an economic analysis of its 12 districts.

The excitement over solar power, which once attracted billions in private investment and public subsidies, has waned recently, underscoring the limitations of renewable energies and the unchallenged dominance of fossil fuels. Some of the $75 billion sector's high profile names have fallen on hard times recently - most notably Suntech Power (STP). The China-based solar panel company rattled the industry when it filed for bankruptcy last week. In its heyday, the stock traded just shy of $90 and had a market capitalization of $16 billion: on Thursday, the last day U.S. markets were open, the shares traded around for 42...

One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too. That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to the company on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help. “I’ve still got a year and a half left...

SNIPPET: "So there I was, doing that thing I do - targeted collection, and triage based on a range of frequently changing criteria - when I happened to notice this image:" SNIPPET: "georgi.ir: sometimes what isn't there is still interesting"

I begin this morning with a decidedly non-political topic. Yahoo! has a new CEO named Marissa Meyer. She just had a baby. She was criticized during her pregnancy for how she would or would not take maternity leave. Basically everything the lady does appears to be criticized. But the newest media outrage is perhaps the stupidest, most selfish bottom feeding outrage the media can muster. Marissa Meyer has decided that employees can no longer telecommute. They must get into a Yahoo! office. How dare she. The outrageous reporting is both entirely predictable and easily would be the stupidest media coverage...

Last Friday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working remotely. Human resources boss Jackie Reses sent out a memo telling all remote employees that, by June, they needed to be working in Yahoo offices. This upset many employees – mothers in particular. -snip- Mayer – who had a baby last fall – is a working mother, but she's able to bring her kid to work. That's because when Mayer had her son last fall, she paid to have a nursery built in her office.

Apparently Yahoo! Korea (the South Korean Yahoo!) ceased to exist as of 12/31/'12. Does anyone know what happened? Was there some trouble with the South Korean government? Or did Korea just decide to switch to Google? I know, it's not important in the big scheme of things, but I need a diversion!

<p>Michelle Obama has called the White House the "people's house," and similar to many American homes, it is seeing an increase in its value with the recovery of the housing market.</p> <p>Since President Barack Obama, his wife, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, moved into the White House in January 2009, the home's value has increased about 7 percent to an estimated $294.9 million, according to housing marketplace Zillow.</p>

Dieting and exercising are perhaps the most popular New Years Resolutions, but don't worry if you've indulged on a few too many holiday treats this year. Swimsuits are already trickling onto retail shelves and the spotlight is on one-piece swimwear, not bikinis. Yes, that extra inch to pinch around your tummy can potentially remain hidden all year. Every stylish celebrity from the curvier gals like Beyonce, Christina Hendricks, and Kim Kardashian, to the skinny-minnies like Taylor Swift, Kate Moss, and Kirsten Dunst are rocking one-piece bathing suits, or "maillots." As a result, the rest of us are heading directly...