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Friday, October 18, 2013

Twitter Now Lets Any Follower Send You Direct Messages If You Want

Twitter is changing the way direct messages work. In the past, Twitter required two people to follow each other for direct messages to be exchanged in either direction; now, users have the option to change settings so that any of their followers can send them a direct message, without having to follow them back.

Parks open, workers back in office after shutdown

Yosemite Park Ranger Ron Morton takes a payment from a visitor at the front gate after the reopening of Yosemite National Park, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. The park reopened Wednesday night with the end of the 16-day partial government shutdown. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)

Visitors at Tunnel View, like Kaori Nishimura and Eriko Kuboi, from Japan, pose in front of Half Dome, center facing, during the reopening of Yosemite National Park, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Tunnel View is a scenic vista which shows off El Capitan, Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall. The park reopened Wednesday night with the end of the 16-day partial government shutdown. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)

People form a tour group at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Barriers went down at federal memorials, National Park Service sites, as well as the Smithsonian Institution's network of popular museums and thousands of furloughed federal workers returned to work across the country Thursday after 16 days off the job due to the partial government shutdown. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Farmer Kevin Scott unloads a truckload of soybeans Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, on his land near Valley Springs, S.D. He said most farmers are more focused on harvesting than the government reopening but they are concerned Congress hasn’t passed a new farm bill. (AP Photo/Carson Walker)

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, center, greets federal employees at the entrance to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as he they return to the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Lawmakers Wednesday voted to avoid a financial default and reopen the government after a 16-day partial shutdown. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

From the Liberty Bell to Alcatraz, federal landmarks and offices reopened Thursday. Furloughed employees were relieved to get back to work — even if faced with email backlogs — but many worried about another such disruption in a matter of months.

"We'd hate to have to live through this all over again," Richard Marcus, a 29-year employee of the National Archives in Washington, said after the government shutdown finally ended.

Nationwide, from big-city office buildings to wilderness outposts, innumerable federal services and operations shifted back into gear after 16 days.

The U.S. Forest Service started lifting a logging ban on national forests. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services restarted the computerized system used to verify the legal status of workers. Boat trips resumed to Alcatraz, the former federal prison in San Francisco Bay, with 1,600 tickets snapped up by tourists in the first hour of business.

In Alaska, federal officials rushed to get the red king crab fishing season underway. The opening had been delayed because furloughed workers were not around to issue crab-quota permits.

National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis said all 401 national park units — from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California to Acadia National Park in Maine — were reopening Thursday.

More than 20,000 National Park Service employees had been among the 800,000 federal workers sent home at the peak of the shutdown.

Visitors from around the world flocked to Yosemite National Park to see such famous sites as El Capitan and Half Dome after weeks of closure brought local economies to a near standstill.

At Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, employees were busy with reopening chores. They returned just in time to begin closing the parks up again for the winter in a couple of weeks.

At Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, one couple's long wait to see the Liberty Bell and other attractions finally drew to a close.

Karen and Richard Dodds of Oklahoma City were on a quest to see every national park in the U.S. They arrived in Philadelphia about three weeks ago in their motor home, visiting Valley Forge just before the shutdown. They stayed on in the area, awaiting a settlement.

"They didn't solve anything by this," Katie Dodds said of the temporary agreement in Congress that funds the government only through Jan. 15 and gives it the borrowing authority it needs only through Feb. 7. "The worst part is they'll do it again in January and February."

Among the many sites reopening in Washington were the Smithsonian Institution's museums and the World War II memorial on the National Mall, which had been the scene of protests over the shutdown.

Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said the museum complex lost about $2.8 million in revenue during the shutdown.

The National Zoo was set to reopen Friday, though its popular panda cam went live Thursday morning, giving fans a view of a cub wriggling about as its mother, Mei Xiang, tucked her paws under her chin and watched.

Federal workers who were furloughed or worked without pay during the shutdown will get back pay in their next paychecks, which for most employees come Oct. 29.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez greeted returning workers with a sympathetic email.

"Unfortunately, as President Obama correctly noted, you are occasionally called on to perform your remarkably important work in a climate that too often treats federal employees and contractors as a punching bag," Perez said.

The Defense Department called back about 7,000 furloughed civilians. In an open letter to the workforce, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the department still faces budget uncertainty as Congress struggles to pass a 2014 spending bill and deal with automatic budget cuts. Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale said the department lost at least $600 million worth of productivity during the four days that civilians were furloughed.

The National Institutes of Health warned university scientists not to expect a quick resumption of research dollars.

At the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., email servers were slowly grinding back into gear.

Fire protection engineer Dan Madrzykowski had been in the office for about half an hour and about 800 emails had popped into his inbox. And that represented less than a week of the shutdown. Still, Madrzykowski said he was pleased to be back.

"Nothing good was coming from keeping the government closed," he said.

Patrice Roberts, who works for Homeland Security, said she wasn't prepared for the emotional lows of the past 16 days.

"It's just frustrating having that kind of control over your life and just having it taken away from me," said Roberts, who is expecting another shutdown in January. "I'll be better prepared next time."

In Pottsville, Pa., several people waited outside the Social Security office ahead of its 9 a.m. opening. James Ulrich, an unemployed 19-year-old, needed a replacement for his lost Social Security card to apply for jobs. He was told a replacement card would take two weeks to arrive.

"I don't have a really good outlook on the government," he said.

In Cincinnati, Renee Yankey, a government alcohol and tobacco tax specialist, was sleep-deprived after staying up late to watch news of the shutdown-ending deal, but otherwise glad to be back at work with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

"I can tell that the alcohol industry missed us," Yankey said. "The first thing I hear is 'I'm so glad I got a person on the phone!'"

In North Little Rock, Ark, Simeon Yates was glad to return to work as an auditor for the Arkansas National Guard.

"It's definitely a relief financially ... knowing that we'll be able to provide for our families again," said Yates, whose wife stays home with their four young children.

"It was hard to explain to the kids," Yates added. "They enjoyed having me home, but when we were just having hot dogs a lot and pancakes ... you know, being small, they didn't necessarily understand that."

____

Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat in Reston, Va.; Ben Nuckols in Springfield, Va.; Dan Sewell in Cincinnati; Michael Rubinkam in Pottsville, Pa.; Jeannie Nuss in North Little Rock, Ark.; Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia; Rachel D'Oro in Anchorage, Alaska; and Jessica Gresko and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-17-Shutdown-Government%20Reopens/id-8471c28c58b64201aaae6f9dbfb65ffc
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With Shutdown Over, The Race To Feed Low-Income Seniors Is On

Meal deliveries to some low-income seniors stopped during the shutdown, and distributors are now racing to get meals out.

iStockphoto.com

Meal deliveries to some low-income seniors stopped during the shutdown, and distributors are now racing to get meals out.

iStockphoto.com

The USDA is back to funding its meals program for low-income seniors. That's good news for those who depend on the weekly food deliveries, which stopped during the government shutdown.

Across Michigan, tens of thousands of seniors turn to dozens of agencies for assistance. In Grand Rapids, where we first reported on the program freeze, a local agency is playing catch-up, relying on volunteers to fill the void.

The race to feed low-income seniors is on. In a warehouse half the size of a football field, more than a dozen volunteers form an assembly line, filling boxes with government surplus food.

They're surrounded by stacks of cereal, canned veggies, soup and dried milk from the USDA's Commodity Supplemental Food Program.

"I'm hoping we can get 3-, 400 boxes packed today," says Stacie Nobles, a volunteer from Feed America.

It's a lofty goal, but she's confident it will get done. She's disturbed by the idea the food here has been sitting the past two weeks, not getting to the stomachs of vulnerable seniors.

"You know, that's our grandparents. What do you do? You go hungry. And how long do you go? Two weeks is a long time," Nobles says.

Kent County's Community Action Agency is pushing to make sure its weekly deliveries go out on Friday. Nobles says 600 boxes are ready to go — but there are 1,500 low-income seniors to serve.

"We've got to try to get everything in by the end of the month now," says Ron Cusin, who runs the warehouse and makes deliveries.

He says those 60 or older with an annual income under $15,000 qualify.

"They'll be very happy to see me, I'll tell you that much," Cusin says. He says he'll be happy to see them, too.

Across the country, in warehouses like this one, the scene is being repeated as volunteers quickly try to put food back on the plates of the elderly poor who rely on them.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/17/236368853/with-shutdown-over-the-race-to-feed-low-income-seniors-is-on?ft=1&f=1053
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Thursday, October 17, 2013

More Angst For College Applicants: A Glitchy Common App

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Applying to college is stressful at the best of times. But technical flaws in the online Common Application, used by hundreds of colleges, have sparked panic among some high school seniors. With deadlines approaching, some schools are making backup plans — like a return to mail or even faxed applications.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/yBixzHzX-Lw/more-angst-for-college-applicants-a-glitchy-common-app
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How to Start a Billion-Dollar Empire With a Laptop

Alexis Ohanian graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005.

The skills needed to be successful today are rapidly evolving, which is why education has never been more important—especially for those in the technology industry, where I'm lucky enough to work. Companies (at least the kind ambitious people want to work for) no longer look for someone to come in from 9 to 5 and uphold the status quo. They want resourceful and innovative employees who work hard and get their jobs done regardless of the circumstances.

To baby boomers, these trends are scary, eating away at the foundation of a steady job and life that they helped instill. But we millennials welcome these new paradigms because they instantly show who is resourceful and who isn't—who will go the extra mile and who will coast to the finish. For the people with the skills to succeed, life is good.

Unfortunately, college alone can’t give those skills, and the economy isn’t helping, as promising yet under- or unemployed young adults with six-figure student loan burdens can attest. Meanwhile, people like Bruce Nussbaum, a professor at Parsons and the author of Creative Intelligence, say that America is experiencing an innovation crisis. Meanwhile, higher education is under fire for its narrow focus on rankings and its insane cost.

So how can we nurture creative thought in a productive way?

Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal founder, thinks the answer is paying students to skip college altogether. He set up the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $100,000 each to 20 people under 20 to pursue their dreams. There are two problems with Thiel's education solution. First, the Thiel Fellowship isn't scalable. Helping 20 kids a year is great, but more than 21 million students enroll in college each year, so the Thiel Fellowship is only helping less than 0.00000095 percent of students. The second problem is that giving a select number of students the option of going to college or getting $100,000 to work on a business creates a false and harmful dichotomy.

The best way to incubate innovation and entrepreneurship is found at the intersection of college and supplemental education. If you sample where today's resourceful elite—the tech titans starting billion-dollar empires with laptops—got their skills, it's almost always a combination of college and supplemental education, like learning how to code with Codeacademy and taking practical classes at places like General Assembly. (Disclosure: I'm an investor in both companies.) The most promising businesses are either building programs for their employees or encouraging them to take supplemental courses to continue learning. These programs, especially in software development, don't offer accreditation—they offer the skills to make careers.

But this doesn’t mean skipping out on traditional higher education. Although no college is perfect, professors and fellow students teach you really important skills. These crucial four years can go a long way toward turning shy and inexperienced freshmen into well-rounded, connected, and inspired graduates.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/alexis_ohanian_reddit_co_founder_on_solving_america_s_innovation_crisis.html
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Sony Alpha 3000

Have you grown out of your point-and-shoot, but can't spend a fortune on an interchangeable lens camera? Sony's Alpha 3000 ($399.99 direct with 18-55m lens) is the least expensive mirrorless camera you can buy. Sony made some compromises to deliver the 20-megapixel APS-C model at this price point, but image quality isn't one of them. We're impressed with the quality of its images, and the fact that it includes an eye-level electronic viewfinder at this price. On the other hand, the low-resolution rear LCD and limited burst-shooting capability are a bit of a letdown. If you have a bit more money to spend, consider a more refined mirrorless camera like our Editors' Choice, the Samsung NX300 or Sony's own NEX-6. But if you're on a tight budget and want the the ability to change lenses along with the image quality that a big image sensor delivers, the Alpha 3000 is worth a serious look.

Design and Features
Most entry-level mirrorless cameras are designed to resemble beefed-up compact cameras. The Alpha 3000 takes the opposite approach, looking more like a scaled-down SLR. This is the same aesthetic that Panasonic chose for its G and GH bodies, including the top-end GH3. The A3000 measures 2.3 by 4 by 1.5 inches (HWD) and weighs in at 9.9 ounces with no lens attached. Adding the kit lens increases the depth by about two inches and ups the total weight to just over a pound. Compare this to Sony's smallest interchangeable lens camera, the NEX-3N, which measures 2.3 by 4.4 by 1.4 inches and weighs 9.5 ounces; its collapsible kit lens increases the depth to about 2.8 inches and the weight to 13.6 ounces.

The SLR body style means that the camera has a deep, comfortable handgrip that's absent from many mirrorless cameras. There's some sacrifice in compactness here, but it's a worthy trade-off, especially when you pair the camera with a telezoom like the 55-210mm E-mount lens. A pop-up flash is built into the body, as is an eye-level EVF, and there's a multi-function hot shoe so that you can attach an external flash or another accessory as needed.

The control layout is a little sparse when compared to an SLR, but is on par with other E-mount bodies. Up top you'll find the Finder/LCD button (there's no eye sensor, so you have to toggle between the two manually), a mode dial, the image playback button, and a power switch that surrounds the shutter release. On the rear there's the movie button, two programmable function buttons, and a control wheel that doubles a four-way joystick with a center select button. By default the bottom button is set to bring up an in-camera guide that explains some photographic concepts and provides shooting tips. If you're comfortable behind the lens you'll want to reprogram this to activate a feature you'll use more often, like Sony's Auto Object Framing, which works to improve the composition of images, or the Clear Image Zoom function, which can effectively double the reach of your lens.

The tile-based menu system is familiar to experienced NEX shooters, but if you're moving up from a compact camera it will take getting used to. When you enter the main menu you'll be greeted by five icons: Camera, Image Size, Brightness/Color, Playback, and Setup. There are a ton of features that can be customized, but menu organization is sometimes unintuitive. For example, you'll need to go into Image Size to control the direction in which you move the camera to grab a panoramic photo; but make sure you're in Panorama mode, or that option will be grayed out.

The 3-inch rear LCD boasts a wide 16:9 ratio, just like the displays on other Sony mirrorless cameras like the NEX-5T. But it only packs a 230k-dot resolution, and looks noticeably pixelated. It can't match the 460k-dot display that Olympus packs into its entry-level PEN Mini E-PM2, and it doesn't incorporate the touch control that both the E-PM2 and NEX-5T offer.

The 0.5-inch, 768k-dot EVF is the best one you'll find in a $400 mirrorless camera, but that's because it's the only EVF you'll find in a $400 mirrorless camera. Compared with other offerings it's not very sharp, and gives you a bit of a tunnel vision effect when peering into it. There's a diopter, so you can tune it to match your eyesight, and it will get the job done when it's too bright to use the rear LCD for image framing.

The Alpha 3000 does support peaking as a manual focus aid; that system outlines in-focus parts of an image in red, yellow, or white to make manual focus quicker and more precise. But if you're serious about using the EVF, you'll be better suited with one that is a bit sharper—especially if you plan on using third-party manual focus lenses. The NEX-6 has a built-in OLED EVF, and the Panasonic G6 has an LCD EVF. You buy an add-on EVF for the Sony NEX-5T, and all Olympus PEN models support the VF-4. Since the Alpha 3000 is a budget-priced camera, it's not surprising that its EVF isn't top-quality.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/s160ezJ-Ivk/0,2817,2425433,00.asp
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NY attorney general names new investor-protection chief

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Wednesday named a new chief for his office's Investor Protection Bureau, which is probing abuses by Wall Street banks in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis.

Chad Johnson, 46, a veteran securities lawyer who joined the attorney general's office last year, replaces Marc Minor, who resigned after holding the position from March 2011 through August.

In recent weeks, Johnson has represented the New York attorney general in negotiations with JPMorgan Chase & Co over government mortgage probes, according to a person familiar with those negotiations who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The discussions also include the U.S. Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

New York's participation stems from Schneiderman's appointment as co-chair of a working group formed by President Barack Obama in January 2012 to investigate misconduct in mortgage securities that contributed to the financial crisis.

Schneiderman brought the 11working group's first lawsuit last October, suing JPMorgan in state court over alleged improper sales of pools of home loans by Bear Stearns in 2006 and 2007.

His Investor Protection Bureau brought a similar lawsuit against Credit Suisse Group AG in November.

In an interview on Wednesday, Johnson declined to comment on the negotiations with JPMorgan.

He said the bureau was continuing to probe the early release of market-moving information. The investigation, which he has been overseeing, includes Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters, and other companies.

"The bureau has a broad mission to look out for the interests of investors," Johnson said. "The attorney general has made clear that, among other things, he is focused on the fact that some companies are involved in the early release of market moving information to a select few."

Schneiderman has said the practice gave an unfair advantage to high-speed traders who execute huge volumes of trades.

While the probe continues, Thomson Reuters has agreed to stop giving high-frequency traders a two-second jump on University of Michigan consumer data. The company has said it believes the practice was legal and it did nothing wrong.

Johnson said the investigation also includes "efforts to gain early access to analysts' sentiments."

Johnson joined the New York attorney general's office last year as a senior trial counsel and later became a deputy attorney general. He graduated from Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan.

Until 2012, he was a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman, where he represented both institutional investors and individual shareholders in securities fraud and corporate governance litigation.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Eddie Evans and Richard Chang)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ny-attorney-general-names-investor-protection-chief-212110298--sector.html
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