Why New York’s ‘tuition-free’ colleges will still cost $14,000 | Money CNN

January 31, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing to make New York the first state in the country to adopt a tuition-free plan at both two-year and four-year public colleges.

The Excelsior Scholarship aims to make college more affordable for middle-class New Yorkers by lowering the cost and encouraging students to finish their degrees on time.

“A college education is not a luxury — it is an absolute necessity for any chance at economic mobility,” Cuomo said when the plan was announced.

But “tuition-free” isn’t the same as free.

Though Cuomo’s plan would lower a student’s total bill by up to about $6,000 a year, it could still cost them $14,000 for fees and room and board.

New Jersey to Provide New Parents With Baby Boxes, Encouraging Educated Parenting | ABC News

January 30, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

New Jersey is becoming the first state to officially partner with The Baby Box Company, a company that works to improve new parent education, encourage newborn health awareness and reduce Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Syndrome.

The program will distribute baby boxes filled with diapers and other newborn necessities to all new parents in New Jersey who complete a free online parenting education course. The course curriculum includes information on breastfeeding, prenatal health and safe sleep practices.

The box itself also acts as a mattress that the baby can use as a bed, encouraging healthy sleeping environments. According to a report by the Child Fatality & Near Fatality Review Board, 93 percent of infant deaths associated with Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Syndrome were directly related to a child’s sleep and sleep environment.

Source: New Jersey to Provide New Parents With Baby Boxes, Encouraging Educated Parenting – ABC News

Lyft surges to the top 10 on Apple’s App Store following the #DeleteUber campaign | TechCrunch

January 30, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Lyft’s app has surged in the App Store thanks to the “Delete Uber” campaign which took place via social media over the weekend. People were angry that Uber appeared to be taking advantage of a taxi strike at JFK in order to promote its car-hailing service. The company had tweeted that surge pricing at JFK had been switched off, shortly after the NY Taxi Workers Alliance called for a stop on pickups at the airport in response to what they said was the “inhumane, unconstitutional ban of Muslim refugees and travelers.”

The Taxi Workers Alliance had asked all drivers, Uber included, to not pick up at JFK on Saturday, January 28th from 6 PM to 7 PM as a means of protesting Trump’s immigration and refugee ban.

“We cannot be silent. We go to work to welcome people to a land that once welcomed us,” the taxi union had written on Twitter.

Samsung Finally Reveals Why the Galaxy Note 7 Kept Exploding | WIRED

January 23, 2017January 22, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

WELL, IT WASN’T the stylus.

After months of silence following a global recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone last October, Samsung disclosed its lengthy findings as to what caused the device’s batteries to overheat and catch fire. Based on the company’s own investigation and independent scientific analysis of the issues by three consulting bodies, the overheating was caused by separate problems in batteries sourced from two different suppliers.

Agency Crowdsourced This Mosaic of Standing Ovation GIFs as a Thank-You to Obama | Adweek

January 20, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If there was ever a time to give President Obama a standing ovation, today is the day. And GIFs—lots of them—are helping make it happen.

To offer Obama one final thank-you for the past eight years, Deep Focus came up with a way to let everyone give the president a round of applause. The agency created The Standing O, a microsite that collects user-submitted GIFs of people giving Obama a standing ovation that then become a mosaic of Obama himself. So far, thousands of people have submitted videos of themselves applauding the president, resulting in a recreation of the image of Obama that appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2008

Microsoft to Businesses: Upgrade to Windows 10 or Face Serious Security Risks | Business News Daily

January 18, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Attention all businesses: Upgrade from Windows 7 or risk serious security consequences. That’s the message Microsoft is sending this week with the news that extended support for the 8-year-old operating system is set to end in 2020.

In other words, the Windows 7 operating system will stop receiving security patches altogether on Jan. 13, 2020. Companies that haven’t updated to Windows 10 will leave themselves vulnerable to malware attacks that the newer operating system can easily fend off. In fact, Microsoft recently published a report showing that Windows 10 Anniversary Update — the most current iteration of the OS — could neutralize two zero-day security exploits, even without the patches that have been needed to protect Windows 7 and other, earlier versions of Windows.

China’s first freight train to the U.K. arrives in London | Money CNN

January 18, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One of the longest train journeys in the world has just ended.

The first freight train from China to the U.K. rolled into London on Wednesday, more than two weeks after it left the Chinese port city of Yiwu. The journey covered nearly 8,000 miles.

“It is hoped this will further improve trade ties between China and the U.K.,” said Richard Doubtfire, seafreight director at Brunel Shipping & Liner Services, one of two British companies handling logistics for the journey.

The China Railway Express train left Yiwu on Jan. 1. It passed through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France over the course of its 18-day trip before entering the U.K. through the Channel Tunnel.

Vine is shutting down, so don’t forget to export your videos today | TechCrunch

January 17, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As first announced back in October, Twitter is about to shut down its looping video app and social network, Vine. The company had originally implied it would pull the Vine app from the app stores, but later said it would transition it to a new, low-maintenance app called Vine Camera instead. Ahead of this, Vine’s website and app were updated to allow you to export your Vines for posterity, if you couldn’t bear to lose them.

Vines can be exported until some point today from the vine.co website, or from the iOS or Android application. The Vine website currently says you can download your Vines “only until January 17, when the apps become the Vine Camera,” but the mobile app’s banner says the app will actually be updated tomorrow.

In any event, you have only hours left to grab your Vines before they’re gone.

JCPenney could close 300 stores | Business Insider

January 13, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

JCPenney could close up to 30% of its stores, or roughly 300 of its more than 1,000 locations, within the next two years, according to a Cowen & Co. report.

The department store chain has largely avoided mass store closures in recent years, but the rise of ecommerce is now forcing the company to reassess its store base, Cowen & Co. analyst Oliver Chen told Business Insider following a meeting with JCPenney management.

“They are proactively evaluating everything,” Chen said.

He predicts that in the next one to two years, the company will close 100 to 300 of its 1,014 stores.

JCPenney CEO Marvin Ellison has publicly confirmed that the company is considering closures.

Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open-Sourced It | WIRED

January 12, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

QUANTUM COMPUTING IS real. But it’s also hard. So hard that only a few developers, usually trained in quantum physics, advanced mathematics, or most likely both, can actually work with the few quantum computers that exist. Now D-Wave, the Canadian company behind the quantum computer that Google and NASA have been testing since 2013, wants to make quantum computing a bit easier through the power of open source software.

Traditional computers store information in “bits,” which can represent either a “1” or a “0.” Quantum computing takes advantage of quantum particles in a strange state called “superposition,” meaning that the particle is spinning in two directions at once. Researchers have learned to take advantage of these particles to create what they call “qubits,” which can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time. By stringing qubits together, companies like D-Wave hope to create computers that are exponentially faster than today’s machines.