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You can watch the National Zoo's yet un-named female panda cub be nursed by her mother Mei Xiang right now on the zoo's panda cam. **SNIP** The zoo announced on Twitter that the all live animal cams would go dark during a shutdown, along with in real life public options.

Freepers! I need your advice. I live in the northern California/SF Bay area, and I'm mid-forties. I have started chipping away at pursuing a college degree (yes, a little late in life) but am finding the local offerings have such an overt liberal bias that is very difficult to stomach. Work and family commitments prohibit moving to find a conservative college/university, so I'm searching for online degree programs in business, economics, civil engineering, or one of the sciences (trying to remain flexible in that regard). I would love to be able to attend a "Hillsdale" type college, but can't move...

The Georgia Institute of Technology rocked the higher education world when it announced plans to offer a fully online master’s degree in computer science for roughly one-seventh the price of its on-campus equivalent – less than $7,000. The project is powered by a joint venture with Udacity, an online higher-education course provider that stands to earn 40 percent of the tuition revenues. The AT&T Corporation, which is providing two-thirds of the estimated ramp-up costs, expects to funnel existing employees through the program and recruit new ones at the back-end of it. Reaction to the news has been mixed. Online education...

SecureKey, based in Toronto, today announced it has been awarded a contract by the USPS to provide a cloud-based authentication infrastructure.Get ready for a new set of abbreviations. This is part of some federal programs that have been underway for several years, mostly below the radar — at least this is the first I have heard of it despite being an avid reader of tech publications. But apparently a lot of people have been working on this — some of the relevant Web sites and information sources are listed below.The Federal Cloud Credential Exchange (FCXX) is designed to enable individuals...

WikiLeaks has released a trove of encrypted “insurance” data on Twitter and Facebook. The data can’t be read without an encryption key, but the movement’s supporters say that could be published later in case anything happens to leading WikiLeaks figures. The whistleblowing organization published links for a massive 400 gigabytes worth of encrypted data it described as “insurance documents” on its Twitter and Facebook accounts. It is possible to download the files but advanced encoding prevents them from being opened.

The San Francisco bicyclist involved in a fatal collision with a San Bruno man could face criminal charges, and his flippant early account of the tragedy may not help his case in a city where bikes, cars and pedestrians must increasingly coexist. Chris Bucchere collided in a Castro crosswalk March 29 with 71-year-old Sutchi Hui, who ultimately died Wednesday at San Francisco General Hospital. In an online missive posted just hours after the crash, Bucchere expressed little remorse for his behavior. His irreverent account focused instead on his broken helmet, his own relatively minor injuries and the police seizure of...

Philip Rucker leads the Post today with a story about a study that claims there is a “vast” gun market thriving online that allows gun buyers to evade the background check system. Rucker’s story is full of misleading statements. The marketplace for firearms on the Internet, where buyers are not required to undergo background checks, is so vast that advocates for stricter regulations now consider online sales a greater threat than the gun show loophole. Misleading statement #1: Buyers are only not required to undergo background checks if they’re not buying from a licensed firearms dealer. If you buy...

Colleges around the country should be worried. The quality of online courses is catching up fast. Depending on whom you talk to, massively open online courses (MOOCs) will upend and democratize higher education, or are half-baked approximations of lectures that can never equal the classroom. Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation put it to the test, spending four months taking two MOOCs, from start to finish. One, a Coursera Introduction to Philosophy was everything critics dislike, he says. Too brief, and with none of the problem sets, essays, or tests that make...

In advance of having to collect online state sales tax, Amazon said Tuesday that it will sever ties with its Minnesota-based affiliate websites that receive a fee for referring shoppers to the retail giant's online store. The move comes less than a month after Gov. Mark Dayton signed a law requiring certain online businesses with a physical presence or affiliates in Minnesota to charge sales tax on items it sells to the state's residents. The law takes effect July 1. "While we oppose this unconstitutional state legislation, we strongly support the federal Marketplace Fairness Act now pending before Congress," Amazon...

A top-secret April PowerPoint slideshow details how the National Security Agency partnered with nine tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Google, to monitor users activity. The NSA got direct access to these companies servers´ in order to directly watch user communications, according to the presentation obtained by the Washington Post and the Guardian. The program was nominally aimed at foreign actors, but as the Post reports, purely domestic communications could easily end up in NSA hands, so long as an algorithm estimated at least a 51 percent probability that they were foreign.

Georgia Institute of Technology has announced a partnership with Udacity to offer an online Masters Degree in Computer Science for $7,000, down 80% from the existing cost of $40,000 for the on-campus, instructor led program. Suddenly, masters programs around the country will have to compete with Georgia Tech‘s $7,000 program, and that won’t be easy or fast in coming. The traditionally taught graduate degree in computer science at Georgia Tech is a very well regarded program that is in high demand and has very positive outcomes in terms of jobs and earnings. Georgia Tech graduates tend to do very well...

The US Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at ending tax-free shopping on the internet but the move looks set to face fierce opposition before it becomes law. The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has cross-party supporter and the backing of powerful retailers, would give states the power to require retailers with sales over $1m to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases.

When I mention online learning to my colleagues at Wesleyan University, most respond initially with skepticism. But based on my experience, I know that real learning can take place on the Web. I am currently teaching a massive online open course, or MOOC, on Coursera. Most MOOCs have great attrition, and mine is no exception: There were almost 30,000 students registered at the start, yet 4,000 remain active as we near the end of the semester. Unlike most MOOCs, which focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, mine is a classic humanities course. "The Modern and the Postmodern" starts off...

At a 2008 shareholders meeting, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explained why he opposed requiring businesses like his to collect state and local taxes on their interstate sales. "We're not actually benefiting from any services that those states provide locally," Bezos said, "so it's not fair that we should be obligated to be their tax collection agent." Last year, Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for global public policy, testified in favor of a bill allowing states to demand sales tax from online merchants, saying Congress should "level the playing field for all sellers." As that switcheroo suggests, there are...

At each stage of your life, my Social Security is for you. Your personal online my Social Security account is a valuable source of information beginning in your working years and continuing throughout the time you receive Social Security benefits.

Every TV network is talking about "the loophole that allows anyone to buy a firearm online." Huh? To the best of my knowledge only an FFL can buy or sell a firearm across state lines, and even then, not online. The buyer has to supply a copy of his FFL with the order. Is there such a thing as "buying a gun over the internet" or is this just another case of media corruption?

A recent notice from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reveals that the agency intends to acquire an online database capable of bringing up many of an individual’s personal characteristics and connections with just a few keystrokes. On March 28 the federal law enforcement organization, which is a branch of the US Department of Justice, filed a solicitation notice for a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information. The solicitation is hosted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, where vendors and developers can offer their services to the government in a competitive reverse...

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LOS ANGELES — Authorities say they are aware of a website that has posted what it claims are credit reports and other identifying information on celebrities and government officials. Los Angeles police and the FBI declined to say whether they are investigating the site. It posted details about U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Oscar winner Mel Gibson and nine others. The information posted includes Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and in some instances, credit reports.

After we learn of a morally-crippled poll worker named 'Melowese' voting for Obama at least six times in Ohio, now a report comes out that has the Obama regime itself working directly with like-minded scum at the North Carolina Board of Elections (BoE) to illegally register 11,000+ people. They also paid a company per registration to scrape-up voters, a blatant, in-your-face violation of federal law... ______________________________________________________________________________ The Examiner: North Carolina's Civitas Institute has revealed that the NC State Board of Elections and the Obama campaign conspired to register at least 11,000 people via the internet in violation of state law. This has been confirmed through...