feed on feeds - 2017/03/21 - items 0 to 15

I'm going to a journalism conference in Italy in a couple of weeks.

I wondered how news people get their news. Is it systematic, or do they rely on whatever comes their way on Twitter or through email?

Then, how do they share links with others? Post to Twitter, Facebook, email or?

Do they use a news aggregator like Yahoo or Memeorandum? Or an RSS reader?

Are they happy with what they use? Do they think their system could be improved?

As a person who develops news reading and publishing systems, I'm embarrassed to say I have very little idea today how people do that, or if the systems they use are good, adequate, great or whatever.

US president says lawmakers could face 'political problems' if they fail to pass bill repealing Obamacare.

Apple has announced that it will soon release Clips, a new social-focused photography and video app. The free Clips app will take square photos and videos that are ideal for most social networks, and it will offer fun features like titles, filters, and overlays. Apple gave Lauren Goode of the Verge early access, and she has written a full review. It’s unclear why Apple is making Clips separate from the Camera app — perhaps the company plans to field test new features in Clips before migrating the most popular to Camera? Or perhaps it’s meant as a precursor to an augmented reality app? Or maybe it’s just the latest incarnation of Photo Booth? We hope more becomes clear when Clips ships in April 2017.

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The United States and United Kingdom have banned nearly all electronics larger than a phone from flights originating from several African and Middle Eastern countries. The ban will include laptops, tablets, electronic book readers, and cameras. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security official told the BBC that the ban was based on “evaluated intelligence,” likely related to reports that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula is trying to build bombs with little or no metal content to target commercial aircraft.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Given the prevalence of smartphones nowadays, Wells Fargo has announced plans to upgrade all 13,000 of its ATMs next week to allow customers to access their money using their cellphones instead of traditional bank cards. Wells Fargo would be the first to upgrade all of its ATMs with the feature across the United States. ABC News reports: To access their money, customers would get unique eight-digit codes from their Wells Fargo smartphone app, and enter the code into the ATM along with their PIN number. The machines will still accept debit cards as well. One limitation of the one-time code, though, is that it won't work on the secure doors that many branches have for non-business hours that require a customer to swipe an ATM or debit card to gain entry. Wells Fargo said those secure doors are found at a small percentage of branches, mostly in major metropolitan areas like New York City or Chicago. Wells said it plans to roll out another upgrade to its ATMs later this year, which will allow customers to access the ATMs by holding their smartphones up to a reader on the machine, instead of entering the eight-digit code. It would be similar to using Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, the bank said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pyongyang envoy to UN warns his country is developing 'pre-emptive strike capabilities with nuclear forces'.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: President Donald Trump signed a law on Tuesday authorizing funding for a crewed NASA mission to Mars. The new bill (S.442) adds a crewed mission to the red planet as a key NASA objective and authorizes the space agency to direct test human space flight programs that will enable more crewed exploration in deep space. The space agency has $19.5 billion in funding for the 2018 fiscal year, which starts this October. Trump had allocated $19.1 billion for NASA in his budget, which is slightly down from the current year, but still an improvement from the past decade, which saw the end of the space shuttle program. The commander in chief signed the bill surrounded by astronauts and his former Republican rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who both sponsored the bill. Getting to Mars, though, isn't expected to happen during the Trump presidency. NASA has its sights set on getting to the red planet in the 2030s. In the near term, NASA plans to test its Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket, in addition to visiting an asteroid and redirecting a chunk of it into orbit around the moon. Astronauts could later visit the boulder and use the mission to test some of the tools needed for a Mars mission.