Twitter Troll Who Posted Fake Sandy News Apologizes to Internet

A Twitter troll who got his kicks on Monday by tweeting a series of dire but fake news updates as Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York City took to the microblogging service on Tuesday night to publicly apologize.
Shashank Tripathi is a New York City hedge fund analyst who — until resigning Tuesday — also managed Republican Christopher Wight’s campaign for the House of Representatives in New York. He uses the Twitter handle @ComfortablySmug (that’s his avatar pictured above right).On Monday, as anxiety and panic gripped New York, he tweeted a series of false updates that began with “BREAKING.” One said that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded. Another said that power company Con Ed would cut off service to all of Manhattan.
The messages were retweeted widely and even reported on by national media. They helped spread misinformation about the storm as worried New Yorkers and observers tried to find out what was happening. Some have publicly wondered since whether people who deliberately use social media to disseminate false information during national disasters should be prosecuted. 

Today Is a Big Day for Facebook’s Stock

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Today Is a Big Day for Facebook’s Stock

The New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ are both planning to re-open on Wednesday after having ceased all trading for two days as a result of Hurricane Sandy. For some employees at Facebook, Wednesday probably can’t come soon enough.

The first of three big lockups for Facebook stock expired on Monday, giving employees the option to sell off their shares in the company for the first time since Facebook went public in May. In total, 234 million shares of Facebook stock were freed up as part of the lockup expiration, but because the stock market was closed, employees and shareholders have been unable to trade that stock so far this week.That all changes on Wednesday.Facebook employees have spent more than five months watching as the company’s stock plummeted from its IPO price of $38 a share to as low as $17.55 in early September, without having the option to sell off any of their shares. CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly acknowledged to employees that the declining stock price was “painful” to watch for all.On the day that the stock hit its all-time low, Facebook announced that it would bump up the first lockup expiration date for employees from Nov. 14 to Oct. 29, which some argued was an attempt by the company to boost employee morale. Since then, Facebook’s stock has staged a bit of resurgence and currently sits at $21.70 a share. While that’s well above the low point, it’s also still well below the IPO price — in fact, as of earlier this month, Facebook employees had lost an average of $2 million each since the IPO.The big question going into Wednesday is how quickly Facebook employees will be to pull the trigger on cashing out their stock. If they flood the market by selling millions of shares, it could send a signal to investors that even Facebook employees are not confident in the company’s future, which could have a significantly negative impact on the company’s stock price.A similar situation took place back in August, after the first lockup period expired for 271 millon shares held by Facebook insiders. Peter Thiel, one of Facebook’s first investors, quickly sold off nearly all the stock he owned in the company (about 22 million shares), a red flag for investors that hurt the price of the stock.The average Facebook employee selling this time around certainly doesn’t have 22 million shares to sell, but if employees begin to sell off en masse, it could have a similarly damaging impact on the stock. What’s more, in two weeks, another lockup period will expire for a whopping 777 million shares, which could disrupt the stock’s performance even further.

16 People Died in US super storm Sandy leaves & Six million People in Without Power Due to WaterFlood!!!!

More than 1 million people across 12 states were under orders to evacuate as the massive storm continued to plow westward.

NEW YORK: Superstorm Sandy, one of the fiercest storms before ever  hit the United States, has left at least 16 people dead and over six million people in darkness as it continues to batter the nation's eastern seaboard with unprecedented ferocity.

As the damage from the 'Frankenstorm' continues to grow, President Obama declared a state of emergency in New York City, AFP reported.

Though downgraded to a "post-tropical" superstorm Monday evening by the National Hurricane Centre, Sandy unleashed powerful winds and torrential rains from North Carolina to Maine and knocked out power across 11 states and the national capital.

More than 1 million people across a dozen states were under orders to evacuate as the massive system continued to plow westward.

One disaster forecasting company predicted economic losses could ultimately reach $20 billion, only half insured.

In New York City, emergency backup power failed and 10 feet of water flooded the basement of NYU Langone Medical Center, forcing the evacuation of 260 patients. Nurses manually pumped air to the lungs of those on respirators, reported CNN.

Sandy wrecks havoc in NYC

Lower Manhattan's Battery Park recorded a 12.75 ft tide, breaking a record set in 1960 with Hurricane Donna. The city halted service on its bus and train lines, closing schools and ordering about 400,000 people out of their homes in low-lying areas of Manhattan and elsewhere.

As New York's skyscrapers were being battered, a crane snapped and dangled from the side of a luxury high-rise under construction Far above West 57th Street.

The iconic Grand Central Station in New York bore an eerily deserted look and the subway shut down for only the second time in its history.

Hurricane-force winds stretched from Cape Cod to the Virginia coast as Sandy swept ashore, with its storm surge setting new high-water records for lower Manhattan and swamping beachfronts on both sides of Long Island Sound.

Mass transit shut down across the densely populated Northeast, landmarks stood empty and schools and government offices were closed. The National Grid, which provides power to millions of customers, said 60 million people could be affected before it's over.

"I've been down here for about 16 years, and it's shocking what I'm looking at now. It's unbelievable," Montgomery Dahm, owner of the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City, which stayed open as Sandy neared the Jersey Shore, was quoted as saying.

By Monday afternoon, 23 states were under a warning or advisory for wind related to Sandy. Thousands of flights had been cancelled, and hundreds of roads were flooded.

With the storm expected to linger longer than most, the federal workforce and public employees in the national capital, Maryland and Virginia were told to stay home for a second day Tuesday.

There are no flights were expected Tuesday in or out of the region's three airports, where scores of travellers were stranded Monday after airlines halted service throughout the Northeast. (Agencies)

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Internet Explorer and Firefox teams celebrate new versions with cake-giving tradition

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Internet Explorer and Firefox teams celebrate new versions with cake-giving tradition

Internet Explorer is no longer the  completely dominant browser it used to be. no longer the completely dominant browser it used to be, but that hasn't stopped its team from continuing its cake-giving tradition with the makers of Firefox.According to Mozilla Employee Matt Bruceck, the IE team began it all when it sent over a cake to congratulate the company on the launch of Firefox 2 in 2006. Since then, the Internet Explorer crew has continued to send over cakes for each new version, though they smartly switched over to less-costly cupcakes when Mozilla began its accelerated 6-week upgrade cycles. To return the favor, Matt hand delivered a massive cake to celebrate the launch of Internet Explorer 10 this week to the Microsoft team's headquarters in Redmond, and signed it "Love Mozilla." Who said competition precludes a bit of playfulness between rivals?

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Facebook Hacked

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 I have had Facebook account for years without any issues. I recently upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and did a clean install. Shortly after that my FB account started sending out vulgar messages to my friends. I have changed my password numerous times in an effort to stop the problem but it persists. I have also done a virus check with Windows Defender that came back clean..Has anyone had this issue? I have tried going through the FaceBook help pages but have gotten nowhere.Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kidnapped Indian-origin baby Saanvi Venna found dead: US media reports

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Washington: 10-month-old baby Saanvi Venna, who went missing from her family's suburban Philadelphia apartment earlier this week, has been found dead and a family friend is charged in her death and her grandmother's killing. Saanvi's body was found today in the basement of another building in the apartment complex.
Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman says a family friend planned to kidnap the girl and ransom her for $50,000. Ferman says that plan went awry when Saanvi's paternal grandmother, Satyavathi Venna, was killed trying to fight the man off. Mrs Venna had arrived from Andhra Pradesh in July and was scheduled to return home in January.

Baby Saanvi's parents, father Venkata Konda Siva Venna, and mother Chenchu Latha Punuru, emigrated to the US from India in February 2007. The couple lived in San Antonio, Cleveland and Troy, Michigan, before moving to the Philadelphia-area apartment complex in June this year.

The local police and the Telugu community had announced a $30,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of the baby on Wednesday. This was later increased to $50,000. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had also joined the massive search for the baby.

Does Facebook Know Your Love Secrets? [Infographic]

Does Facebook Know Your Love Secrets? [Infographic]

 Like to keep your love life under wraps? Be careful if you’re on Facebook.

 The social network may be able to predict how happy you are in your relationships, how satisfied your boyfriend or girlfriend is, when you’re most likely to break up or make things official with someone new and even what songs you’re most likely to listen to when you’re on a hormone high or down in the dumps.

 

“It’s not official until it’s on Facebook,” goes the not so old maxim. If that saying holds true though, people are most ready to start going steady around Valentine’s Day and Christmas, with the beginning of April not far behind. On Feb. 14, new relationships outpace fresh breakups by 49%, according to data from the social network. On Dec. 25, the difference is 35%, and on Dec. 24 it’s 28%.

Warm weather and sunshine, meanwhile, seem to get people feeling restless — early spring and the summertime are two of the peak breakup seasons, according to people’s relationship status updates. And people are most likely to broadcast their breakups on Fridays and Saturdays.University of Wisconsin researchers even found that profile pictures and the presence or absence of a declared relationship status can predict the level of harmony between two people. Men who post their status as “In a Relationship” rather than leave it blank were more satisfied with their relationships, the Wisconsin researchers found. Women whose profile pictures include their partners were similarly more satisfied.

The online education directory WorldWideLearn gathered all these findings and more from research by Facebook and a number of news outlets to produce the infographic below. Check it out for the fuller picture of how much Facebook can reasonably predict about your love life.

Do these findings match your own experiences in romance and Facebook? Share your stories in the comments below.

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