Here’s the problem with eating plants: they come from outside, where animals also live. Sometimes, animals want to try our food, too, and the safeguards meant to keep animals that we didn’t mean to eat off our plates fail. That’s when we end up with dead baby weasels in our salads.
Well, one woman in England ended up with a dead baby weasel in her salad, and she was not pleased. She told reporters that she threw up, actually, not expecting to see a dead, wet, mangled weasel in her salad.
She thought it was a mouse at first glance, since it’s hard to tell exactly what the animal is. She probably didn’t want to look closely at it. The Yorkshire Post reports that the store where she purchased the salad, supermarket ASDA, offered a £5 voucher ($7.22), later increasing their offer to £100 after tests showed that the animal was real and that it was a baby weasel.
“It has caused me a lot of trauma,” she told the Yorkshire Post. “I initially thought it was a mouse, and for about a week afterwards I had weird dreams about mice coming out my mouth.”
Let’s hope that the salad supplier improves their quality controls, and may all of the nurse’s future salads remain weasel-free.
If you’ve ever gotten a new phone line with a number that previously belonged to someone else, you know how annoying it can be to repeatedly tell callers that “No, this isn’t Carl. Yes, I’m sure I’m not him. No, I can’t pass him a message.” But when you get the former number of a ’90s rap superstar, the calls and texts are slightly more interesting.
The Seattle Times has the story of a local lawyer who has spent nearly four years fielding calls on a Verizon number that once belonged to a true Seattle legend: Sir Mix-A-Lot, the man whose music gave voice to big-booty lovers around the world.
The man says he got the number back in 2012 when he was in law school. That’s when he started getting unsolicited calls from luxury car dealers in the area asking him to test drive expensive Jaguars, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis.
There were also people pitching him their music and YouTube clips, pictures of bikini-clad women in suggestive poses.
And let’s not forget promoters offering free concert tickets and backstage passes. Those would be easy to take advantage of; just accept them and then show up claiming to be Mix’s agent or manager, right? But the lawyer says, in spite of being egged on to cash in on the confusion, making that sort of false representation would get him in trouble with the bar association.
One August afternoon, he finally figured out just who all these messages were meant for. There were a ton of “Happy Birthday” notes and calls — including some from those scantily clad ladies — and references to “Baby Got Back,” the Sir’s 1992 ode to the gluteus maximus.
A bit of Googling showed that it was Mr. Mix-A-Lot’s birthday, which suddenly made all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
When reached by the Times about the story of Not Sir Mix-A-Lot, the rapper seemed both amused by the news and sorry for the guy who’s had to deal with the deluge of incorrectly sent messages.
In terms of advice, the rapper (real name Anthony Ray), tells the owner of his old number, “Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife.” And as for all those car dealerships texting the lawyer for a test drive, Mix says to not “answer any texts by saying ‘Yes,’ because people take ‘Yes’ differently with me. And usually you end up opening your wallet.”
Take a quick look at Twitter at any given time and you’re sure to see a slew of brands, or celebrities and other influencers, shilling products and services with short 140-character messages. While promotional Tweets might be easy to spot now, they could be more difficult in the future, as the social media platform is reportedly working on a new product that would turn everyday users’ Tweets into ads for brands.
Digiday reports that Twitter is on the cusp of offering a new ad platform that aims to make it easier for advertisers to promote consumers’ messages about their products to a wider audience.
Under the product, which was shown to advertisers during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Twitter would create a repository of brand-related Tweets for advertisers to pick from.
To ensure that users are okay with their thoughts being blasted for all to see, Twitter will send a direct message to the Tweet’s creator asking for permission to use the message before reposting it.
Sources close to the project say it gives brands the ability to Tweet recommendations from everyday users located located near a viewer versus a celebrity.
The idea behind the program, Digiday reports, is that some consumers may view other Twitter users as more trusted than celebrities or other pitchmen.
It’s unclear when the new ad product might be available to companies. Twitter declined to comment on the product, Digiday reports.
Amazon has spent the last year expanding its challenge to the existence of college bookstores, opening pickup locations on campuses scattered across the country. There, students can pick up things that they ordered on Amazon, and… that’s about it. A new pickup point at the University of Pennsylvania will also offer study and collaboration space for student use, and will provide same-day or next-day pickup for members of Amazon Student or Amazon Prime.
Placing an Amazon pickup point with study space right on campus is a handy advertisement for Amazon, but also has an added bonus for the university: letting students and faculty pick up their own darn packages alleviates pressure on campus mail rooms. E-commerce is creating logistical nightmares for campus mail services and apartment complexes.
“The preference by today’s students for on-line shopping has led to a significant increase in deliveries. When we looked closely at the shipping activity, we discovered that almost half of all packages delivered to Penn student mail rooms were from Amazon,” Marie Witt, the Vice President of Business Services at Penn, explained in a statement.
When you’re a major U.S. airline, there’s only one direction you want to go, and that’s up. Which is why Delta Air Lines is likely in a celebratory mood and United Airlines is perhaps a bit down in the dumps today, upon hearing the news that the former has passed the latter to become the No. 2 carrier based on traffic for 2015, behind American Airlines.
Delta passed United in 2015 based on traffic figures for paying passengers that the airlines released for the year, reports The Wall Street Journal: American came in first with reported traffic of 223 billion revenue-passenger miles, a 2.4% increase over the previous year; Delta ended 2015 year with 209.6 billion miles flown by passengers, a 3.3% increase from 2014; and United’s final numbers amounted to 208.6 billion miles, a 1.5% bump from the year prior. Those figures take into account regional-carrier partners the airlines work with.
It seems United is having a bit of trouble playing catch-up while it’s in the process of tying up all the loose ends of its merger with Continental back in 2010. While Delta stayed mum on its success, United said it’s “continuing to focus on running a reliable operation and investing in the tools and services that allow us to deliver the flier-friendly experience our customers deserve and expect.”
These numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all measurement for airline success, however, though it’s one of a few useful tool for comparing airlines. You can rank the airlines by the number of passengers carried (American, 201.2 million; Delta 19.4 million; Southwest 144.6 million; and United 140.4 million in 2015), or you can stack them up based on annual revenue, where Delta remains in second behind American before 2015.
For years, Amazon was able to win over some video game fans by guaranteeing release-day delivery of new titles. But now that gamers can pre-order digital downloads of their games (for the same price) so that they’re available right away when they go live, Amazon is going after customers who want to save money on these pricey new releases.
Amazon announced today that Prime subscribers will now be able to save 20% off sticker price, not just on pre-orders, but also on new titles during their first two weeks of release.
That second part is important, given the number of high-profile games that have been rushed to market with broken content, this two-week window means that Amazon customers can wait to see if the game has crippling problems (or horrendous reviews) before they buy.
For example, the games must be bought through Amazon itself, and not through any of the many sellers (even the Prime-eligible sellers) that use Amazon to reach consumers. It’s also limited to disc-based games. Digital download codes will not be sold at the lower price. And you can only buy one copy of a game with the discount.
If you’ve already pre-ordered a qualifying title, Amazon says it will apply the discount automatically.
Polygon notes that Best Buy and GameStop offer similar discount programs that cost significantly less than the $100 annual price for Prime, meaning people who only want the discounted games might want to check those programs out before they fork over the money for Prime. But if you’re already a Prime member, this is a nice add-on to the existing benefits of free shipping, and video and music content.
The California Air Resources Board has rejected Volkswagen’s recall plan for thousands of 2-liter vehicles sold in the state. The regulators also presented VW with a formal notice of air quality violations for its use of “defeat devices” to cheat on emissions tests in these cars.
CARB determined that VW’s proposed recall plans for 2-liter sedans sold in California between 2009 and 2015 are “incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements to return these vehicles to the claimed certification configuration.”
VW submitted the proposal on Dec. 15, requesting “substantial” additional time to submit complete recall plans, according to CARB. However, California recall regulations require “expeditious action, and VW’s proposed expiation is not acceptable,” the rejection letter [PDF] states.
Specifically, the 2-liter vehicle remedy proposal failed to adequately identify and describe the affected vehicles; provide a sufficient method for obtaining owners’ names, address, and related information; describe the remedial procedure for affected vehicles; contain the impact of proposed fixes on fuel economy, drivability, performance, and safety, among other things.
“Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up,” CARB Chair Mary D. Nichols said in a statement. “They continued and compounded the lie and when they were caught they tried to deny it. The result is thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide that have harmed the health of Californians. They need to make it right. Today’s action is a step in the direction of assuring that will happen.”
The EPA issued a statement on Tuesday saying they backed CARB’s decision to not approve VW’s recall plan.
In addition to rejecting VW’s proposal to fix certain vehicles in California, CARB also formalized the company’s notice of violation [PDF] related to air quality standards.
The notice outlines VW’s violation of state laws in causing “substantial excess, illegal, and on-going emissions and harm that have impacted, and continue to impact, public health and the environment in California.”
The violations are essentially a repeat of the agent and the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings announced in September.
CARB says it will continue to seek “to ensure that VW brings the vehicles into full compliance with State emissions standards and mitigates past, current, and future harm to the environment.”
It’s something you see in movies all the time — something bumps the shelves in a store and down they go in series, like huge dominoes. Luckily, it doesn’t happen in real life because the outcome could be deadly.
That’s the lesson to be learned from an incident inside a Boca Raton, FL, Party City store, where at least three people were injured after seven aisles of store shelves collapsed this morning.
WPTV reports that the three people suffered only minor injuries. Firefighters and sheriff’s office personnel did a search with rescue dogs to see if anyone was trapped in the calamity, but thankfully no one else was caught among the downed shelves and the resulting avalanche of party products.
As of now, there is no explanation for what caused the shelves to collapse.
“We’re looking into the situation to pinpoint the exact cause, and the store remains closed at this time,” says Party City in a statement.
Even when you’ve been accused of violating the copyright of a major music publishers, you still have the right to not be harassed by unsolicited pre-recorded calls demanding payment for those supposed violations. That’s why Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and other defendants have agreed to pay out $450,000 to thousands of alleged music pirates.
According to a class-action lawsuit filed in Nov. 2014, Warner — along with other defendants, including music industry biggie BMG Rights Management, and copyright enforcement company Rightscorp — violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by robocalling accused content pirates without getting their prior express consent, as required by law.
The plaintiffs claimed that Warner and BMG (and possibly others) hired Rightscorp to make these prerecorded calls demanding payment for alleged copyright infringement.
In general, Rightscorp works by offering lower-cost settlements to accused pirates, hoping they will agree to pay up rather than face higher penalties from the legal system. It’s an established practice, but using pre-recorded calls without the recipient’s permission could run afoul of the law.
The plaintiffs alleged that Warner and BMG were vicariously liable for Rightscorp’s actions because the companies allowed these robocalls to happen.
After the defendants filed various motions to dismiss, the case went into legal limbo in June when the judge stayed all proceedings pending the outcome of mediation efforts between the two parties.
Now comes news [via TorrentFreak] that the parties have reached a settlement.
According to documents [PDF] filed with the court this week, the proposed settlement will see the 2,025 sharing in a payout totaling $450,000. After legal fees, that will only come out to around $100 per member of the plaintiff class.
The original complaint had sought statutory penalties for TCPA violations: $500 per negligent violation; $1,500 per intentional robocall. That means that Warner, et al, are getting off with only paying a small fraction of what they could have faced if they’d lost in court. Even better for the companies involved, the settlement does not require that they admit any wrongdoing.
We can only hope that the $450,000 is sufficient to teach Rightscorp that it should pick up the phone if it’s going to accuse people of piracy.
The idea of swinging furniture is a soothing one: you climb in, set yourself to rocking, and away you go, blissfully swaying on a wave of relaxation. Unless, that is, the chair dumps you unceremoniously on the ground in the middle of your veg-out session. That’s why Pier 1 Imports is calling back 276,000 swinging chairs and stands, which can become unstable and lead to folks falling on their backsides.
The recall involves about 260,000 Swingasan chairs and stands, sold by Pier 1 Imports (and about 16,000 more in Canada), according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The chairs and stands were sold separately at Pier 1 Imports stores and online between January 2010 through August 2015, in various colors and designs.
So far, Pier 1 has received 101 reports of incidents with the chairs and stands, including 93 reports of the chair with the stand becoming unstable during use and tipping over. Those falls have led to 23 injuries so far. Eight reports of the suspension hardware failing has included four reports of injuries.
If you’ve purchased one of the chairs and/or stands, stop using it immediately and contact Pier 1 Imports for a free repair kit — or return the items to the store for a full refund. Owners of the Podasan Mocha and Orange Swingasan chairs will have to be happy with a refund, as there’s no repair kit for those models.
Check out the chart below to see if your chair model is included in the recall:
Back in November, Volkswagen announced a “goodwill package” of cash and credit intended to placate some owners of supposed “clean diesel” cars that were rigged to cheat emissions tests. Now the company is expanding this offer to include owners of 3-liter diesel cars from VW, Audi, and Porsche.
Consumerist reader Rob brought the recent expansion of the goodwill package to our attention after his wife received the offer from VW in an email.
“In December, my wife went to [VW’s] website and signed up to be notified of any developments,” Rob, who owns a 2011 VW Touareg, writes in an email. “Yesterday, we got an offer in the email that sounds about the same as the one they made to owners of the [3-liter] diesels: $1000 split between dealer credit and a prepaid Visa loyalty card.”
Originally, the program – which offers the payments in two ways: a $500 Visa prepaid card to be used however the customer desires, and $500 in credits toward a VW purchase and three years of free roadside assistance – applied only to certain Jetta, Jetta Sportwagen, Beetle, Beetle Convertible, Audi A3, Golf, Golf Sportwagen, and Passat vehicles.
According to VW’s website, the company recently added goodwill package eligibility to the owners of the 2015-2016 VW Touareg, the 2014-2016 Porsche Cayenne, and the 2015-2016 Audi A6 Quattro, A7 Quattro, A8, A8L, and Q5.
The carmaker admitted in November that those vehicles also included a “sophisticated software algorithm” programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and to only turn on full emissions control systems – the temperature conditioning mode – during that testing.
While Rob tells Consumerist he’s glad the additional vehicles were added to the goodwill package, he would have liked to have been offered a package that takes into account that the Touareg and others are larger vehicles than those first eligible under the goodwill package.
We reached out to VW about whether or not the company considered creating a goodwill package that reflects the cost of the additional vehicles. We’ll update this post when we hear back.
At this time last year, the rest of the world was freaking out over the prospect of a change to the recipe of Cadbury Creme Eggs. Here in the United States, we were safe from the recipe change, with our Hershey’s-licensed creme eggs remaining as inferior as they’ve ever been. However, researchers speculate that the recipe change cost Cadbury £6 million ($8.6 million) in lost sales.
The Easter candy season is apparently just now kicking off in the United Kingdom, since they don’t start putting out Easter candy in mid-December like Americans do. This news doesn’t come from Cadbury itself, but an outside market research firm, IRI, which looked into the egg situation on behalf of a grocery trade group.
Their research found that Cadbury’s Easter candy lines sold about £10 million less than would have been expected, putting most of the blame on the Creme Egg change.
Cadbury, for its part, insists that they never sold Creme Eggs in a shell of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, and that all of this fuss over a recipe change is fuss over nothing. “The fundamentals of the Cadbury Creme Egg remain exactly the same as the original in 1971 recipe with delicious Cadbury chocolate and a unique gooey creme filling,” a spokesperson told The Telegraph.
Sure, this news doesn’t affect us directly, but it’s a reminder of an important consumer fact: don’t mess with people’s cherished holiday candy memories.
As we saw with the prolonged attempt to sell Cameron’s house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, having your property featured in a famous movie is no guarantee that it will be snatched up at a good price. Just ask the owners of the Pennsylvania home used in the Oscar-winning horror film Silence of the Lambs.
Director Jonathan Demme used the quaint home on the outskirts of tiny Perryopolis, PA, to film some of the movie’s final standoff, where [spoiler alert for those who have somehow managed to not see this movie, or have it spoiled, at some point in the last 25 years] Jodie Foster’s FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling unwittingly stumbles across murderer Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb, played by Ted Levine.
While the tense early part of the sequence was indeed filmed inside the home’s entryway and kitchen, the subsequent chase through its basement was not. Which is a way of saying that this house does not contain a sub-basement starvation pit where a buyer could prep a victim before her eventual flaying.
Perhaps that’s why the home has had difficulty attracting an interested buyer since it went on sale last year. The homeowners, who have owned the house for 40 years, tell the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that they have received a lot of calls from curious fans of the 1991 movie that won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, along with one for its screenplay.
The home was originally listed for $300,000, but it’s recently been dropped to $250,000. Even so, that may be a high price for a one-bathroom house in remote western Pennsylvania, an hour away from Pittsburgh.
A look through real estate sites for this area shows other homes going for significantly less than even the reduced asking price for the (in)famous film set.
However, the homeowners say that bona fide potential buyers are starting to show interest.
“We got the message out to the curious, but not to the people who are interested in actually buying,” the husband tells the Tribune-Review. “We’re finally starting to get a little bit of motion.”
If there’s one time in your life when you could really use a lift somewhere, it’s got to be when you’re preparing to birth a human being. But can an Uber driver who may be adverse to transporting a person in labor just leave you hanging? That’s what happened to one couple in New York City, who say that after the pregnant woman vomited on the sidewalk, their driver refused to give them a ride to the hospital… and charged $13 for the privilege of being stranded.
The family is still peeved over the November incident, when the first-time parents were all ready to make the three-mile trip to the hospital after the woman went into labor, reports Fortune. The Uber driver arrived just in time to see the woman loose her cookies on the pavement. He told them he’d lose money if she became sick in the car, and said no other driver would accept a woman in labor as a passenger either. He left, despite the couple’s pleas, and charged them $13 for his lost time.
Uber eventually refunded the $13 after the company complained, but the husband says he’s frustrated that the company initially wouldn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing by Uber or by the driver. He says that he asked Uber for more informaiton on the driver so he could pursue a complaint with NYC’s taxi regulator, and that a customer service rep refused (that info can be found in your emailed receipt, however).
Though the couple were able to hail another Uber and make it to the hospital in time and safely, the situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place: Uber frowns on the practice as a matter of policy, and New York city and state laws prohibit it.
An Uber spokesperson told Fortune that denying service to a passenger in labor is “unacceptable.”
“It goes against our code of conduct and the standard of service our riders rely on. We extend our deepest apologies to both riders and have taken action to respond to this complaint. We are glad that the rider’s next driver was professional and courteous,” the rep said, adding that whenever a rider reports discrimination, the company will investigate and, when warranted, remove that driver from its platform.
According to Emily Martin, general counsel of the National Women’s Law Center, it’s against the law in New York to discriminate against passengers in such a condition.
“Uber drivers are bound by the same public accommodation laws that prohibit New York City taxi drivers and car services from discriminating on the basis of pregnancy when deciding who they will pick up—and those laws are a good thing, as they help ensure that not many babies end up being born on New York City sidewalks,” Martin told Fortune.
The family is still upset over the situation — though the husband says he’s not blaming the company for one driver’s actions — but says Uber should have done more to address the situation.
“Uber should have clarified their policies on drivers and women in labor, and confirmed that the driver received appropriate disciplinary action,” he told Fortune. “I’m fortunate enough to know my rights and have access to resources, but I feel for the person who is not as lucky.”
Federal regulators and automakers from around the world are set to announce an agreement on Friday to reform and improve auto safety following a year of record fines and safety recalls.
Reuters reports that the agreement, which will be unveiled at the Detroit auto show, is intended to spur a culture change within the auto industry.
Automakers taking part in the agreement, which has been in discussions for several weeks, include General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Diamler AG, Fiat Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai.
According to sources briefed on the matter, among other things, the agreement would improve vehicle cyber security and the use of early warning data to detect potential defects that could lead to large-scale recalls. Additionally, the agreement would create government-industry task forces that would work long term to improve auto safety.
In a letter to NHTSA last week, automakers said that support for the agreement “reaffirms our shared commitment to safety, and signals to the public the areas in which government and industry intend to collaborate to further improve automotive safety.”
Still NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind tells Reuters that the agency won’t hesitate to aggressively enforce rules and fine automakers that fail to follow mandates in the future.
While the agreement showcases growing collaboration between automakers and regulators, it falls short of meeting safety advocates call for binding legal requirements to toughen safety rules.
In fact, Rosekind tells Reuters that the new agreement isn’t enforceable, but that it does meet the agency’s mission to find new tools to make sure vehicles are safe.
If you’re going to casually advertise that your competitor’s product contains an insecticide, you should probably expect to get sued. Just ask the lawyers at General Mills, who are none to happy about Chobani ads claiming that Yoplait’s competing yogurt contains a product used to “kill bugs.”
General Mills, which owns the Yoplait yogurt brand, filed the suit [PDF] Sunday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, accusing Chobani of false advertising.
The ad campaign, which debuted Jan. 6, includes TV commercials, print advertisements in major newspapers, coupons, and a presence at fitness gyms that target other yogurt brands with similar 100-calorie options, including Yoplait and Dannon.
In the ad, Chobani notes that the Yoplait Greek-style yogurt contains the commonly used preservative potassium sorbate. But then the ads goes on to imply that this ingredient is actually a pesticide, saying it is “used to kill bugs.”
“The television commercial that leads the Chobani attack campaign goes so far to convey that, because Yoplait Greek 100 is laced with a pesticide, it is so dangerous and unfit to eat that consumers should discard it as garbage,” the suit states.
The TV spot prominently displays Yoplait Greek 100, with a woman examining the package. At this point a voiceover states, “Yoplait Greek 100 actually uses preservatives like potassium sorbate.”
The narration then continues, “Really?! That stuff is used to kill bugs!” During this exchange, the woman’s face is pinched in a look of disgust as she further examines the Yoplait container; she then flings the container into the garbage.
General Mills contends that Chobani falsely claims that Yoplait is “toxic” because it contains potassium sorbate, a fungicide-like preservative that prevents yeast and mold growth.
“General Mills is informed and believes that there is no scientific evidence that potassium sorbate is effective against insects,” the company said in the suit, noting that potassium sorbate is considered safe by multiple federal agencies, according to the lawsuit.
The suit also takes issue with Chobani’s print and website advertisements for its 100-calorie yogurt. The print ads include references to “bad stuff” — preservatives — in General Mill’s Yoplait yogurt, while the Chobani website allegedly “falsely communicates that the potassium sorbate should be considered a ‘pesticide’ by consumers.”
General Mills claims in the suit that it has spent more than $900 million in marketing and advertising for its Yoplait products in the past five years and that Chobani’s campaign could do irreversible damage to the brand.
“The offending ads are therefore both literally false by necessary implication and highly misleading,” the suit states. “Unless Chobani is immediately enjoined, the Chobani Attack Campaign will irreparably harm General Mills and the goodwill it has developed over several years.”
General Mills’ lawsuit comes less than a week after Dannon threatened to sue the company over claims that its Light & Fit product contains sucralose, an artificial sweetener processed with “added chlorine,” the Star Tribune reports.
Before Dannon could head to court, Chobani sued the company in New York federal court asking for a declaration that its claims don’t constitute false and deceptive advertising. Dannon promptly countersued.
Peter McGuinness, Chobani’s chief marketing and brand officer, told the Star Tribune in a statement on Monday that he wasn’t surprised by the General Mills or Dannon lawsuits.
“I’m disappointed that Dannon and General Mills are focused on stopping people from having the facts about artificial sweeteners and artificial preservatives,” he said. “This campaign is about giving people truthful and accurate information so they can make more informed decisions about the food they buy.”
Now that the anti-everything-artificial train has left the station, it is showing no signs of stopping: Papa John’s says it’s the first pizza chain to eliminate all artificial flavors and synthetic colors from its entire menu.
The change will apply to all pizza ingredients, pizza toppings, dessert items, and sauce selections, Papa John’s said in a statement Tuesday.
“We closed out 2015 announcing our commitment to serve chicken raised without antibiotics and are ringing in the New Year artificial-flavor and synthetic-color free,” said Sean Muldoon, Papa John’s Senior Vice President of Research and Development. “We’re so proud to be able to show our customers how much we care about what they’re eating. This exemplifies Papa John’s continued efforts to deliver high-quality products. It’s the right thing to do.”
The company says the elimination of artificial flavors and synthetic colors is effective as of now, while chicken toppings and poppers will be antibiotic-free by the summer.
Papa John’s is just the latest food company to hop on the anti-artificial train: Panera just announced it’s removed all artificial ingredients from its entire soup menu; Pepsi is planning an organic Gatorade; Hershey is ditching artificial flavors from some chocolate products; Campbell’s changed its chicken noodle soup recipe to do away with artificial flavors; and Schwan is eliminating artificial flavors and ingredients by 2017, just to name a few.
Imagine that you need 42 ounces of Skittles. We’re not sure what you need them for; it’s your life. When shopping in large quantities, always check for dastardly Target Math, which exists to trip up innocent shoppers like you who just want a large quantity of something. Instead, Target Math makes you pay more per ounce when you buy in bulk, while you could have purchased multiples of a smaller size for less money.
Take this example, the real-life version of the Skittles quandary posed above, submitted by reader Tami. You, the theoretical buyer of large quantities of Skittles, could buy one bag of 41 ounces for $7.79, or three bags of 14 ounces each for a total of 42 ounces and $7.47. Makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, over at Dollar General, a “dollar-ish” discount store, Guillem noticed something curious about the sale price on bread. This is the other variation of Target math: putting something on sale without putting it on sale.
If you’ve been putting off your final farewells to Internet Explorer, it’s time to stop procrastinating: Microsoft is ending support for IE versions 8, 9, and 10, effectively sending the browser to that Internet pasture in the sky, where its friends Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, and other tech dinosaurs are waiting.
The final security update delivers a few bug fixes for the browser, as well as a warning that its about to bite the bucket, in the form of an “end of life” notification. The message will push users to upgrade to IE’s successor, Microsoft Edge.
So why should you care? If you’re one of the possibly hundreds of millions of users still running one of those IE versions, you won’t get any more security patches. And if you don’t get security updates, your software will become increasingly vulnerable to hack attacks as time goes by.
If you or your loved ones are still relying on a soon-to-be very outdated version of Microsoft’s web browser, this is your moment. Seize it, and move on.
Consumerist reader and Comcast customer “BB” says that the cable company upgraded the network in his area in recent months, and has been writing and calling him regularly about upgrading his modem ever since.
“For months we received multiple letters in the mail, explaining how we were missing out on the great new capabilities of their network,” writes BB. “This eventually escalated to repeated phone calls from Comcast, stating that we should really upgrade our modem.”
Thing is, BB owns the modem he uses and he’s experienced no problems with service or speeds since the network upgrade. He’d rather not spend money on a new modem — or pay Comcast too much to rent one from the company — when what he has is working just fine.
And BB is not some minor Internet user with an ancient desktop computer that he only uses to check email once a week. In fact, he’s a software developer living — like many of us — in a home with multiple web-connected devices.
“We stream Netflix and YouTube and our Internet speed is great for everything we need,” he writes. “Why should I spend the money?”
BB knows that sometimes customers can indeed be left out in the cold by using old tech — just ask all those people who had to scramble for digital antennas and cable boxes when that changeover happened — so he called Comcast to ask exactly what he was missing out on with his old modem. He says the support rep would only tell him that he wasn’t enjoying the full benefits of the upgraded modem, but failed to provide any real technical info about what this meant.
“Now they’ve moved to more aggressive measures to try to get me to upgrade,” writes BB. “The other day as I was browsing the web on my phone, on my home WiFi, I got a pop-up notice while browsing on wired.com.” (see screenshot above)
In big red letters, the notice alerts BB that there is some “Action Needed” on his service.
It reads: “Our records indicate that the cable modem, which you currently use for your XFINITY Internet service, may not be able to receive the full range of our speeds. To ensure you’re receiving the full benefits of your XFINITY Internet service, please replace your cable modem.”
“This feels like a step too far,” writes BB. “It just feels invasive in a way I’m not comfortable with.”
A Comcast exec we talked to argued that this is not an attempt to upsell the customer on a new modem, and instead characterized the alert as an educational tool to let the customer know that their device may be nearing the end of its life cycle. They explained that while an older modem may work, it may also no longer be receiving necessary, regular software updates and bug fixes.
The exec points to Comcast’s impending rollout of DOCSIS 3.1 technology — which allows for gigabit Internet speeds over existing cable lines. Taking advantage of that leap in speeds will also require users to switch out to newer modems.
Unfortunately for BB, the only way to stop the upgrade alerts from showing up in his web browser is to eventually upgrade his modem. There is currently no way to opt out of these injected notices.
For now, BB seems content with his setup.
“If they want me to upgrade my modem so badly they can send me a new one, or put a credit on my bill to pay for one that I buy myself,” he writes. “Until then, I’m perfectly happy with my Internet speed and will use my modem until it stops working.”
Blue Bell Creameries is working hard to reassure customers after last year’s outbreak of Listeria contamination and a slew of massive recalls, issuing yet another message promising that its products are now safe to eat.
The company announced on Friday that it was within the realm of possibility that listeria might be present still at its Brenham, TX plant — one of three facilities total — while saying that there was no reason for customers to worry about contamination. It seems it’s trying to hammer that message home hard, issuing another statement on Monday (via the Associated Press) saying customers “can be confident in our ice cream because of all the steps we have taken to ensure a safe product. Our enhanced testing program confirms that these procedures are working.”
Part of the new process the company is implementing to stay contamination-free involves enhanced testing that flags suspicious areas early on, “so we can take steps to extensively clean and sanitize the areas, refine our procedures or make additional physical enhancements in our facilities.”
A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services said Blue Bell told her agency that it found “a couple of instances of environmental positives for Listeria species at the Brenham plant over the last month” in non-food areas such as floors and floor drains “and the instances were addressed,” which is pretty much what the company said last week: yes, there could possibly be listeria hanging around here, but no, it’s not going to get into the food.
Part of the fallout from last year’s recall and the subsequent cleanup effort means Blue Bell agreed to inform health officials in the states where it has factories — Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma — when there’s a positive test result for listeria in its products or ingredients. The agreements don’t mean that Blue Bell has to notify the states of any positive listeria test results if it was found on floors or other areas that don’t have contact with food.
Listeria happens to be a foodborne pathogen that can survive being frozen, which is why its presence in ice cream is a particular threat. The Blue Bell outbreak killed three people and sent twelve to the hospital. In healthy people, infection with listeriosis causes fever and muscle aches, along with diarrhea and abdominal pain. Infection can be life-threatening to people who are elderly, young, or who have compromised immune systems.
During last year’s outbreak, 12 people became sick and three died. Blue Bell recalled eight million gallons of ice cream as a result. The company is now in the process of expanding its distribution again, adding El Paso, TX; Little Rock, AR; and Memphis, TN to the list of areas that will be getting Blue Bell products again.
The Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act, intended to reduce the odds of kids getting their little hands on tasty-looking – but poisonous – liquid nicotine, appears destined to be the first new federal law regulating e-cigarettes. Yesterday, Congress passed the measure, which now goes to the White House for President Obama’s signature.
The Act [PDF], introduced by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, aims to treat the packaging of liquid nicotine the same as household substances under the Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970: requiring the use of childproof bottles and containers.
Liquid nicotine, used to refill e-cigarettes, has been a point of concern for consumer advocates, health officials, and lawmakers in recent years, with reports indicating that children, who may be drawn to the product’s bright color packaging and flavors, are at a higher risk of death from coming into contact with the toxin.
According to poison control data, the substance is highly toxic if ingested or absorbed through the skin; as little as half a teaspoon can be fatal if ingested by an average-sized toddler. In 2014, poison control centers received more than 3,000 calls related to e-cigarette and liquid nicotine exposure, and one toddler died, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports.
At issue in the bill is the packaging of the products. Currently, manufacturers aren’t required to use child-resistant containers.
That would change under the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act, as manufacturers of liquid nicotine will be required to sell products in child-resistant packaging — consistent with U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) standards — within six months of the bill’s passage.
The packaging must be difficult for children under five years of age to open or to obtain harmful contents from.
Additionally, the measure will preserve the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate the packaging of tobacco products.
Advocacy groups were quick to applaud the bill’s passage.
“This legislation will go far to protect young children from the dangers of liquid nicotine,” Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, and Kids in Danger said in a joint statement on Monday. “Just one teaspoon can be fatal to a child. And this safety threat only continues to grow as e-cigarettes and other vaping devices grow in popularity.”
Airbnb’s hometown of San Francisco voted down a proposition that would have limited the number of days per year that a host on the service can rent out a room or property, with the goal of keeping scarce housing stock as housing, not places for tourists. Yet the company is preparing for similar future battles in San Francisco and in other cities, and will start by nagging hosts in San Francisco.
Here’s where Airbnb’s approach to local laws gets a little bit tricky. Hosts in San Francisco are supposed to register with the city to avoid violating laws against short-term rentals. The company has offered to help hosts to register, but has not offered to cross-reference and take down the listings of hosts who aren’t registered.
Airbnb has made a new promise to the city of San Francisco to send e-mails and paper letters twice a month to hosts within the city who haven’t registered yet, hoping to gently nag them into doing so. What they haven’t done is responded to a request from the city that the site require hosts to display their city registration numbers on their profiles: the offer to nag their hists is apparently the company’s counter-offer.
New York City is also an expensive market and tourist magnet, and in that city, Airbnb provided a large data dump meant to prove that most of its hosts are not scheming landlords who have dedicated apartments in hot neighborhoods to the tourist trade.
Last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere went on Twitter to post video responses to questions about his company’s Binge On program. While the rabble-rousing exec is often applauded for his plainspoken demeanor, he was roundly criticized for cursing out one pro-consumer group that has been critical of his company. After a few days to think about it, Legere is now apologizing.
In an “Open Letter To Consumers” (read: press release) about Binge On, Legere reiterates many of his previously stated positions on the program, which doesn’t charge T-Mo customers for using data from certain streaming video providers… so long as they don’t mind the fact that the stream may be downgraded from its intended resolution.
T-Mobile fired back, claiming that the downgrading was not throttling, but an optimization process to make these streams run better for customers and allow them to get more for their data subscription.
But a study by the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges that T-Mo is doing is the opposite of optimization and may actually result in video that is even worse than if the content company had sent it out in a lower resolution. Additionally, the EFF claimed that T-Mobile appeared to be downgrading streams regardless of network speeds or congestion.
So when the EFF used last week’s Twitter Q&A with Legere to ask the CEO to explain in more detail about how Binge On works, he finished his response to the non-profit, pro-consumer group by asking “Who the fuck are you anyway EFF? Why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who pays you?”
As we noted in our story last week, this didn’t go over well with supporters of EFF, which is predominantly funded by donations and not from corporate gifts.
And so, Legere concludes today’s open letter with an apology to the EFF.
“Just because we don’t completely agree on all aspects of Binge On doesn’t mean I don’t see how they fight for consumers,” he writes. “We both agree that it is important to protect consumers’ rights and to give consumers value. We have that in common, so more power to them. As I mentioned last week, we look forward to sitting down and talking with the EFF and that is a step we will definitely take. Unfortunately, my color commentary from last week is now drowning out the real value of Binge On – so hopefully this letter will help make that clear again.”
