pileofcrapola

In this video, John Green from Mental Floss is back to test 14 popular money saving hacks that are slinking around the internet. More of them pass than you might expect.

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When you want a cool homemade treat, you can use dry ice as a mold for the perfect juice popsicle.

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The traditional car rental process is known for having it's frustrations, from lost reservations to non-transparent fees . Here are several alternatives to traditional car rentals.

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Do you love cup of soup and instant ramen as much as we do ? Then good news: Here's a DIY way to get your noodles fix while also upgrading it to be more delicious and packed with fresh ingredients.

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Fall is the season of shipping weird stuff across the world. While most packages won't raise an eyebrow, there are some things like alcohol, lithium ion batteries, and perishable items that have their own special rules. Here's how to manage some of the more difficult things to ship.

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No matter how well you train your dog, they sometimes slip away from you. You try to get them back, and they just don't want to come. One Quora user has a solution: run the other way.

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Aiming to please your boss isn't about kissing up. When your goal is to make your manager more successful—rather than just yourself—you'll grow as an individual performer, as a professional, and as a part of the team, especially if you're just beginning your career.

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There's a reason "shameless" and "self-promotion" tend to go together: Few people enjoy promoting themselves or their work. It feels gross and shameful . Self-promotion gives me the heebie-jeebies too, but I've been learning to handle it better.

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A whitepaper written by a University of Texas economist and the staff of coupon site RetailMeNot.com came to a shocking conclusion: consumers can save a lot of money by using RetailMeNot and other online coupon and savings resources. How much? The site’s own statistics show that shoppers save around $17 per purchase by using deal websites, and parents with children at home saved almost twice that amount.

Of course, that statistic would mean that the average online shopper was making 11 to 12 purchases per hour, or buying one thing every five minutes. That’s unlikely, even during the holiday season. It makes more sense when the paper’s author, Professor Jason Abrevaya, points out that deal sites save shoppers’ time by helping them save money without spending a lot of time researching deals on their own.

Instead, deals and coupon codes are in one one place, saving shoppers time. How much time? An estimated 100 million hours of shopping time that Americans presumably decided to spend “liking” pictures of their friends’ cats on Facebook instead. Not that deal sites are always a time-saver: Dr. Abrevaya points out that a minority of shoppers say that using deal sites actually took more time, presumably from shopping more or wrestling with coupons or rebates.

The survey these estimates are based on only had 1,000 participants, but Dr. Abrevaya used it to draw conclusions about all online shoppers. For example, he calculated that deal and coupon sites save shoppers a total of $4 billion just during the peak of the holiday shopping season in November and December of 2013.

Holiday Haul: How Shoppers Will Save $5 Billion This Holiday Season [RetailMeNot] (PDF download – via press release)

It looks like a lime green gas station, but the new Walmart store concept in the chain’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas doesn’t fill your gas tank: it fills your car with groceries. Announced earlier this year, Walmart Pick-Up Grocery opened on Monday, combining Walmart prices with the experience of not needing to get out of your car.

Living in Walmart’s hometown, the people of Bentonville are used to new and exciting Walmarts and store concepts. Some of these spread to the rest of the country, like the mini Walmart Express stores; others didn’t really take off. That’s why they’re called test stores.

Here’s how the Pick-Up Grocery works: you have to place your order as early as three weeks and as late as two hours in advance. At the appointed time, you pull up in a drive-thru lane that looks like a gas station, and enter your last name or order number on a touchscreen.

This alerts the warehouse employees, who emerge with your order and load it in the car. “The customer would actually have the opportunity to review fresh products” before having them loaded in the car, the facility’s grocery manager explained to local TV station KFSM.

There are 10,000 items available to order online, including alcoholic beverages and some household items.

Walmart Pick-Up Grocery Concept Opens [KFSM]

One body recovered near the volcano's peak was in a squatting position and had to be dug out of a thick layer of ash. Another was caught between boulders bigger than large refrigerators. Police who recovered the bodies Wednesday portrayed a painful scene of death around the summit where hikers enjoying an autumn weekend hike were caught by the mountain's surprise eruption.

A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects.

Young people who torture and kill animals are prone to violence against people later in life if it goes unchecked, studies have shown. A new federal category for animal cruelty crimes will help root out those pet abusers before their behavior worsens and give a boost to prosecutions, an animal welfare group says.

The new faces of GWAR speak -- and it's not pretty. The world as we know it is in peril, and these two ugly aliens are the only things preventing our complete desolation. Editor's note: The photos may not be appropriate for all ages.

What do you serve a man who isn't eating?

A trio of scrawny lions was brought into Israel from Gaza on Tuesday en route to a better life at a wildlife sanctuary in Jordan after their zoo was damaged in the recent Israel-Hamas war.

A man serving life in prison for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 has been selected as a commencement speaker at his Vermont alma mater.

A weekend fire that tore through a North Las Vegas home with 93 small dogs -- more than 15 times the maximum number of canines allowed in a house by the city -- killed 45 of them and injured one man.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson says the front door to the White House now locks automatically in a security breach.

Just a friendly reminder for those in a doggie daze who might just be so relieved that Mr. Fancypants McCuddlebutt is actually going No. 1 that they don’t notice where the spray is going — it’d be very human of you to not let your furry friend pee on plastic garbage bags on the street. Yes, sanitation workers wear gloves, but it’s still gross, what with bags swinging all over the place. [via The New York Times]

Hear that sound? It’s the clink of the bar being set incredibly high for the rest of us folks, after a very dedicated fellow spent 18 months panning for gold in the Scottish mountains, all so he could make his fiancée a wedding ring.

He collected thousands of teeny tiny bits of gold until he had enough to hand over to a jeweler for forging, reports the Daily Mail.

“It was a labour of love,” the 48-year-old said. “It was an amazing feeling to put the ring on her finger. I was really overwhelmed.”

While he didn’t go panning every day of that 18 months, he says he probably spent about 20 full days gathering gold, calling it somewhat of a “gold fever.”

And this Scottish gold is particularly special, as you can’t buy it on the regular market.

“In its natural form Scottish gold has a purity of approximately 22+ carats (pure gold being 24 carats) and a significantly greater value than the gold market value thanks to its rarity,” he explains.

This isn’t the first time’s pulled such a ridiculously sweet trick — he also proposed to his fiancee with an engagement ring cast from gold he’d panned himself.

“I feel very proud of John, and very lucky,” she says, adding that while she went on one panning trip and found a tiny bit, it was all him. “The ring is very unique and very special.”

Romantic boyfriend spends 18 months panning for GOLD in the Scottish mountains to make a unique engagement ring for his bride-to-be [The Daily Mail]

When a train conductor in Wisconsin pulled in to work last week in his car, he had an unexpected decoration on his grill. A coyote was somehow wedged in, and it was alive but injured. The local animal control officer took Vern, as he was named, to a wildlife rehabilitator, and he is expected to recover. Only how did he get wedged in the front of a car to begin with?

The driver remembers hitting something with his car during his commute, but didn’t see anything in the road that he hit. (Yes, train conductors usually drive cars to work, not trains.) When that happens, most people assume that perhaps they hit an animal and it was unhurt, or ran away injured. He continued to work and pulled into the parking lot with a beautiful coyote in his grill.

A local animal control officer described the coyote as “docile,” which isn’t normal for wild predators. He was in shock and had three leg fractures. After treatment at a local wildlife rehabilitation facility, Vern will be released back into the wild in the spring.

The train conductor was described as “distraught,” and he was the one who came up with the name “Vern.” He’s raising money for the rehabilitation center.

Motorist Arriving At Train Station Finds Coyote Wedged In Bumper [CBS Chicago]

So far we know that drones can be used for any number of activities from delivering medicine in Germany to improving sight-seeing near the Space Needle. Now we’re learning they’ve been used for more sinister extra curricular activities, specifically by alleged criminals to case prospective targets.

According to WLNY-TV, authorities in Pennsylvania report they arrested two men with ties to a burglary ring that may be using drones to case possible targets.

Police officials say they arrested two New Jersey men earlier this week in connection with a robbery at an area Verizon store.

A police memo obtained by WLNY revealed that the two men may be part of a burglary ring operating in several states including New Jersey.

One of the men was found to be in possession of at least a dozen cell phones and a drone.

An officer of the police department reports he witnessed the same drone hovering over the police department the day before the Verizon store burglary.

“The way to get into buildings, the easiest way to get into commercial buildings is through different ducts and vents that are on the roof, and that is a way to check and case how they are going to get into buildings without having to climb on the roof in advance,” security expert Dan Coleman tells WLNY.

Footage from the drone showed shots of the Cityplex 12 theater in Newark, as well as, I-495, the Lincoln Tunnel, and West 38th Street in Manhattan.

CBS 2 Exclusive: Cops Say Criminals Are Going High-Tech, Using Drones To Case Victims [WLNY-TV]

Pets are often regarded with a special level of love and devotion from their owners. When it comes to feeding those furry family members, only the best is acceptable. And the best certainly doesn’t include salmonella. That’s why dog and cat food manufacturer Bravo issued a recall of several varieties of pet food.

The Food & Drug Administration reports that Connecticut-based Bravo issued the recall after routine testing found salmonella in some lots of the company’s soft food products.

Affected varieties include two- and five-pound packages of Raw Food Diet Bravo! Turkey Blend for dogs and cats, Bravo! Blends All Natural Chicken Blend diet for dogs and cats, Premium Turkey Formula Bravo! Balance Raw Diet, and Bravo! Blends All Natural Chicken Blend diet for dogs and cats. The products have a “Best Used By” dates of November 5, 2015 and August 11, 2016.

Out of an “abundance of caution” the company is also recalling all the two, five and 10-pound sizes of Bravo Chicken Blends, Bravo Turkey Blends, Bravo Balance Chicken Balance and Bravo Balance Premium Turkey Formula frozen raw diet products with “Best Used By” dates between June 20, 2016 and September 18, 2016.

The dog and cat food was distributed nationwide beginning in November 2013 to retail stores, internet retailers and directly to consumers.

The product can be identified by the batch ID code printed on the side of the plastic tube.

Pets with Salmonella infections may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever, and vomiting. Some pets will have only decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.

Bravo Recalls Select Chicken and Turkey Pet Foods Because of Possible Salmonella Health Risk [FDA]

Most people who drive learn the essentials of driving, traffic, car maintenance, and road rage skills from their parents. That’s what parents are for: to pass on their wisdom as well as their bad habits. We also pick up bad or outdated information along the way, like the requirement to change our oil every 3,000 miles. Or the belief that cars need frequent tune-ups.

If your car is more than 15 years old or so, yes, you do need to tune it up. That includes adjustments of parts that newer cars don’t even have, like the carburetor, and replacing spark plugs and the condenser as they wear out. Spark plugs in newer cars, meanwhile, last for up to 100,000 miles.

If you want to keep your car running efficiently and prolong its life, consult the maintenance schedule in the manual and do what’s recommended unless you have a compelling reason not to. Don’t visit your mechanic and ask for a “tune-up” unless your car is of the proper age, unless you want to broadcast that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

You probably don’t need a tune-up [Consumer Reports]
Reality check on car-care myths [Consumer Reports]

How carefully do you read those terms and conditions that pop up when you use a WiFi hotspot you’re unfamiliar with? Not quite carefully enough, it seems, as one group doing an experiment on the security risks of public WiFi found at least six people who unwittingly gave away their firstborn children in the process of getting online.

The European law enforcement agency Europol teamed with security researchers to set up a WiFi hotspot in London this summer, reports The Guardian, and buried some interesting terms in the fine print to sign on to the free network.

Included in the terms was a “Herod clause,” which granted free WiFi access if “the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity.”

Six people will now have to hand their firstborn kids over to Rumpelstiltskin.

Just kidding, no one is going to take any babies for Wifi.

“We have yet to enforce our rights under the terms and conditions but, as this is an experiment, we will be returning the children to their parents,” wrote the security company, F-Score, in its report, adding that its legal advisor “points out that – while terms and conditions are legally binding – it is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services, so the clause would not be enforceable in a court of law.”

The experiment was aimed at highlighting just how serious people should take their own security while using public WiFi not protected by a password.

When the Herod clause was removed during another part of the experiment, 33 devices connected to the portable hotspot of unknown origin — which could be an easy way to let hackers in to your network, researchers say.

“It‘s a particularly disturbing development as recent research has shown that individuals can be accurately identified by using just the last four access points where they have logged on,” F-Secure’s report read.

The group advised using VPN software to encrypt data coming in and out of your device, or to turn off WiFi when in public and near untrusted hotspots, and to practice spinning straw into gold.

Londoners give up eldest children in public Wi-Fi security horror show [The Guardian]

Perhaps in a quest to ensure that a new generation of people will go to sleep every night with shapes floating behind their eyelids, someone is making a full-length live-action movie of the popular 1980s video game, Tetris. Aaaaaaaand cue that song that never fails to get in your head.

Yes, a Tetris movie, and no, this is not a joke, at least not as reported by the Wall Street Journal: A company called Threshold Entertainment is working with the Tetris Company to create a movie based on the game.

There’s already a plot, and apparently it doesn’t involve people dodging giant blocks falling from the sky, which is really the only storyline that comes to mind.

“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” Threshold’s CEO Larry Kasanoff told the WSJ. “This isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes.”

He’s got some street cred in the game-to-movie realm, as he adapted Mortal Kombat games into two big screen flicks back in the 1990s.

Besides, it’s all about cashing in on the name Tetris made for itself by being the best distraction a graphing calculator could hold for bored high schoolers pretending to pay attention before there were mobile devices with more than one game on them.

“Brands are the new stars of Hollywood,” Kasanoff explains. “We have a story behind ‘Tetris’ which makes it a much more imaginative thing.”

Apparently aliens will also enjoy Tetris the movie, as he adds that the flick will be just “the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance.”

Not to mention, the soundtrack is probably going to be implanted in your brains forever.

A ‘Tetris’ Movie Is in the Works (Exclusive) [Wall Street Journal]

The good news: It’s a Home Depot story that doesn’t involve your credit or debit card information being stolen. The not-so-good news: More than a dozen people at a California Home Depot had to be treated after a customer decided that it would be a good idea to use pepper spray on another customer.

According to KTLA-TV, four people were hospitalized and another dozen were treated by emergency responders following an incident inside a Covina, CA, Depot on Monday.

It’s unclear exactly what happened, but two men inside the store — who apparently had some sort of previous business arrangement with each other — began arguing and one of them let loose with the pepper spray.

He claims he was defending himself, and maybe that’s the case. What’s known for sure is that people were having trouble breathing, the store was evacuated, 9-1-1 responders in hazmat suits showed up, and the pepper-sprayer was arrested on charges of suspicion of unlawful possession and use of a tear gas weapon.

The man was allegedly carrying an illegally large amount of pepper spray on him, which may explain why it was able to spread throughout the store and affect so many people.

The store was reopened about two hours after authorities were first called to the scene.

We are all about reaching for the stars and daring to dream your biggest dreams, folks, especially if it includes many, many feet of bratwurst or working together to create a 1,126-pound world record attempt for a dish containing rice, hamburger, eggs and gravy.

You might not be familiar with loco moco, a dish popular in Hawaii, but there’s no getting around how crazy the idea of more than a thousand pounds of ingredients sounds.

That’s what it took to get the world record, which a restaurant chef and volunteers say they did with their massive moco loco dish over the weekend, reports the Associated Press.

Guinness World Records says the dish would’ve had to be at least 1,100 pounds for consideration, and it certainly sounds like the moco loco gang have delivered: They used 600 pounds of rice, 200 pounds of ground beef, 300 scrambled eggs and 200 pounds of gravy.

Though some critics said the egg should be fried over easy instead of scrambled, the idea of frying 300 eggs was likely a bit daunting. And in the end it did take a while — the crew worked for 3.5 hours to make the moco loco, which was then donated to charity to feed the homeless.

Crew makes 1,126-pound bowl of Hawaii rice dish [Associated Press]

“Free ball python with every car rental” might appeal to some customers as a promotion, but it would be an expensive one, and most customers probably wouldn’t be interested. Two tourists found a free surprise python in the trunk of the car they had rented at Logan airport in Boston and drove to their motel in Maine. The good news? The snake was alive and unharmed, and its owner has already been found.

Still, the women were clearly alarmed to find a snake in the car’s trunk, and they had motel staff call 911. (They didn’t talk to reporters about the incident.) Local police used a pillowcase to remove the snake from the car, and brought it to a nearby pet store equipped to care for a snake of that size.

It turns out that the snake had been hanging out in the vehicle for a few weeks: it escaped from its tank during a previous rental. “We spent about three hours trying to find it and never found it,” the owner told TV station WBZ.

Going on vacation in Maine, hanging out at the Burger King drive-thru: escaped snakes are leading very exciting lives this year. The boa constrictor in the United Kingdom that lurked in the trunk of a used car to surprise the new owner last month didn’t seem to have any fun plans, though.

Women Find Python In Trunk Of Car Rented From Logan Airport [WBZ]