pileofcrapola

MetroPCS is now part of T-Mobile. Last year, before the merger was finalized, we speculated that their union could result in better service for T-Mobile customers, but price increases for MetroPCS customers. One potential consequence of the merger that we hadn’t considered is that that some MetroPCS customers will have to get new phones.

It’s not all MetroPCS customers; only those who purchased their phones before the two companies got engaged in July of last year. The good news for customers is that the company will let them swap their current phones for a comparable one. This swap won’t be entirely free, though. Customers will owe sales tax on their new phones, for a maximum of maybe $50. The trade-in value on their now-useless old phones will offset the taxes, though.

Are you affected by this change? Do you think the phones T-MetroPCS is offering are really comparable, or were you planning to upgrade anyway? Drop us a message at tips@consumerist.com and put “T-MetroPCS” in the subject line.

Call Kurtis: Millions of MetroPCS Phones Could Stop Working After Cell Tower Upgrades [CBS Sacramento]

While human beings can apparently urinate in the aisle of a passenger jet without the plane needing to make a pit stop, and it’s fine and dandy to fly a plane full of people sick with the norovirus to their destination, a little dog poop on a US Airways flight is cause to bring a transcontinental flight to a screeching halt and bring in a clean-up crew.

This is what happened earlier this week aboard the US Air flight from L.A. to Philadelphia, when a dog in the cabin just couldn’t wait a few more hours to go for a W-A-L-K.

The canine was apparently brought into the cabin as a service animal for one of the passengers on the flight, but lost control of his bowels. It didn’t help that passengers (and the dog) sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours before they even took off.

“About an hour into the flight, I started smelling this terrible smell,” one passenger tells Inside Edition. “I look up the aisle way and there’s a dog pooping right in the middle of the aisle. It’s a big dog, three or four feet tall or long, and he was just going!”

He says that the smell was so bad that some people were dry-heaving and others actually vomited.

And it got worse when the dog let loose for a second round of poo. The passenger says that the cabin crew ran out of paper towels, at which point the pilot announced they would be making an unscheduled pit stop.

So the plane landed in Kansas City, where a cleaning crew boarded and took care of the toxic dump.

The passenger says the dog’s owner was apologetic and offered to send Starbucks gift cards to everyone.

Of course, this being the age of Twitter and in-flight WiFi, the entire ordeal was shared in real-time by passengers. You can read a mess of poo-related Tweets at NBC Philadelphia.

What would you do for 52 free meals? Would you forgo the delights of home and sleeping in your own comfortable, dry bed to camp in line overnight through the rain? Because that’s what 100 people hungry for free Chick-fil-A did in Baltimore.

In what sounds like one of those situations where the poor souls stuck together for extended periods of time come together in shared misery, the first 100 people in line at the local Chick-fil-A seemed pretty pleased with the whole thing, rain aside.

“I’ve got one year, 52 meals, for chicken. I’ve waited 24 hours. This is the seventh time I’ve done this,” one customer told CBS Baltimore. “I’m happy. It’s good friendship. Good community. We get to be with friends and we love it here.”

Others are repeat waiters too, and have been rewarded yet again for their fortitude in the face of 24 hours of awfulness with a card loaded with 52 free meals.

The store just opened, and its owner says the staff is ready to go, with this first wait just a test of what’s to come.

“We had a dedicated crew through the rain and everything. They stayed happy. There were here all night. They were raring to go first thing this morning. I’ve never seen people so excited,” said the owner.

Really? Never? Free food is great and all, but then there’s the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, teenage boys at a comic book convention and me on payday, so, start looking around. Excitement is everywhere.

Despite Rain, 100 People Don’t Chicken Out & Get A Free Meal For A Year From Chick-Fil-A [CBS Baltimore]

Did you miss Krispy Kreme’s celebration of heroes where they gave out free dozens of donuts? That’s okay: next week, the chain will offfer free donuts for all. Sorry, you’ll have to bring your own beef patties and cheese if you want to construct a cheeseburger. One free donut per person; participating locations only. [Foodbeast]

As we’ve mentioned numerous times over the last few years, college tuition costs have skyrocketed during the past two decades, far outpacing inflation and saddling an entire generation of college-educated Americans with student loan debt that can take many years to pay off. All the while, college graduates aren’t making as much as they did when college was more affordable. Surely the trend of soaring college costs has to level out, right?

Not according to these projections from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which estimate that the total cost (tuition, room, board, fees) of a college education will continue to increase at a rate of 5% per year.

That means that the school that cost someone $40,000/year in 2013 will more than double to $90,000 by 2030. That adorable toddler whose every move you’re documenting on Facebook could be putting you in the poorhouse in 17 years when he starts working on his degree in Frisbee history.

Even the significantly less expensive public colleges will exhaust most parents’ bank accounts, with costs expected to jump from around $18,000 a year in 2013 to nearly $41,000 by 2030. So even if your local Big State U. has an acceptable Frisbee Studies department, your kid will still probably need to take out student loans just to get through.

And since those costs could continue to increase each year, by the time a child born today graduates from college, her education could run her anywhere from $186K for four years to more than $400K. Not many jobs being offered to recent graduates that will help pay down that level of student loans:

[via BusinessInsider]

Did you think that tiny Bluetooth ATM skimmers were a terrifying prospect? Two men in Macau are accused of using long strips that look like circuit boards to infect ATMs and digitally extract customers’ card numbers and PINs.

Krebs on Security is the place to learn about scams like these, explaining both the crimes and how they work. In this case, police say that the two suspects aren’t from Macau (a Chinese territory west of Hong Kong) but are from Ukraine. They stole $100,000 by corrupting the automatic tellers.

They allegedly used these green objects, which were connected to a laptop, then inserted them in the card slot. This is the best picture that we have of them so far, but the strips are about as wide as a credit card and maybe five times as long. They resemble a circuit board, but no details on exactly how they were constructed have been made public yet. Obviously.

According to a source at the bank in question, inserting the circuit board card thingy caused the machines to crash and restart, then run normally while slurping up card number and PIN data from customers. The government says that the two suspects returned to the ATM to gather their virtual loot, extracting it from the machine using the same green strip.

It’s almost enough to make a person refuse to withdraw money from anywhere other than a metal box in her backyard. (Not really. Stay out of my backyard.)

Thieves Planted Malware to Hack ATMs [Krebs on Security]

Most of the time, we can rest assured that we’re living a way cooler life than our toothbrushes. What do they do all day but sit around in a cup by the sink, bristling at the sound of rushing water and just hoping they get used at least twice in 24 hours? Unless you’re a toothbrush that’s been to space, and in that case, you can fetch a pretty penny for having lived such an abnormal toothbrush life.

A toothbrush used by an American astronaut who flew to the moon sold at auction for $11,974 this week, proving that it’s much cooler than most humans and a lot more interesting than your average dental hygiene tool.

The clear Oral-B40 brush was used by command module pilot Jack Swigert during the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, reports the AFP, and was sold to an anonymous buyer this week.

You’ll remember Swigert as the guy Kevin Bacon played in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. So no, not Tom Hanks’ toothbrush.

Swigert flew around the Moon as part of the Apollo program, but wasn’t one of those who stepped foot on the surface. He passed away in 1982, but his toothbrush lives on and again, is a lot cooler than anyone I know.

Apollo 13 astronaut’s toothbrush sells for $11,794 [AFP]

Last year, the General Motors engineer who quietly signed off on a fix to an ignition problem that has resulted in at least 13 deaths claimed in a deposition that he had no knowledge of making this incredibly important improvement. But after Congressional investigators have turned up all sorts of evidence showing that he did indeed give the okay for this fix, the engineer reportedly says he simply forgot about it.

He is one of two engineers suspended in April for their part in allegedly trying to sweep this defect under the rug while more than a dozen people died.

The NY Times reports that Congressional investigators recently put him through a 10-hour round of questioning over his involvement.

To recap for those not entirely familiar with the case — In 2001, before any of the defective cars hit the road, GM noticed the possibility that the ignition switches in certain new vehicles could be easily turned off if the key in the ignition is attached to a heavy keychain, or gets bumped by the driver. This causes the engine to quit, and results in a loss of power steering and brakes. Most importantly, the car’s airbags become useless.

As owners and dealers complained about the problem, GM mulled over various fixes to the problem but did not act. Meanwhile, accidents were happening and people began to die. Then in 2006, the engineer in charge of these ignitions gave the go-ahead to the third-party manufacturer of the switch to start producing a new version that would not turn off so easily.

However, the part number was never changed to reflect this fix, so new switches commingled with old, defective ones in dealerships’ inventories. When GM finally got around to issuing the recall in 2014, it not only had to recall all the vehicles made before the ignition switch was fixed, but it had to subsequently add on another million vehicles made after that upgrade because some of those newer cars might have the old switches in them.

Signing off on a change to an ignition switch is no small thing, and the failure to change the part number after this fix gives a stink of cover-up to the engineer’s actions. But in a 2013 deposition for a lawsuit brought against GM by the parents of a woman who died while driving a Chevy Cobalt, the engineer stated, “I don’t ever recall authorizing such a change.”

Then on May 19, while being grilled by Congressional investigators, the engineer admitted he did indeed make the change, but that it must have just slipped his mind because it had been seven years and the ignition fix was not the only change he was making at the time.

The family involved in that lawsuit has asked the court to reopen its case against GM, claiming the engineer perjured himself by saying that any changes made to the ignition switch happened without his knowledge or say-so.

We love to use wedding imagery when discussing corporate mergers, because it’s a useful metaphor: months of preparation and due diligence lead to a joyous union and (we hope) decades of happiness as life partners. In the case of the acquisition of Zale Corp. by Signet Jewelers Ltd., the comparison is just poor writing, since all companies involved are mall jewelry stores, where Americans buy their wedding bling.

You might remember the name Signet because it comes up whenever a reader has a problem with an item purchased at Kay or Jared. We always recommend that people take their complaints up the food chain at the company’s corporate parent. Signet also owns Piercing Pagoda, a chain of large kiosks that sell less expensive jewelry. Combined, the companies will control 14.6% of the retail jewelry business in the United States. Taking over Zales will also give the company a bigger presence in Canada.

The last decade has been rough on Zales, and the chain’s competitor is taking the company over as its comeback succeeds. The companies say that Zales will continue to exist as an independent subsidiary, with its current CEO staying on as president and CEO.

Mall jewelers Zales and Kay get hitched [Dallas Morning News]
Signet and Zale tie the knot, create mall-based jewelry giant [CNN] (via Chain Store Age)

What if you could pay only $1,000 and be guaranteed a freshly-poured beer whenever you felt like it? That’s not a feasible deal for most of us, but for early investors in one Minnesota brew pub, that dream has come true.

When three business partners wanted to raise $220,000 to get a bank loan and open up their own restaurant, the Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub in southern Minneapolis, they at first tried to the usual rout of finding investors and offering a voting share in the restaurant, reports The Atlantic’s City Lab.

But those investors didn’t know much about the restaurant business, so they tried a different tactic when friends and family offered up a few grand here and there.

“They were, like, ‘I’ve got a few grand, but I don’t have too much money,’ ” one business partner recalls. “And people kept saying this over and over, and we latched onto the idea. Why not just take a couple grand from everybody and then we’d have all the money we’d need?”

Ding ding ding. The plan they settled on? Those who invested $1,000 could get free in-house beer forever and ever, or as long as the pub stayed open. Or they could receive 0.1% nonvoting equity in the company for every $1,000 invested. A $5,000 investment got investors 0.5% equity AND beer.

The brewpub is now a registered LLC and hit its $220,000 goal, and has been thriving for two years now, giving away about 17 free beers per day. All told, there were 46 investors who took the first option, 42 chose the second and another 30 who took the third.

Yes, that means 72 people have free beer for life, and you don’t. Better start looking for another brewpub offering that kind of deal, good luck!

Would You Pay $1,000 Once to Get Free Beer for Life? [City Lab]

For years, Hernan Argueta's small plot of coffee plants seemed immune to the fungus spreading elsewhere in Central America. The airborne disease that strikes coffee plants, flecking their leaves with spots and causing them to wither and fall off, failed to do much damage in the cooler elevations of Guatemala's mountains.

Millions of viewers worldwide could miss live coverage of the commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day next week because the French president's office reversed a decision to grant international news agencies free access to the broadcast.

Britain is putting a price on vice.

A civilian diver died Friday during the search for people still believed trapped inside a sunken South Korean ferry, the second diver's death in the six-week operation.

President Barack Obama is welcoming the release of the lone U.S. soldier held in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

A nighttime car chase in Cleveland that ended on a schoolyard where more than 100 shots were fired at the suspect's vehicle appeared to be over when an officer opened fire again, a prosecutor said in announcing charges against the patrolman and five police supervisors.

Before Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they went to Hawaii to train on the Big Island's lunar landscapes.

ear-old former Marine fell and broke his back in December.

The Food and Drug Administration is updating its advice for pregnant women on the appropriate levels of mercury in seafood but Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said Friday that it won't require mercury labels on seafood packages.

Medicare can no longer automatically deny coverage requests for sex reassignment surgeries, a federal board ruled Friday in a groundbreaking decision that recognizes the procedures are medically necessary for some people who don't identify with their biological sex.

Officers raiding a Georgia home in search of a drug suspect used a flash grenade not knowing children were inside, severely burning a toddler who was sleeping just inside the door, authorities and the boy's family said.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will appear Friday at the Stonewall Inn, scene of the riots widely credited with starting the modern gay rights movement, to announce the National Park Service will begin marking places of significance to the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

About four years ago, the Google team trying to develop cars driven by computers -- not people -- concluded that sooner than later, the technology would be ready for the masses. There was one big problem: No state had even considered whether driverless cars should be legal.

A flight attendant asked Adam Popp to move from his seat on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Virginia is letting anglers fish without a license for free next weekend.

Former military dogs are being retrained as Prince George's County Police K9s.

A longtime Baltimore County firefighter has died after he went into cardiac arrest during a training exercise.

A federal judge has sentenced an ex-Marine to death for the 2009 murder of a Navy sailor at a barracks in northern Virginia.

Less than one day after Virginia's Democratic U.S. senators added their voices to the chorus seeking Eric Shineski's (shin-SEHK'-ee's) resignation, the embattled Veterans Affairs secretary has done just that.

Drummer Artimus Pyle survived the 1977 plane crash that killed Lynyrd Skynyrd founder and creative force Ronnie Van Zant. Now, Pyle is defiantly paying tribute to the band that shaped his life.