It only took the theft of40 million Target customer credit card details to spur Congress into finally joining the rest of the world in abandoning the highly insecure credit cards you're used to. Starting late next year, every credit card in the United States will adopt a more secure system. Here's what it is, and how it works.
    
|
We all get nervous sometimes. Whether it's about social interactions, performance, or actual threat giving us the feeling, the same mechanism is at play, just at different levels. But, as this video explains, you can do something about it.
|
|
Let's face it, doing the laundry isn't the most fun activity. What if you could prolong bed sheet washing, while still sleeping in clean sheets? Here's a trick to do just that.
|
|
Staying hydrated is essential for your health, particularly when you're working out and possibly losing a lot of water through sweat. This infographic from Greatist and CamelBak take the mystery out of how much water you need to drink, depending on the kind of exercise you do and other factors.
|
|
When you don't know how to answer a question during an interview, the silence can seem excruciating. You might even wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole. Not to worry, though—keep these tips in mind the next time you're strapped for an answer.
|
|
Batteries with both terminals on the same side, like a 9V or a 12V battery, aren't too common, but they're common enough that it's worth remembering that before you recycle them or toss them in the trash, tape over the terminals. Conductive material across both terminals can easily create a short, and then a fire.
|
|
Whether you're cleaning up after your own pet or you're moving into a new place where pets used to live, vinegar is a surefire way to get rid of any lingering pet odors in the floors or carpet. Over at Apartment Therapy, contractor John Gleeson Connolly explains how well it really works.
|
|
I will read your résumé unless it's 10 pages, but (just as you didn't want to write your résumé) I really don't want to read your résumé. To put it another way, I don't want to read it because I must in order to make a yes/no decision.
|
|
(Razor512)
The Impulse Purchase Savings Plan is very simple. Whenever you make an impulse purchase, whether it’s a candy bar or an entire bar tab, you deposit the same amount of money in a savings account.
Depending on your bank, it’s probably not wise to transfer over every impulse purchase that you ever make unless you have exceptional financial restraint. Know your bank’s transfer limits, and work within them. Maybe take notes and transfer a total at the end of the week or end of the month.
You can work this plan if you use only cash, too: save the money up in an envelope and deposit it at the end of the month.
Of course, don’t go around buying stupid junk and use the savings plan to justify it. If you have an impulse purchase you can’t decide on, just go ahead and save the purchase amount and the matching amount in your savings account. A fat savings account is its own reward, right?
The Impulse Purchase Savings Plan [Debt Roundup] (via Rockstar Finance)
Scrubbing down with your favorite exfoliating bodywash might never been the same again if you live in New York: Lawmakers there are pushing legislation that would ban the tiny plastic beads from personal hygiene products, saying the wee little things are ending up in our waterways.
New York would be the first state to outlaw microbeads in things like face wash, toothpaste and anything else used to scrub or exfoliate your body, reports the New York Times.
But when those beads wash down the sink, they manage to slip right through wastewater treatment plants. From there they end up in our nation’s waterways, like the tens of millions of’em in the Great Lakes, scientists say. Once they’re in the water they become coated with toxins, making them dangerous to any marine life that might be tempted to snack on them. They’ve also been found in rivers and the Pacific Ocean.
And who eats marine life? We do — which means that microbead you used to scrub your calloused feet could end up right back in your stomach. Yup, eww.
N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement that the proposal scheduled to go before the legislature today is “common-sense legislation that will stop the flow of plastic from ill-designed beauty products into our vital waters, preserving our natural heritage for future generations.”
Ban Sought on Microbeads in Beauty Items [New York Times]
You might want to keep your voice down if you’re in Portland discussing this news: The American Dental Association has switched up its advice on baby tooth care. Namely, that fluoride toothpaste should be introduced as soon as that first tooth shows up, instead of waiting until kids are three.
While some corners of the country aren’t so keen on fluoride – including Portland, which doesn’t have it in its drinking water — the ADA says parents should start with a rice-grain size smear of fluoride toothpaste on a child’s first teeth, reports USA Today.
Once a child reaches age three, parents should work up to a pea-size blob, the ADA says in its newly updated guidelines in the Journal of the American Dental Association.
This is in line with a smaller group’s advice, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, but is likely going to cause quite the stir among parents who have always been told to wait on the fluoride.
So why the change now? The group is worried about the 25% of U.S. children who develop cavities before kindergarten, explained the chair of the ADA’s Council on Scientific Affairs.
Using a tiny bit of fluoride toothpaste could help prevent cavities, the ADA’s scientific review found, as well as helping discourage a discoloration of the teeth known as fluorosis that can happen with overexposure to fluoride early on.
Basically, it can make your pearly whites stay pearly and hole-free, according to the ADA’s research, but go easy on the stuff.
The ADA adds that kids should also be taught to always spit out their excess toothpaste as quick as they can, which as any parent knows isn’t the easiest thing to do. Especially if the stuff tastes like fudge.
New advice: Use fluoride toothpaste on baby teeth [USA Today]
We all eventually learn the difficult lesson that the world is out to get us and our small electronics. One young girl in Florida learned this in an unfortunate time and place: two men took off with her cell phone while she and a friend sold Girl Scout cookies in front of a grocery store.
Many of you will be asking the very important question of whether the thieves picked up any of the cookies. The sad truth is that we don’t know. The girls hadn’t counted how many cookies they had when they started selling, so they don’t know how many were left at the time of the robbery. The money was safe, and it sounds like the only thing taken was one girl’s phone. Everyone staffing the booth at the time happened to be looking down or away at the time of the theft.
Police searched the area, but couldn’t find the thieves or the girl’s phone. All of the girls are safe, though, and all of the cookies are probably safe, so that’s what is most important here.
In the meantime, mobile phone owners young and old alike should remember: God and Gap Incorporated put pockets in your pants for a reason. Use ‘em for their intended purpose, and keep your phone safe.
Girl Scout Robbed Outside Lauderdale Winn Dixie [CBS Miami]
Bed bugs are already the pests of our worst nightmares, but usually when a customer buys a brand new mattress, that fear is allayed by the fact that well, the mattress is a new one, wrapped in plastic, and thus safe from bugs. But what if some freaky mattress inception had gone on and there’s an old mattress inside the new mattress?
According to 3 On Your Side in Arizona, a woman in Phoenix was in the market for twin bunk bed mattresses and headed to a local outlet. She bought them, with a three-month warranty included and brought them home.
“The mattresses were fully covered in padding like a brand new mattress,” she says. “They had plastic coverings all over them.”
So far so good, right? Sure, for another two and a half months… and cue the awful, creepy crawly bed bug music, if such music exists:
“It was about midnight,” she remembers. “I was up with the baby and I looked over and a bug crawled across my bed. I freaked out, jumped out of bed, called an exterminator about two in the morning, had them come over.”
A pest control expert came to check out the situation and took video of what he saw — an old mattress stuffed inside the new one. What in the what? And also, bed bugs. Ick.
“I was kind of expecting it a little bit, just because when we were trying to pull them off this bunk bed they weighed about 100 pounds,” he says. “Usually a mattress that size doesn’t weight that much.”
The mattress company issued a statement to 3 On Your Side denying that such a thing could be possible.
“We categorically state this store does not have bed bugs.” In a second email, the company stuck to its guns, adding, “We purchase and sell brand new mattresses only.”
When asked how that old mattress could possibly have come to exist inside the new one, the company merely cited the bedding manufacturers they deal with, ostensibly shifting the blame to those companies.
Though not admitting any blame, the company says it’ll give the customer a $200 refund for the mattress and an extra $200 to cover the professional cleaning as a “goodwill gesture.”
Mattress inception. Our newest fear.
3OYS: Consumer claims old mattress found inside new mattress [3 On Your Side]
Do you have broadband internet? Do you like to watch streaming movies and TV on Netflix? If so, great news: your connection to Netflix is getting faster! Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the tens of millions of Americans who use Comcast or Verizon FiOS for internet access at home, in which case it’s completely the opposite.
Netflix has updated their monthly internet service provider speed rankings with the first data from 2014. The overall look at 17 major ISPs doesn’t seem too bad. There’s an general upward trend among them all, and while Google Fiber is in a high-speed class by itself, the general pack of other providers looks to be both competitive and improving.
US ISP speed data from Netflix, February, 2013 to February, 2014.
There are some major exceptions, though, and they happen to include two of the largest internet service providers.
In the graph below, the blue (top) line is Verizon FiOS; the green (bottom) line is Comcast. Though both saw improving or stable speeds for most of 2013, the difference after October is stark.
Comparison of Comcast and Verizon FiOS connection speeds via Netflix, January, 2013 to February, 2014.
Comcast’s average speeds for Netflix users have dropped dramatically in just a handful of months. From January through September of 2013, Comcast bounced around between 2 Mbps and about 2.13 Mbps. But starting in October, their performance fell and by January of this year, their average was closer to 1.5 Mbps. FiOS saw a similar, though not quite as precipitous, drop, from a high around 2.2 Mbps to their current low of about 1.8.
Back when Netflix first started publishing their ISP speed rankings in 2012, FiOS and Comcast were in positions #2 and #3, right behind Google Fiber. They currently rank #7 and #14, respectively.
So why did the numbers start plummeting in October? Part of it has to do with a change in Netflix’s measurements. As the text accompanying the chart tool explains, “These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISPs network from Nov. 2012 through Sept. 2013 and average performance during prime time starting in Oct. 2013. The average is well below the peak performance due to many factors including the variety of encodes we use to deliver the TV shows and movies we carry as well as home Wi-Fi and the variety of devices our members use.”
The change in measurement, though, doesn’t seem to have caused a dramatic a shift for most of the other ISPs. (Medialink and AT&T UVerse also saw big drops.) Several–Google Fiber, Cablevision Optimum, Cox, and Suddenlink–have maintained a decidedly upward trajectory, and many other providers have remained stable or seen a mix of peaks and valleys.
So if it’s not just differences in measurement, what’s going on?
This data, of course, comes from Netflix and specifically measures Netflix’s connections with broadband providers. There is now no active rule requiring ISPs to treat different internet traffic the same way. So major networks might actually be getting slower… or they might be throttling some of the traffic moving through them.
Verizon was accused of causing deliberate bottlenecks in Netflix traffic in 2013, months before net neutrality was overturned. Comcast has been accused of doing the same in years past. And Netflix has been of particular concern in the wake of the December ruling.
Ars Technica investigated the issue specifically with Verizon last week and didn’t find proof that Verizon was selectively throttling traffic. Nor did they find proof that Verizon isn’t; it’s simply not possible to tell from the outside one way or the other right now. Perhaps the FCC, with its interim case-by-case stance on net neutrality, will eventually take a look.
In the menatime, want to check out how your own connection compares nationally or internationally? Hit up the Netflix ISP Speed Index and have fun with all the graphs and tables they provide.
Molson made a version of this machine for an ad, taking it on a tour of Europe last year as a form of outreach to Canadian travelers.
This is all great publicity and very fun, but what other countries could apply the same concept? We humbly suggest a dispenser full of cheese in New York City that only people from Wisconsin can open. Or maybe a machine that dispenses Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in under-served areas.
This Canadian beer machine is the most amazing technology at the Olympics [USA Today]
(Photo: Twitter user @ohmykevin)
A Twitter user in D.C. recently spotted something called Doritos Loaded at a 7-Eleven store in our nation’s capital, described in the poster as a “warm nacho cheese snack.”
Figured out lunch tomorrow @7eleven http://t.co/pT0fblOMDi—
Kevin Cobb (@ohmykevin) January 28, 2014
He finally got around to sampling the item and gave his feedback to Yahoo.
“They tasted like Nacho Cheese Doritos dipped in queso,” he explains. “The smell was awesome and distinctly Dorito-y,” though the texture was more like a mozzarella stick than what you’d expect from Doritos.
Yahoo spoke to a 7-Eleven rep who confirmed that Doritos Loaded is “a product that is in test… It’s just too soon to really talk about it.”
We are currently attempting to haze politely convince Consumerist’s new D.C.-based staffers to hoof it over to Vermont Ave and see whether these are indeed the next step in fast food evolution or just another Dorito dodo bird.
Thanks to Paul for the tip!
No herring here, but look, a fish! (TheGiantVermin)
Add this to the list of things you’ll probably never have happen to you: A Swedish fermented herring expert is taking his special set of skills all the way to a cabin in northern Norway to help “disarm” a 25-year-old can of fermented herring. The thing has been stuck up in the eaves so long, the pressure inside the can has expanded it, literally raising the roof of the cabin.
Although The Local uses the word “disarm,” it’s unlikely that there’s any kind of danger from an explosion, the expert from Sweden’s Surströmming Academy explained. Fermented herring — or Surströmming — is a delicacy in Sweden.
“There really isn’t any risk for an explosion. Of course, some fermented herring might come spurting out when we open it. And yes, it will smell,” he said.
“If there’s any fish left in the can, I’m going to eat it,” he added.
The cabin’s owner found the swollen can recently, and his wife says it was leftover from a party the couple hosted back in 1990. The man says the can has bulged so much it probably raised the roof by around two centimeters.
“We had three cans. We ate two and my husband took the third and put it up under the roof, because we had eaten enough. Then he forgot about it,” she said. “There’s going to be a gruesome smell.”
He was also kinda worried it would go ka-boom after all that time, so he warned his neighbors and Norway’s Armed Forces about the potential stink bomb.
The disarmament of the can has turned into a media event, with hundreds of people expected to attend on the big day, Feb. 18.
“There are going to be more people there than there were at Barack Obama’s inauguration,” the expert joked.
“After we open the can it’s going to party, party,” he said.
Swede set to ‘disarm’ 25-year-old herring tin [The Local]
While the media and health officials have been keeping a beady eye fixed on energy drink consumption in young people, it seems a dark horse is riding toward the front of the caffeinated pack: that old stand-by, coffee. A new study says teens get a lot more caffeine from coffee drinks than they had in the past.
The report in the journal Pediatrics found that 17- and 18-year-olds are getting almost twice the amount of caffeine from coffee than they did 10 years ago. And tweens ages 12-16 are joining in too.
The study’s authors used numbers from 1999-2010 on caffeine consumption and said that coffee accounted for 10% of caffeine intake in 1999–2000 and jumped to almost 24% of intake in 2008-2010.
“It was a surprise,” researcher Amy Branum, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NPR’s The Salt blog.
The good news is that while the delivery methods are shifting, overall caffeine consumption has stayed mostly the same. While soda is still the biggest caffeine drink on the scene, adolescents aren’t drinking as much of it: Soda dropped from 62% of all caffeine consumption in 1999-2010 to only 38%.
Another bright spot in the study? Preschool kids aren’t drinking as much caffeine as they used to. We’re sure their parents are pretty happy about that, too. Because a three-year-old on caffeine does not a restful day make.
Trends in Caffeine Intake Among US Children and Adolescents [Pediatrics]
How Caffeinated Are Our Kids? Coffee Consumption Jumps [The Salt]
People and dogs have been cooperating for thousands of years now. It’s our thing. In the modern world, it’s generally not okay to take your dog shopping, on a plane, or to Starbucks unless it’s a service dog trained to perform some kind of function other than being a fun pet. Not everyone knows this, which leads to some unfortunate situations…like the experience that a man had at a Houston Starbucks when he and his service dog were questioned at the door.
The man, an Iraq War veteran, had a leg amputated below the knee due to bone cancer. He has a service dog that helps him perform everyday tasks and physically supports him. The pair had been together for three and a half months, and were in town to speak about the awesomeness of the service dog training program.
A Starbucks employee tried to stop them at the door, though, insisting that dogs aren’t allowed inside. There’s one thing that businesses specifically aren’t allowed to do when someone with a service dog wants to enter their establishment, and that’s quiz the person about their disability and what the dog does.
Employees of a business can ask whether the dog is a service animal, and ask what tasks the dog performs. Updated guidelines for service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act spell this out very specifically.
When it is not obvious what service an animal provides, only limited inquiries are allowed. Staff may ask two questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform. Staff cannot ask about the person’s disability, require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the work or task.
Saying “You’re not blind” and “Why can’t you [pick things up from the ground] yourself?” as the employee of this Houston Starbucks allegedly did? Not allowed.
In a statement to TV station KHOU, Starbucks assured the world that service dogs are welcome in its stores, and are not subject to interrogation.
Starbucks always welcomes service animals to our stores, and this customer’s experience is not consistent with the welcoming and friendly environment we strive to create for everyone. We have spoken with this customer to apologize for his experience, and we hope to have the opportunity to serve him again. We have also spoken with our store partner about this situation and used this as a coaching opportunity for the future.
Disabled veteran confronted by Starbucks employee about service dog [KHOU]
Everyone knows that when the Zombie apocalypse hits we will all be spending our days and nights searching for our one true love – Twinkies. Rest easy friends, because we now have one more place to find the ooey-gooey treats when the undead start roaming the streets. Big Lots announced Tuesday it will begin selling the sweet treats at a discount.
The Columbus, Ohio-based discount retailer will now be home to discount Twinkies, Ding Dongs, HoHos and other beloved Hostess treats, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Hostess rose from the ashes of bankruptcy to once again produce the snack cakes in July, but the company’s 600 outlet stores did not reopen. That’s where Big Lots saves the day for consumers who like a tasty treat and a good deal.
Officials with Big Lots say a varied assortment of Hostess products will be stocked weekly at stores across the country. The products will have a two-week shelf life and sell for as much as 40% off the suggested retail price.
Big Lots becomes thrift store for Hostess [Columbus Dispatch]
The saga of the “Dumb Starbucks” coffee shop in L.A. continued last night, first with the not-at-all-shocking revelation that the creator is a publicity-hungry comedian and writer and then with the news that the store/parody/stunt/art installation had been shut down by the county for reasons that have nothing directly to do with its use of the Starbucks name.
No, the reason for the shut-down was that Dumb Starbucks — which claimed to be a piece of parodic art and had initially been giving away coffee to customers — was operating without a valid public health permit. Even a parody needs a permit if it wants to give away or sell food to the public.
A closed-door meeting is scheduled to be heard on the matter between the L.A. County Health Dept. and the Dumb Starbucks owner, who outed himself to the public last night as Canadian comedian and writer Nathan Fielder, who has written for shows like Jon Benjamin Has a Van and Important Things With Demetri Martin, along with his own Comedy Central series.
When asked if the network knows about his Dumb Starbucks stunt, Fielder told the L.A. Times, “Oh, they do now.”
Once again, here is Fielder attempting to use the parody defense to explain why he believes calling his store “Dumb Starbucks” is legal:
Adios, little buddy.
Eyes glazed, staring at the screen, a tiny pearl of drool juuust forming at the crease of a slack-jawed mouth… The Flappy Bird addicts out there (and you know who you are) only have themselves to blame for the game vanishing from app stores, says its developer.
The Vietnamese developer announced to the world over the weekend that he’d be pulling the popular mobile game on Sunday, and at first it didn’t seem like he was going to explain exactly why, just that it had become too much for him.
But Forbes snagged an interview with the man who once again confirms that Flappy Bird is gone. Forever. No more. And it’s your fault, Flappy Bird player. Of course, you can still play it if it’s already downloaded to your device.
“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” he tells Forbes. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”
And the money? Apparently even pulling in around $50,000 a day from in-app advertising isn’t enough to keep Flappy Bird flying.
“I don’t know the exact figure, but I do know it’s a lot,” he admitted of what he makes per day on the app.
There’s more mystery to the whole affair, as Forbes’ Lan Anh Nguyen describes the interview with the developer:
“The circumstances surrounding the interview, conducted in Vietnamese, were as much of a soap opera as his public ruminations about whether to take down the app,” she explains, adding that it was delayed several hours due to the developer having a sudden meeting with the country’s deputy prime minister.
“The 29-year-old, who sports a close-cropped haircut, appeared stressed,” she writes. “He smoked several cigarettes over the course of the 45-minute interview, and doodled monkey heads on a pad of paper.”
Monkey heads, maybe that’s the next game? Stranger things have happened. But for now, he’s not dwelling on the death of Flappy Bird and he doesn’t regret killing it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, but now he feels much better. “I don’t think it’s a mistake,” he says. “I have thought it through.”
(A customer photo posted to the Star 105.5 Facebook page)
Yes, for only $.011 per gallon, customers at a Shell station in Woodstock, IL, could fill up their entire cars with pocket change and apparently the cashier working at the station did not notice.
The news even got posted to a local radio station’s Facebook page, complete with photo:
When a morning shift employee realized what was going on, she tried to correct the problem immediately.
“The first thing I did was run outside this morning to make sure the pumps were OK,” she tells the Northwest Herald. “It’s not good for business.”
Woodstock Police said they noticed a long line of cars waiting to get into the gas station but didn’t initially know that it was because of the glitch at the pump. The officers shooed off the vehicles that were screwing up traffic only to find more cars getting in line at the station. That’s when they realized there was something fishy going on.
“The clerk didn’t appear to be aware [of the price change],” explains one officer. “We made him aware of the situation and instructed him to shut off his pumps and fix the problem.”
It was ultimately the police who decided to hit the emergency shut-off button on the pumps, putting an end to the free gas giveaway at the Shell station.
2 Va. teens arrested for robbery W*USA 9 Police arrested two teens Friday, who were involved in a robbery that happened in Manassas on January 29th. Loading… Post to Facebook. 2 Va. teens arrested for robbery on WUSA9.com: http://on.wusa9.com/1eiSoMw. Incorrect please try again. |
Dear Lifehacker,
I'm having trouble getting my landlord to return my security deposit. I've been told I should take the issue to small claims court, but, I have no idea what small claims court does or when it's worth it to use it. How big does my dispute have to be to justify the cost? What disputes can I even take in?
|
|
