pileofcrapola

Readers offer their best tips for getting a page's Facebook notifications through RSS, removing unwanted Gmail contacts, and building DIY key holders with LEGO.

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Great discussions are par for the course here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Check out these discussions and add your own thoughts to make them even more wonderful!

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Mornings can be tough enough if you have only yourself to worry about. Add a full family into the mix and morning routines can quickly become the stuff of nightmares. Fortunately, there are some solid ways you can smooth out your mornings for everyone involved.

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Cold and Flu season is in full swing in many parts of the world and with it, the inevitable coughs and sore throats. If you like avoiding the decongestant, antihistamine, and dextromethorphan path for milder symptoms, this recipe for a DIY cough syrup has got you covered.

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A D.C. appeals court has ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce its Open Internet rules, which prevent landline ISPs from discriminating internet traffic.

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Congress is all set to pass a $1.1 trillion budget this week. The massive spending bill, which has already cleared the House and is likely to pass in the Senate, affects every federal agency there is. Yet in the midst of a trillion-dollar omnibus law that reaches into every aspect of our government, there is controversy. And over what enormous issue might such controversy exist, you might ask?

Light bulbs.

As the Washington Post reports, House Republicans added a rider to the budget bill that prohibits the Department of Energy from spending any money to enforce a 2007 law relating to lightbulb efficiency. Without that funding, the DOE is effectively banned from enforcing the rules.

The rule in question takes old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs out of circulation in the country, by slowly phasing them out over time. In their place, manufacturers and distributors can sell LED, CFL, or higher-efficiency halogen-filled incandescent bulbs.

The phasing-out process allows companies and retailers to continue to sell any existing stock of the older bulbs, but prohibits the manufacture or import of new ones. 100-watt bulbs went in 2012, 75-watt bulbs went last year, and 60- and 40-watt bulbs had their turn start this month.

The rider on the budget bill doesn’t actually change the law at all. Nor does it technically prohibit enforcement. Through defunding, it simply seeks to make enforcement more or less impossible in practical terms.

We went through a version of this fight back in 2011 as well. That time around, a government funding bill forced a nine-month delay on the implementation of the law.

So will some retailer or importer use the impending lack of oversight to skirt the law? Undoubtedly. Someone, somewhere, always does–even when a law is actually well-enforced.

But in general, the move to bar funding for enforcement is more likely to be empty political grandstanding than something that has a noticeable effect on consumers. Manufacturers based in the US have already converted their factories and product lines over to newer bulbs and newer standards. No sane producer is suddenly going to shift their production lines back down to older standards just because they think the DOE isn’t looking for a year.

As George Slover, policy counsel for Consumers Union, said, “The marketplace is ahead of the opponents of energy efficient bulbs.  Consumers are choosing them, manufacturers are committed to them, and we think this action is unlikely to change that.”

Republicans are still trying to save traditional lightbulbs. It likely won’t work. [Washington Post]

This is it. It’s time, finally! It feels like we’ve been preparing for this war all our lives. And by preparing we mean eating things that taste of chocolates and hazelnut and wondering what else could possibly exist with those flavors. Hershey’s has its answer, a line of chocolate spreads that seek to usurp the chocolate spread throne currently held by Nutella.

One of these new flavored spreads is direct hazelnut competition for Nutella, while the “chocolate” and “chocolate with almonds” versions are a bit more subtle in their coup attempts.

“The average American snacks more than two times a day and what better way to transform everyday snacks into delicious treats, than with the genuine chocolate flavor that only Hershey can deliver,” said a spokeswoman for Hershey’s in a press release (clearly choosing to ignore other chocolate flavored spreads on the market with that “only Hershey can deliver” bit).

We’re not about to take sides in this war, because it’s not our place to do so. But we will arm ourselves with knives — nay, spoons! — should the occasion arise where we find ourselves in the middle of a crazy brawl. Mmm, a chocolate brawl.

It sounds too awful to be true, but it is: A man who brought in a BMW to a repair shop for some minor work ended up with a wrecked car instead, after an employee admitted to taking it out for a joyride and wrecking it. And apparently, that is totally legal.

The customer is out one vehicle after the incident, but it appears all he can do is sue the repair shop, reports WESH.com in Orlando. Police confirmed that the worker was driving the car and was involved in not one, but two accidents in the wee hours of January 8.

The car was towed by another company, whose owner called up the repair shop to see what the heck had happened.

“He proceeds to tell me that it wasn’t the owner but one of his employees that wrecked it,” the tow company owner said.

But unfortunately for the car’s owner, it’s not against the law for an employee to drive a customer’s car, the cops say. And the repair shop apparently told the owner “Not our problem.”

“They gave (their employee) permission to take my car across the state of Florida and total it and not give it back to me. And in the meantime, I’m out a $7,000 BMW, and they told me tough luck,” the customer says.

It’s not like he’s totally out of luck, with no recourse. He can sue the repair shop — and it’s to be hoped that it was a fully licensed and insured because that would likely cover the cost of the wrecked car. But until he sorts through all of that, which would take place in civil courts, the employee is just fine in the eyes of the law.

Which brings to mind this, of course:

Repair shop employee wrecked customer’s BMW on joyride, police say [WESH.com]

MCDonald’s recently unveiled their new lineup of Happy Meal toys, slated to start appearing at a drive-through near you on Friday. Fans of Cartoon Network’s series Adventure Time are thrilled to find their favorite animated characters available for purchase along with their burgers and fries. Except something seems to be missing.

You wouldn’t know it from the Happy Meal offerings, but Adventure Time does indeed have female characters. More than one, in fact. Popular ones–like the Lumpy Space Princess, Princess Bubblegum, and Marceline the Vampire Queen–with fans of their own and everything.

As they have done for years, McDonald’s has separate “boys” and “girls” Happy Meal toy line-ups because reasons. The Adventure Time set, devoid of the distaff half of the cast, is the new pile of boys’ toys. The six-toy lineup includes two toys each of Jake and Finn, and one each of the Ice King and Beemo.

Girls, meanwhile, get a line-up of six pink-heavy Paul Frank toys: a handbag, a journal, a sticker dispenser, a tin of stickers, a bobblehead, and a pair of “best friends” bracelets.

Compounding the insult? The boys get actual toys that do stuff. Finn’s versions are bendy or sword-swinging; Jake’s are bendy or spring-loaded. Speaking as an adult who was once a young girl who did, in fact, always love books and journals? Journals aren’t toys. You cannot play with them. They are a crappy Happy Meal prize.

As we all of course know, children are completely incapable of being fans of fictional characters of the opposite sex. That’s why no girl has ever liked Harry Potter, and no boy in the entire country knows a thing about The Hunger Games.

More seriously, the assumptions underlying this marketing maneuver are bad ones, and the messages they send are part of a cultural stew that doesn’t do any kids, either boys or girls, any favors.

The first faulty assumption: only boys watch Adventure Time. It’s true that the show is very highly-rated among boys, but they’re not the exclusive audience. Girls like the show too. At least, though, girls can still get the Adventure Time toys; McDonald’s lets customers order girl or boy meals as they will.

The other flawed underlying asumption is far worse: that boys cannot handle girls in their media or their toys. Boys apparently cannot cope with even the specter of girl cooties mixing with their McNuggets, and so a six-toy set is better off duplicating male characters rather than bothering to include any of the female ones.

Any parent, or anyone else who has shopped for toys or clothes for small children lately, is familiar with how deeply entrenched the color-coded gender divide is in kids’ products these days. It’s bad enough to do that with anything, but as io9 points out, it seems particularly ill-chosen to segregate the girls out of a show that has so very many female characters and has even gender-swapped its own cast with aplomb.

Research shows that girls and women are still woefully under-represented in children’s media, with male characters outnumbering female ones 3 to 1. Adventure Time is a show that actually makes a point of keeping female characters on-screen. Overlooking all of them entirely in a toy set for anyone, even or perhaps especially one marketed at boys, is unfair all around.

McDonald’s thinks Adventure Time is just for boys [io9]

The conversion of Philadelphia to Kabletown continues. Comcast’s relatively new headquarters already dominates the city’s skyline, pointing into the clouds like a giant USB drive. Now comes news that the Lords of Xfinity are set to erect an even taller middle finger to all the people of Philadelphia (myself included) who would much rather have another cable and Internet provider.

Rumors of a second building began to sprout up last fall, with some even whispering that Comcast would be moving its newly acquired NBC operations from NYC to Philly. Comcast denied that it was relocating anyone, but the Philadelphia Inquirer has confirmed that the cable/Internet/TV mega-company will be adding a fittingly large building in a lot adjacent to its existing HQ.

The new building will stand 1,121 feet tall, 150 feet taller than the current Comcast tower and 573 feet taller than the statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall, which had once been the maximum height of any building in the city.

Because Comcast lives in a 1950s industrial film, the tower will apparently be called the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center. (Science! Industry! World of Tomorrow!)

It will include 13 “sky gardens,” a fancy term for three-story atriums, where the company’s software designers, engineers and product developers will contemplate the universe, and how to wring every last dollar out of people for enjoying it.

Interestingly enough, the top floors of the new building won’t be reserved for CEO Brian Roberts to stand atop while sipping expensive brandy and rich-person-laughing. Instead, these floors will be given over to the fancy Four Seasons Hotel that will relocate to the new tower.

On the plus side for Philadelphia, the construction of the tower will result in jobs for thousands of people both during and after construction.

25% of the building’s 1.5 million square feet of office space will be available for rent to other businesses, so maybe I can relocate a few blocks from my cold, dank cave to a deluxe office in the sky-aye-aye.

Comcast is expected to break ground on its new digs sometime this summer.

We know consumers’ love for all things technology begins early, but what’s too early? The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood defines too early is when you hold your infant or toddler captive with an iPad dangling infront of his or her face.

The CCFC sent a letter demanding Apple end its licensing agreement for Fisher-Price’s Newborn-to-Toddler Apptivity Seat for iPad Device because of the product’s potential harm to infants and toddlers.

The CCFC insists the bouncy seat is a detriment for healthy development – the iPad blocks the child’s view of the world – and encourages parents to leave the child alone for long periods of time.

In December, the CCFC launched a campaign urging Fisher-Price to pull the seat from the market. The petition collected 13,000 signatures, more than any previous CCFC petition and Fisher-Price has distanced itself from the product, the CCFC said in the letter to Apple.

The Apptivity seat isn’t’ the first iPad related product for children the CCFC’s taken to task. During the holidays, the organization named the iPad potty chair the worst toy of the year.

CCFC to Apple: No iPad bouncy seat [The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood]

Mirriad bills itself as a company that does “advertising for the skip generation.” What the heck does that mean? They’re the people who insert new ads into reruns of your favorite programs, adding not-yet-released DVDs to nonexistent bookshelves and even adding televisions that show ads to walls in a scene. You can advertise any product in a program, no matter how old it might be.

We can’t wait until this idea gets taken to its obvious conclusion: iPhone billboards in the New York City of “Seinfeld.” The Ricardos of “I Love Lucy” have a giant curved flatscreen TV in their living room. The possibilities really are endless.

Faux-conservative pundit Stephen Colbert certainly knows that. The future of advertising is with Mirriad’s model, and Colbert is ready. Which is good, because Viacom, parent company of Comedy Central, is now a client of Mirriad and will try digitally inserting anachronistic ads in its programs.

No new TVs stuck on walls or fake Gap stores here, though: Colbert pulls out a few items painted chroma key green so marketers can insert whatever brand they like. (One of those items is probably not so safe for work…but might be once Mirriad transforms it into a sandwich, a massive sausage, or the world’s largest gummy worm.)

Mirriad & Retroactive Product Placement [The Colbert Report] (Warning: auto-play video)

First of all, we’re not really friends with the U.S. Mint because it’s not a person and besides, we’ve never met it and thus have no idea if it would even laugh at all our jokes or if it likes a nice glass of wine. Everyone likes money though — unless that money looks funny. Say, a brown nickel? Would that throw you off, would you reject it as a currency? Because the Mint would like to know.

Judging by the reaction of Fortune reporter Caroline Fairchild when she was confronted with a brown nickel at the Mint’s research and development lab, weird coins might not go over so well.

“I am immediately thrown off by both its light feel and dark hue,” she writes. “There is no way anyone would ever think this is a real, I keep thinking.”

Making it seem real is the goal of the Mint’s research, as officials keep trying to figure out alternative metals they can use to bring down the production costs at the agency..

Scientists have narrowed down the metals to six potential metal alloys for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters that could trim $30 to $40 million off the government’s costs every year. That brown nickel — really a copper-plated zinc coin — is just experiment.

Before you’re confronted with a strange currency, the Mint is now starting a study this year to see if the look, feel, and color of coins actually matters much. You can’t see a bitcoin and yet people use it, so what’s the difference? Maybe not much in theory, but when confronted with weird coins, the Mint doesn’t want people to flip out and reject them.

“There could be a new metal that could work that would have transition costs, but it is really all about how people use their coins,” Deputy Director Richard Peterson explains. “What will people say when you feel what you felt [in that lab]? That’s what we need to go and figure out.”

We’ll give you a start, Mint. Just because we’re nice.

Take Our Poll

Is America ready for a brown nickel? [Fortune]

Whenever I play Monopoly, sure, I’m playing to survive — well, survive the shame that inevitably befalls the worst player on the board. But a new report says the game did a lot more for prisoners of war during World War II, who used rigged sets to escape to freedom. Now that’s survival of the fittest. Or at least the cleverest.

Christian Donland over at Eurogamer takes an extensive look at the game’s contribution to springing many WWII POWs, who already loved Monopoly and would play it to make the days pass at prison camps.

“The German guards knew that if the prisoners were diverted by some pastime, like playing Monopoly, they would be less inclined to spend their time thinking about how to escape,” Phil Orbanes, chief judge of the Monopoly World Championships and author of the book Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game tells Donland.

“The Germans were actually glad when games and pastimes came into the camps because it meant that more of the prisoners could be engaged in calming activities.” Ha! Calming, indeed.

Because Monopoly was a common sight at these camps, a British intelligence officer named Clayton Hutton took advantage of that, and designed escape tools that could be hidden in boxed sets shipped from phony charities to help prisoners escape.

“My aim, right from the start of my association with the escape department had always been to discover a foolproof system for introducing my ‘toys’ into the camps themselves,” Hutton wrote. “To arrange for the odd map and compass to be smuggled to particular prisoners was one thing; to initiate and maintain a steady flow of all our devices was another.”

These games would show up with clues to the tools in their letterhead, hinting that this Monopoly set was not what it seemed at first. Another sign you had shears, metal files, a silk escape map, mini-compass and money stashed in the game? A red dot on the Free Parking space.

It’s still unclear how many Allied POWs got out and made it back home with the help of the rigged sets — Hutton had to keep his mouth shut since he was an intelligence officer and all. We salute you, Hutton, in the name of all those game players who were actually playing for their lives, and not so their older brothers would stop teasing them about being such a sore loser.

Check out the source link for the full, very lengthy and interesting piece by Donland. You’ll learn more about tiny compasses than you ever thought you could know.

Inside Monopoly’s secret war against the Third Reich [Eurogamer]

There is something missing in your life. You may not realize it right now, but you are suffering from a severe lack of giant pieces of novelty candy. When we say “giant,” we mean “26-pound gummy bears.”

We first learned about this strange industry from The Worst Things For Sale, which featured a three-pound worm along with an animated GIF of a guy chomping on it. This piqued our interest for what should be obvious reasons when you see the GIF.

Also, sugar. On Amazon, you can find other packaged giant candies. There is an 8-pack of giant Pop Rocks packets, for example.

There’s also a giant box of Nerds. Why does this exist? Who could finish such a container before they went stale?

That person with a very powerful pancreas might also be a fan of the giant gummy bears and worms, weighing in at three or six pounds. Or the even more giant ones available from specialty shops, such as the 26-pound gummy python.

I asked whether we could split one of these at our next Consumerist staff meeting, but was voted down. maybe because of the nutrition information:

Cherry & Blue Raspberry flavored
Weight: 26.9 pounds (12.2 kg)
Calories: 36,720
Servings: Approximately 306

Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime owe a good deal of their success to parents of young children, who love that they can dial up one of their kids’ favorite shows or movies instantly and without commercials. The folks at Viacom and Verizon are hoping to replicate some of that experience with a new customizable cable TV channel aimed at youngsters.

Rather than putting viewers at the mercy of TV programmers or forcing parents to find desired content online or via on-demand TV, “My Nick Jr.” will take a different approach by giving viewers a selection of seven different themes — like “get creative,” “word play,” or “supersonic science” — that will then determine the initial programming. Viewers can then vote yay or nay (via smile and frown icons) for individual shows. This feedback will then help customize the experience further.

Think of it like Pandora for your TV, where the Nickelodeon back-end computers do their best to predict what shows you will want based on your expressed preferences.

The Wall St. Journal reports that there will (at least initially) be no ads on My Nick Jr., and parents will be able to set limits on how many hours of the channel their kids can watch at a time. Parents will also have access to reports on which shows their kids are watching.

The My Nick Jr. channel will first launch on Verizon FiOS in the coming months. It will be given a slot in the channel lineup directly next to the existing Nick Jr. channel.

Viacom says it expects to roll the new channel out to other TV providers but gives no time frame. It’s also possible that the format could be extended to other Viacom-operated properties like MTV.

This customizable content approach is seen by some as a way to combat cord-cutters who are tired of being restricted by broadcasters’ programming schedules.

“It’s a way you can quash the momentum of over-the-top players in the marketplace,” explains Verizon’s vice president of content strategy and acquisition. “There’s no reason they should own that space—we should own that space.”

Viacom to Launch Customized Kids’ TV Channel [WSJ.com]

Yesterday’s ruling by a federal appeals court gives Internet service providers the ability to charge premium rates or additional fees to whichever content providers the ISPs want. Considering that Netflix is the single largest user of bandwidth in the U.S., many observers predict this ruling is bad news for the streaming video service, but some contend that Netflix may come out a winner in the long run.

The negatives for Netflix are obvious. ISPs like Verizon, which has already been accused of deliberately allowing Netflix traffic to become bottlenecked, that have competing streaming video services (Redbox Instant is a joint venture of Redbox and Verizon) can throttle Netflix data so that consumers get an unsatisfying experience, effectively taking away any value to the Netflix subscriber. At the same time, Verizon could give priority access to Redbox Instant.

Of course the ISPs will likely not just tell Netflix to go suck eggs and deal with the throttled data speeds; not when there is money to be made. Netflix will undoubtedly be offered the opportunity to pay for unfettered access to ISPs’ networks. And, barring any sort of legislative or regulatory intervention, Netflix will have to ante up if it wants to keep its position as the market leader in streaming video.

Surprisingly, it’s this very pay-to-play proposition that GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham argues that Netflix may actually be a winner. Higginbotham contends that Netflix, and other bandwidth gobblers like Skype, have the deep pockets required to pay for priority access without going under.

Indeed, if Netflix does have the money to pay the inevitable fees from the various ISPs, it could outlast a number of smaller competitors who can’t pay the higher toll for access to the old information superhighway. Paying the ISPs’ ransom would also mean — hopefully — a higher quality of video being delivered to Netflix subscribers.

But at what cost?

I’d contend that Netflix may not have the deep pockets some believe it does. The company has recently seen an improvement in its profit margin, but Netflix is known for investing much of its money in content — TV studios get so much money from Netflix they refer to the revenue as “pure heroin” — and in streaming technology to deliver uninterrupted feeds to subscribers’ homes — all at what most people feel is a reasonable monthly rate.

Regardless, it’s not like Reed Hastings is swimming in some Scrooge McDuck-like pool of gold coins that is just waiting to be handed over to ISPs. The money for these fees — which Bloomberg figures could be as much as 10% of Netflix’s annual revenue — will have to come from somewhere.

Maybe that means a smaller investment in content, meaning fewer TV shows and movies in the Netflix library. Maybe it means higher rates being charged to the customer, meaning the cost of the access fees is just being shifted to the end user (just like cable TV).

Regardless of whether Netflix wins or loses in the long run, the ultimate loser is the consumer.

Role-players and rescuers plan for an unthinkable mass casualty in Pr. William Washington Post On an indoor set at the Prince William County Public Safety Training Center in Nokesville, fire and rescue technician Jill Sears assesses actor Justin Mohay's artificial dark-red chest wound as he lies motionless on the ground; a tag around his neck ...

Prince William County community calendar, Jan. 16 to 22, 2014 Washington Post Thursday, Jan. 16. “Off the Wall No.10,” Prince William County student exhibition, sponsored by Lockheed Martin. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 1-5 p.m. Saturdays, through Jan. 29, Center for the Arts, Caton Merchant Family Art Gallery, 9419 Battle St ... Fairfax County Teen Escapes from Man Who Kidnapped, Sexually Assaulted ...Patch.com all 7 news articles »

Prince William County crime report Washington Post Prince William County. These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police. For information, call 703-792-7245. epa04025352 View of lightning that strikes next to the statue Christ the Redeemer in Rio de ... and more »

Prince William County and Stafford County home sales Washington Post Prince William County. These were among sales data provided to The Washington Post by Lender Processing Services. To find sale and assessment records for homes elsewhere in the Washington area, visit www.washingtonpost.com/homesales. BRISTOW ...

WJLA	Justin Wolfe bond hearing in Manassas WJLA MANASSAS, Va. (WJLA) - A Virginia man who spent 13 years in prison could soon be free. Continue reading. Photo of Justine Wolfe. More on this story. Justin Wolfe: Appeals court allows new trial. Alleged drug kingpin Justin Wolfe is in a Manassas court ...

- Three teenage boys have admitted to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old Northern California girl who later committed suicide after photographs of the attack were circulated to classmates, according to published reports.

- Long the province of the purebred, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show is opening a doggie door this year to mixed-breed competitors.

Son of New Jersey Bruce Springsteen and late night comedian Jimmy Fallon joined forces to retool one of Springsteen's hits to address "bridge-gate" -- the scandal surrounding embattled governor of the Garden State Chris Christie.

For pet owners who worry they'll need help on hand if their pet is suddenly injured or ill, the Red Cross is offering a First Aid app that helps diagnose and treat some common pet injuries.

- A Navy official says an F-18 fighter jet has crashed into waters off the Virginia coast, but the pilot ejected safely.

- The body of a pilot who had been missing since a helicopter crashed last week off the coast of Virginia has been recovered, the Navy said.