pileofcrapola

Chrome: How productive are you, really, when you're online? Unless you track your time, you might not really know. Limitless is a new extension that not only tracks your browsing habits, it also inspires you to complete your goals.

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In many parts of the world, temperatures are hitting record lows. Make the most of this winter cold by turning soda into slushies or slurpees.

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Most job openings at most companies go unadvertised—that is, they're posted on their site, but they're not farmed out to recruiters or posted on massive job boards. That also makes them harder to find. Thankfully, Google can do the job for you. Use these search strings to uncover matching gigs.

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Not everyone needs a ton of stuff with them at all times. Reader Oscar Lara kept his possessions to a minimum with a lot of small but useful tools in his every day carry (EDC) bag.

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Be prepared for breakdowns and roadside car problems like flats, dead batteries, and mechanical trouble with this glovebox guide to emergency maintenance.

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Beer is one of the major Consumerist food groups, along with tacos, cheese, and bacon. It’s very important and nice to have around. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should dial up emergency services to report that your granddaughter won’t buy you beer, as one Tennessee woman allegedly did. [Associated Press]

While the rest of the country deals with record-breaking frigid temperatures by bundling up and cancelling schools, some organizations just don't have the option. The Tomb Sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is standing his ground.

The Play With Your Music course is a completely free, hands-on class in music production and engineering. You'll group with students who like the same music you do to learn mixing, audio editing, remixing, and more. If you're interested in learning the ins and outs of making music, it's worth a look.

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This month, my husband and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary. A dozen years is both a long and a short time to be married, depending on how you look at it, but over the years I've learned a few things I didn't quite expect life after the wedding to be like. Here are the things I think every single person should consider before they get married.

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Ever tried to control your reaction when you were really, really mad? Having good intentions is one thing—reality is quite another. You can think all you want that the next time your kids provoke you, you will not react angrily no matter how mad you are. But seriously, when you're really mad, can you even think straight, let alone control your reaction?

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The PlayStation 4 launched in November and so far has sold and performed well for Sony. One thing it doesn’t have, though, is backwards compatibility. The PS3 was out for seven years before that, and the PlayStation 2 before it sold over 150 million units worldwide. That’s a lot of old video games that don’t run on your shiny new system.

Sony bought cloud-based streaming-gaming provider Gaikai in 2012, and announced in 2013 that they would use the streaming service to bring PS3 games to the PS4 and handheld PS Vita. Today at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony execs announced that the service is called PlayStation Now, and it appears to be even bigger than players might have guessed.

Not only will PlayStation Now serve up PS2 and PS3 games to the new current generation of consoles, but also it will stream titles to the PS3, tablets, smartphones, and even to smart TVs (like the Sony Bravia, naturally) directly.

The cloud-based gaming service can work on such a wide range of devices the same way an HD streaming movie from Netflix or YouTube can. The computing and graphics processing happen remotely on big servers. You’re essentially seeing a video of what you’re doing, with your controller signals being sent back to the server, and a stream of what you did being sent back to you.

The end result, when it works, feels like just sitting there playing a video game. Successful play doesn’t require a high-end graphics card on the player’s end… but it does need a stable, low-latency internet connection.

Sony is running a live demo of PlayStation now at CES, using 2013 hit (and top-end HD graphical spectacle) The Last of Us.

According to Polygon, PlayStation Now will allow users both to rent access to individual games, and also to pay for subscription plans. Sony hasn’t yet clarified exactly how either option will work, or how much it will cost.

Sony says they plan to launch a closed beta of the service by the end of this month, and that they hope to roll out PlayStation Now over the summer.

PlayStation Now streams PlayStation games to PS4, Vita, PS3, tablets and smartphones [Engadget]
PlayStation Now game-streaming service coming summer 2014 [Polygon]

Pretty girls, fruit hurtling in windows, giant toasters: it’s like something out of a terrifying hallucination. Only it’s not. These are the terrifying images that those of us who watched Pop-Tart commercials in the ’80s and ’90s are now trying to forget.

There’s this spot from the late ’80s, which should serve as a warning for what happens when you eat strawberry breakfast pastries shortly before going to bed.

Then both Rollerblades and frosted sparkling Pop-Tarts came into existence, so we encountered this horror.

“So hot they’re cool, so cool they’re hot” is the Zen koan of breakfast slogans. What does it mean? That’s for you to ponder only when properly loopy on high fructose corn syrup.

RELATED:
Make Your Own Pop Tarts!

Yesterday’s clever advertising ploy/PR stunt from Amazon and/or Nissan got us thinking back to that 1,509-pound gun safe, which previously held the title of Heaviest Thing You Can Ship For Free on Amazon. One Consumerist reader says he found something even heavier that’s Prime-eligible, which could mean it’s time to pass the title on.

Brian writes in with this new kid on the block — a 2,550-pound wide belt sander that sells for $16,245 — saying it deserves to be crowned.

“While the gun safe is certainly a porker at 1,509 pounds, this Shop Fox belt sander really tips the scales with a shipping weight of 3,955 pounds and is Prime Eligible,” he explains, and it appears to be so.

But Brian isn’t done with us yet, throwing down the gauntlet to back his assertion: “I’II challenge you to find a heavier product!”

Challenge accepted. If you can find a heavier item on Amazon that will cost Prime members nothing to ship, or heck, something even bigger than the car that was apparently in that super big box yesterday, let us know at tips@consumerist.com. Then you can share in the wearing of the imaginary crown.

When food companies need to work on their profit margin but don’t want to raise prices, they deploy the Grocery Shrink Ray. The Shrink Ray lets them charge the same amount for fractionally less food. Today, we have most of a Shrink Rayed breakfast: it’s been deployed on Kellogg’s Special K Protein cereal and Chobani yogurt cups.

Mark sent in these cereal boxes., which show an entire ounce removed from Special K Protein after a box redesign. Redesigns often provide handy cover for Shrink Rayage.

Sarra sent this photo of Chobani’s yogurt cups. It always was remarkable that Chobani offered a full six ounces: i suppose it was too wonderful to last.

Since shortly after Christmas Day, we’ve been tracking the spread of Easter Creep across the country. That’s when chocolate eggs and plastic bunnies hit store shelves before all of the unsold Christmas decorations are off the clearance shelf.

Normally, Kroger does some very innovative things in the Easter Creep field. In 2011, they even dragged out the chocolate eggs during the first week of December. You know, for your Easter stocking. Reader Gail sent us the above photo from her local CVS, though, and I spotted a similar display right at the front door of my CVS.

As much as we decry holiday merchandise being available on store shelves earlier and earlier here at Consumerist, we’ve never really had a problem with Easter Creep. This is probably because we like Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and candy-shelled chocolate eggs. It’s a sickness.

You know you’ve got a special set of customers on your hands when they walk in and ask for the restaurant’s grumpiest server. But when that happened at a Cracker Barrel in Lincoln, Neb., the hostess said there weren’t any cranky servers. The customers wanted to make someone laugh, so instead the hostess sat them with the place’s happiest server. And she’d soon be even happier.

The 18-year-old waitress greeted the customers and took their order, reports the Lincoln Journal Star, and they in turn asked her why she was so happy.

During the course of their visit, she explained her whole life story — a tough childhood after her parents were in a car crash and then a horrible time in foster care with her siblings, with what she said was an abusive family.

They were split up again and more troubles hit the family until the kids were reunited nine years ago in a loving home.

“It’s a great home, great people, amazing,” the waitress explained. “I don’t know how I would have turned out if I didn’t have them. They shaped the person I am today.”

Then she told her curious customers about her future, which at the moment was at a bit of a crossroads as she didn’t have enough money to pay for her next semester at college. She was saving up her tips and applying for financial aid in the hopes that she could go back next fall.

All that she’s been through and where she was headed, that’s why she was so happy, she explained to the two customers.

Finally when the men were finished eating, one explained that he had graduated from the same college she had attended. Then he opened his checkbook and wrote a check to the college for $5,000 for her tuition, another $1,000 made out to her for whatever she wanted, and a $100 cash tip which she split with another server.

You’ve got to admit, sounds a lot nicer than simple turning a grump’s frown upside down.

Lincoln waitress receives the tip of a lifetime [Lincoln Journal Star]

- Run Run Shaw built a Hong Kong movie and TV empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner."

- Run Run Shaw built a Hong Kong movie and TV empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner."

- The 16-year-old reported that she had been gang raped, only to be raped again by the same men the next day and later threatened for going to the police in eastern India. By the time charges were filed more than two months later, she had been set on fire and died from her injuries.

- A handcuffed Jerry Sandusky testified by video link for nearly three hours Tuesday as Pennsylvania's public pension agency considered his request to restore retirement benefits canceled because of his child molestation conviction.

- Certain essentials must be taken care of, no matter what. As a record freeze hit this small town outside Pittsburgh early Tuesday, basic needs came down to football, lottery tickets and cigarettes. Especially cigarettes.

- Smithfield Foods is recommending that its contract growers phase out the practice of keeping female hogs in small metal crates while pregnant.

New technology is helping Washington Redskins safety Reed Doughty do something he's never done before - wear hearing aids on the playing field.

WSSC crews are dealing with 38 broken water mains in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

As temperatures dropped into low single digits Monday, officials say the man walked into a motel and asked the clerk to call police.

Prince George's County and Maryland Department of Environment investigators are planning this week to excavate suspected dump pits exposed by WUSA9 after workers filled in the holes before investigators got there to see for themselves.

A Metropolitan Police Department officer was sentenced Monday for domestic violence charges.

Chrome: Reading a bright screen at night is never a pleasant experience. If you're a fan of the night mode in many ereaders and apps, Hacker Vision is an extension that does the same thing on your computer and turns bright sites a darker color.

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When I was a kid and Disney’s Aladdin came out, I was extremely perturbed by the genie’s rule against wishing for more wishes, because it completely ruined the entire premise of the genie strategy that I had been working out since infancy. After much thought, I pivoted by deciding to wish for the means of producing whatever I wanted. This brings me to MakerBot’s new Replicator Mini. It’s basically a tiny toy factory, the object of my power-mad childhood dreams.

The box, one of three new machines debuted by MakerBot at their CES press conference, is “one touch” and WiFi enabled. Simply download some 3D models from MakerBot’s new iTunes-esque toy store. Founder Bre Pettis explains, “You connect it to your smartphone or computer, and then there’s just one button. You’re ready to go.”

A ready-to-print 3D model goes for $0.99, or $9.99 for a whole set of related designs. The toys range from pets to dragons to trucks to a whole town full of cute fishmongers and bike repair specialists.

But does it make financial sense to 3D print your toys? At $1,375 plus the cost of the model and film (used to actually craft the objects), no, it doesn’t. To be fair, however, you can use the machine to print more than just toys, and presumably the digital store will be expanding into other types of ready-to-print models in the future.

[MakerBot]

PotomacLocal.com

Warming Shelters Open in Manassas PotomacLocal.com MANASSAS, Va. – Two warming shelters are now open in Manassas due to the deep freeze. The shelters are at: Grace United Methodist Church. 9750 Wellington Road. Osbourn High School. 9005 Tudor Lane. At 9 p.m. Monday, the temperature in ... Wind chills could reach -15 in DC region overnightMyFox Washington DC all 3 news articles »