pileofcrapola

Your education doesn't have to stop once you leave school—freedom from the classroom just means you have more control over what you learn and when you learn it. We've put together a curriculum of some of the best free online classes available on the web this spring (yes, and winter) for the latest term of Lifehacker U, our regularly-updating guide to improving your life with free, online college-level classes. Let's get started.

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If you don't want your computer tampered with, or you want to be able to tell if someone's been fiddling with your gear, a little glittery, shiny nail polish may be the perfect solution. A pair of security researchers presented the idea at the Chaos Communication Congress, and it's surprisingly effective. Here's why.

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Credit and debit cards both have advantages and financial experts often disagree about which is best. We're interested in hearing your opinion. And make it count, because we'll be posting a follow-up article next week with the best arguments on both sides.

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As someone who has to deal with a 29-years old Italian car, I can assure you that I've learnt a lot about keeping my ride alive in 2013. And with these ten tips in the hat, 2014 is going to bring even more four-wheeled adventures.

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Dear Lifehacker,
Every now and then I crack my knuckles and sometimes my other joints creak and pop too. I'm not even that old, really! Should I be concerned? Are my noisy joints bad?
Signed,
Creaky

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You might think that all chargers are created equally, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wired explains that picking the right charger with the right amperage (a measure of current) can mean the difference between getting your phone charged while you work versus waiting all day before you can unplug it.

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General Mills says it’s been making original-flavor Cheerios without genetically modified organisms and that they’ll be on store shelves soon after consumers piped up to ask for GMO-free products. It’s only doing so for the original flavor because that one is mostly oats and conveniently enough, there aren’t any genetically modified oats anyway.

It’s updated the flavor by switching the cornstarch and sugar out, said a spokesman, which was easy enough only with its basic version of Cheerios, reports the Associated Press.

“We were able to do this with original Cheerios because the main ingredients are oats,” the spokesman added, pointing out that no oats have GMOs. Each box will bear a label reading “Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients.”

That’s not so much an official certification as a way to alert customers that it’s trying to go GMO-free. There could be trace amounts of GMO ingredients however, due to the way the Cheerios are made.

Again, other flavors like Apple Cinnamon or Honey Nut Cheerios won’t get the same GMO-scrubbing as they use ingredients like corn. While there isn’t a lot of scientific evidence out there that shows that a food with GMOs is less safe than one without, some consumer groups have put pressure on food manufacturers to remove them, citing potential long-term effects.

One such consumer group called Green America started a campaign asking General Mills to make Cheerios GMO-free. Its corporate responsibility director said that this move is “an important victory in getting GMOs out of our food supply and an important first step for General Mills.”

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Original Cheerios to go GMO-free [Associated Press]

In the January issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Marie Brenner looks into the potential dangers of newer hormonal birth control pills. By “newer” we mean “came on the market since the ’90s.” The popular NuvaRing, a convenient insertable ring, is associated with a higher risk of life-threatening cardiovascular problems. Why aren’t women warned about this when they begin taking it?

You should go read the full article yourself, which introduces readers to the family of one young woman who died, an Olympic athlete who nearly died, and a lawyer working on behalf of affected patients…or their survivors.

1. NuvaRing was developed in the ’90s by Organon, a Dutch drug company. It hit the U.S. market in 2002. Schering-Plough bought Organon in 2007, and Merck in turn acquired Schering-Plough in 2009.
2. Study results vary, but the Food and Drug Administration says that women using contraceptive rings are 56% more likely to suffer a venous thromboembolism (VTE), a life-threatening blood clot. A study in the British Medical Journal found that women using rings were 90% more likely to have a VTE.
3. This significant increased risk doesn’t really come up during the office visit when women get a prescription for NuvaRing or a free sample. Vanity Fair’s reporter sent two young women out to a college clinic and to Planned Parenthood to seek rings. Neither health care provider mentioned the increased VTE risk. The relative risk is low, but women still should know about the symptoms.
4. The real danger of delivery systems like patches and pills is that they may deliver hormone spikes. Organon found evidence of this in its initial studies before launching NuvaRing.
5. The article takes us to visit a New York law firm that’s working on multi-state litigation against drug companies over VTEs caused by third- and fourth-generation birth control. The attorney leading the charge against Merck learned something important from his work, and called his daughters with a succinct warning. “Do not ever use any third- or fourth-generation birth control,” he tells Vanity Fair that he told them. “It could kill you.”
6. According to internal e-mails, Schering-Plough drug reps were instructed to minimize the risks of NuvaRing compared to other birth control when discussing the product with doctors. Marketing provided them with handy scripts to steer the conversation and compare the product favorably to competitors like the Ortho-Evra patch.
7. You might remember Vioxx, a painkiller that increased patients’ risk of having a heart attack. Know who made that? Merck. When they were sued, the company refused to settle. In some cases, patients got big payouts, but in most, the company won.
8. When the Ortho-Evra patch added a great big warning to its package about the increased danger of VTEs, sales plummeted 80%.
9. One tiny early trial of NuvaRing showed huge, dangerous spikes in test subjects’ estrogen levels. This trial wasn’t part of Organon’s original application to the FDA.

Danger in the Ring [Vanity Fair]

Either more exciting, crazy things happen in Florida every day or we just get to hear about them more often because it’s Florida: This week a baby was born in a car parked in the lot at Walmart while the father stepped inside to grab a few things.

One minute he’s just shopping for a few items and the next minute, he’s a new dad, reports MyNews13.com.

Police officers and firefighters showed up to find that the woman had given birth in the car with her three daughters sitting with her to witness. The dad told cops he’d only been inside for a few minutes and came outside to find his children frantically yelling at him to get back to the car.

By the time he reached the vehicle, the little bundle of joy had arrived.

“I would be floored and astounded,” said another shopper, who we will just call Captain Obvious.

The report says both mother and baby are doing fine, and for some reason the family decided not to get interviewed by the news team. Probably because everyone had already had enough excitement for one day.

Walmart says it’ll give gift cards to the family as well as some baby items by way of congratulations. Hey, a free baby shower!

While dad shopped, mom gave birth in Walmart parking lot [MyNews13.com]

If I had a nickel for every time my donkey meat snack turned out to be fox meat instead, I’d have no nickels. But there would be plenty of coins coming in for customers at some Walmart stores in China after tests showed that what was labeled as “Five Spice” donkey meat was tainted with the meat of other animals.

Walmart is now pulling the item from shelves and refunding customers who bought the meat while it tries to figure out how the mixup happened, reports Reuters.

It’s bad timing for Walmart’s reputation in China as the company is planning on opening 110 new stores in the country over the next few years. But shoppers could be put off by such an incident because as we all know, what the label says is what you should get.

While it’s not like everyone in China is chowing down on donkeys, it’s a popular snack in some areas. In 2011 China slaughtered 2.4 million donkeys for consumption, so ostensibly someone is buying the stuff and wouldn’t be pleased to have it be any other kind of meat.

“We are deeply sorry for this whole affair,” said Wal-Mart’s China president and CEO, Greg Foran. “It is a deep lesson (for us) that we need to continue to increase investment in supplier management.”

Wal-Mart recalls donkey product in China after fox meat scandal [Reuters]

Are you in the market for a new television, some furniture, a gaming console, or new winter clothes? It might seem like the post-holiday sales frenzy is the perfect time to shop for all of these items, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

Over at DealNews, they outline some items that, according to their research, you may or may not find the best deals on during the month of January. What should you avoid shopping for?

• Shiny new game consoles. The Xbox One and Playstation 4 are still hot items right now. We probably won’t see discounts on them until spring at the earliest.
• Televisions. Unless you need a new one right now, wait until February: prices will fall a little more. Start shopping in January: if you find the right deal for you, nab it, but prices might continue to fall.

Ah, but there are also some items that Dealnews says that you should consider buying in January, because the best deals around are going on now or about to start soon. What are those things?

• Christmas stuff. That one’s obvious, and it may even be too late. For those retailers that have some holiday items on the shelves and haven’t cleared them all out in favor of Easter candy yet, you can get some nice deals. Some items that aren’t explicitly Christmassy like winter-themed mugs or major-brand candies in red and green wrappers might still be on shelves, too.
• Furniture. New collections come out in February: get great deals on the old ones now.
• Winter clothing. Need a new coat or boots? Better get them now, while they’re on clearance. Some retailers already have winter clothes priced at up to 80% off.

Tax software. Wait, what? We don’t even have our W-2s yet. That’s why you can get nice deals on copies of tax software early on, as low as 40%. Make sure that the one you choose includes state filing if you live in a state that requires a tax return: some programs charge extra.

The Best and Worst Things to Buy in January [Dealnews]

At least one woman is likely very relieved that it’s now 2014, after she stuck to her pledge to only eat food purchased from Starbucks for her three meals a day, every day in 2013. That’s a lot of nut boxes and pressed breakfast sandwiches.

The Seattle mother of two challenged herself to complete the endeavor last year and restricted all her meals to only what she could buy at Starbucks or “Starbucks-inspired” (translation: Starbucks-owned) stores like Roy Street Coffee, Tazo Tea and Evolution Fresh. Yes, even on her birthday and holidays. She did prepare regular food for her children, however.

“WHY? am I doing this challenge? Or WHY? will I do any challenge in the future? Because I LOVE being human and I LOVE the privilege of being able to ask the question WHY? in the first place!” she wrote on her blog at the start last year, via the New York Daily News.

It’s not cheap to eat only at coffee shops, either — she spent around $500 to $600 every month on food, which she photographed along the way.

And then there’s the tongue-numbing boredom of being stuck with a limited menu.

“In the last month, in the last couple weeks, it’s been really difficult. People had pizza at the office last week and I was dying,” she told the NYDN. “I’m happy to be able to eat whatever I want (again).”

To celebrate her culinary freedom, she gnoshed on fish and chips and had a bit of a tough time at first.

“My taste buds have been freaking out for the last 24 hours,” she explained. “Starbucks doesn’t really have anything that’s fried, and you can only eat so much after you haven’t had stuff like that for a year.”

I would’ve bought food at Starbucks and then fried it up as a food disguise, although that might be considered cheating. Or just not restrict myself to one company’s food in the first place, but that’s another matter.

Seattle woman eats nothing but Starbucks food for a year [New York Daily News]

When a Florida Walmart manager followed a couple of suspected beer thieves out into the parking lot, he probably wasn’t expecting he’d end up going on a 12-mile ride in the back of their truck, tossing beer cans toward passing cars in the hopes of getting someone’s attention.

The manager of the Titusville, FL, store tells WFTV in Orlando that he’d spotted a male and female leaving the Walmart with some 25 cases of beer that we was pretty sure they hadn’t paid for.

“I had asked them for a receipt and they kept throwing beers into their car,” he recalls. “I ran up to get their license plate, but when I realized how close I was, I jumped in the back so they didn’t run me over.”

And so the truck took off down I-95 with the pilfered Bud Light and a freaked-out Walmart manager in the back.

In an attempt to get someone to call the police, the manager began tossing beer cans into the road.

The manager says they stopped the truck twice. The first time, the shoplifters attempted to beat him up. They later pulled off onto a wooded road and tried to force him out of the truck.

“I was like, ‘I’m not getting out for you to run me over,’” he recalls.

This got the attention of one driver, who pulled up behind the stopped truck on a country road and announced that he’d called the sheriff.

“Well, I just saw all the beers alongside the road,” says the driver. “The gentleman in the back got out, and as soon as he did, the other guy jumps into the pickup truck and just leaves.”

Oh Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that’s going round? The shamrock is already thick on the ground at Big Lots, a full two and a half months before St. Patrick’s Day. Or maybe this store just has a really loyal Irish customer base.

While it’s not like we’re super worried that Valentine’s Day won’t get its due attention (read: not worried at all because we know the hearts and mushy cards will coat the country in a blanket of buyable affection) it’s still way, way too early to decorate for St. Patrick’s Day.

At least reader Leigh thinks so when she submitted the above and below pics in Maryland yesterday, writing: “This is worse than Target setting up for Valentine’s the day after Christmas.”

While some of the employees at my local McDonald’s were visibly displeased that their boss made them wear funny party hats on New Year’s Eve, these workers are probably delighted that they don’t work in Taiwan, where the last days of 2013 saw kitten-eared schoolgirls and “maids” in pink uniforms manning the counters.

RocketNews24 first noticed the maids shortly after Christmas, with employees referring to customers as “Master,” which is a little creepy for our tastes.

Then a few days later the site had photos and video of the anime-style schoolgirl outfits, complete with the knee socks and cat-eared headbands, worn by female employees who saluted customers.

While we doubt this would go over well with fast food employees here in the States, these oddball outfits are apparently all sanctioned by McDonald’s Taiwan as part of a year-end competition between franchises.

A California woman recently found out she couldn’t open a Comcast account in her name because she owed the cable company a lot of money… even though she’d never been a customer before. She eventually found out that Comcast had allowed people to use her social security number to open up more than a dozen accounts, and then sent a collection agency after her to make her pay for the company’s failure to catch these scammers.

The woman, named Marjorie, tells KGO-TV’s Michael Finney, that other people began illegally using her Social Security number, along with variations on her first name — Marge, Margie, Margaret — to open Comcast accounts all around Northern California.

“I know that two addresses in Oakland were used and the first time I talked to Comcast they said that accounts had been opened in Dublin and Pleasanton and Berkeley and kind of all over the East Bay,” she recalls.

Somehow, the repeated use of the SSN did nothing to trip off alarm bells at Comcast, but when the actual Marjorie used her actual info to open her first Comcast account, she was told she owed $1,500.

Even after she explained to Comcast that these were fraudulent accounts the cable company demanded payment and sent a collection agency after her for money she didn’t owe.

“I got really nervous and scared,” she tells Finney. “I had heard things happening with debt collection agencies that follow you for the rest of your life.”

As happens, once Finney and his 7 On Your Side team contacted Comcast, the cable company was suddenly apologetic and said it would call off the debt collector dogs.

So why could so many accounts — Marjorie claims it was 15; Comcast says it was fewer, but won’t give a number — be opened using the same SSN?

According to the Comcast brain trust, its system didn’t catch the multiple uses of the same Social Security number because customers sometimes open multiple accounts. However, it claims to have put something in place (I think it’s called “common sense”) to help prevent this from happening in the future.

What would happen if one of your favorite products changed the feature that made it your favorite in the first place? That’s the frustration that users of Pine-Sol face now that the company has changed the product’s fragrance. The company blames a pine oil shortage and promises to offer the original scent online.

“It was a tough decision, but we did have to change the formula of our Original Pine-Sol due to a lower amount of pine oil available,” explains a company representative on the Pine-Sol Facebook page.

If you thought that a cleaning solution couldn’t inspire this level of devotion…well, you’re wrong. Complaints are a regular fixture on the Pine-Sol Facebook page, and a Change.org petition reveals consumers’ devotion to the product.

This whole world changes, nothing is perfect. EXCEPT ORIGINAL PINE-SOL! I DO NOT GET MAD EASY, THINGS HAPPEN FOR REASON, AND WE CAN’T CHANGE EVERYTHING. I’M 37 AND HAVE BEEN A FAITHFUL, ADDICTED CUSTOMER TO ORIGINAL SCENT PINE-SOL, I USE IT EVERYWHERE, FOR EVERYTHING…

I WILL FIGHT,THIS STUPID MOVE YOU GUYS DID TILL I’M TO [sic] OLD TO MOVE, THEN I’LL DIE, AND COMEBACK AND HAUNT YOUR ASS, AND KEEP FIGHTING FROM MY GRACE [sic]. IT’S BULLSHIT YOU KNOW IT, NOW CHSNGE [sic] IT BACK.

Now, that, Clorox, is what you’d call a loyal customer.

Pine Sol: Change the original scent back [Change.org] (Thanks, Scorpio!)

- It's the kind of puzzle that might have amused Sherlock Holmes himself.

How do get rid of the pesky indoor pests like silverfish and roaches but without pesticides? Garden Plot Editor Mike McGrath has you covered.

Friday there was a lion on the loose at Survival Outreach Sanctuary in Pasco County

AAA Mid-Atlantic has tips for taking care of your car for the winter, including putting an emergency kit into your trunk.

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. GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, GERMANY - JANUARY 01: (FRANCE OUT) Kamil Stoch of ... and more »

Hit and Run Suspect Sought in Manassas PotomacLocal.com MANASSAS, Va. – Police are searching for a man suspected of being involved in a hit-and-run pursuit. The unidentified suspect while behind the wheel of a vehicle struck another vehicle in the area of Breeden and Mathis avenues in Manassas on ...

Police search for Manassas shooting suspect Inside NoVA David Jamar Moore, 25, is wanted on charges of aggravated malicious wounding and use of a firearm in a felony. Posted: Thursday, January 2, 2014 1:16 pm | Updated: 1:41 pm, Thu Jan 2, 2014. Police search for Manassas shooting suspect 0 comments. and more »

WUSA 9 Meteorologist Howard Bernstein says between 2" and 5"of snow fell.

A truck with a plow attachment overturned in someone's yard in Aspen Hill on Friday morning.

More than half of female Marines in boot camp can't do three pullups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year, prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement, part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs.

The mother sent photos, videos to boyfriend while he was traveling.

Take a look at these photos of some of the year's best images of wildlife, pets and zoo inhabitants.