pileofcrapola

Even if you love your Android phone, there are always going to be some little things it does that bug you. Poor battery life, confusing UI, or just something you miss from another OS, what are the things that bug you most about Android?

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You probably know your phone can pinpoint your location for GPS, local search, or the weather. Hopefully, you also know that means your phone keeps track of everywhere you go, all the time. Don't be alarmed—it's the trade you make for the features you get. If it makes you uncomfortable, here's how to opt-out.

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You don't have to empty your wallet or set up a special savings account just to invite your friends over. Whether you're planning an informal get together or a fancy dinner party, there are more than a few ways to get the job done and have a great time without spending a ton of money. Here's how.

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- Finding a knockoff version of the fur you want under the Christmas tree would ordinarily be a disappointment.

Mighty Wings, McDonalds’ attempt at fast-food wingage, didn’t go over well with consumers. Maybe it was the pricing, well above sports bars and other wing outlets at about $1 per wing, in a restaurant that offers actual burgers for a dollar. The product didn’t take flight, and now McDonald’s is stuck with 10 million pounds of wings.

No, not 10 million wings. 10 million pounds of wings. That’s 20% of the original 50 million pounds that Mickey D’s ordered for the United States launch of Mighty Wings. That’s a lot of wings.

Franchisees aren’t huge fans of the product, and the Wall Street Journal reports that they’ve just been told that the wings have to come back. Their source tells them that McDonald’s wants to get rid of the leftover wing inventory, so there will be another Mighty Wings promotion, or the franchisees will get stuck with the Mighty Bill for all of that unsold chicken.

The solution should be obvious, McDonald’s: make the chicken and waffles thing real. Also price them reasonably. But people really seem to like chicken and waffles.

Unsold: Ten Million Pounds of McDonald’s Mighty Wings [Wall Street Journal]

Once upon a time, not very long ago, you went to the grocery store — not a big box store, or a warehouse club or online — and bought “chicken.” Now the poultry section can be a confusing mish-mash of labels that may not mean what consumers think they mean, or may not mean anything at all.

As part of its huge story on bacteria and chicken breasts, our pals at Consumer Reports put together a helpful guide for shoppers who want to know what each of the labels on their chickens mean.

This chart at GreenerChoices.org (also run by Consumer Reports) provides even more detailed information on nearly two dozen different chicken labels. Here the ones that most of us will come up against while grocery shopping:

Organic: In order to be labeled “USDA Organic,” the chicken had to have been fed not just a vegetarian diet, but a diet that does not include any genetically modified ingredients or toxic synthetic pesticides. It also means that antibiotics can not be used for anything other than medically necessary antibiotics (though some may argue that there are farmers who stretch the boundaries of what is medically necessary). However, chickens can be provided with antibiotics during their first day of life; the drug-free rule kicks in the day after the shell breaks open.

Organic certification, which requires annual inspections, mandates that access to the outdoors be provided for the chickens, but sets no specific standards for the size of the outdoor area, the size of the door leading between inside and outside, or the amount of time the birds spend outdoors.

No antibiotics: These chickens are never given antibiotics, including in the egg. That said, there is no inspection process to verify this label before it is employed.

No hormones: This label can be used on all conventionally raised chickens in the U.S. as the use of hormones in not allowed in the production of chickens for market. So if you see “no hormones” on a label, it just means “chicken.”

Cage-Free: Another label that is just touting the industry minimum, says CR. “No chickens raised for meat in the U.S. are kept in cages. Neither does it mean that the birds have access to the outdoors.”

Free-range: The only difference between conventionally raised chickens and free-range is that the chickens have access of some sort to the outside. Once again, there are no standards for size of the outdoor area or for the door to the outside, and inspections are not required to use this label.

No GMOs: To get the “Non GMO Project Verified” label, the chicken’s feed must be comprised of less than 0.9 percent of genetically modified crops. Verification is required for this label.

Natural: CR dubbed this one “the most misleading label” of the bunch, as more than half of the survey respondents said they believed “natural” meant the chickens didn’t receive antibiotics or chow down on feed containing GMOs. 42% of respondents said they thought the term meant the chickens were raised outdoors, while 1-in-3 said they thought it meant the same as “organic.” The only substantial requirement for “natural” chicken breasts is that they contain no artificial ingredients, but even then there is no process to verify this claim.

In case they missed the news last night, Target customers around the country are waking up this morning and learning that they may be one of many millions of consumers whose credit and debit card information was compromised during the course of a nearly three-week-long security breach at the retailer. Big Red, you’ve got some explaining to do…

In a statement to potentially affected customers, Target confirms that the “unauthorized access to Target payment card data” at its retail locations (Target.com purchases were apparently not impacted by the attack) lasted from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15, effectively encompassing the heart of the store’s holiday shopping business and affecting around 40 million Target shoppers, according to the retailer.

“Your trust is a top priority for Target, and we deeply regret the inconvenience this may cause,” said the company in a demonstration of corporate understatement.

The breach didn’t just get at basic things like customer names and addresses — nope, Target says the data thieves rode off into the virtual sunset with info that included customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card’s expiration date and CVV (that three-digit security code on the back of your card).

“We are partnering with a leading third-party forensics firm to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and to examine additional measures we can take that would be designed to help prevent incidents of this kind in the future,” says Target, which is recommending that customers do the sensible thing and review their accounts for signs of fraud and identity theft.

“If you see something that appears fraudulent, REDcard holders should contact Target,” explains the company in an FAQ, “others should contact their bank.”

Target is swearing up and down that its payment systems are now safe and secure, but will customers believe them? Would you?

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While hundreds of people around the country were getting sick from the recent salmonella outbreak, our co-workers at Consumer Reports just happened to be looking into the tiny life forms clinging to that popular poultry offering, the chicken breast. The results — that potentially harmful bacteria are lurking on and in almost every single chicken breast for sale at the supermarket — may not shock you, but they do highlight the growing concern over everything from what chickens are fed to how their meat is handled and prepared.

CR looked at 316 chicken breasts purchased at various types of food retailers, everything from the regionally owned grocery store to national supermarket and big box chains, in 26 different states. The samples covered both name brand products, including Perdue, Pilgrim’s, Sanderson Farms, and Tyson, and conventional no-brand chicken that many of us buy from the poultry section of the market.

Since most chickens produced for the retail market are provided with a steady diet of antibiotics, CR also made sure to test breasts that were labeled as “antibiotic-free” and “organic.” Here is a PDF of every brand included in the tests.

Each breast was tested for the presence of six bacteria — salmonella, campylobacter, staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, enterococcus, and klebsiella pneumoniae. Salmonella, campylobacter and staph are common causes of food poisoning. E. coli and enterococcus are usually the result of fecal contamination, while klebsiella is naturally present in the human stomach but can cause infections like pneumonia.

In addition to determining the mere presence of each bacteria type, CR testers then tried to determine which strains of each pathogen had been found, as one strain of a bug like salmonella may be rather mild while some, like the Heidelberg strain that was behind the recent outbreak, can wreak havoc.

Here are some of the findings:
* There was no significant difference between the average types of bacteria found on conventionally raised chickens (i.e., with antibiotics) and those labeled as “organic” or “no antibiotics.”

* Nearly 80% of the tested samples tested positive for enterococcus, followed by E. coli (65%), campylobacter (43%), klebsiella pneumoniae (13.6%), salmonella (10.8%), then staph (9.2%).

* Of the samples testing positive for E. coli, 17.5% were tainted with the “ExPEC” strain, which is more likely than other types to make a human sick with a urinary-tract infection.

* About half the samples (49.7%) tested positive for at least one multidrug-­resistant bacterium, and 11.5% ­carried two or more types of multidrug-­resistant bacteria.

* The drug-resistant bacteria found on the chickens breasts was significantly more resistant to those classes of antibiotics that are FDA-approved for the production (i.e., non-medical) of chickens than for those drugs that are only approved to prevent and treat disease. The FDA recently asked the drug makers to voluntarily stop selling those antibiotics that are solely for production, though farmers would still be feeding their animals all the “preventative” drugs they are now.

Here are some of the results for several name brands, along with the averages for smaller brands and antibiotic-free breasts:

Though most, if not all, of these bacterial issues can be overcome by cooking the chicken breast to an internal temperature of 165° F, that doesn’t get rid of the most common way for humans to contract these food-borne illnesses at home — cross-contamination during the preparation process. You pick up the chicken breast, touch a dinner plate or some utensils without properly cleaning your hands and you may have bought yourself a vacation to Diarrhea Town.

James R. Johnson, M.D., a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota tells Consumer Reports that you may be able to pick up one of these bugs just by touching the outside of the packaging.

According to a survey of CR readers, while 82% of Americans say they cook chicken breasts all the way to 165 degrees, only 30% of us actually use a meat thermometer when cooking chicken. More than 9-in-10 Americans claim to wash their hands right after handling raw poultry, but 72% of folks make the mistake of washing chicken before they cook it, when all that’s likely to do is spread bacteria-filled water around your kitchen and onto you.

Here are some more survey findings from the CR story:

Even though both conventionally raised and antibiotic-free chicken breasts contained roughly the same amount of bacteria, choosing antibiotic free is still a smarter choice for public health.

Consumer Reports’ recent tests of packaged ground turkey products found that conventionally raised turkey was more likely to contain drug-resistant bacteria. And choosing meat that is antibiotic free means you are encouraging farmers to not feed their animals drugs that are helping to foster new antibiotic-resistant superbugs that sicken around 2 million Americans and cause more than 23,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

Among other regulatory and legislative measures, Consumer Reports is calling on Congress to give the USDA authority to recall meat and poultry products that are tied by DNA fingerprinting to disease outbreaks. Amazingly, the agency does not currently have this authority.

Because it’s not the holidays without family, friends, gifts, reindeer, and news of a massive breach of credit and debit card records, the folks at Target are reportedly looking into the possibility that its customers’ information may have been compromised during the busiest shopping season of the year.
—–
UPDATE: The U.S. Secret Service has confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it is investigating the data breach, which is believed to have taken advantage of a vulnerability in the network of some 40,000 card-scanning devices used at Target stores nationwide.
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Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs cites multiple sources at large credit card issuers who tell him that the retailer is investigating a potential data breach that appears to have begun on Black Friday, and which would impact nearly all of the store’s locations in the U.S.

Krebs’ sources say the alleged breach only lasted for about a week, but it’s recently been discovered that it may have continued until around Dec. 15. The total number of accounts affected by the hack is not known, but millions of people all over the country flooded Target stores during these weeks in preparation for the Christmas holiday.

He reports that the “track data” allegedly stolen from customers’ accounts allows the data thieves to create counterfeit cards by encoding that information onto any blank card with a magnetic strip. Debit cards would also be at risk if the hackers have access to PIN information for cardholders. Duplicated debit cards could be used to siphon cash directly from accounts via ATM.

It’s not yet known if the breach extends to Target.com customers.

“The breach window is definitely expanding,” one anti-fraud analyst at a bank card issuer tells Krebs. “We can’t say for sure that all stores were impacted, but we do see customers all over the U.S. that were victimized.”

Another analyst says that if the breach is as bad as it appears, it could be “up there with some of the largest retail breaches to date.”

As of hitting “Publish” on this post, Target has not responded to requests for comment.

Speaking with Target’s hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Krebs says he has not heard from his sources about the hack being tied to any fraudulent charges on Target customers’ cards, but cautions that the thieves may have been biding their time before unloading all the pilfered data.

“There are so many stolen cards that the market for them is flooded and it’s hard for thieves to get much money for them anymore,” he explains. “And if the card numbers aren’t sold, they’re not being used.”

By law, credit card holders are only liable for up to $50 for fraudulent purchases, though a recent survey shows that all four of the major credit networks — Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express — have $0 liability policies for cardholders. Some of these companies also extend this policy to debit cardholders who make purchases using the “credit” option at the point of purchase.

Anyone who has used a credit or debit card at Target in the last month should check their accounts to make sure there are no questionable purchases, debits, or transfers.

As you’ll notice in the Krebs report, this information is coming not from Target but from the card issuers. Why? We can only presume that Target was hoping to minimize the publicity damage in the middle of the super-busy holidays season. The card companies and banks meanwhile would want this information to be made public so that cardholders are proactively checking for fraudulent activity before it happens. News of the breach may also give the thieves a good reason to not make this stolen information public.

You know the only thing wrong with a half-ton chocolate Santa Claus? No, not the 2.5 million calories he’s made of — calories don’t matter during the holidays or whenever a half-ton chocolate figurine is at stake. It’s the fact that the Houston hotel that has him on display has made it so no one can eat Santa. No one.

It’s a darn shame to remark on the existence of such a hefty bit of chocolate knowing the Santa will live out his days un-ingested, but I guess it’s kind of neat that someone made him in the first place.

The half-ton chocolate St. Nick greets guests in the lobby of the Hilton Americas in Houston, and will be at his post until Dec. 30, reports the Houston Chronicle. The Geppetto responsible for Santa is a pastry chef from the hotel’s own kitchen, who also created a chocolate scene with elves and presents.

He used 1,000 pounds of dark chocolate and chocolate dough, according to a hotel spokeswoman, while other helpers made gingerbread bricks for the scene’s fireplace and chimney. And then, after 400 hours of work spread over months… he painted it over with inedible lacquer. SIGH.

That’s because Santa must rise again next Christmas, after spending the off-season in cold storage at the hotel.

“We are going to add on to each it year,” says the spokeswoman. “Next year it will be even larger.”

Larger, and still inedible. What is this world we live in?

Houston hotel displays 2.5 million-calorie chocolate Santa sculpture [Houston Chronicle]

If your child isn’t old enough for the iPad potty chair and you simply can’t wait to prop her up in front of a tablet screen at close range, there’s always another option: the Apptivity seat from Fisher-Price. It’s an iPad chair for kids from birth until toddlerhood. It’s an improvement over the potty-seat version in that it was not explicitly designed as a toilet.

This is a real thing and it’s available from Amazon, where the reviews from non-customers are scathing.

Our heroes over at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood are campaigning to get this product pulled from the market, after they already named the potty chair one of the worst toys of the year.

To be fair, the iPad is only one of several entertainment options while your little one is in the bouncy seat. There is also a mirror, or you could strap your baby in and encourage it to look at its surroundings.

(via The Worst Things For Sale)

The saga of the couple fined $3500 for writing a negative review of a company back in 2008 continues and now, it’s going to court.

Public Citizen announced today that they have filed a lawsuit on behalf of the couple in federal court in Utah.  The full complaint (PDF) against the company, KlearGear.com, and Fidelity Information Corp., the debt collection agency that went after the couple, asserts that Jen and John did not actually owe the money to begin with because the fine in question is ridiculous.  “Ridiculous” not being a legal term however, the suit actually says:

According to KlearGear, this critical online review constituted a violation of a “non-disparagement clause” in KlearGear’s online Terms of Sale and Use that forbade anyone who did business with KlearGear from “taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.” This clause, however, did not appear in the Terms of Sale and Use when John did business with KlearGear; rather, the clause was added more than three years later. And even if had been present at the time of John’s transaction, the clause would be unenforceable under basic principles of contract law and under the First Amendment.

Public Citizen issued a legal letter to KlearGear in late November demanding that the company contact credit agencies to fix the couple’s problem, as well as paying $75,000 in damages and removing the “non-disparagement clause” from their terms of use.  In the letter, Public Citizen said that if KlearGear did not act, they would sue.  KlearGear has not acted, so Public Citizen is following through with the suit.

Public Citizen is seeking two outcomes from the suit: first, compensation and punitive damages for damaging Jen and John’s credit score and all the rippling problems that has caused in their lives.  And second, a declaration from the court that the couple does not owe money just for criticizing a retailer online.

Online reviews come up often in lawsuits.  Late last year, the state supreme court in Virginia ruled that reviews did not have to be pulled from sites like Yelp until after they were proven libelous.  Remember, kids: Negative statements are only libel or slander if they’re not actually true.  Somehow, though, that doesn’t stop many companies from trying to fix their reputations by attacking displeased customers, rather than fixing the problems the customers were ticked off about to begin with.

I am looking at a screen with the profile photos of many of my male friends. There’s a married guy who has his 2-year-old son as his main photo, right next to a stranger I’ve never seen before who I am not friends with on Facebook and the guy who sang loudest in high school choir. Oh, there’s my married brother. Their full names are there, along with a numbered rating from female reviewers.

You might’ve heard about the Lulu app from a New York Times piece about the company a few weeks back. I heard about it only recently from a friend who downloaded it out of curiosity and lo and behold, there was her boyfriend’s face with three reviews. She deleted it immediately instead of reading what his exes had to say about him.

Here’s how the company says it’s supposed to work, as a tool to help women have a bit of background about a guy before they go out with them: You sign in using your Facebook account but you get to stay anonymous (unlike the fellas) when you’re reviewing your past experience with the men whose faces show up on the site, whether you just had a crush or are an ex-girlfriend who wants to let the world know her heart was irrevocably broken.

It’s not quite like a Yelp for dating because reviewers can’t write whatever they want and are instead kept to a certain set of hashtags like #SweetToMom or #RudeToWaiters. The app guides you through a few sections like “appearance” “The Good” and “The Bad” and then comes up with a rating between 1 and 10 somehow at the end.

The app’s FAQ says: “Lulu is friends only. Girls can only see and review their friends. Guys can only be seen and reviewed by their friends.” (Side note: What does this accomplish then, unless you only want to date your FB friends?)

But the fact remains that I am seeing a whole lot of strangers who are most definitely not my Facebook friends. I’m seeing what their past crushes felt about them, whether they like to snuggle or got an “A in anatomy” (eww, when your family members are on there) and again, their full names.

As another friend related anecdotally, it seems that strangers can see whichever guy happens to be nearby.

“A friend of mine was at an art gallery about a month ago, chatting up a young lady, and she pulled out her phone right in front of him and looked him up on it while he was standing right there,” she says. “He said it felt supremely creepy.”

And the founder even seems to imply in the NYT piece that Lulu is meant to shed light on strangers, specifically: ”When you Google a guy, you don’t want to know if he voted Republican or what he wrote a paper about in college.” she said. “You want to know if mothers like him. Does he have good manners? Is he sweet?”

If you’re already Facebook friends with the guy, why would you need to Google him?

Consumerist reached out to Lulu to address what would appear to be a privacy loophole — sure, the terms of use and privacy policy explain how the app needs to access your Facebook information, but I highly doubt every male I’m friends with would grant the use of his image and name just by the fact that we’re friends.

There is this on the FAQ: “If guys don’t want to be reviewed by their friends on Lulu, we take them off immediately.”

But again, the guy would have to be aware of such an app in the first place in order to request they be removed, and that might not be the case.

On the one hand, this could be seen as empowering — men are far from innocent when it comes to their treatment of women. But also? It’s kind of icky. Or is it? As a male friend of mine said when I asked, “Dudes just don’t really care.” Tell us if you care, dudes. And gals.

Take Our Poll

What’s He Really Like? Check the Lulu App [New York Times]

Fairfax County Animal Watch Washington Post FAIRFAX COUNTY. No incidents were reported by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. Journalists and employees, wearing slippers to protect the glass floor, visit the 'Step ... and more »

- A German woman filmed crushing mice for a fetish video has been convicted of violating animal protection laws and fined.

- Former NBA star Dennis Rodman flew to North Korea on Thursday to help train the national team and renew his friendship with the North's young leader Kim Jong Un, a visit unaffected by the recent execution of Kim's uncle in a dramatic political purge.

- In the mountains of southwestern Jordan, where tradition says Moses saw the Promised Land, dozens of sick dogs lay chained and starving at an isolated olive plantation.

- Enough donations have been raised to allow a blind man to keep the aging guide dog that went onto the subway tracks with him when the man lost consciousness and fell from a station platform, officials say.

- Bernie Goetz said he thought he was going to be mugged by a man who turned out to be a plainclothes cop arresting him in a low-level drug sting -- the same explanation he used nearly three decades ago when he opened fire on four panhandling youths on a subway train.

If you have plans to buy a house in 2014, some new fees on the settlement sheet may surprise you.

Not everyone is drinking out of a giant cup of Christmas cheer this year. But before you go hounding "the grinches," stop and think about why people might be low on spirit.

- Anne Arundel County officials say a 34-year-old man died after he was shocked while putting up Christmas lights.

If you're looking for family-friendly things to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we found a bunch of options for you to choose from all around the region.

- The Smithsonian American Art Museum has begun collecting video games for its permanent collection as part of an ongoing commitment to study and preserve such games as an artistic medium.

- Engineers are studying a plan to send water from Smith Mountain Lake to Bedford and Forest.

In a statement, A&E said it was extremely disappointed to see Robertson's anti-gay remarks, which it said were based on his personal beliefs

Holiday shopping has customers falling ill - from discount fatigue. Bombarded with daily e-mails from retailers and bored by blanket offers of 40% off, shoppers are tuning out.

Homemade bombs caused death and agony for troops and prompted changes in military equipment.

The Secret Service has confirmed to USA TODAY that it is investigating a potential massive data breach involving shoppers' personal credit card information and Target retail stores.

Toys that give back and give lots of laughs make our Hot Holiday Toy picks today.