A magical and wonderful thing has happened to some customers who have Charter Internet service After restarting their cable modems for some reason or another, they found that their home internet connections had received a speed boost. It was a big one, boosting real-life speeds from about 30 mbps to 100 mbps.
Confusingly, Charter does offer a 100 mbps service tier to customers. As Legit Reviews points out, these speedsters received a speed boost from 100 to 120 mbps, but is that enough to continue paying for the upgrade?
If you’re a Charter customer in that area, try power cycling your modem to find out whether you get the update, too. You may find a pleasant surprise.
The question is: why? Sure, St. Louis is in the same state as Google Fiber rollout site Kansas City, but it’s a long drive and a heck of a commute.
The BBC says three men convicted of stealing some bread trays from a bakery will serve at least three years each for the crime. That probably seems like a heavy sentence, so I should clarify that the baker is Warburtons, the largest in Britain, and "some bread trays" means at least 90,000 bread trays weighing well over 200 tons in total and valued at over £500,000. The men diverted 60-70 truckloads of trays for "recycling" over a six-month period. Maybe they thought Warburtons was too big to notice a mere 90,000 missing bread trays. Turns out it's not.
Speaking of things that are missing, if you lost a fingertip at the fair last week you might try the lost-and-found department of the Wellington, Ontario, police department. Police there said they had no reason to suspect foul play at the moment, but haven't ruled it out. "The priority" right now, said a sergeant, "is to identify who lost a fingertip and who it belongs to." My guess is they will answer both those questions at the same time, if they get any answers at all.
Hm. Car sitting there with its engine running, but I don't see anybody inside. The windows are tinted, though. Hard to tell. Could be a free car, or some good stuff inside for the taking. I'll just try the door and take a quick look.... Or there could be an undercover police officer inside who now has a gun pointed at me, and some difficult questions for which, frankly, I had not prepared. Wow, I certainly did not see that coming, although with hindsight, perhaps I should have. Well, lesson learned.
Also stupid: the Northeast Independent School District in San Antonio, which has reportedly banned students from bringing sunscreen to school without a doctor's note. The district claims sunscreen is a "medication," which it isn't, and also that it is "typically a toxic substance," which it also isn't and which contradicts the first stupid argument. The district said that if parents are concerned that their children may be outdoors, "they should come to school fully covered in sunscreen," but they can't bring their own.
George R.R. Martin is once again assuring fans that he will finish the A Song of Ice and Fire series in seven books and that the HBO show Game of Thrones won't catch up to him. He might be the only one who still believes this.
Martin spoke to Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday to respond to the growing sense that his ever-expansive fantasy series won't be finished in seven books. "My plan is to finish in seven," Martin said. "But my original plan was to finish in three. I write the stories and they grow." That's not exactly an confidence-inspiring statement.
Martin's comments come after Martin's editor Anne Groell answered a question about the series' length and said she was starting to "wonder" if seven would be enough, and hints about "maybe eight books."
I begin to wonder—though 7 is what we currently have under contract. I remember when he called me, years and years back, to confess that his little trilogy was…well…no longer a trilogy. He predicted four books. I said Seven Books for Seven Kingdoms. Then he said five books. I said Seven Books for Seven Kingdoms. Then he went to six. I said… Well, you get it. Finally, we were on the same page. Seven Books for Seven Kingdoms. Good. Only, as I recently learned while editing THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE (another awesome thing you must buy when it comes out!), there are really technically eight kingdoms, all having to do with who has annexed what when Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros. So, maybe eight books for Seven Kingdoms would be okay.
Groell has worked with Martin from the beginning of the book series and has been saying there would be seven books since early on in the writing process. So she certainly is an expert on Martin's abilities and tendencies. Each book has taken longer and longer to write, with a five-year period to write book four and six years to finish book five, which came out in 2011.
In the Entertainment Weekly interview, Martin again emphasized his hopes that he would finish the series before the HBO show. The show-runners have said they will finish in seven or eight seasons, or about three-to-four years from now. Martin finishing two more books in that short period already seemed unlikely; the possibility of an eighth book would rule it out entirely.
But Martin is sticking to his belief that the show won't actually finish in seven or eight seasons. "I don’t think it will be enough to tell the story we’re telling in the books," he said. He advocates that HBO avoid passing the show by making staggered feature films. But HBO — a television subscription channel first and foremost — hasn't really warmed to that idea of stopping the show for a movie.
Martin is definitely still in control of the book series and the Thrones canon. But with both his editor and the show doubting his espoused plan, Martin's credibility on the series' future is just sinking lower and lower.
This weekend, a pair of kids who thought they were in for a fun day of harmless bouncing were tossed nearly 300 feet when the inflatable slide they were enjoying went airborne, the second such incident in less than a month.
There were two ten-year olds children trapped inside the bouncy structure when it went flying in a park in Littleton, Colorado, on Saturday. One was hospitalized, but is expected to make a full recovery. Vanessa Atencio witnessed the house take flight, "We saw the wind kicking up and all of a sudden the wind took the jumpy slide with it and we were just horrified."
This is the second flying bouncy playhouse accident in a month. In mid-May, two children were injured when the bouncy house they were playing in took flight in South Glens Falls, New York. A study released in 2012 claimed that, on average, 31 children were treated for bounce-house related injuries every day. So consider this a reminder from The Wire that the more traditional (non-bouncy) slides can be pretty fun too.
In case you missed it, rapper 50 Cent had a somewhat embarrassing moment last night, on Citi Field in NYC, where he uncorked one of the worst ceremonial first pitches ever seen, prior to the Mets-Pirates game.
Tennessee governor Bill Haslam signed a bill into law today that will allow the state to execute prisoners in the electric chair if lethal injection drugs aren't available.
The bill was passed last month by overwhelming majorities in both the state's Senate and House of Representatives. While there are other states that give prisoners a choice to be executed by electric chair or other means, Tennessee is now the first state that will compel it.
Tennessee, like many states, has struggled to obtain lethal injection drugs after European drug manufacturers banned their use in executions. Other states have tried to replace those drugs with other drug protocols, often ones that have not been used in an execution before -- and with terrible results. Tennessee can now avoid that entirely by simply electrocuting its prisoners.
In 2007, Daryl Holton was the last person to be executed by electric chair in the state, per his request. The New York Times' Dan Barry described it as follows:
With the push of a button on a console labeled Electric Chair Control, 1,750 volts bolt through Mr. Holton’s body, jerking it up and dropping it like a sack of earth. The black shroud offers the slightest flutter, and witnesses cannot tell whether they have just heard a machine’s whoosh or a man’s sigh.
Fifteen seconds later, another bolt, and Mr. Holton’s body rises even higher, slumps even lower. His reddened hands remain gripped to the arms of the chair, whose oaken pieces are said to have once belonged to the old electric chair, and before that, to the gallows.
Before Holton, Tennessee's electric chair hadn't been used in 40 years.
Tennessee's most recent execution was Cecil Johnson in 2009. The next inmate scheduled for execution is Billy Ray Irick, on October 7.
A spokesman for Haslam would not comment to the AP further than to say the bill had been signed.
At this point, I can't imagine who would still buy one of their cars.
AP Photo/General Motors
General Motors announced yet another vehicle recall today, marking its 29th in the United States this year. 284,000 older Chevrolets are a potential fire hazard. The Chevy Aveo and Optra cars, model years 2004 to 2008, have “a faulty part in their daytime running lights that could overheat and cause a fire.”
Unlike the ignition switch fault that is lined to at least 13 deaths, GM said that this issue could not be linked to any injuries or deaths, but did not disclose how many reports of the problem it had.
For those keeping a running tally, GM has issued more recalls this year than ever before (and it’s only May). The 29 recalls cover 13.8 million vehicles in the U.S. and 15.8 worldwide. GM says that the increase is the result of new safety standards and issuing recalls at a quicker pace.
According to CNN, “The company estimates it will cost $1.7 billion to repair the cars recalled so far in 2014. That expense essentially erased the profit the company would have reported in the first quarter.”
Last week, the heavily-scrutinized automaker agreed to pay a record $35 million fine, the maximum civil penalty, over the ignition switch defect. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called it the “single highest civil penalty amount ever paid as a result of a NHTSA investigation of violations stemming from a recall.”
This really seems to combine many of my favorite things into one movie.
Ethan and Joel Coen are now on board to draft a screenplay for the untitled Cold War thriller that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are developing. The film is based on the real-life negotiations between the KGB and American attorney James Donovan concerning the release of Gary Powers, a U-2 spy plane pilot whom the Russians shot down. Hanks is slated to portray Donovan, and with the Coen brothers penning the script, he’ll probably have some killer monologues. Though Spielberg is only a producer at this point, the Coen brothers’ involvement could be a big push for him to direct the project. Spielberg is working on the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s BFG in early 2015, but with plans to begin shooting with Hanks in Europe this September, he could probably squeeze a tense historical thriller somewhere into his busy schedule.
Fordite, also known as Detroit agate, is a beautiful stone and a wonderful relic of urban history. The extraordinary gem looks very much like a natural agate, rippling with layers upon layers of the most vibrant colours there are.
The stones were produced by car painting techniques that are no longer practiced – layered spray-painting by hand in automobile factories. This practice produced layers of enamel paint slag on the tracks and skids on which the painted cars and parts stood. As the painted cars were baked numerous times to dry and harden the paint, the overspray below them would also be baked repeatedly before eventually being removed.
Keen-eyed workers who recognized the aesthetic value of the dried paint stones collected and saved them until now, when this car painting practice no longer exists. Their history makes them almost as valuable as real gems.
Now that the car painting process is automated, materials like Fordite might never be produced again. The limited supplies of Detroit agate are now used to create eye-catching pieces of jewellery, swirling with psychedelic patterns and inspiring nostalgia for bygone days.
In light of recent, high-profile data breaches, consumers are constantly on guard when it comes to their credit card information. So it might come as a surprise that the country’s largest retailer is asking customer to fork over the sacred three-digit security code on the back of cards in order to make purchases.
Walmart is in the process of rolling out a security policy and guidelines that require consumers to punch in their three-digit security code for purchases over a certain price threshold, KRPC in Houston reports.
The new policy, which was agreed upon between the company and several card issuers, is an attempt to cut down on credit card fraud, a company spokesperson says.
Often after credit card information is taken during a data breach, thieves create phony cards with the legitimate accounts. Since thieves don’t generally obtain three-digit security codes through breaches, so requiring customers to enter that code would cut down on fraudulent purchases.
Chris Bronk, a Rice University Baker Institute Fellow in IT Policy tells KRPC that Walmart is doing the right thing with their new policy.
“It really is a necessity at this point, because credit card fraud, thanks to the cyber vector, is worse than ever before,” he says.
However, Bronk says for the company to maintain consumer privacy protections it would need to store account numbers and the codes separately.
Once credit card issuers switch to the more secure chip-and-pin cards, also known as EMV cards, Walmart says it will stop requiring consumers to enter their three-digit security codes.
The EMV (short for “Europay, MasterCard and Visa”) technology cuts back on card fraud because the chips make cards significantly harder to clone: even if you get all of the information from a card’s magnetic strip, as through a skimmer, without the chip actually being present the card data is useless in a physical transaction.
However, while the use of EMV technology in a card does make it more difficult to clone a card for in-person transactions, it doesn’t necessarily prevent an ID thief from using stolen card numbers for online or phone purchases. There is no such thing as a card that is 100% safe from clever criminals.
Renewed interest in chip-and-PIN cards began shortly after a string of data breaches occurred at national retailers. More than 110 million Target customers were affected in a breach during the 2013 holiday season.Neiman Marcus and Michaels both fell victim to hackers during the early months of 2014.
While KPRC reported that the policy is new, a spokesperson for Walmart tells Consumerist the retailer has actually been requiring the additional information for credit card purchases exceeding certain dollar thresholds for nearly a year.
okay, so no one deserves to have their stuff stolen but seriously...it takes a special sort of rich-person entitlement to leave that where anyone can get to it
The purse was left on passenger seat of unlocked car at Chesterfield daycare, police say
REUTERS/Brian Blanco 
AP 
AP Photo/General Motors 
