We complain 879 million times/year (and Facebook is our top target)
We complain about brands an astonishing 879 million times a year on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks. A full 10 percent of us find something to be angry about publicly every single day.
Continue reading… “Facebook is the most Complained about Brand”
Apple’s splash into home automation with addition of HomeKit to iOS 8 is expected to have a huge impact on sales of smart home devices in 2015 according to a Park Associates report that found 37% of U.S. Households plan to purchase one or more devices next year.
Continue reading… “Which Smart Home Device will be Under your Tree this Year?”
Federal regulations are designed to make sure that colleges that don’t offer a good value to students, don’t get student aid money.
Corinthian Colleges will put 85 of its U.S. campuses up for sale and close the remaining dozen under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education. The for-profit college chain operates campuses under the names Heald, Everest and WyoTech. It has more than 70,000 students across North America. It’s the largest-ever college, by enrollment, to be shut down in this way.
Continue reading… “Department of Education shuts down for-profit Corinthian Colleges”
Robin Speronis lives off the grid in Florida, completely independent of the city’s water and electric system. A few weeks ago, officials ruled her off-grid home illegal. Officials cited the International Property Maintenance Code, which mandates that homes be connected to an electricity grid and a running water source.
Continue reading… “Living off the Grid is now Illegal in the State of Florida”
The Marcone company of St. Louis was implicated in a coolant smuggling scheme.
A trusted senior vice president of a century-old company from America’s heartland had been caught on a wiretap buying half a million dollars in smuggled merchandise, much of it from China. And now the chief executive of the company was on the witness stand trying to explain how the senior vice president did it.
Continue reading… “Coolant smugglers reap large profits”
New rulings mean big changes in the online poker world.
Two weeks ago, online poker site PokerStars.com reached a settlement agreement with the United States Department of Justice in the amount of $731 Million dollars in relations to charges brought against them in April of 2011. In addition, the settlement included terms that saw PokerStars purchase rival online poker site Full Tilt Poker.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment on April 15th, 2011 against PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker that charged them with numerous crimes that included money laundering, bank fraud, and violations of the UIGEA. In addition, their .com domains were seized by the US Government.Since that time, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker have both been forced out of business and PokerStars pulled out of the United States…
Continue reading… “Recent PokerStars-DOJ Deal Will Change the Future of Online Poker Forever”
Banks have imposed other harsh penalties on consumers for minor lapses.
Despite efforts by regulators to to rein in aggressive practices by banks checking account overdraft fees have jumped during the past two years, according to new reports by two nonprofit groups.
Continue reading… “Despite regulatory efforts overdraft fees are rising”
What you see is not what you get.
The price for HP ink cartridges isn’t shrinking but the amount of ink that HP puts into those cartridges sure has, according to an investigation by HP Ink Cartridges.co.uk.
The site took two of the same model of ink cartridges, the HP 350. One was produced in 2010, the other in 2012. They sawed off the top and measured the spot that holds the ink with a sponge. The one from 2012 held about half the ink from 2010. But from the outside they looked the same…
Continue reading… “HP busted for putting less and less ink into printer cartridges”
Sucks for American clean tech. Never mind that the industry is pretty universally regarded as one of tomorrow’s most important drivers of job growth and innovation—the already too-meager, maddeningly scattershot government support for clean energy is about to dry up altogether. So, goodbye ARPA-E?
David Roberts points us to this graph from a newish report from the Breakthrough Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution, and, as you can see, it’s not pretty. And that sad-looking $11 billion stump too will disappear unless there’s a shift in policy.
Here’s Roberts…
Continue reading… “U.S. on track to stop funding clean tech”
How much time do you have to read the privacy policies you encounter?
In The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies, by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, the authors calculate that the average Internet user would have to spend one full working month per year in order to skim all the Internet privacy policies she encounters in a year. Mike Masnick reports on Techdirt…
Continue reading… “Reading all the privacy policies you “agree” to would take a month per year”
Signs of the impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and scientists and fishermen point fingers towards BP’s oil as being the cause.
Two years after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen are finding deformed fish and mutant shrimp in their seafood catch…
Continue reading… “The aftermath of BP oil spill: mutant seafood”
CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523), is a successor, of sorts, to the loathesome SOPA legislative proposal, which was shot down in flames earlier this year. EFF’s chilling analysis of the bill shows how it could be used to give copyright enforcers carte blanche to spy on Internet users and censoring the Internet (it would also give these powers to companies and governments who’d been embarrassed by sites like Wikileaks).
Continue reading… “CISPA is SOPA 2.0”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.