Nordstrom Remodels Flagship Stores, Won’t Make You Go Inside

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(Mike Mozart)

There are two interesting developments that Nordstrom is trying right now: first, they’re remodeling and fancying up their stores in Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco, seeking to draw international tourists with world-class retail experiences. They’re also experimenting with curbside order pickup, so local shoppers can pick up their online order of bras without getting out of their cars.

These trends make sense: while people might shop online for their own mundane purchases, while on vacation they might visit a department store that they don’t have at home. They’re shopping for recreation or for an experience rather than Nordstrom wants to attract people visiting these three cities from all over the world, and more importantly keep them in the building for long enough to buy some stuff.

Two floors of the Seattle store have already been remodeled, and reporters got to tour the new space. There’s more natural light, and also a new cocktail and tapas bar and a cafe. The Seattle store will also be about 20,000 feet bigger than it was before the remodel, and renovations of the other floors will be done next spring. People probably won’t travel from all over the world just to see these stores, but they hope that tourists might stop in to shop.

Nordstrom aims high with downtown flagship remodel [Seattle Times]

SEE ALSO:
Uncanny: This Man Can Always Tell When He’s In A Store’s Flagship Location [Clickhole]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Philip Morris International Uses Copyright Claims To Quiet Marlboro Critics

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Earlier this year, John Oliver thrust Philip Morris International — the New York-based cigarette giant that markets Marlboro and other brands in hundreds of countries outside the U.S. — into the spotlight for its questionable legal efforts to delay and block tobacco regulation around the globe. And this morning, the company used copyright claims to have videos posted by critics of Marlboro removed from the Internet.

The group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has been highly critical of the “Be Marlboro” marketing campaign that PMI has been running in various countries since 2012. The ads tell young smokers to “Don’t Be A Maybe” and project a vibrant lifestyle full of partying and extreme sports while leaving out things like cancer, emphysema, and heart disease.

CTFK had compiled several Marlboro marketing videos with footage of Marlboro-sponsored parties that were part of this marketing. These clips were uploaded, without any editing, to video-sharing site Vimeo to show how Marlboro actively markets to the young-adult market.

But after the group sent out a press release notifying the media of its video collection, the clips vanished from Vimeo because of a copyright request from the Philip Morris office in Switzerland:

The available takedown details provide nothing more than the names of the videos removed from the site other than the titles of the deleted clips and PMI’s claim to ownership. We’ve reached out to PMI for further explanation but have not yet received a reply from the company.

“We want people to see these videos for the same reason Philip Morris International wants to take them down,” explains a spokesperson for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “because they make it clear that the Be Marlboro ad campaign is targeting young people around the world. Philip Morris claims they don’t market to kids, but the Be Marlboro advertising and videos show otherwise. They use images and themes like sex, parties and risk that are sure to appeal to teens and entice them to become Marlboro smokers. It’s important for public officials around the world to see this marketing and take action to protect kids by banning the Be Marlboro campaign and others like it.”

While these particular videos are no longer available on Vimeo, we were able to view them in order to present them so that readers can decide whether or not they cross an ethical line.

“In 2012, Marlboro launched a new revolutionary campaign — ‘Don’t Be A Maybe; Be Marlboro!’ — which is aimed to inspire a young adult smoker into decision-making,” explains the voice-over on the clip produced by Philip Morris Slovakia for a pop-up “Red City” festival Marlboro put together there. “Only thanks to courage, it’s possible to make decisions.”

Philip Morris International says the goal of “Don’t Be A Maybe” is to “inspire a young adult smoker into decision-making.” Here we see someone jumping off a 10-meter tower, presumably rather than having to smoke a Marlboro.

“We tried to inspire and induce visitors to make a decision to experience something new at the festival,” continues the voice-over. “Ongoing activities through the day were presented in the spirit of the brand campaign and linked to the overall concept through music, dance, graffiti, and lifestyle.”

Marlboro wants to encourage young smokers to dance, which is good because they won’t be able to dance very much later in life if they’re still smoking.

There was also a video from a 2012 party in Moldova, complete with DJs wearing furry panda heads and a topless dancer.

Several minutes of the Moldova video feature this topless dancer grinding on the panda-headed DJs. The Marlboro logo in the image above was inserted to cover her bare, pierced nipples.

In Indonesia, the partying may have been less explicit, but the Marlboro branding was not.

While this Marlboro poster tells men to boldly go and ask for a woman’s phone number, even though the only women shown attending this party were working there as models or dancers.

What’s a party without premium product placement?

The party also featured a fashion show with women wearing Marlboro’s favorite color: red.

What better way to drive home the cigarette brand’s anti-maybe message?

While the Indonesia Marlboro party was noticeably free of non-working female attendees, the one in Saudi Arabia was a strictly male-only event, and even more focused on pushing Marlboro cigarettes:

Interestingly, the Saudi Arabia video tells viewers that “Freedom doesn’t start with a maybe,” but glosses over the lack of freedom for women in Saudi Arabia (like the fact that none of them would be allowed to attend this party).

In all of the videos we watched, this was the first where we saw any kind of visible health warning, though you’d have to squint to see it.

Yes, that’s a steel briefcase full of Marlboros…

This is the guy who shows off that steel briefcase to talk up the cigarettes and distribute samples.

The video of the Saudi Marlboro party was the only one we saw where guests were actually shown smoking.

The video ends with “behind-the-scenes” footage of a host asking attendees to name the best cigarette brand. You’ll never guess what they say.

One could argue that these parties are not significantly different from events thrown every night in cities all around the world by alcohol, electronics, software, and food companies. The claim could also be made that party attendees don’t actually care about the sponsor or the branding message and just want to enjoy themselves. At the same time, one has to wonder why Marlboro is going through the cost and expense of both throwing these parties and hiring producers to record them, but doesn’t want them to be shared — without any subsequent edits or commentary — by a group critical of Marlboro’s motives.

We leave you with the original Last Week Tonight report that first put the Be Marlboro campaign in the national spotlight:

(All above party photographs are screen-grabs taken from four separate Philip Morris videos provided to Consumerist by Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids)

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Net Neutrality Is Already Improving Internet Connections And It Hasn’t Even Gone Into Effect

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(Steve)

Though the FCC narrowly voted to approve the new Open Internet Order (AKA net neutrality) several months ago, the rules don’t actually kick in until June 12. Yet with those new guidelines looming, some Internet service providers are already beginning to play nice with the companies that do most of the heavy lifting for the web.

Earlier today, Verizon announced that it had reached a new interconnection deal with Cogent, a company you may have never heard of, but who plays an important role in carrying data across the Internet. Cogent is one of the major bandwidth providers for online businesses, transporting massive amounts of data from the source to ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable, who only handle much of your data for the so-called “last mile” to your home or office.

Cogent was caught in the middle of the openly nasty dispute between Netflix and several ISPs, including Verizon. The company was responsible for much of Netflix’s bandwidth, which can sometimes account for around 1/3 of all downstream traffic in the U.S., but when that data got to the peering points — those connections where Cogent actually hands off data to an ISP — it was becoming bottlenecked because the ISPs were refusing to open up additional connections to alleviate the flow.

Netflix ultimately ended up making deals with Comcast, Verizon, TWC, and AT&T for more direct access to their networks, taking some of the burden off Cogent and similar providers. Meanwhile, the question of whether ISPs could passive-aggressively allow data to bottleneck remained unanswered.

The new neutrality rules will allow companies like Cogent to file complaints with the FCC because ISPs will officially be reclassified as common carriers that are not allowed to discriminate when it comes to the data flowing to their end users.

Whether or not those complaints end up being successful, it appears the mere threat of having to deal with them is pushing toward resolutions in advance of the enactment of the neutrality rules.

For example, while the Verizon/Cogent deal includes provisions for adding capacity and establishing new interconnection locations between their two networks, Cogent says the agreement does not involve the exchange of any money.

Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer tells Ars Technica, “We have never paid for peering, and we continue to never pay for peering.”

Schaeffer also said that Comcast — the first to reach an interconnection agreement with Netflix — has recently been the most reasonable of the large ISPs, opening additional ports as capacity demands. However, AT&T, TWC, and CenturyLink are not playing as nice.

Ars notes that Verizon recently announced an interconnection deal with Level 3, another major bandwidth provider that could have filed a complaint under the new neutrality rules. It’s not known whether that arrangement involves any money.

Though the threat of neutrality complaints is apparently helping nudge some ISPs toward agreeable resolutions, Schaeffer says he may end up having to take his concerns before the FCC if companies aren’t willing to work with him.

“I sincerely hope I don’t have to file any, but I am also prepared,” he tells Ars. “If any of the mass market ISPs violate the consumer protection provisions outlined in the Open Internet Order, we will go to the Enforcement Bureau and file a complaint.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Jet.com Is Either The Future Of Retail Or A Doomed Wacky Scheme

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This week, a new e-commerce site launched to about 10,000 beta users who signed up for a preview. The easy-to-remember name of this new site is Jet.com, and its goal is to remove some of the inefficiencies of shopping online. Will they succeed?

This isn’t the team’s first war with Amazon: they founded Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com, Soap.com, and Wag.com. Amazon waged price war on those sites, and the company eventually admitted defeat by being acquired by Amazon.

Jet’s founder told the Washington Post that it’s targeting a novel group of consumers: older millennials. That’s a generation of people who are in their late twenties to early thirties and who are not terrified of computers, yet who also don’t see the appeal of using Amazon Prime to order their paper towels. Founder Marc Lore explained to the Washington Post that he wants to compete on price, and that means flipping around the process of shopping. Instead of letting users throw whatever they want in their cart and calculating shipping once they’re ready to check out, how Jet works is that it figures out in real time how much to charge for different items based on the customer’s address. Along the way, users also get incentives to choose items that happen to come from the same vendor or the same warehouse as the items they’ve already chosen, incentivizing customers to make shipping easier on the suppliers.

More importantly, by signing up partners across the country instead of building its own massive warehouses, Jet is able to build a massive inventory without constructing massive warehouses.

The cost of “free” shipping and returns is built into the prices at all retailers, and the novel thing that Jet offers is the ability to waive free return shipping in exchange for a small discount.

What’s interesting, though, is how Jet acquired their big user base before launching. While 10,000 beta users were allowed to shop yesterday, they claim to have signed up 350,000 users who are waiting to be allowed behind the virtual velvet rope. Yes, people are always interested in new and exciting ways to shop, especially if it’s something exclusive that not everyone has access to.

Jet did something a little different, though: they were able to sign up so many people before the site launched by holding a contest. Early adopters would get 6 months of their membership for free (a $25 value) but the top referrer would get 100,000 stock options. The winner of that contest was a 28-year-old Pennsylvania man who spent $18,000 advertising on sites that give users prizes for performing online tasks like registering accounts. He signed up about 8,000 people and won the contest. Jet isn’t a public company, but those 100,000 shares could be worth as much as $20 million.

This guy used a get-rich-quick scheme and got rich [CNN]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Owners Of Derby-Pie Trademark Fight To Keep It From Becoming Genericized

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Not a Kerns Kitchen Derby-Pie. (sheesalt)

First of all, what’s a derby pie? For those not living in or near Louisville, many Kentucky Derby fans say it’s a pie made with bourbon, chocolate chips and pecans. And then there’s one company that says it’s a walnut treat made without bourbon. Thing is, the latter holds the trademark to the phrase Derby-Pie, and it’s not ready to allow others to peddle their own iterations of the traditional dessert with that name.

While the denizens of Louisville will likely be gulping down what they call derby pies for tomorrow’s event at Churchill Downs,  only one business has the legal right to call its creations Derby-Pie, reports NPR’s Foodways blog.

That company is Kerns Kitchen, and it hasn’t shied away from suing in its fight to keep the term from becoming genericized, potentially leading to a loss of its legal trademark.

One worker at an area restaurant remembers when she and her co-workers used to serve what they called derby pie, until the establishment received a cease-and-desist from Kerns.

“You can say, ‘We have chocolate pecan pie, but we do not have Derby-Pie,’ ” the worker says now if someone orders a derby pie. “You didn’t know if they’d sent a plant in to see if we were doing it or not.”

Kerns tells NPR its Derby-Pie chocolate nut pie was created by family members in the 1950s as their restaurant’s signature item. The company later ditched the restaurant idea and kept the pie business, registering Derby-Pie as a trademark around that time.

With a business that produces 800 pies per day, according to the company, Kerns is fierce about protecting its recipe and technique, along with staunchly defending the trademarked name.

In another bit of legal wrangling, the manager of a local diner has been sued twice by the company, once in 1997 and once in 2007.

“I actually put up a sign after that conversation [that read]: Have a piece of ‘I Can’t Call It Derby Pie’ pie,” he says of his reaction during the first legal fight, which . Now though, he says he makes a Kentucky Bourbon Pie.

Though Kern’s doesn’t want its pie to go the way of zipper, laundromat and linoleum — other trademarked names that fell to genericide when people used them to reference any similar product — critics say threatening other people who use the name is robbing Kentuckians of their history, Kentuckians who might think of a different recipe when they hear “derby pie” anyway.

“If you have people scared to use the words ‘derby pie,’ and yet Grandma used to make it, then you’ve really banished Grandma in a way, haven’t you?” the diner owner says.

What’s Inside A ‘Derby Pie’? Maybe A Lawsuit Waiting To Happen [NPR Foodways]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

IKEA Expands Crib Mattress Recall To Include Five Additional Styles

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IKEA expanded a recall of crib mattresses to include the SULTANA brand.

All recalls are important to take note of, but ones related to baby products are often of the greatest concern. And IKEA’s expansion of a six-month old recall to include an additional 150,000 crib mattresses because of the risk of entrapment would fall into that category.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced today that IKEA will add four types of SULTANA mattresses to its January recall, bringing the total number of mattresses recalled to roughly 300,000.

IKEA initially recalled five styles of VYSSA mattresses after receiving two reports of infants becoming entrapped between the mattress and an end of the crib. Fortunately, the children were removed from the situation without injury.

The newly recalled mattresses include the BLUNDA, DROMMA, SNARKA and SUSSA models that are 52 inches long and 27 ½ inches wide and were manufactured on May 4, 2014 or earlier.

Mattresses can be identified by a label on the cover. [Click to enlarge]

Affected mattresses can be identified by a label on the cover that has the manufacturer date in Month-DD-YY format or YY-WW format and the SULTAN or VYSSA model name, the company says in a statement.

Consumers should inspect the recalled mattress by making sure there is no gap larger than the width of two fingers between the ends of the crib and the mattress. If any gap is larger, customers should immediately stop using the recalled mattress and return it to any IKEA store for an exchange or full refund.

The mattresses sold for about $20 to $100 at IKEA stores throughout the U.S. and online from October 2000 to May 2014.

Customers with questions or concerns can call IKEA at (888)966-4532.

IKEA Expands Recall of Crib Mattresses Due to Risk of Entrapment [Consumer Product Safety Commission]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Judge Throws Out United’s Lawsuit Against “Hidden City” Airfare Site Skiplagged.com

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Example Skiplagged listings for flights that don’t end in Chicago, but go through Chicago. As part of its settlement with Orbitz, Skiplagged will no longer direct people to purchase their hidden city fares through the travel-booking site.

Last fall, both United Airlines and Orbitz sued travel-booking startup Skiplagged.com, which helped travelers find so-called “hidden city” tickets where you book a multi-stop itinerary with the intention of not flying all the way to the end. Orbitz settled its part of the case in February, but the United suit continued — until yesterday, when a federal judge dismissed the airline’s complaint, but not because the airline didn’t have a case.

Instead, in his order [PDF] dismissing the complaint, the judge says it’s a matter of jurisdiction, i.e., that United filed its copyright claim in the wrong court.

The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois, but the judge explains that “the record only shows a limited course of dealing between the parties and Defendant’s Illinois contacts were with a third-party. Such contacts, even where relevant, are not meaningful enough to warrant exercising personal jurisdiction over Defendant.”

In non-legalese, because the defendant, Skiplagged owner Aktarer Zaman, lives in New York and doesn’t operate his business in Illinois, this particular court should not be the one to hear it.

“This dismissal does not preclude Plaintiff from refiling and litigating its claims in a proper forum,” concludes the order.

And it looks like United may not give up its fight, with a rep for the airline telling CNN that “the decision was a ruling on procedural grounds and not on the merits of the case.”

The rep continued, “We remain troubled that Mr. Zaman continues to openly encourage customers to violate our contract of carriage by purchasing hidden-city tickets.”

For his part, Zaman is calling the dismissal “definitely a victory.”

Skiplagged lets users search for savings through hidden city fares. For example, rather than book a flight that terminates in Chicago, it might be less expensive to book a flight to Kansas City that stops in Chicago. I can just get off the plane when it lands at that first stop.

It’s not illegal, but it is against every major airline’s policy. Because Skiplagged didn’t just provide pricing information but actually directed users to airline sites where they could then book their hidden city tickets, it was accused of, among other claims, encouraging customers to violate their terms of service by knowingly booking these fares.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Played With That Viral Age-Guesser This Week? You Just Gave Microsoft A Bunch Of Free Photos To Use

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Time has apparently not been kind at all to those Cheerios… and the baby didn’t need the extra year of aging, either.

If you use Facebook, Twitter, or basically any part of the internet at all, sometime in the last 24 hours you’ve seen Microsoft’s newest tool, the age-guesser. Everyone’s sharing it, using it, and laughing over (or feeling insulted by) the results. But the tool’s rapid spread also accidentally highlights one of the biggest challenges of the digital age: the fine print.

The tool, How-Old.net, has gone viral very fast because of how hilariously wrong it often is. The world-weary baby at the top of this post, for example, was 9 months old when the picture was taken, which isn’t too far off — but the Cheerios on her tray were neither sixteen, male, nor in fact human at all. Plug in fictional characters or politicians, and the results are jokes that basically write themselves.

Microsoft isn’t planning to make age guessing a fixture of its Office Suite anytime soon; the tool was put together quickly as a demo for the company’s Azure cloud platform and services. But buried in the fine print of the Azure terms and services, as Fast Company points out, is a clause that might give Microsoft more power than you want them to have:

[B]y posting, uploading, inputting, providing, or submitting your Submission, you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies, and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all Microsoft services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Website Services.

In other words: Microsoft now maintains the rights to use any image you uploaded in basically any way they want. And that “public performance” bit is basically an out that prevents you from suing on copyright grounds if they do.

Are your dog, best friend, grandma, U.S. representative, worst nightmare, favorite baseball player, kid, cat, and Cheerios likely to end up being used in demos, ads, or other products? No, not really. Microsoft has gotten tens or hundreds of thousands of pictures submitted, and, frankly, they can afford better promotional images from real photographers when they need a pic or two. And given how quickly the page was thrown together, and how chancy the lightning strike of viral fame can be, it’s unlikely at best that the tech giant actually meant the service to be a giant free photo collection tool.

But the fine print should be a reminder to all of us: when it comes to data and privacy, the devil is indeed in the details.

Read the fine print before you use Microsoft’s viral age-guessing tool [Fast Company]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Delta Employees Will Probably Be Dressed Better Than You With Plan For New Designer Uniforms

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(quinn.anya)

Maybe you think of yourself as a snappy dresser. Maybe you prefer to wear housepants on a regular basis. I’m not here to judge, only to report that someday in the nearish future, most Delta Air Lines employees will have an automatic advantage over us less fashion fortunate, with designer Zac Posen on board to pull together new uniforms for all workers.

Though the kinds of expensive couture pieces seen on one kind of runway at fashion shows won’t likely show up in say, the average tarmac worker’s coveralls, the airline says in a press release that it’s hoping Posen can bring some flair to the friendly skies with “high fashion and function.”

Nearly all uniformed employees will get an updated look, with Posen designing uniform collections for Delta’s flight attendants and airport customer service agents, and advising on the uniform project for Delta’s ramp and ground support agents, Delta Cargo agents and Delta TechOps employees.

“I’m thrilled to partner with this classic American brand and look forward to collaborating with Delta employees to understand their wants and needs for the new collection,” Posen said in the press release. “Together, we will bring everyday elegance and style innovation to the ground and air alike, while making employees look and feel their best.”

He’ll be working with Delta employees over the next few months to get a handle on their needs while on the job, with the new uniform program expected to roll out in early 2018.

Racked points out that Delta will likely focus on wearability of the uniforms in light of what happened when Virgin Atlantic cabin crew complained that their Vivienne Westwood-designed uniforms left their feet blistered from high heels and their legs restricted in overly slim pencil skirts.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Community Furious That School Cafeterias Served Smelly 6-Year-Old Pork To Kids

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You might not take your kids all that seriously when they complain about the gross mystery meat served in their school cafeteria, but the children in some schools in Hawkins County, Tennessee had a right to complain last week when they were served pork that had been sitting in the freezer since 2009.

As long as it has always been kept at a consistent and cold temperature, 6-year-old meat isn’t going to make people sick, but it might not necessarily be appetizing, either. A school employee sent a mobile phone photo of the not-so-mysterious meat to the county commissioner.

“Here in Hawkins County, we have a lot of kids that go to school and that might be the only meal they get all day long,” the commish told TV station WJHL. “It just upsets me that these kids are going to school to get that meat.”

He reports that a cafeteria worker told him that the school made gravy for the pork roast, which is a time-honored method of dealing with meats that have problematic textures and flavors. However, the news that their kids were served meat that had been sitting in a freezer that long shocked parents in the community.

Reviews from cafeterias at individual schools varied, but were overall positive. The chicken fajitas served that day seemed to be more popular with kids overall, though.

“As soon as you tasted the pork, [and] it was just as soon as you tasted it, me and a friend both, it was not good,” a high school student explained to the TV station.

6-year-old lunch meat served to students in Hawkins County, TN [WJHL]
Hawkins Co. parents search for answers after 6-year-old pork served to students [WJHL] (Thanks, Kelly!)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Why Everyone Is Suddenly Dying To Buy A Cable Company You May Never Even Have Heard Of

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Odds are (unless you live in central Florida) that you probably don’t know much about Bright House Networks. The cable company serves about 2 million TV and internet customers, mostly in Florida and also in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, and California. But in the many eddies rippling through the cable world after the sinking of the Comcast/TWC merger, this one regional provider may be poised to make or break some pretty big deals.

Bright House, the Wall Street Journal reports, is the new kingmaker. All eyes are turning to the nation’s sixth-largest cable company and its 2 million customers as investors try to figure out where the

If you thought someone already called dibs on Bright House, you’re not wrong. Charter and Bright House announced a $10bn deal just about a month ago. But there’s one huge hitch in that plan, and its name is Comcast.

The Charter/Bright House deal, as set up in March, was contingent on the Comcast/TWC merger going forward. As part of that now-firmly-failed transaction, Comcast/TWC would have spun off 4 million customers to Charter as a concession to prevent the merged company from crossing a particular threshold of “too large.” That move would have allowed Charter heavily to consolidate their presence in the Midwest and would have given a post-merger Comcast more access to both coasts.

Part of the deal between Charter and Bright House’s ownership, the WSJ reports, is that if the Comcast/TWC failed, the Charter/Bright House deal would have a “30 day ‘good faith’ period” to renegotiate their deal. Comcast and TWC called off their merger plan one week ago, so there are 22 or 23 (depending how you count) days left in that window. But Charter is not the only party who can negotiate with Bright House during these weeks — and TWC could jump in, too.

According to the WSJ, Time Warner Cable is likely to jump in with a pitch that would let Bright House’s current ownership retain more shares and hold more influence in the combined company than the Charter deal would permit.

But those investor details might also be what motivates Charter to push hard for the deal. The added customers — a drop in the bucket compared to Comcast’s 22m, but a huge growth from Charter’s ~6m — and cash flow could be a step on the path that would also allow Charter to go out and acquire TWC.

So, this is effectively where we stand: Charter and Time Warner Cable are about to find themselves in competition over buying Bright House Networks, while at the same time Charter tries to buy Time Warner Cable. It is possible, therefore, that all three could end up as one single company in the near future — or that all the buyout offers could be spurned or face too many regulatory hurdles.

While none of the deals on (or near) the table have the same disastrously large scope and attendant dangerous gatekeeper power that the Comcast/TWC transaction did, consumers are right to remain wary of continued consolidation. It’s true that putting more players into Comcast’s league could keep Kabletown’s influence under control, but it is even more true that consumers need more competition in the marketplace, not less.

The competition situation is already pretty abysmal in most of the country, and every single merger makes it that much worse.

Bright House Emerges as a Player in the New Cable Drama [Wall Street Journal]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Great, Now Hackers Are Apparently Hiding Malware In Job Applications Submitted Online

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(Pixteca | Len & Pix【ツ】)

Though we often think of all the stress in a hiring process as being on the side of the job seeker, businesses have a new potential part of the process to worry about: Researchers say hackers are infecting companies by slipping malware in along with resumes submitted through job posting website CareerBuilder.com.

According to security company Proofpoint (via MarketWatch), the attackers are going through open positions and then attaching documents with names like “resume.doc” or “cv.doc” to applications. When a hiring manager or interviewer on the other end opens it up, the malware gets in because CareerBuilder automatically emails notifications and attachments with resumes to the job poster when someone applies.

“Rather than attempt to create a realistic lure, the attackers here have instead capitalized on the brand and service of a real site: the recipients are likely to read them and open the attachments because not only are they legitimate emails from a reputable service, but these emails are expected and even desired by the recipient,” Proofpoint researchers wrote in a blog post.

CareerBuilder is investigating the attack with the help of third-party experts and letting affect customers know, a spokeswoman told MarketWatch. She says the site “has controls in place to stop mass distribution of applications to job postings and takes a variety of preventative measures.”

Proofpoint adds that any job boards that work similarly are also susceptible to these kinds of attacks.

Foot in the door: Cybercriminals leverage job search website to sneak malware into businesses [Proofpoint]
Hackers sneak malware into job applications [MarketWatch]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Here Is A Ship That Could Carry 182 Million iPads

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(Corey Templeton)

As we learned during the contract dispute at cargo ports on the West Coast that finally ended this year, cargo ships are essential. They keep the things that we now think of as the basic comforts of modern life, from car parts to McDonald’s French fries, flowing around the globe.

Bloomberg Businessweek profiled the Morten Maersk, a massive container ship, as it left Shanghai, China for a trip to the port of Felixstowe in England. It’s more of a photo essay, but pictures are crucial to understand the scale of a single cargo ship, and why the national economy can be effected when the people in charge of loading and unloading them dawdle a little bit. This one ship holds 18,000 shipping containers. To put that in terms that regular people can grasp, that’s 111 million pairs of sneakers, or 182 million iPads. A ship that size with so much cargo only needs 22 crew members, though.

The ship makes the trip from Shanghai to England completely full, but but only has a few containers making the return trip full of exports from Europe to Asia.

How to Haul 182 Million iPads [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Report: Stick Of TSA Dynamite Used In Training Exercise Accidentally Left In LAX Museum Plane For 4 Days

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(sfxeric)

When you make a mess, you’ve got to clean up your toys. It’s a lesson many of us learned as kids, and one that a Los Angeles Airport law enforcement officials says police slipped up on after a stick of live dynamite used in a training exercise was left behind near the airport museum for four days.

A law enforcement official at LAX who was brief on the incident spoke to the Associated Press anonymously, saying that the live stick of dynamite was found by workers on Tuesday when they saw its bright colors.

The insider said the stick was found inside the “Spirit of Seventy Six” plane, which is featured at the Flight Path Learning Center and Museum on the airport’s southern edge. It’d been checked out from a Transportation Security Administration explosive storage container and used in a training session for K9 Officers and their dogs on Saturday.

Though it was live, it still would’ve needed a detonator or explosive to be set off.

Nothing that though the object found in the plane did contain “a certain amount of TNT,” an LAX police spokeswoman denied to the AP that it was a stick of dynamite and said the object was a “training aid.” She added that airport police are investigating and have notified the TSA, which did not immediately comment to the AP.

Dynamite left on old plane at LAX for 4 days after police training exercise, says official [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Black & Decker To Pay $1.57M Penalty For Failing To Report Defects Of Lawnmower That Started On Its Own

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Black & Decker has agreed to pay a $1.57 million fine for failing to report issues with two of its electric lawnmowers to the CPSC.

Under federal law, manufacturers, distributors and retailers are required to immediately report information regarding possible safety defects to the Consumer Product Safety Commission within 24 hours of obtaining reasonable supporting evidence. That 24-hour window allegedly turned into 11 years for Black & Decker and now the company must pay a nearly $1.6 million fine for failing report safety issues related to an electric lawnmower that started spontaneously, injuring at least two consumers.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Department of Justice announced this week that they had reached a $1.575 million deal with Black & Decker to settle allegations that the company purposefully didn’t report safety issues with its cordless electric lawnmowers for nearly eleven years.

Black & Decker’s agreement to a settlement with the CPSC and DOJ – which doesn’t include an admission of violating the law – marks the fifth time since 1986 that the company has been required to pay a civil penalty for failing to report safety defects. The most recent case represents the largest penalty the Black & Decker has faced.

According to the CPSC, the company began receiving consumer complaints about the Black & Decker and Craftsman brand lawnmowers, which were sold from 1995 to 2006, as early as 1998.

Most of the early complaints concerned an issue in which the lawnmower would not turn on even after consumers released the handle and removed the safety key – which is actually a violation of laws that require the blades on walk-behind mowers to stop when the safety handle is released.

Then, starting in 2003, the company began receiving complaints that the lawnmowers would restart spontaneously after the handle was released and the safety key removed.

In all, more than 100 consumers reported safety issues to Black & Decker, two of which resulted in injuries.

In one incident, a man cleaning the blades of a lawnmower with the safety key removed reported that the mower started on its own and cut his hand.

A similar accident occurred three years later in 2006, when a man reportedly received injuries to his hand after the lawnmower started unexpectedly while he was also cleaning the blades. That complaint alleges that the lawnmower continued to run for several hours, even after fire department officials arrived and removed the blade.

The CPSC reports that in 2004, Black & Decker hired an outside expert who eventually identified the defect that caused the lawnmowers to continue to run after being disengaged by users.

Even after pinpointing the issue, Black & Decker failed to report any hazard associated with the lawnmowers to the CPSC until 2009. The company agreed to a recall of the machines in 2010.

In addition to paying the $1.57 million fine, Black & Decker must maintain an internal compliance program to ensure that the firm complies with CPSC’s safety statutes and regulations and also agreed to a system of internal controls and procedures including creating written standards and policies, allowing confidential employee reporting of compliance, and implementing corrective and preventive actions when compliance deficiencies or violations are identified.

The company will also pay $1,000 in liquidated damages for each day it fails to comply with any provision of the agreement, the CPSC reports.

Black & Decker Agrees to $1.575 Million Civil Penalty, Internal Compliance Program, for Failure to Report Defective Lawnmowers [CPSC]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

MillerCoors Sued For Selling Blue Moon As A Craft Beer

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To some people, the term “craft beer” implies that the brew is made in limited quantities and implies some level of independence from industry giants like MillerCoors and AB InBev. To others, it may mean just any brand that runs fewer than 10 commercials during your average Sunday NFL game. A recently filed lawsuit raises the question of whether anything made by these giant beer behemoths can justifiably be labeled a craft beer.

The potential class action complaint [PDF], filed late last week in a California state court in San Diego, alleges that MillerCoors violated multiple state laws by claiming that its Blue Moon brand is a craft beer.

“Beer consumers… are willing to pay, and do pay, a premium for high quality, small batch, craft beers,” reads the lawsuit. “On average, a six pack of craft beer typically costs $2.00 to $3.00 more than a six pack of macrobrewed, or mass produced beer.”

The complaint then cites the Brewers Association’s standards for what qualifies as a craft beer: That fewer than 6 million barrels are produced annually; that a non-craft brewer can only own up to 25% of the supposed craft brewer; and at that the beer is to be made using only traditional or innovative brewing ingredients. Of course, these guidelines are in no way legally binding.

The Association has previously called out MillerCoors for its attempts to distance Blue Moon from the parent company in an attempt to give it the aura of being an independent product.

And it’s this alleged attempt to hide the macrobrew parentage of Blue Moon that is at the core of the lawsuit.

The plaintiff acknowledges that there is a Blue Moon Brewing Company — a “small, limited capacity brewery” — but that this operation, located inside the Coors Field baseball stadium, is not the source of any Blue Moon sold in stores.

“Rather, it is brewed by MillerCoors at the company’s Golden, Colorado and Eden, North Carolina breweries,” explains the suit. “In addition to brewing Blue Moon, these breweries produce all of Defendant’s other beers, including Coors, Milwaukee’s Best, Miller High Life, Hamm’s, Icehouse and Olde English.”

The complaint alleges that MillerCoors “goes to great lengths to disassociate Blue Moon beer from the MillerCoors name,” keeping the company name off the bottle. It also notes that the Blue Moon brand can easily be found on the MillerCoors site, but that the Blue Moon website does not reference MillerCoors. “In this regard, Defendant gains the benefit of having a top selling beer included among its brands, while at the same time avoiding the loss of sales that would undoubtedly come with having Blue Moon branded as a macrobrew and/or a MillerCoors beer.”

Also at issue is the trademarked phrase, “artfully crafted,” used to describe Blue Moon in ads on the brand’s website. To the plaintiff, this wording misleads consumers into believing they are buying a craft beer “brewed by an almost entirely fictitious brewery.”

Through these alleged deceptions, the plaintiff claims that MillerCoors is able to charge around 50% more than it would if the company were transparent about Blue Moon’s corporate ownership.

The complaint seeks an injunction to stop MillerCoors from marketing Blue Moon as an independent craft beer operation. It also seeks damages for a class of plaintiffs that would consist of “all consumers who purchased Blue Moon beer from a retailer within the state of California” for the last four years.

[via Eater.com]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

We Are Immensely Relieved That Many Subway Riders Will Offer A Pregnant Woman A Seat

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(Gothamist)

In a world of man-spreading, pole-hogging, door-holding and other public transit nuisances, one might expect that there are times when a pregnant woman can’t get a seat amidst a sea of suddenly oblivious passengers. This might have even happened to you. So it’s with a sigh of relief that we learn today that there are still a lot of good hearts out there ready to rise to the occasion.

The team at Gothamist went undercover with a visibly pregnant woman riding the rails in New York City, along with a videographer filming at a distance with his phone, to see if people would respond by offering her a seat.

Though surely there are folks out there who apparently don’t mind taking up a seat — heck, even two seats, when you account for leg spread — when someone else is struggling to stay upright in a crowded car with a stomach the size of a watermelon holding a human being inside, spoiler alert: Gothamist’s results will please you.

Watch What Happens When A Pregnant Woman Tries To Get A Seat On The Subway [Gothamist]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Driving Around With A Recalled Takata Airbag Is Scary For Consumers

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(Jackie Vance-Kuss)

Earlier this week, we shared the news that federal regulators are not thrilled with the speed at which cars with potentially dangerous Takata airbags are getting the repairs that they need. What’s that like from the other point of view: specifically, from behind the wheel of a recalled car that has an airbag that may harm you instead of protecting you?

One owner of an affected Honda CR-V complained to CBS Sacramento consumer reporter Kurtis Ming about the current state of the recall, noting that he sits as far back from the airbag as he possibly can while driving. “About 18 inches from my face there is an explosive device which may or may not be there to save my life,” he said in an interview. That’s enough to make anyone nervous, yet manufacturer Takata isn’t producing replacement airbags quickly enough to meet global demand.

In a statement, Takata reiterated that it’s speeding up production of replacement airbags and plans to produce 900,000 per month by September, but that means car owners have to drive around in cars with airbag systems that have malfunctioned and killed people for perhaps the rest of this year.

That’s unacceptable to many consumer advocates, and to consumers who dislike being killed by shrapnel. In California, there’s a bill before the state legislature that would force carmakers to give consumers a loaner car after theirs becomes part of a life-threatening recall, but the bill has a flaw: according to a representative of Consumers for Auto Reliability, it doesn’t require that the loaner be a vehicle that hasn’t been recalled as well.

Call Kurtis: My Car Is Recalled, Why Can’t I Get It Fixed? [CBS Sacramento]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist