jikPolice In Ohio On The Lookout For Serial Pooper Defecating On Parked Carsde

4 4 4 4

(Akron Police via NewsNet5)

Police in Akron, OH have been dealing with a messy issue since 2012, and it’s one they just can’t seem to wipe away: Cops say a mysterious serial pooper/bowel movement bandit has made area cars his own personal dumping ground, hitting up as many as 19 vehicles in the last three years. But now, police have his face on camera.

While it might be easier to look away when faced with such a gross activity, a brave resident was able to stay focused and snap a photo of the poopetrator in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, reports NewsNet 5.

The resident had set up a camera after having her car hit by the feces villain for the seventh time, all while her car was parked in the driveway. She caught the suspect in action, and police are now using his photo to try and bust him for going in public.

Another man said his car has been hit six times, with fecal matter spread all over his vehicle in at least one instance.

If he’s caught, the suspect could face misdemeanor criminal mischief or criminal damaging charges. So far none of the victims have recognized the man caught on camera, but Akron Police say they’ve gotten about a dozen tips so far.

Stay vigilant, citizens. Even if it’s worse to watch the crime in action, you could be saving others from a stinky fate.

Akron Police searching for someone who pooped on 19 parked cars [NewsNet5]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikDog Dies During Petsmart Grooming, Owners Want Justicede

4 4 4 4

A family in Indiana brought their bulldog, Bubba, to the local Petsmart grooming salon for a nail trim, and the pup never came home. What happened? It’s not really clear, but it appears that the dog collapsed and vomited, leaving him unable to breathe. Now the family is upset and wants justice for their pet, but what does “justice” in this case mean?

The case first reached the attention of local news from Reddit, where a picture of the dog and a summary of what happened attracted sympathy and stories of groomer harm from other pet owners.

The publicity around Bubba’s death is a good reminder for people: if pedicures are stressful for your pet, consider having them performed at the vet instead of a groomer, and performed under sedation. Some pets will even tolerate baths, haircuts, and nail trims at home if you learn how to perform them.

Petsmart acknowledges that the dog died under their care, and said in a statement that there is an “investigation” of the incident happening. As a short-snouted breed, bulldogs are at particular risk of breathing problems during stressful situations like air travel or grooming.

Petsmart released a statement to a local news station, which may not be good enough for the family since it doesn’t actually apologize or acknowledge that the groomers did anything wrong.

At PetSmart, the health and safety of the pets in our care is a top priority, and we are truly saddened by the loss of Bubba. An investigation is underway, but our initial review indicates that our associates acted appropriately by helping the pet parent find the nearest open pet emergency center. We require all of our pet groomers to complete an extensive training program and an annual safety certification. We believe that a continued focus on high standards is an effective way to hold groomers accountable and promote safety in our salons.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikTwitter Cracks Down On Revenge Porn In Update To Site Rulesde

4 4 4 4

(Tom Raftery)

After leaked emails showed Twitter CEO Dick Costolo admitting that the social media site isn’t all that great at dealing with abuse and trolls, and in fact has “sucked at it for years,” the company included a new bit in its terms of service on Wednesday that outlaws revenge porn.

“You may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent,” Twitter says in its update to the Twitter Rules under “Private Information.”

So-called revenge porn is when someone else puts nude photos or videos online without the consent of the subject, and it’s an issue many sites have been dealing with. Reddit also banned revenge porn earlier this week with an update to its privacy police that bans the posting of nude and sexual images without the consent of the subject.

Along with its prevalence on social media, sites that existed solely to publish such content are also falling under the baleful gaze of the law: The operator of one now-defunct site dedicated to revenge porn called “isanybodydown.com” was the focus of a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission, which alleges he used deception to acquire nude content to post online, among other things.

He settled with the FTC and was ordered to destroy all images and personal contact information he collected from victims and people who knew them.

In another similar case recently, the operator of yougotposted.com was found guilty of identity theft and extortion for running the site, which included thousands of sexually explicit images, mostly of women, that were published by anonymous users without the subjects’ consent or knowledge. He’s facing up to 20 years in jail as a result.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikDollar General Plans To Open Hundreds Of Stores After Failed Bid For Family Dollarde

4 4 4 4

(Mike Mozart)

Like any recently scorned lover might do, Dollar General has an ambitious plan to better itself and make Family Dollar rue the day it rejected its $9 billion takeover bid in favor of Dollar Tree’s merger advances.

Forbes reports that Dollar General plans to open hundreds of new stores this year, with even more slated to open in 2016.

Dollar General’s determined expansion plan comes as a sign the company is gearing up for added competition from the newly merged Family Dollar and Dollar Tree companies.

By opening 730 new locations this year, Dollar General will have 12,519 stores in 40 states. However, that still falls below the combined approximately 13,000 stores operated by Dollar Tree and Family Dollar.

While Dollar Tree was ultimately named the victor of the dollar store war and won the heart of Family Dollar, had Dollar General been successful in landing the smaller store, it would likely have had to sell off nearly 4,000 stores.

The sordid dollar store love triangle began back in July when Dollar Tree made an $8.5 billion bid for North Carolina-based Family Dollar. Not one to feel left out, Dollar General proceeded to provide an unsolicited bid of $8.95 billion for the smaller chain.

But Family Dollar wasn’t feeling the love and rejected the Dollar General offer citing “significant antitrust issues” because the two chains have similar business models. Both Dollar General and Family Dollar sell items at different dollar price points, catering to low-income shoppers, while Dollar Tree caters to more middle-income shoppers and sells most items at $1.

Dollar General came back with a second bid of $9.1 billion and in an attempt to ease Family Dollars’ anti-trust review fears, it proposed closing 1,500 of the potentially combined-companies 20,000 stores.

Yet, that still wasn’t enough and Family Dollar rejected the bid, choosing instead to stay with its true love, Dollar Tree. Dollar General subsequently turned hostile, taking its big directly to shareholders in September.

The ordeal concluded in January when the shareholders for Family Dollar overwhelmingly voted in favor of a smaller, but safer, takeover bid from Dollar Tree, effectively crushing the heart of aggressive suitor Dollar General.

Dollar General Plans $1B Buyback, 730 New Stores This Year [Forbes]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

jikUber, Lyft Trying To Convince Courts That Drivers Are Not Employeesde

4 4 4 4

(frankieleon)

What’s the difference between a contractor working for you and an employee? Often, an employee will receive benefits like health insurance and workers compensation if something goes awry, among other things, while a contractor is hired to do one job and that is it. Uber and Lyft don’t want their drivers to fall into the employee category and be responsible for all that entails, but thus far they haven’t been able to sway the courts to see it their way.

The ride-hailing companies didn’t move judges into ruling that their drivers are independent contractors instead of employees in two separate rulings this week, reports Reuters, which could mean they and other businesses might be on the line for a slew of employee benefits.

U.S. District Judges Edward Chen and Vince Chhabria in San Francisco federal court said in the two rulings that it would be up to juries to determine what the companies’ drivers are. If they’re employees, as separate lawsuits claim, Uber and Lyft would likely have to reimburse them for expenses like gas and vehicle maintenance, and force them to pay Social Security, workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.

Right now, drivers pay all outside expenses themselves. Putting the onus on Uber and Lyft to do so would significantly raise the companies’ costs.

Chen said in his ruling on Wednesday that because Uber has the right to fire its drivers, who provide a key service for the ride-hailing app, those two things skew to the side of drivers being employees.

“Uber could not be ‘Everyone’s Private Driver’ without the drivers,” Chen wrote. Because it’s a muddy issue, however, it should be up to a jury.

Chhabria also pointed out how hard it is to figure out which category Lyft’s drivers fall into, as there are characteristics of both in the job.

“The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes,” the judge wrote. “California’s outmoded test for classifying workers will apply in cases like this. And because the test provides nothing remotely close to a clear answer, it will often be for juries to decide.”

If juries decide ride-hailing drivers are employees, that could ripple out into other industries that rely on a pool of privately contracted individuals to provide a plethora of services on-demand.

While Uber and Lyft are staying mum, an attorney for drivers in both cases is glad judges have chosen to put the question to juries.

“We are very excited about both rulings,” the attorney told Reuters.

Uber, Lyft rebuffed in bids to deem drivers independent contractors [Reuters]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikThe Privacy And Consent Issues With Apple’s New ResearchKitde

4 4 4 4

(RedAndJonny)

Earlier this week, Apple gave us wrist computers and took away almost all of the ports in its notebook computers, and also announced something that gadget fans may not have expected: a set of apps called ResearchKit designed to help medical researchers collect data from ordinary citizens for their research. Tens of thousands of people have already signed up for studies, which is potentially great for science. Is it good for us, the potential research subjects, though?

RESEARCH STUDIES

It’s often difficult to recruit participants for medical studies, so the idea of a massive pool of potential participants is appealing to researchers whose studies are suited to an app format. However, making it super-easy to sign up means that participants are likely to ignore the text in the consent forms, just like most people ignore the terms of use when signing up for, well, anything.

The Stanford heart disease study, for example, uses a series of screens that users must scroll through to explain the responsibilities of study participants and its possible effect on our lives. They’re logical and easy to understand, but do they tell the entire story?

People seem very thrilled with the potential of HealthKit, but what about its potential to violate our privacy and enable our inner hypochondriac? I checked with Nicholas Evans, a postdoctoral fellow in advanced biomedical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. (Disclaimer: Dr. Evans is married to one of my friends.) He downloaded the asthma study app and found numerous problems with how it explains the study and the app to participants. “All in all, this appears to be a solid attempt to design an informed consent document for the digital age, but it reads more like an End-User License Agreement with some extra bells and whistles,” he observed after pretending to sign up for the study. There’s a big difference between an e-mail app and a program meant to detect hand tremors or determine your risk of heart disease.

ANONYMITY ISN’T GUARANTEED

One key promise that Apple made when announcing ResearchKit was that data will never pass through Apple’s hands while being submitted. Stanford says that survey data will be anonymized by a nonprofit third party, Sage Bionetwork, with participant names stripped out and numbers subbed in. In a smaller and more specific study, it may be possible to identify participants by looking at their demographic data.

ResearchKit apps also allow participants to share their data with other “qualified researchers,” without making it clear who those researchers are (nobody knows yet) and what they could be using the data for. While the screen to opt in or out of data sharing explains this, there’s no room to explain the complex relationships between universities, hospitals, and private companies. “[The data-sharing screen] elides what they are going to do in terms of other researchers, who may have commercial interests or ties to third party commercial entities,” observes Penn’s Evans. Yes.

These disclosure screens may be part of other research study apps, and they simplify (arguably, they over-simplify) the possible risks and benefits of taking part in a study.

Current practices for recruiting human subjects in an experiment presume that researchers and subjects are interacting in person in some way.

ResearchKit allows a study to gather huge numbers of people. These people might get bored or drop out, or they could make up their data points or lie. Anyone who thinks that someone wouldn’t invest significant time and energy in pretending to have a serious illness hasn’t spent much time in the darker corners of the Internet. There’s a difference between an app-based data collection effort and full-blown Munchausen’s by Internet, but there will always be the risk that motivated trolls and liars can sign up.

It might not do any good to gather huge amounts of data from people all over the country to begin with. The obvious problem is that people who own smartphones tend to be wealthier than people who don’t. Another professor at Dartmouth explained to Bloomberg News that all of this data collection could be a waste of time that doesn’t advance science at all. “Just collecting lots of information about people — who may or may not have a particular disease, and may or may not represent the typical patient — could just add noise and distraction,” Lisa Schwartz of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice explained in an e-mail.

Apple’s marketing of ResearchKit plays up its promise, but maybe all we are doing is collecting servers full of anonymized noise. Taking part in medical research doesn’t always benefit you, personally: studies that follow people with particular risk factors or that test treatments that are ineffective don’t directly help anyone.

Should you take part in research through HealthKit, if you own an iPhone? That’s up to you. Carefully read the disclosures, and be cautious about what personal information that you share. Research with human subjects that tries new methods can have unforeseen consequences.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jik‘Breaking Bad’ Creator: If You’re Throwing Pizza On Walter White’s Albuquerque House, You’re A “Jagoff”de

4 4 4 4

You are not Walter White.

So you think you’re a Breaking Bad fan, huh? Well if you’re one of the people tossing pizza on the roof of Walter White’s home in Albuquerque, show creator Vince Gilligan has got some pointed words for you.

Namely: Stop it, because seriously? Someone actually lives there, and she does not appreciate food being chucked at her house.

During a Better Call Saul podcast (starting around 3:05) that also features Jonathan Banks, otherwise known as enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut, Gilligan says that people who he won’t even call “fans” have started acting up at the site, which has turned into somewhat of a tourist attraction in light of the show’s popularity.

While that’s understandable, and the couple who live in that house have been just fine with courteous visitors who stay off the property and can act like decent, respectful human beings, Gilligan says they’ve reported an uptick in rude behavior, including food throwing, as an apparent homage to the scene in the show where White chucks an extra large pizza onto the garage roof.

“Lately we’ve been hearing from her that folks are wandering onto her property and they are being rude to her when she comes out, and basically says you’re on my property, and they’re throwing pizza on roofs and stuff like that,” Gilligan says.

He warns would-be tossers that “there is nothing original, or funny or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof.”

“And if I catch you doing it, i will hunt you down,” Banks chimes in with his scariest Mike voice.

Gilligan reiterates again that he doesn’t think the culprits are listening to the podcast, “but if we are, I don’t even know what to say to you. So uncool, please stop.”

If you don’t, Gilligan has no love for you.

“Again, we love our fans — we don’t love those fans,” he adds. “I don’t even consider them fans. I consider them jagoffs.”

Our previous exposure to the word “jagoff” has come mostly from grumpy Consumerist dads so we know it’s got to be pretty bad.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist