uExploding Airbag In Volkswagen Under Investigationr

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  (Sarah)

  For the past year, federal regulators have been investigating shrapnel-shooting airbags, linked to at least eight deaths and hundreds of injuries. These devices, made by Takata, are used by 11 different automakers, but until this week, Volkswagen had not been part of the investigation.

  Yesterday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed it was investigating a June 2015 rupture of a  Takata airbag in a 2015 Volkswagen Tiguan in Missouri. NHTSA has issued special orders to both companies, seeking information related to the incident.

  According to NHTSA’s order [PDF], Volkswagen notified regulators of the rupture of a Takata airbag inflator on July 15, more than a month after the incident took place.

  A spokesperson for VW tells the Detroit News that the rupture occurred after the vehicle hit a deer. The driver did not file a police report and did not seek medical attention.

  NHTSA says information from VW and Takata – who have until Aug. 24 to comply with the orders – could help identify a cause for the June incident, which doesn’t fit the previous pattern of airbag ruptures linked to Takata safety devices.

  For the most part, the previous ruptures have often occurred in older vehicles and in areas of high humidity, such as Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

  Among the information NHTSA is seeking from the automaker and Japanese parts supplier includes a list of all models that have airbags with ammonium nitrate, from any auto supplier

  The agency also asked for police reports and records related to the rupture and information on whether other VW vehicles have suffered ruptures.

  Mark Gillies, a VW spokesperson, tells the Detroit News that the automaker is working to investigate the June incident with Takata.

  Gillies say he was unaware of how many of the automaker’s vehicles are equipped with Takata airbags and had “no comment” on why VW airbags are not part of the wider Takata recall.

  The company Tweeted back in May that while it uses Takata airbags, “the parts on our VWs are not part of the current recall.”

  For its part, Takata says it doesn’t believe the most recent incident is related to the wider 33.8 million vehicle recall for defective airbags.

  “While we are still investigating the cause of this malfunction, we believe it is unrelated to the previous recalls, which the extensive data suggests were a result of aging and long-term exposure to heat and high humidity,” Jared Levy, Takata spokesperson says. “We are cooperating closely with NHTSA and the vehicle manufacturer.”

  Recalls of vehicles with Takata-produced airbags began slowly in 2008, but gained traction over the last year, culminating in the recall of 33.8 million vehicles in May.

  The company and a plethora of investigators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as well as the 10 automakers affected by the recall have yet to identify what causes Takata’s airbags to rupture so violently. Because of this, it’s unclear whether or not vehicles already repaired are actually safe.

  In fact, company also plans to re-recall about 400,000 vehicles that have already been repaired.

  Takata announced it would change its use of the often volatile chemical ammonium nitrate in its safety devices and replace its batwing driver inflators.

  U.S. investigates VW for ruptured Takata air bag [The Detroit News]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uPolice: Don’t Bring Homemade Toilets To Jimmy Buffett Concerts, Then Leave’em For Others To Clean Upr

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  (Sam Howzit)

  What’s a Parrothead to do when they’ve been wasting away in Margaritaville and the lines to the bathroom are too long? Apparently, there’s a bucket for that. Police in Mansfield, MA say Jimmy Buffett fans really need to stop bringing their own homemade toilets to concerts at the local arena, because not only are the tailgaters relieving themselves outside of sanctioned restrooms, they’re leaving their latrine creations behind for someone else to deal with.

  Workers at the Xfinity Center and police were on the lookout in the parking lot over the weekend for tailgaters equipped with their own portable, makeshift toilets, reports The Sun Chronicle. Typical models include a five-gallon bucket with a foam pool noodle on the rim as a seat, often inside a tall tent. There’s also a design with a wooden box holding a bucket, and a toilet seat attached to the top.

  Police estimate 75 to 100 people were told to remove makeshift portable toilets, and yet officers found seven to 10 potties on the grounds after the show. It’s a major health issue, and isn’t something arena staff are prepared to deal with.

  The Xfinity Center’s general manager said the venue’s overnight cleaning crew was able to “get creative with the porta-pottys” to dispose of the leftover waste after Saturday’s concert, but that’s not something they want to deal with in the long run.

  “We’re just not set up to handle that kind of waste,” he said, adding that he’ll discuss the issue with local officials in an attempt to combat it in the future.

  Lest you think Parrotheads are getting singled out unfairly, police say the group of fans is the “primary offender” in makeshift toileting, and that the practice of leaving out used johns for others to deal with is “unsanitary and just disrespectful.”

  “They’re known as a party crowd, and I guess they don’t want to wait in line,” a police lieutenant told the newspaper.

  It isn’t just in Mansfield that this happens, apparently: A Buffett fan site called Troprockin.com polled readers in April for the top tailgating “must-haves,” and “makeshift potty” was the most popular write-in vote.

  “Parrot Heads have learned there comes a time at every tailgate when you just can’t fathom going into the port-a-potty,” the article says. “Several different versions were listed. From your bucket with a shower curtain to commercial little pottys and a privacy tent. I’m assuming in this scenario, you’re bringing the toilet paper.”

  This was the first year Mansfield police tried to address the issue ahead of time, posting a notice on Facebook to concertgoers to please leave their latrines at home. Officials say they’ll continue to keep an eye out for wayward toilets at other shows as well.

  Mansfield police fighting make-shift toilets at Xfinity Center [The Sun Chronicle]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uCompany Fined $750K For Blocking WiFi Hotspots At Convention Centersr

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  (Mike Mozart)

  In Section 333 of the Communications Act, it states that “No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference” with any licensed or authorized radio communications. But a company that provides Internet service for hotels and convention centers around the country has admitted to deliberately preventing people from using their own, legal hotspots to go online.

  According to a consent decree [PDF] filed by the FCC, the Commission received a complaint from a hotspot provider in 2014 that a company called Smart City Holdings — which operates large hotel and convention center telecom, broadband, and WiFi networks — was jamming the connections of certain people who used hotspots instead of paying to connect to their WiFi.

  The FCC investigated and Smart City acknowledged that several of its venues — including convention centers in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Orlando, and Phoenix — would identify hotspots that had comparable signal strengths to the Smart City networks, and then automatically transmit “deauthentication frames,” which inhibit the hotspot user from maintaining a connection between their hotspot and their other devices, to prevent them from working properly.

  The FCC says that there is no evidence that Smart City was jamming these signals in response to any threats to its networks or users. The goal of the blocking, alleges the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, was to drive exhibitors and visitors to these convention centers to pay a fee to access the Smart City networks.

  Smart City did, after being told about the FCC investigation, tell its network managers to stop the deauthentication. But the company still must pay a $750,000 civil penalty.

  “It is unacceptable for any company to charge consumers exorbitant fees to access the Internet while at the same time blocking them from using their own personal Wi-Fi hotspots to access the Internet,” said Travis LeBlanc, Chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau. “All companies who seek to use technologies that block FCC-approved Wi-Fi connections are on notice that such practices are patently unlawful.”

  The Smart City settlement is larger than last year’s deal with Marriott over similar allegations. In that case, the hotel mega-chain agreed to pay a $600,000 penalty after the FCC learned it had been blocking independent hotspot signals at its Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFCC To Dish: No, You Are Not A Small Business, You May Not Use Small Business Discountsr

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  (Jim Ellwanger)

  The FCC has an auction process to sell spectrum to businesses. The FCC also is charged with promoting competition. So there’s a credit available to small businesses who play in the auction. But this week, the FCC has had to tell one behemoth that small means small, and that no amount of pretending otherwise will actually change that.

  A bit of background on spectrum auctions: All wireless communications — TV, radio, wifi, cell signals, 4G, and so on — fly around in the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light takes up a small slice of that spectrum, and the rest is where radio waves, microwaves, x-rays, and other kinds of radiation travel. So far, so good.

  Certain stretches of the EM spectrum are better than others for specific kinds of signals. There’s a comparatively narrow stretch of radio frequencies where cell phones, broadcast TV, and other signals can work, so there’s a lot of competition for those frequencies.

  If everyone just flung all their stuff out there at once, there would be chaos. Signals would collide and interference would be rampant — nothing would work. So the FCC regulates the airwaves. Each company gets a range of frequencies assigned to them that they are allowed to use, and that is their chunk of spectrum. When businesses merge, spectrum is one of the valuable assets they bring with them.

  The FCC currently allocates spectrum through an auction process. There are a lot of complicated details about where the spectrum comes from and who can bid, but in general, it’s an auction. However, the FCC also has a mandate to protect and encourage competition. Letting the biggest companies (i.e. Verizon and AT&T) waltz in with their moneybags and snap up all the spectrum because they can bid most would be the opposite of encouraging competition — it would let a pair of businesses become essentially a duopoly, which would be bad for everyone.

  So the auctions have a system of handicaps and credits, to ensure that smaller businesses can stand a chance to participate. The FCC has spent a lot of time and energy in the past couple of years discussing the rules of the most recent auction, which concluded in January, and the next one, which takes place in 2016. And that’s where this most recent ruling comes in.

  In the last auction, two small businesses, SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless, each bid on and won a stretch of spectrum to use. Because they are small businesses, they received a combined $3.3 billion in small business credits toward the $13.3 billion winning bid, meaning they paid $10 billion. That’s a pretty good discount.

  But there’s one problem: those businesses aren’t exactly small, free-floating entities. They are both owned by Dish.

  Dish claims that it has non-controlling interests in each company, and so they should still be eligible for the small-business credits. But that “non-controlling interest” isn’t exactly a minority stake; Dish owns a full 85% of each company.

  The FCC decided this week that no, seriously, Dish does not get to claim small business credits just because their subsidiaries were the faces that did the bidding. In a statement about yesterday’s vote, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said, “Small businesses require an on-ramp into the mobile marketplace to provide more choices for consumers. Our competitive bidding rules were designed to do just that — give bona fide small businesses an opportunity to acquire valuable spectrum.”

  Bona fide being the key words there. The FCC’s review process concluded that SNR and Northstar are not, in fact, genuinely small businesses.

  Dish has a few options now: they can pay the $3.3 billion difference, they can appeal, or they can pay a penalty.

  Dish has not indicated what it intends to do. Although the satellite pay-TV company does not in fact provide any mobile services, they have been stocking up on spectrum where possible. The rumor mill has it that the company is in talks to buy T-Mobile, and as far as those negotiations are concerned any spectrum Dish is sitting on is an incredibly important factor. Dish being unable to use the discount may be a major factor in those as-yet-unannounced merger plans.

  FCC says Dish can’t use $3.3B in credits in airwaves auction [Associated Press]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uUber Updates App To Show The Difference Between Hailing A Ride And Ordering Lunchr

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• Following a bit of consumer confusion related to rolling its ride-hailing and food ordering options into the same app back in June, Uber has finally pushed out an update aiming to ensure people looking for a ride don’t order a sandwich instead. Along with now prominently displaying separate buttons for requesting a ride and ordering via UberEATS, the update includes an expansion of the food delivery service to San Francisco.

  The service – already available in New York City, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles, Toronto and Barcelona – delivers customers their choice of meals from a specially curated and rotating menu that features “local flavors that you crave the most” from the “most popular, iconic restaurants.” Ordering is available during lunch and dinner depending on the location.

  [via Forbes, TechCrunch]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSuitcase Cam Shows What It’s Like To Be Luggage At The Airportr

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  (Schiphol Airport)

  Have you ever ever wondered what it’s like for your checked luggage at the airport? Where does it go, what does it see, who touches it — does it make suitcase friends along the way? While many of those questions remain unanswered, a new video shot from the point of view of a piece of baggage cruising around behind the scenes at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is definitely mesmerizing.

  In what could be a scene out of a Pixar movie featuring adorable, no-nonsense robots just doing their job, the point-of-view camera attached to a suitcase shows the long journey your bags make to get from the cargo hold of the plane and around the airport, until they land at baggage claim.

  There are conveyor belts aplenty, robotic arms tipping bags here and there with purpose, and long stretches of rollercoaster-like cruising up and down.

  The video below is worth a watch for fun, but perhaps even cooler is the 360-degree view video the airport added to its site. That version allows users to click and drag their mouse on the screen to see any direction around the bag as it shuttles along on its merry way.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uPOSTSCRIPT: Even After Embarrassing Story, CenturyLink Still Has No Idea That This House Is Not On Their Networkr

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• You probably remember the story of Seth, the Washington state homeowner who was on the brink of having to sell his new house because — in spite of what their websites said — neither Comcast nor CenturyLink were willing to sell him the broadband service he needs for his home office. Even though this made national headlines, with CenturyLink looking particularly inept, the company still hasn’t figured out that Seth’s house is not connected to its network.

  Just a quick catch-up for those coming late to the story. Before Seth moved in, he’d twice checked with Comcast to make sure the house could get service. After multiple install techs confirmed there was no service and the nearest connection point was thousands of feet away, Seth looked into other options.

  Among those was CenturyLink, which does sell adequate broadband service in his general area. The CenturyLink website even confirmed for Seth that his address could be connected. But after making the appointment for installing the service, CenturyLink cancelled, telling him their website was mistaken and that there was no intention of expanding Internet service to his neighborhood in the foreseeable future.

  And yet, his address continued to remain on the site, even after Consumerist spent weeks chasing some sort of explanation from CenturyLink.

  We were repeatedly promised a comment and that the company was looking into the situation, only to be told after several weeks that the person we’d been dealing with had been promoted and that we had to start all over again with a new media contact — who was on vacation for another week.

  Even by the time we published Seth’s story, about a month after we’d brought the error to the company’s attention, the CenturyLink site was still showing his address as being part of their broadband network.

  At no small expense of time and money, Seth ultimately made a complicated deal with his county — which operates a fiberoptic network, but which is prohibited by state law from selling directly to consumers — and a broadband reseller to connect his property to the Internet, saving him from having to sell.

  But then he goes to check his mailbox and gets the above mailer from CenturyLink, telling him to sign up for the company’s high-speed Internet service, even though it’s still definitely not available in his area.

  How do we know? A) Because no CenturyLink teams have been out and about, digging or running cable in Seth’s neck of the woods; and B) because the CenturyLink site now accurately reflects the connection possibilities at his address:

  

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist