uChicago Residents Want City To Buy Their Homes, Claiming Living Near O’Hare Airport Is A Noisy Nightmarer

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  A group of residents living near O’Hare International Airport are suing the city of Chicago, seeking to make the city buy their homes. They claim their houses have become unlivable after a spike in jet noise from O’Hare, after a new runway opened two years ago.

  About 50 homeowners have joined the cause, saying that since the new runway opened, there’s been a major shift in flight patterns that has forced them to live with the drone of jets flying above their homes night and day.

  “They now have a volume of eight or nine hundred planes literally coming over the treetops of their houses,” the homeowners’ attorney tells CBS Chicago. The noise from a “constant barrage” of jumbo jet airliners, cargo carriers and commercial aircraft has turned their lives into a nightmare, he added.

  The area had few planes overhead before the new runway opened in October 2013, prompting new flight patterns at O’Hare that have sent hundreds of flights over their homes, which don’t lie within the existing O’Hare noise contour map. That guide hasn’t been revised since the first new runway opened at O’Hare in 2008. Those homeowners included within the contour map qualify for taxpayer funded soundproofing.

  They can’t sell their homes because of the near constant jet noise, the group’s attorney says, so Chicago should buy them out.

  “You’re saying the city essentially condemned your property without giving you compensation,” the lawyer said. “The city of Chicago has essentially wreaked havoc on their lives, and diminished the property value, and just made the area unlivable.”

  The lawsuit seeks to force the city to buy their homes at fair market value — based on what they were worth before the new runway was installed — at a cost estimated at between $10 million to $15 million.

  Bensenville Residents Sue City, Claim O’Hare Noise Makes Homes Unlivable [CBS Chicago]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uHospital Doesn’t Know The Difference Between Copay And Deductible, Sticks Patient With $3,900 Billr

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  When a California man checked with the hospital about the copay for his daughter’s treatment, the hospital told him it would $500. Except what they meant to tell him was that his insurance deductible would be $500, but that he’d be stuck with a bill for nearly $4,000.

  The man tells the L.A. Times’ David Lazarus that he got the $500 copay estimate in writing from UCLA Medical Center.

  But after his daughter’s first treatment, a simple injection administered by a nurse, he received a bill for $3,908.

  Making matters worse, his 9-year-old daughter’s full treatment would require multiple visits. At this rate, he’d be looking at a final bill of closer to $20,000.

  After Lazarus got involved, a rep for UCLA explained that the problem was an “error in our insurance verification process,” and that the father should have been told that he’d still have the pricey copay on top of his deductible.

  UCLA defended the high price of the treatment by saying that the hospital adds “our overhead expenses to the wholesale cost [of the drug] which was paid to our supplier.”

  But as Lazarus notes, the hospital may be grossly overpaying for this medication. It put a price tag of $19,827 on a single injection, but the drug can be found elsewhere at the still-expensive-but-not-outrageously-so price of between $5,000 and $7,500 for the same dose.

  The father says had UCLA not misled him about the copay, he would have looked around for other providers to make sure he wasn’t getting taken for a ride. Now that he knows how much UCLA charges, he says he’s looking elsewhere for the remainder of his daughter’s injections.

  Even after realizing it screwed up, UCLA continued to tell the dad that he needed to pay the full $3,908. It wasn’t until after the L.A. Times got involved that the hospital agreed to only charge him the $500 it had put in the estimate.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uCrowdfunding Site Patreon Hacked, 15GB Of Donor Info Dumped Onliner

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• Patreon, a website that allows donors to give regularly to sites, artists, projects and other creators, yesterday evening that it’d been hit by a hack attack that accessed some registered names, email addresses and mailing addresses. And according to reports, 15GB of data was then dumped online, exposing information about donors and the projects they’ve funded.

  Hackers published almost 15 gigabytes’ worth of password data, donation records, and source code snagged during the attack, reports Ars Technica. Patreon said on Wednesday that someone had managed to access a “debug version” of the website that was accessible to the public, but that all payment information was safe as full credit card numbers aren’t stored on its servers.

  “Although accessed, all passwords, social security numbers and tax form information remain safely encrypted with a 2048-bit RSA key,” Jack Conte, co-founder and CEO of Patreon said, adding that user passwords are cryptographically protected with bcrypt, but that patrons should change their passwords immediately as a precaution.

  Even so, it’s possible that hackers could find programming mistakes that would allow them to crack the hashes eventually, though it’d likely take a lot of time and resources. Access to the source code could expose the encryption key that’s said to protect social security numbers and tax IDs, Ars points out.

  Security researcher Troy Hunt, who’s inspected the contents of the data dump, says it includes a fair amount of private messages sent and received by users.

  “Obviously all the campaigns, supporters and pledges are there too,” he Tweeted. “You can determine how much those using Patreon are making.”

  If you’re a Patreon subscriber, make sure you change your password on that site as well as anywhere else you’ve used it. You should also be aware that it’s very likely that your identity, any project you donated to and possibly private messages you exchanged using the site is now available to the Internet at large.

  Gigabytes of user data from hack of Patreon donations site dumped online [Ars Technica]
  Patreon: Some user names, e-mail and mailing addresses stolen [Ars Technica]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uAT&T Testing Wireless Home Broadband In At Least 4 Statesr

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  AT&T helped grease the wheels for its recent acquisition of DirecTV by promising to bring high-speed wireless broadband to homes in rural America. Now that the merger is official, it’s look like AT&T is beginning to make good on that promise, though a number of questions about the new service still remain.

  Back in March, we were the first to report on the rough details of AT&T’s plan to use “wireless local loop” (WLL) technology to deliver Internet access into customers’ homes.

  Though AT&T said that it needed the AT&T merger would help deploy its WLL offering, it does not use the satellite service to deliver Internet access to customers. Instead, WLL customers get a dedicated receiver and antenna in their homes that connect wirelessly to nearby AT&T towers.

  The idea is to provide service that doesn’t require running an expensive cable/fiber line but which offers a connection that’s more reliable and consistent than a mobile hotspot.

  FierceWireless reports that testing of WLL has begun in parts of at least four states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Virginia — and that users there are reporting seeing data speeds of 15-25Mbps.

  That’s not blazing fast, but it’s sufficient for many consumer’s current data needs. The two things we still don’t know — price and whether there are any data caps — will probably determine whether WLL has the legs to succeed.

  In order to make WLL marketable, AT&T would need to charge a heck of a lot less per gigabyte than it does for its LTE wireless data.

  Most home broadband plans include data limits of at least 250GB a month. AT&T’s largest LTE data plan tops out at 50GB and costs $350. That’s $7.50 per gigabyte. The company can’t charge anywhere near that amount — or, conversely, try to limit use to only a few gigabytes per month — and hope to win over the 13 million home broadband subscribers it said it would try to reach.

  [via DSL Reports]

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

u8 Items You’ll Find Deals On In Octoberr

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  The season is changing, and that doesn’t just mean pumpkin spice lattes and piles of leaves to jump in. It also means that shoppers can get deals on a mix of products from three different seasons in the coming months, if they know where and when to shop. Fortunately, our pals over at Consumer Reports watch prices on items as well as testing them, and here’s what they say you should shop for in October.

  Bikes: As appropriate biking weather ends in areas of the country with four seasons, you can get great deals on bikes being cleared out for next year.

  Computers: The back-to-school shopping season is over, but some computers are left behind.

  Digital Cameras: We’re not sure why prices on these fall: maybe retailers want to clear out old stock before the holidays? Know your own camera needs and research what type is right for you before you start to shop.

  Gas Grills: Yes, grilling season is over in much of the country: deal with your sadness by shopping for a new one for next year, maybe.

  Lawn Mowers: This, too, will lurk in your garage until needed next year, but the discounts should console you.

  Patio Furniture: They have to clear it out to make way for Christmas decorations, so there are deals to be found.

  Sporting Goods: Items like camping gear and baseball items may be on sale in your local sporting good store.

  Winter Clothing: Using impeccable fashion logic, you need to buy your winter coat long before winter starts. If you need one now, shop now that the first fashion collections of the season have come and gone.

  8 Products on Deep Discount in October [Consumer Reports]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uFive People Injured During Unexpected Turbulence On American Airlines Flightr

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  Five passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from the Caribbean island of Grenada to Miami were taken to a local hospital for minor injuries on Thursday, after experiencing some unexpectedly rough air along the way.

  American Flight 982 left Maurice Bishop International Airport in Grenada yesterday morning and landed in Miami with 74 passengers and a five-member crew, with five of those passengers heading to the hospital shortly after, reports the Miami Herald.

  The bumpy air seems to have come upon the plane somewhat unexpectedly, as American said in a statement that the plane “encountered turbulence during flight. The seatbelt sign was illuminated at the time and the pilots did not have any indication of severe turbulence in the area.”

  After hitting that rough patch, American said the Airbus A319 “landed without further incident.”

  And though everyone is probably looking to blame Hurricane Joaquin, which is currently heading for the East Coast, American noted that the turbulence was not related to the storm system, reports CNN: the turbulence hit about 80 miles south-southwest of of Nassau, Bahamas, at 36,000 feet, while Hurricane Joaquin was located 230 miles east-southeast of Nassau.

  5 airline passengers injured by turbulence on Grenada to Miami flight [Miami Herald]
  Five airline passengers injured during turbulence [CNN]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uConsumerist Friday Flickr Findsr

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• Here are six of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist