uMcDonald’s Switching To Digital Menu Boards That Suggest Meals Based On The Weatherr

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  Ever walked into a McDonald’s and not been sure what to order? Probably not, if you’re already at the restaurant. But for those of us who just can’t make up our minds, the Golden Arches has a solution: a digital menu board that recommends meals depending on the weather. 

  The idea behind the boards, which are expected to be installed by the end of 2016, is to better engage customers, bring attention to certain items, and of course increase sales, Business Insider reports.

  As for the boards’ ability to determine your meal needs based on weather?

  McDonald’s U.S. President Mike Andres says the smart menus are designed to monitor the temperature outside and, based on that information, recommend products that tend to sell better at hotter or cooler temperatures.

  So when it’s cold or raining outside, for example, the digital menu might suggest hot drinks or heartier meals.

  Additionally, the boards will track the time of day to promote breakfast products in the morning, then switch to other items at appropriate times.

  McDonald’s ‘smart’ menus will start recommending food based on the weather [Business Insider]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uWalmart Employees Want A Discount On More Grocery Itemsr

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  After a successful effort to raise wages for many workers, Walmart staffers are focusing on a new goal: they want employee discount on more grocery items, as well as the 10% discount they already receive on all other merchandise.

  The current deal includes fruits, vegetables and some snacks, but employees want that list to expand. Besides, Target and Whole Foods offer that perk, so why shouldn’t Walmart?

  “It is ridiculous,” one Louisiana employee told Bloomberg News. “You can get a 10 percent discount on cat food, but if I buy tuna or chicken, I get no discount.”

  An online petition started by a group of Walmart workers that demands the company widen the discount to include more grocery items has received 12,600 signatures from employees so far. The group plans to take the petition to store managers and executives this month.

  The cost to Walmart to provide such a benefit could be pretty hefty: if all 1.4 million U.S. employees take advantage of the proposed 10% grocery discount and bought their food at work, it could add up to a $420 million tab for the company to cover.

  A Walmart spokesman declined to say whether the company is considering the food discount, but said that the world’s largest retailer is always reviewing benefits. Last year, it offered $500 million in discounts, the spokesman added.

  Though the company surveyed employees on which benefits they’d like, higher wages, better scheduling and more regular hours took priority over a food discount, the spokesman said.

  But with competitors already on the grocery discount bandwagon, it could be hard for Walmart to resist if it wants to keep its workforce, experts say, especially under employee pressure. And besides, it’s just good business for Walmart to turn its workers into loyal customers: offering a discount will keep their grocery dollars at work, instead of going to rival grocery stores.

  Wal-Mart Workers Demand Discount on Food [Bloomberg News]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uRolls-Royce Recalls One Car… Yes, You Read That Rightr

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  In the past year, automakers have recalled millions upon millions of vehicle for airbag issues. Bucking that trend is Rolls-Royce, which announced this week that it would recall one car. That’s right a single – very expensive – vehicle because of a problem with the safety device. 

  The carmaker, a division of BMW, issued the recall for one model year 2015 Ghost.

  In a notice [PDF] posted with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Rolls-Royce says the driver and passenger airbags in the affected vehicle may fail to meet side impact performance requirements. In the event of a crash, the company says the airbag’s non-deployment may increase the risk of injury to front seat passengers.

  “As such, this vehicle may fail to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards [on] Side Impact Protection,” the notice states.

  Rolls-Royce will notify the owner of the affected vehicle and a dealer will replace the driver-side and passenger-side airbag module.

  This isn’t the first single vehicle recall we’ve heard of. Last year, Swedish carmaker Koenigsegg Automotive notified NHTSA that it would recall one 2013 Agera sold in the United States because of a tire problem.

  “We have only one US spec vehicle with this system installed,” the company said at the time. “We located the customer, who had temporarily moved to Europe and had taken the car with him. By the time we had located and made contact, he had already initiated the return of the vehicle to the US.”

  [via Syracuse.com]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uFederal Government Unseals Indictments In 2014 Bank Breachesr

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  Have you ever received a spam e-mail advertising a penny stock, and assumed that it came from a general junk mail list, or someone simply typed out a list of randomly-generated addresses? Criminal charges announced today revealed that the perpetrators of a stock fraud scheme obtained e-mail addresses to contact by exploiting the Heartbleed bug to steal the names and e-mail addresses of about 80 million customers from JPMorganChase.

  These e-mail addresses were used to blast messages about cheap stocks, with the goal of convincing junk mail recipients to buy the stocks, artificially inflating the price before the people behind the scheme sold all of their shares of that stock. This is called a pump and dump scheme, and in itself will get you in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (The SEC will, indeed, catch up with them about the alleged securities fraud later.)

  Last year, the same hackers hit multiple banks in a series of coordinated attacks, exploiting the Heartbleed bug to harvest the e-mail addresses of people with online accounts with JPMorganChase, E-Trade, ScottTrade, and the information service Dow Jones.

  It makes sense, if you’re a scammy evil-doer: if you want to perpetrate a scam that means someone has to buy the stock you’re shilling right away, it makes sense if those people are savvy enough to have online brokerage accounts or online bank accounts.

  The indictment of scheme leaders describes a criminal enterprise that employed hundreds of people and began in 2012. The brokerage accounts were part of a separate scheme to start a new criminal enterprise, recruiting the people whose information was stolen as clients on false pretenses.

  U.S. announces criminal charges in massive 2014 JPMorgan hack [Washington Post]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uScience Says: Victoria’s Secret Perfume Is A Pretty Great Mosquito Repellentr

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  When the hot, humid months of summer roll around, I usually skip using any flowery, sweet-smelling perfumes because I don’t like to be followed around by clouds of mosquitoes. But just because a scent is particularly odoriferous, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be more susceptible to bug bites, according to a study that studied a flowery fragrance from Victoria’s Secret along more traditional insect repellents.

  A group of scientists at New Mexico State’s Molecular Vector Physiology Lab studying the most effective mosquito repellents tested 10 different formulas, including camping standbys like DEET, as well as a Victoria’s Secret perfume called Bombshell. They published their findings in the Journal of Insect Science (h/t Gizmodo).

  Researchers put mosquitoes to the test by giving them two options: either leave a holding chamber in one part of a Y-shaped tube and head to a researcher’s bare hand, with no repellant on it, or wind up on a hand coated with one of the repellents.

  When the mosquitoes were set loose, the researchers counted how many chose the hands with treatments on them, in order to measure how attracted they were. They also took measurements over time in order to see which repellents were most effective after a few hours.

  DEET-based repellents were the most effective, while bare hands attracted 61% of the mosquitoes. But as it turns out, the Victoria’s Secret perfume worked almost as well as formulas with DEET: it attracted only 17% of mosquitoes and stayed effective for 120 minutes.

  Researcher Stacy Rodriguez initially decided to test the perfume in the research to see if fragrant, sweet smells attract the pests or not.

  “There was some previous literature that said fruity, floral scents attracted mosquitoes, and to not wear those,” she said in a statement. “It was interesting to see that the mosquitoes weren’t actually attracted to the person that was wearing the Victoria’s Secret perfume – they were repelled by it.”

  Stow that one away for summer — we now return you to your regularly scheduled chilly weather gripes and grumbles.

  The Efficacy of Some Commercially Available Insect Repellents for Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) and Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) [Journal of Insect Science]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uKroger Buys Midwest Grocer Roundy’s For $800Mr

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  The merger bug has been hitting the supermarket aisle for several years now, and it continued Wednesday as Kroger announced it would buy midwest grocery chain Roundy’s – the owner of Pick ‘n Save – for a cool $800 million. 

  Under the deal, Cincinnati-based Kroger will take on Roundy’s $646 million debt, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

  Under the proposed deal, Roundy’s will continue to be based in Milwaukee and current senior management will remain in place.

  Kroger says that while it expects to have a cost savings of $40 million over time, it doesn’t plan to close any stores.

  The deal represents the second big change for Roundy’s, which exited the Minneapolis-St. Paul market last year, selling 18 Rainbow stores there to a group of local grocery retailers for $65 million, the Journal Sentinel reports.

  After the merger, Kroger will operate more than 2,700 supermarkets in 35 states and employ nearly half a million people.

  Kroger to buy Pick ‘n Save stores parent Roundy’s in $800 million deal [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uPandora Mulling The Idea Of An Offline Listening Featurer

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• It’s tough out there for a streaming music service like Pandora, with competition from Spotify and Apple Music constantly putting on the pressure to get more subscribers. But there’s one thing Pandora’s rivals have that it doesn’t — an option for subscribers to listen to music offline. That may change in the future.

  If you’re unfamiliar with Pandora, it works a bit differently than other streaming services, which allow users to make playlists and play specific songs on demand: Pandora lets users create certain “stations” based on a band, song, musical artist or genre, and then acts like a DJ, playing songs it thinks you might like. Users can skip songs or tell Pandora they don’t like it, thus, teaching it a lesson for next time.

  But if you’re not online, there’s no way to take the tunes with you. Things could be changing, if comments from a Pandora executive speaking at the M1 Summit mobile conference in San Francisco yesterday are any indication, reports Forbes.

  “It’s something we’re looking at,” said Lisa Sullivan-Cross, vice president of growth marketing at Pandora, in response to a question posed to several mobile companies on a panel. “It’s on our minds.”

  When Forbes pressed further after the panel, Sullivan-Cross wouldn’t say much more, beyond acknowledging that Pandora knows customers want it, but, “I don’t know if or when.”

  Offline mode might be an alluring idea, but Pandora would still have to face obstacles: there could be additional licensing fees from music labels, or it might not be so easy to actually implement. Subscribers might not even want the option, especially if they have to pay more for it. But it’s in the realm of possibility.

  Pandora Eyes Offline Mode For Its Music Service [Forbes]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist