uLG Refrigerator Has Door That Becomes Transparent When You Knock On Itr

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• Most of LG’s Tuesday morning was given over to ooh-and-ah displays of its big, beautiful, super-thin (as skinny as 2.5mm), Ultra-HD OLED TVs, but we’ve all seen really large, expensive TV sets displaying vibrant images. The company’s more novel innovations were shown off during the tail-end of the event, when LG showed off its new line of premium appliances.

  For instance, there was the LG Signature washing machine that does away with the standard panel of buttons and dials and puts all the controls on the glass window.

  

  

  And not only does this machine retain the in-the-pedestal mini-washer that LG introduced at last year’s CES, this version is also a combination washer/dryer. According to LG, the machine’s drying function requires half the electricity of a traditional electric clothes dryer.

  Another cool idea with this washer: push-to-open. So if your arms are full of laundry — or maybe you’re talking on your phone and trying to load the washer at the same time — you can just push the door in and it will open; no having to put anything down to pull the handle.

  Speaking of easy-open, the new LG Signature fridge features two interesting innovations. The first is a floor-level sensor that allows people to use their feet to tell the refrigerator to open the door. LG claims that a nosy pet won’t trigger the sensor, but we’ll believe that when we see it.

  

  Then finally there’s the fridge door with a panel that turns transparent and lights up when you knock on it. Want to see if there’s milk, or if the butter is running low? Just knock and — assuming what you’re looking for is visible through that panel — you’ll know without having to open it.

  The fridge also comes with an interior clad in stainless steel, which doesn’t just look rad, but which LG claims will better moderate the inside temperature.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uLumosity Ordered To Quit Claiming Their Games Make Users Smarter, Prevent Dementiar

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• Improving every day at a casual mobile or computer game might make you feel like you’ve accomplished something, but does it make you smarter? It’s possible, but if recent ads from Lumosity made you wonder how a company can legally claim that playing a simple game can help stave off Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, well, they can’t. The Federal Trade Commission must pay $2 million to customers and a $50 million judgement to the FTC, though the latter has been suspended because the company doesn’t have that kind of money.

  You’ve probably seen or heard ads for Lumosity, which promised to provide a workout for your brain in just a few minutes a day of playing fun games on your computer, phone, or tablet. They advertised on TV, radio, podcasts, and bought ads on Google that popped up when users looked for information about various brain diseases.

  In addition to refunds and the the potential $50 million penalty, here’s what Lumosity has to do to avoid further wrath from the FTC and possibly the Food and Drug Administration:

  1. Lumosity is no longer allowed to make claims that using their games improves cognitive ability to increase performance or helps stave off damage from phyiscal, age-related, or psychological illnesses that can affect thinking and memory, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Turner syndrome, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

  2. The company can only make claims based on scientific research when it’s performed by qualified professionals and is completely randomized, blinded, and independent from the company itself.

  3. Lumosity and its representatives can’t call their product or a similar one “clinically proven.”

  4. If Lumosity’s claims about improved thinking and memory are true, that would make their game a drug, and subject to approval and regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

  5. User testimonials are great, but Lumosity solicited testimonials through a contest offering prizes like a lifetime subscription to the service, or a trip to San Francisco.

  If you subscribe to the service, you should receive a notice soon telling you how to end your auto-renewing subscription if you have one, and also letting you know about this settlement once it’s finalized.

  FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION v. LUMOS LABS, INC [Proposed Final Judgement] (via Courthouse News)

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uWhat You Need To Know Before You Take A Sleeping Pillr

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  When you’re having a hard time getting a good night’s sleep, you might reach for the pill bottle for a simple, chemical solution. And you’re not alone — according to a new survey from our colleagues at Consumer Reports, more than one-third of adults who complained of sleep problems at least once per week said they had used an over-the-counter or prescription sleep drug in the previous year.

  And why not? The Food and Drug Administration has approved these drugs to treat sleep problems, which means the agency has determined that their benefits outweigh the risks.

  “But those benefits aren’t as great as many people assume, and the drugs have important harms,” said Lisa Schwartz, M.D., a drug-safety expert at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine, who has worked with Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs on investigating sleeping-pill effectiveness and safety.

  As part of a deep dive into the problems we have sleeping, the Consumer Reports survey found that around half the folks who take sleep aids use the drugs in potentially harmful ways — by taking them more often than they should or for longer than recommended, or mixing them with other drugs or supplements.

  In general, sleeping pills should be reserved for short-term insomnia—such as that caused by jet lag, anxiety after the death of a family member, or job loss—says Watson at the AASM. For those limited situations, CR experts recommend following these precautions, which apply to prescription and over-the-counter sleep drugs:

  • Tell your doctor about all of the medications you take, including supplements. Many common drugs, such as certain antibiotics and antidepressants, can interact dangerously with sleep drugs.
  • Take the drugs only if you have time for at least 7 or 8 hours of sleep. Even if you’ve had that much sleep, don’t drive if you feel drowsy.
  • Do not take an extra dose if you wake up in the middle of the night.
  • Never mix sleeping pills with alcohol, recreational drugs, or other sleep drugs or supplements, including over-the-counter nighttime pain relievers and antihistamines, such as Benadryl Allergy, that contain the sedative diphenhydramine.
  • Start with the lowest recommended dose, especially until you know how the drug affects you.
  • Be cautious about frequent use. Taking sleep drugs regularly can breed dependence and raise the risk of adverse effects.

  You should also know what’s what before you take whatever happens to be in your medicine cabinet:

  Benzos: These drugs swam into the public awareness around the 1960s when diazepam (Valium) — part of a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines — was prescribed for restless housewives. Other benzodiazepines — estazolam, flurazepam (Dalmane), and temazepam (Restoril) are approved sleep aids, but they can still breed dependence and trigger side effects such as confusion and grogginess.

  “Z” Drugs: Doctors hoped these meds — eszopiclone (Lunesta), zaleplon (Sonata), and zolpidem (Ambien) — wouldn’t cause troublesome next-day drowsiness. But the FDA says they are prone to that, too, and linked to rare, though frightening, behaviors such as sleep driving and sleep eating.

  Belsomra: This is the first in a new class of sleep drugs to target orexin, a brain chemical linked to wakefulness and appetite. But it doesn’t seem to work better than older drugs, and it can trigger worrisome side effects, such as “sleep paralysis,” in which you are awake but unable to move.

  Trazodone: This medication is commonly prescribed for sleep — even though it’s approved by the FDA only for depression. Consumer Reports’ experts say not to take the drug for sleep unless you also suffer from depression.

  Over-the-counter: Sleep drugs you can buy without a prescription aren’t much safer than Rx drugs. In fact it’s easy to high doses of them because their active ingredients — the antihistamines diphenydramine and doxylamine — aren’t only in OTC sleep products such as Sominex and ZzzQuil. They’re also in nighttime pain relievers such as Advil PM and Tylenol PM, as well as allergy meds such as Benadryl.

  Why Americans Can’t Sleep [Consumer Reports]

  
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by consumerist.com via Consumerist

uMan Claims Burger King Sandwich Was Covered In Antsr

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• It wasn’t a dead mouse or a dishrag, but a Pittsburgh Burger King customer claims to have found something just as disgusting on his burger: ants.
  

  WPXI reports that the man purchased the burger for his girlfriend’s son at a local Burger King recently, and after handing the sandwich to the boy he discovered the unwanted tagalongs.

  “He opened it up and said, ‘Mom I don’t want this, there are bugs in it.’ I said, ‘No, there’s no bugs in there.’ Then I saw the ants crawling on the bottom bun and I took it right back,” the man says.

  The customers returned the sandwich to Burger King and the restaurant refunded their money and offered to make a new order. The man says he refused.

  A manager for the local Burger King denies that the insects came from the store, noting that the franchise pays for monthly inspections, which have come back clean.

  Still, the local health department is investigating the incident. An official for the department tells WPXI that the investigation could take five days and then they will decide if an inspection is warranted.

  A rep for the Burger King’s corporate office says that food quality is a top priority for all of its fast food restaurants.

  “We have spoken with the franchisee that owns and operates this restaurant, and he has assured us that they practice all local health department and brand food quality procedures and prescribe monthly preventative care with a reputable national provider,” the rep tells WPXI. “Most recent documentation shows a pest-free restaurant as of 12.29.15. The guest immediately had his money refunded and the franchisee is currently having the restaurant re-inspected.”

  South Side Burger King customer claims burger was crawling with ants [WPXI]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uNew York Program Will Pay For Two Years Of Recent Graduates’ Student Loansr

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  For many recent graduates, repaying their education debt obligations can be a struggle. For some in New York, that struggle just got a little less cumbersome thanks to a recently launched student loan forgiveness program that aims to help the debtors land on their feet after graduation.

  CNN Money reports that the state’s Get On Your Feet program, first proposed last year, will pay up to two years of student loan bills for eligible residents who have encountered trouble paying down their debt.

  Recent grads are eligible for the program if they earn less than $50,000 a year, graduate from a college or university located in New York after Dec. 2014, and currently live in the state.

  Additionally, grads must already be enrolled in the federal government’s income-based Pay As Your Earn (PAYE) program. That program allows borrowers to pay 10% a year of their discretionary income in monthly installments.

  Once enrolled in Get On Your Feet, the state will pay the difference between what the federal government covers under PAYE and the remaining loan payment.

  The state program will only cover the cost of residents’ monthly bill on federal loans. Private loans are not eligible under Get On Your Feet.

  “Ensuring students are able pay for college and not saddled with debt is critical for both their individual success and the continued economic growth of New York State,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

  The governor’s office estimates that 7,100 recent graduates will take advantage of the program, which went live Dec. 31.

  By 2020, the office expects 24,000 New York graduates to enroll in the program, resulting in an estimated total debt forgiveness tab of $41.7 million.

  CNN points out that New York’s program is the first to offer student loan forgiveness based on income, but that at least 35 other states have similar programs that take into consideration a debtor’s work or where they live.

  In the past, some cities have used debt forgiveness as a tool to keep young adults in their areas. In 2014, Niagara Falls offered to repay a of recent graduates’ student loans in exchange for living in the city for two years.

  New York will pay your student loan bills for two years [CNN Money]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uEFF Test Shows That T-Mobile “Optimization” Of YouTube, Other Video Really Is Just Connection Throttlingr

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  We’ve had a bit of a high-tech tiff going on for the past few weeks between YouTube and T-Mobile. First, YouTube accused T-Mobile of unfairly degrading their video. T-Mobile replied nuh-uh, everything is simply optimized for mobile and the world is great. So who’s right?

  Well, that’s what the EFF set out to test.

  The tech rights advocacy group decided to find out exactly what T-Mobile’s system does to a video, and whether it’s fair to call it throttling or not. They took a scientific approach, using a T-Mobile phone with Binge On enabled, in the same place, on the same network, and at the same time of day. They tested video streaming against three other kinds of downloads and measured the connection speeds for each.

  What the EFF found is that T-Mobile’s “mobile optimization” of video does indeed apply universally, and not to consumers’ benefit:
  

  The first result of our test confirms that when Binge On is enabled, T-Mobile throttles all HTML5 video streams to around 1.5Mps, even when the phone is capable of downloading at higher speeds, and regardless of whether or not the video provider enrolled in Binge On.

  Netflix is a Binge On partner, so someone who uses the Netflix app on their phone with Binge On enabled could expect to see the lower-data stream. However, YouTube is not a Binge On partner — and yet video viewed through the website, not even the app, was also being affected.

  The drop in quality, meanwhile, is neither small nor unlikely to be noticed. For comparison, that 1.5 Mbps stream speed is about a tenth of what most modern smartphones are usually going to reach on most networks — average download speeds of 10-15 Mbps or higher are common nationwide.

  But it gets worse. The EFF continues:
  

  This is the case whether the video is being streamed or being downloaded — which means that T-Mobile is artificially reducing the download speeds of customers with Binge On enabled, even if they’re downloading the video to watch later. It also means that videos are being throttled even if they’re being watched or downloaded to another device via a tethered connection.

  That means it’s not just the Binge On partners, or streaming video, that are subject to the file “optimization” T-Mobile claims to offer. It applies to any video content you stream or download, from any site or service, as long as you have Binge On enabled.

  As the EFF concludes, that ends up having the exact opposite effect from the “optimization” that T-Mo promises. If the video in question is in high definition and the server sending it doesn’t have a way to adapt to the throttled T-Mobile device receiving it, the result is stuttering, uneven streaming — about as far from “optimized” as you can get.

  The EFF asked T-Mobile to verify their findings, and the company confirmed that “they don’t do any actual optimizations of video streams other than reducing the bandwidth allocated to them.”

  In the end, the EFF concludes, there’s basically no term for it other than “throttling.” It’s not “optimization,” because nothing actually gets better. It’s not “downgrading,” because there’s no change in the absence of other network traffic. It’s just a straight-up cap.

  But how does that fly with regards to net neutrality?

  The FCC’s Open Internet Rule, which went into effect in June, 2015, specifically states as one of its three bright-line rules that ISPs, “shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service.” As far as the EFF is concerned, T-Mobile’s choice to degrade all video content is in flagrant violation of that rule.

  The FCC, however, gets to be the final arbiter of that. The commission is already slated to meet with T-Mobile sometime this month about their Binge One plan; it seems likely that this newest wrinkle is likely to come up. From there, the FCC’s next action is anyone’s guess.

  EFF Confirms: T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately to All Video [Electronic Frontier Foundation]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uSpirit Airlines Replaces Loudmouth CEO Ben Baldanzar

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  For the last decade, Ben Baldanza has been the outspoken, often crass leader of Spirit Airlines, the bottom-dollar carrier that was easily the most complained-about airline in the U.S., but which Big Ben declared was the country’s “most consumer-friendly” carrier. It looks like Spirit has fallen out of love with Baldanza, who has stepped down from his gig as CEO.

  The airline announced this morning that, effective immediately, it was installing board member Robert L. Fornaro as President and CEO. If Fornaro’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the CEO of AirTran when that discount carrier was purchased by Southwest.

  Baldanza, known more for bizarre marketing moves like releasing survey results showing that people hate his airline, was rather subdued in his explanation for his exit.

  “Following the tremendous growth and success of Spirit over the last 10 years, the Board and I have concluded that this is the right time to implement an orderly succession plan,” explained Benny B. “Bob is the right choice to lead the Company through its next phase of growth.”

  While Baldanza may be talking up all the longterm success of Spirit during his tenure, the Florida-based airline’s stock is now only about half of what it was when it peaked in Dec. 2014. This is due in no small part to larger airlines cutting their prices to compete during the last year.

  Lest you think that this change in leadership could signal a shift in direction for Spirit, Fornaro says the airline’s focus will remain on “delivering a customer-friendly product and providing the lowest total price to the places we fly.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist