uYour New Apple Watch Might Look Nice, But Will It Get Scratched?r

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• How many of us are toting around smartphones with cracked and scratched screens? No need to raise your hand; we can’t actually see you. Now imagine that your phone screen was continuous exposed to the elements in a position on your body where it can easily get scratched, and you’ve imagined the life of an Apple Watch. So can the pricey accessory take a licking and keep on… well, not ticking exactly, but you get the idea.

  Our colleagues at Consumer Reports purchased some Apple Watches (both the aluminum Apple Watch Sport and the more expensive stainless steel version; but not the $10,000 gold watch) last week and took them right into the labs to put the new devices through its paces.

  The Sport uses hardened “Ion-X” glass for its watch face. Ion-X appears to be similar to Corning Gorilla Glass, which you’ll find on a lot of smartphones.

  The stainless steel Apple Watch actually uses a super-hard sapphire-crystal face favored by high-end companies like Rolex (not to be confused with Ronex, a brand you can buy from a street vendor for less than the cost of a Whopper).

  To test scratch resistance on the watches, CR turned to the old Mohs hardness scale that you hopefully remember from middle school science. You remember, gypsum can scratch talc, quartz can scratch gypsum, topaz can scratch quartz, and diamonds are forever, at least according to Shirley Bassey.

  Just like the Batcave, the CR labs happen to have a Mohs hardness kit that applies pressure using picks of varying hardness to determine where a material falls on the scale.

  “The Mohs scale uses common materials, so it’s easy to understand,” explains James A. Harrington, a professor of materials science and engineering at Rutgers University. “When it comes to their structure, glasses and crystals are as different as apples and oranges.”

  While glass is a generic term that can mean a lot of things, sapphire is a mineral with a Mohs rating of 9/10, just below diamonds. And as you’d expect, the sapphire crystal watch face went unscratched even up to a 9 on the Mohs kit.

  The Ion-X glass face was almost as impressive, only scratching when tested with a level-8 pick on the Mohs kit.

  For a non-scientific test of the Sport, CR also tried to scratch the glass with a steel key but to no avail.

  In response to people who have pointed out that some sandpaper can scratch the Apple Watch face, CR points out that corundum, with its Mohs score of 9, is commonly used in sandpaper.

  “So it’s not that suprising that sandpaper would scratch the glass of the Apple Watch Sport,” writes CR’s Glenn Derene. “The lesson: Keep your belt sander away from your Apple Watch Sport, and keep your diamond rings away from your Apple Watch.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uStudents Affected By Corinthian Colleges Closures Have Some Relief Optionsr

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• 

  (C x 2)

  Although many of us saw the final collapse of Corinthian Colleges Inc. on the horizon since last summer, for the nearly 16,000 students who were currently enrolled at the company’s 28 remaining Everest University, Heald College and WyoTech campuses news that they no longer have a school to attend was no doubt jarring, opening a door to questions about their future education and the debt burden they now carry.

  Consumer groups and the Department of Education are trying to quickly address former Corinthian College students’ concerns, but most answers will come with time.

  “Many students will be panicked and upset,” Robyn Smith, an attorney working with the National Consumer Law Center, tells Consumerist. “It’s super important that they understand, that while this is a difficult time, they are in the best position, in terms of getting both federal and private loan relief.”

  Such was the case for one current CCI student who emailed Consumerist. The woman, who attended Everest University online, says she found about about the school’s closure when trying to login for class today.

  “I have been trying to get a hold of my school to figure out what I need to do, but no one will respond to my calls or emails,” she says. “I do not think it is right to just spring this on students and teachers, and I believe that they should of informed us of this before so that we could have been better prepared.”

  This student’s ordeal is similar to the situation that thousands of CCI students found themselves in last year when the company announced it would close or sell nearly 100 campuses across the country as part of a deal with the Department of Education.

  At the time, Consumerist compiled a list of what students might expect as a result of their campus being closed or sold. While many of those options – such as teach-out programs – are no longer viable for CCI students, most will now benefit from the closed school discharge.

  Students attending a school slated for closure, or if that student withdrew within 120 days of the school closing, would be entitled to a closed school discharge, meaning they would have no further obligation to repay their Direct Loans, Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans (which include Stafford and PLUS loans), or Perkins Loans.

  Although a closed school discharge does not generally cover private student loan debt, students who attended CCI campuses in California – with the exception of Heald College – may be eligible for relief under the state’s Student Tuition Recovery Fund.

  The fund, which is administered by the California Department of Consumer Affairs Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, provides tuition reimbursement to eligible students enrolled at the time of school closure or within 60 days of the school’s closure.

  In a statement [PDF] released Monday, the Bureau announced it would be at CCI’s 13 Everest College and WyoTech campus locations in California Tuesday and Wednesday, April 28 & 29, to advise students about their options.

  “The Bureau had anticipated such a development and prepared, and will now execute,a massive effort to assist the more than 4,000 Everest and WyoTech students in California,” the Bureau said in a statement. “About one-third of the Bureau’s staff will travel to the 13 campus locations to provide students with applications for the Student Tuition Recovery Fund (STRF) and information about getting federal student loans discharged, and to help students obtain their transcripts, financial aid documents and other important records.”

  Several other states – including Arizona, Ohio, Oregon and New York – have similar tuition recovery programs available to eligible students. Information about those programs, as well as legal contacts, can be found on the Student Loan Borrower Assistance website.

  Smith tells Consumerist that the California attorney general’s website will soon act as a landing page for many student affected by the CCI closure. Legal services organizations and other groups are expected to provide contact information and dates for school closure discharge clinics on the site.

  Additionally, students from CCI campuses in California can click on their exact location to see which organizations they should contact with questions.

  While students who attended CCI are likely trying to grapple with their new-found situation, Smith warns students not to jump into a new relationship with other colleges.

  “They need to watch out,” she tells Consumerist. “What happens when a for-profit closes is that another swoops in on students and starts to market their programs. We caution students to be smart on their next education choice, sometimes local community colleges are better, more affordable and have better programs.”

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSen. Al Franken: Still Not Enough Competition For Cable & Internet Accessr

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• 

  This is what fixed-line broadband competition (or lack thereof) looks like in Minneapolis.

  While many opponents of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger were setting off fireworks last Friday to celebrate the defeat of this deal that would have concentrated nearly 60% of the nation’s high-speed broadband accounts under one company, realists among us are pointing out that the end of that ill-fated engagement does nothing to change the already dismal competition landscape in many markets.

  Last year we used maps to show how little competition there is for cable and broadband customers in many U.S. markets where consumers often have one choice for affordable high-speed Internet access.

  A subsequent FCC report confirmed that only 36% of the country has two or more choices for broadband, and fewer than 10% have three or more options.

  And as we showed with the case of one Washington state homeowner, sometimes the government data shows that you have multiple options for wired broadband when in fact you have none.

  The end of the Comcast/TWC merger doesn’t make the broadband market more competitive. Even if you were to break Comcast up into the companies it acquired over the years to get to its current size, competition would still be effectively nonexistent. That’s because most cable providers have exclusivity deals in the areas they operate. So even if you were to shatter Comcast into 100 smaller operators, each would likely still be the sole broadband choice for consumers in their respective market.

  In an op-ed piece for Time.com, Sen. Al Franken from Minnesota — one of the few federal lawmakers openly opposed to the merger — reviews the lessons learned from the Comcast/TWC failure, including that “there is far too little competition in the cable and broadband markets.”

  Given the lack of localized competition, and the fact that Comcast is still the dominant provider of broadband for U.S. consumers, Franken contends that there is “Not exactly an incentive for the company to provide first-class service, as many Comcast customers can attest.”

  The senator says that over the last year, as the merger made its way through the regulatory review process, “other companies who did business with Comcast told me they were afraid go public with their opposition because they feared retribution.”

  Comcast had maintained throughout the process that the savings from the TWC acquisition would allow it to innovate but Franken counters that “Innovation… comes from competition. And in important sectors of our economy, there still isn’t nearly enough competition.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uSupreme Court To Decide If You Can Sue When Data Aggregators Are Wrongr

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  (BenBalter)

  
  There’s a true 21st-century case a-brewing at the Supreme Court, one of those unsexy legal questions with enormous potential repercussions. At heart of the matter is personal data. There’s an insane amount of it out there, on each and every one of us, and it’s all for trade, barter, and sale. But that doesn’t mean it’s all correct or true. So if some website or service goes around saying you’re someone you’re not, do you have the right to sue?
  

  The answer is already “yes” if the misinformation causes actual harm you can point to in court. So, for example, if you’re erroneously listed in a criminal database despite having a squeaky-clean record, and that causes you to lose job offers during the background check, that’s a clear harm you can obviously sue over. But in the general sea of information, when you can’t point to a specific harm, is it still wrong of services to publish (or share) incorrect information?

  That’s what the Supreme Court is now poised to decide when it hears Spokeo v. Robins in its next term.

  Spokeo is, basically, a records aggregator. Anyone can use it to look up the address, phone number, email address, and social media presence of anyone else. It’s a powerful tool, not only for general research and contact but also unfortunately often used to bad ends when internet hate mobs want to chase down and harass or threaten a particular target.

  

  The highlights of what information Spokeo promises to return on basically anyone.

  Worse: its aggregated results are also often wrong, wrong, wrong. Spokeo makes no claim that all its data is valid; it merely aggregates data from other sources, after all, and can claim that the fault is in the original. And so their listings often contain incorrect data, sometimes conflating different people with the same name into a single search result.

  One man, Thomas Robins, sued Spokeo after finding his own profile was wrong in a whole bunch of ways. According to the AP, Robins’s profile “incorrectly stated his age, that he had a graduate degree, was employed and married with children. In fact, Robins was unemployed and looking for work.” Robins sued Spokeo under the Fair Credit Reporting act, claiming that the incorrect information erroneously matched to him damaged his job prospects.

  The first court found that Robins had no right to sue because he had no actual harms he could point to the errors causing. On appeal, the ruling was reversed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that no actually, by publishing incorrect data Spokeo did violate the FCRA and Robins had the right to sue. And that brings us to Spokeo appealing right back, this time to the Supreme Court.

  As SCOTUSblog explains, the Constitutional issue that brings this into the Court’s purview is a question of “whether an individual can sue based on a simple claim that a right created by federal law has been violated, without proof of an additional injury growing out of that violation.”

  If Robins wins and the class action suit he’s pursuing is verified, Spokeo could face damages of $1000 per violation. Given how many millions of people the company aggregates records on, and how many potential errors are in every profile, that could easily be millions or billions of dollars. So it’s easy to see why Spokeo would want to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.

  But in our data-driven economy, where we the collective consumers are more often than not also the product being traded and sold, the case also has repercussions far beyond Spokeo.

  Tech giants are closely watching the case. Facebook and Google between them are probably the two biggest personal data collectors and traders in the world, and nearly all of us interact with one or both several times daily. If they and others are going to have liability for making sure every piece of personal data they move is accurate, that would be a huge shift for them.

  The case also points to basically the existential question of the 21st century economy: what are the legal, moral, and ethical rules around our data and our privacy? What burden do individuals bear? What burden do companies bear to make sure that information is entirely accurate? And where in the chain does that burden fall — on the first collector? On the resellers? On an aggregator like Spokeo?

  It will be good news for consumers if businesses that trade our data need to make sure it’s right before they can sell it. But that’s just the first of many likely future challenges to face consumers and businesses in the personal-data-driven app-era market.

  High Court to Consider Lawsuits Over Personal Data [Associated Press]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uNylabone Recalls Puppy Starter Kits For Possible Salmonella Contaminationr

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• Puppies chew everything: fingers, toes, shoes, furniture…well, anything else within their reach. Nylabone offers a kit with a few different types of durable bone for your puppy to try in order to redirect their chewing urge toward something more that’s cheaper than shoes and healthier for their teeth. That seems like a good idea…unless the bones they’re chewing are contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

  Salmonella can affect dogs and humans alike. It’s a more severe illness for people, causing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. Infection can also have rare complications that can be fatal. Dogs can experience diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, but they can also be carriers and transmit Salmonella to humans who haven’t touched the contaminated food item…or dog toy, in this case.

  Here’s how to identify packages that might be affected: they’re labeled with lot number 21935. The UPC is 0-18214-81291-3, and they have an expiration date of 3/22/18. All of these will be printed at the bottom of the back of the package.

  If you have the kit, you should return any unchewed portion to the store where you purchased it for a refund. If you have any questions about the recall, bark at Nylabone at 1-877-273-7527.

  TFH Publications, Inc./Nylabone Products Recalls Puppy Starter Kit Due To Possible Salmonella Health Risk [FDA]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uPetition Calls For Loan Relief For Corinthian College Studentsr

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• 

  (thisisbossi)

  Ever since for-profit education chain Corinthian Colleges began its downward spiral last summer, consumer groups, students and legislators have urged the Department of Education to provide current and former students relief from student loans they took out to finance an education based on deceptive recruitment practices. Now that CCI has closed its remaining Everest University, Heald College and WyoTech campuses, consumer advocates say discharging federal student loans held by these students – and protecting students of other for-profit institutions – should be of immediate concern for the Department.

  The National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project started a petition that aims to ensure consumers receive the relief they deserve and that the Dept. of Education holds CCI and other for-profit colleges accountable for their use of misleading and deceptive efforts to enroll students and entice them to take out thousands of dollars in costly private and federal loans.

  According to the petition [PDF], the Dept. of Education ignored its duty to protect Corinthian students despite multiple audits and government and state investigations having revealed widespread deception throughout CCI’s recruitment system, including the use of inflated job placement rates and graduation rates.

  “The Department facilitated Corinthian’s sophisticated scheme to bilk thousands of low-income students of their dreams, while leaving taxpayers to foot the bill,” the petition states. “Now, the Department relentlessly pursues Corinthian borrowers for repayment of their federal loans. It has unjustly shifted the financial harm caused by its own mistakes onto the backs of students who are not at fault and who were deceived into taking out federal loans.”

  For these reasons, the Department should provide immediate relief to all Corinthian students, the petition states.

  Robyn Smith, an attorney working with the National Consumer Law Center, tells Consumerist that although many students who attended the CCI campuses that closed on Monday will be covered by closed school discharges, the petition aims to provide relief for all CCI students, even those who were enrolled or previously dropped out of the schools but were subject to the same deceptive practices.

  While the “Corinthian 100″ – hundreds of students who are refusing to pay their federal student loans in protest of the government’s support of the crumbling for-profit college chain – along with nine attorneys general and several legislators have asked the Dept. of Education to provide students relief from federal loans through a defenses to repayment mechanism, the NCLC’s petition instead urges an across the board relief system for affected students.

  Under the defense of repayment option, the Department would provide loan relief to students on a case-by-case basis. However, that system could take a significant amount of time before students see any help, and that’s time they simply don’t have.

  “We are asking the Department to set up a system to work with the attorneys general to provide widespread relief to all students throughout the country harmed by CCI,” Smith says.

  The system would provide an automatic discharge of student loans without the student actually having to apply for the relief if that student’s school was part of state attorneys general investigations that found the campus engaged in deceptive recruitment practices.

  Students that aren’t covered by evidence in current investigations wouldn’t be out of luck either. Smith says the petition suggests a simplified procedure to provide student relief, such as sending students a form that lists the deceptive practices that CCI relied on. If a student can testify under oath that those practices happened to them, they would receive the discharge.

  Smith says a simplified, across-the-board system is more appropriate than the current case-by-case determination because most students don’t realize they might even qualify for relief.

  “This is important because by requiring students to apply, many students don’t understand their rights or don’t get contacted,” she says. “Only six to seven percent of students have contacted the Department bout discharges in the past.

  “We’re urging the Department not to implement heavy standards,” she says. “They shouldn’t be erecting barriers, but should be liberally providing relief.”

  While the petition’s timing coincides perfectly with thousands of students left with large student loan bills after attending CCI schools, Smith says the NCLC’s mission is to help all students.

  “The importance of this petition goes beyond Corinthian,” Smith says. “Corinthian isn’t the only college that has engaged in these deceptive practices.”

  And so, the petition includes a section urging the Department to provide relief for students of any for-profit higher education institutions if state and federal investigations find violations.

  “The Department should take aggressive and timely appropriate action when it knows that a school is violating state and federal laws,” Smith says. “The petition is important looking both at relief for Corinthian students and fixing some of the brokenness we have in the oversight relief systems.”

  The petition from NCLC – which is collecting signatures from both individuals and organizations – will be presented to the Department of Education in early May.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uGM Ignition Death Toll Rises Again, Now At 90r

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• 

  (paul bica)
  

  For more than a decade, General Motors staffers and federal regulators ignored signs of defective ignition switches in various GM vehicles. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were being hurt or killed because the car company failed to acknowledge its error.

  The latest report from the compensation fund set up to review claims of injury and death related to the defect now puts the number of approved death claims at 90, nearly seven times as many victims as the car company originally acknowledged.

  Another 163 injury claims have been approved by the fund, which doesn’t disclose amounts offered to victims or their families.

  A claimant isn’t required to accept an offer from the compensation fund, but if an offer is accepted, that claimant gives up their right to pursue any further related legal action.

  The AP reports that 118 offers have been made, and all but five of them have been accepted.

  Though the fund stopped accepting claim applications months ago, nearly one-quarter of those 4,324 claims are still under review. In some cases, this is due to incomplete documentation.

  A bankruptcy court recently ruled that GM could not face certain civil claims related to the recall. As part of the company’s 2009 bankruptcy restructuring, the “New GM” could not be held liable for all the bad behavior of the pre-bankruptcy “Old GM.”

  Even though the recall didn’t occur until 2014, the court disagreed with plaintiffs who alleged that there had been a cover up by New GM executives and that they should be held accountable for their alleged fraud.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist