Bacon restaurant closes down because of the bacon stink
May 20th, 2013 • 1 Comment
A bacon restaurant in San Francisco – called Bacon Bacon – has been ordered to shut its doors forever, thanks to the smell of bacon.
Who would have ever thought a bacon restaurant would stink of bacon? Well, for one, the neighbours who complained about it.
The owners apparently had months to address the “porcine aroma” and “grease disposal” issues, but alas, didn’t manage to do so.
“It’s frustrating,” said owner Jim Angelus. “Two weeks ago, the health department showed up saying we had no permits. So we had a hearing and one person showed up saying they were opposed.”
“They told us we had long enough to resolve these issues – and as a result, we have to cease operations May 17.”
Piggin’ awful, etc.
Yahoo Japan admits to possible heist of 22 million users’ data
May 20th, 2013 • 1 Comment
Yahoo may be trying to act cool with their purchase of alt.porn-fest Tumblr, but they’ve got problems to sort out before they start going on about Sasha Grey and making Miguel memes.
It has been revealed that its Japanese users might have had their data stolen.
Yahoo Japan sent out a weak-wristed not to their users, saying that their personal data may’ve been swiped, but didn’t say sorry or anything. It must be a small number of people then? Only 22 million user IDs.
“There was unauthorized access from the outside to the server that is managing the Yahoo! Japan ID was found. Where he was to strengthen the monitoring system in response to the unauthorized access occurred on April 2, it is what it is detected suspicious login,” they said, adding that the “result of the investigation, it has been found that files that have been extracted only the ID of 22 million maximum of has been created.”
“The files that were created, such as ‘secret question’ you need when you have forgotten your password… data other than ID is not included,” it said. ”ID is the public information that is available to everyone, it is displayed on the service, personal information of everyone in the user is not included at all.”
Tumblr users will now be worried that all their tentacle porn will be leaked at some point in the future, alongside pictures of bearded men stroking cats and self-confessional journals about how their exes are awful.
Rise of the Contactless Payment Machines…
May 20th, 2013 • 4 Comments
Near Field Technology or NFT is one of technology’s latest strides. It means you can pay for things using a mobile phone, or with a bank card flashing a sideways wireless symbol. If you are using a card this means you can save seconds of your time by not entering your PIN into the terminal. Handy if you have only seconds to live or if you have forgotten your PIN number. But is it any use?
Well, lots of people seem to think so, with latest figures from Visa Europe showing 46% increase in contactless payments across Europe in the first three months of this year. That’s a total of 19m transactions, with 5.3m of them here in the UK. We are, in fact, “leading the way in contactless usage” along with Spain and Poland.
However, as with all things technological, there is also scope for what cyber-geeks like to call a cock up. The BBC Money Box programme has been investigating claims that so-called Near Field Technology has become more of a Not-So Near Field, with customers reporting contactless payments being swiped from cards minding their own business inside purses or wallets.
Rosemary from Sussex wasn’t even trying to save time- she only realised the contactless payment had been taken when the machine wouldn’t allow her to enter her PIN on her old-fangled debit card. Paula from London had a double whammy- the till took the payment from both her purse-enclosed contactless card and the debit card whose PIN she dutifully entered into the keypad. Both ladies were shopping at Marks and Spencer and both claim the contactless card was at least a foot away from the card reader. Another customer reported a similar issue at sandwich shop Pret a Manger.
Contactless cards are only supposed to charge the card when it is tapped on the reader, and in Marks and Spencer’s case, the readers are only supposed to work within 4cm, although they do work through the material of a purse or wallet. Tests undertaken by Martin Emms, a researcher into new payment formats at Newcastle University also showed that payment would be taken if cards were placed within a wallet at the side of the card reader. According to the card issuers, the cards themselves are only supposed to work within 5cm of the contactless payment point.
For the ladies concerned, having a purchase accidentally charged to a credit card is probably a nuisance, but perhaps not the end of the world. But what if this happened to someone who was already in a punitive overdraft at the bank? That one mistaken charge could result in daily penalties being slapped on an account, and a refusal of access to funds. Or if you’ve been doing something clever and transferred balances on a credit card, so you don’t get charged interest unless you make a purchase.
While far-reaching payment systems are probably a glitch that won’t cause most people a problem, perhaps this is a sign we should beware of all this digital tech. We’ve all seen Terminator…
Deals Of The Day – Monday 20th May
May 20th, 2013 • No Comments
Sky have recently snapped up O2’s broadband service and are in the process of amalgamating everything together – and if you’re a current O2 customer, you could cop for a nice little bonus as a result.
The Murdoch-flavoured media giants are offering free TV and Broadband for a year for O2 Broadband customers in advance of the switchover of their service to Sky. It’s the Entertainment Extra+ service with 48 HD channels etc, plus their Broadband Unlimited package. You’ll have to fork out for Sky line rental instead of O2 line rental, which may work out worse for some, but it does include free caller display which O2 doesn’t. Sky are saying that the package you get for free is worth £468. Not often you get something nice for free is it?
WAIT! THERE’S MORE …!!!
• Daft Punk – Random Access Memories MP3 download – only £5.00.
• Need For Speed Most Wanted (PS Vita) – just £14.86.
• Samsung 64GB Class 10 MicroSD – yours for £38.08.
• The Complete Bourne Movie Collection (Blu-ray) – only £15.95.
• Lego City Undercover (Nintendo WiiU , limited edition with Chase McCain minifig) – only £32.99 delivered.
• Assassin’s Creed 3 (PS3/360) – yours for £14.99.
• Far Cry 3 (PS3) – just £17.59 delivered.
• Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix (limited edition) – yours for £24.29.
• Lexar 8GB SDHC card class 6 – £3.99 delivered.
• The Last of Us – Joel Edition (PS3) – only £39.00 (with code).
• Toshiba 3TB USB 3.0 3.5” desktop hard drive – just £90.96.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
Will buying Tumblr make Yahoo cool?
May 20th, 2013 • 1 CommentAw, poor Yahoo. It’s like a dopey, snot ridden Napoleon Dynamite who tries to be in with the cool kids by buying the latest trainers and hoping for the best. Its board has just approved a $1.1bn deal to buy Tumblr, which is where hipsters unveil their animated gifs of Azealia Banks riding a My Little Pony through space with Mr Miyagi.
For Yahoo, who are basically Richie Cunningham to Tumblr’s Fonz, this is a big deal in terms of how they’re perceived, but whether the kids are going to care is another matter. Remember when News Corp bought Myspace? MEGALOLZ.
Although Yahoo will own Tumblr, its foundr, 26 year old vowel-hatr David Karp, will remain in charge of the New York based site, which now hosts 108 million really terrible blogs.
CEO Marissa Mayer, who used to be with Google, is making some sweeping changes at Yahoo, trying to bring them into the 21st century and away from that crazy dial-up modem scene of 1998. #yolo
But Mashable has already reported a backlash amongst Tumblr users, who are all like ‘Dude – Yahoo are like, so OLD. I bet they even remember Tori Amos.’
What is the average Facebook user like?
May 20th, 2013 • 8 Comments
Someone, for their own sweet reasons, has conducted a study into the activity of 1m Facebook users in a bid to see what Mr and Ms Average are like on the social network.
Apparently, Mr Average Facebook is jaded with their career by the time they get to 30, which is eight years earlier than Ms Average Facebook. It has also been noted that Ms Average Facebook peaks talking about TV at 44, while Mr Average Facebook natters about the box at 31.
Women at 34 prefer to talk about exercise, while blokes lay off that ’til they’re 45. Basically, it looks like men and women are avoiding each other on Facebook.
The only result which showed some harmony was travel, with men most interested in the topic at 29 and women at 27.
Researcher Stephen Wolfram said: “Some of this is rather depressingly stereotypical. And most of it isn’t terribly surprising to anyone who’s known a reasonable diversity of people of different ages… but what to me is remarkable is how we can see everything laid out in such quantitative detail [and through data analysis create] a kind of a signature of people’s thinking as they go through life.”
Meanwhile, over on MySpace and G+, a tumbleweed passes by and a lone church bell peals.
The Government wants to know about your financial wellbeing
May 20th, 2013 • 1 Comment
a worried man, yesterday
On Friday, the Money Advice Service (you know, that annoying ‘Ask Ma’ advert) asked for “evidence to help draw up a new national strategy to help improve the UK’s financial wellbeing.” Basically, they are going to ask everyone, including charity organisations to tell them about projects and initiatives which have successfully improved people’s financial wellbeing.
Most people would probably argue that having a job, more money or a lower cost of living would improve their financial wellbeing, but the Government, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that instead, people need a “blueprint” to help them manage their money. The survey will also find out whether people have got any better with money since the last survey was produced by the FSA (now the FCA) back in 2006. And perhaps they will find that people have got better with money, after all it’s a case of needs must for many.
But perhaps Ma could just ask MoneySupermarket.com how people are feeling about their money (or lack thereof). In conjunction with mental health charity Mind, Moneysupermarket have found that, somewhat unsurprisingly, our current or future financial situation is the thing that causes the biggest stress for almost a third of us (31%).
The research showed that 18% say it is their current financial situation which causes them the most stress, and a further 13% are most worried about their future financial situation. Third up is health worries, also at 13%. To make matters worse, 72% of people worried about their finances think Professor Brian Cox is talking out of his behind and that things can only get worse, with half of these people blaming the rising cost of living for ever-increasing money worries. Ten per cent of people think uncertainty over their benefits will add to their financial stress- probably those middle class couples worrying if one of their earnings is going to tip over the £50,000 threshold so they will lose their child benefit.
Almost half of all respondents (48%) claim they are either frequently or occasionally worried about their financial situation, with 18 to 34 year olds (62% of the relatively-young) being worst affected.
The Ma final report is due out in 2014.
END OF DAYS
May 20th, 2013 • 14 CommentsRemember that stupid grizzled orange sack of human flesh who was arrested for encouraging her kid to come with her to the tanning salon – even though her daughter was only 6 years old? Patricia Krentcil of New Jersey was charged with child endangerment when the kid turned up to school with terrible sunburn, but the charges were dropped.
But instead of learning that you don’t fry children under cancertastic UV tubes, she’s released a music video under the name ‘Tan Mom.’ And it’s the WORST MUSIC VIDEO EVER.
Internet culture really is a suppurating stinkhole of crap at the best of times, but Tan Mom will make you eat your own FACE with embarrassment. Embarrassment that you belong to the human race, and that you live in the same universe as Tan Mom, who looks like a discarded chip wrapper in a Rick Parfitt wig. If you could go back to the beginning and just not be born, that would be better than watching Tan Mom writhing around in a bikini and ‘singing’ like an autotuned bull mastiff.
Released by gossip channel and black void of moral doom TMZ, Tan Mom’s video is an attempt to launch her as a celebrity in the same vein as Octomom and Teen Mom. Instead, it is a low point in history on a par with the Holocaust. In fact, this video is a source of such great shame to humanity that we may as well all just throw ourselves on a burning pyre.
I urge you to end it all now – before she makes a sex tape. No wait – she kind of is.
Over in Glasgow, there’s a nightspot called The Shimmy Club and it has one unusual feature, away from the dancing, drinking and awful promotional photos they stick on Facebook; at the Shimmy, you can spy on girls while they’re in the toilet.
For £800-a-pop, you can hire two private function rooms which look into the ladies toilets through a spyglass mirror, like you see in police interrogation rooms. Oh, and there’s nothing in the ladies toilets telling patrons that they’re being watched. Basically, posh voyeurs can watch women in the toilet like they’re a trainee Chuck Berry.
A spokesman for the club, owned by the G1 Group, have said that they don’t allow male or mixed-sex groups to hire the rooms, despite the fact social networks are full of photographs showing quite the opposite. And, to add to this, it seems the club are deleting any negative comments they receive on Facebook. As you can see from the photo above, the ‘records and dancing’ watermark is visible on an image that shows a fella watching two women through what appears to be a two-way mirror.
One woman contacted a paper to say: “I find it absolutely outrageous that a club can get away with this, it is a complete invasion of privacy of the unsuspecting girls. Nowhere is it made clear that this is the case so when visiting the bathroom for the first time, there are women bending over the sink, pouting into the mirror to redo their lipstick, adjusting themselves whilst unknowingly being watched by people on the other side.”
Of course, Shimmy doesn’t offer the same service looking into the gents.
Gary Hall, of G1 Group, said it was “definitely not the case” that the women’s toilets were fitted with two-way mirrors, despite the fact that earlier in the week, you could book a ‘smoke and mirrors’ booth from the club themselves. Ironic that, when you visit the club’s website, one of the first things you see is an animation of the word ‘LAWLESS’.
A petition soon sprung up against the club too. While the club are denying the two-way mirrors, the video of the launch night possibly seems to show the spy-glass around 50 seconds in. Pretty damning all-in-all.
We’re all dealhunters. But feel dirty afterwards.
May 17th, 2013 • 4 Comments
Do you remember when hunting for the best deal on you new white goods purchase was fun? That sense of achievement when you got 12% off RRP? No? Apparently you are not alone.
A new YouGov survey commissioned by EDF Energy found that 77% of us look for deals because we feel under pressure to do so, and that most dealhunters do it (48% of us) do it out of a crippling fear that we are going to miss a good deal, rather than enjoying it when we do find one. Just 37% of us actually enjoy looking for deals- for the rest of us, it’s just another chore.
And being British, we like to take our time over our own suffering. Almost half of shoppers (49%) will take over two hours researching a £200+ purchase, with an estimated three million of us dedicating more than 24 hours of time researching every major purchase.
Technology has just made this unhealthy obsession easier to feed, according to YouGov. Consumers can search through millions of options on thousands of websites , checking vouchercodes, cashbacks and comparison sites to make sure that carefully-considered purchase is the best use of what little spare cash is around.
And after spending all this time researching, over a third of consumers consider themselves an expert on triple A rated fridge freezers and would trust their own finding above anything else. Thirty-three percent would trust a comparison site but only 12% would listen to their other half.
However, the report concludes that customers are suffering from ‘analysis paralysis’, faced with too much choice for one brain to handle; consumers end up shivering in a corner too scared to buy anything in case it’s not the best deal.
Sound familiar?
Rent rising five times faster than wages
May 17th, 2013 • 5 Comments
As the headline points out, rent is rising nearly five times faster than wages according to a report. The average rent in England and Wales has risen to £736 per month (up 3.9% on last year), so say the owner of Britain’s biggest lettings agencies.
With the Office for National Statistics noting that the average worker is getting a pay rise of just 0.8 per cent, it shows something of a toxic disparity in wages and rent.
In London, average rent has shot-up by an eye-watering 7.6%.
David Newnes, director of LSL Property Services (owners of Your Move and Reeds Rain) said tenants are having a nightmare because wages are “seriously under water,” adding: “Rents everywhere are higher than a year ago at a time when pay has crept up at the slowest rate in years.”
With energy bills rising by an appalling rate, the situation is pretty bleak indeed. Of course, if anyone is attempting to save for a deposit so they can buy their own house, they’re looking rather screwed at the moment.
Deals Of The Day – Friday 17th May
May 17th, 2013 • No Comments
Time for another round of tablet bingo. We won’t rest until we’ve found every available tablet at a reduced price for you, and there’s a couple more to cross off the ever-expanding list here.
First up, from the good folk at Dell, is the XPS Windows tablet. A whopping ten-incher, it’s been reduced from £399 down to just £249 for a limited period. If that’s too pricy for you, have a butchers at the Archos 80 Cobalt instead. You can have one for as little as £69, although it seems as though there might be a bit of an instore hunt required. A bit like hunting for a £69 Easter egg, if you like. Good luck…
WAIT! THERE’S MORE…!!!
• 11 nights in Gran Canaria from 23rd May – £145pp.
• Gears of War: Judgment (Xbox 360) – yours for £19.95.
• Duke Nukem Forever (PC) – just £0.99.
• Red Faction: Armageddon (PC) – only £0.99.
• Huawei Ascend W1 – yours for £99.
• Digital Games Mayhem – various deals at £99.
• Sony 500GB portable hard drive (USB 3.0) – just £35.99.
• Technika 40″ full HD LED TV with Freeview – only £207.
• Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360) – yours for £2.95.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
DEATHWATCH: EA ditches Wii U
May 17th, 2013 • 7 Comments
Nintendo’s Wii U has far from set the world alight. They’ve been trying to flog them for cheap, and no-one is really taking the bait. To make this beleaguered console look even more doomed, EA have backed away, saying they won’t be developing games for it any more.
Nintendo know they’re in trouble with the Wii U as it is consistently being outsold by older consoles. One thing they’ve said, regarding the lack of success, is that there aren’t enough titles to buy for it, and EA pulling out isn’t going to help.
“Wii U was not able to maintain the initial sales momentum after the beginning of 2013 due to a delay in the development of subsequent software titles,” it said. ”Operating loss increased primarily due to the sales of ‘Nintendo 3DS’ and ‘Wii U’ being weaker than expected,”
EA, meanwhile, are still excited about other consoles. “We have never been better positioned for the launch of new technology, either mobile or console,” said EA.
Angry man launches site about call centres
May 17th, 2013 • 4 Comments
Frustrated man, Nigel Clarke, has launched a website listing the call centre menu sequences for accessing a myriad of services, in a bid to cut out loads of wasted hours in our lives. He kicked off his project after losing the will to live while on the phone to various companies.
Not surprising as some automated menus have nearly 80 options.
Clarke uses the example of speaking to an adviser at HMRC, which only requires pressing four buttons but takes six minutes to get through each menu level.
Mr Clarke said of his pleasepress1.com site, that it is a “labour of love” which he built after seven years of creating post-it notes of sequences he used regularly. Using Skype and recording software, he amassed a huge amount of sequences, which sounds furiously sad, but great for us if we want to speed up the process of ringing a company.
So, if you need to reporting a water leak to Lloyds TSB’s home insurance department, instead of actually listening, you can now simply dial 1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, 4 instead of navigating 78 menu options.
“The companies have these systems in place for a reason,” said Mr Clarke. ”I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design. No menu is best – but if it is a necessity then design it properly. I think two levels maximum is ideal. Some stretch to three. You don’t really want much more than that.”
Let us know how you get on with it, should you use it.
Only older people can afford to go to festivals now
May 17th, 2013 • 11 CommentsRemember when festivals were full of young people with flowers painted on their boobs, indulging in free love? Well, now they’re more likely to be full of tedious over 30s with John Lewis picnic equipment and an endless supply of Dorset Cereal, according to a new survey by MSN.
It’s hardly surprising when you find out that the average cost for a British festival is now a staggering £423.01 – that’s including tickets, transport, camping equipment, bottles of Williams Brothers craft beer, crap straw hats and ukelele maintenance.
As festival goers are older these days, there’s also been an increasing trend towards older headline acts. It seems that when you hit 36 it’s impossible to process new things, so campers are much happier to see established acts from back in the days when they were happy and had an intact hairline. In fact, 43% of the 2000 festival goers polled said they preferred to see acts that had been around a decade or more.
The average age of festival punters who go to T In The Park is 37, with Glastonbury at 36 and Reading and Leeds at a relatively sprightly 35 years and eight months.
So come on, Reef – start rehearsing ‘Place Your Hands’ – you’ve got work to do.
