Owners and users of nearly 30 different Hewlett-Packard laptop models, beware: It turns out an unknown number of computers shipped with a keylogger embedded in them, tracing and recording your every keystroke. [More]
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[Update] Delta Grounds All Flights Worldwide After Major Systems Outage
By 8.8.16
Update: As of 8:40a.m. EDT, Delta has lifted the full ground stop and some flights — “limited departures” — are starting to be able to take off. However, customers flying this morning should still expect lots of delays and cancellations, Delta says, and should check in with the airline before heading to the airport if you’re not there already. [More]
Abercrombie & Fitch May Be Getting Worried Now That European Tourists Aren’t Shopping As Much
By 5.23.16
Even as Abercrombie & Fitch was struggling to bring American customers back into it stores, there was always one group the retailer good count on: European tourists who flock to the stores, waiting in long lines to purchase A&F-branded clothing. Abercrombie might not be able to count on that foreign bread and butter forever, however. [More]
SpaghettiOs Recalled Because Red Plastic Pieces Are Not A New Flavor
By 11.13.15
After some customers complained, the Campbell Soup Company discovered that the red plastic lining of cans of Original flavor SpaghettiOs has peeled off, ending up in the tomato sauce and posing a choking hazard. The recall includes 355,000 cans, which seems like a massive amount, but is quite small compared to the total number of SpaghettiOs cans sold nationwide. [More]
Exotic SpaghettiO Flavors Render Recent Shrink Rayage Less Logical
By 10.27.15
We were under the impression that when SpaghettiOs Shrink Rayed their standard-size cans to 14 ounces across all flavors to celebrate the product’s 50th birthday, this was done to harmonize the package size across the whole brand. Plain pasta in tomato-ish sauce, sliced hot dogs, meatballs: across the board, they would all be 14 ounces. That made sense. Then we saw the pizza flavor. [More]
Bad News: Security Hole Can Let An Attacker Take Over Your Android Phone With A Single Text
By 7.27.15
It’s a bad news Monday for up to 950 million — yes, that’s almost 1 billion — Android device owners worldwide. A vulnerability that would let a hacker take over your phone remotely has been announced, and it’s a doozy. [More]
SpaghettiOs Celebrates 50th Birthday By Shrinking Cans To 14 Ounces
By 7.13.15
Happy 50th birthday, Spaghetti-Os! You’re a fun and traditional American brand and the favorite food of 4-year-olds across the nation. How are you going to celebrate? By taking back up to an ounce of your former can size? That doesn’t sound very festive, SpaghettiOs. [More]
Two Big Reasons The New Broadband Standard Is Bad News For The Comcast Merger
By 1.29.15
None of the big ISPs are happy about today’s FCC vote drastically increasing the bare minimum that qualifies as “broadband.” But even though executives at Verizon, AT&T, and plenty of others are probably muttering aloud rude words in the C-suite right now, Comcast and Time Warner Cable have good reason to be more worried than most. [More]
Nope, It’s Still Too Soon To Use Pearl Harbor To Sell Booze And SpaghettiOs
By 12.9.13
When has enough time passed to turn a tragedy into just another day on the calendar to sell drink specials? Some marketers thought that the 72 years that have elapsed since December 7, 1941 was enough time that it’s OK to mention the anniversary in their marketing. One mention was pretty innocuous, the other…not as much. [More]
Uh-Oh, These Chicken Broth Cans Contain Spaghetti-Os
By 9.3.13 — Updated: 10.1.13
Do you have any 14.5-ounce cans of Swanson chicken broth around the house? You might have a strange but tasty surprise in store once you open up the can. Thanks to a mixup at the factory, 80 cases of cans labeled “Swanson broth” are actually Spaghetti-Os with meatballs. Campbell’s has warned customers not to eat the surprise pasta, which makes us sad. [More]
Toyota Warn Its North American Plants Of Possible Shut-Downs
By 3.24.11
The earthquake and subsequent devastation in Japan has prompted Toyota to warn its U.S. plants that they may have to shut down, due to parts shortages from Japan. [More]
QuickBooks' Latest Update Destroyed Mac Users' Desktops
By 1.10.08
Here’s one reason to use an online service to store financial data: no buggy updates to deal with.* Intuit’s December update for 2006 and 2007 versions of QuickBooks Pro on the Mac platform wiped the user’s Desktop folder and anything stored there. The company released a patch, but it didn’t work if you launched QuickBooks while connected to a wireless hotspot, oops. The latest patch, so far as we can tell, simply disables any further updates to the application—on January 3rd the company “began automatically feeding a patch to Mac QuickBooks users that permanently switches off the program’s upgrade mechanism to prevent a repetition of a data disaster.” In the meantime, since they can’t offer a way to fix the deleted Desktop folders, they’re offering rebates to users who buy a copy of the data recovery program Data Rescue II.
