update

Androdollar

Samsung Allows Customers To Disable Bixby, Leaves Them With Worthless Button

Samsung’s answer to Siri, Alexa, and Cortana could soon be homeless: While the company continues to work on a smart speaker to house Bixby, it’s allowing customers to evict the artificially intelligent assistant from its dedicated button on their smartphones.  [More]

Atwater Village Newbie

Tesla Changes Autopilot Again, Restricts Driving To Posted Speed Limit On Some Roads

Tesla’s Autopilot has faced a slew of issues and controversies this year following the first fatal crash to occur while the semi-autonomous function was activated: from Germany asking the company to change the feature’s name to updates that included radar and driver enhancement safety checks. Now, the electric carmaker is making another change, rolling out an update that limits the vehicle to driving at the speed limit when on certain roads.  [More]

Reddit

Samsung Software Update Will Deliberately ‘Brick’ Remaining Galaxy Note 7 Phones

If you’re one of the few folks still using a recalled, potentially dangerous Samsung Galaxy Note 7, you need to find a replacement soon, as Samsung’s next software update for the Note 7 will render it useless. [More]

William Hook

iPhone Owners Complain That iOS Update Drains Batteries Unexpectedly

A week after Apple admitted that some iPhone 6S batteries weren’t woking properly and agreed to fix the power source for free, the company’s latest iOS update has been found to unexpectedly drain device batteries in a matter of seconds.  [More]

Atwater Village Newbie

Tesla Supplier Says It Broke With Carmaker Over Autopilot Safety Concerns

In July, automotive tech company Mobileye, which had provided parts for Tesla’s Autopilot assisted-driving system, announced that it was ending its relationship with the carmaker. Now Mobileye says it parted ways with Tesla because Autopilot was “pushing the envelope in terms of safety.”  [More]

Tesla Updating Autopilot Feature With Radar, Driver Engagement Safety Check

Tesla Updating Autopilot Feature With Radar, Driver Engagement Safety Check

Two months after Tesla said its Autopilot feature wasn’t going anywhere amid a federal safety investigation into what part the feature played in the first fatal crash to occur while the semi-autonomous function was activated, the electric carmaker has unveiled a software update that it claims will better incorporate the use of radar, and which the company says could have prevented the May crash.

[More]

Adam Fagen

Apple Adds Organ Donor Registration To Health App

Most of us are probably fairly familiar with the idea of signing up to be (or not to be) an organ donor when renewing our driver’s license. Apple’s working to take the Department of Motor Vehicles out of the equation by pushing organ donor registration with its new operating system. [More]

Jaap Joris

Apple Sent Two Technicians To Investigate Music Download Deletions

When your Apple product starts acting up, maybe you go the Genius Bar, maybe you call tech support, maybe you just ask a friend for advice. Or maybe, if your blog post about Apple Music apparently deleting thousands of downloaded files makes national news headlines, two Apple techs come knocking on your door.  [More]

Target Believes Porn That Played Over California Store’s PA System Come From An Outside Source

Target Believes Porn That Played Over California Store’s PA System Come From An Outside Source

A few weeks ago, shoppers at a California Target received an unsettling surprise when the unmistakable sounds of professional coitus aired loud and clear over the store’s PA system. While an investigation into the incident continues, the retailer believes the pornographic audio originated from an outside source.  [More]

One Month After Closing Stores For Plumbing Repairs, Walmart Actually Files For Permits

One Month After Closing Stores For Plumbing Repairs, Walmart Actually Files For Permits

When Walmart closed five stores in four different states on the same day, claiming that they were shutting down due to unspecified “plumbing problems,” people became suspicious. Some citizen theories involve the military, and others involve the nationwide OUR Walmart walkouts that began at one of the California stores targeted for temporary closing. One piece of evidence was that Walmart hadn’t yet filed for permits for any of these urgent renovations. Well, now they have. [More]

Green Dot, the company that services Walmart MoneyCard accounts, says an investigation gives it reason to believe this may be a hoax.

Story Of The Returned $10,000 Walmart Debit Card May Be Hoax

Earlier today, we told you about the odd story of a man in Alabama who claimed to have found a Walmart prepaid debit card containing more than $10,000 on it, and who says he did the right thing by trying to return it to the store. However, the more we learn about this story the more questions come up. [More]

Chef Who Threatened Yelper Over Negative Review Issues Public Apology

Chef Who Threatened Yelper Over Negative Review Issues Public Apology

We recently brought you the story of a restaurant customer in Cleveland whose one-star Yelp review of a new eatery led to the chef/owner sending the customer angry, threatening messages via Facebook. The Yelper subsequently told us that he’d received a private apology from the chef, but that the restaurant continued to mock him through its social media outlets. After weeks of not directly addressing this story in a public forum, the chef posted an apology late last week. [More]

More Info From Yelper Who Says He Was Threatened Over Negative Review

More Info From Yelper Who Says He Was Threatened Over Negative Review

Earlier today, we told you about the apparent dispute between a Cleveland consumer and the chef/owner of a local restaurant who allegedly reacted to the customer’s negative Yelp review with a series of nasty, threatening messages on Facebook. Now that diner has reached out to Consumerist to share more of his side of the story. [More]

Can’t Remember Where You Parked? Google’s Here To Remind You

Can’t Remember Where You Parked? Google’s Here To Remind You

Apparently, we consumers can’t be trusted to remember where we parked. But have no fear, Google is here keep us from wandering around the mall parking lot aimlessly looking for our vehicles. [More]

Pizza Hut Wants To Hire Back Manager Who Refused To Work Thanksgiving

Pizza Hut Wants To Hire Back Manager Who Refused To Work Thanksgiving

Earlier this week, a Pizza Hut manager in Indiana was all over the news for taking a stand against his bosses’ demand to open the restaurant on Thanksgiving — and losing his job in the process. Now the folks at Pizza Hut HQ are finally talking about the subject and say it was all a big misunderstanding. [More]

Golden Corral claims these ribs found out by the dumpster were never served.

Golden Corral: Food In Dumpster Video Wasn’t Served; Father Of Employee Tried To Sell Video To Company For $5K

As we mentioned this morning, a video showing food sitting by the dumpsters of a Golden Corral restaurant in Florida has become an Internet sensation. Now the owners of the Golden Corral franchise featured in the clip are saying that all the food shown in the video was thrown out and the manager involved was fired. The franchise owners also claim that the father of the employee in the video tried to sell the clip to the company before it went public. [More]

Once people realized 1 washcloth + 1 towel = $10, they rushed to buy as many washcloth/towel pairings as possible.

JCPenney Says Coupon Code Users Can Only Get One Of Those “Free” Towels They Ordered Online

We told you last week about savvy online shoppers who realized that a JCPenney coupon code for $10 off purchases of $10 or more could be used to snap up a washcloth/towel combination that cost exactly $10. It also looked like the code could be used repeatedly, so some folks just kept ordering these items until JCP ran out of every possible color. But now the retailer is saying “not so fast” to customers who placed multiple orders. [More]

Customer Who Posted Olive Garden Receipt Says He Understands The Skeptics

Customer Who Posted Olive Garden Receipt Says He Understands The Skeptics

Earlier today, we told you about a receipt posted by an Olive Garden diner whose meal was comped, and about all the doubters that came out of the woodwork to claim it was a fake. We weren’t sure — we certainly wouldn’t put it past a clever marketing department — so we asked the man who originally published the much-debated pic. [More]