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Akamai’s top 10 worldwide best average internet connection speeds for the end of 2014. It’s that time again! Internet company Akamai keeps a sharp eye on the state of broadband at home and abroad, and delivers a quarterly report lining up just how we’re doing. But despite a whole huge pile of brand new data, the story remains the same: the U.S. still has a lot of catching up to do if we want to consider ourselves among the global broadband elite. The new report ( PDF ) has the usual mixed bag of news. The good bit: improvement is widespread, year over year. All 51 states (the report includes the District of Columbia) saw increases by the end of 2014, as compared to the end of 2013. However, the rest of the world is improving, too. And in many cases, faster. While the U.S., on average clocked in at 12th globally in the first half of 2014, by the year’s end we find ourselves sitting at #16. As usual, of course, comparing a country with an enormous web of state-level governments and a 3...

( ChrisGoldNY ) We need some kind of global scoreboard to keep track of which Uber services are legal in which municipality. Surely there is such a thing at Uber HQ, but we have no such thing here at Consumerist. Good news for fans of low-cost transport who are visiting France, though: Uberpop, the peer-to-peer taxi service that any safe driver can work for, can temporarily still operate in France. Uber’s ride-summoning app offers different services at differing price points: there’s also UberBlack, a service for licensed livery drivers who pick you up in whatever the local equivalent of a Town Car is. Most countries don’t have a problem with this version of the service, but it’s the lower-cost services with a lower barrier to entry that have met with opposition from governments and taxi drivers alike everywhere from New York City to Japan . That service is called UberX in the United States and UberPop in Europe, and the company has had to stop offering the service altogether in many ...

( Atwater Village Newbie ) Baseball season is only days away, and the L.A. Dodgers are fresh off a 94-win division title season. Yet a large number of Dodgers fans can’t watch the games on TV because the cable sports channel owned by the team and Time Warner Cable has yet to reach deals that would let other pay-TV operators in the region carry the station. And TWC’s answer to these fans is mind-bogglingly idiotic. Fierce Cable’s Daniel Frankel is the latest to try to get a real reading from TWC on the odds that SportsNet L.A. will be made available to anyone in the L.A. area other than TWC customers. He even indicts himself for picking up a recent news item that gave a glimmer of hope to many Dodgers fans that they might see a game on TV this spring. Frankel notes that TWC is even telling its investors that they should expect the company to continue losing money on the SportsNet L.A. deal for the foreseeable future because the likelihood of reaching a carriage deal with other pay-TV...

( Amazon on YouTube ) Reaching for another roll of paper towels in the pantry only to find you’ve run out just when little Timmy has flung yet another bowl of pureed peas against the wall is annoying, as is realizing your roommate hasn’t bought toilet paper during your moment of need. In an attempt to solve that problem, Amazon announced a new line of branded buttons that reorder certain common household products with one push, using your home’s WiFi connection and a connected Prime account. We first heard rumblings of Amazon testing out a one-button system for ordering things last fall , at which point it was still uncertain whether such a thing would make it market or not. It seems that’s going to be a reality, as Amazon unveiled a line of free Dash buttons that can be stuck to say, the washing machine or the bathroom mirror, allowing Prime customers to simply push them when they need more Tide or Olay moisturizer. From Amazon: Dash Button comes with a reusable adhesive and a hook ...

( kevindean ) Will calling emergency services repeatedly about a bar bill summon the cops? Sure, but they won’t be helping to sort out whether or not you were overcharged for a beer, they’ll be charging you with abusing the 9-1-1 system, an offense that can bring up to a year in jail and a fine that is the equivalent of many, many beers. Police say an Idaho man dialed up 9-1-1 a dozen times early Monday morning with an urgent non-emergency, reports KXLY.com : He claimed that the bar he’d just been booted from had overcharged him for his beers. “He was demanding that the place he got kicked out of didn’t over charge him for him being down there,” the town’s police captain said. According to the police report, the man was kicked out of a bar around 1:13 a.m. and an officer gave him a courtesy ride home. Apparently he felt close to the police at that point, and decided to give’em a few more rings. “He had been intoxicated, so we gave him a ride home and shortly after we started receiving...

Pac-Man eats his way through the Gray’s Ferry section of Philadelphia. Have you ever looked at a Google Map and thought to yourself, “It would be flippin’ awesome if I could play Pac-Man on this street grid”? Probably not, because that is not something that occurs to most people. But it did occur to some folks at Google who have incorporated, perhaps temporarily, a button that lets you Pac-Man-ize your Google Map. It’s really simple, just go to maps.google.com , pick an area in which you would like to play Pac-Man, then click the button on the bottom-left of the screen (next to the one that switches between graphical maps and satellite maps). Then you just play Pac-Man. The functionality does limit the size of the street map maze. So if you’re zoomed out too far, or zoomed in too close, the screen will automatically adjust to a level that works with the game. Two employee-friendly (but not employer-friendly) notes: It seems to default to muted sound, so you won’t have to worry about ...

( Colin ) The prospect of using our phones in place of wallets is exciting to absent-minded people everywhere, but how well is adoption of mobile payments going in the real world? A recent survey looking at adoption of Apple Pay a few months out from its introduction shows that consumers are enthused about it, but are having trouble finding retailers where they can use the service. Near field communication chips and mobile payments are nothing new, but they were new to Apple’s lineup of smartphones. but making Apple Pay part of the iPhone 6 meant that the capability rolled out to millions of people all at once. According to a survey by Phoenix Marketing International, about two-thirds of people who own the new iPhones at least signed up for Apple Pay and added a credit card to their accounts, but the problem has been on retailers’ end. 88% of survey participants who set up Apple Pay went out into the world and tried to use it, Phoenix reports, but almost half of those users (47%) say t...

(Not the Pizza Hut in question. SchuminWeb ) While the human mouth gets to have all the fun of tasting, chewing and eating delicious food in all its various incarnations, it can also be the portal to pain when something isn’t right. In the case of a man who said he broke a partial denture at Pizza Hut, the weapon of destruction came in the form of “excessively hard croutons.” The Tennessee man was awarded a $2,400, interest and court costs in a judgment against Pizza Hut, reports Roane County News , after he sued the restaurant for his damaged denture. His lawsuit claimed the restaurant caused personal injuries and damages to his specialized partial denture by “negligently serving at defendant’s restaurant excessively hard croutons.” The customer’s attorney said they approached Pizza Hut to find a resolution before going ahead with the lawsuit, but nothing came of it. “We tried to work it out with their insurance company, but they never wanted to talk,” his attorney said. “So we went ...

The unlikely partnership between Starbucks and Dannon parent company Danone that Consumerist first reported on back in 2013 is finally coming to fruition with the launch of an exclusive line of yogurt-bases smoothies, parfaits and fruit cups at 4,300 of the company’s coffee shops. Starbucks announced today that it will add a line of three Evolution Fresh Smoothies at select stores in Washington state, Oregon, Alaska, Northern California and Idaho. The smoothies, which will come in flavors like Sweet Greens, Strawberry and Mango Carrot, were first piloted in select Starbucks stores last year. The new menu offerings will consist of exclusive-to-Starbucks Dannon Greek yogurt and hand pressed juices from Starbucks-owned Evolution Fresh. Customers can customize the new drinks with add-ins like protein powder and kale. Starbucks’ latest endeavor doesn’t end there, though. As it was suggested in 2013, the company plans to begin selling Evolution Fresh Greek yogurt parfaits in about half ...

( honeylamb ) Last fall, we were the first to tell you about Conal O’Rourke, the Comcast customer in California who spent more than a year dealing with consistent over-billing — including $1,820 worth of equipment he’d never ordered nor needed — and horrendous customer service who was fired from his job at Comcast-consulting accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers after he took his complaint to the office of the Comcast controller . Shortly after publishing that story, Conal sued Comcast over the incident , and now he’s amended that lawsuit to allege invasion of privacy and to put a higher dollar amount on the damages being sought. The amended complaint [ PDF ] adds a seventh cause of action — invasion of privacy — to the original complaint, claiming that Comcast’s public statements about Conal’s customer service calls involve a public disclosure of private facts. After Conal filed suit, Comcast released a statement to Consumerist and others, explaining that, “As part of this investig...

( JeepersMedia ) Kraft Singles won’t come with a stamp from the Academy of Nutrition and Diatetics reading “Kids Eat Right” anymore, after a group of dietitians signed a petition calling to put an end to the partnership. The petition claims that having such a logo makes it seem like the group is endorsing the cheese product. The two sides say the deal is over due to “misperceptions” that are “overshadowing the campaign,” reports the Associated Press . The petition also seeks transparency about the terms of the deal that allowed Kraft to slap the logo on its products. Kraft and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said the effort was supposed to raise awareness about kids not getting enough calcium and Vitamin D, but Kraft didn’t reveal how much money it forked over for the right to use the logo. It was supposed to be a three-year deal, and would’ve included a website and, among other things. A Kraft spokeswoman says they’re still figuring out how to end the effort. “That collaborati...

It seems like just yesterday we were dreaming of a mega-luxury online retail platform where we could buy all the designer brands our wallets will never be able to afford. That’s probably because it was one day ago that reports began to swirl that online merchants Yoox and Net-A-Porter were thinking of merging to create one big high-end shopping destination on the interwebs. Those talks appear to have escalated quickly, as Yoox confirmed this morning that it has clinched a deal with Net-A-Porter to create a “business combination.” The financial aspects of the deal were not made public. The merger creates a new group to be known as Yoox Net-A-Porter Group with expected revenue of $1.4 billion. Under the deal, the new company is expected to attract nearly two million high-spending customers and over 24 million monthly visitors worldwide. Both Yoox and Net-a-Porter – which is owned by Swiss company Richemont – launched in 2000 as a way to provide more upscale brands in one place. How...

In cable, merger mania isn’t just for the biggest players. The next tier down wants to play, too. And so we have the announcement this morning that Charter is planning to buy regional operator Bright House Networks for a cool $10.4 billion. Bright House is, according to Charter’s press release, the sixth largest cable operator in the U.S., serving about 2 million customers in Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, and California. And Florida really seems to be Charter’s main target here: the company has no presence in that state at this time, nor will the Comcast/TWC merger land them customers there. Charter is, of course, intimately involved in the pending Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger. If that trio gets its way with regulators, Charter will directly trade roughly a million and a half customers to/from Comcast, as well as own a significant stake in the new spin-off organization, GreatLand. Charter has also indicated that should the Comcast/TWC deal for whatever reason not come to ...

Over the weekend, StubHub filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors , alleging that the team and the ticket company are forcing Warriors season-ticket subscribers to use Ticketmaster if they want to resell their seats to anyone. Ticketmaster is now defending itself and says that it is the one that’s on the side of sports fans. “We are disappointed that StubHub has filed a baseless lawsuit that asks the courts to help prop up its business against true fan-friendly competition,” reads the statement from Ticketmaster about the StubHub lawsuit. “NBA teams like the Golden State Warriors have implemented ticket exchanges powered by Ticketmaster because they want ticket resale to be a secure experience, not an opportunity for scalping and fraud. The exchanges are growing in popularity because Ticketmaster and its partners have worked hard to make ticket resale much safer and more transparent, uniquely serving true fans. Ticketmaster does not force any custome...

( Mike Mozart ) Imagine that you’re visiting a large restaurant at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. You take a seat and give your order to a roving server, who taps it into a tablet computer and takes payment. Then your food arrives, which is…Big Macs and fries? What is this? When did McDonald’s start offering table service? It’s part of an experiment at the 500-seat McDonald’s at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, where the fast-foodery will try a bold new experiment in bringing food to people. They can either place their orders on a kiosk ( like at their locations with fancy $8 burgers in Australia ) and then sit and wait for their food to arrive. Easterbrook calls this set up the future of McDonald’s, which raises one inevitable question: would we be expected to tip here in the U.S.? The job of new McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook is to figure out how to coax people all over the world back into the chain’s restaurants, away from quick-serve interlopers like Chipotle and Panera. G...

( Great Beyond ) Texting while driving isn’t the only distracting activity drivers are partaking in behind the wheel while they should be paying attention to the road, according to a new survey. There are people primping, changing clothes, going to the bathroom, taking selfies and even strumming away on the guitar while driving, making the roads more dangerous for the rest of us. In a survey conducted for Erie Insurance by Harris Poll of 2,019 adults to bring attention to National Distracted Driving Awareness Month in April, participants admitted to doing a wide variety of things behind the wheel that aren’t actually driving, reports the Chicago Tribune . “A distraction is anything that causes a driver to take their eyes off the road, their hands off the wheel, or their mind off the primary task of driving safely,” Doug Smith, Erie Insurance senior vice president of personal lines, said in a statement. “Our survey found drivers unfortunately are engaging in a wide range of distracting...

( Jamie McCaffrey ) Future Shop is the best name ever given to an electronics retailer, and also a chain in Canada that for the last 14 years has been owned by Best Buy. Best Buy also operates stores in Canada, which means that Future Shop has really been competing with itself. Until now. All of Future Shop’s current stores closed abruptly this weekend, and half will soon re-open as Best Buy stores. Future Shop had 131 stores, and plans to keep 65 of them as Best Buy locations . The rest of them will close entirely, putting 500 full-time and 1,000 part-time employees out of work. It may have been a terrible idea all along for Best Buy to keep all of Future Shop’s stores open in competition with its own stores, especially when both stores are similar big-box electronics formats. Some of their stores are even neighbo(u)rs in the same shopping plazas, as you can see in the photo illustrating this post. Instead of withdrawing from the country entirely, as Target is currently doing, Best B...

( David Goehring ) Late last year, Consumerist reported on a string of debt collectors paying to use prosecutors’ letterheads as a way to intimidate consumers into paying their debts. While the company facing the wrath of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today didn’t exactly pay to use the letterhead, they allegedly used the documents in a deceptive manner to get consumers to enroll in costly financial education programs. According to the CFPB complaint [ PDF ], between 2009 and 2014 National Corrective Group masqueraded as prosecutors and used deceptive tactics to intimidate consumers into paying hundreds of dollars in fees to avoid supposed jail time. The California-based operation, along with Victim Services Inc. and American Justice Solutions, Inc., make up the largest administrators of bad check diversion programs in the United States. Check diversion programs are often offered by state and district attorneys’ office to consumers accused of writing bad checks as a wa...

That Elon sure does know how to tease… (via Twitter ) Earlier today, Tesla founder and Twitter tease Elon Musk announced that his company would be unveiling a “Major new product line” on April 3, while cautioning immediately that it’s “not a car.” So what could it be? The biggest bet is something related to Tesla’s batteries. Last month, Musk revealed that Tesla was working on lithium-ion battery packs for home and business use . “We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses fairly soon,” he told investors at the time. These batteries could possibly be used with things like solar panels to collect and distribute electricity as needed, especially in developing parts of the world or in areas where it’s impractical to run electrical wiring or operate a gas-powered generator. “A lot of utilities are working in this space and we are talking to almost all of them,” JB Straubel, chief technology officer for Tesla ...

( imgur ) TV production and distribution is a complicated entanglement of interests involving studios, distributors, networks, and pay-TV services, not to mention deals any of these people might have with other companies like home video or on-demand streaming sites. That’s been one of the huge impediments to getting live-streaming of all TV content — having to please all those parties who may not all agree. And that appears to be why Sling TV users are now finding that they can’t access every show on all of the networks. Some Sling users have taken to this reddit thread to discuss why they unable to watch Criminal Minds reruns on A&E, or why certain movies are not available on Lifetime and other channels in the Sling lineup. “Due to rights restrictions, this content cannot be streamed on Sling TV,” reads the message that users get when trying to watch these shows. Even though Sling has only been widely available since early February , we’d heard no reports of rights restriction...

(JeepersMedia) We initially reported that people with RadioShack gift cards would have to use them up by March 5 or lose the entire balance. Great news if you happen to have found one buried in the far corner of your junk drawer: RadioShack has extended the period that they’re accepting gift cards to March 31. The chain reportedly would like to wind things down tomorrow so they don’t have to pay April rent in their thousands of remaining stores, which is understandable. Whether they hand the keys over to designated auction winner Standard General or to a team of liquidators, another company will most likely be in charge as of April 1. After that, we’re not even sure whether there will still be RadioShack brand stores around: one possible outcome of the bankruptcy auction is that the chain will be liquidated entirely , with only the remaining dealers and franchise stores maybe continuing to exist. Without a RadioShack supply chain, those stores could become something else. People who d...

( pjseeger ) The owner of a steakhouse who added an extra-large genital enhancement to the bull on the restaurant’s sign says he’s removing the nether bits that caused a slew of complaints from residents, but he’s not doing it because of the controversy. He says he woke up one day and realized that the bull would be just as effective on the sign if it didn’t have the long cone-shaped phallus it originally included, reports The Spectrum . But it’s not because of all the naysayers out there he says, adding that he called up the city to explain himself first. “I told them I am not removing the penis for you or because of your complaints. I don’t like you. I’m doing it for me,” he said. “I just decided it would look better without the weenie. And oh my God! It’s beautiful.” City officials say that though a stream of complaints have come in from people about the restaurant since it opened in 2009, there’s no cause to revoke its business license. The owner says he filed all the proper paper...