Free Urdu English Islamic, IT, Urdu Story , Ebooks Library | PDF Docx Format | Learn Online

After Beats Electronics and Music scored $3 billion when it became part of Apple, not everyone was happy. A former partner of Beats executives Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, for one, who sued the pair in 2015 , claiming they’d swindled him out of money that should’ve been his. A judge has now dismissed key claims in the former partner’s lawsuit. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Fahey issued a summary judgment that ties up the main part of the double-crossing case, the Los Angeles Times reports. Noel Lee, founder of video and audio cable maker Monster, was an early partner of Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Iovine, holding a 5% stake in Beats as part of a partnership between his company and the headphone makers. He alleged in the lawsuit that his former pals worked out a “sham deal” with HTC in 2011 that effectively ended Monster’s alliance with the company, and Lee’s stake in Beats was cut to 1.25%. He eventually sold off the rest for $5.5 million in late 2013, claiming in ...

How many times have you looked at an Instagram photo on your smartphone and instinctively tapped the picture to get a closer look at the details captured, only to be reminded that the photo sharing site doesn’t support zoom? Countless. Well, that’s about to change, finally.  After five years of making users squint and hold their smartphones within inches of their faces to decipher what’s in the background of pictures, Instagram announced it will add a zoom function to its set of tools. Instagram shared a video on its — what else? — Instagram account unveiling the new feature, noting iOS users can start zooming in today, while Android users will have to wait a few weeks. “Starting today, you can pinch to zoom on photos and videos in feed, on profiles and on Explore,” the announcement states. While the social network doesn’t say exactly how long it’s been working on the feature or why it wasn’t included in the original platform, Instagram says the tool is just the latest innova...

Following Korean news reports of the batteries in some new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones catching fire or exploding, Samsung says it is delaying shipments of the device pending additional quality control testing. “Shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 are being delayed due to additional tests being conducted for product quality,” the company tells Reuters , with a similar statement going to the Wall Street Journal. South Korean news agency Yonhap was among the first to report that Samsung had halted its shipment of the Note 7 to wireless providers in the company’s home country. That report says there are at least five claims thus far of the device exploding while being charged. A quick search of the U.S. SaferProducts.gov database didn’t turn up any stateside complaints about the Note 7, but does show that a number of Samsung customer have previously complained about their previous model Galaxy phones allegedly catching fire or smoking while plugged in for charging. What Samsung has n...

A United Airlines flight from Houston bound for London was diverted to Shannon Airport in Ireland, after extremely bumpy skies injured 12 onboard. Airport officials and the airline at first said 14 passengers and two members of the flight crew were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the flight — including cuts, bruises, and minor head injuries— but University Hospital Limerick later confirmed that 10 passengers and two crew members were admitted, and 11 people discharged so far. “All have since been discharged, except for one of our flight attendants,” United said in a statement. Flight 880 was diverted due to a “medical situation,” a Shannon Airport spokesman told NBC News , resulting from “severe and unexpected turbulence.” One passenger told the news station that things were flying “all over the cabin and kitchen area.” “One attendant [cracked] the side of her head and was bleeding,” he said. “My shoulders are really really hurting from grabbing onto the armrest during ...

When you see a UPS or FedEx truck in your neighborhood on a weekday, or a U.S. Postal Service truck on a Sunday, they’re probably there with some kind of delivery from an online retailer, and that retailer is likely to be Amazon. As more of our everyday shopping happens online, someone will need to bring those items to our doorsteps, but it may not necessarily be the carriers we’re used to. Amazon is taking over more of its own delivery functions. Is the retail giant trying to put its partners out of business? No, Amazon representatives say, as it adds cities and drivers to its Flex package delivery service . In a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story this week , though, we learned about the big picture of Amazon’s delivery projects in the context of its global ambitions and future projects. In a public interview at this year’s Code Conference put on by Recode, tech journalist Walt Mossberg asked Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos about the growth of white Amazon vans in some metropolit...

Last week, Dropbox asked longtime users to update their login credentials after learning that their information may have been compromised nearly four years earlier. At the time, the file-sharing site didn’t say just how many users were affected by this breach, but a new report shows that more than 68 million accounts were involved. Motherboard reported Tuesday that it was recently able to obtain a selection of files containing 68.6 million email addresses and passwords for Dropbox accounts. An employee with Dropbox confirmed to Motherboard that the data it received was legitimate and tied to the previously disclosed breach. Motherboard reports that the hacked passwords would have been nearly impossible to decipher. Nearly 32 million of the compromised credentials include passwords secured with a strong hashing function bcrypt, while the remaining passwords include a random string — called a “salt” — added to the password process to strengthen them. Patrick Heim, head of Trus...

When you think of designer goods that are prime targets for thieves, you might think of stuff like handbags, jewelry, and clothing, perhaps. But coolers? Really? Yes, really, there is one specific brand of cooler popular among the outdoorsy set that keeps getting stolen, reports the Wall Street Journal : it’s made by Yeti, a company that has a super popular line of luxury outdoor gear. The coolers are especially prized, with prices starting at $250 for the smaller models and up to $1,300 for a version that can hold two tuna or three dressed elk. The coolers are designed to endure the rigors of nature, like say, a bear chomping on it. To that end, Yeti coolers earned a seal of approval from the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, an organization dedicated to preserving grizzly habitats. This popularity has driven the coolers to popularity not only among campers, but among thieves who have been swiping them from campers, stores, beaches, and boats all around the country, the WSJ notes...

All Walmarts are, bluntly, not created equal. Some have better customer service than others and are just plain more pleasant shopping experiences. And if you’ve felt like the Walmarts in richer ZIP codes are more likely to be the nicer ones, well, one study says you’re right. A study published this year took a look at Walmart customer satisfaction by analyzing the 35,000 total Yelp reviews for all Walmarts nationwide. And the trend the researcher found is… disquieting. The reviews covered a total of 2.840 stores. Among them, the study found, reviews for stores in areas with a lower average income were significantly worse than reviews for stores in areas with higher incomes. And worse: even controlling for average area income, the higher the percentage of black or Latino residents in a certain ZIP code, the worse a Walmart there would rate. The researcher running the study didn’t just look at the numerical ratings stores got; he also looked at the words reviewers were using to desc...

In 2015, the average household spent around $3,008 to go to restaurants and have someone else do the cooking and dishwashing for once. That’s a slight uptick over the previous year, but spending more money at restaurants doesn’t necessarily mean we’re eating out more frequently. Instead, Burger Business reports that the 7.9% spending increase seen in 2015 is likely tied to higher menu prices, not more frequent visits. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, households dedicated 5.37% of their income to dining out last year compared to spending 5.21% of funds in 2014. On the flip side, consumers are still spending plenty to eat at home, just not as much as typically seen in the past. In 2015, income dedicated to at-home food declined to 7.17%, compared with 7.42% in 2014. Analysts believe that while we all might like a night out or a quick bite from a local fast food or fine dining establishment every once in a while, consumers aren’t exactly heading to those resta...

It seems every week we’re reporting on ride-share drivers accused of mistreating the passengers they’re hired to take from point A to B, and this week is no different: an Uber driver in Massachusetts has been accused of stealing from an elderly disabled woman and assaulting her in the process. Prosecutors say a 21-year-old man went to an elderly woman’s house to pick her up on Monday night in Malden, reports CBS Boston , though she hadn’t hailed him through the Uber app. Instead, she told police, she’d called him directly because he’d given her rides before. He said he had to use the bathroom, and went inside her home. When he came out, he allegedly said to her, “Sorry, I’m going to have to take this,” snatching her handbag and a bag of medicine, WHDH.com reports. The bag contained several hundred dollars and credit cards, she said. When she tried stop him, police said he assaulted her by shoving her. He was arrested on Tuesday and arraigned on charges of assault and battery on a p...

If you were planning on watching upcoming NCAA or NFL games at a Fox & Hound or Champps sport bar, you should call first. Dozens of locations for the bar/restaurant chains are shuttering only weeks after their parent company filed for bankruptcy protection.  When it filed for bankruptcy in early August , the now-ironically named Last Call Guarantor LLC operated 48 Fox & Hound locations and 23 Champps bars, along with 9 Bailey’s restaurants. Now, a company rep tells Nation’s Restaurant News that Last Call has shuttered a total of 25 locations, leaving 37 Fox & Hounds, 14 Champps, while Bailey’s only has 4 remaining eateries. Closed locations include those in Chattanooga, New Orleans, and New Jersey The restaurant closures came after Last Call received $5.4 million in financing from Kelly Investment Group — a private equity firm that specializes in restructuring — to keep the company in operation until a planned auction next month. Last Call said in a bankruptcy f...

Despite that popular childhood chant, finders is not keepers in the adult world, which is why a United Airlines employee is in hot water for allegedly boosting $129,000 in jewelry that was stashed in a passenger’s lost bag. Police arrested a customer service agent who works at Denver International Airport, accusing him of swiping a cosmetic case that had fallen out of a traveler’s suitcase, The Denver Post reports. Inside that case was $129,000 worth of jewelry. The woman who owns the jewelry arrived at DIA on Aug. 8 on a United flight from Aspen, and realized her case had gone missing, a search warrant says. She reached out to the Aspen airport, and was told that the case had been located and was on its way back to her in Denver. But police didn’t find the case when the flight arrived, so they took a look at security camera footage from the area. In it, the worker is seen “wrapping the cosmetic case in printer paper. He leaves and then returns with a brown paper bag,” according to...

Nuts are a delicious and filling snack and a tasty addition to a cookie, but they’re a lot less healthy when they come with a generous coating of Salmonella bacteria. That’s the case with macadamia nuts from Diamond, which have been recalled after routine testing turned up bacteria on a bag of nuts. The good news is that the bacteria turned up in routine testing, and hasn’t yet been linked to any illnesses among customers out in the real world. This may be because the bags included in the recall are marketed for baking, which might heat the products up enough to kill the bacteria. However, two different sizes of the nut packaging have been recalled as a precaution, and those include: 4 ounce package (1 cup), Chopped Macadamia Nuts 2.25 ounce package (1/2 cup), Macadamia Halves and Pieces Affected products will have a “best before” date between November 16 and December 7, 2017. If you have the affected products, or if you have any questions about the recall in general, conta...

Earlier this month, the Department of Education denied non-profit status to a chain of for-profit career colleges , accusing the schools’ operators of trying to avoid accountability with the switch. This week, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education fired back, suing the Department, alleging the government has a political agenda of putting career schools out of business. The lawsuit [ PDF ], filed yesterday in a federal court in Utah, probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who saw CEHE’s response to the government’s rejection of the schools’ non-profit status. Earlier this month, CEHE’s top executive told Consumerist the company would “fight this politicized attempt to smear our good colleges and our amazing students.” According to the complaint, CEHE — which is seeking a court declaration that the colleges are non-profit institutions and should be regulated as such —  the DOE’s decision to deny status was “arbitrary and capricious.” “The Department has arbitrarily ...

When Uber was new, it may have claimed to be a ride-sharing service, but these days it’s a high-tech, glorified, unlicensed taxi app. So Google’s planning to start competing against it in San Francisco, with… an actual ride-sharing service. As the Wall Street Journal reports , Google’s going to use Waze, which it acquired in 2013, to match commuters with carpools headed their way. The Waze pilot program charges riders a maximum of $0.54 per mile (the current IRS mileage reimbursement rate , so a pretty common rate to see mileage reimbursement set to) to be matched to drivers headed their way. That’s lower than Uber’s rate, which is an incentive for passengers to try it. And for now at least, Google’s not taking a slice of the money — which may be incentive for drivers to pick up as many folks as they can cram into their cars. That said, it’s still a very limited pilot. While any Waze user in San Francisco can sign up to be a driver, riders for now have to be one of roughly 25,000 a...

When there’s a baby locked in a hot car, there’s only one option: get that kid out of there, no matter what it takes. In the case of a four-month-old who had been left in a hot vehicle in a shopping center parking lot, that meant two passers-by using a sledgehammer to break the car’s windows. A 53-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman were both in the parking lot of a New Jersey Kohl’s store when the man said he heard a baby cry out just before 1 p.m., and saw an infant strapped into the seat inside a car, reports the Asbury Park Press . According to police, the windows were closed, the car was off, and the outside temperature was in the upper 80s. Temperatures in the car were likely much higher than that. “It was a little baby wrapped up in a woolen blanket — crying, sweating, eyes rolling in the back of her head,” said the man, who is a retired police officer. He and the other woman asked other passers-by if they had a tire iron or something to break the windows, when he suddenly r...

Two months ago, Uber launched a rewards program that offered free rides to users who used a Capital One credit card . Today, the company unveiled a separate reward program with Visa, providing free rides based on how much customers spend at local businesses.  Uber announced today that it would launch a new feature called Local Rewards that will see the company providing riders with one “Uber point” for each dollar spent at a business using the Visa card saved to their Uber account. For every 100 points accumulated, users will receive a free ride valued up to $10. The program is being rolled out in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with other cities expected to be added in the future. Unlike the Capital One rewards program, which currently has an end date of March 2017, the Visa partnership appears to be a more permanent offer to Uber customers. Users can enroll in the program and view a list of participating local businesses above the “Promotions” section of the app menu. Uber p...

The six-month saga of the Texas petsitter who sued a customer for up to $1 million in damages over a negative Yelp review appears to have come to an end, with a judge agreeing to dismiss the case that made national headlines. Just to backtrack, in case you’ve somehow had more important things to read about than petsitter-related litigation in the Lone Star State. A couple in Plano, TX, hired a local petsitting company to look after their dogs and fish while they were on vacation. The customers weren’t terribly thrilled about the quality of service they received and shared their feedback publicly on Yelp in Oct. 2015. The petsitting company not only responded to that write-up, but followed it with a cease-and-desist notice directing the customers to remove their review. When they did not take their Yelp post down, the petsitter filed a lawsuit in justice of the peace court for around $6,700, accusing the couple of violating a non-disparagement clause in the petsitter’s customer agr...

Hey, have you heard about video? You might have missed it, what with literally every social media platform all but begging you to post more and watch more at all times, but video is the new hotness. And to get individuals to post more video to their platform, Twitter’s willing to split the ad take. In a blog post today , Twitter announced that Twitter Amplify, its revenue-generating (read as: advertising) program for video creators, will now be available to individuals in the US. Amplify currently has certain large-scale VIP partners like the NFL, but has not been available to the would-be internet stars of the next generation — the burgeoning YouTube, Instagram, and Vine celebrities of the world — until now. It’s a fairly sweet deal, Recode reports : Twitter Amplify users will be able to keep 70% of the ad revenue their content generates for the social network, the same split that existing contributors get. YouTube, on the other hand, requires a 55% / 45% split. That said, you can...

Two months after IKEA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission took the unprecedented step in recalling $29 million top-heavy Malm and other models of dressers and chests linked to the deaths of six children , the retailer has missed a deadline to hand over documents related to the recall. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that IKEA missed an Aug. 19 deadline to provide the internal records to lawyers representing the family of a two-year-old boy who died after being crushed by a dresser in 2014. The family’s lawsuit against IKEA accuses the company of continuing to sell the dressers despite knowing of the tip-over risk and potential injury to children. A lawyer representing the family says the documents, which include photos and video of IKEA dresser tests and emails, will shed light on the true nature of the the dangers posed by the furniture, including information related to global Malm tip-over incidents. The 75 requested documents relate to IKEA’s two year-long discussion ...

As it was foretold, so it has come to past: after filing a trademark application for the term “brunchfast” earlier this summer, Jack in the Box is now testing a new menu with that name in Southern California. InsideSoCal.com’s Dine 909 blog spotted the new menu in the wild way back in July, with BurgerBusiness.com noting the find just this week. The chain is reportedly testing the option at about 20 locations in Riverside County, CA. Jack in the Box already serves regular breakfast all day, so this effort seems to be more about having a funny name/idea to bring in customers in between breakfast and brunch. To that end, the company’s chairman and CEO admitted during the most recent earnings call that all-day breakfast at McDonald’s is affecting their business from 10:30 to noon, even though Jack’s breakfast business remains brisk. Brunchfast to the rescue? Brunchfast is also available all day long, and includes a Brunch Burger that previously appeared on the chain’s late night Mun...

It was really only a matter of time: owners of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices affected by the so-called “touch disease” have sued Apple over a supposed flaw that leads touchscreens to become unresponsive, essentially rendering the devices useless. The proposed class-action lawsuit [ PDF ], filed Saturday in U.S. District Court for Northern California, accuses Apple of fraud and violating California consumer protection laws, claiming the tech giant concealed the defect and hasn’t done anything to address the problem. According to the lawsuit, the issue, which surfaces after a flickering gray bar appears atop the touchscreen, is the result of Apple’s decision not to use a metal “shield” to protect chips that control the touchscreen. These two chips translate your finger pressure into information the phone can use, iFixit reported about the flaw last week. When the chips go bad, they don’t register even the most forceful touch. The lawsuit claims that Apple previously used a metal shie...

Can you effectively recreate a supermarket by buying a bunch of that store’s products, shipping them across the border and selling them in a store with a deliberately similar name? That’s the question at the center of a years-long legal battle between Trader Joe’s and its Canadian lookalike Pirate Joe’s. We first wrote about this dispute back in Aug. 2013 , when Trader Joe’s filed a lawsuit against Pirate Joe’s, a small Vancouver retailer that re-sold TJ products bought in the U.S. and shipped across the border. Trader Joe’s argued that this was a case of trademark infringement and dilution that could cause possible confusion and harm to the brand. The Canadian store sells TJ-branded products, but at a substantial markup. Additionally, the U.S.-based chain said its reputation could be indirectly hurt if someone were to fall ill from eating frozen food that was improperly transported. But the court disagreed , dismissing the lawsuit and ruling that the Lanham Act — the U.S. law that ...

In its continuing effort to make everyone forget about all that food-borne illness stuff from last year, Chipotle is trotting out two new promotions in September aimed at the younger set. The chain announced different freebies for different age groups: kids 12 and under will eat free on Sundays next month if their adult purchases one regular-priced entrée; and high school and college students will get a free drink with their order of an entrée if they show proper school ID. “It’s back-to-school time, and students — particularly high school and college students — have always been such loyal customers, so we thought a promotion directed specifically to them would be a great way to help them ring in a new school year,” a Chipotle spokesman said. That, and also it’d be super great for Chipotle if it could create loyal customers early that then grow up to be loyal adults willing to spend their money on burritos. Other efforts in the Chipotle campaign to make people forget its run-ins...

To people immersed in the world of video games, some things read as a given. You only play Halo titles on Xbox consoles. You only play Uncharted games on Sony hardware. PCs are yet another planet; there are worlds of exclusives that simply never meet. And yet today, it seems some streams will cross. Sony announced today that its PlayStation Now streaming service is now available on Windows PCs, for all the PC gamers out there who want to get a taste of the console life. PlayStation Now is basically a Netflix for video games: you pay your monthly fee, log in when you want, and can play games available on the service through live-streaming tech as long as you’re a subscriber in good standing. When PlayStation Now first launched in 2015, it was expensive and limited. Subscriptions ran for $20 per month, and were basically only useful as a partial work-around for the absence of backward compatibility on the PS4 — you could use the new console to stream some PS3 titles, and that was ...

Now that home improvement materials are selling like hot cakes, , Sears is hoping it can capitalize on the DIY trend by selling paint for the first time in four years. Noting that a strong housing market has prompted an increase in home improvement projects, Sears said it will sell Craftsman, Weatherbeater, and Easy Living paint brands in 23 locations first, before eventually expanding to the rest of its U.S. stores. Paint accessories like brushes and tape will also be available in Sears home improvement sections, the company said, along with “a trained sales team in all paint stores to assist customers in finding the best product for their project.” “After stepping away from the paint business in 2012, we are seeing the demand from our customers to bring it back. With updated paint mixing technology, and by enlisting dedicated and trained associates, we are confident the time is right to re-enter the category and fill a need for our members,” said Dean Schwartz, vice president of T...

The Amazon Echo has a decent voice-controlled “assistant” in Alexa; too bad the speaker itself isn’t so great. Meanwhile, Sonos makes decent, web-connected speakers but without any voice control. You see where we’re going with this? Sonos announced Tuesday that it had partnered with Amazon, and other companies, to “usher in a new era of connected home listening.” This means that, starting in early 2017, Sonos speakers will work with Amazon’s Alexa. No, you won’t suddenly be able to shout orders at your $500 Play 5 speaker; you’ll need to have at least one of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices (Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Tap) connected to your network. Folks who have both Sonos and one of these Amazon products will be able to ask Alexa to play music from Amazon Music, Spotify and other services and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home, Sonos says. “Our mission is to fill every home with music,” Sonos President Patrick Spence said in a statement. “We don’t care what yo...

It’s been less than a week since WhatsApp announced it would start sharing some user data with parent company Facebook, but in that short time, app users and privacy advocates alike have raised a ruckus over what they see as a broken promise. Now, some consumer privacy watchdog groups have filed a formal complaint with the FTC, asking them to look into it. The complaint ( PDF ) comes from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). The groups ask the FTC to investigate the new terms that Facebook and WhatsApp have set, saying it constitutes “an unfair and deceptive trade practice,” which is the legal term for all those misleading things the FTC’s responsible for quashing. The change, EPIC and CDD claim, is widely viewed as a reduction of users’ privacy. They cite several tech journalists, international regulators, and experts who all shared negative views of the news when it broke. They also cite the FTC’s own previous communications ...

We’ve come a long way from the days of glistening abs stretching across every Abercrombie & Fitch billboard and shopping bag, and “cool” executives who’d rather not deal with any uncool customers : as the company continues its campaign toward wholesomeness , the new focus is on making shoppers feel good about themselves. The company says its designs and marketing will now be focused on the shopper’s “best self and inner confidence,” Chief Merchandising Officer Fran Horowitz told analysts Tuesday, as reported by CNBC . “Image is less important than character. Abercrombie has been trying to retool its image from the 1990s version of itself that banked on sexual imagery and clothing made only for people cool enough to wear it. Those “cool” people ostensibly wore khaki cargo shorts. Last year, the company decided to stop using shirtless models in its marketing , and has been moving toward a “casual luxury” vibe instead of “oversexed college freshman on spring break for the first time...

Nearly two years after a Chipotle employee filed a class-action seeking lawsuit accusing the fast casual restaurant of wage theft, the case has signed on nearly 10,000 former and current employees. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2014, claimed that Chipotle would automatically clock workers out before they were actually finished completing required work or attending mandated after-shift meetings. According to CNN , 9,961 current and former workers from nearly every state in which a Chipotle is located have sent in consent forms to join the suit as of Aug. 26. The lawsuit centers mostly on what happens when stores close and employees begin the process of winding down operations for the day. While workers are supposed to end their shifts between 11 p.m. and midnight at many restaurants, some employees tell CNN that they almost never leave on time. In fact, some employees say they are required to stay after that time frame to finish cleaning, preparing for the next day, or to attend...

Last week, a Zara customer filed a lawsuit against the company accusing it of misleading customers by posting some prices in euros and others in U.S. dollars, and of making up its own exchange rates to charge more for those items with price tags in dollars. The plaintiff’s lawyers now say they have even more proof of this pricing switcheroo. The attorneys at Geragos & Geragos posted a video on YouTube (careful: you’ll want to turn the sound down unless obnoxious music is your thing) of a visit to a Zara store in downtown Los Angeles that they say shows the company is ripping off customers with its pricing tacts. “Since Zara apparently thinks American consumers are stupid, we decided to take the #ZaraChallenge and see how much we would be ripped off in 10 minutes of shopping,” the caption reads. In the video, they show price tags for individual items, both in euros and in U.S. dollars, and then a calculated “ripoff” amount. In one example, the price on the tag for a pair of blac...

Nearly two years ago, the Federal Trade Commission sued AT&T for allegedly misleading wireless customers by charging them for “unlimited” data plans while simultaneously throttling their cellular connection speeds when they passed certain monthly thresholds. AT&T failed in 2015 to get the case dismissed in District Court, but yesterday succeeded in convincing a federal appeals court to throw out the government’s complaint. For those who don’t remember the throttling saga, here’s a quick refresher: When the iPhone launched, AT&T was the exclusive carrier in the U.S., and the company marketed unlimited data plans as a way to convince people to try out these new-fangled “smart” phones. But after a couple of years, as smartphones became the norm and other carriers also started offering the iPhone, AT&T ceased offering new unlimited plans. Meanwhile, existing customers with these all-you-can-download plans were told they now faced a new limit: After reaching a certain mo...

Until recently, home loans generally covered two types of properties: primary residences or investments. That was before services like Airbnb allowed anyone with an extra room to make a bit of extra money by renting it out for short periods of time. This blurred line between “my house” and “my investment” is causing trouble for some homeowners when they go to refinance their mortgages. More and more homeowners say they are finding themselves on the receiving end of rejection letters from their long-time banks when trying to refinance their mortgage, simply because they rent a room on Airbnb, the Wall Street Journal reports. When applying to refinance their loans, owners say they were under the impression that having a higher income would improve their credit. So they reported all income drawn for short-term rental deals. But banks don’t exactly see it that way, the WSJ reports. Because short-term rentals made online through Airbnb are fairly new, banks are having a difficult time p...

The dream of the four-day workweek is alive at Amazon, where the company is testing out a plan that has certain teams of workers on a part-time schedule. The teams consist of information-technology specialists in Amazon’s human resources department, who will work Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., using the 16 remaining hours as flex work throughout the week, the company noted in a recent post on Eventbrite (h/t Seattle Times ). Amazon decided to try something new because the usual 40-hour work week “may not be a ‘one size fits all’ model.” And although the company has folks in part-time positions elsewhere, this is a change from the norm because entire teams are organized on the same schedule. The teams of part-timers are known as “two pizza teams” — not because they get to eat two pizzas every work week, which would be amazing, but because they have the right amount of people on them to be fed easily with just two pizzas. That’s about a dozen people, if I’m not there...

Microwaves are supposed to heat up your leftovers or make popcorn, not catch fire. So after learning about a handful of Whirlpool microwaves going up in smoke and/or flames, the company says it will recall more than 15,000 of the kitchen appliances. Whirlpool announced the recall of 15,200 microwaves after determining a plastic component inside has the potential to catch fire. “Internal arcing during use can ignite an internal plastic component, posing a fire hazard,” the company said Whirlpool said of the microwave-oven hood combination appliances. According to a notice posted with the Consumer Product Safety Commission , Whirlpool has received five reports of fire hazard incidents, including one home fire, two fires involving surrounding cabinets, one report of smoke, and one report of a burning odor. The microwaves were sold in stainless steel, black, and white for between $370 and $470 at Best Buy, HH Gregg, Lowes, Sears, and other home improvement, home appliance and retail s...

American Airlines wants you to be happy in the air. Or at least, they want you not to cause an incident that will result in an emergency landing and major disruption. So instead of adding features, creating legroom, or improving their end of things, American’s asking you: have you considered being more zen and less face-punchy? That’s the gist, if not the actual wording, of a new ad campaign American’s trying out, the New York Times reports . The theme of the campaign is that “great flyers make the best of their situation,” and they want you to be great, “no matter where you’re sitting.” Your seat, the airline seems to concede, will be horribly unpleasant. Conditions will be cramped. Everyone will be angry and tired. So instead of advertising features — like WiFi or in-flight entertainment — that could make you want to fly with them, they’re trying a new tactic: asking you not to be a jerk. American implores you: bring noise-canceling headphones if you don’t like the sound of babies...

The residents of Hershey, PA, can breathe a sigh a relief today, as Mondelez — the owner of Nabisco and Cadbury — announced it would ditch its months-long bid to purchase the Hershey’s brand following several rebuffed offers by the chocolate giant. Mondelez has thrown in the towel after Hershey rejected its latest offer, declaring there was “no actionable path forward” to buy the chocolate brand. “As the world’s leading snacking company, we remain focused on successfully executing our strategy to deliver both sustainable top-line growth and significant margin expansion and are well-positioned to continue to deliver value to our shareholders,” Chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reports that the timing just wasn’t right for the two companies to combine, as the Hershey Trust, which controls 81% of Hershey’s shareholder votes, is undergoing an overhaul of its own. The Hershey Trust has historically resisted any sale offers. “While we a...

Sometimes, we have no choice but to leave our smart devices in the hands of another. But after she left her phone for repair, a woman in the Atlanta area was shocked to find out that someone had been text messaging an unknown number from her phone. Even worse, she discovered that nearly 20 personal photos she’d had on her phone had been sent to a stranger, reports WSB-TV ( warning: link contains autoplay video ). Milton Police say the woman brought her broken phone to a store in June, and when she got it back, something was amiss. “She noticed some text messaging on there that she did not recognize,” a police lieutenant told WSB-TV. “Pictures from her phone had been texted to a number she was not familiar with. Those pictures were personal pictures.” She went back to the store and confronted the technician, and he admitted that the number on her phone was his. The customer filed a police report, and after an investigation, police arrested him last week and charged him with felony c...