You may have noticed a lower number on your gas station receipts. The average price of gas in the U.S. is now $2.55 per gallon, the lowest it’s been since 2009. We’re told to never question a good thing, but why are these prices falling?
Watch The Brief to find out why you’re spending less than usual at the pump.
The ongoing fallout from last month’s cyber attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment continues this week as two former employees are suing the company after their personal information was exposed as part of the high-profile hack.
Michael Corona and Christina Mathis haven’t worked for Sony Pictures for years, but the former employees both claim that their sensitive personal information — including their names, Social Security numbers, former addresses and other info — was made public in the past month due to “security weaknesses in Sony’s Network.” That’s according to a lawsuit the two filed on Monday in California federal court in which they claim Sony Pictures failed in its legal duty to protect the personal information of current and former employees affected by the hack.
A group identifying itself as Guardians of Peace, or GOP,shut down Sony Pictures’ computer system just before Thanksgiving and have been releasing sensitive company documents on the Internet in subsequent weeks. The hackers posted documents revealing salary information and personal identifying information for thousands of the company’s employees along with other confidential financial documents and passwords for company accounts and computer systems. Over the past few weeks, the hackers have also leaked a mountain of embarrassing e-mail correspondence involving Sony executives — to the point that the company has asked the media to stop publishing excerpts from the once-private messages.
In their lawsuit, Corona and Mathis claim that their personal information was included in the documents the hackers revealed to the world, despite the fact that Corona left the company in 2007 and Mathis has not worked there for 12 years. (The complaint does not specify what the plaintiffs’ roles at Sony were, though it notes that Corona worked for Sony Pictures Entertainment while Mathis was employed by the company’s consumer products arm.) Both Corona and Mathis claim that the release of their information has forced them to spend hundreds of dollars on identity theft protection.
TIME’s Sam Frizell wrote last week about the possibility of employee lawsuits against Sony Pictures, noting that the company’s defense in such a legal action would hinge on whether the company could prove it took the appropriate steps to protect its employees’ personal data.
Monday’s lawsuit alleges that Sony Pictures failed to improve its security after what it describes as a history of data breaches. The suit refers to the 2011 hack of Sony’s PlayStation Network and calls the company “a longstanding and frequent target for hackers.” The complaint also references a recent Gizmodo report that Sony Pictures’ own corporate audit department warned the company about problems with its IT security just months before the November hack. Despite the alleged risk Sony Pictures faced, the company “made a business decision” to not step up its security, the lawsuit claims.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would allow other current and former Sony Pictures employees to join the lawsuit. Corona and Mathis are seeking various damages from Sony Pictures, including at least $1,000 for each class member eventually attached to the lawsuit. They also want the company to pay for five years of credit and bank monitoring services as well as identity theft insurance for all class members.
Sony Pictures declined to comment on the lawsuit.
In case your brunch wasn’t getting cold enough as you toiled over the perfect filter to properly capture your pancakes, Instagram premiered five new filters Tuesday.
The fancily named Perpetua, Ludwig, Slumber, Aden and Crema will be added to Instagram’s existing 20 options — which include the “normal” setting.
This is the first filter addition in two years.
Here’s how they look:
Slumber
Perpetua
Crema
Arden
Instagram also added slo-mo video, real-time commenting (to prevent the constant need to refresh your screen), new preview modes, and the ability to manage how you view your editing options.
“We know that everyone has their favorite filters,” Instagram said in a statement sent to TIME. “We want to keep things simple as we add more, so we’ve added a new ‘Manage’ button at the end of your filter tray. Tap it to re-arrange the order of your filters and hide the ones you rarely use.”
So, maybe your scrambled eggs will stay piping hot after all.
Apple doesn’t have to pay up to $1 billion to iPod owners for the way it limited access to competing music services’ songs on the devices, a jury ruled Tuesday.
The eight-person jury in Oakland, Calif., determined that software updates to a version of iTunes released in 2006 were legitimate product improvements rather than a ploy to limit competition in the digital music market, Bloomberg reports.
Plaintiffs had argued that Apple purposefully prevented songs downloaded from other music stores from working on the iPod to boost the sale of its own products. Apple said the changes were made to boost security on the iPod and iTunes, and to meet the demands of record labels at the time.
The plaintiffs sought $350 million in damages from Apple, an amount that could have tripled to exceed $1 billion under antitrust law.
Several of the world’s tech giants are squaring off, thanks to new strategies and tools that have one common goal: to bring their respective companies a bigger slice of the enormous consumer spending pie.
Google vs. Amazon
This week the Wall Street Journal reported that Google is working on a “Buy” button that would allow online shoppers to make quick one-click purchases—a feature that’s most often associated with Amazon, the world’s largest e-retailer. Google wouldn’t run factories full of merchandise, nor would it sell and ship goods like Amazon does. Instead, in theory (none of this is settled, or even confirmed by Google), consumers would be able to buy goods in a single click directly from partner retailers that show up in Google Shopping search results. Google is reportedly also considering an expedited shipping subscription service along the lines of Amazon Prime or ShopRunner, which would store the customer’s billing info and shipping address.
Google dominates search in general. Yet when people are searching specifically for things to buy, far more start their online shopping expeditions at Amazon. Naturally, Google would love to have more consumers browsing for goods with its search tools. What’s more, it would love to keep them within the Google sphere when actually making purchases. Right now, consumers who start shopping searches at Google are typically sent to other sites—including Amazon—when the time comes to buy. Google would much rather keep a tight hold of the eyeballs and wallets of shoppers.
Amazon vs. Ebay
Amazon recently announced the introduction of a new “Make an Offer” feature that allows customers to bid and negotiate on the price of certain merchandise—options that are in the wheelhouse of eBay, which was born as an auction site and has evolved into more of a general marketplace for sellers big and small.
For now at least, Amazon is essentially just the host site for sellers who are willing to haggle with customers. Only items falling under a few sales categories, including Fine Art and Sport and Entertainment Collectibles, are available on the “Make an Offer” basis, and it’s always a third-party vendor (not Amazon) that does all the negotiating and selling. After a customer views the suggested price of an item and makes an offer, “The seller will receive the customer’s lower price offer through email, at which point the seller can accept, reject or counter the offer,” an Amazon.com press release explained. “The seller and customer can continue to negotiate through email until the negotiation is complete.”
Consumer Reports noted of Amazon’s new tool, “By adding a haggling element to its traditional fixed-price model, Amazon broadens its appeal to a wider audience of consumers motivated not simply by low prices, but by the thrill of the hunt and scoring a deal.” Note that there are no open auctions, and that all haggling takes place privately between the two parties involved—not unlike the negotiations that take place between buyer and seller in a car dealership, or perhaps via a connection made on Craigslist or Priceline. Customers can “Make an Offer” on roughly 150,000 items right now at Amazon, and the e-retail giant plans on expanding the bidding option to hundreds of thousands more items in 2015.
Apple Pay vs. All Other Forms of Payment
When Apple Pay debuted in October, the mobile payment tool—allowing customers to pay for goods with a tap of an iPhone—could be used at Macy’s, McDonald’s, Whole Foods, and several other major chains, but overall less than 3% of U.S. merchants that take credit cards were ready to accept Apple Pay. As the New York Times reported this week, however, dozens more banks, retailers, and at least one NBA Arena (Amway Center in Orlando) have since started accepting Apple Pay, and experts increasingly are of the mind that Apple has the best chances of making smartphone payments commonplace:
“Retailers and payment companies see Apple Pay as the implementation that has the best chance at mass consumer adoption, which has eluded prior attempts,” said Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy, a research firm. “They believe it will solve many of the problems they had before with electronic payments.”
Still, there’s a very long way to go before a critical mass of consumers are paying for purchases regularly with iPhones, or any smartphones. Many big-name retailers, including Best Buy, Walmart, and Gap, aren’t accepting Apple Pay because they’re trying to create their own smartphone payment system—which may or may not be easier and more convenient to use than Apple Pay. More importantly, consumers generally still see old-fashioned debit and credit cards as a more convenient and certainly a more comfortable way to pay for stuff. For smartphone payments to be a true success, Apple Pay or other services will have to convince the masses otherwise.
Walmart has been ordered to pay $188 million over claims by employees that the company regularly cut their breaks for meals and rest. The payment would be a settlement for a class-action lawsuit that went all the way to the Pennsylvania Supereme Court. The ruling would hurt Walmart’s earnings, the company said, by reducing its profits from continuing operations by 6 cents per share. Wal-Mart said it may appeal the decision.
The lawsuit involved 187,000 Pennsylvania-based Walmart employees. They worked at the retailer between 1998 and 2006.
[Reuters]
We’ve all been there: Every month, a slice of our mobile data plan goes unused, only to disappear into the ether forever at the end of the month. Now, one carrier aims to put an end to that.
T-Mobile will start rolling over customers’ unused data from month-to-month, the carrier announced Tuesday. That unused data will get added to what T-Mobile is calling a “Data Stash,” where customers can use it for up to a year to avoid going over their plan’s monthly data limits.
“With Data Stash, when you buy additional high-speed data, there’s no need to lose what you don’t use,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in a statement.
T-Mobile is rolling out Data Stash for customers on “Simple Choice” plans who buy at least 3GB of additional smartphone data or 1GB of additional tablet data above their plan’s base rate. Qualifying T-Mobile customers will start out with 10GB of data in their Stash.
T-Mobile has a history of making bold moves to shake up the wireless carrier industry, like offering to pay competitors’ early termination fees for customers who switch to the service before their contracts are up. T-Mobile’s competitors, including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, have often followed T-Mobile’s moves, but it remains to be seen if they’ll play ball this time: Overage fees charged to customers who exceed their monthly data limits are a lucrative source of income for wireless carriers. T-Mobile’s aim here is most likely to forego some of those fees in favor of attracting rivals’ customers fed up with overage charges.
The Data Stash announcement came during T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier 8.0″ event, during which the company also touted its recent speed improvements to wireless broadband services in several cities, including New York.
The reach of Apple Pay continues to extend. The mobile payments system that launched on the iPhone 6 will be supported by ten additional banks starting Tuesday, including TD Bank North America and Commerce America Bank, according to the New York Times. Apple Pay will now support about 90% of credit card purchase volume in the U.S., up from 83% when the service launched in October.
Apple has also quietly been adding retailers to its roster of partners post-launch. Staples now supports Apple Pay at its physical stores, as does Winn-Dixie. The tech giant hasn’t released any firm numbers about the use of Apple Pay since announcing that 1 million credit cards were activated on the service in its first 72 hours. However, individual retailers have hinted that the service is seeing wider adoption than previous mobile wallets. McDonald’s, for instance, said in November that 50% of its tap-to-pay transactions are now made using Apple Pay.
To learn better, hit control-s and “outsource” your remembering.
In a new study, scientists found that people tackling a mental challenge on a computer did a better job if they saved the previous work they had been doing beforehand.
“Saving one file before studying a new file significantly improved memory for the contents of the new file,” the authors write. “Saving has the potential to significantly influence how people learn and remember.”
In a series of experiments, participants were instructed to study two PDF files and remember words it contained. Subjects did a better job remembering material from the second file if they successfully saved the first file before proceeding onto the second one.
“Saving allows us to maintain access to more data and experiences than would be possible otherwise,” says says Benjamin Strong, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the study. “Memory now works in concert with technology, and by saving information we are able to keep that information from interfering with the learning of something new.”
The act of saving something digitally gives us a sense of reassurance that the information is there when we need it, which psychologically frees up our mind and allows us to focus on the next batch of information we need to learn. Essentially, we’re reallocating our mental resources.
“To maximize memory and productivity we need to be able to set stuff aside and move on to other matters,” Storm says.
In earlier research, he found that thinking of new things makes it harder to remember old thoughts. If you’re worrying if or when you’ll need to refer to earlier information in the future, hitting the “save” button or shortcut is a quick, easy and low-risk way way to virtually hang onto that information without forcing it to occupy the forefront of your mind.
“Saving may protect us from this type of thinking-induced forgetting by allowing us to think of new ideas while keeping our old ideas safely saved and out of the way,” Storm says.
Storm points out that his experiments just looked at what happens when someone saves a file before closing it and starting a new task, but he says it’s not a bad idea to save your work on a regular basis anyway.
When new information crowds out older thoughts, people can even forget their own ideas, Storm says. “Save or write down good ideas as soon as you get them,” he advises. “Even if you think you’re going to remember them, chances are that you won’t, especially if you continue to try to think of new ideas.”
NBC will live stream programs to computers, tablets and other mobile devices, the broadcaster announced on Tuesday, as part of an industry wide push to deliver television content across a wider variety of devices.
The broadcaster eschewed the standalone subscription model favored by HBO and CBS, however, choosing instead to deliver online content to cable and satellite subscribers at no additional cost, the Wall Street Journal reports. Viewers will have to authenticate their pay-TV subscription in order to access the shows.
The initiative marks a significant step forward in the industry’s “TV Everywhere” campaign, which commits to broadcasting television content online, but has been stymied by internecine squabbles over revenue sharing agreements. NBC Universal said in a statement that it was “committed to supporting the TV Everywhere ecosystem.”
