By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:48 AM
The Wendy’s employee who was pictured earlier in the week chugging a Frosty ice cream treat directly from the nozzle of the machine has been fired from the restaurant where the incident occurred. The image came to light after it had been posted on the social news site Reddit.
“The person in this photo is no longer at this Wendy’s,” the company said via its Twitter account. “We will be reinforcing proper procedures.”
Although the chain has not provided the location of the restaurant where the incident took place, a Wendys spokesperson is confident that this was an isolated incident. “We don’t know the exact date the photo was taken, but we believe in it was in May,” said Wendy’s spokesperson Bob Bertini. “We’re taking it very seriously.”
This incident at Wendy’s comes just a week after another fast food restaurant made the headlines for a similar food mishandling incident. A Taco Bell in California fired an employee after a picture was posted to Facebook showing the employee licking a stack of taco shells.
By Cristian Onvio :: 8:36 AM
The European Union is devising a plan to require every passenger vehicle on the road to be outfitted with a mobile phone or similar device that alerts emergency crews in the case of an accident.
European Commissioners signed off on draft legislation that would make the requirement come into effect in 2015. European Parliament and the Council of the European Union will also need to sign off on the measure, but lawmakers expect no opposition to the regulations.
The technology is called eCall, and when installed in a vehicle, the service will automatically dial Europe’s emergency number, “112”, when a crash is detected. Legislators hope that by automating the emergency service call, response times to road accidents will be faster, and emergency workers will be able to more accurately locate a wreck.
European officials believe that the cost of implementing the regulations will amount to about €100 ($130) per each new car fitted with the devices. It is expected that the mandate could save 2,500 lives over a ten year period.
By Gilbert Falso :: 6:57 AM
Members of the United States military who enjoy playing console games during their downtime while deployed or at sea may have a problem continuing their hobby if they purchase an Xbox One system.
Service members are quickly finding out that because the new Microsoft console requires a connection to the Internet once every 24 hours, bringing it along with them to their next duty station might be a futile task. Service members stationed stateside may have an easier time getting their console hooked up to an Internet connection, but it is a dubious task for those abroad, and a near impossible feat for Navy service members at sea.
“With the Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection,†explained a Microsoft spokesperson.
Scott Metcalf, a lieutenant in the Navy told the Military Times that such a requirement was a “showstopper” for nearly any service member deployed outside of the U.S.
In addition to the once-every-24-hours Internet check-in, there is also the issue of region coding. Microsoft will only allow the Xbox One to work in certain countries around the globe. Service members in Great Britain, Italy, or Germany would be able to play on their consoles if they were able to find an Internet connection. However, service members in other areas of the world with large U.S. military presences, like Kuwait, Japan, or Afghanistan, would not be allowed to able to connect to the Xbox One network, even if they are able to secure a reliable Internet connection.
Region issues also extend to the game media itself. If a service member receives a disc in the mail from a relative as part of a care package, it cannot be activated abroad. Games purchased in the U.S. can only be activated if the console is in the U.S. It is not known if a console connected to a U.S. military Internet connection registers with Microsoft as a U.S. IP address or as a foreign IP address, and each U.S. military installation could be different around the world.
Microsoft isn’t sympathetic to the plights of U.S. service members, either. In an interview at the E3 conference in Los Angeles this week, Microsoft executive Don Mattrick suggested that users without a stable Internet connection should just use the Xbox 360.
[Photo caption: Soldiers at Camp Atterbury in Indiana play video games to relax in the camp’s USO facility. Photo courtesy U.S. Army.]
By Gilbert Falso :: 11:17 PM
Facebook, the recipient of increasing user backlash over its participation in the recently-leaked PRISM government data gathering program, has worked out an arrangement with the federal government to release some basic information about the requests it has received for user data.
The social network had asked government officials for the ability to be more transparent with users when it comes to government orders to hand over data. In a surprising move, the government has agreed to limited sharing of information about federal requests.
According to data reported by Facebook (in aggregate form only – the agreement does not allow Facebook to get too specific), in the second half of last year, the company fielded between 9,000 and 10,000 government requests for user data. This includes government requests from all levels, federal, state, and local entities. Those requests covered around 18,000 user accounts. The social network confirmed that it complied with the government requests in a majority of the cases, about 80%.
Being able to release even this basic information, “is progress,” Facebook’s general counsel Ted Ullyot told the Los Angeles Times, “but we’re continuing to push for even more transparency.”
Facebook is not the only company seeking permission to disclose records of how many times it has provided user data to the government. Currently Google and Microsoft are both in similar talks. Earlier in the week, Google’s leadership drafted anopen letter this week to Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, to give it the search giant more leeway to share the types of data requests it has received.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:49 PM
Netflix’s Internet streaming service is currently down for many users across the United States.
The service began to fail around 7:30 PM Eastern time, and has been unreachable across all Netflix clients, including PCs, mobile, and game consoles.
The company has said on Twitter that they are “having a hiccup here on our side,” and encourages users to check back. They did not provide any estimate of how long it will take to restore service.
Netflix service representatives who were answering questions via the company’s Twitter account have not responded to queries since 9:00 PM.
This is the second time in just over a week that Netflix’s streaming service has crashed in the evening. On Thursday June 6, around 7:30 PM Eastern time, approximately the same time as tonight’s outage, Netflix suffered downtime of several hours.