Self-Driving Cars: Fewer Accidents, But More Motion Sickness

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(Neal Fowler)

Cars increasingly drive themselves. If tech companies have their way, then entirely autonomous vehicles will be the future as soon as possible. But that future isn’t exactly primed to be glorious for everyone. For those of us at all prone to motion sickness, that future — despite being lower on accidents and higher on energy efficiency — is not going to be fun.

Quartz reports on a recent study conducted at the University of Michigan that points out something many of us have been avoiding: if you’re not driving the car, you’re going to need to do something else with that time. And if you’re reading, watching a video, or doing a whole host of other stuff, you’re drastically upping the chances of a motion sickness episode.

Most people who are prone to motion sickness have more trouble as passengers than as drivers. When we’re controlling the car and focusing our attention ahead of us, we mainly do okay. But when we’re passengers in a vehicle of whatever sort, the dissonance between what we’re looking at and where we’re going can create a, well, gut reaction.

Researchers asked what most people plan to do while their car is driving itself and while a surprisingly high number answered that they’d stare at the road, about 37% said they’d be using that time about the same way folks commuting by conventional mass transit do: reading, working, typing, watching videos, and so on. And all of those activities are more likely to increase motion sickness.

The verdict? Somewhere between 6% and 10% of Americans riding in self-driving cars will probably experience motion sickness more often than not. Biking to work is suddenly starting to look a lot more appealing.

Driverless cars are going to make some people puke [Quartz]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Costco Misses Out On $40M/Year Because Of $5 Rotisserie Chickens, And It’s Okay With That

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(Mike Mozart)

When you buy a jug of mayonnaise or a mammoth pack of toilet paper rolls at Costco, you understand that you’re saving by buying in bulk. But then there are the $4.99 rotisserie chickens that you don’t have to buy by the dozen to get that low price. In fact, Costco is the one getting the short end of that deal, missing out on millions a year by keeping the price low.

Speaking this week to analysts about the wholesale club’s quarterly earnings, Costco chief financial officer Richard Galanti answered a question about the company’s philosophy on the cheap chickens.

“I can only tell you what history has shown us: When others were raising their chicken prices from $4.99 to $5.99, we were willing to eat, if you will, $30 to $40 million a year in gross margin by keeping it at $4.99,” he explained, according to the Seattle Times. “That’s what we do for a living.”

In 2014, Costco sold 76 million of these chickens, just about one per club cardholder. Just like the $1.50 hot dog and soda combo (and other low-priced menu items) at the Costco in-store snack bars, they appear to be helping to get customers in the doors where they can make purchases on higher-margin items.

The price of chicken has remained flat in the last year, but that might change due to a recent outbreak in avian flu, though many of the chickens that have died or been euthanized were raised for egg production.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Uber Proposes Simpler Privacy Policy, Will Let Riders See Their Ratings

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(Adam Fagen)

One feature of ride-hailing app Uber that’s meant to keep riders from acting like complete jerks is mutual rating: passengers rate their drivers, sure, but drivers also rate passengers. Secretly. Users can’t see their own ratings, but they could prevent someone from being picked up at a busy time. The company has promised to clarify its privacy policy and allow passengers to see their own ratings.

They aren’t doing this to win over new riders or just for funsies: it’s at the recommendation of an outside law firm’s review of their privacy policies. Last year, people began to have some very understandable concerns after the existence of what’s called “God mode” within available to select employees. This mode serves as a sort of Marauder’s Map of real life, showing where every user of the service is in real time.

Last year, people began asking questions about Uber’s privacy policies after one of the company’s executives answered a reporter’s questions about the service by e-mailing her excerpts from logs of her own Uber trips, something that she didn’t give him permission to do.

The new privacy policy makes it much clearer that Uber collects certain information about its users, which includes their location at any time (even when the app isn’t running) and that the company will store information about people in your address book that you share with the app.

Uber Broadens Rider Privacy Policy, Asks for New Permissions [Bloomberg News]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Swiss Cheese Has Been Losing Its Holes, And Now Science Knows Why

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(Ruby Nguyen)

The 21st century has not been kind to the trademark texture of Emmental cheese. To Americans, that’s Swiss cheese: the stuff with all the holes in. But the holes have been vanishing and the cheese becoming smoother over time. Scientists determined to find out why. The answer? Modern cheese is just too clean.

The AP reports that a Swiss government-funded agricultural institute delved into the mystery of the nation’s most famous cheese and found that holes need hay. Or, more specifically, that “microscopically small hay particles” that make their way into the milk are responsible for the holes when that milk becomes cheese.

When a dairy farm is all manual labor, with people doing their best to keep rooms clean but using pre-industrial tech, some of those airborne particles will make their way into milk and there’s nothing you can do about it. But the transition from traditional milking methods into fully-automated industrial systems means there’s less stuff in the air, and that means fewer holes in the cheese.

The solution? More hay. “In a series of tests,” the AP reports, “scientists added different amounts of hay dust to the milk and discovered it allowed them to regulate the number of holes.”

Mystery of disappearing holes in Swiss cheese solved [Associated Press]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Amazon Brand Coffee And Cereal May Soon Be Coming To An Internet Near You

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(Nazra Z)

Amazon really, really wants to be your everything store. They do tech, they do digital goods, they do groceries, they even do same-day delivery. So perhaps it seems inevitable that they’re no longer just interested in selling other people’s stuff, but coming up with their own house brand for everyday items too.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, like basically every grocery and big box store out there, Amazon is planning to launch its own in-house store-brand line of items under the Amazon Elements label.

Amazon’s first foray into the Amazon Elements brand was not without its challenges. They started late last year with diapers and baby wipes, but had to yank the diapers off the virtual shelves less than two months in to the experiment because customers basically hated them and said they didn’t work properly. (And if there is one baby care product you really, really want to work properly, it is a diaper.)

At this point, the only Elements-branded product Amazon sells are the baby wipes. But, the WSJ reports, they could soon be joined by not only other personal care and home care items like razors and cleaning products, but also by your standard grocery-store staples like coffee, soup, water, pasta, and pet food.

Sales of generic (store-brand) items are on the rise, the WSJ points out, and it makes sense for Amazon’s bottom line that they would want to enter that market. The WSJ points out that Amazon’s Elements brand is likely to compete with Costco’s Kirkland line and Target’s Archer Farms and Up & Up lines. Private-label items have a higher profit margin for retailers, despite the fact that they generally cost consumers less.

But customers like generics mainly because they cost less. Not only did the Elements diapers not work particularly well, but also Elements baby products were framed as an upscale, higher-end option for parents to consider — on par with the biggest brand names, and more expensive than existing generic options. If Amazon wants Prime members to sip a cup of Amazon Brew with their Amazon-Os in the morning, they’ll probably have to make sure that their products cost less than some Starbucks and a box of Cheerios.

Amazon Plans to Add Its Own Line of Food [Wall Street Journal]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

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Here are eleven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

(Freaktography)

(Eric BEAUME)

(Michael G. Chan)

Erin Nekervis

(C x 2)

(Rich Renomeron)

(Rick Drew)

(Great Beyond)

(Kevin Cardosi)

(Jason Cook)

(Eric BEAUME)

Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

3 More Toxic Salad Beetles Show Up In Canada And Texas

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Maybe save this post until you’re done eating your salad.

It turns out that fleeing to Canada won’t keep you safe from the Salad Beetle Scourge. You may remember the Iron Cross Blister Beetles turning up in organic salads and pakages of leafy greens across the United States. We learned today of three more discovered in different parts of North America, two of which were in Canada.

HERE IS YOUR WARNING THAT THERE’S A PICTURE OF ONE OF THE BEETLES BELOW

In Canada, two beetles found in greens this week made the news: Erin found our site while researching the creature she found in her salad greens and sent us this picture:

She also appeared on TV news this morning to talk about her find.

Maybe the experience wasn’t as novel as the CBC thought, though: just a few hours later, another CBC story appeared out of the province of Saskatchewan, featuring another woman who found the same type of beetle in her salad: this one from Earthbound Organics. The company told the CBC in a statement that it had never encountered the Iron Cross blister beetle in its farms before, and that it would stop using greens from that particular supplier and investigate the situation. They offered the woman $30, which she declined, and then $250, which she also declined. “I don’t know how long it will be until I can eat packaged food like this again,” she said about the offers.

While Earthbound Farms may be correct that they’ve never encountered the insect on their farms before, one of the original four salad beetle reports was about an Earthbound Organics product. A similar beetle was found in one two weeks ago. The company responded by sending a form letter about the beneficial insects used in organic farming. The blister beetle, you may have guessed, is not supposed to be one of them.

Melissa encountered one of the critters in a restaurant. She lives in Texas, which is a within the beetle’s native habitat, but they’re not supposed to live in restaurants. She didn’t get a picture, but described the scene instead:

It was the scariest creature I have ever seen! As I realized it was a beetle, I came into a state of shock and even feeling my blood pressure rise a little, I did not think about taking a photo of it or my salad. :( Once I realized I needed a photo so people could believe me, the waitress had already thrown it in the trash.

Reminder: if you find a large black, yellow, and red beetle in your food, contact the Food and Drug Adminstration (or equivalent agency where you live) and let them know. Also contact the packager of the product as well as the retailer if those are separate companies.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist