Security Video Shows Thief Apparently Hypnotizing Shopkeeper Before Picking His Pockets

The next time I find myself suddenly without any cash, I’m now going to be convinced that it was a hypnotizing thief lightening my load. Because yes, that can apparently happen: Police in London believe a shopkeeper might’ve been put in a trance by a guy caught on CCTV who then picked his pockets.

Yes, this is a thing people are believing, after a wine merchant found himself “stunned” by the theft of hundreds of pounds in cash, reports the London Evening Standard.

In the video, a man brushes past the shopkeeper and taps him on the arm. He then goes through a series of motions and gestures, ostensibly to put him into the hypnotic state. The shop owner does appear dazed and stands very still in the video, while the thief reaches inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet before walking out.

The shopkeeper then appears to snap out of whatever waking snooze he was having, and runs out after him.

Scotland Yard released the shop’s CCTV footage this week, showing the bizarre Sept. 11 incident in a search for the suspect.

“The victim remained motionless and unable to stop the robbery taking place. He said that he was momentarily unaware of what had happened to him,” a detective sergeant said.

“The suspect’s distraction tactics appeared to have worked as he robbed the victim of cash from his pocket.“

A BBC magician weighed in, saying the man might’ve previously been hypnotized by the suspect in order to implant “trigger” words into his subconscious, making it easier on this subsequent trip to get him into a trance.

“You can never hypnotize someone on the first go, you warm them up,” he explained to the paper. “I would have thought he has already gone in there before and done some pre-suggestive stuff.”

Maybe this means that the hypnotist I allowed to fake hypnotize me onstage at a tourist resort in Mexico wasn’t actually a total sham and is now going to reappear and rob me. That’s what this story has taught me. Never get hypnotized on vacation and later brag that it didn’t work (it didn’t) because it might just be an elaborate set-up.

Shopkeeper ‘placed in trance by hypnotist’ during theft in north London [London Evening Standard]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Cracker Barrel Waitress Scores Ultimate Tip: A Car

After seeing the woeful state of their waitress’s car parked outside the Branson, MO, Cracker Barrel where she worked, a couple from Arkansas decided to leave her a pretty nice tip — in the form of a car.

The couple, who only knew the waitress in passing, say they first noticed the car a few months back and thought it had been abandoned because it was in such bad shape.

The waitress tells KOLR-TV that her old wheels were still running okay, but that she’d had a few too many run-ins with deer. In fact, she claims to have hit five of the antlered animals with her car over the years.

When the Arkansas couple came back again to Branson and saw the car still sitting in the lot, they asked around the restaurant to find out who the battered vehicle belonged to.

“I talked with my wife about it,” says the husband about the decision to help the waitress out. “And I said, ‘something has to be done.'”

And so the couple decided to come back and surprise her with their four-wheeled gift (it looks like a Ford sedan in the Facebook video recorded by the couple’s daughter), complete with a red ribbon on top.

“I was in a spot where I was depressed,” the waitress reveals, “Just feeling like nobody cares. It’s very different now.”

She says the gift has restored her faith in humanity, adding that “everyone I talked to says the same thing.”

Back in 2012, we told you about the waiter in Houston who received a $5,000 tip — on a $27 bill — from some regular customers who wanted to help him get a new car.

[via Eater]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Enoturísmo como sector servicio exportable #tourism

Hola:

Una presentación sobre Enoturísmo como sector servicio exportable.

Un saludo

Archivado en: Infografía Tagged: Turismo



from TICs y Formación http://ift.tt/1rXjFlF

via Alfredo Vela Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

Mensajería móvil: un ascenso imparable #infografia #infographic

Hola:

Una infografía sobre Mensajería móvil: un ascenso imparable. Vía

Un saludo

Mensajería móvil: un ascenso imparable

Archivado en: Infografía, Sociedad de la información Tagged: Infografía, internet, Telefonía, tic



from TICs y Formación http://ift.tt/1AwAy6e

via Alfredo Vela Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

El futuro de las infografías #infografia #infographic

Hola:

Una infografía sobre el futuro de las infografías.

Un saludo

El futuro de las infografías

Archivado en: Diseño, Infografía Tagged: Diseño, Infografía



from TICs y Formación http://ift.tt/1G0IP5n

via Alfredo Vela Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

Tesla Batteries Might Be The Next Big Threat To Electric Companies

(Atwater Village Newbie)

Electric cars might not be great for gas companies, but they feel like a net win for the electric utilities: after all, if you’re plugging in a Tesla in the garage every night, that’s a little more juice they can charge you for using. Tesla’s goal, though, isn’t just to make cars less environmentally hostile, but to make everything else that way too. And that might just be a huge problem for existing electric utilities.

Most electric utilities aren’t quite caught up to what Tesla’s doing, but the ones that have should probably be scared, Bloomberg reports.

The electric-car company is breaking ground on a battery “gigafactory” in Nevada. The factory itself is being designed to have essentially zero emissions and be as eco-friendly as possible. It will not draw power from the electric grid, instead generating its own wind and solar power on site — making the Nevada desert a perfect location.

The factory will not only be making batteries for use powering Tesla’s current and future lines of all-electric cars, but also for the “storage market.” That storage line gets thrown in quickly and then passed over in most press releases and media stories but, Bloomberg says, it’s actually a huge deal.

Those batteries can be paired with home solar panels, which are also getting less expensive every year. A homeowner who installs solar panels (also conveniently made by an Elon Musk company) and can store the excess energy for later use in a rainy week, using one of Tesla’s batteries, suddenly doesn’t even need to be connected to the local grid even for backup.

One analyst told Bloomberg that battery storage is “the Holy Grail for renewables,” because “the energy is intermittent. Finding a way to store that is very powerful.”

Another consultant described the potential to Bloomberg as a “mortal threat,” saying, “That [battery and solar panel package] is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide.”

Of course, just because people can go installing new energy systems at home doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to do it… but they certainly might.

About 40% of all plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. go to Californians, Bloomberg says. And in California, roughly half of all those 100,000 people who have electric cars either already have solar power at home, or have plans to install it.

California has over 38 million residents, so the 50,000 homeowners who want to use solar power aren’t exactly an existential threat just yet. And Tesla’s factory won’t be online and operational for years yet to come.

But the future can come quickly. Right now, at $70-$100k, Teslas are too pricey for most folks. But with a $30,000 model launching in a few years, electric cars will become more accessible to millions more families. And economies of scale are a real thing: the more widely a technology gets adopted, the more efficiently a company can manufacture it, and the less expensive and more widespread it can continue to become.

Analysts think that the industry is drastically underestimating just how far Tesla has already come, Bloomberg writes. They quote Morgan Stanley analysts, who said “There is not sufficient appreciation of the magnitude of energy storage cost reduction that Tesla has already achieved, nor of the further cost reduction magnitude that Tesla might be able to achieve once the company has constructed its gigafactory.”

Ultimately, Bloomberg concludes, the landscape is changing. So far, electric utilities can do what they like because most consumers don’t exactly have a way to make their own electricity at home. But soon, many of us might. At that point, utilities are going to have to change somehow… whether or not they want to.

Why Elon Musk’s Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company [Bloomberg]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Why Are 100,000 People On A Waiting List To Buy Duck Boots From L.L. Bean?

Do you need a warm and waterproof pair of boots so you can tromp through serious snow, slush, and ice this winter? If so, you really should have planned ahead. L.L. Bean reports that their duck boots (which are not made out of actual ducks) for men and women alike are pre-ordered so far in advance that for some sizes, you’ll be waiting around until mid-March to get your boots.

Like most trends that are making people miserable, the experts blame millennials. Specifically, high school and college students and urban-dwellers who have suddenly decided that classic waterproof footwear is back in style. The boots cost $139, but are one product that L.L. Bean still manufactures in the United States, so it was a decent choice of footwear to suddenly make trendy again.

It’s not like the company can just hire more workers and crank out enough boots to feed the trend until Christmas is over, either. “Making more boots is also a slow process given the specialization needed to produce the hand-crafted boots,” a company spokesperson explained to Yahoo Style, presumably while strapping on some snowshoes to go visit the boot warehouse. It takes a new boot-maker 26 weeks to master the stitching, so those darn kids really should have given the company at least nine months’ notice before turning the boots into a hot item. So rude.

Yahoo reports that the company is on track to sell about 450,000 pairs of boots this year, and the waiting list stands at 100,000 right now.

L.L. Bean’s Already Sold Out of Snow Boots [Yahoo Style] (via Racked)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

For-Profit College Hired Exotic Dancers As Admissions Reps

The operators of a now-defunct for-profit college in Florida allegedly told its admissions directors to do whatever it took to sell the school to potential students. Among the tactics used by the school is one straight out of a wacky, low-budget, late-night college movie you might see on Cinemax.

According to a lawsuit [PDF] filed earlier this week by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida against the operators of the FastTrain chain of colleges, the school used exotic dancers to entice young males to apply to the school.

“FastTrain employed female exotic dancers as admissions representatives… to lure young male students,” reads the complaint, which says that admissions directors then “encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain.”

The goal, alleges the suit, was to get as many students enrolled in the school as possible in order to get these students to take out federal student loans. That money would go to the school, and the student is left on the hook whether or not they graduate, get a decent education, or ever have the ability to repay.

Before it closed in 2012, FastTrain operated seven campuses in Florida’s Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval counties.

According to the complaint, starting as far back as 2009 FastTrain “knowingly submitted, or caused to be submitted, numerous false claims” for payments through the U.S. Dept. of Education’s student aid programs.

FastTrain allegedly lied about students’ eligibility for aid, claiming these students had high school diplomas (or equivalents) when they did not.

The government says that FastTrain admissions personnel coached prospective ineligible students to lie on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid form “in order for FastTrain to secure more federal funding for students than the students were eligible to receive.”

FastTrain allegedly took in more than $4.3 million in federal student loans and another $2.21 million in Federal Pell Grants that shouldn’t have been given.

“Federal financial student aid programs are designed to assist students obtain an education. Those who misuse federal funds will be brought to justice and held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Ferrer.

While Florida AG Bondi says that “Taking advantage of students in order to exploit federal financial aid programs is reprehensible, and we will continue to work with our federal partners to protect Florida students and the integrity of federal financial aid.”

The school’s owner, Alex Amor, and other individuals associated with FastTrain were charged earlier this fall in a 15-count indictment with conspiracy to steal government funds.

[via Local10.com]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Sprint Exec Admits That “Half-Off” Offer Will Likely Only Result In Savings Of Around 20%

(Will Middelar)

Earlier this week, Sprint introduced a new offer for current Verizon and AT&T customers looking to switch service — same amount of data at half the price. We noted at the time that the major catch to this deal is that you have to pay full price for your new phone when you switch (or pay $200), but how much would that cut into your savings? According to one top Sprint exec, quite a lot.

As we pointed out in our original story, getting the half-off deal from Sprint requires that you not just jump ship from AT&T or Verizon but that you also get a new phone through Sprint using either its Easy Pay system (which charges full price but in monthly installments) or by paying full sticker price for your new phone outright.

Even though AT&T and Verizon have been nudging customers into similar installment programs like AT&T Next and Verizon Edge, most current subscribers are still on plans where they buy discounted phones in exchange for agreeing to two-year contracts with their provider. By one estimate from Verizon, only around 2% of its customers are on Edge.

So while jumping to Sprint would indeed cut the monthly amount customers are charged for data/voice/text, those savings would be partially offset by the added cost of paying off a full-price phone.

Speaking earlier this week at a Merrill Lynch conference, CFO Joe Euteneuer admitted that a switching customer’s savings would not be exactly half of what it was at AT&T or Verizon.

“They are still probably getting a 20% sort of net discount,” he explained.

For 20% off their bill, we could imagine lots of people jumping ship between AT&T, Verizon, or even T-Mobile, as they all provide high-speed LTE service. But until Sprint can get demonstrate that its LTE network is reliable and fast, it will probably only win over customers looking to save a bit of money in exchange for a possible loss in service quality.

[via DSL Reports]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Don’t Want To Buy An Ugly Holiday Sweater You’ll Only Wear Once? Now You Can Rent It

If you don’t have a female relative over the age of 50 who can conveniently provide you with a glittery, puffy landscape of giant snowflakes and bedazzled Christmas trees, it’s understandable that you don’t want to drop the big bucks on an ugly holiday sweater you’ll never wear again after that Ugly Holiday Sweater Party you’ll inevitably be invited to at some point in your life. As an alternative, now you can rent one. And never see it again, like that other mistake you made last holiday season.

The folks who rent designer dresses with hefty price tags at Rent the Runway have launched an Ugly Holiday Sweater collection to help those in need of an atrocious item of clothing on the cheap.

Sweaters vary by your location, for a total of 12 in the collection whose sole purpose is to make you look as fashionably idiotic as is possibly this holiday season.

You want a bunch of teddy bears? Got’em. A creepy 3D Christmas clown sewn onto your chest, adorned with a red tinsel fringe? Okay then, wear that and try not to have nightmares later.

This is what I dream of when I drink too much egg nog.

Sweaters only come in one-size-fits all size, at a four-day rental cost of $15.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist