Technology

The iPhone 6 has already been the subject of several concept designs and other mockups, but a French site claims to have obtained what could be actual leaked photos of Apple's new flagship device. Sporting rounded edges and a barely-there profile, the new images from French site Nowwhereelse.fr show an iPhone that has almost no bezel on the sides and a considerably taller display. However, the site doesn't have any photos showing the purported 5.5-inch version of the iPhone 6.

The OnePlus One Android handset is far from being properly launched, but the OnePlus and Cyanogen Inc teams have come up with a new contest that will reward ten lucky winners with a OnePlus One handset each. The “Case Chase” competition takes place between April 1 and April 10 in Europe and North America, with clues being tweeted each day for a specific region. “We’ve positioned Agents across the world to secure high value targets. Your mission is to find and extract the packages,” the CyanogenMod team wrote on its blog, mentioning that this isn’t an April Fools prank. “The Agency will provide live surveillance and intelligence via the following channels: @CyanogenMod, @CyanogenInc, @OnePlus – tune your communicators in accordingly.

Walking around London, you're likely to see the words "bus stop" plastered over the road thousands of times. London-based designer Tom Williams captured a worker painting the road markings a couple of years ago, and the video he uploaded was recently highlighted by Kottke.

For the last 24 hours (and likely the next 12), excitable company execs have been barraging our inbox,YouTube and your social media networks with their best shenanigans. Love it or loathe it (and you're probably starting to loathe it by now), the April Fools tradition continues, even stronger, in 2014. Google went a little overboard, but hopefully, after today, selfies will die a death. Hopefully.

MILTON, Vt. (AP) — Maple syrup production has come a long way from metal buckets hung on trees, but even high-tech operations have had to rely on old-fashioned foot patrols to fix a common problem — leaks.

Shortly after Google launched its Chromecast dongle in various international markets, a report says the device is quite popular in Europe, singling out U.K. and Norway as top markets for the device. GigaOm says that Curry sold a Chromecast every 4.5 seconds on launch day in the U.K. Some stores sold out the allotted stock on launch day, with one representative calling it “one of the most successful launch days, both online and in-store, in recent years,” comparable with an iPad launch – however, the Chromecast is a significantly more affordable purchase option for consumers. Norway’s Elkjøp retail chain also confirmed strong Chromecast sales, ordering a second batch of 40,000 units to meet up demand, described by a spokesperson as

The company behind the smart, learning thermostat has posted a video outlining its partnership with Virgin Galactic to bring the world's first space tourists something called Total Temperature Control. It means that as well as travelling to the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, each passenger on board the space craft gets his or her own Nest thermostat to perfectly customize the temperature around each individual seat. Desperate to address the negativity around Google Glass and anxious to be seen as more of a hipster brand with ironic chic, the search giant has announced the launch of Google Glass Solo -- the world's first smart monocle. The South Korean company has been very focused on its pranking.

Lightsabers, as Obi Wan Kenobi once said, are an elegant weapon for a civilized age. Birth of the Lightsaber was first seen as a special feature on the original Star Wars trilogy's DVD boxset in 2004, but this marks the first time the video has made its way onto the internet in an official capacity. It tells how Star Wars' production staff planned and choreographed the movies' increasingly complex fight sequences, and how they came to understand the capabilities and limitations of Lucas' invented weapon. There's one particularly interesting shot around two minutes into the video that shows Obi Wan Kenobi being run through by Darth Vader's lightsaber.

It may have been overshadowed by pricier acquisition deals in subsequent years, but HP's 2010 takeover of Palm remains a milestone event. It was a seemingly perfect combination of a highly competitive mobile operating system with a deep-pocketed hardware juggernaut. HP promised it would fund the future development of webOS and support it with a broad ecosystem of devices. Only a year later, however, the company reversed course and abandoned its touted plans, to the chagrin of hard-hit shareholders.

Tesla has toughened the Model S' underbody to help prevent any more fires, but apparently it needs to add some reinforcement to its network features too. An enterprising hacker can't quite drive one of the electric vehicles away ( ...

By Dan Levine SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Apple and Samsung return to federal court on Tuesday for opening statements in their latest patent battle, with the iPhone maker expected to present more detailed evidence in its attempt to win a U.S. ban on sales of several Samsung smartphones. Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been litigating around the world for nearly three years. Jurors awarded the iPhone maker about $930 million after a 2012 trial in San Jose, California, but Apple failed to persuade U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to issue a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung phones. A sales ban would be a far more serious threat to Samsung, which earned $7.7 billion in the quarter that ended in December.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Like so much about the government's health care overhaul, Monday's deadline to sign up for coverage in 2014 didn't turn out quite as planned: Many people still are eligible for extensions that will let them enroll.

Game_Jam was set to be a reality show that followed independent video game developers as they created a game from scratch, but shortly after filming began, the production fell apart. Arcane contracts demanded the developers — including people who worked on The Stanley Parable and Depression Quest — keep away from social media for weeks at a time, while obnoxious branding regulations meant they could only drink Mountain Dew on set. ...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Jury selection promised to be a challenge for the world's leading smartphone makers as they continued their patent fight in federal court on Tuesday.

We double checked the calendar too, but no, it's not an April Fools joke -- Verizon's FIOS Media Server is finally available in a few areas as a part of the new Quantum TV package. The VMS1100 upgrades ...

(Reuters) - A federal judge ordered Marvell Technology Group Ltd to pay nearly $1.54 billion for infringing two hard disk drive patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, nearly one-third more than a jury had previously awarded. In a decision late Monday, U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer in Pittsburgh, where Carnegie Mellon is based, said "enhanced damages" were justified because the university presented enough credible evidence to establish that Marvell through "known willful infringement" deliberately copied its patents. Judge Fischer said Marvell knew of the patents for at least seven years prior to Carnegie Mellon's March 2009 lawsuit.

Firefighters are our heroes… until we figure out how to replace them with robots, at least. Discovery News points us to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s newest robot robot called SAFFiR (short for “Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot”) that can walk right into deadly fires that are two intense for human firefighters to handle. Of course, films such as Terminator 2 have already taught us to believe that robots must be fire-proof by default but building an actual robot that can function in extreme heat is easier said than done. NRL says that its engineers ”have developed a class of light-weight, high temperature polyetheretherketone (PEEK)-like phthalonitrile-resin that can be molded to any shape and remain strong at temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius,” which is

(Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co agreed to pay $57 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the personal computer maker's former management of defrauding shareholders by abandoning a business model it had long touted. The lawsuit was filed after former Chief Executive Leo Apotheker shocked investors on August 18, 2011 by announcing plans to refocus the company on business services and products. He also revealed plans to scrap WebOS, whose rights HP had obtained when it bought Palm Inc in 2010; pay $11. ...

By Reiji Murai TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Inc suppliers will begin mass producing displays as early as May for the next iPhone, expected to be launched this autumn, with a 4.7-inch screen likely to be produced first while a 5.5-inch version could be delayed, supply chain sources said. Japan Display Inc, Sharp Corp and South Korea's LG Display Co Ltd have all been tapped to make the screens, said the sources, who asked not to be identified. Representatives for the three suppliers and for Apple declined to comment. Both iPhone 6 screens will be larger than the 4.0-inch panels on Apple's existing iPhone 5S and 5C models.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A day after a protest over Albuquerque police shootings devolved into violence, the city's new police chief on Monday commended officers for showing restraint and said he is about to unveil reforms that include changes to the embattled department's recruiting process.