Hasta La Gadget!

If these first in-the-wild shots of T-Mobile’s upcoming Android-powered Sidekick 4G turn out to be legit — and we’ve no reason to doubt them, especially considering TmoNews‘ track record — then we’d say the carrier has done a reasonably good job porting the classic Sidekick design and pulling it into the modern age off the strength of a big display… and, of course, a modern operating system. Interestingly, word on the street is that the new model is made by Samsung, not Sharp; historically, Sharp has made all of the Sidekicks with the exception of the forgettable Slide, which was a Motorola one-off. Looks like the swivel display has been replaced by a tilt-slide, but most importantly, the device looks the same when open and closed, which should put a warm, fuzzy feeling in the hearts of old-school Sidekick users. Who’s excited?

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G in the wild, made by Samsung? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Staten Island Facebook user is suing the social network after it cut off his account with apparently no warning. Thirty-nine-year-old Mustafa Fteja lost contact with his roughly 340 Facebook friends, losing a valuable connection to the world, his suit claims. And now the site won’t respond.

“You call, they don’t answer the phone,” said Fteja. “You write, they don’t reply.” The man also noted that he was Muslim in the $500,000 lawsuit, stating that religious discrimination may have played a role in the company’s decision. “I’m not doing this for money,” Fteja told reporters. “I’m doing this for justice. I believe there should be some, somewhere.”

Fteja’s account was cut off on September 24th. When he reached out to the site, he received a form letter stating that he had violated Facebook’s terms of service. “I know one thing,” says Fteja. ” I didn’t do anything. I didn’t violate anything.”

Starting yesterday, Google began a subtle censorship of “piracy related” terms from its instant and autocomplete services. The following “pirate” terms are now blocked from autocompete: bitTorrent, megaupload, uTorrent, rapidshareIf, and any combination of terms ending with the word “torrent.”

If you try to enter “utorrent” into the search box, it stops supplying suggestions after you type “uto.” However, you can still type out the complete word, and it will supply suggestions, including “utorrent download” and “utorrent search” and you type out the entire term, Google will complete the search. So, you can still access these sites through a search, you just have to type out the entire term. But, “uTorrent”, a popular piece of software, and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and name of BitTorrent Inc., are both completely legal, but they are nonetheless being censored. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems wrong.

Remember when Google fought against censorship in China? Google was all for freedom to information. But, apparently, Google thinks censoring against piracy is okay though. Supplying information and access to legal sites it not encouraging piracy. Our friends at PCMag, recently had a bit of a scuffle with the RIAA over a simple news article, which they requested PCMag retract (they didn’t).

Although this is new censorship is slight, the entertainment industries shadow is being cast farther. And it raises some questions: How far will it this censorship stretch? And will other industries be able to succeed in censoring certain terms and info on Google?

Via TorrentFreak

A new report claims that we could dramatically decrease our energy consumption by simply being a lot more efficient.

The study, which was led by Julian Allwood from the University of Cambridge, looked at buildings and transportation and applied numerous efficiency improving techniques, including triple-glazed windows to keep the heat in, covering pans with lids while cooking, and even lowering the weight of cars to under 300 kilograms. The results showed that around 73 percent of global energy use could be eliminated simply by implementing these types of changes.

“We think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll find a good response to the threat of global warming on the supply side alone,” Allwood told New Scientist. “But if we can make a serious reduction in our demand for energy, then all the options [for changing the energy supply] look more realistic.”

Look on the center stack of your new Mazda3, in front of the cupholders, in the console, in the glovebox: There’s no iPod adapter. Mazda hasn’t forgotten you. You’ve got to have the iPods adapter installed by the dealer. Unfortunately, with the Mazda3 (see review), a feature that adds just a few dollars in costs when integrated into every new car at the factory will likely set you back more than $500. A local dealer quoted me $565 — $325 for the adapter and $240 (two hours of shop time) for installation.