Hasta La Gadget!

Let’s admit it: a real-life Death Star would be pretty cool, and we’re one step closer to its reality, thanks to a petition calling on the United States to begin construction of this moon-sized megaweapon. It has achieved over 25,000 signatures, which according to the rules of the Obama administration’s “We the People,” requires a response directly from the White House.

The petition barely made its requirements, though, receiving a total of 27,184 signatures. The petition calls on the US government to “secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” The petition hit 25,000 signatures today, just a day before it would reach its 30-day expiration date.

However, while the White House will be addressing the petition, don’t expect a positive response at all. It would cost around $852 quadrillion (that’s 15 zeroes) to build a Death Star, and it would take about 800,000 years to produce the steel and other materials needed to assemble it, but you can’t deny that plenty of jobs would be created.

In the end, the petition doesn’t have a lot of traction at all, and we’re 99.9% sure that the White House will throw it out, along with other petitions such as six US states wanting to secede, impeaching the president, and deporting “everyone who signed a petition to withdraw their state from the United States of America.”

[via CNET]

Petition for Death Star achieves 25,000 signatures, requires response from White House is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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You know, it’s funny that with all of the R2-D2 merch I’ve seen over the years, I’ve never envisioned the little maintenance droid in wood. But now that I’ve seen him made out of the stuff, I rather like the way he looks.

This rustic wooden iPhone dock was handmade by Mario of Valliswood, and bears more than a passing resemblance to R2-D2. He was made using sustainable hardwoods found in the woods of Croatia, and measures about 9 inches-tall, and his head swivels open to dock your iPhone or iPod Touch. I always thought that R2 should have an iPhone dock built into his body somewhere.

You’ll need to provide your own charger cable, but R2 is compatible with the iPhone 3G/3GS, iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5 and iPod devices except the shuffle and new nano. R2 was always such a versatile droid, wasn’t he?

The R2-D2 dock is selling for $210(USD) over on Etsy. If you want him sitting under the Christmas tree this year, you’d better move quick before some sneaky Jawa snatches him up from under your nose.

You’d think that a story about an origami Yoda would be a first, right? Well, the world being what it is today, it turns out that our very own Lambert Varias wrote about an origami Yoda last year. But I think this one has got the original beat like Yoda beat down Darth Maul – so take that, Lambert!

This detailed Yoda sculpture was hand-folded out of a single sheet of paper by James Lucas, based on a design by Fumiaki Kawahata. How can that be one sheet of paper, you ask? It’s actually a sheet of tissue-foil paper with green on one side and ivory on the other, that’s how.

Yoda stands about 6″ tall, and is covered with a layer of waterproof spray lacquer, which should keep him in good condition – though I still wouldn’t leave him out in the Dagobah swamp for long. Order origami Yoda over on Etsy for $55 (USD) you will.

Here’s a heads-up for Star Wars fans who have yet to check out the most awesome thing to hit eBay since the beginning of time: a listing for 1,950 action figures featuring the rich slew of characters from the hit franchise that George Lucas built.

This massive auction was set up to benefit Rancho Obi-Wan, which is a non-profit museum that’s dedicated to collecting Star Wars-related memorabilia.

The impressive lot was collected over a period of over 30 years, and includes numerous vintage Jedi, Sith, droids, and ewoks among other things. More than a handful of modern action figures from early 2011 are also included.

44 bids have already been placed so far to bring the current price of the lot to $8,000(USD). Even at that hefty price, this is still a pretty good deal for the serious collector.

Interested? Place your bid for this impressive collection here by December 9th at 11:00AM PST.

[via CNET]

If you are an avid gamer, and love all things that have to do with the Star Wars universe, then you would surely mourn the fact that you would never be able to enjoy Star Wars: Battlefront 3, which is rather sad considering the game itself was “99% finished”, according to Free Radical Design’s co-founder Steve Ellis. The only thing left that was required to do was bug fixing, and the game studio itself could have, in Ellis’ words, “turned a corner” after the Haze debacle/

Ellis said, “It felt like we had turned a corner as a company. We had had a dark period during the development of Haze, we’d had problems with our tech and we’d had some growing pains as we expanded to the size we needed to be, but it really felt like we were finally coming out of the other side intact. We had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release. It should have been our most successful game, but it was cancelled for financial reasons. I’m happy that people did at least get to see what we were working on and share the team’s enthusiasm for it.”

Now that is rather sad, and it would have been nice to see just how Star Wars: Battlefront 3 would have fared if it were given the final push.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: PC system requirements for Crysis 3 revealed, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for iOS and Android trailer debuts,