Entertainment

Even if you're too short to join the Galactic Empire as a Stormtrooper, at least you can still see yourself as one with the magic of 3D scanning and printing.

For $99.95, visitors to Florida's Walt Disney World during "Star Wars" Weekends (running each weekend from May 17 to June 9) can immortalize themselves as a 7.5-inch-tall Stormtrooper figurine. In some ways, it's probably a better deal than being a real Stormtrooper. They usually end up getting vaporized aboard a Death Star or miss every shot they fire at fleeing Rebels. … Read more

Any fan of "Star Wars" will immediately recognize the Lars Homestead, where Luke Skywalker grew up. But they may not realize that the sets used to film those scenes in the 1970s were left essentially untouched after George Lucas and his crew departed Tunisia.

Thanks to Laughing Squid, I stumbled across the beautiful and haunting photographs by visual artist Ra di Martino, who visited the location in Chott el Gharsa, Tunisia, where Lucas filmed those scenes, and captured their decrepit state years later.

Of course, there are a lot of people who want to keep the Lars Homestead … Read more

Attention early adopters: That first-edition Google Glass hardware is likely to be gathering dust a few years from now as the technology gets seriously revved (or falls victim to paranoid lawmakers and pub owners), but don't toss it out!

If an auction later this month of computing and other technological blasts from the past is any indication, it could pay off to hold on to those obsolete gadgets that were once on the cutting edge, even just briefly.

The highlight of the sale, planned for May 25 by German auction house Breker, is an original, working Apple-1, one of only 200 that were produced and 50 that are believed to still exist. Last year, Sotheby's auctioned off just an original Apple-1 motherboard for $374,500.… Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The Worst Room makes everyone in New York feel terrible.

- San Francisco hotels pricey? Van on Airbnb is only $92 a night.

- A bold new font lets dyslexia sufferers read.

- Bang With Friends goes mobile, because some people want to get it on the run.

- A Wi-Fi enabled Microsoft ad printed in Forbes magazine offers free Internet to readers.… Read more

If you're BlueStacks, the startup that figured out how to bring Android apps to Windows and Macs with its eponymous app player, the next logical step is to upend the mobile gaming market with a console and subscription service called GamePop, the company announced Thursday.

As CNET reported at CES 2013, GamePop is BlueStacks' Android-powered console that lets you not only play Android games on your TV, but also lets you use your phone or tablet as the controller.

GamePop preorders are available immediately at GamePop.tv, with consoles shipping this winter. As of today, the console ships with … Read more

Keep an eye on the sky the next time you're at a concert -- a cold beer might be coming your way. It's been announced that attendees of South Africa's OppiKoppi music festival will be able to order beer that comes delivered on an octocopter drone.

Called the OppiKoppi beer drone, the device is an 8-propeller helicopter that can be loaded with beer and flown over the festival, arriving at the GPS location of any person who orders a cold brew from a mobile app. Once the drone arrives at its location, it drops its cargo and a single beer attached to a parachute will make its way down to a designated campsite called District 9.

With beer intentionally flying in the air, there's some concern about a cold brew randomly hitting festival goers in the head. Darkwing Aerials, the South African company that's providing the beer drone for the festival, says it is taking safety precautions. … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Wolfenstein: The New Order set for current, next-gen consoles.

- How a 17-year-old girl hacked her way to a spoiler-free "Game of Thrones."

- Downloadify lets Chrome users copy MP3s of Spotify songs for 24 hours.

- Nintendo's big problem, according to CNN.… Read more

Android users who employ the TWC TV application will soon have far more functionality available to them.

Time Warner Cable announced on Tuesday that the upgrade to its Android application will deliver access to more than 4,000 On Demand TV shows and movies. The app will also allow for out-of-home access to some On Demand programming and live TV viewing over a Wi-Fi connection. Time Warner Cable says mobile users will have access to over 1,100 On Demand shows and movies and live television from "a dozen or so" news, sports, and entertainment channels.

Time Warner … Read more

Ouya, the open-source game console that took the Kickstarter world by storm, has been ripped apart by the folks over at iFixit.

The Ouya device earned a score of 9 out of 10 from iFixit for its high repairability. The iFixit team was able to tear apart the gadget with ease, and found that it was packed with several important components, including two Samsung 4-gigabit SDRAM modules (for a total of 1 gigabyte), a Texas Instruments power management tool, and Nvidia's Tegra 3 multicore CPU.… Read more