tekkr

#blockquote At SXSW, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde helmed a conference via Skype, where he likened P2P to Coca Cola, and The Pirate Bay to sugar. He also said he could make Sergey Brin "want to marry me." [TechRadar] More »

#video What do you do when a laptop breaks down three months after purchase? Get it repaired? Sell it? Or do as this Chinese man did, and destroy it silently at a HP store, with not a single swear-word passing your lips? More »

#nintendo GDC is over for another year, but the omission of any solid Nintendo news—particularly in the shape of a new handheld console—was not enough for RPAD.tv, who spent the whole show digging for DS2 information from developers. More »

#att You don't need a smartphone to get smartphone-like services, claims AT&T. They of course have a few new handsets backing up that boast, but what's most interesting is the free online syncing for both contacts and media. More »

On this day, back in 1985, the first ever dotcom URL was created, Symbolics.com. There were just six dotcoms registered that year, compared to the 100,000 that are created every day now. More »

At Google's panel today at SXSW in Austin, a Gmail team member named Jonathan Perlow asked the crowd to raise their hands if they think Gmail is too slow. We love Gmail, but certainly we can sympathize with the fair percentage of those audience members who raised their hands—the problem is pretty much limited to those, like us, who are power users with hundreds of thousands of messages (most of which are junk, we're not bragging, but still). Perlow had a response, confidently saying "We are fixing it." He didn't elaborate, but Google's always improving Gmail—hopefully this means we'll be seeing some improvements for power users soon. [TechCrunch] More »

#imagecache This picture shows entrants in this year's FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Breakaway match. Teams of ambitious high school kids build robots to compete in what's basically the American Gladiator version of soccer. It's pretty amazing. More »

#reviews Our game-loving sister site Kotaku reviewed the newest of that king of all RPG series, Final Fantasy, and found it, if not a blockbuster, worthwhile, and "a step in the right direction." Read the whole review here. [Kotaku] More »

#accessories The Spiderpodium is pretty self-explanatory: It's a gadget-stand/tripod (well, an octo-pod, technically) shaped like an arthropod. Lacking much to explain, I'm going to tell you the origins of my arachnophobia. Everyone take a seat. It's about to get real. More »

#ipad Listen up, rich people: If you ordered an iPad, cancel it. This is the one you need, covered with 11.43 carats of diamonds, graded G/H in color, VS2/SI1 in clarity, and 100/100 in stupidity. I can imagine Steve Jobs reaction: More »

#att Way to go, AT&T! It was nerve-wracking after last year's troubles, but reports are coming in that the oft-maligned network is holding up to the stress of SXSW better than expected. More »

#rhapsody Rhapsody just released a little teaser video for the next version of its iPhone app (to be followed closely by its new Android app) that marks a major change for the service: You can now download songs instead of streaming. More »

#bluster The WSJ has a discussion today of the phenomenon of the iPhone-using Microsoft employee. Apparently that time Ballmer fake-stomped an iPhone is emblematic of some (barely) real anti-iPhone sentiment in Redmond. More »

#winners This iPhone typist/possible woodpecker earns today's Holy Shit YouTube Moment of the Day Award. I'm positive I couldn't beat him on my Droid—hell, he'd put up a good fight against me on my laptop. More »

#astronomy Want to know where you can get a glimpse of the ultra-rare total solar eclipse? This map shows exactly when and where every eclipse in the next fifteen years will be visible—and why you should move to Memphis. More »

#happypiday Today's March 14th, which everyone knows is the day high school math club members further cement their alienation by celebrating their love of math, or circles, or whatever. But today's Sunday, so let's everyone celebrate nerddom in the comments! [Wiki] More »

#ipad So, the iPad is finally available for pre-order, and it turns out the half of the Giz staff that bought one aren't alone: CNN estimates Apple received about 120,000 iPad pre-orders on that first day alone. More »

Tonight at 2am, remember to set your clock an hour forward. Look forward to both more sunlight at the end of the day and unfortunately, an earlier rise to work. Wikipedia explains why: More »

#blockquote Social media researcher and general internet guru Danah Boyd gave the keynote address at SXSWi earlier today, focusing on matters of privacy. On paper, Google Buzz was a perfect social network. So why did it freak everyone out so much? More »

#mechanics Last month, I risked life and limb to tell you about Celsius X-VI-II, a shadowy French company who was building a $300,000 mechanical cellphone. The first pictures of the phone have surfaced, though they don't exactly answer our questions. More »