But if they’re carrying a 32-ounce Big Gulp from 7-11, deadly force is authorized.

Matt Martin, Gamesindustry.biz:

The Wii U just had its Dreamcast moment. With Electronic Arts confirming it doesn’t have any games in development for the machine, one of the console industry’s biggest players has walked away from the system counting its losses. So that’s none of the market-leading sports games for the Wii U in the near term and none of those tantalising new Star Wars games in the mid-term. We weren’t looking at a long term solution for the Wii U, but now it seems it won’t even get a semi-decent sales pick up at the end of the year. Christmas is cancelled for Nintendo.

I have to admit, I winced with the Dreamcast reference. I’m a big Dreamcast fan even to this day. Big difference between Nintendo and Sega, though: Nintendo’s got a thriving handheld gaming business.

EA pulling up stakes in the Wii U software business isn’t necessarily a death knell for the platform, but it is a major PR issue for Nintendo to deal with. Martin outlines some of Nintendo’s other challenges, too.

Yahoo has been mulling some kind of deal with the hip New York-based blogging site, from a strategic investment to an outright acquisition. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going to be “the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo.”

This would be very interesting.

Over 11,000 UK consumers responded to the survey, with Apple coming out on top with an 85% satisfaction score. Apple Retail Stores were praised specifically for their “unique look and feel” and “great customer service.”

No surprise, but good to see.

Good news.

Jeff Bertolucci for The Saturday Evening Post:

Beware. Your tech gear is costing you money while you sleep. Sure, the stuff looks innocent enough: cable box, HDTV, computer monitor, and sundry other electronic gadgets that consume power even when in “sleep” mode. While their energy-sucking ways may seem harmless, they cost you big bucks over time.

It all adds up.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini:

”We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we’d done it,” Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. “The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”

So basically, Otellini is the Pete Best of the tech business.

Tim is setting the record straight and offering new ideas.

There’s barely enough left to give back to the shareholders.

I love that these types of transitions no longer require Flash.

I have never used a case on my iPhone, except for the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. Having the extra battery power made it worth while and the Mophie never let me down. Good seeing it available for the iPhone 5.

Zakk Wylde, Lee Ritenour, JJ Grey & Mofro, and Rock Candy Funk Party (RCFP)–featuring Tal Bergman, Joe Bonamassa, Ron DeJesus, and Mike Merritt–will take The Iridium stage to celebrate Les Paul’s 98th birthday with more than a week of shows June 3-12.

I was at the first celebration at the Iridium in New York after Les died sitting at a table with Zakk Wylde and Steven Van Zandt. Jeff Beck played that night — it was absolutely amazing.

Jalopnik:

Sydney has been having a big problem with oversized trucks driving into tunnels that are too low. So Sydney needed a stop sign that is absolutely impossible to miss. Here it is and it’s amazing.P

It’s a curtain of water with a stop sign projected onto it.

I don’t know – it seems like they might scare the daylights out of the driver and cause even more havoc.

Slate:

…as a scientist, I can’t help but notice that every now and again, just sometimes, maybe, Trek ventures into some pretty dicey science territory. Let me be clear: I have no problem with faster-than-light travel, time travel, teleporters, the Universal Translator, or anything like that. Every genre has a conceit, a gimme, and in scifi that means advanced tech that we can’t necessarily explain today. That’s fine, and as long as it’s internally consistent in the story I’m happy.

My beef is usually when the plot relies on some error in science, or when the tech is used inconsistently.

In honor of the release of the latest Star Trek movie today, this should get the Trekkies all wound up.

Police were called to calm Star Wars and Doctor Who fans at a science fiction convention in Norwich, UK, after the two groups got into a heated argument, the BBC reports.

Meanwhile the Star Trek fans just watched from the sidelines, recording the fracas on their Windows 8 phones.

Moving into Union Square is great for Apple.

Jason Wilson, VentureBeat:

EA is doing away with its Online Pass program from this point forward, a decision the video game publisher says is partially based on player response.

“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”

Online Pass was EA’s attempt to short circuit the used game market. New console games included an “online pass” code that players needed to input in order to play their games online. Games purchased second-hand from GameStop and elsewhere required users to purchase an additional code in order to play.

With all the bad press that EA’s getting this year over SimCity and other fumbles, it’s no wonder they did away with this program. It was as welcome as a turd in a punchbowl.

“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

That is the line that the DOJ is using in its e-book case against Apple. However, when you look at it in context with the rest of the comments Jobs made, it’s pretty innocuous.

Google is pissed off that Microsoft made a YouTube app for Windows Phone, but excluded the advertising. Here is a section of Google’s letter:

“Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube,” says Google’s letter, addressed to Microsoft’s Todd Brix.

Actually Google, Microsoft has it right — this sounds like a great YouTube app.

I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland, but I won’t be able to catch this event. If you’re in Edinburgh, stop by and check it out.

Jim and Dan talk about Google’s recent announcement including Google Play Music All Access and changes the changes coming to Google+, Larry Page’s voice issues, the release of The Loop magazine app, and the issues that arise when launching such an app.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME5 for 30% off), and Shopify.

Eight years after Google launched Maps as a beta product, the search giant is reinventing the map for a new data rich web that lives on fast broadband, and runs on computers with oomph to spare.

Glad to see it.

Statement by Apple spokesman Steve Dowling:

“Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012,” Dowling said in a statement. “We also help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. by keeping our R&D in California and creating category-defining products like the iPhone, iPad and the app store, which has generated billions of dollars in sales for software developers.”

If they are going to ask Apple about its offshore money, they should ask the politicians too.

Gizmodo:

On December 21st of last year, Commander Hadfield and his team (Expedition 35) docked with the ISS after a two-day flight in aboard a Soyuz TMA-07M, and began their mission.

Hadfield was the first to realize, on a large scale, that we don’t want a lecture, we just want to see cool stuff. So he told what amounts to the Good Parts version of living in space. He got results, too. His most popular video has 7 and a half million views, with several more in the millions or hundreds of thousands.

Commander Hadfield made all Canadians very proud.

The 50 billionth app has been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. The winner hasn’t been announced yet, but we’ll update the info when it comes out.