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AT&T to prorate cancellation fees

AT&T wants to be more consumer-friendly.

On Tuesday the company said that it will prorate the $175 early termination fee it charges wireless customers who cancel their contracts based upon how much time they have left in their contract. This means that someone who cancels their service 23 months into a two-year contract will pay considerably less than someone who cancels the service after only six months. (All new customers are able to cancel their service with no penalty for up to 30 days after service begins.)

The company also said it will no longer require customers to … Read more

Hotshot robot enjoys insult comedy and stealing your girlfriend

Attendees of this past weekend's Coachella music festival in Southern California spotted a robot named Hotshot who apparently roamed the fairgrounds making colorful robotic commentary. Falling somewhere between Short Circuit and Triumph the insult-comic dog, Hotshot seems to be a remote-controlled bot with a head-mounted camera and an off-site operator who provides the robot with its witty banter.

Hotshot begs an interesting and possibly terrifying question. Is it possible to engineer a robot that has a better chance of getting lucky than you do? Not some kind of super-realistic sexbot like Cherry 2000, but a Johnny 5-style robot … Read more

A USB key for reality shows

They've been run over, submerged in water, subjected to extreme temperatures and even built to withstand nuclear explosions. For some reason, people insist on treating USB flash drives like contestants on Fear Factor. And yet, more often than not, they seem to survive with flying colors.

The "Corsair Flash Survivor" is the latest to enter this Thunderdome culture, an aluminum encased device with a black O-ring to prevent water seepage that comes in 4GB and 8GB storage sizes, according to Everything USB. What we can't figure out, however, is why it looks like a flashlight.

Robot, heal thy self

We make sport of robots here at Crave on occasion, but it's all in good fun. We'd like to state that for the record, now that we're afraid they may some day rule the world.

The latest fodder for our paranoia comes not from watching too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica, but from a reputable periodical. Science magazine is reporting today that mechanical engineers at Cornell University are working on a robot that can recover from injuries--we're not talking Terminator just yet, but it's definitely limping in that direction.

Cornell's four-legged prototype can, … Read more