Sphero’s Force Band wearable can control nearly anything now thanks to IFTTT

Sphero has been selling the Force Band wearable for awhile now, designed to let you control the adorable little BB-8 droid with "force gestures" — like a Jedi. But now the $80 (or slightly less) gadget is potentially a lot more useful. As Gizmodo notes, the company is setting it up to work with If This Then That, which means that you can use it to control much more than a cute robot toy. IFTTT, if you’re not familiar, lets you create little applets that use one thing to trigger another thing automatically. One good example I like: you can set your Instagram posts to auto-Tweet with the embedded image so they actually show up on Twitter. IFTTT can do stuff with smart gadgets, your Android phone, Facebook, and so much more.

And now, they can be triggered by the Force Band. Sphero is obviously leading with the most fun stuff: controlling your smart home gadgets. Making a real world gesture cause real world things to happen is obviously going to impress your family more than using it to fire off a tweet. The recipe page for the Force Band has some pre-made, Star Wars-themed suggestions, including "Play the Imperial March" and "post your Jedi wisdom to Twitter."

There are three gestures that work with the Force Band: push, pull, and stop — but an absolutely massive set of services you can connect those three simple gestures to. Will mapping broad arm gestures to turning on your smart lights actually be useful? Doubtful. Will it be cool? Yes.

Sadly, I don’t think there’s a way to remote start your car with IFTTT, otherwise you’d be able to turn the classic Volkswagen ad into a reality. Maybe next year.

Get a free ticket to Westworld with this sweet Chromecast deal

Google has sweetened the deal for a new Chromecast, offering 3 months of free HBO Now access for new subscribers. If you want HBO, the deal basically nets a more-than-free Chromecast: the streaming device is on sale for $25, and 3 months of HBO Now normally costs about $45. The free subscription also comes with Google’s higher-end, 4K Chromecast Ultra, which costs $69. It’s definitely the best deal Google is offering this year for Black Friday.

We’re not telling you what to do with that HBO subscription, but there are only two episodes of Westworld left, so now is a good time to take a trip to the park if you’ve been missing out.

Star Wars smartphones are coming to SoftBank in Japan

Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank is marking the incoming release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by launching a pair of phones that let you choose your Force allegiance. The Star Wars Mobile phones are made by Sharp and come in both Dark and Light side editions.

Here are the unexciting specs:

5.3-inch 1080p IGZO display
Snapdragon 820 processor
22.6-megapixel camera
3,000mAh battery
TV tuner
3GB of RAM
32GB of storage (plus microSD slot)
7.6mm thick, 155g

Apple offers gift cards up to $150 for its Black Friday deals

After skipping out on Black Friday last year, Apple is back with some seasonal deals. Or, well, gift cards. Rather than giving customers money off products, the iPhone-maker is instead bundling in gift cards worth up to $150 on select purchases.

Here’s what you can get:

$150 gift card when buying a MacBook (from $1,299), MacBook Pro 13-inch or 15-inch (from $1,299; no late-2016 models are included so that means no TouchBar), MacBook Air (from $999), iMac (from $1,099), or Mac Pro ($2,999)

Up to $100 gift card when buying an iPad Pro (from $599), iPad Air 2 (from $399), or iPad mini 4 (from $399)

Up to $50 gift card when buying an iPhone SE (from $399), iPhone 6s (from $549), or iPhone 6s Plus (from $649)

$25 gift card when buying an Apple TV (from $149) or select Apple Watch Series 1 models (from $269)

Similar deals are also available in markets including Canada (gift cards up to CA$200), Australia (gift cards up to AU$200), New Zealand (gift cards up to (NZ$215), and the United Kingdom (gift cards up to £120).

The deals are, frankly, a little disappointing, especially when Apple’s teaser for the sales suggests something quite substantial. (Or maybe that was just our imagination.) Getting $150 or $100 off a future Apple purchase isn’t to be sniffed at, but it’s a shame the company hasn’t bothered to include any of its latest products in the deals. For more savings, you should check out what other stores have to offer

GoPro is already recalling its long-awaited Karma drone

After selling 2,500 units so far, GoPro today announced plans to recall its Karma drone after just 16 days on the market.GoPro founder and CEO Nick Woodman said the recall is due to safety concerns caused by a malfunction causing power loss and unpredictable behavior by the drone. According to Woodman in statement:

Safety is our top priority.

A very small number of Karma owners have reported incidents of power failure during operation. We have moved quickly to recall all units of Karma and provide a full refund while we investigate the issue. We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible.

Unfortunately, this came at a terrible time for GoPro. Last week, the company announced it missed quarterly revenue expectations by 23 percent. A 2,500 unit recall for its first non-camera product doesn’t bode well.

Strange Facebook bug shows certain users as dead — including Mark Zuckerberg [Updated]

A strange Facebook bug spotted by Business Insider shows a memorial message sitting atop profiles that informs friends and families a user has died. The message reads:We hope people who love [User] will find comfort in the things other share to remember and celebrate his life.The message also includes a link to a Facebook form to set up an account for a deceased person as a memorial account.
It’s not affecting everyone, so it’s unclear at this time how widespread the bug is, or what’s causing it. Business Insider reports it has seen the message on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s account, but we haven’t been able to spot it ourselves. In fact, we haven’t spotted it at all — so it seems to be a problem that’s not affecting the platform globally.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification.

There’s a simple solution to Facebook’s fake news problem

It’s almost as if Mark Zuckerberg could hear the sound of furious journalists pounding away on keys. Or, more likely, he read one of the countless pieces last week that sought to expose Facebook’s role in last week’s election. Either way, he’s responded to the media outcry that Facebook was directly responsible for Trump’s win.I ranted about this very thing after the election last week, but it bears repeating: Facebook isn’t responsible for Trump’s ascension to power, at least not directly.

That’s not a fair burden to place on the shoulders of a platform meant to facilitate information sharing. If you’d like an easier argument to make, blame the algorithmic timeline that forces each of us into an echo chamber of similar world views. Blame the decision to cut human editors. Blame Facebook’s decision to allow pages that deliberately misrepresent a news story (or make one up entirely) to operate with impunity.

For every argument Zuckerberg makes about being a platform to promote free speech and open views, I can make another about conscious misrepresentation and the promotion of libelous material. And his argument that “truth” is complicated is falling on deaf ears.

He’s not wrong. Truth is a complicated matter and even major publications get it wrong from time to time. But we’re not seeking perfection. Something, anything, would be a step in the right direction. A simple law of averages approach would work wonders. Once a certain percentage of your content is deemed false, the Page is suspended. Keep it up and you’ll be deleted from the platform entirely.

If Zuckerberg can make the claim that “more than 99 percent of what people see [on Facebook] is authentic,” then it’s certainly not a stretch to assume he can apply the tools used to come up with that stat on a per-Page basis.Arguing that Facebook isn’t at fault for giving a platform to the masses is fair. Arguing that it shoulders no responsibility in how they use it, well, isn’t.