Pizzas with a side order of alternating current

Pizza Express
Awkward silence occasionally broken by new @reply notification sound

Can't bear to stop looking at your mobile telephone? Not even for long enough to stuff a pizza into your mouth while occasionally looking up to acknowledge the presence of the person you're eating it with?

You're not alone. You're part of a larger problem with modern society, but we'll not address that here. And besides, it's a problem about to be fixed by the experts at Pizza Express.

The supplier of round foodstuffs is launching a whole new category of dining experience, which will include built-in iPod docks beside its redesigned tables. So you can eat your Hot Meat Feast - or pasta for the lady - without having to worry about the modern problem of your battery going flat and therefore having to make conversation with the person you're with.

The new dough consumption pods also include a rounded hood arrangement, which the company says helps black out background noise. Not that background noise is much of a problem these days, as all we do is sit still and look at telephones in silence all day. Or is that just us?

Bomb-proof

A category of laptop you may not be aware of has been updated, with the latest military-spec models from VT Miltope revealed this week. The tech specs of the company's combat-ready RLC-3 war-proof laptop are rather odd - the maker claims it can survive being dropped 26 times from a height of three feet.

VT

ACTUAL FACT: It has a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo T9400 inside. We can do facts, on occasion

It can also carry on working after being rained on in a 20mph wind and has been certified fungus proof, according to the PDF data sheet. So if you have a three-foot-high coffee table and live in a damp, mouldy basement flat, it'll be a good replacement for that knackered old Acer of yours.

Fully operational

Need a good piece of Star Wars merchandise? Planning on selling your house soon anyway? Then you might want to make an excuse to be in the vicinity of Christie's auction house on 25 November, as that's when the ultimate, ultimate, most ultimate piece of Star Wars memorabilia goes up for sale - an original Darth Vader costume.

Vader

VENTED FRONT: Vader getting his helmet polished for the first time in decades

Expected to sell for between £160k and £230k, this particular model of Vader case is thought to have been made for filming The Empire Strikes Back. Hopefully George Lucas hasn't been needlessly fiddling with it, retro-fitting loads of pointless new gadgets, cutting new eye-holes and the like over the last 27 years.

Dark side of the room

Finally, a gadget to reveal precisely what is causing all those strange groans coming through the walls from the flat next-door between 11.20pm and 11.25pm every Friday night - the US military's new through-the-walls imaging system.

Actually, we've already grossly exaggerated the actual tech capabilities of the AN/PPS-26 STTW out of all proportion. The thing has the ability to scan for weak signs of motion through (non-metal) walls, using radar. That's it. There will be no pictures of Mrs Williams getting undressed.

The other downside, when applied to military situations, is that it "could be a cow or a chimpanzee or a human being" generating the movements, as it's sadly not particularly specific about what's moving about. Best shoot it, anyway.

TOPICS
Latest in Tech
Josie and Matt laughing in front of the Google Pixel 9a
TechRadar Podcast: Is the Pixel 9a ugly? Has Apple ruined the smartwatch market? And is Samsung's One UI in trouble?
A Lego Pikachu tail next to a Pebble OS watch and a screenshot of Assassin's Creed Shadow
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from LG's excellent new OLED TV to our Assassin's Creed Shadow review
A triptych image of the Meridian Ellipse, LG C5 and Xiaomi 15.
5 amazing tech reviews of the week: LG's latest OLED TV is the best you can buy and Xiaomi's seriously powerful new phone
Beats Studio Pro Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones in Black and Gold on yellow background with big savings text
The best Beats headphones you can buy drop to $169.99 at Best Buy's Tech Fest sale
Ray-Ban smart glasses with the Cpperni logo, an LED array, and a MacBook Air with M4 next to ecah other.
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from Twitter's massive outage to iRobot's impressive new Roombas
A triptych image featuring the Sennheiser HD 505, Apple iPad Air 11-inch (2025), and Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4).
5 unmissable tech reviews of the week: why the MacBook Air (M4) should be your next laptop and the best sounding OLED TV ever
Latest in News
Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con up-close from app store
Nintendo's new app gave us another look at the Switch 2, and there's something different with the Joy-Con
cheap Nintendo Switch game deals sales
Nintendo didn't anticipate that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was 'going to be the juggernaut' for the Nintendo Switch when it was ported to the console, according to former employees
Three angles of the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M4 laptop above a desk
Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) review roundup – should you buy Apple's new lightweight laptop?
Witchbrook
Witchbrook, the life-sim I've been waiting years for, finally has a release window and it's sooner than you think
Amazon Echo Smart Speaker
Amazon is experimenting with renaming Echo speakers to Alexa speakers, and it's about time
Shigeru Miyamoto presents Nintendo Today app
Nintendo Today smartphone app is out now on iOS and Android devices – and here's what it does