It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Legions of nine-to-fivers stare idly at their office monitors, pretending to work in the few short hours before going on holiday. Dysfunctional families assemble for awkward turkey dinners. And, of course, all of the consumer electronics companies ramp up their ad campaigns to lure in the tired, poor and hungry masses of seasonal shoppers.

Yet, sadly, by the looks of all the smartphone commercials coming out, it seems advertising companies consider us idiots. Instead of smart, Super Bowl-quality ads, we’re forced to watch ridiculous dreck, often f...

Google no longer plays in the solar fields of the lord.

As the year draws to a close, Google is shutting down several projects that haven’t panned out as the company hoped. Perhaps most notably, the search giant is ending its foray into solar thermal energy.

“At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level,” Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations said in a blog post.

Google’s “Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal” program started in 2007, aiming to reduce the costs associated with heliostats — mirrors used to reflect sunl...