While rumours have suggested it in the past, it's now official: after years of complete and utter redundancy, Sony is finally killing off the MiniDisc. Read More >>

46 years ago yesterday, veteran astronaut Gus Grissom; first American spacewalker Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee were killed in a cabin fire during an Apollo 1 launch pad test. The first majorly-fatal accident in NASA's history, the fire was caused in part by the cabin's pure oxygen atmosphere and a number of other dangerous design flaws that were correct over the 20 month delay that followed the incident. Read More >>

As part of its earnings report, Nokia let slip that Symbian, wrecker of devices and boggler of minds, is dead. Nokia will design NO MORE SYMBIAN DEVICES EVER! That's right folks, the 808 Pureview was the last Nokia device to be riddled with Symbian-itis. Yeah, a couple of other people dabble in Symbian, but it was Nokia's baby; now that it's exterminated it, Symbian should be gone for good. PARTY TIME! [Nokia] Read More >>

Late last night, probably in some tense boardroom at the top of a skyscraper, High Street giant HMV made the call to pull the plug and appoint administrators. This follows in the recent illustrious tradition of High Street tech stores biting the dust: first Game, then Comet, Jessops, and now HMV have gone into administration. Are you sad to see them go? Read More >>

It's what it says on the tin, folks. Hot on the heels of Comet and Jessops last week, the BBC is reporting that HMV is going to be the latest of the high street stores to bite the dust, with shares suspended from trading and Deloittes rumoured to be appointed as administrators in the morning. We should have a definitive statement tomorrow AM. It's a grim start to 2013 for Britain's retailers. Read More >>

I didn't know Aaron Swartz personally. We never spoke, not in person nor by email. Read More >>

Former Reddit co-owner and founder of DemandProgress, Aaron Swartz commited suicide at the age of 26 in New York City yesterday, according to reports by The Tech. Swartz had been battling criminal charges related to his attempts to make JSTOR archives public and had been facing up to 50 years in prison and $4 million dollars (£2,479,466.91) fines at the time of his death. Read More >>

The Newzbin saga has been raging for over a year now, with big media first managing to sue the original Newzbin out of existence, and then winning a court order to block the revived Newzbin2 off the face of the planet. But now the hackers behind Newzbin2 have thrown in the towel. The original Usenet indexer that brought binaries into the mainstream, is no more. Read More >>

So long, iPhone 3GS. Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that the 3GS will be discontinued, replaced as Apple's low end, free-on-contract by the iPhone 4. Goodbye, old friend! Read More >>

Bill Moggridge, a British designer who created the very first clamshell-style laptop, has died age 69. The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has announced that Moggridge, its director, died on Saturday from cancer. Read More >>

Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first man to ever set foot on the moon, died to today at age 82 due to complications from his heart surgery three weeks prior. Read More >>

Sad news has reached our ears today -- Tony Scott, the British director of Top Gun; Days of Thunder; Man on Fire; Enemy of the State and countless other celluloid works of art, has died. The brother of Ridley Scott reportedly took his own life after jumping from a Los Angeles bridge last night. Read More >>

Whitney Houston, the diva of divas, passed away yesterday at the too young age of 48. It's a depressing end to her story of galaxy bending talent, sun magnifying limelight and cursed frailty. Anyone who has ever heard Whitney in her prime will always remember the singular power of her voice. I mean, we all have our own 'oh damn' Whitney-moment we hold dear, right? Not these losers. These uncultured dummies mistook Oprah for Whitney Houston when they posted their RIP messages on Facebook. Read More >>

In a branding equivalent of quietly dumping a corpse off a pier in the middle of the night, Nokia is retiring the Symbian moniker for good. Except it's not dead—now it's just called Nokia Belle. Belle! Ha! Ha. Read More >>

Here's an amazing series of pictures of Steve Jobs playing around with OS X's Photo Booth back in 2005. They're absolutely lovely, showing off a side of Jobs that so few of us knew. Good to see, on a day like this. Read More >>