Are you an avid collector of all things Lego?

Are you an avid collector of all things Lego? Are you a fan of science, or perhaps just a fan of genius in general? Maybe you’re just a collector of very odd esoterica and like to show off all the weird stuff you have? If you fall into any of these categories, then Amazon seller The Living Brick has just the item for you: A Stephen Hawking Lego kit.

The item, which is selling on Amazon for $39.99, comes complete with every piece you’ll need to recreate the venerable physicist, as well as a detailed instruction manual — you know, in case you aren’t the Stephen Hawking of Lego-building and need some guidance. Only 100 of the kits were made, and according to the Amazon page as of this writing, only eight remain. The kit comes with brand-new parts, and ones that are official Lego bricks, rather than some knock-off brand.

Checking some of the product reviews, there are reports of the finished model being a little flimsy, with pieces not being sturdy enough to stay together. However sturdy the model is, it’s actually quite impressive that some small, solid-color Lego pieces were able to represent something so complex and make it instantly recognizable.

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When Google’s Eric Schmidt introduced “The New Motorola”

When Google’s Eric Schmidt introduced “The New Motorola” on stage last year, after appointing Googler Dennis Woodside CEO of Motorola, it was made clear that the company would undergo some serious restructuring to fit in more with Google’s corporate values. What was unclear at the time was the volume of jobs the company would be shaving in order to bring the mobile manufacturer to profitability.

Google inherited quite a mess when they purchased Motorola. 18 months of products that weren’t likely to sell particularly well, a relationship with Verizon Wireless that promoted things like locked bootloader and bloatware, and a corporate ecosystem that was too large to succeed in the market today.

Since the announcement of “The New Motorola” there’s been a lot of changes made to try and right the ship. Google employees were put in key leadership positions, rumors of a powerful X Phone coupled with UI changes to make their phones look more like Stock Android, and now two different workforce adjustments. The company has confirmed today that 1,200 jobs have been cut on top of the 4,000 jobs that were cut back in August, with no confirmation as to whether or not more will come after this.

It’s not all layoffs in Motorola land. Recently the company hired Guy Kawasaki to advise on the next steps for the company. Guy made a name for himself as an Apple evangelist early on, but has since moved to support the Android platform as well as Google’s social network. The hope is that Guy’s influence alongside other Google transplants will work to fix the existing pipeline of products and set up a business model moving forward that leaves the company more able to compete with Samsung and Apple in the next year.

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One of the major benefits of using OLED technology is the very low levels of power they require

One of the major benefits of using OLED technology is the very low levels of power they require. Toshiba has combined that fact with another technology that’s becoming more popular–wireless power transmission.

Typically, we see wireless power used to charge smartphones without the need to plug a cable into them directly. But what Toshiba has done is to integrate the inductive power system into the back of a small OLED panel. The result is a working light that requires no wires.

Toshiba decided the best way to show this system off during Lighting Fair 2013 in Tokyo this week was to create an configurable light unit. It takes the form of a square frame that can be filled with up to 9 wireless OLED panels. The frame provides power to any of the panels inserted into it, and as there’s no physical connection, you can reconfigure the shape of the light whenever you want.

The wireless power system wasn’t the only bit of tech Toshiba was showing off during the fair, though. The Japanese company has also managed to cut the amount of light a transparent OLED panel emits out the back significantly. Typically this is over 30 percent, but Toshiba has got that down to around 10 percent light bleed.

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Having an Xbox 360 under your TV allows entertainment to be accessible by all the family

Having an Xbox 360 under your TV allows entertainment to be accessible by all the family. But that usually means you want an Xbox Live account for each person rather than trying to share one. It also inevitably means paying for multiple Gold accounts every year.

Microsoft eased that burden back in 2010 by introducing the Xbox Live Gold Family Pack. For $100 you got four Gold accounts that could be shared on a single console or split across multiple machines if you so wished. It offered a significant saving over the typical $40 per Gold account annual subscription. Other benefits included being able to monitor activity, restrict access for kids, and allocate Microsoft Points to each account. All invaluable features for parents.

Unfortunately, the option of a Family Pack has now disappeared all of a sudden. For some reason Microsoft has decided to stop offering it, literally overnight, and without warning. Anyone trying to sign up for a new account or renew an existing Family Pack is being denied the option, and Microsoft is so far offering no explanation as to why this decision has been taken.

Were the Family Pack accounts not popular enough? Or does this point to a big change coming to the Xbox Live system when the Xbox 720 is launched? Maybe these family controls will be built into the new Xbox Live, and maybe Microsoft has a new way it wants to handle family accounts that the old way of doing things didn’t support?

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The serious perils of making cocktails at home cannot be understated

The serious perils of making cocktails at home cannot be understated. Who hasn’t spent an evening cleaning up spilled mixers, coping with an eyeful of lime juice, and thinking there must be a better way? According to the guys behind Party Robotics, the answer is an open source robotic drink mixer called the Bartendro. It’s on Kickstarter right now, and is hurtling toward full funding.

Bartendro uses peristaltic pumps (dispensers) to mete out accurate volumes of liquid to make the perfect drink in any size you want. If you only want to try a tiny bit of some complicated beverage, Bartendro can make that happen. The dispensers actually use a modified Arduino controller, and are are connected to a router board paired with a Raspberry Pi computer.

The Raspberry Pi is used to deploy a wireless network that you can connect to with a tablet or smartphone. A web interface is used to easily select drinks, which Bartendo mixes up. The router board can handle upto 15 Bartendo dispensers, each drawing liquid from a different bottle as needed. The team claims it is accurate to within one milliliter.

If you want in on Bartendro, there are a few cheaper levels that offer some swag, but no robot. Spend $99-129 and you can get a single dispenser without the Raspberry Pi or router. Be aware, the cheaper option is an early bird special, and it’s nearly sold out as of this writing. The dispenser-only tier is good for hobbyists that want to play with the pumps.

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If you have ever played Portal, you’re probably a fan of automated turrets

If you have ever played Portal, you’re probably a fan of automated turrets. If you use the internet in 2013, you probably either have a Twitter account, or at least encounter tweets from various people in your daily news cycle. iStrategyLabs, essentially a social media and digital ad agency, created an automated turret that fires paintballs when you tweet at it. It doesn’t sing in soothing tones like the turrets from Portal, but it allows you to shoot a gun from across the internet, if you’re so inclined.

Dubbed PaintBot, the gun (perhaps unfortunately) is set up in the office of iStrategyLabs, rather than placed in the bedroom of that jerk who doesn’t stop tweeting obnoxious retorts to everything you send over Twitter. The paintball gun is mounted on a tripod and shoved between some steadying wood, and hooked up to an Arduino. When someone tweets with the hashtag “#ISLPaint” the rig responds by firing a paintball at a canvas.

Sadly, though, there is much interactivity left to be desired. You can’t aim the gun, so you can’t potentially draw something on the canvas using paintball pellets as your brush, and there also isn’t a livestream, so you can’t watch your tweet shoot a gun. In fact, there’s really no way to tell if your tweet was even registered and did anything. iStrategyLabs does state that it is working on making improvements to the gun, so hopefully some aiming features and a livestream will be added in the future.

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Rather than having to repaint a room numerous times in order to change the color

Rather than having to repaint a room numerous times in order to change the color, a new robotic lighting system called Lighty could get the job done in a matter of seconds.

Lighty uses a tablet-and-stylus interface to control a room that is equipped with an array of robotic lights in the ceiling. A camera embedded in the ceiling displays the image of the room on screen, and the user draws on the image, shading in dark or light areas as if they were coloring in a book. As the user shades in the areas, the robotic lights in the ceiling respond in kind, lightening or darkening the corresponding areas of the room.

The computer does all of the calculations, so all the user has to focus on is coloring, and can even blend light and dark areas for a moody effect. The lights in the ceiling are able to swivel around and aim at specific areas of the room, so for example, if you want to be a little suggestive, the room can be made completely dark except for the bed area.

The tablet interface, though simple, is reminiscent of a graphical design or art program, like Photoshop. The user chooses different brushes from a menu, then paints the displayed image of the room. The demo shows different intensities of light, as well as a few tools, such as a standard brush, one called “squirt,” as well as an eraser and undo button. Though the demo didn’t make mention of it, it’s entirely conceivable that the lighting system can replace the standard white lights with lights of a different color, allowing users to paint a room in many shades.

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