Yes, definitely. Bring'em on. [Flickr via Brothers Brick]

We have few details at the moment, but here's a shot of a WiiZii prototype installed. It can connect an external SATA drive and features a tiny bit on onboard storage so that the chip's firmware can be updated as needed. With the use of the WiiZii+drive, you can load mass amounts of ISO and homebrew files quickly. In fact, I daresay that with a large enough drive, you could load far more content than is actually worth playing on the Wii. [Maxconsole]

Using paper also allows the Matrix's models to be fashioned with a blade, rather than a laser, which also keeps costs down. After the models come out, they can be sanded, painted and finished just like they were made of wood.

The Matrix has been in prototype form for a while, but Mcor has recently fought through the vaporware stage that keeps many 3D printer concepts down, claiming availability in Europe, with the rest of the world to follow next year. [Mcor Matrix via Gadget Lab via Hack-a-Day]

When they started to explain the capacity of these storage areas, designed to accomodate the 19-Billion-piece-per-year production, I realized the unbelievable scale of all this. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing.

Watch the video and multiple that vision by 32. Try to imagine a 65.6-square-mile area (170 square kilometers) distributed among thousands of shelves. Looking down one of the aisles—there are four per building—I realized I was looking at tens of thousands of boxes full of Lego bricks and pieces. All of them completely full: "There are approximately half a million boxes here," they told me. Later I found out that it was 162.240 boxes in each of the old cathedrals (which went up to 13 meters high) and 262.128 in the new ones (the 20 meter high ones).

Up in the distance I could see a robot working. I zoomed with my camera and saw how it took some boxes out, then put others in. "They are taking the boxes to packaging and decoration," Jan—one of the Lego PR guys in Billund—pointed out, "every time there's a production run, computers order the robots to retrieve whatever boxes are needed," according to the number of bricks necessary for a set. Everything is done on demand," he said with a big smile, proud of the efficiency of their system.

Then, without any warning, the robot started to move up there in Lego heaven, accelerating almost immediately as it descended from the top of the building to the bottom, at the end of one of the aisles. The speed was staggering for such a giant metal thing, and we all watched in silence as the gigantic crane moved the bot gracefully, like a male dancer would hold a ballerina in The Nutcracker.

We kept walking and one of them came towards us, stopping smoothly at the end of aisle. My first thought was about jumping into it and waiting for the next request from the production computers to feel the thrill of going up through that massive space, holding my breath and watching the multi-colored boxes blur in front of my eyes, like a Lego Silver Surfer on top of that yellow bot. Probably thinking the same, Jan turned to me: "you know, if you cross that line, the entire production process will stop. It's a security measure." Yeah, on second thought it was probably for the better. Later I learnt there were four robots per cathedral, one per aisle, moving at 2.5 meters per second in the new buildings, and 1.5 meters per second in the old ones. It doesn't seem a lot, but watching they zooming in every direction it didn't look very safe for humans.

But as we walked out of the storage, continuing with our visit to the factory, I just couldn't stop imagining myself flying on top of that bot in one of those long trenches, looking for the exhaust port on the Lego Death Star, probably with Jan and the Lego security chasing me like Darth Vader and his two TIE fighter wingmen. Lego Star Wars", I thought, at the end everything comes full circle. And then I said to myself: "Jesus, you are such a dork." I was. Albeit a very happy, smiling one. [Giz's Lego Trip]

The Mac in question is a 2.2GHz MBP with an undisclosed amount of RAM installed. The user, Flickr member burnflare92, stated no slowdown was detected at all. I find that a little hard to believe, as mine lags a bit with a mere 20-plus apps running, even if it is a 2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM MBP. What do you guys reckon: is zero lag with 150 apps running total BS? [Flickr]

1. Hotel Sax, Chicago
Sixth floor Studio is a room open for guests from 4pm to midnight which is "powered by Microsoft," meaning it has XBox 360 with the best games, Windows Media Center HDTV and Zunes a go-go.

2. Hotel Avante, Mountain View
Near Google's HQ, the Avante is nothing fancy but includes a bunch of random stuff in every room, like Etch-a-Sketch, a Rubik's cube, a deck of cards, a slinky, tape and scissors. For some reason.

3. Westin, Sydney
Nothing special about this one, except it's a five star and they probably will kick your ass if you try to break into the walls to escape room service's tips.

More geeky hotels at the link. [Hotel Chatter]

Not only could it be used to harvest waste heat from humans, it can be used to harvest heat from regular engines or combustion turbines, and has no moving parts at all. The National Science Foundation has granted Mr. Super Soaker funding, which means that we could soon have stuff attached to siphon off our waste heat. Or be connected to the Matrix by robots. Either/or. [Popular Mechanics via Treehugger]

But these $30 customizable leather dot matrix cuffs might be subtle enough for actual public use. Coming in pink or black, the cuffs have tiny perforated holes that won't pop without some force/neat sharp things. Punch out any clever word you can think of from the 5x30 dot grid (bigjohnson is too long). We dig their NSFW template and that we may be confused with evil punk rockers before weak, malnourished techies. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via popgadget]