Video Preview: Voice-activated Dalek for Doctor Who fans

Proper daleks don't respond to voice controls very well. You say 'don't zap me!', they ignore you and shout 'Exterminate!', and basically it's all a bit of a shambles. Ah well.

Shiny Shiny's Susi has found a dalek that's more polite, however. It's a voice-controlled dalek, which can react to movement, answer questions, and generally behave more like a decent, upstanding member of society. Check it out below:

LEGO TECHNIC Motorised Bulldozer: remote-control plastic bobbly goodness

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LEGO TECHNIC has launched this cool Motorised Bulldozer, a realistic model fitted with an infrared receiver, and powered by a remote control unit.

It features four individual motors and one battery box, which work together to enable the bulldozer to be driven, turned on the spot through 360 degrees, its blade and piston engine to be operated, and driven on its realistic caterpillar tracks.

Computer proves Rubik's Cube solvable in 26 moves or less — that's 26 years too late for me

rubiks_cube.gifA computer has calculated that any configuration of the classic 3×3 Rubik’s Cube can be solved in a maximum of 26 moves.

This astounding news comes just weeks after scientists programmed a computer played the perfect game of draughts. Haven’t these computers got anything better to be doing with their CPUs?

The Rubik’s Cube has 43 quintillion (43,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible combinations, so the scientists had to simplify the problem by figuring out which arrangements of the Cube are equivalent, identifying special arrangements of the Cube, and not analysing combinations already solvable in under 26 moves.