Sometimes you just want to build something that looks cool and has no practical purpose whatsoever. If you’re like me, you just huddle in a corner until the urge subsides, but if you’re like Autuin of Free Geek Vancouver, you actually build a thing. The thing in question this time around is called the Dymaxion Auto-Matic Buckminster Fuller. Basically, it’s an old radio with an old CRT display jammed inside of it that spouts randomly generated quotes attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller. It’s as awesome as it is useless.

Internet-connected glasses with a heads-up display seem exceedingly futuristic, but if reports are to be believed, you can expect the future to be coming by the end of this year. Google has been working on this project for a while now, and that fact alone is hardly any kind of secret, but now some new details have come to light according to a tipster at 9 to 5 Google and it turns out that it might not actually be too early to start getting excited.

Discovered back in 2009, exoplanet GJ 1214b has been the focus of interest from the start. One of the first planets discovered to have an atmosphere, there’s been a lot of guessing as to exactly what kind it actually has. In 2010, tests showed that the atmosphere was primarily composed of water, and now infrared spectra taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed that it is in fact a waterworld and a planet unlike any other that has been previously discovered.

If you had any doubts as to whether or not Mass Effect 3 could live up to its epic potential as a gut wrenching tale of the depressing, messy fight for — at best — a Pyrrhic victory against a foe so overwhelming as to be unbelievable, this trailer should clear things up for you. If you still have doubts, just watch it again. Of course, the trailer didn’t include any comedy, but I trust that won’t be absent from this game either. That is, unless, everyone funny bought the farm in your playthrough of Mass Effect 2. I’ll miss you, Mordin.

As part of its enduring fondness for watches which aren’t immediately decipherable, Tokyoflash has released yet another watch that isn’t exactly what it seems. The Kisai Stencil Watch, while a little weird at a glance, is probably the most intuitive Tokyoflash watch I’ve seen in a long time. The trick is easy; the numbers are drawn with the whitespace. As you might have guessed by the watch’s name, its face is conveyed via stencil, making it look like jumbled lines at first glance, but also exceeding easy to read once the trick clicks.

Whether you like it or not, social networks are weaseling their way further into the very fabric of our everyday life. That being the case, you might not be surprised that they’re working their way further into the legal system. For instance, a High Court judge in the U.K. has recently ruled that you can totally serve court summons via Facebook since some people out there seem to be impossible to reach any other way. Yes, we’ve come to that.

I am nothing if not a fan of mechs, and I am stoked to say that it is a very, very good year for mechs. As if it wasn’t good enough already (it is), this mini ED-209 Robocop junkbot is just gravy. A miniscule version of its sophisticated namesake, the mini ED-209 was constructed by TGNsmith out of recycled materials like  an old computer case and some spent propane tanks welded together with some love and ingenuity. The mini ED-209 junkbot actually has a big brother junkbot that weighs over 300 pounds, but this little guy has his own distinct characteristic: He’s for sale.

I’m all for realistic graphics, but this fan-made GoldenEye 64 mod – which is totally an actual GoldenEye 64 mod, for sure — takes it too far. It’s like it comes out of one uncanny valley and into the next. Maybe they should have but a little of that effort into improving Natalya’s AI instead of making sure the bad guys look like real people as they awkwardly crumble. I think I’ll just go play GoldenEye: Rogue Agent; that was way better than GoldenEye 64 anyways. I mean, at least it had an actual golden eye, right?

Remember how the price of Whitney Houston’s “The Ultimate Collection” nearly doubled within the hour following her death? Remember how it got knocked back down and there was just the slightest chance that it could have been unrelated to price-gouging since Sony gave a vaugely plausible story? Now, The Bodyguard, a film in which Houston starred, has been yanked off Netflix streaming. Why? Because the rightsholder (which is most likely Warner Bros.) saw that “there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies.” No two ways about it.

The Pirate Bay has been sailing on some stormy seas lately, and things don’t look to be getting any better. U.K. high court recently ruled that the site ”authorizes” and encourages users to infringe on copyrights as opposed to merely “enabling” or “assisting,” a distinction which puts The Pirate Bay in the position of being decidedly illegal in the U.K.. That being the case, it’s possible that the site could be blocked outright by ISPs; they wouldn’t be the first.