Gadget Guru’s magic box

During GaGu’s regularly mandated trawl through the crowdfunding world, he stumbled upon a thing that will change his life forever: the $380/£296 Cubiio. By day, an unassuming cube. Also by day, a cube with a stupidly strong laser in it that can burn custom-generated patterns into whatever you point it at. Supremely dangerous in (and, indeed, on) the wrong hands, but very cool if you want to etch your child’s latest drawing onto a pancake, scorch your name into fine leather goods, or leave an indelible black mark just about anywhere. Please do not mention to Guru the fact that this Kickstarter project falls squarely into the ‘rather unlikely to work properly’ category. A pyromaniac can dream.

Very interesting to see the HTC Vive getting a price cut to £599, chasing down the Oculus Rift’s recent drop to £400. Drawing new people in is massively important to the VR world. Far more important than squabbling over patents, having little lawsuit parties, or spoiling the broth by signing up games to be exclusive to one platform when they could work well on either.

While Guru has long extolled the virtues of Mrs Guru’s Gtech eBike City (£995) he does need to point out one little foible that’s recently come to light: it uses regular brake pads on the wheel rims rather than disc brakes. These, it seems, get ground down to nothing in a matter of months given the bike’s usual lick of speed; perhaps not the best choice of hardware, there. And while Guru is on the subject, GaGu Sr.’s found something odd on his own bike: he was getting electric shocks when riding under power lines. Turns out power cables can build up a strong electric charge in you, shocking when it gets conducted out. Official advice is to grip the metal on your bike the whole time under power lines, so it can’t build up.