Mylenium

Well, the different versions of various elements floating around would seem to disprove that, be it the 1 x 1 tile, some plates, Technic liftarms and so on. As for the buttons you likely will end up ordering directly from LEGO to get factory-fresh ones. Since the element in question has never been produced before in this color there like will only be one version either way. Mylenium

In so many words: Huh? In those ten years I've been doing LEGO I'm sure I could recount great sets just as I can remember really bad ones, but never would I say that any particular year has been the best year, best theme or whatever... Mylenium

I'm only referring to the reviewers with exclusive early access. Of course they can't control it once the genie is out of the bottle and the stuff is sold via regular channels. Mylenium

I'd actually be more interested in a lighter light gray and an in-between for DBG and LBG. I'm not sure what a darker DBG would do. Perceived lightness/ luminance has this weird curve where certain colors just cannot be differentiated by the human eye. A "slightly darker grey" would simply look black unless you blast it with light just like super light grey would simply look white. Personally I'm also not too jazzed about "warm grey" as the typical method of just adding red and yellow pigments more often than not looks like a dirty brown rather than actual grey. This would likely require lots of experimentation to get right and I'm leaning more into the purple and green-ish greys for that. Mylenium

They come out in March here in Germany, so they're probably still embargoed. Due to the selective launch they may also require people to sign extra paperwork behind the scenes so they don't end up in unlicensed regions. I'm sure proper reviews will pop up soon enough in February. Mylenium

Yeah, of course. They're already PR-spinning it and "course-correcting". Still, even that won't ever be the mass market they probably think it is in my opinion due to the technical limitations. Mylenium As long as I have to hold those stupid controllers to even navigate, it always totally breaks immersion. And let's be real: You cannot really "walk" in these environments, you have no proper haptic feedback and even with stunning visuals you can have poorly mixed sound. I haven't seen anything that would provide a fully wholesome experience, but of course I can't claim to have seen it all. Anyway, it's not gonna change now that companies are abandoning VR left and right. As far as I'm concerned VR at the consumer level is dead. Mylenium

Exactly the point. It's still niche, though. and that kind of is the problem. Nobody has overcome this classic chicken vs. egg problem. Users don't buy it because the devices are expensive and there is no content and developers don't produce content because there isn't enough of a mass basis. That and of course there are serious issues with interaction models, motion sickness, eye problems and so on. And to me those virtual worlds are also kind of stupid. VR does nothing that a phone call or cam chat can't. It's kind of like the hologram communicators in sci-fi movies. It looks cool, but adds nothing. Mylenium Yeah, I know it's a bad analogy, but in the moment I couldn't think of a better word. ;-) Mylenium

Yepp, that's the next disaster waiting to happen. Not in the sense that AI isn't here to stay, but a big chunk of those experiments will go nowhere and in a few years all those expensive data centers they built for it will not be worth much. And an AGI will never come, anyway. Mylenium

Yes, more or less. Just this week they confirmed a change of strategy after external observers suspected as much after their mass layoffs. And it's not just them. Apple apparently have reduced production of the Vision Pro by a significant amount as well because sales are sluggish. Yes, of course. It's ADHD everywhere, fueled by social media. Mylenium

Welcome to the club! This was one of my biggest frustrations when I was deeply involved with the development and testing of end-user software (graphics and 3D programs). They were selling minimal additions as the next big thing and when Adobe and other companies introduced subscription models it got totally ridiculous. The smallest UI improvement was hyped to high heavens because there was no longer any pressure to actually deliver something that would drive people to update their software. Mylenium Not sure I share this view. Substance still matters. This can be well observed with the current AI bubble or even Meta giving up on VR after having burned bazillions of dollars. Hype only takes you so far when you can't prove a sensible use case. The Smart Brick falls into exactly this category. So far there isn't anything out there that makes it a must-have and it's quite possible that it will die a quiet death if LEGO can't prove its value in the next two years. Mylenium

It's almost like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - 4070 is the answer to everything. Plugging such bricks at 90 degrees creates a smooth base onto which other stuff can be plugged, eleminitating the half stud offset. You may need some brackets in there onto which the 4070's themselves get plugged as illustrated by some of the examples as well, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Mylenium

Probably not what he meant, considering that on average even these large boxes contain about eight instances of each element. You'd need to buy whole truck loads to get a decent amount of 2 x 4 bricks for instance. And then of course there's also the issue of color. Coral, Dark Pink and Lime Green certainly are not everyone's favorite. In a weird way LEGO themselves are driving people away from buying these sets and users will simply get their bulk lots elsewhere. That doesn't even necessarily translate to them buying original LEGO anymore from Bricklink. The rise of BlueBrixx here in Germany has a lot to do with them offering big parts packs for landscape building and the like for instance... Mylenium Yeah, the novelty will wear off quickly. Even if kids like it they will just assemble their favorite model and leave it at that. This isn't the creative breakthrough it is being sold as. Mylenium

Again taking a clue from "how the big boys" do it in industrial circles: It's about "component failure", not the product as a whole. Your points about miniaturization certainly are valid, but I don't think it would be impossible to accommodate a swap-able battery. Anyway, if you think too hard about it, we'll be running in circles. This could be argued either way. We'll probably find out when the EU rules on repairing such stuff have caught up in a few years and force out the truth... Mylenium

Strictly speaking for end customer products that may be true, but servicing machines is a big business in industrial circles. And even for those consumer products it is not necessarily the way things would have to be. We have just been pushed into these shorter lifecycles and been conditioned to accept them as given. It's that old discussion about sustainability, designed obsolescence, repairability. I'm not going to argue that the electronics of the Smart Brick generally will look dated in a few years, but replacing the battery should have been part of the design. I guess we'll find out... Mylenium

Their mere survival? I'm approaching my tenth anniversary of starting LEGO, but apparently as I learned after the fact things could have gone horribly wrong if they hadn't licensed Star Wars and the "The Phantom Menace" wouldn't have been a success... Everything else just seems like normal evolution. Call me jaded if you will, but I've been around too long and seen those repeating patterns too many times to get excited over such stuff. Today's innovation simply is tomorrow's normal and my engineering brain sees many things that are sold as "the next big thing" simply as a consequence of other technologies evolving organically. The Smart Brick couldn't have been done 20 years ago, but there's no reason to not do it now, if you get my drift. By that same token one could delve into the LEGO graveyard of failed "innovations" and come to other conclusions. I really have very mixed feelings about most of this. And some things I simply cannot defend. The minifigures and part designs have turned into a weapon, so in a way LEGO are also stifling advancements by making it impossible for competitors to use certain things. If you really wanted to get down to it, perhaps Technic as a system and everything that was derived from it (Bionicle, bricks with pins and axle holes etc.) were the biggest jump in how to build models differently, but then again one could argue what the LEGO world would be without brackets just as well... Mylenium