Moxie
Latest
You can now rent the kid-friendly Moxie robot for $149 a month
The child companion robot Moxie can now be rented for $149 a month.
Living with Moxie, the robot companion for kids
Moxie is a robot build specifically for kids. But while it's fun and smart, it's also very expensive.
NASA's Perseverance rover turns a tiny bit of Mars air into breathable oxygen
On April 20th, Perseverance successfully pulled carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere and converted it into oxygen.
The Daily Grind: Would you play a pacifist character if it were compelling?
I don't know what got my mind on this train of thought the other day, but I got a little incensed that MMO developers constantly equate "hero" with "mass murder of hundreds of sentients," not to mention the fact that as a character, I'm more or less pushed into being a weapon. Yes, I can kill to protect and save, but the killing wears on the virtual soul after a while. My mind then turned to the prospect of being a pacifist in these combat-oriented worlds. Sure, there are always people who go far out of their way to figure out paths to leveling without killing, but what if the game made fighting optional rather than mandatory? I'm not talking about just sitting in a hovel crafting but solving quests through deduction, puzzle-solving, diplomacy, and sheer moxie. How cool would it be to be a mage whose spellbook was full of utility spells instead of fireballs and could use those to help NPCs? Would you play a pacifist character if the game made it compelling enough? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Red Herring: A terrific little game from 7 Little Words creator
Last night, my daughters and I spent several hours working our way through the first levels of Red Herring (free, with in-app purchases), a twistedly difficult new game from the creator of 7 Little Words and Moxie. The game presents you with 16 phrases at a time, which you categorize into 3 meaningful groups of 4, plus a "red herrings" column for the extras. If you're playing the most difficult level -- and the game isn't nearly as much fun unless you are -- it's a true challenge to sort out the meaningful groupings from the red herrings. Like 7 Little Words, you get the initial puzzle pack for free. In Red Herring, this consists of 50 challenging puzzles to start with. Once hooked, you pay for additional packs. The puzzles can be fiendish, especially if you choose to work without the built-in categories or partial solutions offered by the easy and medium levels. 10 gateway hints are offered for free. After that you pay US$1.99 for unlimited hints. My family had a ball with this -- it was tons of fun and involved lots of brainstorming. Throw the display over to a TV via Air Play and it's the perfect party game as well. We really liked it. Recommended.
Kohler's Moxie shower head makes it rain music, sticks with you all morning
Like to sing in the shower? Take a seat on your grandma's old bathing stool -- your own shower head is about to show you up. Kohler's latest water dispersal nozzle, Moxie, features a detachable Bluetooth speaker secured in the shower head's center with a magnet. It sounds like a bad Yakov Smirnoff gag: in Soviet Russia, shower sings to you! The speaker pops off the sprayer when it's time to towel off, and promises to provide up to seven hours of sudsy tunes before needing a recharge. The only thing it seems to be missing is a water powered micro-turbine. Read on for Kohler's official press release.
Lineage II becomes one with the servers
We haven't heard a lot of news from Lineage II since their recent Freya expansion, but apparently the game has hit a rocky patch. Associate producer "Moxie" informed the players on Wednesday that the NA and EU servers would be merging to just one per region. This merge is being done "in order to promote a healthy and competitive environment, as well as to offer a better overall experience." Currently, Lineage II has five North American and three European servers, which will be boiled down to only two by the end of this month. The team is accepting nominations for the new server names until September 14th and will hold a vote thereafter to determine the winners. As merges always create an organizational headache, NCsoft is still figuring out the details of exactly how and when this will happen. However, Moxie said that the team will be deleting any character under level 20 that has not logged into the game in more than one year, and if a player has more than seven characters across all of the servers, he or she will only be allowed to keep the seven highest in terms of experience. [Thanks Riz!]
