How old are you really?

No, don’t worry I didn’t find your secret stash of headshots and have questions regarding your listed birthday, I’m just wondering how old you are in your heart, where age really matters. If the answer is somewhere between the ages of 8-10, then I’ve got just the gadget for you.

It’s a Hot Wheels car maker that not only lets you relive the glory days of owning several garages worth of the sweetest micro machines known to man, but allows you to craft unique models as well. All you have to do is create a mold for the car (there are several different mold types available sold seperately through kits) and use the press to form it into an actual Hot Wheel. Add some decals to it, and you’ve got a bad-ass toy car nearly all your own.

Sure its limited and incredibly childish, but sometimes you’ve got to screw it and treat yourself to the toy you’ve always wanted as a child. So whether you’re buying this for your kid, buying this for yourself, or buying it for your kid in the hopes they eventually get tired of it and you have it all to yourself, for $40 it’s a pretty great way to act your inner child age for a while.

Plus it guarantees fun on the Amazon listing, which I’m pretty sure counts as a binding contract.

Sometimes your favorite piece of technology can make you feel like a kid playing with their favorite toy when you’re using it. It’s just an added benefit that your new favorite toy often provides some sort of additional life benefit outside of being fun to play with, making it the technological equivalent of Kix cereal. Kid tested, mother approved.

This new piece of technology in the works at MIT seems to fit that design philosophy. It’s a series of self-assembling cubes that are able to function independently and can quickly form a variety of shapes with almost no human interaction required.

Functioning off of a complex mixture of computer chips, flywheels, and magnets, the basic tech behind these cubes may bring back those childhood toy memories and make you start dreaming of their use in the ultimate “Transformers” toy, but the team behind them are already dreaming up some pretty amazing potential real life uses for them, including uses in quickly repairing structures, or forming must have items in emergencies quickly, such as hospital beds.

The final uses for this invention may be up in the air, but it’s clear that the technology is as good as the developer’s intentions, which usually serves as the basis to great products.

Though hopefully, after these are done saving the world, we can actually get that sweet new “Transformer’s” toy.

While I usually like to use this site to show the amazing new pieces of technology that are improving not just our everyday lives, but the world itself, every now and then I think we could use a reminder that even the smartest of devices can be ruined by the inherent stupidity of people.

Take for instance the brand new iOS 7 update. While the full merits of the update and the new features it provides are debatable, the one thing we can all agree on is that it doesn’t make your device waterproof. That may sound like an incredibly out of place and obvious statement, but apparently it really, really needs to be reiterated, as a fake advert for the new operating software has been getting passed around the internet through various sites which all claim, through admittedly professional looking formatting, that the most recent update will make whatever phone it is uploaded to waterproof.

Now, if you’re intelligent enough to not believe such a thing, you’ve also probably deduced by now that some people have fallen for this. In fact it turns out quite a few people believed this, as evidenced by a Twitter search that reveals not only people ecstatic regarding this recent “upgrade,” but some who are now very irate after trying to test it. Of particular note is the person lamenting that their iPhone is now at the bottom of a river after this,suggesting they not only lack common sense and a basic understanding of technology, but quite possibly don’t understand what waterproof means as well.

Thanks to the miracle of Vine, we can also see a person actually attempt to drop their phone in water after reading this news, in case you were ever wondering what such an act of wanton stupidity looks like.

Perhaps I should be more sympathetic for these people who have now probably ruined their devices, especially those if they tried it with their brand new 5S. Instead I’m choosing to laugh at their amazing ability to possess more money than common sense, and appreciate the fact there are pranksters out there who are using the power of technology to continually prove the truth behind the old George Carlin quote, “Imagine how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are dumber than that.”

In case it needs reiterating though, iOS 7 does not make your device waterproof and no software update ever possibly could.

Remember that old “Animaniacs” segment ‘Good Idea/Bad Idea’ where the narrator would show a similarly themed idea and the good idea and bad idea versions of it? Let’s play that with Apple’s newest iPhone announcement.

Good idea; the iPhone 5S.

The 5S looks to be the most powerful smartphone ever, and everything about it (including the gimmicky, but soon to be standard, fingerprint scanner) fits perfectly in line with the Apple model of releasing a new model that isn’t quite ready to be distinguished as the next build (i.e. the iPhone 6), but represents a nice leap forward when compared to what came before.

Bad idea; the insulting, low down, no good, dirty rotten, laughably greedy idea now known as the iPhone 5C.

You know how Apple usually lowers the price of a previous model of iPhone when the new one comes out? Yeah, well this time they’ve decided to release a “new” and cheaper version of the iPhone 5 called the iPhoneC instead. Though there are some minor differences between the iPhone 5 and the 5C, the biggest ones would have to be the extremely low price point ($99, no contract required), the all plastic body, and the shiny, shiny, colors it is available in.

By itself it wouldn’t be such a bad idea (essentially a really cheap iPhone 5), but what makes its unveiling such a slap in the face is that Apple has also made the decision that they will discontinue the iPhone 5 starting immediately. That means that everyone holding an iPhone 5 right now is essentially dead to Apple, as they are clearly expecting all of their customers who want to retain basic service and be able to purchase accessories to either drop a fresh ton of cash on the 5S, or to purchase the near identical 5C model for an unnecessary $99 fee.

This is simply inexcusable, especially considering that a 64 GB model of the iPhone 5C is not even available like it is for the iPhone 5. While Apple could have released the 5C as a cheaper alternative, they’ve instead chosen to enhance their nefarious image as the absolute greediest company in the tech world, by turning their most loyal (and recent) customers into nothing but suckers who will accept a financial reaming from a major corporation so long as the offending apparatus is in shiny new colors.

In a way I feel bad for iPhone 5 owners, as they are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the new releases given the discontinuation announcement. On the other hand, anyone that submits to this billion dollar cash ploy and continues to give their financial and spiritual support to Apple, deserves to receive the sub-human consumer treatment that Apple has started to package along with every iPhone sold.

With phablets finding its way into the dictionary (along with twerking, which….well let’s leave that be), it’s pretty safe to say the hybrid style of devices is here to stay and will continue to be a major part of technology moving forward.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all though, comes the ultimate potential hybrid device, the Pandora.

Billed as a desktop/laptop/tablet hybrid, what separates the Pandora from just about every other similar device is a unique build that doesn’t make it natively comfortable as any of those three devices it can transform into, and instead allows it to truly become work with equal functionality in any form.

Measuring only 9mm thick, this impressive gadget can fold out into a 16:9 widescreen desktop monitor, while and L shape bend turns it into a 13 inch laptop complete with pop up keyboard for the lower half, which can then be folded back to form a Windows 8 powered 13 inch tablet. In any setup, the Pandora sports four speakers, a microphone, front and back cameras, and a flexible battery.

Further details such as the processing power and price are still incoming, so it’s still difficult to measure the full validity of this specific device, but whether or not you consider it to be the future of gadgets, it’s hard to argue that a design of this nature one day will be.