Lego has announced that they will soon be offering up the next-generation of their Mindstorms line. The new system, which is the third-generation of its line, will be the EV3. EV3 sports a bunch of improved features in both hardware and software, where it's headed to the classroom and will also be used in Lego League competitions. Soren Thomsen of LEGO Education told Forbes:

We gathered information from teachers and coaches to meet their needs. This is a strong new kit that should last for a lot of years.

Some of the new features being built into EV3's kit include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the ability to add memory to the units - which is something that the Lego League teams have been asking for - as well as the file sizes of the programs being streamlined. The new EV3 has a 3D instruction manual which should make it easier for users to see all the pieces from all angles, allowing them to design and construct their own robots.

In this world of iOS and Android dominance, the voice of Windows Phone isn't heard too much. Well, now we have something to go on. Forbes' latest report is talking about Qualcomm's CES keynote, in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ran onto the stage and spilled some numbers.

During his speech in the Qualcomm CES keynote, he said that the latest Windows Phone was selling "five times more devices than the same period last year". There are no exact numbers here, but if we go back to Q4 2011, we're looking at around 2.5 million units. Ewan Spence, who wrote the article for Forbes, he made:

A couple of assumptions, I make the range of Windows Phone handsets sold in Q4 2012 as being between 9,500,000 and 13,250,000 smartphones. My gut feeling is that the sales are at the lower end of this range, but I'd expect Q1 2013 to build on Q4 2012, mostly because the Windows Phone 8 devices were only available for half the quarter. So there's lots of room to improve those numbers over the next three months.

The tragic supposed suicide of digital activist, and co-founder of Reddit, Aaron Swartz happened just days ago and now Anonymous have stepped into the ring to play [hacking] ball. They leave a tribute message to Swartz, which says:

We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites. We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened, but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge instead the responsibility they have - that we all have - to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud.

The link to see it is here, and at the time of writing wasn't loading. I'm sure MIT will have the site updated shortly.

CES 2013 - Asustor, a division of ASUS pieced together from former staff from QNAP and Synology, displayed their 2013 product lineup at CES. Within six months the team moved from their ideas to working products and a select few models are already listed at e-tail outlets.

The Asustor products look very good and have a lot of functionality. Initial products includes 8, 6, 4 and 2-bay models, all from the 6 Series. At CES we also saw the first rackmount products shipping later this year.

The units look very good and after a demonstration we're convinced that on consumer features, Asustor is ahead of the competition. The 6-Series gives users the ability to turn the lights off or even dim them on the NAS. With HDMI connectivity now a standard feature in NAS products, more of these units are headed to the living room and away from the network switch.

The Internet Archive hosts unbelievable amounts of data, and stores something like 150,000,000,000 URLs and the associated data for these addresses. There has been a campaign pushing for donations so that they could expand their storage and store even more Internet history.

The Internet Archive have now announced they've almost doubled their storage, giving them the capacity to store some 240,000,000,000 (that's 240 billion) URLs - this works out to just over 5 petabytes of storage. All of this data gives you the ability to walk down the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine, cranking the dial all the way back to 1996 all the way up to last month.

The image above is a shot of our site, all the way back in May of 2000!

CES 2013 - Our own Trace Hagan and Chad Sebring had the idea earlier today to drop a new Corsair Survivor 16GB pen drive from their hotel room in Las Vegas at CES 2013 to see if the drive would actually survive. What else do you do when CES is over? Have some fun!

As you can see in the video above, it was a big drop for the fairly weighty device, but it did indeed survive. Chris Ramseyer was on the ground clearing the area for safety. He straight away plugged in the drive to test it, and it popped up in Windows and showed the data which was saved on it before the drop.

Tomorrow Trace Hagan is going to attempt to take the test a little more extreme - stay tuned for another video if all goes to plan!

CES 2013 - At CES 2013 Plextor revealed the new M5 Pro Extreme SSD, this SSD features new TSOP Toshiba Toggle NAND, providing higher performance in the 19nm SSD category.

This new version of NAND will lead to a lower price point for end-users. The new firmware can also be used with older versions of the M5 Pro, so current owners of the M5 Pro will not be left out in the cold.

The M5 Pro Extreme features a Marvell 9187 controller which provides up to 540MB/s in sequential read and 470MB/s in sequential write speeds. Perhaps most impressive is the 100,000 random read IOPS and 88,000 random write IOPS.

CES 2013 - QNAP hit the show floor in full stride with a little something for everyone.

The new TS-1270U-RP is the first in a new series from the company. The new systems use an Intel Celeron dual-core processor and support 10GbE Ethernet with up to 1800MB/s throughput (Dual Ports Teamed).

The new unit is on the bottom so we had to use the smaller 8-drive version to do our spin around, back side pics.

CES 2013 - The Samsung SSD Angels, made popular by their videos on YouTube, made an appearance at CES 2013. The Angels first appeared in Europe where they popped up at events to swap out notebook mechanical drives with Samsung SSDs. The swap is free to those willing to take the plunge.

The tour trailer, decked out in Samsung marketing has all of the goodies that make the transformation possible.

We popped in to see the Angels in action. On our visit they were updating the notebook of a passerby and he seemed very happy. If you are in the Las Vegas area grab your notebook and come to the Convention Center. The SSD Angels are located outside of the show floor, by the giant registration tent in the front parking lot.

About a week ago, reports surfaced of a workaround that allowed unsigned ARM-based applications to run on Windows RT, and now a member at the XDA-Developers forum has created a jailbreak tool that automates the process, making it easy for non-tech savvy users to run unsigned apps.

The jailbreak tool is based on the same tethered technique shown by the hacker "clrokr", meaning that the jailbreak will have to be applied each time the device is rebooted. While not ideal, this saves you from having to modify the Windows kernel.

x86 programs cannot simply be installed using this technique, they still must be recompiled for the ARM architecture. Still, this hack opens up huge doors of opportunity for the home-brew crowd, as well as developers and hackers alike. It is still up in the air if Redmond will issue a patch, effectively blocking the crack, or if they will embrace the DIY community and leave sleeping lions lying.