The Hong Kong Coliseum turned into a kinetic storytelling arena on September 10, 2025 when Ruby Law, founder of RULA Design Studio, unveiled a seven‑meter white cube that folds, glows and morphs throughout Terence Lam’s “White Summer” concert. The sculptural centerpiece sits beneath two circular LED screens, creating a striking contrast between the rigid square and the surrounding round light panels—a visual metaphor for the show’s theme of duality, where light and shadow, joy and melancholy intertwine .

From the opening act, the cube dominates the stage as a static, pristine block. Its stark white surface reflects the blinding summer sun projected from the overhead screens, casting deep shadows that echo the concert’s exploration of contrast. As the performance progresses, the cube begins to unfold, its panels swinging outward to reveal a glowing “+” symbol on the floor. This simple cross becomes a sign of unison, a visual cue that disparate elements are converging into a single narrative thread .

Designer: Ruby Law (photos by Right Eyeball Studio)

The circular LED screens above the stage act like abstract glasses, framing fragments of a love story that unfold in projected memories. Audiences watch tender moments turn bittersweet as Terence Lam, positioned outside the cube, observes past relationship scenes playing within the transparent interior. A backward‑running clock punctuates the segment, reminding viewers of the impossibility of reversing time with a loved one.

Colour gradually seeps into the scene, breaking the initial black‑and‑white palette. This shift mirrors the transition from memory to present emotion, while the audience’s light sticks synchronize with a smaller, 360‑degree flying prop—a miniature replica of the main cube—that changes hue in real time. The shared illumination blurs the line between performer and spectator, forging a moment of collective unity.

Aerial choreography defines the concert’s second half. Terence Lam lies on a bed as his “soul” lifts away, rising into a suspended space where his shadow drifts above him. The floating fragments of memory, rendered as weightless shapes, interact with the audience’s light, creating a sensation of gravity‑free movement. The design draws on Daoist ideas of transcendence, suggesting that letting go of past attachments can lead to a higher state of being .

Behind the spectacle, a dedicated engineering and construction crew rebuilt the flying mechanisms after a three‑year venue restriction. Their effort made possible the seamless transitions, rapid unfolding of the massive cube, and precise aerial lifts that kept the performance fluid and safe . The visual language of “White Summer” hinges on the interplay of geometric forms—square versus circle, static versus kinetic—and the emotional journey from recollection to renewal. Ruby Law’s modular cube not only serves as a stage prop but also as a narrative device, framing the concert’s story of love, loss and the hope of moving forward. The unfolding cube stands as a testament to innovative stage design, proving that a simple geometric shape, when engineered with imagination, can become a powerful conduit for storytelling.

The post Ruby Law’s Unfolding Cube Transforms Terence Lam’s “White Summer” Concert into a Live-Stage Narrative first appeared on Yanko Design.

20 ans plus tard, les vieilles consoles continuent de nous surprendre… La preuve avec ce hack complètement barré qui transforme une GameCube de 2001 en client pour nos IA modernes.

Josh Fonseca a en effet réussi l’exploit de connecter ChatGPT à Animal Crossing via l’émulateur Dolphin. Pas de mod de la cartouche, pas de modification du code original, mais juste du bon vieux Python qui lit et écrit dans la RAM émulée pendant que le jeu tourne.

Hé oui, le mec n’a même pas touché une seule ligne du code original du jeu. Il a “simplement” identifié les adresses mémoire où le jeu stocke les dialogues (0x81298360 pour les curieux) et remplacé le texte à la volée. L’émulateur Dolphin pense faire tourner les dialogues d’origine, mais en fait il affiche du contenu généré par une IA qui tourne sur un serveur cloud.

Techniquement, c’est malin comme approche puisque la GameCube n’a que 24 MB de RAM et un processeur PowerPC à 485 MHz. Il lui est donc impossible de faire tourner un LLM dessus. Du coup il a créé une sorte de pont mémoire entre l’émulateur et le LLM. Son script Python surveille cette adresse en mémoire via le processus Dolphin, récupère le contexte du dialogue, l’envoie à l’IA, et réinjecte la réponse dans la mémoire émulée.

Ce qui complique vraiment les choses, c’est qu’Animal Crossing n’utilise pas du texte brut pour ses dialogues. Le jeu a son propre langage de contrôle avec des codes pour les pauses, les émotions, les effets sonores. Un peu comme du HTML mais version Nintendo 2001, ce qui fait qu’il a fallu créer deux IA : une première qui génère le dialogue créatif (le “Writer AI”) et une autre qui ajoute tous les codes techniques (le “Director AI”).

Voici un extrait :

# A small sample of the control codes I had to encode/decode
CONTROL_CODES = {
 0x00: "<End Conversation>",
 0x03: "<Pause [{:02X}]>", # e.g., <Pause [0A]> for a short pause
 0x05: "<Color Line [{:06X}]>", # e.g., <Color Line [FF0000]> for red
 0x09: "<NPC Expression [Cat:{:02X}] [{}]>", # Trigger an emotion
 0x59: "<Play Sound Effect [{}]>", # e.g., <Play Sound Effect [Happy]>
 0x1A: "<Player Name>",
 0x1C: "<Catchphrase>",
}

# The magic byte that signals a command is coming
PREFIX_BYTE = 0x7F

Je trouve ça cool comme projet car les joueurs rêvent depuis longtemps de dialogues plus variés dans Animal Crossing. En effet, si comme moi, vous n’êtes pas pro-gamer sur Animal Crossing, vous ignorez surement que Nintendo limite les villageois à 8 types de personnalité, ce qui rend les conversations hyper répétitives après quelques heures de jeu.

Avec ce hack, les villageois peuvent donc maintenant discuter de l’actualité mondiale, critiquer Tom Nook sur ses pratiques immobilières douteuses, ou même avoir des conversations philosophiques sur le sens de la vie dans votre village virtuel. Le mod est sur Github pour ceux qui veulent tester sur émulateur.

Notez que la communauté de décompilation d’Animal Crossing a joué un rôle crucial dans ce projet car sans leur travail pour convertir le code PowerPC en C lisible, identifier ces adresses mémoire spécifiques aurait été un cauchemar. C’est grâce donc à eux que le développeur a pu comprendre comment le jeu gère ses dialogues en interne.

Bref, je trouve ça assez marrant qu’une console vielle de +20 ans capable de fonctionner totalement offline (car à l’époque Nintendo était allergique à Internet), soit finalement indirectement “connectée” (via l’émulateur) pour utiliser ce qui se fait de plus hype en ce moment, à savoir l’IA (les LLMs plus exactement).

Comme je vous le disais, pour l’instant, ce hack fonctionne sur la version GameCube originale du jeu via l’émulateur Dolphin. L’auteur mentionne qu’une adaptation sur du vrai matériel serait possible avec le Broadband Adapter officiel, mais nécessiterait beaucoup plus de travail. Les versions ultérieures sorties sur DS, Wii ou Switch utiliseraient une architecture mémoire différente, mais techniquement, rien n’empêche d’adopter une approche similaire.

Comme quoi, avec un peu d’ingéniosité, on peut moderniser n’importe quel jeu rétro !

You’d think the world had run out of challenges for LEGO builders. After all, we’ve seen ‘functional’ lawnmowers, instant-photo Polaroid cameras that spit out LEGO “photos,” and even a ‘working’ rotary phone, all meticulously engineered, all somehow feeling like they’re right at home in the pantheon of LEGO absurdity. Yet, every so often, a builder comes along who ups the ante and rewrites the rules of what counts as “functional.” This time, that crown goes to a Rubik’s Cube, the kind that actually works. Not a blocky facsimile or a fidget toy with half-hearted spin, but a LEGO-built, fully twistable, color-matching, soul-crushing 3×3 Rubik’s Cube that might just be the most precise and satisfying “MOC” (that’s “My Own Creation” for the LEGO uninitiated) you’ll see this season.

Precision is the name of the game with Rubik’s Cubes. Every speedcuber, every fidgeter worth their salt, knows that the difference between a good cube and a mediocre one is measured in microns. A single click or jam, and your whole solve is toast. So making a functioning cube out of LEGO, with its famously not-quite-millimeter-perfect clutch power and those tiny mold-parting lines, feels like tempting fate. Yet here it is, spinning with the kind of smoothness that would make Erno Rubik himself do a double take. The builder, whose project recently surfaced on the LEGO Ideas platform, didn’t just aim for “works in theory.” They built a full-size, color-accurate cube that moves with the same crispness and tactile feedback you expect from a real puzzle.

Designer: Kragle Dog

The mechanism underneath those glossy 3×3 tiles? A clever lattice of LEGO Technic and system bricks, ingeniously stacked and interlocked to mimic the familiar spindle-and-corner arrangement of the original. It’s a feat that takes patience and an obsessive eye for tolerances, because even a fraction of a millimeter’s error can mean the difference between a cube that spins and a cube that simply locks up.

Size-wise, this thing’s a beast. Scale it against a standard Rubik’s Cube, and you’re looking at a puzzle that’s roughly four times the volume of the pocket original, clocking in at 15.6cm or over 6 inches per side. That extra space isn’t wasted, though. It gives the mechanism inside room to breathe and function, letting each axis rotate independently and with minimal play. The outer tiles are color-matched to classic Rubik’s specs, with red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and white plates snapping into place like a proper 80s icon. The result is a cube that looks like it was plucked directly from the world’s nerdiest toy store and dropped onto your desk, ready for a scramble.

“The Rubik’s Cube truly is an iconic toy, shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of the LEGO brick,” says LEGO builder Kragle Dog. “So, being a fan of both LEGO bricks and Rubik’s Cube, I decided to try a new challenge and combine those two legendary toys into one epic idea.” The resulting build uses a staggering 2,216 bricks (that’s just the cube, not counting the base or the Rubik minifigure).

What really gets me is how this project manages to bridge the gap between playful creativity and mechanical purism. Most LEGO MOCs err on the side of whimsy, sacrificing accuracy for charm. Here, though, the builder’s gone full engineer, wrangling LEGO’s sometimes-fussy tolerances into something that actually works. That’s no small feat. The prototype reportedly holds together under repeated twists and turns, resisting the kind of catastrophic blowouts that plague less robust builds. There’s sheer genius in how each piece interlocks, trading the usual friction-fit for a system that’s both sturdy and forgiving. It’s the kind of object that makes you want to pick it up, scramble it, and maybe even try to speedsolve just to see if it can keep up. And no, you’re not allowed to use a Brick Separator to ‘solve’ the cube, even though that’s technically possible.

The flex doesn’t stop at the cube itself. The builder included a custom 357-brick display stand, elevating the puzzle into the realm of functional sculpture. There’s even a minifigure of Erno Rubik, the Hungarian architect who kicked off the global cubing craze back in 1974, complete with his signature hair and a tiny cube of his own. It’s a wink at the history and the culture surrounding the puzzle, and a reminder that behind every great invention is a designer obsessed with the details. The stand’s got just enough visual heft to make it a centerpiece on any shelf, while the figure adds a layer of narrative that most LEGO MOCs skip over in favor of pure form.

If you do want to see this project come to life, it just requires you to vote for it on the LEGO Ideas forum – a platform created for LEGO enthusiasts to share unique creations and vote for their favorite builds. We’ve covered hundreds of MOCs at this point, and I for one continue to be surprised by the kind of ingenuity LEGO builders possess, even after covering this beat for over 10 years!

The post This 2216-piece functional LEGO Rubik’s Cube could be the ultimate desk flex first appeared on Yanko Design.

If you wish to again play games on your Nintendo console with the GameCube controller that has damaged wires and bad instances of drifting analog sticks, then this accessory arrives as a blessing in disguise. 8BitDo has introduced a mod kit that lets you upgrade your GameCube controller to a wireless gamepad, so that you’re not impulsively tempted into buying a new one.

This is not the first time 8BitDo has introduced a mod kit for the Nintendo controllers including the N64 and earlier ones, so this comes as no surprise. The trick here is that you’ll have to replace the existing PCB of the NGC controller with a drop-in board. The Chinese tech company is taking pre-orders for this useful gaming accessory that’ll make you go wireless if you hate the wire clutter on your Nintendo ecosystem. Called the NGC Mod Kit, this one is slated to ship on 25^th September.

Designer: 8BitDo

You’ll need to have basic soldering knowledge and loads of patience to make the changeover. Remember, controllers are not that easy to put together when opened up. Although not as tedious as putting together something like a DualSense. Of course, there are certified adapters on the market (including 8BitDo GBros and Nintendo’s official adapter) that allow you to use the wired GameCube controller with the Switch but this mod kit cuts out the extra and brings straightforward wireless Bluetooth connectivity.

Along with making your gamepad wireless, there are other add-ons as well. It has Hall effect joysticks for improved lifespan and immunity against sensitive vibrations if you love to play your FPS games hard. The accessory adds a 300mAh USB-C rechargeable battery with 6 hours of playtime for gaming without interruptions. It also adds a new set of triggers to the controller, so basically, you’ll have a virtually new gaming controller to play around with.

8BitDo Mod Kit priced at $26 is worth the spend if you have a Nintendo GameCube controller with chewed-down wires and defunct joystick controls. The only catch is, that you’ll have to slash out another $26 for the Tetro Receiver for GNC to connect to the GameCube. So, spending $52 on a wire-free setup for your existing NGC controller makes logical sense.

The post 8BitDo’s Mod Kit turns wired NGC controller into wireless one with Hall Effect joysticks first appeared on Yanko Design.