🧱 Lego Smart Bricks

Hey folks,

CES 2026 just wrapped and the theme was clear: AI is enabling hardware. Samsung and LG debuted Micro RGB TVs with Gemini built in. Amazon launched Alexa+ on the web. Lego unveiled Smart Bricks with embedded chips that talk to each other without apps or internet. Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 promises 60% performance gains, and LG showed off CLOiD, a concept robot that folds laundry and unloads dishwashers. Even L'Oréal brought flexible LED face masks. The full announcement list is long.

Today in AI:

→ Lego Smart Bricks pack chips smaller than a stud
→ Alexa+ goes browser-native at Alexa.com
→ How to use AI for live meeting prep
→ Prompt of the day: Turn any CES announcement into a technical brief

PS - if you didn’t hear about this from teens over xmas, and want some midweek entertainment - google 67

Let’s dive in..

🧱 Lego Smart Bricks: Physical-Digital Play Without Screens

Lego just crammed an entire computing platform into a 2x4 brick.

At CES 2026, Lego unveiled Smart Bricks. Standard-looking Lego pieces with a 4.1mm ASIC chip smaller than a single stud. No apps required. No internet connection. No screens. The bricks talk to each other using BrickNet, Lego's proprietary wireless layer built on Bluetooth with "Neighbor Position Measurement" technology.

What's inside the Smart Brick:

• 4.1mm ASIC chip smaller than a Lego stud

• Built-in speaker producing audio tied to live play actions

• LED array for visual feedback

• Accelerometer detecting motion and orientation

• Copper coils for wireless communication and charging

• Near-field magnetic communication to sense proximity and direction of other Smart pieces.

The system includes three components: the Smart Brick itself, Smart Tags (2x2 studless tiles with embedded digital IDs), and Smart Minifigures with NFC identification. When pieces interact, they respond.

Launch sets are Star Wars themed: Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, Luke's Red Five X-Wing, and Throne Room Duel & A-wing.

For your team: This is embedded systems design done right. Meaningful interaction without screen dependency. Worth studying if you're building IoT products for families or exploring mesh networking in constrained environments.

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🗣️ Alexa+ Hits the Web To Go Browser-Native

Amazon just made Alexa available without an Echo.

At CES 2026, Amazon launched Alexa.com, bringing its generative AI assistant to any web browser. The move puts Alexa+ in direct competition with ChatGPT and Gemini, but with a key differentiator: deep integration with Amazon's ecosystem and 600 million Alexa enabled devices already in homes.

What Alexa+ can do that others can't:

• Agentic actions: Book tickets via Ticketmaster, make reservations through OpenTable, schedule rides with Uber without leaving the conversation

• Smart home control: Manage thermostats, lights, cameras, and locks directly from the browser

• Persistent context: Conversations sync across Echo devices, mobile app, and web

• Life admin: Upload documents, extract information, schedule appointments, generate grocery lists from recipes

• Shopping integration: Lists sync with Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods for instant checkout

Amazon claims 76% of what customers do with Alexa+ "is not possible with any other AI" citing scenarios that combine device control, multi-step tasks, and cross-service actions.

For your team: If you're building voice or conversational AI features, Alexa+ just set a new bar for what "agentic" means in consumer products. The web launch also signals Amazon sees browser-based AI as a serious channel.

🎯 How To Prep for Meetings with AI

Stop walking into meetings cold. Here's how to use AI for instant context:

1. Navigate to Claude or ChatGPT

2. Gather your materials: calendar invite, previous meeting notes, any relevant docs

3. Paste the context and use this prompt:

I have a meeting in 30 minutes. Based on these materials, give me: 

1) A 2-sentence summary of what this meeting is about, 
2) The 3 most important points I need to understand,
3) Two smart questions I could ask to add value, 
4) Any landmines or tensions I should be aware of. 

Keep it brief. I'm skimming this while walking to the conference room.

🎯 Prompt Of The Day

Turn any CES announcement into a technical brief your team can actually use:

Analyze this product announcement for my engineering team. Extract: 

1) Core technical specifications and capabilities, 
2) What problem it solves and for whom, 
3) Integration requirements or dependencies, 
4) Realistic timeline to production availability, 
5) Whether this is genuinely new or incremental improvement, 
6) Specific use cases where this beats current alternatives. 

Skip the marketing language and give me the engineering reality.

🐝 AI Buzz Bits

💻 Claude Code's creator shared his setup, and it's surprisingly simple. Boris Cherny runs 5-10 parallel Claude sessions across terminal and web, uses Opus 4.5 with thinking for everything, and maintains a shared CLAUDE.md that documents mistakes so Claude learns from them.

🕶️ ASUS and XREAL launched the first 240Hz AR gaming glasses. The XREAL R1 packs a micro-OLED display with a huge 171-inch virtual screen at 4 meters with 3ms latency.

📱 Samsung is putting Gemini on 800 million devices this year. That's double last year's 400 million. Samsung will "apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible", including smart refrigerators. Google gets distribution no other partner can match.

🛠️ Tool Spotlight

1. Kilo Code — Open-source AI coding agent from GitLab's co-founder; 750K+ downloads across VS Code, recently raised $8M seed.

2. Appwrite Sites — Open-source Vercel alternative, cloud development platform for developers who like to get things done.

3. The AI 500 — The S&P 500 for AI visibility. Queries ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity across 500 industries with 5,000+ prompts to track which brands AI actually recommends.

4. Inspiration by Mind Dock — Live AI trends aggregator pulling from HuggingFace, ArXiv, GitHub, and more. Explore models, research, and news in one place.

For a full list of 1500+ AI tools, visit our Supertool Directory