While PlayStation still hasn’t confirmed whether its motion controller will be called the Arc, the rumor mill has gone one step further this week with a forum-poster claiming it’ll work alongside a Wii-like nunchuk.

GDC is kicking off over in San Francisco this week, so if ever there was a venue to announce a new add-on—or even confirmation of the name—that would be it.

The forum-poster at NeoGAF, by the name of Ichinisan, reckons the pictures he saw of the nunchuk included an analog stick, plus X and O buttons, along with L1 and L2 buttons under the D-Pad. The wand-shaped Arc meanwhile apparently has “one very big button on top” (no word if s/he meant the big glowing globe, or something else), and X, O, triangle and square buttons. The trigger is the ‘T’ command, according to this mysterious poster—who could very well be full of shit, as he’s just a junior member of the forums. He does comment that “it’s actually long, not like the Wii Nunchuk”—which measures 22.9 x 17.8 x 5.7cm. [NeoGAF via VG247 via TechRadar]

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You’d be able to conceive and give birth to a baby faster than the Tron Legacy takes to come out (just nine months and nine days left!), but here’s a trailer to sate you for a while longer.

You won’t be able to make much out in the leaked video, but hey—there’s audio! Here’s the official synopsis, if you missed it last time:

TRON: LEGACY is a 3D high-tech adventure set in a digital world that’s unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Sam Flynn (GARRETT HEDLUND), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (JEFF BRIDGES), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the digital world of Tron where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant Quorra (OLIVIA WILDE), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey of escape across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

How about someone at Disney, still high off their “Up” win at the Oscars yesterday, press the button and make the official trailer appear on YouTube? Anyone? [Giant Freakin Robot via Digg]

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Kojiro here is the work of Tokyo’s JSK Robotics Laboratory. With his 60 degrees of motion, provided by a network of Super Effective! artificial muscles and tendons, he’ll utterly destroy Asimo in the inevitable slow-motion robot battle in their future.

I say slow motion because, I mean, look at this thing. He’s getting more hand holding help than grandpa at the retirement home. Hell, even grandpa doesn’t need someone fiddling with an original PlayStation controller and a UI to get him to perform basic tasks. Like turning at the waist (see video).

Geezer speed aside, it’s the musculature that’s the takeaway here. Modeled after human muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments, the system is incredibly flexible for robot, and its 60 degrees of motion bests the aforementioned Asimo by a good 26 degrees. It’s also lighter than your traditional humanoid robot, which designers content will make it more friendly when humans have to interact with it.

Mental note: Lighter materials also mean one can chuck it farther, perhaps off a cliff, should “more friendly” actually be “more deadly” if and when it goes haywire. [IEEE Spectrum via Engadget]

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Things I thought of while viewing the solar eclipse-inspired Nissyoku lamp: GLaDOS, a glowing tennis ball and, oh yeah, a solar eclipse:

The designer says that unlike those fleeting solar eclipses we see in the sky, this lamp lasts for up to 10 years.

It’s also capable of morphing from one simple shape to the next, and can be suspended from the ceiling, a la a chandelier, or placed on a table, where it will neither burn out your eyes nor damage your table.

The light source, sadly, is not fusion or even fission, but a 5W LED in each of the two panels. [Igendesign via Design Blog]

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Point: As my fellow Jalopnik readers would agree, the thought of an au-to-MO-bile running on some coffee beans is equally laughable and insulting. Counterpoint: As my fellow coffee drinkers would agree, this is an utter disgrace to our holy bean.

Countercounterpoint: Carpuccino? Really?

A while ago we read that coffee-based biofuels were feasible. Knowing the internet as we do, we figured it was only a matter of time before somebody took that novel possibility and turned it into an absurd reality. We were right! The Carpuccino, a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco modified to run on ground coffee, will drive 210 miles between Manchester and London in the coming weeks.

The trip will require over 150 pounds of coffee, with the car getting a mileage of roughly 1.4 miles per pound. The vehicle can hit speeds of 60mph, though the trip could take as long as ten hours, as the car has to stop every 60 miles to clean out its coffee filters (seriously).

The joke on wheels was built by the BBC1 show Bang Goes The Theory as a reminder that unconventional fuels can power vehicles. Sidebar: the Carpuccino’s trip will cost up to 50 times as much as it would if it were running on gas.

All that being said, I think we can agree to set aside whatever qualms we may have with the Carpuccino in light of its similarities, aesthetic and otherwise, to Doc Brown’s Mr. Fusion-equipped DeLorean from Back to the Future II.

Espresso? Where we’re going we don’t need espresso. [Daily Mail via Green Diary]

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