It is officially Jessica Jones day, and to celebrate, Comixology is offering a variety of Jessica Jones comics at discounted prices.Included in the sale is the entire collection of Alias comics, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Michael Gaydos. Launched under Marvel's MAX label, Alias is the series that the Netflix show draws its inspiration from.For those that want to learn more about the character and her backstory, this is the series to do it with. Each issue is currently available for $1, meaning readers can get the entire collection for $28.Those who have been trying to keep up with Marvel's New Avengers series will also be glad to know they can get the entire second volume collection of the ongoing series at half-price.The specific collection ran from 2010-2012 and starred Jessica Jones and Luke Cage (who also has a starring role in the Netflix series) alongside Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Wolverine and The Thing among others.Also included in the sale is the entire collection of Pulse, another series written by Bendis that focused on a specific part of The Bugle, the fictional New York City newspaper that appears throughout the Marvel universe.
Jones is also the main figure in this series, working as an investigative journalist alongside Luke Cage. Each issue is available right now for $1, making the entire collection $14.There are a few other single issues available to buy that Jones makes an appearance in, so if you wanted to learn more about the titular superheroine, this is the time to do it.The sale ends on Nov. 29. For a quick explainer before you dive into the series this weekend, be sure to check out the video below.Watch this video on YouTube/LEGO-Harry...But as you say LEGO products are generally fairly expensive. The quick answer is that the products cost exactly what people want to pay for them (like with most other products), but when you buy LEGO sets you also buy into the overall system; being able to combine your set with other LEGO sets, the consistant quality and clutch-power etc.doubledHere's an article on Medium about this exactly:Why are LEGOs so expensive, exactly?Basically, it's a mix of marketing costs, licensing costs, super high quality standards, and rigorous QA (quality assurance).
1.) It costs a lot to do marketing stunts like this one:Yes, that's a giant X-Wing made of LEGOs in Times Square, New York City. This type of marketing is a big part of the reason that they have such great brand recognition, and it's the first name both kids and parents think of when brick-style building toys are mentioned; it also adds to the sticker price.2.) Speaking of Star Wars, licenses don't come cheap. Having to pay royalties to properties like Harry Potter and Star Wars means charging the consumers more too, but it's worth it to LEGO because they gain new customers from those fans. 3.) Quality control - LEGO uses German made molds and has rigorous standards so that you never get two LEGO pieces that don't fit together perfectly. Not only that, but you can put the pieces together and take them apart again for years and years and they will still have a tight fit. There are plenty of "clones", knock-offs, and alternative building toys out there for cheaper, [http://www.smart-toys.info/#!Pos...] so it's clear that simple bricks can be made for less.
But read the reviews, they don't always fit snug, or they are just generally not as nice to use. LEGOs cost more because they are obsessive about quality.Robots are hard to build from scratch unless you have degrees in engineering and programming. That's what makes LEGO's Mindstorms sets so amazing. They're flexible robotics kits that combine sensors, motors, and an electronic brain with LEGO Technic components to make robots anyone can build. LEGO has stepped up its robotics game with its newest Mindstorms product. Over four years since the launch of its Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit, the company has released LEGO Mindstorms EV3. This $349.99 (direct) robotics kit is faster, smarter, and more flexible than the previous version, and stands as one of the best ways to dabble in robotics without investing in tools. Its price tag might seem like a lot for a toy, but it's much more than that; LEGO Mindstorms EV3 is a remarkably powerful and functional robotics kit people of any age can use to build some impressive and complicated projects.
ContentsFor your $350, you get the Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick (the "brain" of the Mindstorms EV3 set), an infrared remote control, three servo motors, a color sensor, a touch sensor, an infrared sensor, and 550 LEGO Technic pieces. The 550 bricks and other building components might not seem like a lot against the nearly 3,000 pieces of the $320 LEGO Sydney Opera House Creator set, but you're mostly paying for the robotic parts. In fact, the Intelligent Brick itself would cost $150 separately, and each other robotic component can be purchased piecemeal for $20 (servo motors, touch sensor) to $50 (infrared sensor). Since this is a LEGO Technic set with a robotic heart, you can use any of your standard LEGO or LEGO Technic components with the set. That's one of the great things about LEGO: universal backwards compatibility. In fact, with a few small exceptions (six big sword/scale pieces, a handful of curved, white cover pieces, and a few specific mechanical pieces), all of the bricks that come with the set are universal and could be turned into nearly everything (a feature not seen very often with complex, licensed building sets for series like Star Wars or The Hobbit).
The set doesn't have any exact dimensions because it's over 500 different pieces, but you can build a robot about the size of a shoebox and have it still be structurally sound. Of course, you can also get more LEGO parts and build a robot as large as you'd like, as long as the moving parts are still light enough and have enough leverage for the servos to move them. View All 7 Photos in Gallery The Intelligent BrickAs the brain of the kit, the Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick features a ton of connection features. It has eight Mindstorms connection cable ports (modified RJ12 ports with the plastic tab on the right side of the jack), a mini-USB port for connecting to your computer, a microSD card slot for expanding the memory, and a full-size USB port for an optional Wi-Fi dongle or daisy-chaining up to three additional Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Bricks for a total of 32 connection ports—useful if you want to build a much more complicated and expensive robot than the kit allows on its own.
The Intelligent Brick also features built-in Bluetooth for directly controlling your robot with your mobile device and the Mindstorms iOS or Android app. The top of the brick holds a monochrome LCD display, four direction buttons, a back button, and a confirmation button on the top, and the right side of the brick holds a small speaker for playing sound files. The Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick uses an ARM9-based processor with 16MB of memory (and storage expandable exponentially with the microSD card slot). This is a massive leap in power from the ARM7-based Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Intelligent Brick, which only 256KB of memory and no microSD card slot. The NXT 2.0 Intelligent Brick had Bluetooth, but it was only Bluetooth 2.0 compared to the EV3 Intelligent Brick's Bluetooth 4.0, and couldn't be used to directly control your creations. The sensors have also gotten a power upgrade, and are able to send new values to the EV3 Intelligent Brick 1,000 times per second, three times more often than the NXT 2.0 sensors.