Jan 16
Wednesday's Best Deals: Anker Speakers, Puma Gear, Contigo Bottles, and More
Posted in: Uncategorized
PowerBeats3 Headphones, USB-C Chargers, and a Chef’sChoice Deli Slicer lead off Wednesday’s best deals.
Jan 16
The 20-Year Quest to Track Down Every Bird-of-Paradise Species Before They Vanish
Posted in: Today's Chili
Edwin Scholes has taken dozens of bush plane flights, helicopters and boat trips, and spent countless hours hauling gear up muddy mountains in New Guinea, for nothing more than a song and dance. Sometimes, he only manages to capture a few seconds of footage of the rainforest performances he seeks before his subjects…
Jan 16
Employee Falls for Fake Job Interview Over Skype, Gives North Korean Hackers Access to Chile's ATM Network: Report
Posted in: Today's Chili
The one thing no one expects on a job interview is North Korean hackers picking up on the other line. But that’s apparently exactly what happened to a hapless employee at Redbanc, the company that handles Chile’s ATM network.
Jan 16
Upskirting Set to Be Criminalized in England and Wales, Thanks to Viral Facebook Post
Posted in: Today's Chili
A year and a half after Gina Martin began a campaign against taking invasive photos, the British Parliament’s House of Lords has approved legislation that would make taking upskirt photos a criminal offense punishable of up to two years in prison, in England and Wales, reports the BBC.
Jan 16
Jan 16
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is quite big, as the name suggests, at 17 miles long. It asked for recommendations from 1,300 contributors back in 2014 for a feasible plan to build a new collider that would be significantly bigger than the LHC. CERN has now unveiled the preliminary designs for this project called the Future Circular Collider which will make the LHC tiny in comparison.
According to the plan, this massive particle accelerator is going to be 62 miles long and up to six times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider. The head of CERN’s theory department Gian Francesco Giudice put the leap in perspective by describing it as planning a trip not to Mars, but to Uranus.”
Researchers would obviously be hoping that the significantly more powerful FCC is able to discover new particles due to its more powerful collisions. On the other hand, the LHC hasn’t discovered any new particles other than the Higgs Boson.
As you can probably imagine, this project isn’t going to come cheap. It’s expected to cost around $24 billion and there’s no guarantee either that just because it’s powerful it will end up discovering a new particle.
CERN will be using the LHC for a few more decades before some like the FCC will be brought into operation so it’s going to be a long time before we hear about any discoveries, or lack thereof, from a project of this magnitude.
CERN Looking To Build Collider Four Times Bigger Than Its LHC , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Jan 16
Listen to the callers explain how the missing 13-year-old was found.
Jan 16
Car guys and gals, here is your chance to own a McLaren Senna supercar without having to hit the lotto. LEGO is showing off a new Speed Champions edition of the Senna that is just $14.99, making it roughly 1/64,000th of the cost of the real thing.
The LEGO Senna is a simple 219-piece kit and measures 5-inches long when complete. The kit comes with its own helmeted minifig and a wind tunnel fan for blocky aero testing. The toy is as accurate as you can be with this few bricks, and features a front splitter, roof snorkel, diffuser, and rear wing.
The kit is done up in a victory gray livery with orange highlights, and the car comes with interchangeable wheels. The minifig wears a helmet and racing suit with Pirelli partnership logo. The LEGO kit is available at from Amazon now.
[via McLaren]
Jan 16
Handheld retro gaming machines come and go, but few go so simply and effectively to the point as My Arcade’s Retro Champ. You stick in your NES cartridge, hit the power button and, assuming you blew on it beforehand, it powers up. This one sets itself apart with a big ol’ screen, Famicom compatibility and a whopping 35-hour battery life. Update: Nope! It’s 3 to 5 hours, not 35 as the company originally stated. I thought that was suspiciously high.
I played with the Retro Champ at CES, where they had one under lock and key — it’s not the production version, but that’s coming in the Spring. But it works just like you’d expect, and I was pleased to find it responsive, comfortable and pleasantly ridiculous. It’s really quite big, but not nearly as heavy as it looks.
The 7-inch screen is bright and the color looked good; it was responsive and the device felt well-balanced. The controls are where you’d expect, with big scoops in the back of the case to help you grip it. NES cartridges go in the top (and stick out as you see) and Famicom cartridges tuck in the bottom.
There’s a stand so you can prop it up and use wireless controllers with it (not included; they’re trying to keep the price low), and you can also plug it straight into your TV via HDMI, which basically makes this thing a spare NES home console. The screen is low-resolution, but that’s fine for NES; and its 480p output won’t wow anyone, but again, this is a Nintendo we’re talking about. The original outputs via RF adapter.
Lastly (and hilariously), there’s a hidden cleaning kit with space for a few Q-tips and a small bottle of solvent, for getting those really grimed-up games working.
My questions went to the usual pain points for scrupulous retro-loving gamers like myself:
Yes, it’s a 16:9 screen, and of course NES games were 4:3. So yes, you’ll be able to change that.
And no, it’s not just loading the ROM data into an emulator. This is the common way of doing it, and it produces artifacts and incompatibility with some games, not to mention control lag and other issues. Things have gotten better, but it’s definitely corner-cutting.
I chatted with Amir Navid, the creative director and one of the developers of the device. Though he couldn’t get into the technical details (patents pending), he said that they had developed their own chip that runs the game the same way an actual NES would.
So any cartridge that works on the NES, including homebrew and hacked games, will load right up no problem. That means you can also use a cartridge with an SD card loader, like an Everdrive, for those hard-to-get and hacked titles.
Some features are up in the air, for instance save states. It’s possible, but because this is in effect just a small Nintendo and not a virtual one, it’s also tricky. We’ll see.
I was also curious why there were four round buttons instead of the traditional NES D-pad. Navid said they were still waiting on feedback from players about which worked best; for an actual controller, the original D-pad might be good, but perhaps not for the handheld style. So they’re considering a few configurations; likewise the buttons on the right — they could get some tweaking before release.
The device goes for $80, which seems fair to me. If you want absolute fidelity for a home console, you can spend five to 10 times that amount, while for handhelds there are cheaper and smaller devices out there, most of which use emulators. They’re aiming for enthusiasts who want an easy but uncompromised way of playing their cartridges — lots of us have consoles sitting in boxes, but it’s a pain to get them set up. The Retro Champ could be one of the easiest ways to get back in the game. It ships in June.
Jan 16
Verizon Wireless is now offering free access to Apple Music. The music streaming service is available on select Verizon Wireless plans starting on January 17, 2019. Previously, Verizon and Apple offered a free 6-month trial to the streaming service.
The partnership comes as Apple is clearly looking for partners to help extend the reach of Apple’s services. Just last week, at CES 2019, multiple consumer electronic companies announced compatibility and support for several of Apple’s services including Airplay 2, HomeKit and iTunes video streaming services. This Verizon partnership further demonstrates Apple’s willingness to piggyback on another company to reach new users.
Verizon Wireless is America’s largest wireless carriers though it’s unclear how many users will have access to this service. The free Apple Music offer is only available to Verizon subscribers on select plans. Starting January 17, Apple Music will be included in Beyond Unlimited and Above Unlimited plans. For other users, a six-month trial is still available.
Wireless carriers have long looked to offering outside services to its subscribers to prop up their offerings. T-Mobile offers free Netflix and limited access to GoGo. Sprint gives subscribers free Hulu and Tidal. Sprint lets users on some plans pick from free HBO, Cinemax, Showtime or other services. Verizon is the first to offer free Apple Music.
Partnering with wireless carriers is a proven strategy to supercharge growth. Previously, Spotify used similar methods to introduce its service to customers. Others such as Dropbox followed. It’s a smart move: go where there are already customers. Wireless carriers offer service companies access to a huge range of customers from various demographic groups.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Apple discloses the source of Apple Music subscribers in quarterly reports. This deal will likely result in a massive increase of subscribers who are not paying for the service through traditional means.
Disclosure: TechCrunch is a Verizon Media company.
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