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Retro Receiver Makes Your Nintendo Modern Again

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I have a lot of video games for my old Nintendo Entertainment System that I’d love to play again.  However, there’s a problem.  I’ve gotten used to having wireless controllers and as such, I move my hands and arms a lot more than I used to back when I was hooked by a black wire to a gray box in my bedroom.  Fortunately, for those of us who didn’t buy a wireless controller back in 1987, there’s a more modern solution.  The Retro Receiver allows you to hook a modern wireless controller to your Nintendo.

A Nintendo Wiimote?  A Sony DualShock 4? Yup, just get them connected and you can bring modern ergonomics to Super Mario Brothers 3.  The hard part might be finding a tube television that will allow you to play your Nintendo again, since the standard definition graphics have a lot of ghosting on high definition systems, and I’m not sure there are a lot of converters out there to fix it.

Get your own Retro Reciever at 8Bitdo.

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Google Perks Up Chrome Speeds

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I love Google Chrome.  It’s the browser of choice for people who want to get things done, safely and quickly.  There’s no memory leak, and it’s more secure when it comes to viruses compared to the competition, and Google is only going to make it better.  Google is planning on making Chrome even faster with some tweaks to the software powering it.  By compressing the data before it reaches your web browser, it makes things move even faster, no matter your connection speed.

Brotli promises to boost speeds by 26 percent over Chrome’s current processing system, which is good news because the fastest web browser on the market is about to get even faster.  Who complains about getting things faster?  Well, no one, that I know of, but if you need more evidence that it’s good, it also promises to lower battery drain and data usage.  Brotli is coming in the next update for Chrome, and Firefox is also on board, adopting Brotli as their algorithm of choice.

I can only hope that the next edition of Chrome comes out pretty quickly, so I can experience the speed boost for myself.

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Apple Japan's "Lucky Bags"

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There are a lot of interesting New Year’s Day traditions.  My mother, for example, swears on corned beef and cabbage as a way to bring good luck in the New Year.  Other people and other cultures have different things.  In Japan, it’s not the New Year that brings luck, but merchants brings the luck.  Japan has a custom called fukubukuro, in which merchants put together grab bags and sell them to customers, with the bags running for 50% or less of the value of the goods inside.  If you’re very lucky, you’ll do great and get some great deals.  If you’re not, you’ll still get some great deals.  Even Apple has jumped onto the trend.  Here’s a discussion of Apple’s Lucky Bags in Japan, which can include everything from Macbook Airs to wireless headphones.

So what does that mean?  Well, for $300 or so, you can get somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 in prizes.  The more you spend on your bag, the more goodies you get.  Now the bags themselves are randomly filled, and even Apple employees don’t know what’s inside, they’re just priced by tiers and it’s the luck of the draw as to who gets what.  Even if you don’t get the laptop, you still get a cool prize.  It’s the Japanese equivalent of Woot’s mystery box, and I for one hope it spreads.

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Smartphone "Kill Switch" Coming To California

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Every year, 1.6 million phones are stolen, and most of those phones are smartphones.  In a smartphone is a lot of personal information.  Everything from banking apps to emails to home security systems to car starting apps, the smartphone is the hub of the average user’s universe and to lose that hub is bad enough.  To lose that hub to someone with no scruples is borderline unthinkable.  That’s why customers, and governments, are looking for a way to kill that information theft before it can happen.  California has passed a law saying all smartphones sold in the state must have a “kill switch” that bricks the phone in the event of theft or loss.

California governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 962 into law on Monday, which mandates a “kill switch” but gives companies the freedom to decide how best to lock down phones based on their software and hardware options.  Minnesota was the first state to pass the “kill switch” law, and companies are totally on board with the concept.  Google, Microsoft, and Apple all have or will be adding “kill switch” options on their phones, though customers typically have to set up that themselves.  Under California’s new law, the “kill switch” will be set up upon activation of the phone, forcing customers to opt in or out.

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Britain's Tate Museum Adds Creepy Robots

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If you ever get the chance to go to London, expect to spend a lot of time in museums.  After all, the city is home to some of the world’s most famous museums, and each museum is loaded down with hundreds of priceless pictures, artifacts, sculptures, paintings, and all that sort of artsy stuff that are worth taking the time to visit.  However, between Buckingham Palace and St. James Park and the British Museum and all the other stuff that you have to do, it’s easy to miss some things.  In my case, I missed the Tate Museum, which is a shame in and of itself.  However, not to worry.  The Tate Museum will be open for late-night online visitors courtesy of an army of creepy robots.

The Robots will have LED lights and cameras, and lucky visitors to the Tate website could be the lucky folks who get to actually control and pilot the robots.  Tour guides will provide commentary as the robots roll silently around the darkened Tate Museum, like creepy mechanical guards standing sentinel over 500 years of artwork.  It’s a cool thing, but it’s also for a limited amount of time, so be mindful and cross your fingers that you’ll get lucky.

“We want it to feel a bit spooky, a bit mysterious,” says Jane Burton, Creative Director of Tate Media at the museum. “[Online users] will probably see different things in the artwork than [visitors] would see in them if they came during the day.  “From your couch, anywhere in the world, if you’ve got the right Internet connection and browser, you can come and see what we have in our galleries, at night.”

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, and why wouldn’t it be, you can check it out at the Tate Museum’s After Dark website.

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