"Little benownst to the world all this time, GoldenEye (N64) has a fully-functional ZX Spectrum 48x emulator built into it. By feeding it a proper Spectrum monitor program and calling menu 25 to load a snapshot, any Spectrum 48x program can be run. The emulator started life as a side project to see if Spectrum emulation was possible on N64 and was hooked into GE, the current game in development. It was supposed to be removed before release but was only made inaccessible and inoperable. All the registers, dependancies, and script required to run the emulator still reside in retail GoldenEye carts."

Over the years, one thing has been very hard to grasp for some people: the fact that people want smartphones with 4.0"+ screens. These 'some people' seem to believe that because Apple chose a 3.5" display, any display size that isn't 3.5" is wrong. Keep that in mind when you read Samsung's latest little communiqué: the Korean giant has sold (not shipped, sold) more than 5 million Galaxy Notes. Which has a 5.3" screen.

The Goodbye, Microsoft website has been a good source of Linux information for five years, focusing on issues like compatibility, mature computers, performance, applications, light distros, and reviews. The site just posted its Big Board of Linux Distributions, a list that gives you quick info on Linux distros sorted by hardware requirements. Here's to hoping this useful non-commercial website is with us for the next five years.

"Today marks a major milestone in the development of the Go programming language. We're announcing Go version 1, or Go 1 for short, which defines a language and a set of core libraries to provide a stable foundation for creating reliable products, projects, and publications. Go 1 is the first release of Go that is available in supported binary distributions. They are available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and, we are thrilled to announce, Windows."

"I just gave the new iPad an Editors' Choice award for large tablets, but frankly it was a foregone conclusion. The iPad doesn't get the award because of its hardware, lovely as the hardware is. It gets the award because its apps are generally better than the apps available for Android tablets." The laptop gap may have been closed, but the tablet gap sure hasn't.

For years and years now (since the first G4 iBooks), whenever someone asked me for advice about what laptop to buy, my standard answer was simple: get an Apple laptop. Doesn't matter which one. Apple was so far ahead of the competition it just wasn't funny anymore. This past weekend, though, marked the end of an era for me: for the first time, I advised someone to get an Asus ZenBook instead.

"Last week, Apple and Nokia got into a very public dust-up over the future of the SIM card - a staple in phones all around the world - thanks to a Financial Times article pointing out that the two had filed competing proposals with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for the so-called 'fourth form factor (4FF) UICC', more commonly known as the 'nano-SIM'. The nano-SIM proposals seek to standardize a new SIM card that would be even smaller than the current micro-SIM popularized by the iPhone, freeing precious extra millimeters inside the phone's chassis for more circuitry, more battery capacity, and slimmer profiles. We've now had a chance to see the original proposals for the nano-SIM standard from Apple, Nokia, and RIM, and we have a better idea on what the ETSI will be voting on later this week."

"Last week, we previewed the launch of Wing Commander Saga: Darkest Dawn, the fan-built companion to Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger that's been in the making for the past ten years. We were excited for its launch. But now that the game is available, how'd the team do?" They did good, it turns out. It's high time the space simulator genre gets a boost. And yeah, it's a slow news day, unless you want me to bore you with nonsense about the new iPad being slightly warmer to the touch or a Microsoft contest not being fair (who'da thunk?!).

A few months ago, I wrote an article about comments, in which I said, among others things, that Twitter can never replace comments because not only is it effectively a one-to-one communication channel, Twitter messages are also far too short to foster any form of coherent conversation. Over the weekend, a silly link-bait story illustrated my point perfectly.

"Last week a large, profitable company sued a small start-up business for patent infringement. As a non-legal person, I can only guess that this sort of thing must happen fairly often. I would also guess that the large companies, which have the means to hire crackerjack legal teams and drag cases out, must often win. And while I guess I feel bad for the small businesses, I've never really cared before now. Because this time, the stakes are high. This time, it's my daughter's voice on the line. Literally." Infuriating. Maybe these are the kinds of stories we need to get normal people to care enough to force lawmakers to change. Sadly, the big bags of money from Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are probably far more important to them than this sad story.

"The Pirate Bay is not only the most visited BitTorrent site on the Internet, but arguably the most censored too. Many ISPs have been ordered to block their customers’ access to the website, and recently Microsoft joined in on the action by stopping people sharing its location with others. Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger now refuses to pass on links to The Pirate Bay website, claiming they are unsafe." They refuse links to The Pirate Bay. In that light, here are a bunch of completely and utterly useless links to The Pirate Bay. And some more. And then some. Update: We have some more links to The Pirate Bay.

Still holding on to Windows 2000, XP RTM or XP SP1? No more Firefox for you, my friend - Mozilla has just upped its minimum supported Windows version to Windows XP SP2. In addition, support for Firefox 3.6 will end April 24. Asa Dotzler presents Opera as an alternative for you crazy people still on Windows 2000, XP RTM or XP SP1.

"Reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, it can be argued the creative catalyst for the iPad was not Jobs himself, nor Apple design wizard Jony Ive, but instead some Microsoft engineer who talked too much at parties. At least that's how Steve Jobs told it from 2002. 'But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you're dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, "Fuck it, let's show him what a tablet can really be".' Apocryphal dinner story or not, Apple did indeed show Microsoft how tablets are done, and attempted to bury the stylus in doing so. However, a decade later and just after the launch of the new iPad, it turns out the stylus isn't dead at all. In fact, it's getting better."

Absolutely terrifying and very depressing screenshots from all kinds of software. "Screenshots of despair". Chilling stuff.