Technology

One of the Nintendo Switch’s persistent flaws has been Joy-Con drift, a phenomenon where players observe false inputs when they aren’t even touching the joysticks on the controllers. Nintendo has been relatively quiet on the subject for years, and the company refused to say whether the new OLED-equipped Nintendo Switch OLED had fixed the issue. But today, the company is breaking its silence in a big way — and suggesting that Joy-Con drift may never be fully addressed. In a new Q&A about the development of the Nintendo Switch OLED, the company reveals that it has steadily been making improvements to the Joy-Cons to try and make them more reliable. The joysticks that came with 2019’s Switch Lite aren’t the same as those in the original 2017 Switch, and they’re continually getting refined...

Hulu’s prices are going up beginning Friday, October 8th for both its monthly and annual subscription tiers. It was initially reported in September that Hulu’s monthly cost would increase by $1 per month or $10 per year (ad-supported) to $7 monthly (ad-supported), $13 monthly (no-ads), and $70 per year, respectively. Both Hulu’s base ad-supported and ad-free monthly subscription prices are going up in price by a dollar, but neither of its live TV tiers will be impacted. (Those plans got a price increase late last year.) In a recent email to subscribers, Hulu wrote that the price hike “will be reflected in your first billing cycle on or after October 8.” Users will be charged the new price unless they cancel their subscription on or before Friday. Hulu has said that those subscribed through...

California governor Gavin Newsom signed the Silenced No More Act on Thursday night— a historic piece of legislation, authored by state senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino), that should protect workers who speak out about harassment and discrimination even if they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma began pushing the bill forward last year, after coming forward with allegations of racism against the tech company. She knew she was partially protected by the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, a Me Too-era law that banned NDAs in sexual harassment cases, but soon realized the bill did not provide protections for other forms of abuse. Now, that’s changing. Workers in California will be legally protected for speaking out about discrimination based on rac...

YouTube has announced that its automatic livestream captions should now be available for all creators, instead of being limited to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers like they were during the feature’s initial rollout. This change, along with some future improvements the company details in its blog, should help make the platform more accessible to deaf or hard-of-hearing people. Some of those updates include making live auto captions available to 12 more languages instead of just English (including Japanese, Turkish, and Spanish), the ability to add multiple audio tracks to a video to support multiple languages (and audio descriptions for those with limited eyesight), and the expansion of the auto-translate captions feature to support mobile devices, too. The expanded language suppo...

In a tweet earlier today, Google SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer called on Apple to support RCS, the next-generation texting standard that’s supposed to supplant SMS. He offered an “open invitation to the folks who can make this right” and said “we are here to help.” Translation: the “folks” are Apple and “we are here to help” is Google’s offer to assist Apple in implementing the new standard. RCS is finally starting to gain traction around the world. Its biggest champion has been Google, which finally landed on using it as the default texting solution for Android phones after trying every other solution. RCS is far from perfect, but it’s clearly superior to SMS (which is, of course, a low bar). After securing deals from US carriers to commit to the standard in the next year, Google is setting its ...

Did you take one look at our hefty Windows 11 upgrade checklist and nope right out of there? It turns out there’s a dramatically easier way to install Windows 11 on computers with older CPUs — with no need to reformat your drive, erase your files, or even burn the ISO to an external USB drive. If you’re currently seeing “This PC doesn’t currently meet Windows 11 system requirements” or “The processor isn’t currently supported for Windows 11,” there’s a Microsoft-approved registry hack that should instantly make it better. <div class="c-imageslider" data-cid="apps/imageslider-1633645054_8251_32090" data-cdata="{"caption":"You can go from “doesn’t meet requirements” to “ready to install” in a single minute.","image_left":{"ratio&...

Ireland said Thursday it would join an international agreement that sets taxes on profits for multinational corporations at a minimum rate of 15 percent. This is a major shift for the country that is the European headquarters for many large US pharmaceutical companies, as well as tech firms, including Google, Apple, and Facebook. An increase from Ireland’s current 12.5 percent to 15 percent may not seem that large by itself. The so-called Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Inclusive Framework agreement, outlined in July, is actually a two-pillar plan aimed at helping end tax avoidance and making international tax rules fairer and more transparent. The OECD has estimated that a 15 percent tax rate would generate some $150 billion in global tax revenue annually and ...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, where it has been building a new factory for a little more than a year. Musk said Tesla will continue to operate its electric vehicle factory in Fremont, CA, and that he even plans to try and increase production there by 50 percent. “Just to be clear, though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” he said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. “So this is not a matter of Tesla leaving California.” Musk had previously threatened to pull Tesla’s entire operations out of California because he disagreed with the shelter-in-place orders the state leaned on early in the coronavirus pandemic. Tesla even sued the county that the company’s California ...

Microsoft has agreed to have an independent third-party study the potential impact of it making its devices easier to repair and to make changes based on those findings by the end of 2022, according to Grist and the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. The agreement was made after As You Sow filed a shareholder resolution asking Microsoft to look into the potential impact that it could make by making it easier for consumers to get their devices repaired. As You Sow has withdrawn its resolution in return for Microsoft conducting the study and making parts and documentation more available to repair shops that aren’t official Microsoft service providers based on the study’s results. As You Sow calls Microsoft’s commitment “an encouraging step,” but it’s worth keeping in perspective that it ...

Sony Pictures Entertainment has released a new trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the next live-action film based on the popular horror video game franchise, ahead of the movie’s November 24th release in theaters. The movie, which is a reboot for the film side of the franchise, looks to be filled with Resident Evil hallmarks. It takes place in Raccoon City, series mainstays Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield are all featured, something about the Umbrella Corporation is apparently at the heart of the conflict, and the main characters look like they will spend some time fleeing zombies in a spooky mansion. (There’s even a part in the trailer where a zombie dog shatters a window.) Here’s the official synopsis of the film, if you want to know a b...

The 2022 Geneva International Motor Show, slated to happen in February, has been canceled as the COVID pandemic persists and the auto industry struggles with a global chip shortage. Organizers said Thursday that there are still too many “uncertainties” related to the pandemic and the shortage for automakers to commit to the show, which usually serves as a showcase for wild supercars, concepts, and prototypes. The hope is to have “a more impactful show in 2023” with more virtual presentations. “We have pushed very hard and tried everything to reactivate the Geneva International Motor Show in 2022,” Maurice Turrettini, who runs the committee in charge of the show, said in a statement. “Despite all our efforts, we have to face the facts and the reality: the pandemic situation is not under con...

Eidos-Montréal and its subsidiary Eidos-Sherbrooke are switching to a four-day workweek, the game developer announced on Thursday. The Square Enix-owned company is currently working on the next big Marvel video game adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy. “This initiative is another step towards the embodiment of the studio’s values, building a healthy, creative, and sustainable work environment for our employees,” studio head David Anfossi writes in the company’s blog. “The idea is not to condense the working hours into four days, but rather to review our ways of doing things and our quality time invested, with the aim of working better!” A 32-hour workweek Eidos-Montréal says that both studios will be closed on Fridays in the next few weeks, “without changing the working conditions currentl...