Technology

Nintendo revealed a new model of the Switch this week that adds an OLED screen, enhanced speakers, and a much-improved kickstand. One thing it seems the OLED Switch won’t bring, however, is a fix for the Joy-Con drift issues that have plagued Switch owners for years — and frustratingly, Nintendo won’t even confirm that it won’t. A variety of publications including The Verge tried to ask the question, but Nintendo won’t tackle it head-on, despite other helpful answers like how the new Switch won’t have a new CPU. Switch owners have been reporting Joy-Con drift problems for years, and the problem is bad enough that it’s the subject of numerous lawsuits — though Nintendo will unofficially fix controllers experiencing Joy-Con drift for free, even if you’re out of warranty. One of our top reque...

This year will go down in history as the year we entered the golden age of Not Losing Your Stuff. Well, in addition to some other historic milestones, somewhere in the top 100 hits of the year will be the introduction of smart tracker tags from two major mobile device manufacturers: Samsung and Apple. Tracking tags have been around for a while now, and Tile has been the best-known brand in the space. With new options from the two most popular US phone manufacturers entering the picture, tracking tags may be poised to go mainstream. If you’re thinking of picking one up but unsure where to start, then you’re in the right place. We tried out three top tracking tags — the Samsung SmartTag Plus, Apple AirTag, and Tile Pro — to see how they compare. First, a word about the very real privacy conc...

Tesla began sending out over-the-air software updates for its long-awaited “Full Self-Driving” beta version 9, the definitely-not-autonomous-but-certainly-advanced driver assist system. As promised by Elon Musk, the software update (2021.4.18.12) began uploading after midnight on Friday, giving thousands of Tesla owners who have purchased the FSD option access to the feature, which enables drivers to use many of Autopilot’s advanced driver-assist features on local, non-highway streets. [embedded content] Musk has been promising v9 of the software for, well, a while now Musk has been promising v9 of the software for, well, a while now. He said in 2018 that the “long awaited” version of FSD would begin rolling out in August. He did it again in 2019, proclaiming that “a year from now” there w...

Virgin Galactic will launch Richard Branson and three company employees to the edge of space on the morning of Sunday, July 11th. The company is promising quite a show for the mission: Stephen Colbert will host the mission’s livestream, singer-songwriter Khalid will reportedly perform a new single live onstage following the spaceplane’s landing, and Branson has said he’ll “announce something very exciting” after his spaceflight. The flight marks one of the company’s final test missions before it aims to kick off commercial space tourism business next year. The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will mark Virgin Galactic’s fourth flight to space carrying humans, with its largest crew yet. Four people, including Branson, will test the astronaut cabin experience, and two pilots will be in the cockpit....

Social video sharing and creator platform TikTok can be used for many purposes, but as of today adult content in the form of nudity and violence displayed in videos will no longer be shown thanks to a new automated removal system. The crackdown follows roughly a year of trial and error tweaks that have resulted in such videos being removed from the platform. TikTok is known for its generally younger audience and user base, so these kinds of videos are not safe for minors — and as a result, anything displaying violence, graphic content, nudity, sex, illegal activity and regulated goods are subjected to being taken down. Videos will be taken down using an automated system that can detect violating content, pulling the video off the platform immediately. Owners of the video can appeal, and th...

The first trailer for The Witcher season 2 has arrived, hot on the heels of Netflix’s announcement that the show will be returning on December 17th, at the inaugural WitcherCon event. And unlike earlier teases, this one’s a proper, full-length look at the upcoming season. Mild spoilers for The Witcher, season 1 ahead Picking up where the first season left off, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) has finally joined up with the exiled Princess Cirilla. The second season will see the two travel to Kaer Morhen, the mountain fortress of the witchers where Geralt was trained — and where Ciri will be undergoing similar trials to become a witcher herself. And if the teaser is anything to go by, learning to become a witcher is no fun at all. There are also plenty of shots of Cavill dashing through the s...

A licensing deal between Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Amazon will broaden Prime Video’s streaming library and bring anticipated titles to the service after a brief run on Peacock. As part of a multiyear licensing deal that will begin in 2022, live-action Universal films will head exclusively to Prime Video after their earlier pay-one premieres on NBCUniversal’s own streaming service Peacock. Per the agreement, Prime Video and Amazon’s free and ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV will both snag a number of new and older Universal titles. On Prime Video, Jurassic World: Dominion, The 355, and Ambulance will land on the service after their theatrical releases and earlier exclusive four-month run on Peacock. Amazon’s marquee streaming service will also get some of Universal’s cl...

Tencent, the biggest game company in the world, is rolling out facial recognition technology that will likely scan many gamers’ faces every single evening, aiming to catch minors breaking a gaming curfew and help prevent video game addiction (via Gizmodo). That’s a lot of controversial concepts in one sentence, no? Here’s what’s going on, according to the company and China games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad. In China, video game addiction prevention is literally the law of the land, one that’s been evolving for many years but recently hit some important milestones. In 2019, China introduced a law that banned minors from playing video games between 10PM and 8AM or from playing more than 90 minutes on a weekday. And as of June 1st, 2021, every game in the country is required to add a new au...

Managers at Amazon are instructed not to warn employees that they are being monitored under the company’s “Focus” performance management tool, according to documents obtained by The Seattle Times. Focus is supposed to be a program where managers document how they are coaching employees and bringing their performance up to snuff. But in documents obtained by the Times, managers were instructed to not discuss Focus with employees, and instead they are supposed to more generally explain that the worker isn’t meeting expectations and how to improve. Managers would only be able to tell an employee they’re on the plan if they’re asked directly. This means an employee could be on track to losing their job without ever knowing that their performance is under intense corporate scrutiny, and some wh...

This year’s League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) finale is the latest esports event to welcome an audience to attend in person. Riot Games announced on Friday that the final two matches of the LCS Championship, the league’s postseason summer tournament, will take place at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, on August 28th and 29th, and fans will be able to attend the event. During the pandemic, the league shifted to an entirely virtual format where players competed online and casters commentated remotely. It has moved slowly toward a return to events with fans. The final two matches of the Midseason Showdown tournament in April brought the players and production crew onstage at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, but there was no audience in attendance. LCS matches for the Su...

A PR war between two billionaire-owned space companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, is starting to get spicy. Ever since Virgin announced it’d try to fly its founder Branson to space nine days before Bezos flies on his own rocket, Blue Origin has been on a warpath to discredit Virgin’s suborbital spaceplane, publicly attacking everything from the vehicle’s peak altitude to the size of its windows. Blue Origin’s CEO Bob Smith wished Branson well after Virgin’s announcement, but alleged he’s not really going to space — “they’re not flying above the Kármán line and it’s a very different experience.” The Kármán line, 62 miles above ground, is the boundary of space recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), a Swiss organization that sets g...