Technology

At its latest indie showcase, Nintendo revealed a handful of intriguing titles coming to the Switch in 2021. The biggest reveal is that Among Us, one of 2020’s biggest games, isn’t just coming to the Switch, but it’ll be available later today. There were plenty of other cool announcements as well. One of the most notable reveals was that classic rouguelike series Spelunky is coming to the Switch next year. That includes both the original Spelunky as well as Spelunky 2, with local multiplayer for both (and online for the sequel) in summer 2021. Other reveals include: Fisti-fluffs, a physics-based brawler about cats wreaking havoc in an empty house, will launch in early 2021 Tunche, a hand-drawn action game about exploring a fantasy version of the Amazon rainforest, will be out in March 2021...

How do you want to be remembered after you die? A new documentary from Wall Street Journal tech reporter (and Verge alum) Joanna Stern examines the idea of what it means to pass on a digital legacy, and how we think about preserving our identities after death. She interviews Lucy, a young woman with a medical condition who is bound to a wheelchair and needs a feeding tube. Lucy is acutely aware of creating a digital footprint that will outlive her, but her mother Kate is not so certain about what may comfort her if Lucy passes on. Stern also spoke to James Vlahos, a man who recorded interviews with his terminally ill father and created a “Dadbot” to keep his father’s personality traits — as well as his jokes and his singing — alive after his death. Vlahos founded HereAfter AI, which uses c...

If you’ve been using Microsoft Office on an M1 Mac, it’s about to get better — Microsoft is announcing an update today that brings native support for Apple’s new custom chip architecture to the Windows productivity suite. The apps getting the updates are Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Notably absent, however, is Teams. The updates are making the apps universal ones — meaning these versions will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, so any upcoming updates or features will be coming at the same time for both platforms. If you’re a heavy user of Teams, you may be disappointed to hear that it hasn’t been included in today’s rollout of updates. Microsoft promises they’re working on that platform in their blog post, but the company hasn’t announced any sort of timeline. Mean...

Today’s episode of Decoder is a fun one, I promise: it’s about advertising. The modern ad industry is an enormous part of the economy that’s been completely reinvented by technology, that all of us experience every day, and to which most of us don’t pay any serious attention. And advertising is now also a data-intensive operation that has way more to do with technology and how it’s deployed than any of the Mad Men-era stereotypes we’re familiar with. When Mark Zuckerberg testifies to Congress that Facebook is free because it sells ads, what he’s really talking about is a massive ecosystem of data collection, user targeting, and sales tracking that operates in every corner of the tech industry. Facebook and Google have taken the old advertising cliche of finding the right customer at the ri...

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Twitter €450,000 (around $546,000) over a data breach it disclosed back in January 2019, the regulator announced today. The security flaw exposed some supposedly private tweets from the service’s Android users for over four years. Twitter was found to have violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because it failed to notify the regulator within 72 hours of discovering the breach, The Wall Street Journal reports. The fine is notable because it’s the first time a US tech giant has been hit with a GDPR fine in a cross-border case, meaning one in which the Irish regulator consulted its EU counterparts as part of the decision. The investigation was headed by Ireland’s DPC because Ireland is where Twitter’s international hea...

Samsung’s president of mobile, TM Roh, dropped several hints about the company’s product roadmap in a blog post today. He confirmed Samsung will hold an event in January — presumably for the Galaxy S21. He also implied that S Pen support will come to more phones and that Samsung intends to broaden its line of folding phones with less expensive options. The hint that’s likely to have the biggest impact on the greatest number of customers is stylus support for Galaxy phones beyond the Note line. That’s been rumored for some time now, but Roh also claims that Samsung intends to “add some of its most well-loved features to other devices in our lineup.” It may mean that the other half of those rumors will also come to pass: that the Note line itself may soon be coming to an end, at least as a p...

In early April, I watched a clip of people crying, hollering, and clapping during a scene in Avengers: Endgame. It was the first time I remember missing physically sitting in a movie theater. I thought by May, when Black Widow was scheduled to be released, life would return to normal. I’d be back in a theater on Thursday night with friends, sitting among a packed room full of strangers chatting excitedly about the beginning of a new Marvel Cinematic Universe phase. That never happened. Instead, 2020 has become the first year since 2009 without a major addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s no big introduction of a new superhero, no highly anticipated sequel — there’s not even an entry in Marvel Studios’ MCU TV universe. WandaVision, once slated to premiere this month, won’t hit...

Uber has 30 days to pay a $59 million fine to California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for failing to answer the regulator’s questions about a damning safety report released by the company in December 2019. If Uber doesn’t pay up and answer the outstanding questions, CPUC could suspend the company’s license to operate in the state, an administrative law judge ruled on Monday. It’s the latest development in Uber’s long history of trouble with violence and assault between its drivers and passengers — trouble that competitor Lyft shares, too. News of the fine was first reported by The San Francisco Chronicle. Regulators want to know more about Uber’s own damning safety report, released in 2019 The report, which Uber itself called “jarring” at the time, detailed thousands of sexual assa...

Apple has killed an upcoming Apple TV Plus show about Gawker, a now-defunct news organization, according to a report by the New York Times. The show, called Scraper, is one to add to the list of stories about Apple killing projects that touch things that are too sensitive or edgy for the company. When Tim Cook found out that Apple was working on the show, he reportedly sent an email saying that he was surprised to hear about it. He also mentioned he disliked Gawker. Although Apple has decided to kill the project, the show is back on the market, where another distributor could buy and finance it. This isn’t the first time Apple executives have stepped in to steer their TV service away from controversy This isn’t the first time Apple executives have stepped in to steer their TV service away ...

If you’ve been waiting until you could play all three SNES Donkey Kong Country games before picking up a Switch, you’re in luck. Nintendo has announced that the third game in the series, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble, will be added to the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service this Friday. The original Donkey Kong Country game was added in July, while its sequel followed in September. Beyond Donkey Kong Country 3, Nintendo Switch Online is also getting some deeper cuts this week. SNES titles The Ignition Factor, Super Valis IV, and Tuff E Nuff are all coming on Friday alongside NES game Nightshade. A Nintendo Switch Online subscription is required to access the Switch’s library of NES and SNES games, as well as giving you cloud saves and the ability to play Switch...

Google has pushed back its return to the office until September, and will experiment with a hybrid model allowing some employees to work from home part of the week, the company said. First reported by The New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai emailed employees Sunday about plans to test a flexible work week once conditions are safe for people to return. Google employees would work three days in the office and the rest of the week at home under the new plan. Pichai said the company is testing whether such a model would lead to greater productivity and employee well-being. “No company at our scale has ever created a fully hybrid work force model — though a few are starting to test it — so it will be interesting to try,” Pichai wrote. According to CNBC, however, Google’s hybrid work model ...