Technology

Nintendo continues to struggle to hit its Switch production targets as a result of the global chip shortage, which contributed to a near 23 percent decline in console sales to 3.43 million in the three months ending June 30th, the company reported today. Sales of the standard Nintendo Switch were down 60 percent to 1.32 million units in the quarter, while sales of the Switch Lite were down nearly 50 percent to 0.59 million. The Switch OLED, which only went on sale last October, made up some of the shortfall with 1.52 million units sold. Software sales were also down by 8.6 percent to a little under 41.5 million units. The company still expects to sell 21 million consoles throughout the course of its year ending March 2023. “Production was impacted by factors such as the global shortage of ...

Ford says it has delivered F-150 Lightning electric truck — which is totally sold out in the US for 2022 — to customers in all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii. It’s a nice, if not exactly important, milestone and a feather in Ford’s cap as it seeks to ramp up production and deliveries of its flagship electric vehicle. And it all happened in the span of two months, which Ford deems “lightning quick.” “lightning quick” Ford is counting on its 119 years of production and delivery expertise as well as its vast network of dealerships as it seeks to vault over its rivals in the race to get electric trucks to the most people. Trucks are among the top-selling vehicles in the country, and the F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the US for the last 40 years. California, where most EV s...

Some Michigan counties can’t immediately report Tuesday night’s election results due to a confusing mix of federal vote reporting guidance and AT&T’s decision to retire its 3G networks this past February. In a website alert, the Wayne County clerk’s office confirmed that 65 of Michigan’s 83 total counties “are no longer modeming unofficial election results.” Wayne County is where Detroit is located, and it’s the state’s biggest county by population, with about 1.8 million residents. It’s unclear how many are due to county officials that did not upgrade their own modems, or if this is due to U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) guidelines advising against using modems. In section 14.2-E, the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0 established in February 2021 advised against ...

About a week ago, industry observers noticed that Comic-Con 2022 came and went without any mention of Batgirl, the Warner Bros. film shot over the winter and apparently due for release in 2023. Today, the New York Post, The Wrap, and other entertainment outlets report that despite being in the final stages of post-production, Warner Bros. and DC Films have decided not to release the movie on any platform or in theaters. The list of American unreleased films on Wikipedia is not a long one, and the flicks on it usually have a reason for being there — see the 1994 Fantastic Four effort or Netflix’s shelved Bill Cosby 77 project. The Post says this film will join them due to new Warner Bros. Discovery executive David Zaslav and new Warner Bros. head Michael De Luca seeking to cut costs and foc...

Chevy has started offering some Bolt owners rebates of up to $6,000 as a “goodwill reimbursement” for anyone who bought one of the battery-powered EVs shortly before the company made them significantly cheaper. However, as Jalopnik points out, taking the rebate means agreeing to never sue the company for any present or future issues with the car or its battery or join any class action suits related to the Bolt. Given that Bolt had to be recalled twice following several battery fires (and the fact that the recall was expanded to include pretty much every model of the car), it may be an uncomfortable agreement for some. However, most people who were actually affected by the battery problems won’t be the ones having to decide whether to take the money or not. The rebate is only for people who...

The big God of War sequel is one of the year’s most anticipated video games, and you can now play it on Xbox. Yes, that’s right, War Gods Zeus of Child, which stars Sony’s video game character Kratos and a horde of identical and generic monster baddies, is currently available for just $4.09 on the Xbox store. Oh, you thought I was talking about a different game? Nope, War Gods Zeus of Child is definitely an approved and legitimate entry in one of Sony’s most valuable franchises being sold on a competing console platform. I promise you’ll want to play it just based on the game’s description: War Gods Zeus of Child is a great war game. Destroy all enemies and creatures with the Zeus War Gods of challange [sic]. Kill them all with your gun. Launch attacks with various combos. Reach the highes...

A jury has found Argishti Khudaverdyan, a former owner of a T-Mobile store, guilty of using stolen credentials to unlock “hundreds of thousands of cellphones” from August 2014 to June 2019 (via PCMag). According to a press release from the Department of Justice and an indictment filed earlier this year, Khudaverdyan made around $25 million from the scheme, which also involved bypassing carrier blocks put on lost or stolen cell phones. For years, he reportedly used several tactics to acquire the T-Mobile employee credentials needed to unlock phones, including phishing, social engineering, and even getting the carrier’s IT department to reset higher-ups’ passwords, giving him access. The DOJ says he accessed over 50 employees’ credentials, and used them to unlock phones from “Sprint, AT&...

Robinhood is letting go of nearly a quarter of its staff, CEO Vlad Tenev said in a message posted to the company’s blog. “As part of a broader company reorganization into a General Manager (GM) structure, I just announced that we are reducing our headcount by approximately 23%,” Tenev wrote. “While employees from all functions will be impacted, the changes are particularly concentrated in our operations, marketing, and program management functions.” Robinhood’s chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada is also stepping down from her post as part of the restructuring, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though she’ll “remain employed in an advisory role to the CEO or his designee through January 2, 2023.” Chennapragada joined the company from Google in March ...

One of my biggest complaints about using a Nintendo Switch in handheld mode is that its screen is just too small. And unlike previous Nintendo handhelds like the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, no company has been brave enough to release a straight-up book light and magnifying glass window combo for the Switch. If you asked me how interested I’d be, then, in a Switch that had a massive 11.6-inch display, I’d count the days down until I could own what sounds like a glorious thing. (Not quite what I had in mind for a Switch Pro, but I guess Nintendo knows best.) Well, that future is here — and it has apparently been here for longer than I realized. A company called Up-Switch makes the Orion, a glorified Switch dock-meets-screen that can be sandwiched between two Joy-Con controllers. This $299...

Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor is stepping down as the CEO of the software company he co-founded, MicroStrategy, and will instead take on the role of executive chairman. Saylor’s belief in Bitcoin has turned the company into a holding vehicle for the cryptocurrency. The news came as the company reported its second-quarter earnings. It noted a loss of $1.062 billion, mostly due to an impairment charge of $917 million based on the value of its Bitcoin holdings, which have plunged since the price peaked in November last year. Phong Le, MicroStrategy’s current president, will take Saylor’s place as CEO. “I look forward to leading the organization for the long-term health and growth of our enterprise software and bitcoin acquisition strategies,” Le said in a statement to shareholders. In 2020,...

Today, we’re learning how big AMD’s gaming business is for the very first time — and the answer is $5 billion a year. That’s how much the company earned in 2021 from the “semi-custom” chips that go into Sony’s PS5, PS4, and every modern Microsoft Xbox, in addition to its discrete GPUs you’ll find in graphics cards and high-end gaming laptops. It appears to have become quite a profitable business, too — nearly $1 billion in revenue in 2021 — and could exceed that this year: in an earnings call, CEO Lisa Su says the company typically sees its most money from game consoles in the third quarter, and it’s on track for “record semi-custom annual revenue in 2022.” In 2020, AMD actually lost $138 million on gaming… but in just one year, operating income rose by over a billion dollars to hit ...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken new photographs of the Cartwheel Galaxy, located in the Sculptor constellation about 500 million light-years away from Earth. The images provided scientists with a closer look into the galaxy’s central black hole. They also give viewers an idea of star formation in the Cartwheel Galaxy and how it has evolved over billions of years. To take the photo, which shows Cartwheel alongside two smaller galaxies against a backdrop of many galaxies, scientists utilized Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The imager functions to perceive wavelengths of light, showing even more stars than would be discernible in visible light. Scientists explained that infrared light can show young stars that are actively forming in the outer ring, as the light shows the di...