Month: May 2018

Enlarge / The 2nd Switch comes with everything you see here! Your parents help set it up! Batteries included, from NINTENDO! (credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo fans in Japan now have the option of buying a cheaper Switch package that doesn't include the accessories needed to connect the system to a TV. Marketed as a "2nd unit" Switch in a Google translated announcement, the new Switch package costs ¥24,980 (about $229), down from the ¥29,980 ($275) for the standard package.

For that lower price, Japanese consumers will miss out on the Switch dock, HDMI cable, and wall-outlet charger that come bundled in the standard package. The system itself can be charged by any number of standard USB-C accessories, though users may have to be careful of USB standards. If "Second Switch" buyers want to hook the Switch to a TV later on, they can use the same dock that came in the standard Switch package, purchase one à la carte from Nintendo, or use one of a number of cheaper third-party Switch dock options (which can vary widely in reliability).

Back in February, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto said the company's "ultimate ambition is for a Nintendo Switch to be owned not just by every family, but by every single person." This package seems to be an explicit effort to help that process along by making it easier to set up a multi-Switch household with only a single TV dock.

One of the big advantages that Microsoft has been promoting for its Edge browser is that it's more battery efficient than both Chrome and Firefox. My own anecdotal experience bears this out; although I use Chrome for most browsing, I've found it burns battery faster than Edge under similar workloads. Whenever I'm mobile, I switch to Microsoft's browser over Google's.

Microsoft's own figures use a video-playback benchmark, and the company has duly released a new comparison for the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, version 1803. Edge still comes out ahead—it lasts 98 percent longer than Mozilla Firefox, and 14 percent longer than Google Chrome—but it's striking that the gap with Chrome has narrowed.

In January, using Windows 10 version 1709, Microsoft's browser resulted in the battery lasting 19 percent longer than Google's. In April last year, using Windows 10 version 1703, the Microsoft advantage was 35 percent. And in June 2016, Edge lasted a whopping 70 percent longer than Chrome.

Enlarge / An Uber self-driving car in San Francisco in 2017. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report on the fatal March crash of an Uber self-driving car in Tempe, Arizona. It paints a damning picture of Uber's self-driving technology.

The report confirms that the sensors on the vehicle worked as expected, spotting pedestrian Elaine Herzberg about six seconds prior to impact, which should have given it enough time to stop given the car's 43mph speed.

The problem was that Uber's software became confused, according to the NTSB. "As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path," the report says.

Enlarge / The home screen of the revamped YouTube Music app, running on an iPad. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Google has confirmed that its revamped YouTube Music streaming service will eventually support key features of its Google Play Music app, including the ability for users to upload music files that may not exist in the service’s streaming catalog.

Google announced an overhaul for YouTube Music last week alongside a price bump for its YouTube Red service. It then began a “soft” rollout of the app for select users on Tuesday.

But the announcement of a revamped YouTube Music app has caused some confusion among those who subscribe to Google Play Music, a streaming music service Google launched in 2011 but has struggled to attract subscribers on the level of category leaders Spotify and Apple Music.