Month: October 2020

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster should be of interest to anyone in the market for a new Nintendo Switch gamepad, as both the Switch Pro Controller and pairs of the console's default Joy-Con controllers are currently $10 off. The deals bring them down to $59 and $69, respectively. Neither offer represents the absolute lowest price we've seen, and there's always a chance we see steeper drops on Black Friday, but discounts on both products have been rare this year. For the Switch Pro Controller, this matches the best price we've seen (on a handful of occasions) in 2020. For the Joy-Cons, it's the best price we've tracked since January, though for some newer variants it matches the biggest discount we've seen in general.

As for the devices themselves, we still recommend the Switch Pro Controller for anyone who spends as much time playing their Switch on the TV as they do in the console's handheld mode. It's immediately more comfortable than the default Joy-Cons, with roomier triggers, face buttons and joy-sticks, an actual d-pad, and excellent battery life that lasts around 40 hours. It doesn't have a headphone jack, but it does support Nintendo's HD rumble, motion control, and amiibo scanning features. The shape should feel right at home for anyone who has played an Xbox or PlayStation in recent years, and it can work with a gaming PC if needed.

The Joy-Cons aren't as ergonomic, especially over longer play sessions, and there's always the risk of "drift" settling in over time. If you only need one controller, note that Nintendo will soon drop the price of single Joy-Cons to $40 in the coming weeks. But Nintendo has gotten better about addressing any durability issues that may arise, and really, there aren't many other options for gamers who mostly play their Switch away from the big screen.

Enlarge / This Groovy Gorilla doesn't just have a Raspberry Pi 4 on his mind, he's got a Raspberry Pi 4 as his mind. (credit: Canonical / Raspberry Pi / Ars Technica)

Last week, Canonical released the latest intermediate version of Ubuntu, 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla"—which, for the first time, adds first-class platform support for the Raspberry Pi 4.

Groovy Gorilla itself is a pretty typical interim release, offering an updated GNOME version (3.38) with lots of bugfixes and small feature additions, such as drag-and-drop organization of folders and shortcuts in the Applications grid. Support has also been added for Windows Active Directory in the Ubiquity OS installer itself.

Canonical embraces the Pi

While it has been possible for some time to install Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi hardware, up until now that has been strictly a community effort. The Pi itself ships with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based distribution whose origins began with the Pi community, but which has since been officially adopted and supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself. And while Canonical added the Pi as a supported platform in 20.04 Focal Fossa earlier this year, that support was only for the Ubuntu Server distribution—not Desktop.

Enlarge / World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program Director Michael Ryan (L) speaks past Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a daily press briefing on COVID-19 virus at the WHO headquarters in Geneva on March 9, 2020. (credit: Getty | FABRICE COFFRINI )

Top officials at the World Health Organization on Monday appeared at times exasperated, flabbergasted, and wearied as they confronted comments by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggesting that the United States has given up trying to control the spread of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said in a CNN interview Sunday. Instead we will focus on “vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas,” he said. The comments spurred widespread uproar, which Meadows tried to quell Monday. But his clarification only reinforced his earlier comments.

“I mean, when we look at this, we’re going to defeat the virus. We’re not going to control it. We will try to contain it as best we can,” he told reporters outside the White House yesterday. He again emphasized the need for therapeutics and vaccines.

Enlarge / If you look closely at the shades, you can see the effect of today's news: Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed again, now to December 10, 2020. (credit: CD Projekt Red / Aurich Lawson)

CD Projekt Red's next massive adventure game, Cyberpunk 2077, has been delayed for what appears to be the 4,000th time since being announced roughly eight years ago.

After assuring fans that the game's last delay—to November 19—was pretty much ironclad, due in part to the game "going gold," CD Projekt Red confirmed a new release date via a Twitter post on Tuesday. Cyberpunk 2077 will now arrive on December 10 simultaneously on a bunch of platforms. (Deep breath: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PS4, Windows 10 PC, and Stadia.)

“Undercalculated”

"'Going gold' means the game is ready, can be completed, and has all content in it," the studio's leads wrote in a statement. "But it doesn't mean we stop working on it and raising the quality bar... This is the time period we undercalculated."