The Morning After: Nintendo wants to put several Switches in ‘every home’ | Engadget

After selling 23 million Switches two years ago and 18 million last year, Nintendo expects demand for the aging console to decline. It is forecasting sales of 15 million for next year and is not confident about that figure, according to its latest earnings report. “Sustaining the Switch’s sales momentum will be difficult in its seventh year,” President Shuntaro Furukawa said on the call. “Our target of selling 15 million units this fiscal has been slightly stretched.” To achieve that, he said: “We try to put not only one system in each house but several in each house.” Well, at least a new Zelda game is just around the corner…

– Matt Smith

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Universal Music claims that bots have increased the number of streams.

Spotify has reportedly pulled tens of thousands of tracks from producer AI company Boomi. It is said to have removed seven percent of songs generated by the startup’s systems, underscoring the rapid proliferation of AI-generated content on music streaming platforms. A Universal Music report said it detected suspicious streaming activity on Boomi’s songs for Spotify and other major services to collect more money from Spotify, which pays on a per-listen basis.

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Choose from unique and step-by-step frameworks.

VanMoof strives to offer premium e-bike features and build quality for significantly less money. At $2,498, that’s $1,000 less than the company’s top-tier S5 and X5 bikes, but that doesn’t exactly make them cheap. VanMoof co-founder Tice Corlier said in a press release that it’s an attempt at a “more simple, more accessible and more reliable” e-bike. A major simplification is the transition to adaptive motor support and a two-speed gear hub. The SX5 series had a three-speed gear system, and although it had a torque sensor to assist, adaptive motor support was new to these cheap e-bikes. The company expects the range to be similar to the SA5 and older SX3 e-bikes, 37-62 miles (60-150 km), depending on conditions and rider. Both the VanMoof S4 and X4 are available for pre-order now.

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Watches are using the same since 2020.

The Apple Watch has effectively used the same processor since 2020’s Series 6, but it’s set for a long-term upgrade. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claims that the Apple Watch Series 9 will use a truly “new processor”. He believes the CPU in the S9 system-on-chip is based on the A15 chip, which first appeared in the iPhone 13 family. Apple has historically introduced new Apple Watches in September, so it shouldn’t be a long wait.

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As Elon Musk puts it, it’s important to ‘free the abandoned handles’.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has warned users of the social network that they could see a drop in followers as the company purges accounts that have had “no activity” for years. Musk’s announcement is pretty vague, so we’ll have to wait for Twitter to announce more specific terms like how long “several years” actually is. At this time, the website has yet to update its inactive account policy page, which states that users are required to log in every 30 days to keep their account active.

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The beta lets you record voice messages or chat on Google-powered wearables.

WhatsApp is now testing the app for Wear OS 3 on Galaxy Watch 5, Pixel Watch and other devices. It has most of the functionality of the mobile versions, showing recent chats and contacts, but also allows you to send voice and text messages. WhatsApp offers a circular complication that shows unread messages on your watch’s home screen. There are two tiles for Contacts and Voice Messages to quickly access people or start a voice message recording. It’s a significant release for Wear OS 3, with the most popular app most people have on their phones, fulfilling Google’s goal of getting more developers on the platform.

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Only 951 miles to go!

Twenty-one years after Vanessa Carlton released her debut single ‘A Thousand Miles’, a team of amateur roboticists have brought Carlton’s music back to the public ear – this time, on the streets of San Francisco, with an animatronic performer and, luckily, a disco ball.

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