Nintendo:

A news report on Sept. 30, 2021 (JST) falsely claims that Nintendo is supplying tools to drive game development for a Nintendo Switch with 4K support. To ensure correct understanding among our investors and customers, we want to clarify that this report is not true.

We also want to restate that, as we announced in July, we have no plans for any new model other than Nintendo Switch — OLED Model, which will launch on October 8, 2021.

What news report? This news report, from Bloomberg reporters Takashi Mochizuki and Olga Kharif. Quite the strident denial. It’s certainly possible Nintendo is lying here, or stretching the truth to the point of absurdity (like, say, if they supplied 4K Switch development tools in the past, but are not “supplying” them now).

We should know the answer soon — if Bloomberg’s report is simply wrong, I’m sure they’ll promptly issue a correction and retraction.

(“Big Hack” snark aside, here’s a theory that adds up: third-party developers are working on games for a 4K-capable Nintendo gaming console, which console is probably Switch-like and will play Switch games, including updated 4K versions of existing Switch games, but that new console (a) is not imminent, and Nintendo doesn’t want to Osborne the actually imminent Switch OLED in the meantime, and (b) will not be called a “Switch”.)

Joanna Stern, writing two weeks ago for The Wall Street Journal:

If you loved Apple’s 5-watt charger for its cute design that didn’t block multiple power outlets, get ready to be happy: You can now get four times the power in the same size brick.

The Apple 5-watt took nearly two hours to charge my iPhone 11’s battery to 50%. The 20-watt $20 Aukey Omnia Mini and Anker Nano took just 30 minutes. (Apple’s just released $19 20-watt charger should be just as fast, but I haven’t tested it yet.)

I bought an Anker Nano back in April, and at the time, it was only 18W. Anker recently updated it to support 20W, which, I think, means the updated ones will support Apple’s MagSafe inductive charger at the maximum 15W capacity.

What I don’t understand is why Aukey and Anker’s 20W chargers are so much smaller than Apple’s. They’re not just a little smaller, they’re a lot smaller — and about half the weight of Apple’s. They really are just a wee smidge bigger than Apple’s classic dice-sized 5W charger.

So what’s the deal? Are Anker and Aukey just better at making chargers than Apple? Is Apple’s so much bigger because it’s cheaper to produce that way? Or is Apple’s better in some way that necessitates it being bigger that I don’t understand? Because unless I’m missing something there’s no reason not to buy the 20W chargers from Aukey and Anker instead of Apple’s.

Phil Harrison, vice president and GM of Google Stadia:

Using our globally connected network of Google data centers, Stadia will free players from the limitations of traditional consoles and PCs.

When players use Stadia, they’ll be able to access their games at all times, and on virtually any screen. And developers will have access to nearly unlimited resources to create the games they’ve always dreamed of. It’s a powerful hardware stack combining server class GPU, CPU, memory and storage, and with the power of Google’s data center infrastructure, Stadia can evolve as quickly as the imagination of game creators.

They have a custom game controller too, which from the outside looks a lot like a Sony Dualshock. The innovation is that the controller isn’t a peripheral to a local device — it connects by Wi-Fi to the Stadia cloud.

Streaming high-performance games over the internet sounds like something that could never compete with a local device, but no less an authority than John Carmack vouches for it in principle.

It’s worth pointing out too that this is a very Google-like strategy, where your device doesn’t really matter, only the cloud service.

Arjun Kharpal, writing for CNBC under the jacktastic headline “Apple’s iPhone X Will Be Killed Off This Year, Analyst Says”:

TSMC’s record inventory levels are due to Apple not buying components for any future iPhone X models, suggesting the device will be killed off this year, Campling said.

“With the declines in iPhone X orders and the inventory issue at TSMC at record highs, which basically reflect a need to burn off inventory. Why? Because the iPhone X is dead,” Campling wrote in his note.

“The simple problem with X is that it is too expensive,” Campling told CNBC by phone on Friday, talking about the device’s $999 price tag. “Consumers are turning their backs on high-priced smartphones.”

It might be true that the iPhone X will be discontinued in September when new iPhones are announced, but I guarantee it will be replaced by a successor. It actually makes sense that Apple wouldn’t keep the iPhone X around for another year at a lower price — that’s the iPhone 8’s role.

I don’t know why CNBC is paying credence to Campling on this, because by all accounts the iPhone X is selling well or very well. Tim Cook told CNBC in February that “iPhone X was our most popular iPhone, despite not beginning to ship until November.” A report this week from Counterpoint claims the iPhone X alone accounted for 35 percent of all profits in the industry in Q4 2017 — even though it only went on sale in November. (The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus combined for 34 percent; all iPhones combined accounted for 86 percent. I don’t know how much credence to give to Counterpoint’s report because I don’t know their methodology, but if their numbers are even vaguely accurate, Apple has almost no competition in the premium handset market. Samsung’s top two phones combined account for less than 5 percent of industry profits, and no other company had a phone that cracked the top 10.)

Megan Farokhmanesh, writing for The Verge last week:

At SXSW yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would start adding information from Wikipedia to conspiracy-related videos within the next few weeks. “We will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event,” she said. The company is “using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia” to pull from. However, YouTube appears to have left one party in the dark: “We were not given advance notice of this announcement,” said the Wikimedia Foundation in a statement on Twitter.

According to Wikimedia, this partnership isn’t a formal one with either Wikimedia or Wikipedia. “We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize Wikipedia’s value as a repository of free knowledge,” the company said. YouTube doesn’t need to officially partner with Wikimedia to use information from Wikipedia, but it’s still a bemusing tactic to make such an announcement without any official word passed between the two.

It really was rather shitty of YouTube not to tell Wikipedia in advance. But what gets me about this whole story is this: if YouTube knows that these videos need these fact-check disclaimers, why are they serving these videos at all? The videos that are flagged by this algorithm shouldn’t be shown with fact-check disclaimers — they should be removed from YouTube.

The answer, of course, is money. YouTube’s executives know these videos are harmful but they want the money from the ads they show against them.