The Morning After: Switch 2 user accidentally banned after playing pre-owned game cards

Be extra careful where you buy your used Nintendo Switch game cards. A Switch 2 owner posted on Reddit about how their account was banned after downloading patches for a few Switch game cards they'd bought from Facebook Marketplace. The Switch 2 user contacted Nintendo support and discovered they were banned, but they provided proof of purchase and were unbanned shortly after. The Redditor said the “whole process was painless and fluid.”

Nintendo

Nintendo attaches unique codes to its Switch game cartridges to prevent piracy. However, bad actors can copy games to a third-party device, like the MIG Flash, and resell the physical game card, meaning the code can exist twice. Once Nintendo detects two instances of the same code online at the same time, down comes the ban hammer.

Nintendo continues to push back against piracy aggressively. It amended the Switch user agreement to allow it to brick a console it detects running pirated games or mods.

— Mat Smith

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The owners of TikTok are making mixed reality goggles

Expect a tethered puck for processing and battery.

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The Information reports that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, may be working on mixed reality goggles. It’s designed to layer digital objects over your view of the real world and, apparently, is supposed to compete directly with Meta’s upcoming mixed reality products. God, what will it look like?

ByteDance’s virtual reality startup, Pico, the creators of the Pico 4 VR headset, is building the goggles. Its past products have attempted to match Meta’s Quest headsets’ features. However, this new project will be lighter, smaller goggles, which weigh around 0.28 pounds. Pico plans to offload most of the computing work to a wired puck.

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Threads users stay on Threads

Data suggests people aren’t clicking on links.

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Threads is starting to look more and more like the most viable challenger to X, but it still isn’t sending much traffic to other websites, which could make the platform less appealing for creators, publishers and others whose businesses depend on non-Meta-owned websites. According to Similarweb, outbound referral traffic from Threads climbed to 28.4 million visits in June. That’s a notable jump from 15.1 million visits a year ago but still relatively tiny, considering Threads is currently averaging more than 115 million users a day.

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US government is giving leading AI companies a bunch of cash for military applications

This will “maintain strategic advantage.”

The US Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is awarding up to $200 million each to leading AI companies, like Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI, for military applications. A press release says the move will “broaden” the Department of Defense’s use of AI to “address critical national security needs.” This initiative aims to expand the Department of Defense’s AI use for national security. Notably, xAI’s receipt of funds coincides with its new version of Grok, made for federal use.

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