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Image: NintendoBefore the Switch 2 was officially announced earlier this year, magnetic Joy-Con controllers were rumoured for quite a while. In fact, developers at Nintendo wanted to utilise magnets on the original Switch, but the technology at the time meant that they wouldn't be strong enough to gain the late Satoru Iwata's approval. Thankfully, the technology is now right where we need it to be, and after going hands on with the Switch 2 recently, we can confidently confirm that attaching and removing the Joy-Con feels much more satisfying than the original console. According to a Mobile Syrup interview with the Switch 2's key architects – director Takuhiro Dohta, producer Kouichi Kawamoto and technical director Tetsuya Sasaki – the Joy-Con had originally not included a release button, with Kawamoto requesting that the Joy-Con be strong enough so that children couldn't accidentally remove them, and yet weak enough so that if users wanted to simply remove them with force, they could. Kawamoto: Originally, we didn’t have the button that would release the magnet. And so you had to pull. And then we discussed, “Well, wouldn’t the kids pull it apart?” So my first request was, “Please use a strong magnet.” And the second was, “Okay, if you want to be able to pull it, please make sure you can pull it.” So I gave that conflicting request to the hardware experts. [laughs] And to take this request and bring it into realization, we had several ideas using magnets, but for some of them, the technology wasn’t quite available to us yet. So again, we just went through so many iterations before we arrived at the solution. Of course, the final product features prominent release buttons on the back of the device that, when pulled, produces a small pin from the Joy-Con, pushing them away from the console and thus breaking the magnetic field. Furthermore, it's been confirmed that the 'SL' and 'SR' buttons on the two Joy-Con controllers are now made of metal, so that they too could attach to the console via the magnets. According to Tetsuya Sasaki, metal buttons had rarely been utilised in console development, so such a decision did not come naturally when designing the Switch 2. Sasaki: A notable feature, I think, is for example, the SL/SR buttons, because they’re on the inside — the buttons themselves are made of metal because they need to stick to the magnet on the inside. And actually, in console development, it is incredibly rare for buttons to use metal. And so it was an idea that really didn’t come up very naturally for us in development. So initially, we had a bunch of other ideas on how to make this work. There were many advancements made in the world of technology and we were finally able to get to a place where we could use metal in the buttons. But it took a lot of trial and error until we got there. When you look at the final result itself, it feels like such an obvious answer, but the truth is, when the standard doesn’t exist already, it’s one of those ideas that isn’t actually that simple to come up with. It's fascinating to see what kind of thought went into the design of the Switch 2, and honestly, we're pretty thankful that the rail mechanism has been ditched for something a bit more elegant. We can only hope that the magnet system will hold up for the foreseeable future. So smooth What do you make of the new magnetic Joy-Cons? Do you prefer it to the current rail system? Let us know with a comment. [source mobilesyrup.com] See Also Share:0 2 Nintendo Life’s resident horror fanatic, when he’s not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles Switch 2's Backwards Compatibility List Provides Updates On Two Titles Here's what you can expect 126 Games You Should Pick Up In Nintendo's 'Partner Spotlight' eShop Sale (North America) Every game we scored 9/10 or higher 123 Games You Should Pick Up In Nintendo's 'Save & Play' eShop Sale (Europe) Every game we scored 9/10 or higher Nintendo Switch 2 US Pre-Orders Start 24th April, System & Launch Game Pricing Unchanged But accessories "experience price adjustments" in the US

Breakdown & Showreels Punto Nemo: VFX Breakdown by Onirikal Studio By Vincent Frei - 21/04/2025 Where the ocean stretches endlessly and no land is in sight lies Punto Nemo — the most inaccessible point on Earth. Onirkial Studio crafts surreal and visuals that echo the mystery and allure of this forgotten coordinate! WANT TO KNOW MORE?Onirikal Studio: Dedicated page about Punto Nemo on Onirikal website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025

Photo © Joshua Rozells, shared with permission A Stunning Image of the Australian Desert Illuminates the Growing Problem of Satellite Pollution April 18, 2025 NaturePhotography Grace Ebert In January 2021, Joshua Rozells ventured out into the Pinnacles Desert in Western Australia, intending to photograph a star trail. But after shooting for more than three hours and reviewing his images, he realized that the light patterns he captured weren’t what he had hoped for. “There were satellite trails visible in almost every single photo,” he wrote on Instagram. “Instead of trying to get rid of them for a star trail, I decided to put the satellite trails together into a single image to show how polluted the night sky is becoming.” Stitching together 343 distinct photos, Rozells illuminates a growing problem. When Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched Starlink in 2019, 60 satellites filled the skies, with a race from other companies to follow. That number has now topped 10,000, with tens of thousands more in the works. SpaceX alone plans to launch 40,000 more. Rozells’ composite visually echoes pleas from astronomers, who warn that although satellites collect essential data, the staggering amount filling our skies will only worsen light pollution and our ability to study what lies beyond. Because this industry has little regulation, the problem could go unchecked. “Thankfully, astronomers across the globe have taken notice of this growing issue and are starting to speak up,” Rozells adds. “Organisations such as the International Astronomical Union’s Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky are advocating for the regulation and protection of the night sky.” (via Kottke) Next article

Unveiled today, AI Assist aims to help public safety officers do their jobs more efficiently - and safely. Here's how it works.

As Gmail comes under attack, Google issues a 7-day warning for 3 billion users.

A hot potato: Now that people have mostly stopped using ChatGPT to turn themselves into action figures, it seems the next trend involving the AI is using it to guess locations based on photos. While some are finding this reverse location search functionality fun, it raises several privacy concerns, especially when it comes to doxxing. OpenAI released its latest o3 and o4-mini models last week, which can "reason" through uploaded images. This means it can crop, rotate, and zoom in on photos, even if they're of poor quality. Combined with the models' other abilities, people have found that they are particularly good at identifying locations in uploaded photos. Users are feeding o3 images of everything from restaurant menus to selfies and telling the model to imagine it is playing the online guessing game GeoGuessr, which tasks players with guessing locations based on Google Street View images. It's easy to see this as all fun and games, but there's a potentially darker side. This reverse image search could easily allow someone to be doxxed – the public revealing of where they live or are located – based on minute details in an image that most humans would not notice. A simple selfie with few background items, or a story on social media, could be fed into ChatGPT to learn where it was taken. // Related Stories While users have praised the o3 model's ability to identify locations from images, it isn't something that arrived with the latest releases. TechCrunch notes that GPT-4o, which was released without image reasoning, was able to come up with the same answers as o3 more often than not, and it did so in less time. However, there was one instance in the publication's testing where o3 was able to correctly guess that a picture of a purple rhino head mounted in a bar was from a Williamsburg speakeasy – GPT-4o thought it was from a UK pub. It's important to note that even o3 doesn't get its guesses right every time, and sometimes it gets stuck in a loop when trying to determine a location. An OpenAI spokesperson said that visual reasoning will make its tools more helpful in areas like accessibility, research, or identifying locations in emergency response. As for preventing doxxing, the spokesperson said the models refuse requests for private or sensitive information, and the company has added safeguards intended to prohibit the models from identifying private individuals in images. Masthead: Alex Shuper

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Related Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. New York Times Across What the beaklike teeth of a parrotfish are used to bite – CORAL On top of – ABOVE Noodle soup with “tonkotsu” and “shoyu” varieties – RAMEN Sharp as a tack – SMART “___ questions?” – ANY Down Dealership choices – CARS His presidential center is being built on Chicago’s South Side – OBAMA Like Caesar and Cicero – ROMAN Tex ___, animator who drew Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck – AVERY Gave for a short time – LENT Editors’ Recommendations

Jeff Reihl, CTO for the legal and professional side of LexisNexis, discusses how the introduction of AI changed their project plans.

The skull of the newly discovered Palaeolithic dogJean-Baptiste Fourvrel An “extremely rare” 16,000-year-old canine skeleton from southern France offers evidence that Stone Age humans cared for their pets – although the animal was also probably killed by humans. “It is feasible that the individual obtained [its] injuries from being beaten or struck by people,” says Loukas Koungoulos at the University of Western Australia, who was not involved in the analysis of the skeleton. The specimen was discovered in a French cave called Baume Traucade in 2021 by a group of spelunkers.