Nearly ten years after launch, the original Nintendo Switch will vanish from European shops next year. Blame a new EU rule on batteries, not the Switch 2.

Nintendo will stop selling every version of the original Switch in Europe from mid-February 2027, The Verge reports. That lands weeks before the console’s tenth birthday. The cull covers the Switch, the Switch Lite and the Switch OLED model. Sales to retailers and through the Nintendo Store will both end.

Blame the battery rules

A new EU regulation drives the change. From 18 February 2027, portable devices sold in the bloc must let owners swap out their own batteries. Nintendo will phase out current models and roll out revised ones that comply, starting this summer. It promises “no difference in functionality” between the old and new versions.

The Switch 2 gets the biggest overhaul. A version with a user-replaceable battery should reach shops in the autumn, Engadget reports. The trade-offs are tiny. The new battery holds 5,172mAh against 5,220mAh, a drop of about 1 per cent, and the console gains roughly 10g. Revised Joy-Con controllers, the Switch 2 Pro Controller and the N64 and GameCube pads follow on a rolling basis.

What Nintendo drops

Not everything survives the switch. Nintendo will retire the original Switch Pro Controller, its Sega Mega Drive and SNES pads, and the Pokémon Go Plus+ accessory. None of them get a replaceable-battery successor. The rules apply across the 35 markets Nintendo of Europe serves, from the UK and Germany to Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

A quiet end, for now

Nintendo has not said whether the cull reaches beyond Europe. Stopping production of the ageing hardware everywhere may prove tempting, given rising manufacturing costs and the shift to the Switch 2. Even so, the old machine has life in it yet. Fresh first-party games are still on the way, including Rhythm Heaven Groove and Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.

The battery rules were first aimed at phones. Now they will quietly close the book on one of gaming’s best-selling consoles in its home region.

Freight rail is often described as the most energy-efficient way to move goods over land, yet it still runs on one of the dirtiest inputs in modern infrastructure: diesel. As rail operators face mounting pressure from volatile fuel costs, tightening emissions rules, and aging locomotive fleets, the question is no longer whether rail should decarbonize, but how.

One company argues the industry has been approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Voltify, co-founded by Daphna Langer, is pursuing a model that aims to leapfrog conventional electrification strategies, seeking to electrify freight rail without rebuilding the entire network or sacrificing operational range.

The Electrification Trap

On paper, the logic of electrifying rail is straightforward. Replace diesel locomotives with electric ones and connect them to clean power. In practice, freight rail in the United States spans roughly 140,000 miles of privately owned track, making full overhead electrification via catenary wire prohibitively expensive. This approach works for dense passenger corridors but collapses under the scale and fragmentation of freight networks.

The alternative use of battery-electric locomotives appears simpler but introduces a different constraint: energy density. Batteries store less energy per kilogram by over ten times than diesel fuel, which means a fully battery-dependent locomotive quickly runs into range limitations unless it is frequently recharged. That leads to an operational bottleneck: either stop often or carry too much battery weight to remain economically viable.

The industry, in other words, is stuck between two imperfect extremes: “wire everything” or “charge at a depot for hours.”

Leapfrogging Conventional Electrification

Voltify’s premise is that freight rail doesn’t need to choose between full network electrification and battery-only locomotives. Instead, it rethinks where electrification is actually needed, combining battery-electric locomotives with strategically placed charging infrastructure that powers trains while they’re in motion.

The key idea is scale compression. Rather than electrifying the entire rail network, Voltify’s model electrifies roughly a fraction of the track using high-power charging segments that can deliver energy while trains are in motion. The remaining route is covered by onboard battery storage. Static charging at depots complements this dynamic charging system, allowing locomotives to top up during natural breaks in operations.

This approach reframes electrification not as an all-or-nothing infrastructure overhaul, but as a selective augmentation of the highest-value segments of the rail network.

A Three-Pillar System

Voltify’s architecture is built around three tightly integrated layers: locomotives, charging infrastructure, and energy systems.

The first pillar is the locomotive itself. Rather than designing entirely new locomotives, Voltify retrofits existing diesel units into battery-electric locomotives. This approach reduces capital expenditure and leverages the rail industry’s existing asset base.

The second pillar is charging infrastructure. Voltify uses an overhead conductor bar and pantograph system capable of both static and dynamic charging, supported by an unmanned architecture designed for rail environments. A manual charger complements this system for depot-based energy replenishment. The goal is not continuous electrification but targeted, high-throughput energy transfer where trains naturally pass or pause.

The third pillar is power and optimization. Voltify integrates solar generation, grid power, and battery storage into localized microgrids. These are managed by proprietary software that dynamically decides when to buy, store, or dispatch electricity based on cost and demand conditions.

Together, these layers form a system designed not just for electrification, but for energy orchestration.

Where the Business Case Actually Works

While the decarbonization narrative is compelling, Voltify’s real traction point is economic.

Diesel is one of the largest and most volatile operating expenses for rail operators. Voltify argues that its system can reduce energy costs by up to 30%, reframing electrification as an operating margin improvement rather than only a sustainability initiative. For Class I railroads, where fuel is among the largest operating expenses, the opportunity to reduce energy costs without rebuilding the network is a compelling financial proposition.

Another driver is regulatory pressure tied to local air quality. Although freight rail contributes a relatively small share of global CO2 emissions, locomotives emit nitrogen oxides and diesel particulate matter that concentrate heavily in rail yards and port-adjacent communities. These facilities often sit next to densely populated, lower-income neighborhoods, making emissions a localized health burden rather than a diffuse global one.

The Concentration Problem

The critical nuance in rail emissions is not their total size, but their geography.

Rail yards operate around the clock, with switcher locomotives idling and maneuvering in fixed locations often adjacent to residential neighborhoods. This creates concentrated exposure to pollutants such as NOx and soot. Research on rail-related pollution has linked it to substantial public health costs nationwide, including thousands of premature deaths annually and tens of billions of dollars in health damages.

In California, studies of major rail yards have identified elevated cancer and asthma risk zones extending beyond facility boundaries, disproportionately affecting lower-income and minority communities. Compounding the issue, locomotive fleets are slow to modernize, with engines often remaining in service for nearly three decades under grandfathered emissions standards.

Beyond Carbon: A System Redesign

The result is a more complex reality than a simple climate narrative suggests. Rail emissions are significant in localized health outcomes. The problem is simultaneously technical, economic, and justice-oriented (environmental and economic).

Voltify’s approach sits at that intersection. By avoiding full-network electrification while still achieving meaningful decarbonization and cost reductions, it seeks to unlock a leapfrog path that traditional models have overlooked. Whether that model scales will depend not only on engineering execution, but on whether rail operators are ready to rethink electrification as a distributed system rather than a binary choice.

Amazon Prime Day is now live in Australia, and I’m spending the majority of my time seeking out the very best Prime Day coffee machine deals. Fortunately, I’ve not been disappointed, with huge savings on many of our favourite machines here at TechRadar.

The highlight, however, has to be a mega saving on the superb Ninja Luxe Café Premier espresso machine, which drops to a new all-time low in Australia of AU$497.99 for the stainless steel model.

That smashes a previous low price of AU$629 that I spotted during Black Friday last year, and means that if you’ve been holding out on getting the viral-hit coffee maker, this Prime-exclusive deal presents the perfect opportunity.

An Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max that’s been buried as part of an America250 time capsule is unlikely to work when it’s time to unearth it. America’s Time Capsule, due to be dug up in 2276, includes an iPhone with a Notes app featuring “digital artifacts” for future readers. 

However, a Forbes report suggests that the iPhone will be unusable for future generations. The battery is a “fundamental failure point” because lithium-ion batteries degrade over time. The report also suggests that Apple’s “restrictive practices,” such as dropping support for older models, would prevent the phone from being unlocked at all, even if it survives. 

That’s assuming humans will even be using wall outlets, chargers and the same kinds of energy supply and voltage in 250 years — and that Apple servers will still be active.

America Innovates is an event co-hosted by Forbes and America250. It’s unclear whether including Apple’s device was intended as a commentary on the company’s “planned obsolescence” business strategy, where products are designed with a limited lifespan.

Representatives for America Innovates did not respond immediately to CNET’s request for clarification.

This was state-of-the-art technology…

Burying technology in a time capsule may be functionally useless for preservation, but still valuable as a cultural mirror. Sure, the hardware will fail long before two centuries pass, but it serves a historical purpose rather than a practical one.

Still, it’s probably useful to include a disclaimer that we honestly believed we were living in the ultimate digital age when the capsule went underground. That state-of-the-art technology will probably be glorified, nonbiodegradable plastic trash in 250 years. 

The 900-pound time capsule is also filled with photos, documents and other items from the three branches of the government, as well as from all 50 states and territories. These items include a stainless steel rosary from Puerto Rico and a Pocket Constitution signed by Supreme Court justices.

Experts warn that time capsules are an ineffective way to preserve information for several reasons, including the presence of groundwater. A 2019 article said that 99% of unearthed capsules are destroyed or, perhaps worse, simply boring.

“Burying something is literally the worst way to preserve it for future generations,” Paleofuture blogger Matt Novak told Mental Floss, “but we continue to do it.” 

The iPhone is also not the first Apple product to be buried underground for later digging up. In 2013, a once-lost “Steve Jobs time capsule” buried 30 years prior was discovered with an Apple mouse inside. Also included was a six-pack of Ballantine beer and a Rubik’s Cube.

from the can-we-be-done-with-this? dept

As you will recall, the combination of RFK Jr.’s announcement that he’d find a root cause for all this autism going around combined with Donald Trump’s idiotic claim that there must be some external environmental cause of all this autism going around resulted in both of these clowns telling America that pregnant women taking Tylenol is causing all this autism going around. Never mind how dehumanizing this all is towards the many, many human beings who are on the autism spectrum, nor the other causes RFK Jr. has magically found for autism.

There is no scientific reason to believe that any causal link between autism and prenatal use of Tylenol exists. But that hasn’t stopped people with far too much faith in this particular government from refusing to take Tylenol. It also hasn’t stopped from governmental bootlickers making asses of themselves with lawsuits against Kenvue, makers of Tylenol. Not long after this bullshit announcement, even RFK Jr. acknowledged that there is no proven causal link to be had here.

But if that isn’t good enough for you, quality scientific studies continue to be performed and demonstrate that no link between Tylenol and autism can be found.

Another large study has found no link between autism and Tylenol use during pregnancy, refuting claims by President Trump and anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In the new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed electronic health records from 2001 to 2023 for more than 700,000 pairs of mothers and children in Hong Kong. Of those pairs, about 43 percent of children had exposure to acetaminophen in utero.

The researchers saw no link between prenatal acetaminophen use and either condition. It didn’t matter what dosage of acetaminophen was taken, when it was taken during the pregnancy (which trimester), how often it was taken, or how old the mother was at the time. There was simply no link between acetaminophen and autism or ADHD.

Advertisement

Now, as has been the case with some previous studies, and what RFK Jr. and his cronies point to when they make this dumb claim, you do get some correlative linking if you drop the sibling-matched design and instead just correlate between prenatal Tylenol exposure and a diagnoses of autism. The problem is that if you perform what is called a “negative control” analysis, that link disappears again.

Interestingly, there was a link when the researchers dropped the sibling-matched design and instead compared acetaminophen-exposed with unexposed children, which is a finding that has come up in other studies. But when the researchers performed a “negative control” analysis and compared children whose mothers had taken acetaminophen before ever getting pregnant or after they had given birth compared to mothers who didn’t use the painkiller, they also saw an association—one that is “biologically implausible.”

The idea behind a negative control analysis is to analyze a cohort of conditions that should not produce the experimental result, an autism diagnosis in this case. When it does anyway, you know that the previously perceived link isn’t really there. In this case, instances in which a mother took Tylenol before or after pregnancy and had a child that was diagnosed with autism shows that what could have been thought to be a link between the two is actually more likely exposing family, genetic, or environmental factors that are resulting in both a child with autism and a trigger for the mother, or future mother, to be taking Tylenol.

This is what we mean when we say there is correlation, but not causation. It is still a useful clue, in other words, but not in the way that Trump and Kennedy would have you believe. It indicates that the mothers who have taken Tylenol are experiencing something that is a trigger for doing so and may indicate some associated reason for producing a child with autism.

In other words, just because the paint is peeling off your walls and there is a blaring sound going off in your ears doesn’t mean that the blaring sound caused the paint to peel. Your house is on fire, causing both paint to peel and the smoke alarms to go off.

Which, frankly, happens to be a wonderful analogy for what it’s like to have RFK Jr. in charge of public health.

Filed Under: autism, quacks, rfk jr., tylenol

Companies: kenvue

During a demo reel test, the color quality and contrast weren’t great. Mist over a white mountain didn’t look distinct; grass behind a fence should have looked greener; brown buffalo roaming a field didn’t look varied enough in color. To test contrast, I viewed a scene with dark trees in the foreground, but they blended too much into the background.

Another component of color contrast is that dark colors should look deep and rich, but dark scenes in The Creator and Awake on Netflix both just looked too dull. None of the picture modes helped, including the XR Contrast Booster. In Awake, the main character rides a bike at night, and you can see her face but not the background or a guy in a blue shirt.

The movie Hoppers on Disney+ did sell me a bit more on True RGB. (Though, to be fair, the animated movie with vibrant colors looked great on my iPhone 17 Pro.) The Bravia 7 Mark II’s understated backlighting and average contrast gave Hoppers a more artistic look. Project Hail Mary on the Fandango at Home app looked similarly pulled back, reminding me of the matte display on an art television.

To test the Bravia 7 Mark II’s ability to cast, I streamed Dune II using the HBO Max app. It worked perfectly, unlike the Hisense UR9 Mini RGB, which was a bit glitchy. On YouTube TV, I tested multiple news broadcasts (which appeared flat and slightly washed out) and a few World Cup 2026 games (which had smooth and fluid motion, with mostly vivid colors). A screensaver mode that shows static images and artwork looked too dark with poor contrast, especially when I flipped through some oil paintings of shipwrecks.

To test surround sound, I watched the movie Unbroken because it’s my ultimate benchmark for Dolby Atmos. After I connected Klipsch the Nines II speakers to the television, sounds of planes, explosions, and voices emanated throughout the room. The same battle scene using the same speakers was not as immersive in terms of surround sound using the Hisense UR9 television. However, the built-in speakers on the Hisense UR9 are much better for surround sound than the Bravia 7 Mark II’s built-in speakers.

Let the Games Begin

Photograph: John Brandon

Like movie and TV show picture quality, gaming on this model also lacked impressiveness. I started by playing through the Vietnam level of 007 First Light on a PC. This spectacularly vivid segment, with James Bond driving a boat on sun-kissed water surrounded by rocky cliffs, was a mixed bag in terms of quality. In scenes with the sun pouring down, the contrast was amazing and clear, but when Bond drove into a darker area, the contrast suddenly looked washed out. The 120-Hz refresh rate was fine, but not at all as vivid, responsive, and clear as the Hisense UR9 Mini RGB.

A buzzy Bloomberg report citing Netflix data suggests viewers are increasingly abandoning popular shows before the second season. The likely reasons aren’t hard to guess: Netflix frequently cancels shows, there’s too long a wait in between seasons, and much of Netflix’s content is designed for an algorithm instead of for the sake of art.

But the data also points to a shift in how people are consuming entertainment. Netflix’s defining innovation – the binge — was built for an era when streaming was competing with traditional TV. Today, Netflix is competing with TikTok, YouTube, Reels, and various microdrama apps. That shift makes Netflix’s binge model feel like a dated relic from another era.

Bingeing helped Netflix beat TV

When Netflix first dropped an entire season of “House of Cards” in February 2013, it was a revelation.
Ad-free, internet-connected TV meant we could be unshackled from the traditional routine of once-per-week shows punctuated by commercials. Instead, bingeable shows meant viewers could be entertained for hours on end, quickly forming a bond with titles and their characters that would have otherwise taken years to develop. Plus, you could drop in on them at any time — not only the day the network decided to air them, as with linear television.

This way of viewing made sense in a world where Netflix was largely still competing with traditional TV like broadcast, cable, and satellite. But Netflix won that fight. Nielsen in June 2025 announced that the TV era reached a new milestone, when the Netflix-style streaming format for the first time eclipsed broadcast and cable viewing — a milestone that made clear Netflix’s original competition was no longer the threat.

Now Netflix’s competition isn’t the TV of old, but what has become the TV of today: video apps.

TikTok and YouTube are today’s threats

Thanks to the rise of TikTok, Reels, and other short-form video platforms, there’s no need for you to visit Netflix when you have a couple of hours to kill with mindless entertainment. There’s an endless, free supply of video you can turn to instead.

According to eMarketer analysts, TikTok was already nearing Netflix in terms of time spent back in 2024, when U.S. adults were spending an average of 62.1 minutes per day streaming from Netflix and 58.4 minutes per day on TikTok. In 2024, the Financial Times reported that, globally, TikTok users spent an average of 95 minutes per day on the app, the highest engagement rate among major social networks.

Then there is YouTube, which offers a combination of both short and longer-form content. Per a report released this year by Digital i, YouTube surpassed Netflix in average daily viewing for the first time, with 99.1 minutes daily in 2025 compared with Netflix’s 93.4 minutes.

These market reports use differing methodologies and demographics, so they should be taken with a grain of salt — but directionally, they point the same way. YouTube and apps like TikTok are Netflix’s real competition, not TV.

Netflix has even acknowledged this existential threat by way of a product redesign in April that added a TikTok-like feed based on Netflix content.

Where Netflix gets the feed wrong is that it’s still pitched as a way to help you find something to watch, rather than being the thing you watch. It’s understandable why Netflix went this route, given its library, but it’s not necessarily what the end user wants. Today, many people with dopamine-drained attention spans are instead seeking out microdrama apps in growing numbers when they want a serialized storyline they can consume in minutes.

According to data from the app intelligence firm Appfigures, one top microdrama app, ReelShort, saw roughly $1.2 billion in gross consumer spending in 2025, up 119% from 2024, TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling previously reported. Meanwhile, another leading app, DramaBox, generated $276 million in gross consumer spending last year, more than doubling its 2024 numbers. Even TikTok acknowledged the competition, launching a microdrama app of its own to test the market appetite for this type of content.

Where does Netflix go from here?

Where does that leave Netflix, whose claim to fame has been full seasons dropped at once for rapid consumption?

Likely, it will have to rethink how it’s greenlighting, producing, and releasing what it considers a “TV show.”

That doesn’t mean that the Netflix model has to pivot entirely to short-form to keep up with the competition, but it may need to reconsider how people want to stream. Viewers may no longer want to commit the hours and weeks it takes to get through a show and all of its subsequent seasons, for instance. They want something that feels more “finishable,” the way you can easily get through a YouTube video or TikTok series from a creator.

A simple fix could see Netflix try prioritizing single-season shows, traditionally known as miniseries or limited series, allowing people to tune into a completed work without having to worry whether it would end on a cliffhanger and never be renewed.

Netflix could also experiment with breaking up shows into smaller chunks, like the before-its-time Quibi model.

The Jeffrey Katzenberg-backed startup, Quibi, had bet that people would eventually gravitate towards TV content designed to be consumed in shorter sessions. Unfortunately for Quibi, the pandemic hit, and people suddenly had a lot of time to watch TV, leading to its demise.

Many Netflix shows could be easily revamped for shorter viewing sessions, particularly lightweight competition shows like “Nailed It,” “Is It Cake?,” or “Squid Game: The Challenge.” Meanwhile, Netflix could surely produce better microdramas than the ones currently on the market with their awful acting and ridiculous storylines.

To generate interest in its higher-quality content, some Netflix shows could be shifted to the weekly release model. This is something Netflix has already proven works in specific cases. For instance, it drops new episodes of its reality show “Love Is Blind” in weekly dumps, making it great watercooler fodder as everyone is watching the new episodes around the same time. (Faster consumption models could work, too. For instance, Peacock’s “Love Island USA” is the reality hit of the summer, as there’s a new episode almost daily).

But instead of experimenting with different types of short-form content for quick entertainment, combined with slower releases for seasons, or focusing more heavily on miniseries worth watching, Netflix has been dabbling in other areas.

As of late, it’s expanded its lineup with podcasts, which reportedly no one is watching, and live content, which can be hit or miss. In terms of the latter, Netflix investments in live sports have generally done well, but its recent entry into live reality competition shows, “Star Search,” has already been canceled despite a clever real-time voting feature. More work here is still needed.

Bloomberg’s report framed the problem facing Netflix as a failure to create loyal TV viewers who tune into a Season 2, but the underlying issue facing the streamer is much bigger. Netflix may need to rethink whether it still needs to focus on competing with traditional TV and its long-running shows, or whether it should focus on entertainment projects whose storytelling arcs have less filler and wrap up more quickly.

To find the right balance between viewers ditching cable and those who just want something better than TikTok, Netflix is finding itself needing to reinvent TV all over again.