In brief: As doubt lingers over the future of Microsoft’s console business, and controversy over the end of physical media clouds Sony’s, Nintendo wants investors to know its hardware division is still growing. The company’s Q1 fiscal 2027 report points to strong mainstream software sales, a hit tie-in movie, and $300 million in tariff refunds that customers will never see.

The Switch 2 has sold more than 23 million units in its first year on the market, well ahead of its predecessor’s roughly 17 million over the same span. The hybrid console has now also outsold the GameCube’s entire five-year run in a single year – a reminder of how far Nintendo’s hardware business has come over the past two decades.

The quarter ending June 2026 did show a more than 30% YoY drop in hardware sales, but that’s expected: the year-ago quarter included the Switch 2’s explosive launch.

Software tells us a different story. Switch 2 game sales rose 9% YoY, while the original Switch’s software sales jumped 38%. Tomodachi Life was likely the driver, selling more than 8 million copies between its April launch and early August. Net profit, meanwhile, climbed 53% YoY.

Nintendo also disclosed $300 million in refunds after the US Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration’s 2025 tariffs illegal. The government has paid out more than $80 billion of the roughly $166 billion it owes manufacturers and retailers, Nintendo among them, alongside Amazon, Walmart, Sony, and Apple.

Still, Nintendo is fighting a lawsuit from customers demanding a cut of those refunds, arguing it has no obligation to compensate buyers who willingly paid tariff-era prices.

The company kept the Switch 2’s $450 launch price intact despite steep tariffs on its Vietnamese manufacturing – even after Vietnam was briefly hit with a proposed 46% rate. Apple, by contrast, plans to funnel its $2.2 billion refund into domestic manufacturing, while Amazon, Walmart, BJ’s, and Arctic have said they’ll return some of the money to consumers in various forms.

Nintendo also touted The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which opened in April and has since crossed $1 billion at the box office. Up next: a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie, due in 2027.

OpenAI is rolling out a more reliable version of ChatGPT GPT-5.6 Sol for Plus and Pro users, while Free users are getting unlimited text chats with GPT-5.6 Luna.

The changes are focused on making ChatGPT more direct, factually accurate, and consistent across quick questions and deeper reasoning tasks.

In our tests, BleepingComputer observed that GPT now gives you greater control over the model’s reasoning and intelligence with a new slider.

As you can see in the screenshot, you can slide GPT’s reasoning from Instant to High. Instant would respond almost immediately, while High reasoning could take several minutes.

You can keep the slider low for everyday questions or increase the reasoning effort for tasks such as research, coding, writing, planning, and complex decisions.

GPT-5.6 Sol is getting more focused and reliable answers

OpenAI says the updated GPT-5.6 Sol has been tuned specifically for how people use ChatGPT, rather than for the longer-running agentic workflows found in Codex and ChatGPT Work.

“It delivers more focused answers, adapts its level of detail to the question, avoids unnecessary formatting, and offers a helpful correction when simply agreeing wouldn’t be useful,” OpenAI said.

For example, if you ask simple questions, GPT should answer directly without adding unnecessary background. For more complicated work, it should provide enough detail while keeping the main recommendation easy to identify.

A question like “Who is the president of the United States?” will have a single-line answer, but a question like “How are elections held in the US?” will have a longer answer with background information.

OpenAI also claims that GPT-5.6 Sol is less likely to make factual mistakes when handling dates, numbers, sources, legal rules, medical information, financial questions, or assumptions.

In internal tests, OpenAI found that responses containing at least one factual error were 68% less common with GPT-5.6 Sol than with GPT-5.5 Instant.

Moreover, GPT-5.6 Luna reduced such responses by 62% in the same evaluation.

Free users are getting unlimited GPT-5.6 Luna chats

GPT-5.6 Luna will become the default model for Free and Go users this week, and some users are already seeing the change. I spotted it in my OpenAI account with a Go subscription that costs approximately $10.

Starting next week, OpenAI also plans to remove the rate limit for text chats on those plans, although usage will remain subject to abuse protections. However, limits will still apply to file uploads, image generation, and other ChatGPT tools.

With a free account, you will still receive a new Think button that gives GPT-5.6 Luna additional time to reason through harder questions.

“For questions that require deeper reasoning, Free users can tap the new Think button to give GPT-5.6 Luna more time to work through the answer,” OpenAI noted.

The update does not affect GPT-5.6 Sol in Codex or Work

The revised version of GPT-5.6 Sol is designed for everyday conversations and will only be available through ChatGPT’s regular Chat experience.

OpenAI is also introducing additional protections for users believed to be under 18.

These include stricter boundaries around romantic roleplay, sexual content, dangerous activities, eating disorders, body-image risks, age-restricted goods, and graphic violence.

Today’s changes are rolling out gradually.

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When you’re shopping for a portable power station, there’s one number that’s almost impossible to ignore: battery capacity. A 2 kWh battery should give you roughly 2 kWh of usable power, right? Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that simple. Anker SOLIX has published new efficiency data for its S Series portable power stations, and it’s putting the spotlight on something that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as capacity: how much of the energy stored inside the battery actually makes it to your devices.

According to Anker, portable power stations are commonly advertised with efficiency figures measured under relatively heavy loads, where they can reach roughly 89% to 92% efficiency. But that’s not necessarily how most people use one during an outage. Think about what you’d actually plug in. A Wi-Fi router might sip power continuously, a refrigerator switches its compressor on and off throughout the day, and a CPAP machine could run overnight. Together, those devices may draw just a fraction of what a large power station is capable of supplying. And that’s where efficiency can start slipping.

Your 2 kWh battery isn’t necessarily giving you 2 kWh

Anker says discharge efficiency on typical portable power stations can drop to around 70% to 80% under lighter loads. So, a noticeable chunk of the energy you’ve paid to store could disappear through conversion losses and the power station’s own consumption before it ever reaches your fridge or router. The company says its OptiSave 2.0 technology is designed to reduce those losses by changing how the power station operates depending on what’s connected.

Instead of running the inverter the same way all the time, the system monitors demand and adjusts accordingly. A power-hungry appliance such as a microwave can get full output when it needs it. With something much less demanding, such as a router or CPAP machine, the inverter can reduce its operating frequency and its own energy consumption. There’s also a Smart Standby Mode designed for appliances that don’t continuously draw power. When your refrigerator’s compressor switches off, for example, the power station can dramatically reduce its own standby consumption. Once the fridge needs power again, Anker says the system can wake within milliseconds. Those small savings could become surprisingly significant when you’re trying to stretch a battery through a lengthy blackout.

Anker is putting some unusually specific numbers behind it

More interestingly, Anker isn’t only providing a best-case efficiency figure. The company says its S Series reaches 88% discharge efficiency at a relatively light 100W load and 96% at 400W. It claims comparable portable power stations typically fall below 80% at 100W and hover around 89% at 400W. It has cut idle power consumption by as much as 50% compared with competing products. Its S2000, for instance, consumes about 6W while idle, compared with the 15W to 20W Anker says is typical for other 2 kWh power stations.

Put everything together, and the company claims OptiSave 2.0 can give its S Series up to 20% longer runtime than competing power stations with the same advertised battery capacity. The S2000 has also received TÜV SÜD’s A+ energy-efficiency certification under its relevant 2026 portable-power standard, lending some independent weight to the efficiency conversation. Of course, actual runtime will always depend on what you plug in, how frequently those devices run, and environmental conditions. The bigger takeaway here isn’t simply that one battery lasts longer than another. It’s that comparing portable power stations purely by capacity may be leaving out one of the most important numbers. If other manufacturers follow Anker’s lead and start publishing efficiency across different loads, shopping for a power station could become a lot less about whose box has the biggest battery number printed on it.

• Ministers in the UK are consulting on workplace monitoring technologies
• Employers may have to ask permission to implement surveillance tools that ensure employees are working as contracted
• The consultation includes references to the use of artificial intelligence-assisted monitoring

The British government’s Make Work Pay strategy to overhaul employment rights and end exploitative work practices has opened consultation on workplace monitoring technologies, with the Department for Business and Trade seeking to establish whether existing rules covering things like biometric surveillance, keystroke logging, and productivity scoring are fit for purpose.

Current rules over the use of workplace monitoring technology (WMT) may be fit for purpose, but the consultation aims to establish whether non-statutory guidance, a formal code of practice, or a legal framework is required.