If you haven’t scooped one up already, Panic says that its cute little Playdate is back in stock at the moment. The timing is good: a second season of games for the device is currently underway.
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Our 8BitDo pads definitely needed them (they’re live!), and GuliKit has now announced its KK3 Max needs this one to unlock Amiibo support. (Yes, it’s the rare quality 3rd-party pad with working NFC for Nintendo’s figurines, and it’s in our best controller guide.)
Depending on your pad, some simply won’t pair with the Switch 2 at all, while others are missing some features. In general, Nintendo says original Switch controllers won’t be able to wake the Switch 2 from sleep.







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Verge Score
Never get locked out again with a smart lock you can control from your phone, with your face, or with a touch of your finger.



With their new spinoff podcast, the Mission to Zyxx team is building a bigger universe of improvised space adventures.
“You can now easily pause, play, skip forward or backward, and seek via the progress bar right from the picture-in-picture window,” according to a blog post. I don’t use Edge, but these seem like good upgrades.


Our sister site Eater just did a great deep dive into why you might be seeing people comment “meatball” and other foodstuffs on cooking creators’ social media. The short of it is AI recipe and link-sharing automations that help users avoid that pesky link in bio. That said, creators have mixed feelings over chatbots taking over their comment section.
The company is laying off fewer than 100 staffers in its books division, Reuters reports. The company cut about 100 jobs on its devices and services team last month.
[reuters.com]
”It’s a huge giveaway to Big Tech,” the Missouri Republican and longtime foe of the tech giants, tells The New York Times. His concerns: tech companies would be able to issue their own stablecoins that would compete with the U.S. dollar, and it would incentivize these companies to collect more of their customers’ financial data. “It allows these tech companies to issue stablecoins without any kind of controls. I don’t see why we would do that.”

Summer Game Fest kicked off with an attempt to bring more information around accessibility.
Shawn Hickman, who makes an app I really like called Sofa, has eight developer-specific requests for Apple at WWDC. Some are technical, some are business-focused, some are pure vibes. Hickman is just one dev, obviously, but he covers bunch of frustrations I’ve been hearing for years. It’s a good frame ahead of next week.
Once again confirming what many original Switch owners feared, iFixit’s teardown of the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons reveals a familiar joystick design that uses a resistive material that could lead to joystick drift again if it wears down over time.
The new Joy-Cons also don’t look any easier to disassemble and repair. You’ll need a tri-point screwdriver to remove screws, and iFixit had to use a pick and isopropyl alcohol to dislodge the batteries.




The company that owns the biggest sewing pattern brands — Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls, and Vogue — has been sold to a liquidator, per the Craft Industry Alliance. That’s troubling news for those of us that sew and prefer physical patterns, but there’s also a concerning knock-on effect: the company owns the last large-scale tissue printers in the country.
A few years ago I wrote about the painstaking efforts to preserve sewing patterns and fashion history. I suspect that work is now even more urgent.



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But it’s still a big phone.








JW Zhang, founder of US-based Aventon, now has control over UK-based Gocycle — the financially troubled maker of premium, fast-folding electric bikes. “Aventon is going to help Gocycle unleash its true potential and bring more exciting products to people in the future,” said an unidentified Aventon spokesperson speaking to Cycling Electric.
What comes next is unclear, but it should accelerate global expansion for both brands once the deal is settled, and finally make Gocycle’s CX lineup of electric folding cargo bikes a reality.
[cyclingelectric.com]
You can use your iPhone (and likely Android phone) as a webcam for the Switch 2 if you connect them via a USB-C to HDMI cable and HDMI converter cable — total cost about $30.
No need to buy a dedicated webcam just for the new console, which are typically worse than the cameras on modern phones anyway.
And no, they’re not exactly surprising. But even so, a Galaxy Store listing for “Samsung Internet Browser for Fold7 and Flip7,” spotted by GalaxyClub, does give the game away a little, especially since we’re not expecting the new phones to launch for at least a month.
Of course, that doesn’t preclude extra versions, like the Fold Ultra Samsung teased just this week, or its rumored cheaper Flip FE.
That’s exactly a year after its initial release in 2024 on PS5 and PC. I haven’t played the game myself, but my colleague Ash Parrish did last year.


Google’s new feature in Labs will create the visualizations to “help bring financial data to life for questions on stocks and mutual funds,” according to a blog post. You can ask Google a follow-up question, too, and “AI Mode understands what to research for you.”
Here’s a video of the feature, from Google’s post:


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