Technologies

Virtual Game Cards Are Nintendo’s New Way to Share Switch Games Digitally

The new Switch update lets you loan out games for up to 14 days.

Nintendo Switch firmware update 20.0.0 just went live, allowing players to share games more easily with other console owners. Virtual Game Cards is the new catch-all term for anything digital you can swap from one console to the next, covering downloaded games, free software, or even pieces of DLC (additional game content). This new update makes it easier to share your downloaded games with other people, though they need to be near you, so no sharing with friends over the internet.

Ahead of the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch on June 5, this could be one of the last software updates for the original Switch before its successor is released.

Until Tuesday, if you wanted to share a digital version of a Nintendo Switch game with a friend, it wasn’t easy — you had to designate one as your Primary Switch and the other as Secondary. The major downside here was that only the Primary user could play the shared game when offline, and the Secondary always needed to be connected to the internet to play.

But now Nintendo has a new system to lend out digital games. Shareable software are now represented by Virtual Game Cards, which alleviates some of this hassle by sharing full access to the game with the new user. Updating to the new Switch firmware will give users the new Virtual Game Cards icon on their home menu. From there you can select the game (or DLC) you want to share.

Read more: I Played All the Switch 2 Games: What to Look Forward to After April 24 Preorders

You have two options for how to share the game. The first is Load on Other System, which requires the second Switch to be linked to your main one. This is similar to the original Primary/Secondary system where you had to have your Nintendo account set up on both devices to share between.

The second option is Lend to Family Group Member and utilizes the family group you may have set up with a Nintendo Switch Online Family Plan. To do so, you need to bring the two Switch consoles close together to link them.

There are some important limitations to keep in mind when using the Lend to Family Group Member option. The first is that Virtual Game Cards can be borrowed for up to 14 days, after which they’ll be automatically returned to the lending system. It also means that the original system will not have access to that game/DLC while being loaned out. Lastly, players can only lend one Game Card per borrower, up to three borrowers at a time, and a borrower can borrow only one Game Card at a time. So you can’t fill up your Switch with borrowed games from your family members.

It remains to be seen how much more beneficial this system will be compared with the previous version. While this does allow borrowed games to be played offline, unlike before, it also prevents multiple people from each playing a copy of the same game at the same time. This seems like Nintendo is getting its console ready for the eventual launch of the Switch 2 by adding more robust game sharing functionality.

Technologies

TikTok to Let Apple Music Users Stream Full Songs Without Ever Leaving the App

TikTok and Apple Music come together to introduce two new features to the music listening experience.

If you’ve ever scrolled TikTok, caught a snippet of a tune, and thought, «I wish I could play this song all the way through,» this is for you. TikTok and Apple Music announced on Wednesday that they have partnered on two new features, Play Full Song and Listening Party. The goal is to offer listeners a seamless music listening experience without ever leaving the social media app.

Apple Music subscribers who discover a song on their TikTok For You Page or on the Sound Detail Page will be able to click Play Full Song to open the Apple Music player and listen to the track in its entirety. From there, subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to save the song as a favorite, add it to a playlist on Apple Music and listen to a customized stream of recommended songs.

When a full-length song is played, the stream will pay artists through Apple Music.

«Tapping into the music you love should feel effortless,» Ole Obermann, co-head of Apple Music, said in a statement. «With Play Full Song, Apple Music subscribers can move easily from discovering a track on TikTok to listening to it in full instantly, without breaking the flow. This integration not only makes it easier for fans to discover, listen to, and engage with the artists they love, but also creates a powerful new pathway for artists — turning moments of discovery into deeper connection and sustained engagement in one simple, seamless experience.»

Listening Party sounds somewhat like Spotify‘s feature of the same name. Fans join a shared, real-time session where they listen to the same tracks together and interact live, with the songs streamed through Apple Music inside TikTok. Musicians can also join and chat with their fans.

«TikTok is where music discovery and culture move at the speed of the community,» Tracy Gardner, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement. «Thanks to Apple Music, Play Full Song gives fans a seamless way to go from discovery to full-length listening, and Listening Party provides a shared place to experience music together in real time. It’s all about bringing artists and fans closer, and turning shared moments into lasting connections.»

Play Full Song and Listening Party will launch globally on TikTok over the next few weeks.

Technologies

AI Chatbots Are Making People All Think the Same, Study Says

A new paper argues that humans are losing varied ways of thinking due to the use of chatbots, and that’s concerning.

Part of what makes us human is the unique ways we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT might be eroding this uniqueness and leading humans to think and communicate the same way, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who have co-authored a new opinion paper.

«Individuals differ in how they write, reason, and view the world,» Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist of the University of Southern California and first author for the paper, said in a statement.

«When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic style, perspective and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,» Sourati continued.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people worldwide use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.

Thinking inside the box

Pew Research found that one-third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the 2023 figure. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: Two-thirds say they use chatbots, and almost a third use them daily.

Businesses are also going all in on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.

So we’re using AI a lot. But the danger is that we could lose the diversity in the ways we think. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people come up with on their own.

Part of the reason LLMs may be pushing homogenized thought, according to the paper’s authors, is the data used to train them.

«Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages and ideologies, their outputs often mirror a narrow and skewed slice of human experience,» Sourati says.

Why diverse thinking matters

There’s a good reason why the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thought reduces pluralism, which is essentially the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.

«This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-held principle that sound judgment requires exposure to varied thought,» the authors write in the paper. «Unchecked, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability,»

So we use different ways of thinking to figure out more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.

«The concern is not just that LLMs shape how people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,» Sourati says.

The authors also say that this trend even impacts people who don’t use chatbots.

«If a lot of people around me are thinking and speaking in a certain way, and I do things differently, I would feel a pressure to align with them, because it would seem like a more credible or socially acceptable way of expressing my ideas,» Sourati says.