The launch of Fortnite’s Greek mythology-themed Chapter 5: Season 2 had been on hold since early this morning after the usual downtime for maintenance didn’t end on schedule. Epic usually takes the servers down at 3AM ET to prepare for a big update, but only for a few hours. This time, the battle royale game stayed offline until well into Friday evening.

After 9PM ET, players started to report they were able to download updates and get into the game. However, many people say they’re still waiting in queues to log in or getting error messages when they try to play.

The Fortnite Status account on X has posted that the developers are working on issues with islands, purchasing items, and matchmaking problems, while the Epic Games status page tracking downtime related to the v29.00 update says everything is operational now that the maintenance window is over.

Completed

The scheduled maintenance has been completed.

Posted 58 minutes ago. Mar 09, 2024 - 03:01 UTC

Update March 8th, 11:03PM ET: Updated to note the game is coming back online and latest information about ongoing issues.

Around 600 workers in Activision Publishing’s quality assurance department have formed a union. Assisted by the Communications Workers of America, the employees completed their vote with the results certified on Friday, March 8th. With that, Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA becomes the latest union to arise out of Microsoft’s gaming division and the largest video game union in the United States.

In 2022, Microsoft affirmed a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA which eases the organization process at the company and its subsidiaries including Activision Blizzard.

In an interview with The Verge, Tom Shelley, a technical requirements specialist and one of Activision Quality Assurance United’s organizers, said the labor neutrality agreement and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year made their goals of unionizing easier to accomplish.

“This has been an emergent effort that’s arisen in the last few weeks in response to the opportunities we’ve had to freely organize following the merger,” Shelley said. “As QA workers, we often have the weakest protections and lowest pay of any workers in the industry — even though our work is integral to the success of the companies we work for and the titles we make.”

In quality assurance, workers test games looking for bugs and other issues, flagging them for other developers to fix. Since the majority of QA jobs are typically entry level, the industry has a reputation for devaluing these roles, emphasizing the need for labor protections.

Shelley praised Microsoft for voluntarily recognizing the union and hopes it will inspire more organizing at the company and beyond.

Last year, Microsoft voluntarily recognized a union of 300 QA workers at ZeniMax online. It joined the union at Blizzard Albany and Raven Software. Video game labor unions are picking up steam but have faced difficulties in light of the rampant layoffs. In 2023, the CWA filed an unfair labor complaint against Sega, claiming the company was planning to “phase out” temporary employees who were part of the company’s Aegis union that formed last year. When Sega eventually did lay off employees, Aegis said union negotiations were able to save a number of jobs.

An independent investigation commissioned by OpenAI’s nonprofit board has found that CEO Sam Altman’s conduct “did not mandate removal.” After surviving an attempted boardroom coup in November, he will now rejoin the board.

In a press release, board chair Bret Taylor said the law firm WilmerHale interviewed board members, employees, and reviewed “more than 30,000 documents” to reach the conclusion that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman “are the right leaders for OpenAI.”

In addition to Altman, Taylor also announced three more OpenAI board members: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former legal executive at Sony; and Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart. They will join Taylor, Altman, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, and Larry Summers in governing OpenAI’s nonprofit parent company.

For those seeking to better understand why Altman was suddenly fired from his perch last fall, OpenAI’s public summary of the WilmerHale investigation is frustratingly light on details. The law firm said the board believed it “would mitigate internal management challenges” by firing Altman suddenly, and that the “decision did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners.”

The summary of the investigation uses the same vague language that OpenAI’s previous board published to justify its decision to fire Altman: that the incident, which I’m told OpenAI employees refer to as “The Blip,” was a “consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust between the prior Board and Mr. Altman.” WilmerHale also found that the prior board moved “without advance notice to key stakeholders, and without a full inquiry or an opportunity for Mr. Altman to address the prior Board’s concerns.”

On a short video call with reporters Friday, Altman apologized for believing that “a former OpenAI board member was harming OpenAI through their actions” but declined to go into more detail. It has been widely reported that he tussled with ex-board member Helen Toner over an academic paper she co-authored that was critical of OpenAI’s approach to safety, and that others expressed concerns about the conflicts of interest posed by Altman’s other investments.

OpenAI said on Friday that it planned to “strengthen” its conflict of interest policy for employees without elaborating, and that it would also create a whistleblower hotline for employees and contractors.

During the call with reporters, Altman appeared cheerful while sitting next to Bret Taylor. At one point, he was asked about the employment status of co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who played a key role in the failed coup but changed sides when the majority of OpenAI employees threatened to quit if Altman didn’t return.

Sutskever has since gone quiet, leading to questions about his involvement with the company going forward. On the call, Altman said there was “nothing to announce” but that “Ilya is awesome,” and “I hope we work together for the rest of our careers.”

He said that recent “leaks” intended “to pit us against each other” had “not worked,” and that he is “pleased this whole thing is over.”

Google has fired an employee who publicly protested the company’s work for the Israeli military. During a presentation by an executive with Google’s Israel branch on Monday, the now-former Google Cloud engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”

Google confirmed the firing, which was first reported by CNBC, in an email to The Verge. “Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation — interfering with an official company-sponsored event,” Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson says in an emailed statement. “This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”

The incident occurred at Mind the Tech, an annual Israeli tech conference in New York, during a presentation from Google Israel managing director Barak Regev. The engineer was protesting Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for access to cloud services from Google and Amazon. “Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger,” the employee said. “No cloud apartheid.” The employee was escorted out of the presentation shortly after.

Google faced pushback over its involvement in Project Nimbus when the contract was signed in 2021. Hundreds of Google and Amazon employees published an open letter to speak out against the deal, saying the technologies “allow for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians.”

No Tech For Apartheid, an organization rallying against Project Nimbus, published a statement about the engineer’s firing on Friday. “Google’s aims are clear: The corporation is trying to silence workers to hide their moral failings,” the organization said. “As a Cloud Software Engineer on critical technology that enables Project Nimbus to run on sovereign Israeli data centers, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labor.”

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out last October, employees have staged a “die-in” at the company’s San Francisco offices to protest the cloud services contract, and over 600 employees signed a letter urging Google to stop sponsoring the Mind the Tech conference, according to a report from Wired.

Two Florida middle schoolers were arrested in December and charged with third-degree felonies for allegedly creating deepfake nudes of their classmates. A report by Wired cites police reports saying two boys, aged 13 and 14, are accused of using an unnamed “artificial intelligence application” to generate the explicit images of other students “between the ages of 12 and 13.” The incident may be the first US instance of criminal charges related to AI-generated nude images.

They were charged with third-degree felonies under a 2022 Florida law that criminalizes the dissemination of deepfake sexually explicit images without the victim’s consent. Both the arrests and the charges appear to be the first of their kind in the nation related to the sharing of AI-generated nudes.

Local media reported on the incident after the students at Pinecrest Cove Academy in Miami, Florida, were suspended December 6th, and the case was reported to the Miami-Dade Police Department. According to Wired, they were arrested on December 22nd.

Minors creating AI-generated nudes and explicit images of other children has become an increasingly common problem in school districts across the country. But outside of the Florida incident, none we’d heard of have led to an arrest. There’s currently no federal law addressing nonconsensual deepfake nudes, which has left states tackling the impact of generative AI on matters of child sexual abuse material, nonconsensual deepfakes, or revenge porn on their own.

Last fall, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on AI that asked agencies for a report on banning the use of generative AI to produce child sexual abuse material. Congress has yet to pass a law on deepfake porn, but that could possibly change soon. Both the Senate and House introduced legislation, known as the DEFIANCE Act of 2024, this week, and the effort appears to have bipartisan support.

Although nearly all states now have laws on the books that address revenge porn, only a handful of states have passed laws that address AI-generated sexually explicit imagery to varying degrees. Victims in states with no legal protections have also taken to litigation. For example, a New Jersey teen is suing a classmate for sharing fake AI nudes.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Beverly Hills Police Department is currently investigating a case where students allegedly shared images that “used real faces of students atop AI-generated nude bodies.” But because the state’s law against “unlawful possession of obscene matter knowing it depicts person under age of 18 years engaging in or simulating sexual conduct” does not explicitly mention AI-generated images, the article says it’s unclear whether a crime has been committed.

The local school district voted on Friday to expel five students involved in the scandal, the LA Times reports.

Logitech is rolling out a firmware update for its popular G Pro X Superlight 2 mouse this week that will enable 4kHz response rates. The higher polling rate is designed for high DPI / low in-game sensitivity players who play esports PC games, which is who Logitech markets its Superlight series of mice toward.

A higher polling rate on a mouse essentially means that when a frame is rendered, you get a more recent and accurate cursor position shown on your screen. The time delay between your cursor and where it’s being displayed on your screen is reduced the higher the polling rate.

High polling rates sound great, but they only kick in when your mouse needs to reach that rate. So a 4KHz polling rate doesn’t mean your mouse is constantly providing 4,000 updates a second; rather, it just means that it’s capable of doing so.

How all of this translates into a perceivable difference is still up for debate, though. YouTuber Optimum, who does some seriously in-depth PC gaming tech videos, looked at higher polling rates a few months back. Optimum found that you’ll need to set a DPI of 1,600 or above to reach a peak saturation point to force the mouse to update enough to take advantage of a 4kHz mode, and even then, there’s no obvious sign of an improved smoothness or response.

If you do want to enable the 4kHz mode on the G Pro X Superlight 2, then the firmware update is available through the G Hub app right now. You’ll need to plug the mouse into your PC, as both the mouse and the wireless receiver get updated firmware. The new 4kHZ mode will take up more battery life, though, but that’s the price you have to pay to maybe hit that vital head shot a little bit quicker.

One of the more frustrating aspects of TikTok used to be the difficulty in finding a video that you really liked and wanted to see again but had accidentally swiped past or watched a day or two ago. Previously, there was a long, complex series of steps you had to follow to find out your watch history on TikTok — making it hardly worth the effort. Now, however, you can easily find your watch history — and, if you want, erase it. All you have to do is:

• Tap your Profile icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
• Select the three-line icon in the top-right corner.
• Tap on Settings and privacy > Activity center.

You should now see a gallery with all of the videos you’ve watched over the last 180 days. Tap on any that you’d like to rewatch.

If you want to erase any — or all — of the videos in your history, it’s simple to arrange. (You can, if you want, first save your watch history before you delete it from TikTok’s site by going back to Settings and Privacy, and then to Account > Download your data.) To delete one or more of the videos you’ve watched:

• On the Watch history page, tap Select in the upper-right corner. Empty circles will appear in the upper-right corner of each video.
• Tap the circle of each video you want to delete, and then hit the red Delete button in the lower-right corner.
• If you want to clear out all your videos, use the Select all watch history button at the bottom left — which will check circles — and then tap the Delete button.

Be aware that, even if you’ve deleted all your videos, they’re not completely gone: TikTok’s explanation of watch history says that “we’ll continue to keep your watch history data for some time to optimize your experience.” In other words, TikTok will still be using your history to feed its algorithms.

Update March 8th, 2024, 4:07PM ET: This article was originally published on August 3rd, 2022, and has been updated to account for changes in the app.

Even Warner Bros. Discovery games are subject to the capriciousness of the executive suite. Several developers of games published under Adult Swim Games, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, have said that the company has reached out to inform them that their games will soon be removed from digital storefronts on PC and console.

“It saddens me to announce that we received notice from Warner Bros. Discovery (the owners of Adult Swim Games) that Fist Puncher will be retired and removed from Steam in the next 60 days,” wrote Matt Kain, one of Fist Puncher’s developers, on Steam.

Other developers with Adult Swim Games said they received the same message. “Within the next 60 days, Soundodger+ will be removed from Steam,” wrote Studio Bean on X.

Some of the affected developers wrote that they will republish their games on Steam, but the titles will lose their community pages, Steam achievements, forum discussions, screenshots, and other content in the process. That could all be preserved if Warner Bros. transferred publishing permissions to the developers, but developers say the company is refusing to do so, citing a lack of resources.

According to the developers, however, the Steam transfer process takes only minutes. “I sent them the Steam Transfer link, explained that it takes 3 clicks, and they still refused, claiming it would only be fair to transfer no one’s games since they can’t do them all,” Studio Bean wrote.

The move suggests Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to shut down Adult Swim Games and has taken the first step of informing impacted developers. Since completing its merger in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery has removed TV shows from its streaming library and shelved nearly finished films, including Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, as a means of cost cutting. The Verge has reached out to Warner Bros. Discovery for comment.

On Steam, there’s a list of 25 Adult Swim Games titles that will be removed.

Owen Deery, developer of Small Radios Big Televisions, wrote that he’s making his game freely available on his website. Studio Bean wrote that Warner Bros. would allow the team to republish the game on Steam so long as it removed all references to Adult Swim Games, including team members listed in the credits.

“I’m all for games preservation, and this ain’t it chief,” wrote Deery.

With most of the Apple news this week revolving around the new M3 MacBook Air and Apple’s ongoing app store kerfuffles in the EU, it’s not surprising that Best Buy’s current promos on the HomePod Mini and second-gen HomePod have slipped under the radar. That’s a shame, however, given the smart speakers are on sale for $79.99 ($20 off) and $269.99 ($30 off), respectively, which doesn’t happen often.

If you’re deciding between Apple’s latest Siri-based smart speakers, there are a few things to consider. The latest HomePod is essentially a rehash of the original model from 2018, only this time, it comes with support for spatial audio, the new Matter standard, and temperature and humidity sensing. The pint-size HomePod Mini, meanwhile, packs the same features and smart home prowess, though, understandably, it doesn’t prioritize sound quality as much as the full-size model, even if it does sound quite good for its size and put out more bass than similar smart speakers of its stature.

Sound quality aside, the biggest selling point of both speakers is their deep integration with the rest of Apple’s ecosystem (and Apple Home). You can easily hand off music from an iPhone to either, and because they work in tandem with iOS, you can ask both the HomePod and the Mini to place a phone call, read messages, hit you with calendar invites, or even locate family members via Apple’s Find My feature.

Now, if only the HomePod had a real display.

Read our HomePod (second-gen) and HomePod Mini reviews.

I could work from literally anywhere, but I’m usually confined to my desk because of the speed and convenience my multi-monitor setup adds to my workflow. Sure, I could solve that with one of the dreamy dual-screen laptops making waves, but I can’t responsibly justify the splurge, and I’m a MacBook guy when it comes to laptops. A portable monitor like the Asus ZenScreen MB166C can get the job done much cheaper, however, especially since it’s on sale at Amazon for $98.19 (about $41 off).

The 15.6-inch ZenScreen is a USB-C monitor with an IPS full HD display that’s bright enough to use in sunlight and offers nice viewing angles. It accepts power and can transmit 60Hz video over the same cable thanks to DisplayPort Alt, which is almost mandatory for frustration-free deployment. I’ve tested a few of these basic monitors, but none were as sleek or satisfying to view as Asus’ 1080p option. At 0.46 inches, it’s thin enough to slip into the same compartment as my laptop, at least when using roomier bags, and it ships with a handy protective sleeve. Plus, if you’re one of the few people who would find it useful to mount one on a tripod, there’s a quarter-inch thread on its underside to do so.

More deals to celebrate payday

• Now until March 31st (or while supplies last), you can buy a three-foot AmazonBasics USB-C cable at Woot for just $3.99 ($6 off). We’ve seen comparable 60W two-packs from other trusted brands go for between $10 and $15 at their cheapest, so this is a great value.
• If you’ve been looking for a physical copy of Bayonetta 3, you can currently pick one up at Best Buy for $30.99 ($29 off). The Nintendo Switch title draws inspiration from Devil May Cry’s quick, skill-based combat with an original story, though, The Verge’s Ash Parrish felt the plot was a little bit of a letdown in the final moments. Nonetheless, at this price, it’s worth deciding for yourself, especially if you liked the previous titles. Read our review.
• There’s no good reason to lose your most important belongings when you can get a four-pack of Apple AirTags for $78.99 ($21 off) at Amazon and Walmart. You can slip a couple of them into your everyday bag or use one of the many AirTag holders available to attach them to a set of keys or your pet. Just keep in mind that you’ll need an iPhone 11 or newer to use Apple’s Precision Finding feature, which guides you to your item’s location using a compass. Read our hands-on impressions.
• You can buy an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D for $388.99 ($75 off) at Newegg with offer code CLDDQ554. You don’t need such a beefy processor for pure gaming, but the 12-core, 24-thread chip offers great overhead for streaming or heavy creative or engineering workloads. It’s an AM5 processor, though, so you’ll need a newer motherboard with support for AMD Zen 4 architecture.

Brandon Widder contributed to this post.

Amazon’s Drop In feature has become a useful tool for contacting people in your household, finding out what your kids are up to (especially when they’re being too quiet), and checking in on elderly relatives. It allows you to literally “drop in” using an Alexa-capable device, either just via audio or with audio and video. But since you don’t want anyone dropping in on you unwanted, it’s a good idea to understand how to set it up and how to use it.

Set up your device for Drop In

In order to allow somebody to drop in on an Echo or Fire device (or any Alexa-capable device that allows you to make calls), first you have to enable the Drop In feature on that specific unit.

• Open the Alexa app on your phone and select the Device icon on the bottom of the screen.
• You’ll see a list of your devices. Select the one for which you want to enable or disable Drop In.
• Tap the gear icon at the top right of the pop-up window, then scroll down to and select Communications.
• Tap on Drop In. Now you can turn it on for permitted contacts (which means whoever is in your contact list and who has permission to use Drop In), people in your household only, or nobody.

Give someone permission to Drop In

If you want somebody outside your household to have the ability to drop in to your device, then you have to mark that contact as a permitted contact.

• In the Alexa app, go to More > Communicate and tap on the icon resembling two people at the top right.
• You’re now on your Contacts screen. If you want to allow an existing contact to drop in, just tap on the person’s name. You can also create a new contact by either selecting the Add New button and then Add Contact, or by tapping the three dots in the upper right corner and then Add Contact. (You can also, if you wish, import all your contacts associated with your device — just tap on Import at the bottom of the screen.)
• Whichever you choose — a new contact or an existing one — scroll down in the individual’s contact page. Under Permissions, you’ll see Allow Drop In, which you can toggle on or off.

Using Drop In

Now that you’re all set up, it’s easy. Just use the command “Alexa, drop in...” with the name of the device you want to call.

To see what’s going on in another room that has an Echo Show named “Kid’s Den,” for example, just say something like “Alexa, drop in on Kid’s Den.” The device in that room will chime and its light, if any, will turn green. You’ll then be able to see and hear what’s going on in the other room through your own device — and if they’ve got a device with a camera, they’ll be able to see and hear what’s going on in yours. (Of course, if either party is using an audio-only device, that will limit the communication to, well, audio.)

To stop the connection, say, “Alexa, hang up.”

Update March 8th, 2024, 3:06PM ET: This article has been updated to clarify that Drop In is only available on Echos, Fires, or other Alexa-equipped devices that are capable of making calls.