Technology

Anyone who buys the battle pass for the new season of Fortnite gets a nice initial bonus: a playable version of none other than the Mandalorian himself. He unlocks right away, and in many ways, he’s in keeping with the game’s recent strategy of focusing on branded tie-ins. Recent characters have included everyone from Wolverine to Travis Scott, Harley Quinn, and Kathleen “Loserfruit” Belsten. But Mando also differs from those others in one key way: he’s just about the perfect character for the battle royale game. At this point, it’s not a new idea to point out that The Mandalorian is often structured like a video game. It’s a story about a bounty hunter going out on a series of fetch quests; every time he asks for help, he’s tasked with going somewhere else to either collect an item or kil...

Discovery, home to HGTV, Food Network, and Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week, is entering the streaming space with Discovery Plus. Details about the streamer will be revealed at a special event this afternoon, but CNBC reports that Discovery Plus will start at $4.99 with an ad-supported tier, along with a $6.99 ad-free option. The streaming service will launch in January 2021, but it’s unclear if that’s just in the United States or also internationally. CNBC also reports that Discovery is partnering with Verizon to give the telecom company’s 55 million customers a free year of ad-free Discovery Plus. It’s the same move that Disney did with Verizon when the company launched Disney Plus. The company’s collection of notable brands is likely what executives are banking on. CEO David Zaslav...

Apple’s MagSafe Duo charger is now on sale online, after initially having been announced without a release date as part of this year’s iPhone launch. The $129 folding accessory includes a magnetic wireless charging puck for the iPhone 12 as well as an Apple Watch charger. It’s pretty expensive for what you get, especially when you consider that it doesn’t include a charging brick. You’ll need to use at least a 20W USB-C adapter, like Apple’s own $19 option, in order to get the faster charging speeds — and even then it won’t be as fast as the regular 15W MagSafe charger. 20W adapters will charge at 11W, while you’ll get up to 14W from 27W adapters and above. That said, I can see the appeal as someone who would rather not carry two separate power bricks and cables to charge my watch and phon...

Ever watch that movie, or play that video game, about the hacker who can instantly take over someone’s device without touching it at all? Those scenes are typically unrealistic as heck. But every once in a while, a real-life hack makes them seem downright plausible — a hack like the one you can see examples of in the videos above and below. [embedded content] Today, Google Project Zero security researcher Ian Beer has revealed that, until May, a variety of Apple iPhones and other iOS devices were vulnerable to an incredible exploit that could let attackers remotely reboot and take complete control of their devices from a distance — including reading emails and other messages, downloading photos, and even potentially watching and listening to you through the iPhone’s microphone and camera. ...

Following a cataclysmic event starring the supervillain Galactus, the latest season of Fortnite is almost here. Chapter 2: Season 5 has been dubbed “zero point,” and it involves hunters from different realities joining forces to fight something called “the loop.” Most importantly: one of those hunters is the Mandalorian, accompanied as always by Baby Yoda (aka Grogu). While last season was entirely Marvel-themed, season 5 features a bevy of new original Fortnite characters, in addition to the famed Star Wars bounty hunter. Those who purchase this season’s battle pass will be able to unlock characters like an ancient warrior and a sci-fi hunter that looks ripped from a Tsutomu Nihei manga. There’s also a creature called “Mancake the fighting Flapjack,” which feels very Fortnite. (This is th...

2020 was a year when people around the world were forced to find new ways to connect, and that trend is clearly visible when you look at the most downloaded apps on Apple hardware. Today the company revealed the most popular apps on its platforms for the year, and two names in particular stand out: video chat tool Zoom and social game Among Us, which were the top free app and game on both the iPhone and iPad. Neither name should be a big surprise. Despite launching in 2018, Among Us has become arguably the biggest game of 2020, regularly topping Twitch charts and even luring politicians to the world of streaming. The mobile version is particularly popular since it’s free to download. Similarly, Zoom has seen massive growth as it became a de facto social space for people and businesses look...

Ryan Hernandez, the hacker who pled guilty to stealing information about the Nintendo Switch prior to its release, has been sentenced to three years in prison. The sentencing follows a plea agreement originally proposed in January 2020. In addition to prison time, Hernandez will also be required to pay Nintendo $259,323 in retribution for the stolen information. Hernandez was first investigated by the FBI after he and an associate successfully phished confidential information from a Nintendo employee in 2016. The FBI requested that Hernandez stop all illegal activity in 2017. However, Hernandez continued to dig up confidential information in the following years and the FBI renewed its investigation. A July 2019 search of Hernandez’s hard drives by the FBI revealed a stash of child pornogra...

Following their sea creature naming convention, iFixit has released two new screwdriver kits: the Minnow and the Moray. You probably know iFixit for their teardowns of the latest gadgets, but a number of Verge writers also swear by their screwdriver sets which come with lots of exotic bits to open up electronics yourself. These new sets are their smallest and cheapest yet, with 16 and 32 bits respectively, and both come in under $20. Both sets come with the bits you need to take apart some of the most popular consumer tech: you can open iPhones and Macbooks with the pentalobe bits, Nintendo Switches with the tri-wing bits, and some PCs and older Apple computers with the Torx and Torx security bits. Both sets also include the basic Phillips and flatheads that you’d find yourself reaching fo...

The season-ending live event that just took place in Fortnite was the game’s biggest to date, Epic Games has confirmed. The Galactus event, which concluded Fortnite’s current Marvel-themed season, had a record 15.3 million concurrent players, the company said in a tweet. That beats out the Travis Scott concert from April, which peaked at 12.3 million concurrents during the first showing. The record before that was the Marshmello show, which reached 10.7 million. Epic says that 3.4 million people also watched the Galactus event on Twitch and YouTube. The event saw players teaming up to stop the Marvel supervillain from destroying Fortnite’s island by piloting an explosives-laden battle bus to feed him. Fortnite is currently shut down as Epic prepares to launch season 5. Anyone booting the g...

Nvidia’s $399 RTX 3060 Ti is available to purchase on Wednesday, December 2nd — and 6am PT / 9am ET is when it’ll go on sale, Nvidia confirms to The Verge. Like the RTX 3070, this card is a great option if you are looking to play PC games at a 1440p resolution. Also like the RTX 3070 and every other graphics card released this year, stock will likely not last long at most retailers, so you’ll want to be on the dot. In Tom Warren’s review of the 3060 Ti, it put up impressive frame rates on popular titles like Control, Call of Duty: Warzone, Death Stranding, and Fortnite at 1440p resolution — some of these games were even tested with ray-tracing enabled. At $399, the RTX 3060 Ti provides faster performance than the RTX 2080 Super or the RTX 2080 graphics cards, each of which started at $699 ...

The Marvel-themed season of Fortnite ended with a Galactus-sized bang. As has been teased since the debut of season 4 in August, the game’s current season concluded with a live event that pitted Fortnite players against the planet-sized supervillain in a dramatic showdown — and it ended with the game going down, replaced by a timer for the launch of season 5. For those who managed to get into the event, things started out pretty tame. I spent around half an hour just hanging around on the Avengers’ helicarrier while empty-handed, not able to do anything like build or pick up a weapon. Epic even posted a message letting players know they were indeed in the right place. When the event started properly, Galactus slowly made his way to the island before bellowing the ominous words “Beware. I h...