Technology - Google News

Leaked 'Fortnite' Chapter 3 trailer shows a new island and Spider-Man - Engadget
Google Pixel mail-in repairs have allegedly twice resulted in leaked pics and a privacy nightmare - The Verge
Ludwig banned from YouTube after signing an exclusivity deal - NME.com

Leaked 'Fortnite' Chapter 3 trailer shows a new island and Spider-Man - Engadget

Posted: 04 Dec 2021 01:33 PM PST

Fortnite Chapter 2 has only just come to an end, but that isn't preventing sleuths from finding out what Chapter 3 will hold. As Kotaku learned, the game's official Polish YouTube channel briefly shared a Chapter 3 trailer revealing many of the planned changes to the battery royale brawler. You can expect a new island (and new characters, including Gears of War's Marcus and Kait as well as Spider-Man — there even appears to be web-swinging like you've seen in Insomniac's Spider-Man games, not to mention locales like the Daily Bugle.

Chapter 3 will add some new mechanics on top of fresh weapons and items. You can slide (seen in the Chapter 2 finale), and set up camps to both heal your squad and stash items you can carry over to future matches. And there's even a degree of star power: The Foundation, a character voiced by Dwayne Johnson, will carry over from the Chapter 2 shutdown.

It's not clear when Chapter 3 debuts. However, Epic wasn't afraid to repeat history and kick players out of Fortnite as the previous chapter came to an end. Chapter 2 closed in dramatic fashion, with The Foundation helping to defeat a Cube Queen invasion and flipping the entire island upside-down. If you stuck with the event, you were left treading water and with no option but to quit the game. Clearly, Epic is betting this dramatic ploy will work a second time.

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Google Pixel mail-in repairs have allegedly twice resulted in leaked pics and a privacy nightmare - The Verge

Posted: 04 Dec 2021 04:43 PM PST

After game designer and author Jane McGonigal sent her Pixel 5a to Google for repair, someone allegedly took and hacked her device. This is at least the second report in as many weeks from someone claiming they sent a Google phone in for repair, only to have it used to leak their private data and photographs. McGonigal posted a detailed account of the situation on Twitter on Saturday and advised other users not to send their phones in for repair with the company.

Yeah, don't send your Google phone in for warranty repair/replacement. As has happened with others, last night someone used it to log into my gmail, Drive, photos backup email account, dropbox, and I can see from activity logs they opened a bunch of selfies hoping to find nudes
— Jane McGonigal (@avantgame) December 4, 2021

In October, McGonigal sent her broken phone to an official Pixel repair center in Texas. She tweeted later that Google said it never received the phone, and during the ensuing weeks, she was charged for a replacement device.

But according to McGonigal, FedEx tracking information shows the device arrived at the facility weeks ago. Late Friday night — a few hours after she says she finally received a refund for the device — someone seems to have used the "missing" phone to clear two-factor authentication checks and log in to several of her accounts, including her Dropbox, Gmail, and Google Drive.

The activity triggered several email security alerts to McGonigal's backup accounts. However, she speculates that whoever has the phone may have used it to access her backup email addresses and then dumped any security alerts into her spam folder.

"The photos they opened were of me in bathing suits, sports bras, form-fitting dresses, and of stitches after surgery," McGonigal writes. "They deleted Google security notifications in my backup email accounts."

In a statement emailed to The Verge, Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi says, "We are investigating this claim." It's still unclear whether the device might have been intercepted within the repair facility or while it was in transit, or who has it now. Google's official repair instructions recommend backing up and then erasing a device before sending it in. Still, as Jane McGonigal points out, that's either hard or impossible, depending on the damage.

The whole situation reminds us of the security concerns whenever we hand over our devices for repair, and unfortunately, such activity has precedent. In June, Apple paid millions to a woman after repair technicians posted her nude photos to Facebook. Apple recently said it would start selling DIY repair kits, giving users the chance to fix their own phones, or at least have the task done by someone that a user trusts, as opposed to sending it in or dropping it off at an Apple Store.

For Pixel phones, your options for official service are either via mail-in or, in some countries, local service through an authorized provider. In the US, Google partners with uBreakiFix franchises. Whatever phone you have, the options for repairs are still somewhat limited, and you end up having to trust that no one with bad intentions will get their hands on your phone while it's out of your possession.

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Ludwig banned from YouTube after signing an exclusivity deal - NME.com

Posted: 04 Dec 2021 04:44 AM PST

Three days after signing a deal to stream exclusively with YouTube, streamer Ludwig has been banned from the platform for playing a few seconds of copyrighted music.

The streamer who made a name for himself back in April when he streamed his life non-stop for over two weeks, was banned from streaming by YouTube. Ludwig, who used to stream primarily on Twitch, made the switch to YouTube gaming on November 30, after signing an exclusivity deal.

However, on his third day of streaming, he accidentally played a couple of seconds of the copyrighted song Baby Shark which saw his stream get taken down. He then stopped streaming saying he would be back the next day.

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After the ban, he uploaded a three-minute video explaining why the stream was down and what policy rules he had broken. He said that while he was scouring the website for "50 greatest videos of classic YouTube" he played a few seconds of a Baby Shark video with over nine billion views.

Ludwig said "I'm sure the corporate overlords who own Baby Shark have an iron fist over YouTube, and so they took me down. – Apparently, DMCA is going to be more of a concern than I had originally imagined."

Ludwig assumed that playing copyrighted music would result in a "classic rev share" where he would split the monetisation with the copyright owner. However, in Baby Shark's case, his stream got immediately taken down.

He put the misunderstanding down to "growing pains", sharing with viewers YouTube's response stating he can stream again once the copyrighted music is removed.

In other news, Raven Software, the developer of Call of Duty: Warzone, will fire more than a third of its QA department as the company restructures. The studio owned by Activision Blizzard is reportedly struggling amidst allegations of abuse.

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