Fortnite developer Epic Games confirmed this weekend it will transition most of its US-based contingent workers to full-time positions with benefits. The news comes after The Verge obtained an internal memo detailing the company’s plans. Epic spokesperson Elka Looks said the studio plans to hire “a few hundred” existing contractors, and that most of those workers currently serve as quality assurance testers. Epic will directly employ those individuals and they’ll have access to the company’s benefits plan.

Looks also noted the company will still hire contingent workers to fill “short-term needs,” and the memo The Verge obtained said Epic would not extend the full-time employment offer to some workers. “There are a few exceptions in which it makes sense for both the worker and Epic to maintain contingent worker status,” the document said, according to the outlet.

Epic’s decision to convert many of its QA testers to full-time employees comes at a moment when workers in similar positions at Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software work to unionize. In December, the studio laid off a dozen QA testers, leading to a walkout involving both full-time employees and contractors. Last month, those workers said they would unionize with the Communication Workers of America, and asked the troubled publisher to voluntarily recognize their group. Activision did not do that and instead moved to reorganize the studio in a way that critics of the company claim is designed to thwart those efforts.

With less than a week before Elden Ring’sFebruary 25th release date, publisher Bandai Namco has shared a new “Overview” trailer detailing the many systems of FromSoftware’s latest action RPG. The clip features nearly six minutes of edited gameplay footage for fans to check out. And if you’ve been trying to avoid spoilers but still want to see what From’s latest project will offer, this is probably your best chance to do so.

Notably, the trailer offers a glimpse of not just the game’s open-world environment, but the many dungeons that you’ll have a chance to explore during your adventures, including the so-called “legacy” ones that feature the same dense level design that has been a hallmark of FromSoftware games since Demon’s Souls. The clip also offers a look at item crafting, player customization and cooperative play, among other elements.

Elden Ring will be available to play on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. FromSoftware first announced the title back at E3 2019. A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin helped Dark Souls and Bloodborne mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki create the world of the game. After years of waiting, fans will finally get to see the fruits of that collaboration for themselves. 

Following months of reports, Google has confirmed its battery-equipped Nest Doorbell and Cam devices won't charge when they're subjected to extreme cold weather. "At temperatures below freezing, the lithium-ion battery in your Google Nest camera or doorbell won't be able to charge," the company said in a recently published support document spotted by 9to5Google.

According to Google, the battery versions of the Nest Doorbell and Cam can operate at temperatures as low as minus four degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius), provided their batteries have power left. That said, those cells won't charge at temperatures below the freezing mark. What's more, Google warns they may drain faster than usual in cold weather, with battery life potentially halved when the devices are near their operating limit.

The company recommends you bring your Nest Doorbell or Cam indoors in those situations. The warmer the battery gets, the faster it will charge, according to Google. You can look to the Home app to know if you should take your devices inside. The software will display a notification that says "Charging paused" or "Charging slowly," with a lengthy estimated charging time, when cold weather is negatively affecting them.

One other thing to note is that freezing temperatures may impact your Nest devices even if they're wired to your home's electrical system. That's because the Nest Doorbell still draws on its battery for power even when it has an electrical connection. At temperatures below the 32 degrees Farhenheit mark, the trickle charge coming from the wire won't help the battery. And once it dies, you'll need to bring the device inside to charge it once again. By contrast, the Nest Cam can operate with an empty battery as long as it's wired to your home, but should you lose power and the battery is dead, it won't work anymore until you charge it again. In short, if you're cold, there's a good chance your Nest device is too. Bring it inside for a break from the desolate winter. 

NFT marketplace OpenSea is investigating a “phishing attack” that has left more than two dozen of its users without access to some of their most valuable digital tokens. On late Saturday evening, panic hit the platform when someone stole hundreds of NFTs.

Over several hours that afternoon, the attacker targeted 32 accounts and obtained 254 tokens, according to a spreadsheet compiled by Blockchain security service PeckShield. Among the stolen NFTs are tokens from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azuki collections. One estimate by Molly White, the creator of the Web3 is Going Great blog, pegged the haul at 641 Ethereum (approximately $1.7 million at the time of this article).

“We have confidence that this was a phishing attack,” said Devin Finzer, the co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, in a tweet posted early Sunday morning. “We don’t know where the phishing occurred, but we’ve been able to rule out a number of things based on our conversations with the 32 affected users.”

According to Finzer, OpenSea determined its website was not a vector for the attack, nor did someone exploit a previously unknown vulnerability in the platform’s NFT minting, buying, selling and listing features. “Interaction with an OpenSea email is not a vector for attack,” said Finzer. “In fact, we are not aware of any of the affected users receiving or clicking links in suspicious emails.”

We’ve reached out to OpenSea for comment.

As noted by The Verge, the attack likely took advantage of an aspect of the Wyvern Protocol. Many Web3 platforms, including OpenSea, use the open-source standard to underpin their contracts. One Twitter thread suggests those targeted in the phishing campaign may have signed a partial agreement that allowed the attacker to transfer the NFTs without any Ethereum changing hands. Linking to the thread, Finzer said it presented a scenario that was “consistent with our current internal understanding” of the situation.

While there’s still much about the attack we don’t know, what is clear is that it couldn’t have come at a worse time for OpenSea. On Friday, the company introduced a new smart contract and asked people to migrate their assets. It has also been the subject of recent controversy, first starting with an employee who resigned for using insider information to profit on NFT drops and then more recently over the prevalence of tokens that are fake, plagiarized or spam on its platform. 

Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter-like social media platform, will launch in the App Store on February 21st, according to Reuters. The date comes courtesy of a post seen by the outlet on a test version of the network. Responding on Friday to a question from a beta user on when the platform would open to the public, a verified account tied to Truth Social chief product officer “Billy B” told people to mark the 21st on their calendars.

“We’re currently set for release in the Apple App Store for Monday, February 21st,” the executive said, according to Reuters. Incidentally, the 21st marks the Presidents' Day holiday in the US.

Provided the network doesn’t suffer a hiccup like the one it did last fall when a prankster claimed the “donaldjtrump” username and posted an image of defecting pig, the launch will mark Trump’s return to social media. Twitter and Facebook banned the former president following the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.

Before a test version of Truth Social was pulled down last fall, the website’s code showed it ran on a mostly unmodified version of open-source software Mastodon. In October, the Software Freedom Conservancy accused The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) of violating Mastodon’s AGPLv3 license by not sharing the platform’s source code. The website added a dedicated section containing a ZIP archive of its source code two weeks later.

Based on the posts seen by Reuters, Truth Social won’t stray too far from the Twitter formula. People can use the network to post “Truths,” the platform’s equivalent to tweets, and it's possible to reshare posts on one's timeline to expand their reach. The executive who answered questions from beta users said the company was working on a verification policy that it would publish “in the coming weeks.” He also mentioned TMTG was also working on a direct messaging feature that would come later.

When Microsoft announced it would spend $68.7 billion to buy Activision Blizzard to bolster its Xbox gaming division, the news came as a surprise to many. For months, the troubled publisher had been in headlines stemming from the workplace sexual harassment lawsuit filed by California’s fair employment agency in July. The bad press hit a fever pitch on November 16th after The Wall Street Journal published a report that asserted Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had not only known about many of the incidents of sexual harassment that had occured at the company but had also acted to protect those who were responsible for the abuse.

Days after that article came out, Xbox chief Phil Spencer reportedly told employees he was “distributed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions” that allegedly took place at Activision Blizzard and that Microsoft would re-evaluate its relationship with the publisher. It’s one day after that email that Spencer called Kotick to start the process that would end with Microsoft announcing plans to buy Activision Blizzard some two months later, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing first spotted by CNBC.

Starting on page 31 of the document, Microsoft devotes nearly 10 pages detailing the timeline of its talks with Activision. According to the filing, Spencer told Kotick during their November 19th phone call that “Microsoft was interested in discussing strategic opportunities” between the two companies and asked if he had time to talk to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the following day. That Saturday, November 20th, Nadella made it clear Microsoft hoped to purchase the publisher, stating the company was “interested in exploring a strategic combination with Activision Blizzard.”

It turns out the quick pace at which the talks moved was mainly due to all the other companies interested in buying up Activision Blizzard after its stock dived in November. At least four other companies contacted the publisher about a possible acquisition. None of them are named in the SEC filing. However, one notably wanted to just buy Blizzard. Activision didn’t move forward with that option because the company’s board of directors deemed the sale would have been too difficult to pull off.

The document also details the terms of the purchase agreement. If the deal doesn’t go through due to antitrust complications, Microsoft has agreed to pay Activision Blizzard a termination fee of up $3 billion. A few years ago, that’s a possibility Microsoft probably wouldn’t have had to worry about too much, but 2022 finds the company in a very different regulatory environment. At the start of the month, NVIDIA abandoned a $40 billion bid to buy ARM after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the purchase. President Biden appointed Lina Khan, the Commission’s current chair, to the position on the strength of her experience in antitrust law. When the NVIDIA-ARM deal fell through, the agency specifically noted it was "significant" because it "represents the first abandonment of a litigated vertical merger in many years." 

With help from machine learning software, computer scientists may have unmasked the identity of Q, the founder of the QAnon movement. In a sprawling report published on Saturday, The New York Times shared the findings of two independent teams of forensic linguists who claim they’ve identified Paul Furber, a South African software developer who was one of the first to draw attention to the conspiracy theory, as the original writer behind Q. They say Arizona congressional candidate Ron Watkins also wrote under the pseudonym, first by collaborating with Furber and then later taking over the account when it eventually moved to post on his father’s 8chan message board.

The two teams of Swiss and French researchers used different methodologies to come to the same conclusion. The Swiss one, made up of two researchers from startup OrphAnalytics, used software to break down Q’s missives into patterns of three-character sequences. They then tracked how often those sequences repeated. The French team, meanwhile, trained an AI to look for patterns in Q’s writing. Both techniques broadly fall under an approach known as stylometry that looks to analyze writing in a way that is measurable, consistent and replicable. To avoid the possibility of confusing their respective programs, the teams limited their analysis to social media posts. Among all the other possible authors they put through the test, they say the writing of Furber and Watkins stood out the most for how similar it was that of Q’s.

And they’re confident in that identification. The French team made of computational linguists Florian Cafiero and Jean-Baptiste Camps told The Times their software correctly identified Furber’s writing in 98 percent of tests and Watkins’ in 99 percent. “At first most of the text is by Furber,” said Cafiero. “But the signature of Ron Watkins increased during the first few months as Paul Furber decreased and then dropped completely.”

People have previously used machine learning software to identify Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as the secret writer of Cuckoo’s Calling, a 2013 crime fiction novel Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. More broadly, law enforcement agencies have successfully used stylometry in a variety of criminal cases, including by the FBI to show that Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber.

Experts The Times spoke to – including Professor Patrick Juola, the computer scientist who identified Rowling as the author of Cuckoo’s Calling – told they found the findings credible and persuasive. “What’s really powerful is the fact that both of the two independent analyses showed the same overall pattern,” Juola said.

Both Furber and Watkins deny they wrote any of Q’s messages. “I am not Q,” the latter told The Times. Furber, meanwhile, said he was influenced by Q’s posts to change the style of his prose, a claim linguistic experts told the outlet was “implausible.” Also worth mentioning is the fact the analysis included tweets from Furber that date from the earliest days of Q’s existence.

What happens next is unclear. The researchers who worked on the identification told The Times they hope unmasking Q will loosen QAnon’s hold on people. Spreading like wildfire on social media, the conspiracy theory has had a profound effect on politics in the US and other parts of the world. And while Q hasn’t posted a new message since the end of 2020, that hasn’t dampened people’s enthusiasm for conspiracies about the "deep state" and its involvement in their lives.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has responded to Elon Musk’s harassment allegations. In a letter it filed on Friday with a New York federal judge, the SEC said its frequent check-ins with Tesla were consistent with expectations from the court overseeing the company’s 2018 settlement.

At the time, Tesla had agreed its lawyers would preclear some of Musk’s tweets after one of his messages drew the attention of the SEC. The specific tweet saw Musk say that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share. Following an investigation, the SEC alleged the message constituted fraud, with Tesla and Musk eventually agreeing to settle the case for $40 million.

But within less than a year later, the SEC suspected Musk of not complying with his part of the agreement, according to The Wall Street Journal. In 2019 and 2020, the agency’s lawyers wrote to Tesla to ask why some of Musk’s tweets about the company’s production numbers and stock price weren’t cleared by its lawyers. Tesla claimed those statements weren’t covered by the settlement policy.

Tesla accused the SEC this week of using its resources to conduct “endless, unfounded investigations” into the company and its CEO. It also alleges the regulator broke its promise to distribute the $40 million settlement to Tesla shareholders, a claim the SEC disputes. In the letter it filed on Friday, the agency said it was working on a plan to pay shareholders and would have more details to share by March. As for the “endless” investigations, the agency said it has “sought to meet and confer with counsel for Tesla and Mr. Musk to address any concerns regarding Tesla and Mr. Musk’s compliance.”

It’s unclear what happens next now that the SEC has responded to Tesla’s allegations. The Journal reports US District Judge Alison Nathan has asked the two sides to work through their dispute rather than push for the court to intervene in the matter.

Samsung's next hardware event will coincide with Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The company announced today it will host a fully virtual keynote on Sunday, February 27th at 1PM ET. You'll be able to watch the event on Samsung's website and the company's YouTube channel. You'll also find full coverage here at Engadget.

In years past, Mobile World Congress was one of the most important events in Samsung's release calendar. Between 2014 and 2018, the company frequently took to Barcelona to announce its latest Galaxy S phones. However, after it came out with the Galaxy S9 in 2018, the company began instead to unveil those devices at its own Unpacked events. It's easy to see why: while Samsung always dominated the MWC news cycle, it still shared the limelight with other phone makers, including Sony and LG.

And then the pandemic came. In 2020, the GSMA canceled the event. One year later, it pushed it back to late June, but Samsung was among the companies that said it wouldn't have a physical presence at the conference. Now, after two years away, it's returning to the MWC roster.

As for what we can expect from Samsung, it's hard to say. At its first Unpacked of 2022, the company announced the Galaxy S22 and Tab S8. Judging from the invite Samsung shared, the company could focus on devices like the Galaxy Z Flip and Z Fold. The next version of the latter will reportedly take inspiration from the new Galaxy S22 Ultra and add a built-in slot for the company's S Pen Stylus. We won't know the full details until Samsung confirms them come February 27th. Either way, you'll want to visit Engadget that day to see what the company has been working on behind the scenes.

Starting as early as January 2020, Russian state-sponsored hackers have repeatedly targeted American defense contractors, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA). In an alert spotted by The Verge, the agency said on Wednesday that Russian-backed actors have spent the past two years targeting contractors with US security clearance. What's more, those activities allowed them to obtain sensitive information and export-controlled technologies, said CISA.

Those hackers cast a wide net, targeting companies with contracts involving weapons and missile development, as well as vehicle and aircraft design, among other sensitive areas of work for the Department of Defense. CISA makes no mention of those actors obtaining classified documents, but the agency notes they went after both large and small targets. Alongside the FBI and NSA, CISA anticipates Russian-backed hackers will continue to target defense contractors in the near future.

“The acquired information provides significant insight into US weapons platforms development and deployment timelines, vehicle specifications and plans for communications infrastructure and information technology,” said CISA. “By acquiring proprietary internal documents and email communications, adversaries may be able to adjust their own military plans and priorities, hasten technological development efforts, inform foreign policymakers of US intentions and target potential sources for recruitment.”

The advisory comes as tensions between the US and Russia continue to escalate over a potential invasion of Ukraine. In recent weeks, the country has faced multiple cyberattacks, with the most recent coming earlier this week. Ukraine’s defense ministry and two of its state-owned banks suffered denial-of-service attacks. The attacks weren’t directly attributed to Russian-backed actors, but the country blamed its neighbor last month for a campaign that hobbled dozens of government websites.