2 Million People Streamed the ‘Fortnite’ World Cup Finals

On Sunday, 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, also known as Bugha, won the $3 million grand prize at the Fortnite World Cup Finals.Johannes Eisele/Getty ImagesGreetings, and welcome to the latest edition of The Monitor, WIRED's entertainment and culture news roundup. What's happening this fine day? Well, for one, a lot of people saw Quentin Tarantino's new movie—and…

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Physicists Made a Hot Plasma Doughnut to Study Solar Wind

Our planet is mostly shielded from the effects of the solar wind—except near the poles, where it enters Earth’s magnetic field, creating brilliant auroras.Vadim Nefedov/Getty ImagesDespite a reputation for bestowing tans and warming beaches, the sun is not a soothing place. The middle layer of its churning atmosphere, which reaches temperatures of more than ten…

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A VxWorks Operating System Bug Exposes 200 Million Critical Devices

Flaws in networking protocols like those found in VxWorks are rare, but can have serious consequences.Getty ImagesWhen major vulnerabilities show up in ubiquitous operating systems like Microsoft Windows, they can be weaponized and exploited, the fallout potentially impacting millions of devices. Today, researchers from the enterprise security firm Armis are detailing just such a group…

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Cyano-Collage: You Can’t Photoshop This Mountain

The epic blue mountain-scape you see above is a composite of hundreds of image layers. But they weren't made with Photoshop—or a digital camera, for that matter.Instead, artist Wu Chi-Tsung turned to analog methods from the past. He drew from both the Western tradition of cyanotype-making, developed by Sir John Herschel in 1842, and Eastern…

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Star Wars News: The End of ‘Rise of Skywalker’ Will Melt Your Mind

It came in too late to be included in the last roundup, but everyone has met the Sith Trooper that got revealed in the run-up to Comic-Con International, right? Surely you've spent as much time as we have trying to work out just what that name and color scheme means. Are these the next generation…

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Sharing Your \#HotGirlSummer? Buy Megan Thee Stallion’s Album

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion's catchphrase has taken over social media.Lorne Thomson/Redferns/Getty ImagesIf you're having a "hot girl summer," it's time to pay up. Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion, and her definitive tweet that this season is made for hot girls, made the phrase the season's most ubiquitous meme, an internet-wide catchphrase. Got vacation pictures? "Hot…

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