The government is helping Big Telecom squeeze out city-run broadband

The government is helping Big Telecom squeeze out city-run broadband

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

President Joe Biden’s internet access plan will hand $41.6 billion to internet service providers. In many places, that money will get funneled into private hands.

I started fantasizing about moving to Idaho when I heard about the broadband. I knew the state was a gem — I didn’t know a 20,000-person city leads the entire country in equitable internet access.

In Ammon, Idaho, every home has access to a fiber optic connection with 1 gigabit per second download and upload speeds. It costs roughly $30 per month. And it’s not controlled by a single big company. Nine different providers can offer you that connection. If you wanted, each of the four ethernet ports in your home gateway could deliver service from a different ISP.

It’s all thanks to one simple idea picking up steam in pockets of the United States: the internet should be treated like a public street. “We’ve built a road,” Ammon city administrator Micah Austin tells me. “We allow any number of UPS trucks or USPS trucks or Amazon trucks to deliver as many packets as they want to residents. The road we’ve built has unlimited capacity. There’s a million lanes. Really, the biggest limitation is your driveway.”

That means providers have to compete, unlike many parts of the US where people are lucky to have even two real choices of ISP and subsequently pay some of the highest rates in the world.

I tell Austin that he’s just described the waking nightmare of AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Lumen (CenturyLink), and Frontier. We both laugh. But it’s not really a joke – not when tens of billions of dollars in federal funding are at stake.

The United States is about to deploy $41.6 billion to expand high-speed internet access across all 50 states and every major US territory through a program called Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD). It’s the largest public investment in US broadband ever, and the Comcasts of the country will try their damndest to make sure that public money winds up in private hands.

But in many states, the fight will be over before it even begins — because of lobbyists.

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

In 2021, I wrote about the sorry state of internet in the US.

$100 billion was the original plan.

It was March of 2021. President Joe Biden had just taken office, declaring his intent to “bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American.” And instead of relying on Big Telecom, as much money as possible would go toward public networks. Biden promised to prioritize support for networks “owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and co-operatives.” He even suggested he’d clear the way legally for new municipal networks to exist by “lifting barriers that prevent municipally-owned or affiliated providers and rural electric co-ops from competing on an even playing field with private providers.”

This last promise was a key piece of the puzzle. Over the past three decades, hundreds of US cities and towns have tried to launch municipal broadband services in one form or another. But the deck has always been stacked in favor of incumbents.

Biden’s proposal could have launched a thousand new Ammons. When it passed eight months later, it was barely recognizable.

The American Jobs Plan became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, which was finally signed as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $100 billion shrunk to $65 billion, then to $42.45 billion for last-mile connections to people’s homes — technically $41.6 billion, after a 2 percent cut for feds to administer the program. And surprise, surprise: the final law (pdf) didn’t prioritize local networks at all.

Biden’s proposal could have launched a thousand new Ammons

States can’t outright exclude local networks from grant eligibility under Biden’s infrastructure deal. (It says “may not exclude” right in the law.) But they’re only required to submit a “description” of how they intend to coordinate with local governments and “ascertain…whether” it makes sense to establish co-ops or public-private partnerships… or not. After that, they can hand the grants straight to big corporations. And in nearly one-third of the US, that decision may have already been made.

As of this article’s publication, 16 states have laws aimed blatantly at protecting telecom incumbents from pesky public competition. Did you know the state of Michigan only lets you build a network if enough private companies don’t bid? Florida requires local officials to explain how their network will be profitable within four years, as if profits were the point of fixing the digital divide. Nevada will only let towns and counties with tiny populations erect their own networks. Virginia local networks aren’t allowed to charge less than the incumbents — it’s illegal to make the internet more affordable!

These laws weren’t just supported by Big Telecom, by the way — some were effectively written by telecom lobbyists. They can reportedly be traced back to a model law written in 2002 by ALEC, a right-wing legislative group whose donors previously included AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Lumen, and Verizon, and which would allegedly invite state legislators to meet telecom companies at fancy hotels.

Image: Erik Carter for The Verge

In 2022, The Verge teamed up with Consumer Reports to reveal how much our readers actually pay for internet.

In theory, these laws exist because municipal broadband doesn’t work. Its critics certainly have some ammo on their side — and not just openly partisan fare like 2020’s “The Failed Promise of Government Owned Networks Across America” from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

A recently revised study by the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is a linchpin in attacks on municipal broadband. It’s cited in reports that are provided to members of Congress, and it broadly suggests that municipal fiber doesn’t pay. Examining 15 municipal networks, it concludes most failed to turn a profit, many put their towns in debt or hurt their bond ratings, and some were eventually sold at a loss. “City leaders should carefully assess all of these costs and risks before permitting a municipal fiber program to go forward,” wrote lead author, professor Christopher Yoo.

But take a close look at the study’s “failures,” and you’ll find something a lot more complicated.

At first, some of the report’s case studies sound like horror stories. “Marietta, Georgia sold its system for $11.2 million at a loss of $24 million,” wrote Yoo. “Provo, Utah sold its system for $1, leaving behind $39 million in debt.”

“He promised he would sell the fiber network to the highest bidder”

But long-time broadband journalist Philip Dampier revisited those debacles for Stop the Cap! in 2012 and 2017, respectively, and he concluded that Marietta and Provo didn’t sell their networks because of financial problems. They did it because pro-telecom politicians forced their hand.

“Marietta’s then-candidate for mayor, Bill [Dunaway], did not want the city competing with private telecommunications companies. If elected, he promised he would sell the fiber network to the highest bidder. He won and he did,” wrote Dampier. Not only did the supposed $24 million “loss” not count the money Marietta FiberNet was earning — the city was reportedly on track to pay off its debt just two years later. And the company that bought Marietta’s network didn’t fire its management and didn’t change its marketing plans.

As for Provo, it appears telecom lobbyists were at least partly to blame. When Provo was starting out, a new Utah law surprised the city with requirements to wholesale its network and finance it with debt. Meanwhile, the neighboring town of Spanish Fork has a thriving community network to this day because the law didn’t exist yet, ILSR director Chris Mitchell pointed out in 2015.

And while Provo made headlines by selling the network for a dollar, it got more than a single dollar for its $39 million investment: Google Fiber promised to offer seven years of free basic service for residents and 15 years of free service to the city. Perhaps more importantly, it created competition. Google still operates there today, offering gigabit speeds and unlimited data for $70 a month, the same price Comcast charges with a 1.2TB data cap. Provo may not be getting the best value for money, but is the result actually a failure for residents?

Image: Penn Law

Christopher Yoo’s study does capture some of the risk cities may face — but may miss the big picture, among other things.

You could ask the same of Monticello, Minnesota, where Yoo correctly points out that the city defaulted on its debt — but only after getting frivolously sued by the local phone company, after that phone company used the distraction to build its own fiber-optic competitor, and finally after Charter cut its prices by more than half to force the city out of business.

Despite all that, FiberNet Monticello still exists today as a public-private partnership that offers 100Mbps symmetrical connections for $30 a month or gigabit speeds for $75. And all those attempts to drive it out of the market meant competition that wound up lowering consumer prices from their $150-a-month highs. The city’s long-time administrator went on the ILSR podcast in 2020 to discuss how much of a success it’s been for the town — and revealed that its municipal network now makes an annual profit of $280,000.

Yoo originally even tried to use Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Electric Power Board (EPB), one of the highest profile success stories in municipal fiber, as a note of caution — since the city saw its bond rating cut from “AA+” to “AA” in March 2012. But he neglected to point out that S&P upgraded its rating to AA+ later that same year on the strength of its network, and the 2022 version of his study simply omits the EPB from the same argument.

When I mention the Yoo study to Ry Marcattilio, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR), he attempts to discredit it on the spot. “It’s neither credible nor particularly well done, nor sensitive to the actual details of any of the case studies it uses,” he says, adding that Yoo initially got basic details wrong about how local entities were financing and modeling the economics. “Nobody who’s been in this space takes anything he has to say on that seriously.” (The ILSR published a rebuttal to Yoo’s study in 2017, and here’s Yoo’s response.) Yoo did not respond to my requests for comment.

Katie Espeseth, EPB’s VP of new products, suggests I take a look at a study by Dr. Bento Lobo instead — which suggests Chattanooga’s network not only paid for itself in the second year but also contributed $2.2 billion of positive economic impact in its first decade. (Note, though, that it’s not a wholly independent study: Dr. Lobo received a $25,000 grant from the EPB to conduct that research.)

But the best evidence that studies like Yoo’s are flawed, the ILSR claims, are the hundreds of communities across the country that are successfully building their own networks without making national headlines.

Ry Marcattilio joined the ILSR in 2020 specifically to help track the growth of local networks since the covid-19 pandemic, and he says the number has risen by roughly 25 percent to 345 municipal networks during that period. “Altogether, those 345 networks span 89 cities in the United States, of which 269 cities have a citywide physical network serving them,” he says. The American Association of Public Broadband, an advocacy group that just launched this May under Gigi Sohn, puts the number even higher: over 750 community networks in the USA.

Some of that growth is publicly funded. Marcattilio points me to this list of projects using dollars from the American Rescue Plan, and he expects BEAD will make a difference, too. “A good portion of the BEAD money will end up going to the monopoly ISPs. Where it changes the game for municipal networks is where states have set up good rules that favor local voices and where cities have done due diligence in getting this money to take action,” he says. Marcattilio thinks Vermont, Maine, Colorado, and New York are particularly poised to do well with the additional investment.

Image: The Verge

In 2021, The Verge took an interactive county-by-county look at the broadband gap.

But will BEAD funds be pouring into an illegally rigged playing field? That’s the question that’s been bugging me for weeks.

Because no matter how much Biden’s infrastructure bill was weakened, the final federal law still says states “may not exclude” public entities from a chance at the grant money. And yet, the federal agency responsible for BEAD broadband dollars apparently doesn’t agree.

Remember the 2 percent deduction from the infrastructure act? That $849 million helps fund the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which lays out all the requirements for states and their subcontractors to get BEAD funding in this 98-page document (pdf). But the NTIA has seemingly decided not to challenge the states. Even as the agency “strongly encourages” waiving pre-existing laws, it’s simultaneously assuring states it won’t act if they ignore that request.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The law says “may not exclude.” But the NTIA says preexisting state exclusions don’t count.

While the NTIA does interpret the law as banning new restrictions, the only thing states have to do about pre-existing restrictions is to “disclose each unsuccessful application affected by such laws and describe how those laws impacted the decision to deny the application.” It’s effectively a grandfather clause, where the only penalty is paperwork.

And while the NTIA does reserve the right to “determine whether the use of funds” complies with both the letter and spirit of the law, an NTIA representative has already been telling states (and told FierceTelecom) that BEAD funding won’t be delayed to states with pre-existing laws that restrict municipal broadband. Even in places like Nebraska, where most forms of municipal broadband are straight-up banned, the state’s broadband director said he expects no delay or reduction in federal dollars.

NTIA spokesperson Virginia Bring repeatedly deflected our questions about the legal discrepancy between the federal and state laws. None of the agency’s answers to The Verge addressed it at all. Two telecommunication lawyers confirmed to me that the legal discrepancy is real — but suggested the NTIA could get tangled up in a lawsuit if it tried to use the federal law to preempt state ones.

When I ask veteran tell-it-like-it-is telecom reporter Karl Bode about the whole BEAD situation, he tells me: “This is a historic infusion of broadband subsidies that will absolutely result in a lot of amazing progress. At the same time there’s just endless potential for fraud and misuse of funding, given monopoly telecom’s influence on the legislative process.”

But, he points out, some states may at least try to level the playing field before it’s too late.

Colorado used to be the 17th state with laws keeping local entities from easily erecting their own networks. But on May 1st, the state repealed every one of them. Colorado no longer prioritizes private telecom bids, no longer requires a referendum to build a municipal network, and no longer keeps local governments from creating their own middle-mile infrastructure.

In Washington, there’s even a bill in committee that would require BEAD funding to be spent only on open-access networks, making it less desirable for big business to invest.

Some states are challenging the FCC’s broadband maps, too. That’s important because the law requires that states prioritize unserved and underserved regions to help close the digital divide, but that requires knowing where they are. Historically, the FCC has let the wolves guard the henhouse by relying on ISPs to truthfully say which houses they cover — data that the FCC didn’t even audit.

Lastly, while the NTIA may be grandfathering in old laws restricting municipal broadband, the agency does hint it could step in if states make things even harder than before. Before it approves a state’s “final proposal,” the NTIA says it will “consider” whether any “new laws, regulations, policies, procedures, or any other form of rule or restriction” winds up excluding “any potential providers from eligibility.”

Again, the NTIA will only “consider” those things before granting its approval, but at least that’s a veiled threat instead of nothing at all.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In 2018, Karl Bode wrote for The Verge about how the FCC was relying on a false picture of internet access for federal funding. Improvements have been made, but it’s not clear they’re fixed.

Municipal networks can thrive even without these billions in federal funding, and despite restrictive state laws. Tennessee’s law didn’t stop the Chattanooga Electric Power Board from serving 135,000 homes and businesses with 25Gbps symmetrical internet — it mostly just kept the company from expanding beyond its own electrical footprint, restricting its ability to close the digital divide in neighboring cities and towns.

Even then, there are ways to do more. The EPB’s network can touch over a million homes because it offers wholesale services to communities on the edge of its network, Espeseth tells me. Ammon does something similar.

And if you do have the legal authority, Ammon technology director Dan Tracy says justifying a network isn’t as challenging as you might expect. Your city needs water and power anyhow, it uses SCADA systems to control them, and a fiber-optic backbone for those systems can also turn into internet for the residents with a bit more work. “Infrastructure is kind of all the same that way, in that it’s close to where it needs to be,” says Tracy. Ammon hired its own construction crews, bought its own fiber splicer, and built a six-strand network with two fibers just for the city’s backbone connectivity.

But Ammon is a relatively wealthy town, he admits.

So here’s my question: should local entities do without the biggest federal investment in broadband ever? Should they have to do it on their own with these restrictive laws in place, or trust that Comcast and Cox and CenturyLink will fix a problem that they currently benefit from? Should Big Telecom get to own billions of dollars of additional network funded by taxpayers?

Should we really be building toll bridges instead of public roads?

How to Use A.I. as a Shopping Assistant

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Vimeos new AI script generator will write corporate marketing filler in seconds

Vimeo’s new AI script generator will write corporate marketing filler in seconds

Video platform Vimeo is integrating new AI tools for paying users, including an AI script generation feature powered by OpenAI’s tech. The company is promoting the tools as a way for users to “create a fully produced video in minutes,” and stressing the utility for corporate customers — potential use-cases range “from quickly creating highlight reels, to hosting virtual events or company meetings, to exporting quote clips for short marketing videos.”

There are three new features. A script generator that generates scripts “based on a brief description and key inputs like tone and length.” A teleprompter, which has no real AI component, but lets users adjust timing and font size. And a text-based video editor, which automatically identifies “filler words, long pauses, and awkward moments,” and lets users remove them with a single click. The tools will be available from July 17th to users paying for Vimeo’s “standard plan” and up (with prices starting at $25 a month).

The tools sound useful, but we’ve not been able to test out the most important feature, the script generator. This could be handy but it could also be trash. For example, if you’re announcing some new product or service from your company, how will the system know this information? To what degree will users have to edit its output to ensure accuracy? However, OpenAI tools like ChatGPT are certainly capable of generating anodyne corporate marketing filler, and this will presumably be a welcome time-saver for some users.

Vimeo is hoping the tools will help position it as an “all-in-one resource for video production.” Although the site had once hoped to challenge YouTube as a video host with a focus on creative content, it’s since shifted to corporate customers. Bundling production tools along with hosting costs could help strengthen this pitch.

Vimeo’s CPO Ashraf Alkarmi told The Verge that the script generator is “powered by OpenAI,” but wouldn’t specify which model (ChatGPT or GPT-3, etc). Alkarmi also noted that “at this time” the firm is “not currently using videos to train generative AI models.” Utilizing data in this way (as Google has used YouTube to train its AI systems) could certainly provide future revenue, if the production features don’t sell as well as the company hopes.

WhatsApp can now silence calls from unknown numbers

WhatsApp can now silence calls from unknown numbers

The new option is available from the privacy menu in settings. | Image: WhatsApp / Meta

WhatsApp’s latest feature can automatically mute incoming calls if they’re from an unknown number, the service announced today. The setting is available by going into WhatsApp’s settings, hitting “Privacy,” selecting “Calls,” and turning on the “Silence Unknown Callers” toggle. WhatsApp says the feature will help “screen out spam, scams, and calls from unknown people for increased protection.”

When enabled, the feature silences all signs of incoming calls from unknown numbers including both sound and visual alerts in the app. However, silenced calls will still appear in your recent calls list with a “silenced unknown caller” note next to them, in case you want to call back.

The addition of the feature comes after reports of an uptick in spam calls, particularly affecting Indian users. A month ago, TechCrunch reported that WhatsApp had introduced a new enforcement system that used machine learning to reduce the amount of spam calls by a claimed 50 percent. Now, with the new silencing feature in the app, users can attempt to silence any spam calls not caught by the service’s automatic filters.

In addition to the silencing feature, WhatsApp says it’s also adding a new “Privacy Checkup” feature that’s designed to inform users about the privacy and security options WhatsApp offers, step-by-step. The checkup covers several categories, including letting users choose who can contact them, and adding additional security to their account such as two-step verification or requiring biometric authentication to open the app.

Google Pixel Tablet review: the dock makes all the difference

Google Pixel Tablet review: the dock makes all the difference

Google’s first tablet in many years doesn’t try to reinvent what tablets are good for. Instead, it leans into being a good media consumption device and can be a useful smart display when you’re not holding it.

Google’s hardware history is littered with failed attempts at tablets. Many of those past efforts, such as the Pixel C or Pixel Slate, were trying to find new and novel uses for a tablet, most with a focus on productivity. Attachable keyboards, various operating systems, and different ideas on how to multitask were the name of Google’s game.

The Pixel Tablet, Google’s first new tablet in five years, takes a different approach. The $499 tablet isn’t here to convince you that it’s anything more than a big screen for media consumption, playing games, or browsing the web. It makes no effort to replace your laptop, it doesn’t make any proclamations about the future of computing, and its multitasking features end at putting two apps side by side. You can’t get it with built-in cellular connectivity nor can you plug it into a desktop monitor. Google isn’t making a keyboard, stylus, or even a basic folio-style case for it. Its one unique trick is straightforward: an included speaker dock that provides a place to store and charge the tablet when it’s not in your hand.

The Pixel Tablet is defined as much by what it is not as what it is.

That approach largely works. The Pixel Tablet is great for the things most people already do with tablets: watching video on the couch, playing games, or entertaining kids. And when you’re done, instead of getting shoved in a drawer until its battery dies, it can transform into a smart display for listening to music or controlling your smart home while you go about other tasks.

The Pixel Tablet is a simple-looking device, with an 11-inch screen surrounded by a half-inch bezel on all sides. Though it doesn’t look fancy in photos, it’s put together well and doesn’t feel cheap. The back has a soft-touch matte finish on its aluminum body; you could easily mistake it for plastic. There are three colors available: off white, soft pink, or dark green. The two lighter colors have a white bezel around the screen, while the green model has a black bezel. The rounded sides, soft touch finish, and generous bezels make it comfortable to hold in either portrait or landscape orientation.

The Pixel Tablet’s finish looks like plastic from afar, but it’s actually a nice-feeling coating on top of an aluminum frame.

The Pixel Tablet’s rouded sides make it comfortable to hold. A fingerprint scanner in the sleep / wake button makes unlocking it easy.

The LCD display has a sharp 2560 x 1600 resolution, wide viewing angles, punchy colors, and no visible air gap between the glass and the panel. It won’t compete with Samsung’s OLED tablets or Apple’s Mini LED screens for brightness or contrast, nor does it have the high-refresh rates found on the OnePlus Pad and other tablets. But it still looks great for watching video and I doubt many will find fault with it.

My one complaint is with the 16:10 aspect ratio, which is more rectangular than the 4:3 screen on an iPad. Browsing the web in landscape mode feels vertically cramped; reading an article or book in portrait orientation is more awkward than on an iPad. As a result, the Pixel Tablet is not my favorite device for reading, the thing I do most with a tablet. It really drives home the fact that this is primarily a “watch things” device.

There are four speakers, two on each side, that provide clear audio and noticeable stereo separation. What’s lacking is a headphone jack — you’ll have to either use Bluetooth or a USB-C dongle for more private audio. That’s the trend among phones, tablets, and even laptops now, but having a traditional headphone jack would make the Pixel Tablet easier for kids to use and makes sense for the communal type of device it is trying to be.

The Pixel Tablet’s screen is sharp with good colors and viewing angles.

Using the Pixel Tablet in portrait orientation is doable, but awkward.

Centered in the bezel on the long edge of the screen is an 8-megapixel webcam. The Pixel Tablet is fine for one-on-one video calls, with sharp details and good color. But it’s less ideal for large groups: when I used it for a meeting with a dozen other people, Google Meet would only show me half the attendees at a time. There’s also a perfunctory rear camera, which you can use for scanning documents or snapping a pic in a pinch, but you’re certainly better off using the camera on your phone for anything beyond that.

Inside the Pixel Tablet is the same Google-made Tensor G2 processor found in the Pixel 7 line of phones. It’s paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in the base configuration; $100 more gets you 256GB of storage. This setup is effectively identical to the Pixel 7A phone, just with a bigger screen. While I’d have loved to see more storage options and maybe even microSD card expandability, it’s nice that Google is providing twice the base storage Apple offers in its similar iPads.

The G2 provides fine performance for the majority of tasks I tried on the Pixel Tablet, and it had no problem pushing pixels around as I navigated the interface. Most games run well on it and it unsurprisingly streamed video in apps or through the browser without a problem. The chip’s struggles are the same we’ve seen with the phones: the tablet gets noticeably warm even when doing relatively basic tasks and battery life is not as good as I get from similar tablets. Most of the time I got six to eight hours of use between charges, considerably less than the 12 hours Google advertises and a couple hours less than I usually get from an iPad. But charging it up between uses is so easy with the included dock that I don’t think it’s that much of an issue.

The Pixel Tablet is held on its speaker dock via magnets.

The speaker dock is color matched to the tablet and covered in fabric, like many of Google’s other smart home devices.

There’s something undeniably cool about picking up the Pixel Tablet, tapping around for a minute or two to find something to listen to, and then dropping it on the compact, fabric-covered and color matched speaker dock and having my music, podcast, or audiobook seamlessly transfer to the dock’s louder, better speaker before I go about doing something else. I don’t have to phrase a voice command just right to get what I want to play; I don’t have to fuss with Bluetooth pairing or wait for the app to cast to another smart speaker — I just drop the tablet down and am good to go.

The speaker dock is also a clever solution to a familiar problem: if you don’t use a tablet often, it frequently isn’t charged when you do want to use it. By providing a place to always put the tablet when you’re done that also charges the battery, the dock makes sure the Pixel Tablet is ready to go the next time you need it. (By default the Pixel Tablet will charge up to 90 percent on the dock to preserve its battery’s longevity, you can override this in settings to get it to go all the way to 100 percent.)

This is something Apple has never solved with the iPad and third parties haven’t made any decent charging docks in years. I use the $300 Magic Keyboard as a charging dock for my iPad Pro, which tells you everything you need to know about the iPad’s situation here.

The Pixel Tablet mounts to the dock via magnets and uses pogo pins on the back to communicate with it. The one extra accessory Google did make is a kinda-overpriced $79.99 rubberized case that has a large metal loop on the back to act as a kickstand. That loop is wide enough to fit around the dock, so you don’t have to take the tablet out of the case to dock it. On the flip side, the case is heavy and most of the time I ended up taking it off the tablet when I was holding it anyways.

The Pixel Tablet has many of the same features as a Nest Hub when it’s mounted to the speaker dock.

Transitioning audio to and from the dock and the tablet is seamless — the tablet doesn’t pause or require a confirmation, it just plays a soft chime and moves the audio over. It’s easy to line up the tablet on the dock and it’s similarly easy to remove, despite the magnets being strong enough to hold the tablet with confidence.

Once on the dock, the Pixel Tablet becomes a cast target, so you can send video or audio from your phone just like you might with a Chromecast or Google smart display. (Unfortunately, you can’t cast audio to the dock when the tablet isn’t on it.) Audio from the speaker is louder and fuller than the tablet’s built-in speakers, and it had no problem filling my kitchen with sound.

More interestingly, the Pixel Tablet is also a smart display when it’s on the dock. Not only does it look like Google’s own Nest Hub Max when mounted, it can do many of the same tricks. Three far-field microphones can pick up “Hey Google” voice commands to the Google Assistant from across the room, and the tablet will display nicely formatted answers to common queries like weather, sports scores, and general facts. It can display a screensaver of images from a Google Photos album or a variety of other clocks when it’s not in use; it can play music through voice commands from a variety of services. You can ask it to set timers — more than one, even! — or add things to a grocery list you manage in Google Keep.

You can set and monitor multiple timers on the Pixel Tablet when it’s docked.

Sports scores and other information is formatted for a lean back view.

You can also control smart home devices through voice commands or via the shortcut button in the lower left corner of the screen that launches a control panel of device toggles powered by the Google Home app. It also integrates with Google’s Nest devices, such automatically showing a video feed whenever a Nest Doorbell is rung.

I wish Google went further with this, though. I’d love to use the Pixel Tablet as an always-on smart home dashboard when it’s docked, so I could quickly see if someone left the garage door open or easily glance at feeds from security cameras. But you always have to press the shortcut button to launch the control panel, which makes it much less seamless than I’d like.

The Pixel Tablet also lacks some other features from the Nest Hub, though I’m not sure how many people will miss them. You can’t get nicely formatted recipes that walk you through each step; instead you just get a web search. I can’t wave my hand at it to stop a timer or pause music, nor can I use the front-facing camera as a security camera in the Home app. Voice commands to play video often result in the Android app launching instead of playing directly. Those omissions aside, for a lot of people, this can replace a Nest Hub smart display entirely.

The Pixel Tablet’s smart home controls are handy, but could be even better with a few tweaks.

An ideal setup would include multiple speaker docks throughout your house, so no matter where you happen to stop using the tablet, you have a place to put it and have the benefits of a smart display. But Google is charging $129.99 for each additional dock (more than the cost of a standalone Nest Audio smart speaker), which makes this a less than practical option.

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The Pixel Tablet’s Android software has a very similar interface and aesthetic as Google’s Pixel phones. It’s customizable with various colors and widgets and Pixel phone owners will feel right at home with it. Google has added some things to make better use of the tablet’s larger display, such as a dual-pane notification shade and a quick-access app dock. You can also put two apps on the screen at the same time and drag and drop content between them.

The Pixel Tablet is also much more useful as a shared device than an iPad, simply because it supports multiple users. You can have a single tablet in a common space such as a kitchen and everyone can have their own personal accounts on it locked behind their respective fingerprints. There’s also a kids mode for parents to enable that locks down the tablet in customizable ways.

Like the Pixel phones, the Pixel Tablet’s software is colorful and customizable.

But while the Pixel phones have loads of smart features like call screening and flip-to-do-not-disturb, the Pixel Tablet feels lacking in this area. It doesn’t have any tablet-specific smart features that I could find; beyond the split-screen view, there aren’t any multitasking or windowing options. You can’t save pairs of apps as shortcuts to the home screen so they launch together in the same layout every time, like Samsung offers. The volume rocker doesn’t intelligently swap positions when I turn the tablet to portrait orientation, which often leads to “up” being volume down and “down” being volume up. It’s a small thing to get used to, but one that Apple solved on the iPad already.

Google has updated the majority of its own apps, such as Chrome, Maps, Gmail, Google News, Photos, Files, Google Home, weather, and others with tablet-specific designs that look good and work well. But if you look outside Google’s catalog, it doesn’t take long to find apps that still aren’t designed to work well on the tablet. Many apps designed for phones will run on the tablet, but with stretched-out layouts that have loads of unused space instead of multiple column views like on an iPad. For me, it’s my RSS reader and Slack that just stretch to fill the screen with lots of empty space; others will probably find the fact that Instagram opens in a phone-sized view with two-thirds of the screen blacked out a bit disappointing. (Thankfully you can easily fill that dead space with another app.)

If Google was pitching the Pixel Tablet as a laptop-replacing productivity device, I’d have a bigger problem with the lack of well-formatted apps. But if the majority of your time with the tablet is spent watching a video or playing a game in full screen, it doesn’t really matter if the rest of the app’s interface isn’t perfectly formatted.

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With the Pixel Tablet, Google has made a device that’s specifically designed to be used in your home. It’s for watching video on the couch, or listening to music in the kitchen while cooking or doing dishes. It’s not meant to replace your laptop; it’s not even really designed to be used on the go. It’s a tablet built for the things people are already doing with tablets and it does most (if not quite all) of those things well.

A lot of the value you get out of the Pixel Tablet will depend on how much you actually take it off the dock

At $500, the Pixel Tablet does feel a tad expensive, especially when a base model iPad does effectively all the same tablet stuff and a Nest Hub Max does the same smart display stuff, both for much less money. A lot of the value you get out of the Pixel Tablet will be dependent on how much you actually take it off its dock. Based on my conversations with others, a competent tablet that can also be a smart display is exactly what they want. If you already have an Android phone or are invested in Google’s ecosystem by way of the Google Home app, it might make more sense in your life than an iPad.

But it’s also a safe device. The Pixel Tablet is not pushing the boundaries of what a versatile touchscreen slate could be used for, or even trying to compete with something like the iPad Pro. The door is wide open for Google to come out with a “Pixel Tablet Pro” that has accessories designed for productivity and perhaps some more advanced software down the road. The company could be testing the waters for how much appetite there is for an Android tablet before it goes all-in on them again.

Or not. Google’s now got the basics covered and that might just finally be enough.

Meta to Lower Age for Users of Quest VR Headset to 10 From 13

Meta to Lower Age for Users of Quest VR Headset to 10 From 13 The company has reached out to regulators about its plans, which could set off privacy and safety concerns for parents and watchdogs.

Nothing Phone 2: a roundup of every tease about the upcoming phone

Nothing Phone 2: a roundup of every tease about the upcoming phone

The rear of 2022’s Nothing Phone 1. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Our constantly updated list of all the teases Nothing has released about its second phone.

Rather than waiting until a full launch event, Nothing likes to slowly release information about its devices spec-by-spec over time. It’s an approach that generates a lot of headlines, but it can be hard to keep track of all the official information that’s been made public.

As its name suggests, the Phone 2 is Nothing’s second smartphone and is set to launch a year after the company revealed its predecessor. The Phone 1 was notable for its flashing “glyph” interface, where light strips on the rear of the phone would light up to alert you to notifications and other device details.

Here’s our roundup of all the announcements Nothing has made about the Phone 2. We plan to update this page regularly with new details as they emerge in the run up to its official launch in July.

Reddit hackers demand $4.5 million ransom and API pricing changes

Reddit hackers demand $4.5 million ransom and API pricing changes

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

A ransomware group is claiming responsibility for a hack on Reddit’s systems earlier this year — and demanding not just money but policy changes.

BlackCat, a ransomware group, says it was behind the February phishing attack on Reddit, as previously reported by Bleeping Computer. In a post shared by researcher Dominic Alvieri, BlackCat claims to have stolen 80GB of data from Reddit and threatens to release it publicly if demands aren’t met. The group wants a $4.5 million payout in exchange for the data and also demands Reddit roll back its planned API pricing changes that spurred user and moderator protests last week.

At the time of the hack, Reddit said hackers had used a “sophisticated and highly-targeted” phishing attack to get access to internal documents and data, including contact information for employees and advertisers. The company maintained that the hackers hadn’t accessed user data that wasn’t public.

Reddit declined to comment on the record about the hack. Bleeping Computer reports that the BlackCat hack and the incident disclosed by Reddit in February are the same.

BlackCat’s new demands around API pricing changes follow a contentious back-and-forth between Reddit leadership and some of its most engaged users. After Reddit announced it would begin charging developers of third-party apps — potentially to the tune of millions of dollars a year — many top subreddits went dark in response, limiting new posts and closing public access. In an interview with The Verge, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the platform was “never designed” to support third-party apps and that the company wouldn’t pull back from its proposed changes.

Reddit previously fell victim to an attack in 2018 in which a hacker gained access to user data, including email addresses and old usernames and passwords.

Breville Joule Turbo review: sous vide with speed

Breville Joule Turbo review: sous vide with speed

Sous vide cooking can produce perfect meats every time, but it takes a long time to do so. Breville’s new Joule Turbo can pull the same tricks in as little as half the time.

Sous vide cooking has a lot of advantages. It can make a cheap cut of meat taste like an expensive one, it can deliver unparalleled juiciness and tenderness, and it can do all of that while being just about idiot-proof. It also has some disadvantages, chief among them being that it’s slow. I can think of several occasions when I wanted to sous vide something for dinner, only to realize that it would be 11PM by the time it was done. Well, the new $250 Breville Joule Turbo Sous Vide promises to cut cook times by as much as half, and it does it with the power of some serious math.

A quick refresher for those who need it. Sous vide is a cooking technique that uses a circulating immersion heater to bring a bath of water to a very specific temperature and keep it there. That water never touches the food, though (unless you’re hard-boiling eggs). Instead, you season the food as you like and then put it in a plastic or silicone bag, press all the air out, and drop it in that hot water bath. When it’s all done, you give it a quick sear just for that Maillard reaction flavor (akin to caramelization), plate it, and eat it.

This technique is especially beneficial for meats because it’s essentially impossible to overcook or undercook them. If you think 131 degrees Fahrenheit is the perfect temperature for your steak, you set the water to 131 degrees and put it in there. As long as you give it enough time, the entire steak will come to exactly 131 degrees, meaning it’s perfect all the way through, even if your guests get stuck in a snowstorm and it ends up cooking for six hours.

In fact, for cheaper, leaner cuts of meat, slower is generally better. These cuts tend to be leaner and have a lot of connective tissue. Cooking them slowly allows the collagen to melt and brings out amazing savory flavors, but because it’s all bagged up, it can’t dry out, so all those juices stay right where they’re supposed to be.

The Joule Turbo is the new and improved version of the original ChefSteps Joule sous vide. Breville bought ChefSteps a few years ago, so now it’s called the Breville Joule Turbo (this caused a bit of confusion when I couldn’t get the ChefSteps Joule app to work with the new device. I just had to install the Breville Joule app instead).

Like the original, the Joule Turbo is a handsome and compact device. It’s just over 12 inches long and just under two inches in diameter, so it fits easily in virtually any kitchen drawer, which I love. Truth be told, there’s virtually no visible difference between the original and the Turbo hardware-wise. I was told that Breville has a “higher standard for longevity” than perhaps ChefSteps did, so the internal components have been made a bit more robust. The only thing that’s obvious is that it’s an inch or so taller, and it now sports a tougher “Breville plug” on the power cord.

The long and skinny shape of the Joule Turbo makes it easy to store in a kitchen drawer.

The Joule’s strong clip keeps it in place while it cooks.

The good news is that everything that was good about the original hasn’t changed with the Turbo. Despite its diminutive size, water still heats up faster than any other sous vide I’ve tested. It’s also capable of heating a bath as large as 10 gallons, which is truly massive, but its water inlet is low, so it can also run in just a few inches of water (the magnetic foot helps stabilize it in a pot, and the robust metal clip on the side will hold it in place, too).

The bad news is that there are still no manual controls on the device itself. A simple knob and display would go a long way here, as sometimes you just want to put the thing in some water, set it, and walk away. Instead, using the smartphone app is mandatory, which connects to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

That inconvenience aside, the app is generally excellent. Once you’re plugged in and connected, you just choose a recipe, like a salmon steak, for example. The app walks you through everything you need to do and has “visual doneness” videos, which show you what your food will look like depending on which temperature you choose. With the salmon example, set it to 104F (40C) for “soft and buttery,” 113F (45C) for “delicate and juicy,” 122F (50C) for “tender and flaky” (which gets Breville’s “our fave” designation), or 131F (55C) for “piecey and firm.” For each of those options, there’s a short video of a fork pulling apart a salmon steak cooked to that corresponding temp, showing you what the texture will be like. It’s very simple but incredibly effective, as it eliminates a lot of the guesswork if you’re cooking something new. The various meats actually did turn out like the videos suggested in my tests, which is to say pretty incredible.

Breville’s app allows you to choose a recipe and then walks you through the process of cooking your food.

Turbo mode is the new model’s namesake and the only obvious upgrade from the original. As I mentioned, sous vide cooking is generally very slow, but using Turbo mode can actually cut the cook time in half and still make it almost impossible to screw up. The way it does this is by making the water bath a higher temperature than you ultimately want your food to be, but lowering it again just before it reaches the target temp, and then keeping it right there until you’re ready to pull it out and sear it. The idea is that as the temperature differential between the food and the water bath gets smaller and smaller, it takes longer and longer for the food to get up to temp, so those last couple of degrees can seemingly take ages. By increasing the temp of the water bath, the food gets up to the target temperature much faster.

Doing this, however, takes some rather intense calculations. After all, if the machine overshoots, then your food could come out tough and overcooked, which defeats the whole purpose of sous vide cooking. (I can overcook things just fine on my own, thank you very much.) So, the Joule app will ask you for the thickness of the cut of meat, how many separate pieces, and the total weight. With that knowledge, it will estimate the cook time, and you’re off to the races. It will even be able to figure out how much water is in the bath based on how fast it heats up, so it will know how much time it needs to cool it off again.

That was a lot of words to tell you how the thing works, but you’re probably wanting to know how well it works. The short answer is incredibly well. It’s effectively the same device as the original Joule, which was very good, but with the added Turbo trick. In the regular sous vide mode, I made an incredible 2-inch, soy and ginger glazed mahi mahi that was incredibly moist and flaky, and I made a bag of pre-marinated pollo asado from Trader Joe’s that was so nice and tender. All that was to be expected, but it was the Turbo mode I was really curious about.

Sous vide cooking allows you to evenly cook your meats without overcooking any part of it.

The Joule Turbo can reliably bring meat to the exact temp you specify.

For my first foray, I bought a top sirloin steak from the store before I realized that the Joule app didn’t have a sirloin recipe. Oh well, I figured I’d just fudge it and use the fillet mignon settings. This was a mistake. Sirloin is a much leaner cut, and it takes time for the connective tissue to break down and melt, so it turned out okay, but it was a bit chewy. That was my fault, though.

The next week I bought a proper 1.5-inch filet mignon tenderloin (on sale at Costco, no less) and used the Turbo mode for medium rare (131F / 55C). A cut like that could easily take two hours, but with Turbo, it was ready to be seared in just 50 minutes. I slapped it on a blazing hot cast iron pan for 30 seconds on each side and… it was absolute perfection. Better than nearly every fancy steakhouse steak I’ve ever had. Honestly, I can’t stop thinking about it.

When I made a pair of 1.5-inch-thick chicken breasts using the Turbo mode, I set it to 161 degrees. At one point, the water bath got as high as 175 degrees before dropping down again just in time. It took just 55 minutes, and they turned out tender and juicy, with just a bit of variation in the texture throughout. Without Turbo mode, that cook would have normally taken around 100 minutes.

Now, there are some Turbo caveats. For starters, Turbo mode only works with certain cuts of meat, and these are pretty exclusively tender cuts. They do turn out great, but if you’re wanting to experience the magic of making a cheap cut taste like an expensive one, you’re still going to want to use the slower, non-turbo method. The Breville team has expanded the Turbo recipes in just the last few weeks, but at the time of writing, there are no fish settings, much to my surprise. I asked the team at Breville about this, and they said that fish is surprisingly tricky. For example, farmed salmon in the US cooks differently than farmed salmon in Australia, and wild salmon cooks differently than either of those. There are no Turbo veggie recipes yet, either.

Turbo mode is limited to certain cuts of meat and only fresh cuts, nothing frozen

Lastly, Turbo mode currently only works with fresh cuts, not frozen. This is because the temperature differential is just too great, so by the time the core gets up to the target temp, the outside would be overdone. You can sous vide from frozen, but the problem is Breville seems to have removed the non-Turbo recipes where there might have been both, so you’ll be winging it. When I wanted to cook a fillet from frozen, I had to search around until I found the Basic Steak recipe and follow that. Hopefully, Breville adds those recipes back or at least makes Turbo something you can toggle on and off.

That being said, you don’t have to use any of Breville’s recipes at all if you don’t want. You can always follow a recipe you find online and manually set the time and temperature within the app. You can also use Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to set the water temp with your voice, but frankly, that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

Aside from the lack of physical controls, really my only other gripe is the app could be better about helping you find analogs for things. For example, when I searched for mahi mahi in the app, it turned up no results. I had to ask Google for fish that were similar. It suggested halibut, which also wasn’t in the app. Eventually, I got to cod, which there was a Joule recipe for, and which did indeed work extremely well, but it took too much work to find it. There are a few points where instructions could be a bit clearer, too. With regular sous vide cooking, you preheat the bath and then add the food. With the Turbo, you add the food while the water is still cool and let it all heat up together. I did eventually figure that out, but more explicit directions would be helpful.

Once the sous vide process is done, it’s important to sear the food in a pan to finish it off.

It’s worth noting that there’s a potential integration coming down the pipe. Breville also makes the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro ($550), which is arguably the smartest air fryer / toaster oven out there. It, too, has deep app integrations, so it would make sense that the two Breville apps could talk with each other and work together. When speaking with Breville, they talked about the potential of starting a cook with the Joule Turbo and then finishing it in the Joule Air Fryer. Perhaps it could also help coordinating the sides in the oven so they’re all ready at the same time. That all remains to be seen, though, and you shouldn’t buy the Joule Turbo today with the expectation that integration will ever arrive.

Ultimately, the Joule Turbo is terrific, but it also feels like an incremental upgrade from the original. That’s not a bad thing, really, since the original is still one of the best you can buy. If you don’t already have a sous vide, this is an easy rec. It’s compact but powerful, it looks good, and the food it produces is truly delicious. The Turbo feature really is nice, and considering that cook time is often a barrier to entry for people, this faster way to sous vide is very much welcome, and hopefully, more recipes (looking at you, fish) will be added soon. At $250, it’s on the steeper side when it comes to home sous vide devices (you can get very solid ones for under $100), but it’s easily the best sous vide app out there, and it does a lot of hand-holding to walk you through it if you’re new. If you already have the original Joule, you qualify for $75 off the new one.

Overall, it’s very worth your time and conveniently asks less of it.

Photography by Brent Rose for The Verge

Amazon insists striking delivery drivers dont really work for Amazon

Amazon insists striking delivery drivers don’t really work for Amazon

Amazon delivery drivers strike for the first time. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Thursday, Motherboard reported that Amazon delivery drivers in Palmdale, California have gone on strike, a first for the company. The drivers, who unionized with the Teamsters in April and were recognized by Amazon “Delivery Service Partner” (DSP) Battle-Tested Strategies in May, are demanding better pay and improved safety conditions. The 84 striking workers walked out on Thursday.

Happening Now!
Amazon #Teamsters in Palmdale, CA are walking out today in the fight for good jobs at Amazon.

The unfair labor practice strike by Amazon drivers and dispatchers is the first strike of its kind in the US: https://t.co/lcA903tIBM #1u pic.twitter.com/AJ2Anooq2l

— Teamsters (@Teamsters) June 15, 2023

Motherboard’s original article used the headline “Amazon Delivery Drivers Walk Out in First-Ever Driver Strike.” Afterwards, a representative from Amazon emailed the publication to ask that it change its headline. From Motherboard’s article:

“I’m writing to ask if you’d be open to updating your headline of the story you just posted,” the spokesperson wrote. “It reads that these drivers are ‘Amazon drivers’ and that is inaccurate given they are employed by Battle-Tested Strategies. Would you update the headline to read ‘drivers delivering for Amazon’?”

But Amazon, which uses contractor labor for the majority of its fleet, exercises a lot of control over these people it doesn’t technically employ. Getting beyond the fact that they wear Amazon clothes and usually drive delivery trucks wrapped in Amazon’s artwork, the company has tightly controlled what its drivers are allowed to look like and post online, exercises control over when drivers can return if conditions are unsafe, and forces drivers to accept AI surveillance to be hired.

That level of control was a big part of unfair labor charges the union filed with the National Labor Relations Board in early May, calling out an Amazon practice of helping individuals start delivery logistics companies that are then exclusively contracted with Amazon:

Although these drivers wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, identify themselves as Amazon employees, are continuously monitored and surveilled by Amazon managers, and receive their work assignments from Amazon, Amazon has attempted to legally separate itself from these employees through a sham “Delivery Service Partner” (“DSP”) structure. Under this DSP structure, Amazon finds individuals—often with little to no experience running businesses—and purports to help those individuals “start” businesses, all while selling them a false fantasy.

The complaint points out too that Amazon provides branded trucks and uniforms, sets targets and conditions, terminates employees unilaterally, and much more. According to the document, Battle-Tested Strategies also operates from the same Amazon facility, DAX8, as three other “similarly captive” DSPs.

The document also describes the conditions the drivers face, which includes driving without air conditioning in “inhumane heat” in the desert, where temperatures can hit 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside the vans, drivers talking with Motherboard described internal 130-plus-degree temperatures that feel “like walking into an oven.”

Conditions like that are not uncommon in the delivery world. In fact, last week, while representing more than 340,000 drivers, the Teamsters scored a tentative deal to put air conditioners — air conditioners! — in all of the small package delivery vehicles owned by UPS.

The Teamsters passed a resolution in 2021 to help unionize Amazon workers. Battle Hardened Solutions was the first group of drivers and dispatchers to join since then.

Spotify does nothing as Joe Rogan peddles vaccine misinformation

Spotify does nothing as Joe Rogan peddles vaccine misinformation

Nick Barclay / The Verge

After Baylor microbiology professor and public health advocate Peter Hotez, MD Ph.D. tweeted out a Motherboard article about Spotify’s lack of moderation of Joe Rogan’s misinformation after a podcast episode with guest Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rogan challenged him to debate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, proposing a $100,000 donation to a charity of Hotez’s choosing if he agreed.

In the episode, Rogan and Kennedy hit all the pandemic classics: conspiracy theories about vaccines, 5G and Wi-Fi technology, and ivermectin. All common tropes of covid pandemic conspiracy theories.

Twitter’s owner Elon Musk joined the Twitter fray, accusing Hotez of “hating charity” by not accepting the debate, and after hours of Elon and Rogan stans taunting Hotez, the professor tweeted, “I was just was stalked in front of my home by a couple of antivaxers taunting me to debate RFKJr.”

That adds a troubling new dynamic to this story, particularly in the context of the Motherboard story that started this, which touched on Spotify’s contortions to allow Rogan’s misinformation to remain on the platform. In the article, a Spotify spokesperson is quoted as saying that because Rogan and Kennedy never said covid vaccines were designed to kill people, the episode wasn’t in violation of the rules.

Spotify signed a $100 million deal with Rogan over three years ago, and established a new set of misinformation policies after several high-profile stars had their music removed from the platform in protest of Rogan’s vaccine claims, which had previously gone unaddressed by Spotify.

Even with the policies in place, conspiracies highlighted on The Joe Rogan Experience can go viral as social media spreads the claims. To date, according to JREmissing, a site that tracks episodes of the podcast that have been removed, 111 episodes have been taken down.

Since Hotez’s original tweet, Rogan tweeted and retweeted criticisms and insinuations about Hotez — who has been a guest on the podcast in the past — a few times over the next several hours prior to Hotez’s tweet about being stalked.

We’ve reached out to Spotify for comment on the story and will update with a response if we get one.

Update June 18, 2023, 2:56ET PT: Updated the headline and added more details about the recent Rogan podcast episode.

Microsoft says June Outlook outages were a DDoS attack

Microsoft says June Outlook outages were a DDoS attack

Microsoft Outlook was subjected to a DDoS attack. | Illustration: The Verge

In early June, complaints began cropping up on Twitter that Outlook was down for as many as 18,000 users at the peak of what, it turns out, was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, according to a story in The Associated Press (AP) this morning. Microsoft acknowledged the attack in a blog post on Friday, offering some technical details and recommendations for guarding against such attacks in the future.

The blog doesn’t mention whether the company got things under control or whether the attack abated on its own. But on Twitter, the Microsoft 365 Status account tweeted about the outage as it occurred on June 5th, then again later that day, finally seeming to get things under control the next morning:

We continue to observe stable service health since we've applied our various preemptive mitigations and we will closely monitor the service should there be a recurrence.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 7, 2023

The AP article said a spokeswoman (presumably for Microsoft, though it’s not explicitly clear in the article) confirmed the group to be Anonymous Sudan, a group that has been active since at least January, says an article in Cybernews, which reported on the attack the day it happened. Per that article, the group claimed its attack lasted about an hour and a half before it stopped.

According to a former National Security Agency offensive hacker named Jake Williams quoted in the AP story, there is “no way to measure the impact if Microsoft doesn’t provide that info,” and he wasn’t aware of Outlook having been hit this hard before.

In 2021, Microsoft mitigated what was then one of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded, which lasted more than 10 minutes with traffic peaking at 2.4 terabits per second (Tbps). In 2022, an attack reached 3.47Tbps. It’s not clear how large traffic bursts were in the June attack.

The DDoS activity, Microsoft says in its blog post, targeted OSI layer 7 — that is, the layer of a network where applications access network services. It’s where your apps, like email, call out for their data. Microsoft believes the attackers, which it calls Storm-1359, used botnets and tools to launch its attacks “from multiple cloud services and open proxy infrastructures,” and that it appeared to be focused on disruption and publicity.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment, and will update here if we receive a response.

Shutterless cameras deserve good shutter sounds

Shutterless cameras deserve good shutter sounds

The Nikon Z9’s stacked sensor doesn’t require a mechanical shutter, but that doesn’t mean its users don’t need good feedback from their cameras. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Snapping a camera’s shutter to take a picture is one of the best feelings in photography. You get a timeless, tactile feedback as you capture every decisive moment with a satisfying auditory “click” sound. But we’re slowly losing this hallmark of picture-taking. Not only because smartphones are replacing full-size cameras for most people but because more cameras are being built without mechanical shutters at all.

Nikon’s flagship Z9 and newer Z8 cameras forego traditional shutters entirely, so instead of hearing and feeling a mechanical action, you either hear nothing at all or are played the sound of a fake shutter. Just this week, Nikon released firmware 4.0 for the Z9, which added a slew of new features, including extra shutter sounds: a beep, a DSLR-like chonk, a classic film-era clack, and a rangefinder snap. I love the idea of being able to pick my own shutter sound, and bringing back some classics is a fun way to embrace the lineage of photography while taking advantage of the latest technology. But I’m left slightly disappointed if this is all we’re going to get. I think camera companies can (and should) do a whole lot more.

All camera companies should do this but better

First off, where did these new Z9 shutter sounds come from? Were they modeled off of specific Nikon cameras? I reached out to Nikon and asked, but communications manager Geoffrey Coalter told me, “I don’t have the information as to whether or not it is a specific camera model, I’m sorry to say.” Which is a bummer because when I hear someone say “Nikon DSLR sound,” I immediately think of my old D700 and D3. When I hear “Nikon film camera,” I think of my F5, FE2, or the timeless F3 I used in school. And if you’re talking about Nikon and a “rangefinder-style sound,” you better believe I want it to be the beautiful S2 that I’ve only ever seen in pictures.

All those old cameras have unique shutter sounds, and I bet anyone who has used them can recognize them (I know I can recognize the sounds of a D700, D3, and various Leicas). Each one is imprinted on you after thousands of captures and years of use. That’s why I think all camera companies should follow Nikon’s lead and lean into it further while maybe having some fun with it too. Nikon Japan recently teased the idea of playing a cat’s meow as the Z9 shutter sound, but now it’s keeping things so generic and safe when it’s time to deliver the feature to photographers who ponied up $5,500. Come on, Nikon — pros can have fun, too!

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A post shared by NikonRumors (@nikonrumors)

Why don’t we get a little wild with it? In addition to giving us camera sounds based on actual historic models, give us some quirky and different sounds. Ever try photographing a child and get them to look directly at your camera? It’s a total pain, and you usually have to act like a weird fool to get a glimmer of their attention. I bet if you could call up a shutter sound that alternates between cartoon-like beeps and boops, it may more easily draw their eyes to the camera as they’re being photographed.

Let my camera meow like a cat, damnit

Heck, if all of that is too strange for a straight-laced camera company, then let me upload my own sound effects to the camera so I can be as nerdy or as deranged as I want (though I’ll acknowledge this opens up Pandora’s box for potential abuse from creeps and jerks).

Now, before anyone tells me that this is all fruitless because the best part of shutterless cameras is shooting blackout-free with no sound at all, I ask — is it? One of my cameras is a Sony A9 II, and it exemplifies how weird not hearing and feeling a shutter can be. Unlike the new Nikons, the A9 II has a mechanical shutter, but its stacked sensor permits full-time use with its silent electronic shutter. However, the only time I switch it to e-shutter is when I’m photographing a quiet event like a wedding ceremony or my niece’s recent kindergarten graduation.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Sony’s stacked sensor cameras, like its A1 (right) and A9s, are poised to one day ditch mechanical shutters like Nikon’s Z9 (left). That’s fine, but give me some good sounds and better feeling shutter buttons in exchange.

It’s helpful to shoot completely silently in those scenarios, but it’s jarring to not get any feedback from the camera as you’re snapping away — especially because Sony shutter buttons are mushy and lack a clear actuation point when bottoming out. (The amount of accidental frames I’ve shot or timed wrong in silent mode because there’s too much play in the button is maddening.)

If shutterless cameras are our future in photography (and I think they are — and may eventually open up further computational potential), camera companies need to think deeper about what we’re losing as much as what we gain. Give us the fun of quirky and historic shutter sounds, and put more effort into making those shutter buttons as tight and physically communicative as possible. Perhaps future cameras can have a small bit of haptic feedback built into the button or surrounding area that’s akin to what Apple puts into its iPhones — trusting that it doesn’t cause image blur. Or let me connect a pair of Bluetooth earbuds so I can still hear the fake shutter sound myself without disturbing anyone.

We all know there’s been an ongoing trend of photo enthusiasts returning to film photography and vintage cameras, and when you talk to them, they usually speak of the joy of using a truly mechanical camera. If our new cameras continue feeling more and more like computers, let’s try to maintain at least a tiny bit of that old-world lineage. Things like shutter sounds and tactile feedback — even if they have to be faked — offer a tangible benefit that users shouldn’t one day lose out on.

The Squid Game reality show hits Netflix in November

The Squid Game reality show hits Netflix in November

Image: Netflix

More than a year after it was first announced and after reports of some dangerous conditions on set, we now know when Netflix’s Squid Game reality show will start streaming. During its Tudum livestream, the company revealed that the series — called Squid Game: The Challenge — will hit the service in November. We also got the first teaser for the competition show, which doesn’t show much but does confirm that Red Light, Green Light will make an appearance.

The reality spinoff may be dangerous and not particularly in the spirit of the original Squid Game story, but it also feels somewhat inevitable given the now-franchise’s success. Netflix has said that Squid Game was its biggest-ever launch for a series, and naturally, a second season is already underway — though we don’t know much about it or when it might finally start streaming. That success also helped spur a huge investment from Netflix in Korean projects, totaling $2.5 billion.

Googles smart chips now let you view third party app data inside Google Docs

Google’s ‘smart chips’ now let you view third party app data inside Google Docs

Third-party smart clips are now available for Google Docs. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

You can now embed third-party app “smart chips” into your Google Doc after the company announced yesterday that the feature is now available for both Google Workspace users and those with personal Google accounts. Google announced it was opening the feature to third parties last year as part of its ongoing “smart canvas” revamp of its office suite that has brought other features like a pageless layout to Google Docs.

To use third-party smart chips, you’ll first have to have an admin or user install the app’s add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Then, you can simply grab a share link from the third-party app source and paste it into your doc. From there, you’ll be prompted to hit the tab key, which pops the smart chip into the doc and lets you preview the app’s info and work status, so people collaborating within a Google Doc can quickly see where that project’s progress is without leaving the document.

Image: Google

Smart clips can be added by pasting a link and hitting the tab key.

How the chips are implemented depends on the developer. For instance, according to the apps’ Workspace Marketplace pages, Figma “allows users to pull interactive previews of Figma and FigJam files into Google Docs, so that teammates can easily reference the latest designs and project work in context,” while the Atlassian Cloud add-on can let you attach relevant Jira issues so you can track them inside a working Doc.

I tried it out and was able to get the integration up and running with Figma in a matter of just a couple of minutes — it was pretty cool. Once the link was pasted in, I just hovered over the Figma link, and after a moment, it popped up with a preview image of the project, along with who created it and when it was last updated.