Nissan has issued a statement denying that it’s in discussions to work with Apple on the US company’s long-rumored autonomous car project. Earlier today the Financial Times reported that the Japanese automaker had engaged in talks with Apple
“We are not in talks with Apple,” a Nissan spokesperson tells Reuters. “However, Nissan is always open to exploring collaborations and partnerships to accelerate industry transformation.”
That statement doesn’t address whether the talks ever took place, which means it doesn’t directly contradict the Financial Times’ story. That report said that “the contact was brief and the discussions did not advance to senior management levels following divisions over branding for the iPhone maker’s electric vehicles.” The breaking point was said to be Apple’s request that Nissan manufacture cars carrying Apple’s branding.
“We have our own customer satisfaction, which comes by car. No way we are going to change the way we make cars,” Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta tells the Financial Times, again stating that talks aren’t happening now without confirming if they ever did. “The way we design, the way we develop, and the way we manufacture is going to be as an automotive manufacturer, as Nissan.”
The recent speculation over Nissan comes after Hyundai said it wasn’t in talks with Apple on the project. Hyundai has been the primary subject of rumors over the partnership of late, not least because the Korean carmaker itself issued and swiftly retracted a statement saying it had entered discussions with Apple. Analyst Ming-chi Kuo believes the first Apple car will be built on Hyundai’s E-GMP platform and ship in 2025 at the earliest.
Google has provided a bug fix to its iOS YouTube app, the first update to a major Google iOS app since December, 9to5Google reports. Although there’s been speculation that the reason for the lack of updates to iOS versions of Gmail, Docs, Search, and Photos is an attempt to avoid Apple’s new privacy labels, Google has explicitly denied that was the case. The company said in a January 12th blog post it would add the labels to its apps when updates were available:
As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates to our app page listings that include the new App Privacy Details. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that could be collected—meaning if you use every available feature and service in the app. The data you provide to Google products delivers helpful services to you, and you can always control your privacy settings by visiting your Google Account or going directly to the Google products you use on iOS.
Apple requires companies to apply the privacy labels, which it launched on December 14th, before they can update existing iOS apps. Some of Google’s other apps— Stadia, Authenticator, Translate, and Classroom, for example— have received iOS updates already.
We’ve reached out to Google to ask if updates for the iOS versions of Gmail, Search, Docs and Photos are forthcoming, and will report back if we learn more.
Do you remember the Mac vs PC commercials from the mid-2000s? While Microsoft and Apple may have become increasingly buddy-buddy since then, with Windows working on Mac and Mac ceding basic productivity app dominance to Microsoft Office, that doesn’t mean the war between Mac and PC isn’t still raging. The fighters are just different.
Intel’s new ad campaign is taking aim at Apple by promoting PC heavily, a continuation of the company’s recent claims that Intel performs better than Apple’s own M1 chip. While Intel has historically been happy to provide Apple chips in the past, Apple’s decision to move to its own, Arm-based chips seems to have changed Intel’s tune about the company’s entire product lineup.
Intel’s attack campaign has been running on Twitter and across various websites since early February under #GoPC, and makes such biting remarks as “If you can power a rocket launch and launch Rocket League, you’re not on a Mac.” Rocket League was
delisted for Mac
early last year.
Of course, Mac’s substandard gaming ecosystem has been known pretty much since the first Macintosh, and that hasn’t stopped Intel from supporting Apple before. Perhaps more harsh is Intel’s snipe at Apple’s refusal to put a touchscreen on its Macbooks, an oft-requested feature that’s become commonplace on similar PC laptops.
Only a PC offers tablet mode, touch screen and stylus capabilities in a single device. #GoPCFebruary 2, 2021
You could read this as Intel standing behind its new mobile-first Evo certification program, which doesn’t require a touchscreen but is built on mobile-first convenience features that touchscreen laptops frequently pass. By comparison, Intel claims that Macs do not.
Not everyone’s sold on Evo, though, as tests like “Switching to Calendar in Outlook” are pretty specific and generally not taxing for most systems. And again, Intel happily supplies chips to PCs that don’t pass Evo spec as well.
Intel’s also commissioned video for the Go PC campaign, including Tech reviewer Jon Rettinger, whose Intel-sponsored video points out that PC laptops have standard USB ports, touchscreens, and eGPU support, and can easily run with multiple external displays.
Of course, Mac fans are having their own fun with this campaign, including this series of rebuttal images from graphic designer Alex.
And, of course, a reference to the KFConsole that pokes fun at the heat generated by Intel CPUs.
Only Intel processors run so hot they can serve as PC and a fried chicken warmer in a single device. #GoPC pic.twitter.com/hk0MchQ5gYFebruary 12, 2021
The PC and Mac war is unlikely to come to an end in our time (I’m a proud dual-citizen), although it’s an interesting look at the marketplace to see a formerly neutral party take a side. With Apple moving to its own silicon, Intel is now synonymous with PC.
Apple is gearing up for the release of For All Mankind season 2 on Apple TV Plus. It’s kicking things off with a new augmented reality app, For All Mankind: Time Capsule, that looks to fill in the gap between the two seasons using AR artifacts from the world of the show.
The app itself is a fun promotional gimmick to help promote the second season of one of Apple’s higher-profile original shows. It’s the broader strategy at play that’s interesting.
It’s no secret that Apple is interested in AR. The recurring AR demos at the last several iPhone and iPad product announcements, the addition of AR-focused LIDAR cameras on the latest iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro devices, and the persistent rumors of the company’s pending VR / AR headsets are all clear evidence of that. And Apple has been rumored to be working on the tie-in app for a while now.
But For All Mankind: Time Capsule is one of the first indications of Apple tying all of its hardware, content, and service ambitions together. It’s an augmented reality app downloaded from the App Store that prompts users to subscribe to Apple TV Plus to watch For All Mankind, with additional content for LIDAR-equipped Apple devices.
It’s the kind of cross-promotional content that spans Apple’s wide array of businesses. It could also offer a glimpse at the kind of integrated hardware, software, and service bundle that Apple could be considering for any future AR devices.
Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast The Vergecast to discuss this week in Verge headlines. Here’s what The Verge’sNilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Adi Robertson focus the episode on this week: Google’s mysterious lack of iOS app updates, the rumors around an Apple-made VR / AR headset, and the gadget headlines you may have missed.
This week, users of the iOS versions of Google’s apps were shown a prompt claiming the software was “out of date” and suggesting updates to the current versions due to security risks. However, Google had not updated their apps yet and haven’t for several weeks now. The Vergecast crew discuss whether this is related to Apple’s new mandatory App Store privacy labels and what leverage Google might be trying to gain.
Also, it’s another week of rumored Apple products. Last week, the podcast dived into the much-rumored Apple Car and the potential manufacturers that would be teaming up with the tech company to make the vehicle. This week, they update which companies have downplayed these rumors, as well as what other much-rumored product Apple may be developing — a VR headset.
There’s a whole lot more discussed in this episode — like a glimpse of what Android 12 may look like, a laptop with seven screens, and a North Dakota bill that may force alternative app stores on the iPhone — so listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
While many of us moved to home offices when companies sought to avoid COVID-19 infection, for some people, working at home is the norm. One of those people is Sam Byford, Asia editor for The Verge, who works out of a home office in Tokyo, Japan.
We talked to Sam to find out how he has equipped his own home office and to see whether it matters these days if your remote desk is five miles away or about 6,700 miles away from your organization’s main office.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at The Verge.
I’m from the UK, and I’ve been based in Japan since 2008 — first in Osaka, now in Tokyo, where I live with my wife and our dog and our bunny. I came on board The Verge just as the site launched in 2011.
I am now The Verge’s Asia editor, which means two things really. I handle much of our Asia-specific coverage, of course, but I’m also an editor who happens to be in Asia, which is helpful from a time zone perspective. If critical news breaks after the US signs off and before Europe wakes up, or if someone needs an edit on a piece that we’re timing for the morning in the US, that’s often me.
That’s a great space you have. Was that an existing setup, or did you put it together once you knew you’d be working at home?
I’ve been working from home for as long as I’ve been with The Verge, but this is still quite a new setup. My wife and I moved into a bigger place at the end of last year, and it turned out to be good timing since we now both have our own offices and are both at home all day. I didn’t bring any furniture in the move and essentially started from scratch.
The “gaming” desk is on the left; the “working” desk is on the right.
I didn’t expect to see two desks! It looks like one is for gaming and the other for working.
That is exactly what they’re for! In our last place, I had a giant integrated setup on a single L-shaped glass desk. But I found it impossible to keep things organized, and I never really felt like I was off work. With this room, I decided to abandon the idea of coherent, tasteful interior design and went for an unassuming wooden desk for my Mac with an ostentatious gaming setup on the left.
Tell me about the desks themselves. Where did you get them, and how did you decide which ones to get?
They’re both from Rakuten, which often has a bunch of third-party sellers offering near-identical products of unclear origin. The wooden one is simple, but it has convenient storage and a shelf to raise the monitors. The gaming desk came from a seller called PandaTech, and it has RGB lighting, a cup holder, cable management, a USB hub, a controller rack, a headphone hanger, and a fitted mouse mat. I’m not usually into the RGB-heavy gamer aesthetic, but I thought it’d be fun to lean into it as a way to create distinct spaces in the same room.
Did you choose your chair especially, or is that just something you had available?
It’s a Herman Miller Sayl, which is a common chair — Vox Media’s NYC office has hundreds of them. I bought one without arms, though, because it works a little better for my posture. I’m tall, and it’s hard to find chairs that don’t encourage me to slouch. Also, I like the red.
This is obviously going to take a while, but could you tell me about your tech setup?
*deep breath* Okay, so my main work machine is a 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro. I basically never use it as a laptop unless I’m going to trade shows, which, for obvious reasons, I haven’t done since CES 2020, so I like this Brydge vertical dock that turns it into a skinny desktop computer and saves a ton of space. I go through quite a lot of mechanical keyboards, but right now, I’m using a Keychron K2, which is working out great. It’s comfortable to type on, looks good, and works seamlessly with macOS.
The MacBook is hooked up to two LG UltraFine 4K monitors, the discontinued 21-inch model and the current 24 inch. Below them, there’s an Apple HomePod for music and Mac audio, and next to that is one of three original Google Wifi routers we have around the apartment. The camera is a Nikon Df, which I use for most of my personal photography, and I also keep my Nintendo Switch Lite charging on this desk. There are a bunch of dongles, power cables, and wireless chargers in easy reach, plus my two current personal phones: an iPhone SE and a Pixel 4A.
My gaming PC lives under the other desk, and it’s a custom build from 2016. The monitor is an Asus PG279Q, and the speakers are Harman Kardon Soundsticks, which are also hooked up to my Sony record player across the room over Bluetooth. (I’m not an analog purist.) There’s an Oculus Quest VR headset, a Thrustmaster Airbus flight stick, and a Neo Geo Arcade Pro fight stick. There is a dedicated button on my gaming desk to cycle through the colored lighting.
And the Google Nest Hub?
The Google Nest Hub is a recent addition that I got for two specific reasons: to control my Hue smart lights and to keep an eye on Pascal, our unhinged Shiba puppy who spends most of the day upstairs and occasionally tries to destroy our living room. I have a cheap TP-Link Kasa camera hooked up, which does the job.
That’s a great toy collection. Do you have any favorites?
I would say the cacti, which come from an amazing cactus-themed zoo (yes) near Mt. Fuji that my wife and I went to this summer. You can pick the cacti yourself and choose the pots to plant them in, and I like bears and dinosaurs, so.
Cacti, bears, and dinosaurs.
Okay, I need to know about those polar bear basketball players hanging around your computer.
The bear is, for reasons I’m not sure I understand, the mascot character of a Japanese cosmetics brand called Smelly. There’s a store in Harajuku with a gacha machine featuring it in various poses, and I liked the basketball one, so I gave it a shot. Thankfully, it came out quickly.
Do you do game playing on both desks? (I see controllers on the right-hand desk.)
Not unless it’s work-related. The Switch just lives there on its charging dock, and those little handheld consoles are Game Gear Micros that I was in the process of reviewing. There aren’t really any situations where I’d play a game on a Mac when there’s a PC right next to it.
How do you keep the world out while you’re working — or do you need to?
I get locked in pretty easily. The outside light is super bright in the mornings here, even on cloudy days, so I just close the curtains for a few hours and settle in. We live in a mostly quiet neighborhood, so the biggest distraction is our dog, really.
I see you like basketball. (That may be putting it mildly.) Is there anything special about that poster?
My Torontonian wife got me into the Toronto Raptors soon after we met, and now I’m a big fan. This is a print of Kawhi Leonard scoring his iconic Game 7 buzzer-beater over the Sixers to send the Raptors to last year’s Eastern Conference finals on their way to the NBA championship. It’s a great, inspiring image that has taken on new meaning after Kawhi bounced to LA only to see his Clippers collapse embarrassingly in the playoffs this year. I should maybe get it framed or something, but honestly, I kind of like just having sports posters on my wall.
The Toronto Raptors and an OK Computer CD cover.
How about the small print on your wall?
That’s an OK Computer CD cover signed by Thom Yorke from Radiohead. My dad used to be an obsessive autograph hunter, and back when I lived in the UK, we’d often go to gigs together, and he’d wait around for hours afterward to get things signed. Radiohead was one of my favorite bands as a kid, so it’s a neat thing to have that reminds me of home.
Is there anything you’d like to change about or add to the current setup?
I’m mostly good, but I don’t think my gaming PC is going to last very long once next-generation consoles with much better CPUs are on the market. So I’ll probably be looking to rebuild in a year or so. I would also love for Apple to make a version of its 6K pro monitor that doesn’t cost $6,000.
Also, I recently bought Belkin’s ridiculously named Boost↑Charge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe. Charging Apple devices has gotten more complicated recently, at least for me. Now that the Apple Watch tracks sleep, I’ve been charging it with a messy cable at my desk for an hour or so when I start the day instead of overnight. And the iPhone 12 mini turns out to be too small for most stands — the charging coil isn’t high enough on the back of the phone. Belkin’s new charger solves both of those problems.
Update February 11th, 2021, 5:15PM ET: This article was originally published on October 21st, 2020. Several links and prices have been updated, and the Belkin Wireless Charger has been added.
Apple, Spotify, and the impossible problem of moderating shows
When former White House adviser-turned-podcaster Steve Bannon called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray, the tech platforms reacted. Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify all banned him and his podcast relatively quickly, cutting off access to their millions of users. Apple Podcasts, however, took a different stance. The most popular podcast app let his show stay live in its directory so that, months later, when Bannon encouraged his listeners to converge on the Capitol to protest election results, people still had an easy way to access his thoughts. His show, even this week, ranks among Apple Podcast’s top 20 news podcasts.
A story from ProPublica in January pointed out the dangers of not moderating someone like Bannon. It’s reasonable to want Apple to not benefit from clearly harmful voices, but the incident speaks to how unprepared the podcast industry is to moderate: companies face huge challenges in even finding infringing content, and there’s little to no transparency from the big players in how they monitor the listings in their apps. Plus, people in the space have real, philosophical concerns about the extent to which podcasting’s open ecosystem should be policed.
A disparate network of companies makes up the podcasting world, including apps, hosting services, sales teams, and networks. Moderation will need to happen across these companies to be effective, and in this current moment, that effort doesn’t work the way it does at tech monoliths like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, which can remove someone with a push of a button. Put simply, podcasting isn’t ready for full-scale, widespread moderation — if that’s even what the industry wants.
“There’s no podcasting company that has the scale, or the reach, or the resources, to be able to do anything like [that],” says Owen Grover, the former CEO of Pocket Casts, when asked whether he thinks the podcasting ecosystem could monitor shows like Facebook does the posts, images, and videos on its platform. “If the podcasting industry cares about this stuff … it’s going to require multiple organizations that exist across the industry value chain.”
Moderation isn’t a simple task, and even platforms like Facebook and Twitter routinely get it wrong. Audio presents an even tougher challenge. For one, new content rapidly streams into the space. A report published this month from podcast marketing company Chartable says 17,000 shows launch weekly, and to moderate them would mean scanning audio, whether that be with actual human ears, transcripts, or software, and then discerning whether they cross the line. This assumes the companies in the space even care to moderate.
“It’s quite hard to do it at scale,” says Mike Kadin, founder and CEO of the podcast hosting platform RedCircle. “We would have to transcribe everything, maybe, and apply some automated filters to look at everything. A: that’s expensive, and B: even if we could get everything in text, I don’t think a computer can understand the nuance of some of these issues, so it’s super challenging, and we do the best we can.”
Even in high-profile moments, the industry has been slow and inconsistent about moderation. It should have been easy to ban shows from the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2018, for example, but it took weeks to build out even an incomplete blockade across the industry. Spotify started out by removing specific episodes, with Apple Podcasts removing his shows a week later. After that point, a constellation of smaller podcast apps made their own decisions on whether Jones deserved a ban.
These efforts didn’t even remove the podcasts entirely. The Alex Jones Show is still available today on Google Podcasts and smaller apps like Castbox, and the open nature of RSS means you can still listen to his shows inside of Apple Podcasts and other apps where it’s banned if you seek it out.
All of which is to say, one of the most high-profile podcast deplatforming incidents wasn’t even wholly effective, which doesn’t bode well for a future of podcast moderation in which people want apps to take a heavier hand. Now, QAnon podcasts are flourishing on at least one hosting platform, Podbean, which also hosts Bannon’s podcast, and outright fraud has occurred on Apple’s podcast charts. Copycat podcasts have also sprung up on Anchor, Spotify’s podcast creation software. The industry isn’t catching every show that passes through its systems, meaning the problematic programming lives on until someone points it out, forcing the companies to respond. In other cases, the apps and hosting providers either struggle to find these programs or don’t care enough to bother with them.
This speaks to the core of podcasting’s moderation issues, and the industry’s selling point for many: its open nature. Podcasts are distributed through RSS feeds, which are essentially a link to a list of episodes. Most apps (apart from Spotify, Audible, and Amazon Music) effectively serve as search engines for these feeds. As long as a show is hosted online somewhere, it can generally show up in these apps when someone searches for it. Apple, in particular, plays an integral role in the space because it gives smaller podcast apps the ability to incorporate its catalog, meaning Apple’s moderation decisions ripple throughout the industry.
But because the ecosystem is diffuse and multiple podcast indexes exist, most companies end up having to make moderation decisions themselves. The teams’ jobs become easier if a particular program gains the mainstream media’s attention — as Jones’ did — because the team then knows what they’re looking for. But doing their own, preemptive moderation work is tough, if not nearly impossible because day-to-day operations often involve small groups with limited resources.
One podcast app creator, Xavier Guillemane, who made the popular Android podcast player Podcast Addict, says he fills his catalog with shows both from Apple Podcasts and The Podcast Index, a podcast search engine. He relies on user reports for moderation, and if he receives a report, he first checks Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts to see if the show is listed there.
“If it is then it means that the content does not violate their content policies,” he says over email. “If not, then I make sure that this podcast isn’t visible in any popular / suggested lists. That’s all I can do for moderation as I’m developing this app alone. With more than 2 million podcasts available, and with podcasts available in every language, there’s nothing more I can do.”
Grover echoed this idea, saying user reports were mainly how Pocket Casts policed its catalog. Those reports weren’t always reliable, however. “Signals from listeners are not always a good way to go because I will tell you that the whole notion of libertarian, do not censor — these things are powerful currents inside of podcasting,” he says, adding that many users saw the Jones removal as censorship.
Apple and Spotify, the two largest podcast players, each have their own set of community guidelines. Both platforms don’t allow content that encourages violence, for example, or shows that infringe on copyright. Spotify even specifically prohibits programs that promote pyramid schemes, while Apple doesn’t allow Nazi propaganda “as restricted by local law.” Like most terms, though, it’s hard to grasp how moderation would work in practice, and both companies are cagey about how exactly they moderate.
Spotify, which also owns one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, Megaphone, issued a statement for this story saying Spotify uses a “variety of algorithmic and human detection measures to ensure that content on our platform is in keeping with our long-standing policies.” Apple Podcasts spokesperson Zach Kahn declined to comment.
Beyond the listening apps, podcast hosting platforms, like Podbean, also play a key role in moderation. While they don’t necessarily care about distribution, they’re the ones keeping podcasts live and available. In the past, hosting services haven’t been at the center of the moderation debate, but when Amazon Web Services booted Parler, a chat app known for far-right material, off its servers, it emphasized the critical role these hosts play. Podcast hosting platforms have a particular incentive to moderate when they help shows make money, or sell ads for them, because brands generally don’t want to advertise on a controversial show. Otherwise, the hosting platforms don’t have much reason to rein in their own customers.
At RedCircle, the team needs to moderate because it monetizes its users’ shows, but because the company only employs 11 people, Kadin says they can’t listen to or check out every program that joins the hosting service. Instead, the team reviews the shows that are the most popular each week to make sure they’re within the company’s content guidelines, including copyright, and also to ensure they’re receiving proper account support from RedCircle. Meanwhile, Spreaker, a company that’s now owned by iHeartMedia, uses algorithms and a 10-person team to review shows, says Andrea De Marsi, the company’s COO. They mostly focus on the shows that Spreaker monetizes through its advertiser marketplace and try to avoid taking sides on political rhetoric, so long as a podcaster doesn’t say or do anything illegal.
RedCircle says it’s caught some issues itself, like a neo-Nazi podcast that employed obvious imagery while Spreaker has removed dangerous propaganda creators, like ISIS, because of reports they received from law enforcement agencies.
Even Podiant, a podcast hosting platform that prominently advertises itself as a team of “compassionate liberals,” doesn’t have the bandwidth to screen new customers and mostly monitors shows based on user reports. “It’s a really tricky task, especially at the hosting level,” says Podiant founder Mark Steadman.
Acast, another major hosting provider, says it’ll soon be publishing community guidelines for its service.
“This topic is something Acast takes very seriously, and we know we have a responsibility to constantly learn and work on new ways to support podcasters, listeners and advertisers alike,” says Susie Warhurst, SVP of content at Acast in an email statement.
Ultimately, It’s the bigger companies that will have the most say in how moderation happens in podcasting. But because of the system’s open nature, there’s only so far the biggest company, Apple, can go in policing its platform. Asking it to remove a show from its directory is like asking it to make a specific webpage inaccessible in Safari — is that something people want? Podcasting has, so far, avoided crowning one platform as king, meaning anyone, both on the creator and business side, can enter the space and possibly find success in it. That’s what makes podcasting great, even if it requires unclear answers on moderation.
Mid-range smartphones are rarely exciting, but Samsung’s next two are the exception to that rule. They both feature screens with high refresh rates – a feature previously limited to high-end handsets.
The models in question are the Galaxy A52 (5G) and A72. According to a leak from SamMobile, the former will sport a 120Hz screen (as seen on the Galaxy S21 range), while the A72 will have a 90Hz panel. 90Hz is still no slouch – it’s higher than the 60Hz displays seen on the iPhone 12 range. The standard, non-5G version of the A52 will have a 90Hz screen too.
Obviously a 120Hz screen will require more processing power, so the 5G version of the A52 will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chip, while the 4G version will have to make do with a Snapdragon 720G.
The 5G A52’s screen will be large, too, at 6.5 inches. Other than that, it will have fairly standard specs for a mid-range phone.
Still, good news for those wanting more advanced display tech from their smartphone. Is it time for Apple to up its game for the iPhone 13?
Samsung’s new A range phones should launch next month.
MORE:
These are the best smartphones for music and movies on the move
Google fan? Check out the best Android phones
And Apple fans will want the best iPhones money can buy
The ZH8 does a lot of things seriously well, but it makes less sense as a purchase than rival models from Samsung
For
Bright and punchy picture
Superb colours and motion
Impressive sound
Against
Blooming around bright highlights
Plays even less 8K than rivals
Missing some HDMI features
With the dearth of real 8K content likely to continue for a good while yet, manufacturers have an uphill battle to convince consumers that an 8K TV is a sensible purchase in the here and now.
With the ZH8, here reviewed as the 75-inch KD-75ZH8 model, Sony gets a huge amount right. This is one of the punchiest TVs we’ve tested, and one of the best-sounding too. It’s also aggressively priced for an 8K model, significantly undercutting our current Award-winner in the category.
That said, the ZH8 also lags a little behind its main rival in a couple of key areas, not least of which is its lack of support for the tiny amount of 8K footage that is actually already available.
Pricing
The Sony KD-75ZH8 (XBR-75Z8H in the US) was priced at £5999 ($7000) at launch, but you can now pick it up for £4999 ($4998).
Should you have the space and appetite for an even bigger 8K set, the 85in KD-85ZH8 (XBR-85Z8H) is currently available for £8499 ($9000).
Features
(Image credit: Future)
A 75in TV is always going to be a physically daunting proposition, but the Sony KD-75ZH8 is even more imposing than similarly sized rivals thanks to its chunky, industrial design. If you expect a high-end TV to be little more than a super-slim screen, you might be disappointed by the ZH8’s relatively thick bezels and 8.4cm depth – the Samsung QE75Q950TS is just 1.5cm deep. That said, there’s an undeniable stylishness to the Sony, its solidity, straight edges and pointy corners amounting to a seriously premium statement.
Sony KD-75ZH8 tech specs
(Image credit: Future / Greenland, Amazon Prime)
Screen type LCD w/ direct LED backlight
Resolution 8K
Operating system Android TV 9.0
HDR formats HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG
HDMI x4
USB x3
Optical 1
It’s hard to imagine a pedestal stand that wouldn’t buckle under the 48kg weight of the ZH8, so it’s little surprise that Sony has opted for sturdy, low-profile feet instead. These look best when positioned at the bottom corners of the set, but a narrower placement is also an option. With this arrangement, the huge TV will stand on any furniture that’s at least 62cm wide – assuming it’s strong enough to take the 50kg weight with feet attached.
In the box, there are a number of plastic panels that can be attached to the rear of the set, concealing connections and creating an appealing chequerboard pattern. Those connections include four HDMIs, one of which is HDMI 2.1 certified. You might assume that means it has the full suite of advanced HDMI features, but that’s not the case: while the ZH8 supports 8K@60Hz, 4K@120Hz (also known as HFR) and eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) are missing. The absence of those last two features will be disappointing to next-gen gamers: the Xbox Series X makes use of both and the PS5 is due a VRR update in the not too distant future.
As is the norm for all but the most budget-oriented of Sony’s TVs, the ZH8 uses Android TV as its operating system. Android TV gets better with each iteration, and version 9 is no different. As with all Android TVs, the Android portion is installed over a more functional, core operating system, and it makes for a slightly more disjointed user experience than you get from the likes of Samsung and LG. The smart platform feels more like using an external source than it does a core component, for example. That said, Android TV brings bonuses such as Chromecast and Google Assistant (the set is also ‘Works with Alexa’ certified).
Android TV is already pretty well appointed in terms of apps, but Sony has also worked hard to fill any gaps. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Google Play Movies and Rakuten are all here, in at least HDR10 and most with Dolby Vision (the ZH8 doesn’t support HDR10+, as is the norm for Sony). For the UK, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5, Now TV and BT Sport are all present, too. On the music front, Spotify, Tidal and Deezer are integrated, and while Apple Music and Amazon Music aren’t, you can use Chromecast to cast music to the TV from those apps on your phone.
In terms of core technology, the ZH8 is an LCD set with a direct LED backlight, and it uses the Picture Processor X1 Ultimate chip, which is Sony’s most powerful processor until the 2021 Cognitive Processor XR makes its debut with the company’s 2021 TVs in a few months’ time. The headline features here are Object Based Super Resolution, which is designed to intelligently analyse and enhance the definition of individual objects in an image, and an enhanced version of Object Based HDR Remaster, which applies a similar approach to contrast.
Picture
(Image credit: Future / Greenland, Amazon Prime)
Naturally, you’ll want to watch 8K content on your new 8K TV, but that’s even harder to do on the ZH8 than it is with Samsung’s 8K TVs. The only commercially available 8K content out there is streamed by YouTube in the AV1 format, which the ZH8 doesn’t support. You may only be missing out on aerial footage of lovely landscapes, but the fact that the tiny amount of 8K content out there is unplayable on your expensive 8K TV is hugely irritating. What’s more, it raises questions about the extent to which the ZH8 is future-proofed: it looks increasingly likely that the AV1 format is the one that will be utilised for 8K by other streaming services, including Netflix.
We are able to watch 8K content on the ZH8 for this review by using a Sony-supplied media player containing a handful of demo clips. With these clips, the ZH8 puts in a stunning performance that’s so crisp, dynamic and lifelike that you feel you could step right into each scene. However, that’s not an experience you’re going to be able to recreate at home.
Instead, what really matters is how the ZH8 performs with the content you do have access to right now, with the priority being 4K HDR. We insert Blade Runner 2049, one of our most demanding 4K Blu-rays, into our player, and are immediately impressed with the results. What strikes you first about the ZH8’s performance is how punchy and bright it is, particularly in very high-contrast scenarios. Most TVs shy away from fully illuminating the white text that appears from the black background at the beginning of the film, for example, but the ZH8 has no such reservations – this could well be the brightest rendition of this scene-setting copy we’ve seen.
This extreme contrast capability translates well to the film as a whole. As K travels around LA on foot and by flying car, the neon signs and holographic adverts jump out of the depressing dinginess of the rest of the city.
The effectiveness of that punch is further enhanced by the depth of the blacks. It’s not quite OLED levels of perfect blackness, but the ZH8 gets much closer than most LCD TVs, while also proving a dab hand at digging up dark details: on top of that striking contrast, you get superbly subtle shadows, with next to nothing being lost to the gloom.
However, there’s a problem here, and that’s backlight blooming. There are quite obvious halos of light around very bright objects on very dark backgrounds, and light frequently creeps into the black bars at the top and bottom when you’re watching an ultra-widescreen film. It is enough to be distracting at times, which is the last thing you want when you’re trying to sink right into a movie.
(Image credit: Future / Greenland, Amazon Prime)
The ZH8 is also a little soft and flat in its performance compared with the Samsung QE75Q950TS, which upscales 4K content in such a way that you could almost be fooled into thinking you were watching 8K. The Sony isn’t capable of pulling off the same trick, and the image doesn’t leap from the screen in quite the same way.
That said, there’s a naturalism to the ZH8’s performance that few can match. Its edges aren’t as sharp as those of the Samsung Q950TS, but there’s a smoothness and subtlety to the presentation that’s utterly convincing. It’s significantly better with motion, too, smoothing and sharpening everything without any shimmer or unpleasant artificiality. Its rivals are closing the gap in this regard, but Sony remains out in front.
Arguably the greatest contributor to the ZH8’s naturalism is its colour reproduction. It is capable of stunning vibrancy, but it’s also superbly subtle and nuanced, delivering every character’s unique skin tone, every building’s interior lighting, and every neon sign with unquestionable authenticity. Others might entice the eye a little more effectively, but this Sony (like many of its siblings) delivers on the creator’s intent in a way that few can match.
Dropping down to Looper in 1080p, that overall authenticity remains a strength, and it’s actually sharper and more detailed than the Samsung Q950TS. That said, it’s a fair bit noisier, too, exaggerating the intentional film grain to a degree that some will find distracting. It can be toned down by reducing sharpness and/or increasing noise reduction, but doing so softens the picture too much for our tastes. The perfect balance feels just out of reach, but this is an issue that you’ll encounter only occasionally as few films these days have this level of grain.
Those qualities with Full HD content roughly translate when you switch to standard-definition material. We play our trusty Dirty Harry DVD and the performance is sharp and detailed, which is impressive when you consider the amount of picture information that the TV is creating itself. Again, it’s effortlessly natural and convincing, particularly in terms of colours, although there’s still more picture noise than you’ll get from rival models.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
Sony has been much more creative than its rivals in recent years in terms of TV sound, most notably by turning the entire panel of its OLED models into a speaker. That feature, called Acoustic Surface Technology, isn’t possible with an LCD model such as the ZH8, but Sony has sought to recreate the effect (which it calls ‘Sound from Picture’) by using a couple of tweeters to vibrate the frame of the TV. These work in conjunction with two forward-facing drivers mounted at the bottom to make it seem as if the sound is coming directly from the screen, while two rear-mounted woofers fill out the presentation.
All that effort has paid off handsomely. The ZH8 is clear and direct in its presentation, with the sound and picture linked in a way that’s supremely engaging. This is no one-trick performance, though – the sound is also detailed and dynamic by the standards of a TV sound system, making for an overall delivery that’s both engaging and exciting.
Dolby Atmos is supported and, in conjunction with the Acoustic Auto Calibration feature, which tailors the audio performance to your room, gives appropriate soundtracks plenty of scope and scale without sacrificing that directness. Few if any TV-integrated sound systems can fill a room quite as effectively, while also clearly projecting dialogue.
You can even use the ZH8 as the centre speaker of a surround sound package, should you wish, using the standard speaker terminals on the rear of the set. We wouldn’t recommend that, though – while the ZH8 sounds mighty impressive for a TV, even the best AV amplifier will struggle to tonally integrate it with a set of traditional speakers.
Verdict
There’s so much that the ZH8 gets right, most notably its supremely authentic picture performance and very impressive sound, but we can’t give it our wholehearted recommendation.
8K TVs are already a hard sell, and the fact that the ZH8 won’t play the tiny amount of 8K content that’s already available is a real issue, not least because it raises doubts about its ability to play other 8K content that might appear in the future. What’s more, it doesn’t make use its extra pixels with 4K content the way that the rival Samsung Q950TS does.
As such, the ZH8 may as well be a 4K TV. Even viewed on those terms it’s almost worth the full five stars, but the high price and backlight blooming hold it back to a four.
Google is testing a new privacy feature to its Chrome browser for iOS that can lock incognito tabs behind Face ID. Apple’s facial recognition system is used to secure an iPhone or iPad, but many apps have their own Face ID support for extra security. Google has started testing securing incognito tabs behind Face ID in its latest Chrome iOS beta, signaling that it should arrive to regular users in the coming months.
Update notes for the latest Chrome 89 beta on iOS reveal that “when you return to the Chrome app, your incognito tabs will be blurred until you confirm it’s you.” You can enable this feature in the privacy section of Chrome’s settings, but it appears to be in early testing as not even every beta tester has access just yet.
Chrome 89 is expected to debut in early March, but it’s not clear if the Face ID support will be ready in time. Google is also supporting Touch ID, for older devices. This feature is similar to Samsung’s secret mode in its mobile browser, which allows users to lock tabs with facial recognition or fingerprints.
It looks like Sonos is making a pair of headphones. This would be quite a departure for the brand, which has built a reputation as the king of multi-room audio. But if the Sonos track record is anything to go by, then we’re certainly interested to see the company try its hand at something new.
And the Sonos headphones could be here very soon indeed. In a recent earnings call with investors, Sonos’ CEO Patrick Spence said the firm would launch a new product in March 2021. While he didn’t give any details, speculation is rife he was talking about Sonos’ first wireless headphones.
So what kind of Sonos headphones can we expect? Will they be on-ear, over-ear or in-ear? Wireless? And what kinds of features and specs can we look forward to?
We’ve rounded up all the latest Sonos leaks and rumours, and sprinkled a bit of industry knowledge of our own into the mix, to bring you the best possible idea ahead of a launch. And if we’re in the right ballpark, it looks like we’re in for a treat…
Sonos headphones: release date
The Sonos headphones could be here very soon indeed. In his recent call with investors, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence promised “to deliver innovative new products”, and said a new device would launch in March.
That could be the second Bluetooth speaker that was spotted recently. Or it could be Sonos’ first pair of headphones. Spence did confirm for sure that “in the next year” there would be a product in a new category for Sonos. So this makes us very confident that the headphones are coming in 2021. Whether it’s March or later in the year, we’ll find out soon enough.
Sonos headphones: price
For consumer audio, Sonos speakers tend to have a small premium over competitor products – wireless speakers and also soundbars. So with its first headphones, we would expect to see something on the more premium side, with potentially a more affordable product further down the road. That’s certainly the way Sonos approached the speaker and soundbar categories.
While any Sonos headphones perhaps won’t trouble the Apple AirPods Max astonishingly high price of £549 ($549, AU$899), we can expect them to be similar to well-respected and well-established rivals like Sony and Bose.
Sony’s superb WH-1000XM4 (which have been some of our favourite over-ear headphones since they launched) retail for £350 ($350, AU$550), while Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 go for £350 ($399, AU550).
It’s a tricky line for Sonos to walk. Price them too low, and consumers won’t expect great sound quality. Too high, and they will turn off some potential buyers. Sonos has a large and dedicated following, but it’s not quite at Apple levels of slavish dedication. Hence an asking price of over £400 ($550, AU$700) is probably off the cards.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, the headphones will cost about £220 ($300, AU$400). That would undercut Sony’s range toppers by quite a way.
Sonos headphones: design
(Image credit: Sonos (via USPTO))
Headphones come in all shapes and sizes: in-ear, on-ear, over-ear, wireless, wireless earbuds, sporty models, and so on. It seems like Sonos is going for an over-ear wireless model, as detailed by a patent that emerged in September last year.
The patent shows two designs, both of which take an over-ear, wireless form. They both have oval earcups that are angled slightly so that the lower part sits a little further forward on the wearer.
They look like a pretty standard pair of over-ear cans, but the devil is in the detail. Apple’s AirPods Max raised the bar somewhat in the design stakes lately – not only do they feature premium materials and an “obsessive craftsmanship”, they also let you swap the earcups for replacements. Handy if yours wear out, or you just want to sport a different colour for a change.
Replaceable parts are of course more sustainable and something we’re also seeing in wireless speakers such as the B&O Beosound Level, and indeed the Sonos Move (Sonos now sells a replacement battery kit for the Move).
Given that Sonos recently pledged to deliver “innovative new products”, and that it has already adopted a culture of replaceable parts in its other products, there’s a high likelihood that its first headphones will look to play on this.
Sonos headphones: features
(Image credit: Dixons)
The aforementioned patent also points to some pretty cool new features. Chief among them? Swap, which lets the cans work seamlessly with your home Sonos speakers like the Play:5.
The idea is simple. You come home listening to your headphones, and can ‘swap’ the music to your home system, so the same song switches to play from your Sonos multi-room speakers. It should happen seamlessly, so the song doesn’t miss a beat.
As the patent puts it: “For example, if a particular piece of content is currently playing on the wireless headphones, a swap changes the playback to play that piece of content on one or more other playback devices on the local network.”
The “one or more” is crucial here. It means that what’s playing on your headphones could ‘swap’ to blast from every speaker in your house, as long as they’re all on the same network (and presumably are all Sonos speakers).
It’s not something we’ve seen in headphones before, though we have seen something similar in other devices – for example, apps that let you start watching on your phone and pick up where you left off on your TV when you come home. Some headphones can also detect when you take them off and pause what’s playing. Sonos’ feature would seem like a natural evolution of these two functions.
Other than that, the patent shows all the usual bells and whistles: voice assistant control (as seen on the firm’s multi-room speakers and soundbars, like the Beam), volume slider, playback controls and a mic for handsfree calls. In fact, according to a Bloombergreport, which predates the patent’s emergence, the headphones will work with multiple virtual assistants, much like the Sonos Arc and Sonos One speakers.
We would also expect active noise cancelling (ANC), though how many levels and whether – and how much – control the wearer has over it remains to be seen. One of the patent designs mentions a rotating knob, which would give the wearer control over the ANC. The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 (pictured, above) give you 10 levels of ANC to choose from – Sonos doesn’t have to match that necessarily, but some control would be nice.
Lastly, battery life. The AirPods Max manage 20 hours between charges, while the Sony WH-1000XM4 manage 30. We would expect Sonos to deliver somewhere between these two figures, though a lot depends on what kind of feature set it offers. No noise cancellation? Then there’s no excuse for not giving us more than 30 hours playback on a single charge, thank you very much.
Sonos headphones: initial verdict
Launching a premium pair of noise-cancelling wireless headphones is no mean feat – competition is fierce at that end of the market, with Sony, Sennheiser, B&W and Bose all vying for supremacy. It’s only been made harder by the recent entry of industry titan Apple into the space.
In its 20-odd years in the business, Sonos has built a solid reputation as an audio pioneer, so a move into headphones could be a very smart one indeed. If it can marry a desirable design, great sound and a killer feature set complete with an industry-first feature, it could be a real game-changer.
MORE:
Don’t Move, improve: Sonos launches replacement battery kit for its Move wireless speaker
Get the full skinny: Which Sonos speaker should you buy?
Sonos: everything you need to know about the multi-room king
Unsurprisingly, there was much less autonomous vehicle testing in California in 2020 compared to years prior. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns forced many AVs off the road in the early part of the year. But companies licensed to operate AVs on public roads in California still logged nearly 2 million miles of testing, with two of the top operators, Waymo and Cruise, comprising the bulk of those miles thanks to what some safety drivers allege was a lax attitude toward safety.
Autonomous vehicles registered in California traveled approximately 1.99 million miles in autonomous mode on public roads in 2020, a decrease of about 800,000 miles from the previous year, according to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. These mileage figures were reported as part of the state’s annual “disengagement reports,” which all licensed operators are required to submit. In addition to the miles driven, the reports list the frequency at which human safety drivers were forced to take control of their autonomous vehicles (also known as a “disengagement”).
The disengagement reports are widely disparaged as being, at best, meaningless and, at worse, misleading. Companies have a lot of discretion about when to disengage, the testing environments aren’t uniform, and it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between companies. Media outlets tend to overhype the numbers in service of a false “race” narrative in which certain companies are outpacing others in miles driven and disengagements.
But this year, the reports can still serve as a time capsule of a year upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Waymo, for example, generally considered to be the leading autonomous vehicle operator in the world, only drove 628,838 miles, a 56-percent decrease compared to the 1.45 million miles it drove in 2019. That decrease is notable considering Waymo was recently approved to begin accepting passengers in its vehicles in preparation for the inevitable launch of a robotaxi service in California.
Waymo only reported 21 disengagements over the course of the year, or a rate of 0.033 disengagements per 1,000 miles. That’s an improvement over the company’s rate of 0.076 per 1,000 self-driven miles in 2019.
Cruise, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors and Waymo’s main rival, is also prepping to launch a similar service in the state. And interestingly enough, its mileage number remained more or less the same last year as compared to 2019. The company reported driving 770,049 miles, a 7-percent decrease over 2019. It logged 26 disengagements during the year for a rate of 0.033 per 1,000 miles, improving on its 2019 rate of 0.082.
The total miles driven by Waymo and Cruise, 1.39 million, is 70 percent of the total autonomous miles driven in California in 2020. Both companies briefly grounded their vehicles in the early months of the pandemic, but Cruise was back on the road by late April, using deliveries to local food banks as a pretext. Waymo followed suit, resuming limited operations in June delivering packages for two Bay Area nonprofits. Over the summer, as COVID-19 cases in California were peaking, both companies resumed regular operations. Only when the air quality became very poor during the summer’s historic wildfires did Waymo and Cruise pull their vehicles from the road — and only briefly.
This was a worrisome decision for many of the companies’ backup drivers. Waymo and Cruise contract the labor of thousands of operational staff in the Bay Area, including backup drivers, mechanics, cleaners, and fleet managers. Backup drivers, in particular, play a crucial role: they monitor the driving operations of the self-driving car and occasionally take control when something goes wrong.
Some backup drivers were glad to be back at work. But others raised concerns about being stuck in a vehicle for hours a day with another person without the ability to socially distance. They chafed at being asked to come back to work while the salaried employees in the engineering and software divisions of these companies got to continue to work from home.
Waymo and Cruise both insist that safety, including the safety of their contract workers, is a top concern. But several drivers have accused the companies of exploiting loopholes to get cars back on the road in defiance of local public health orders. Cruise, in particular, was criticized for deploying non-delivery vehicles despite public health orders banning regular autonomous vehicle testing. Cruise said the extra vehicles were needed for R&D support for the delivery operation.
Waymo and Cruise weren’t alone in racking up big mileage numbers during the pandemic. Pony.ai, a self-driving startup based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, reported driving 225,496 miles in autonomous mode. And Zoox, an autonomous vehicle company recently acquired by Amazon, drove 102,521 miles.
Apple, which has been working on its own secretive car project for years, reported driving 18,805 miles, more than doubling its mileage in 2019. The tech giant also reported 130 disengagements, up from 64 the previous year.
Google hasn’t updated many of its iOS apps in weeks, perhaps to avoid potential criticism from what might be revealed from Apple’s new mandatory App Store privacy labels. But now, some of Google’s own iOS apps seem to be complaining about the wait: we’re now seeing confusing notices inside Gmail, Google Maps and Google Photos saying that the apps are out of date — even though there aren’t newer versions of the apps available (via Techmeme editor Spencer Dailey).
To see the notice, you have to be logging into your account — so if you’re already logged in, you might not see it. After you type in your email address, you might see this warning message: “You should update this app. The version you’re using doesn’t include the latest security features to keep you protected. Only continue if you understand the risks.”
Google’s notice informing a Verge staffer that their app is out of date.
After you tap the continue button, you can use the app as normal — they still work. But without additional context, users might worry that they don’t have the latest and most secure version of an app.
Google had promised its apps would start including the new mandatory Apple app privacy labels in a blog post on January 12th, and the company has technically kept its word. Google Authenticator and Stadia, for example, have been updated with the labels, and in our testing with those two apps, we didn’t see the “this app is out of date” message.
We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update this article with anything we hear.
Last year AMD significantly overhauled its StoreMi software that’s designed to speed up storage performance on its consumer platforms. This week the company continued to polish off its StoreMi suite by enabling support for its ultra-high-end Threadripper Pro workstations, as well as the ability to use SSD partitions for caching.
Introduced in 2018, AMD’s StoreMi was AMD’s way to improve its platforms’ storage performance, therefore responding to Apple’s Fusion Drive and Intel’s Optane Memory caching. Just like Apple’s Fusion Drive (and unlike Intel’s caching-based algorithm), AMD’s StoreMi used to be a file-based tiered storage solution, which has a clear advantage over caching as far as capacity is concerned, but which may not be the most optimal solution when it comes to reliability. In Q2 2020, AMD re-introduced its StoreMi suite and basically re-invented it as a storage caching software that mirrors frequently used data on a faster drive. Since then, the company has been perfecting the StoreMi V2 software.
The latest version of AMD’s StoreMi can work with AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs on WRX80 motherboards. Hybrid storage subsystems are not exactly common in crème-de-la-crème professional workstations that are usually equipped with high-capacity SSDs and connected to even higher-capacity NAS, but since AMD now offers its Ryzen Threadripper Pro with WRX80 platform at retail, adding support for StoreMi makes sense.
Another improvement of the StoreMi suite is designed for more widespread systems. The update can use SSD petitions for caching. For example, if a system is equipped with a 1 TB SSD, half of its capacity may be used for the OS and frequently used software, whereas the other half can be used for caching data.
(Image credit: AMD)
AMD’s StoreMi V2 suite is now compatible with the company’s X570, B550, 400, X399, TRX40, or WRX80-series platforms. You can download the software here.
Security researcher Alex Birsan has found a security vulnerability that allowed him to run code on servers owned by Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, and over 30 other companies (via Bleeping Computer). The exploit is also deviously simple, and it’s something that many large software developers will have to figure out how to protect themselves from.
The exploit takes advantage of a relatively simple trick: replacing private packages with public ones. When companies are building programs, they often use open-source code written by other people, so they’re not spending time and resources solving a problem that’s already solved. For example, I’ve worked on websites that had to convert text files to webpages in real time. Instead of writing code to do it ourselves, my team found a program that did that and built it into our site.
These publicly available programs can be found on repositories like npm for NodeJS, PyPi for Python, and RubyGems for Ruby. It is worth noting that Birsan found those repositories could be used to carry out this attack, but it’s not limited to just the three.
In addition to these public packages, companies will often build their own private ones, which they don’t upload, but instead distribute among their own developers. This is where Birsan found the exploit. He discovered if he could find the names of the private packages used by companies (a task that turned out to be very easy in most cases), he could upload his own code to one of the public repositories with the same name, and the companies’ automated systems would use his code instead. Not only would they download his package instead of the correct one, but they would also run the code inside it.
To explain this with an example, imagine you had a Word document on your computer, but when you went to open it, your computer said, “Hey, there’s another Word document on the internet with the same name. I’ll open that one instead.” Now imagine the Word document could then automatically make changes to your computer. It’s not a great situation.
It seems like the companies agreed that the problem was serious. In his Medium post, Birsan wrote that “the majority of awarded bug bounties were set at the maximum amount allowed by each program’s policy, and sometimes even higher.” For those unfamiliar, bug bounties are cash rewards companies pay out to people who find serious bugs. The more severe the bug, the more money they’ll pay.
According to Birsan, most of the companies he contacted about the exploit were able to quickly patch their systems so they were no longer vulnerable. Microsoft has even put together a white paper explaining how system administrators can protect their companies from these kinds of attacks, but it’s frankly astonishing that it took this long for someone to figure out that these massive companies were vulnerable to this sort of attack. Thankfully, this isn’t the type of story that ends with you having to immediately update every device in your house, but it seems like it will be a long week for system administrators who now have to change the way their company uses public code.
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