Upon navigating to WhiteHouse.gov, the official website for the happenings and history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, users are met with a banner at the top of the page, “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government,” it reads, with an active timer tick-tick-ticking away, counting, to the second, how long the shutdown has been going on.
Of an estimated 1.4 million government workers, roughly half are considered essential workers, and are currently performing their jobs without pay, while the other half have been furloughed. The government isn’t working at capacity, and the executive branch would like you to know exactly who they’d like to blame.
The events highlighted on the page make sense at first, beginning with George Washington selecting the future site of the White House in 1791, the 1814 burning of the building and subsequent rebuilding, and so on. It’s mostly porticos and additions from there, welcoming the Rose Garden and the Briefing Room to the party, until you scroll to 1998, when the definition of “major events” takes an abrupt turn in the first entry after Richard Nixon’s bowling alley addition in 1973.
“Bill Clinton Scandal: President Bill Clinton‘s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed, leading to White House perjury investigations,” the caption beneath an archival photo of Clinton and Lewinsky in the Oval Office reads. “The Oval Office trysts fueled impeachment for obstruction.”
The next entry takes us to 2012’s “Muslim Brotherhood Visit,” describing President Barack Obama (informally referred to only as “Obama”) hosting members of “a group that promotes Islamist extremism and has ties to Hamas” and describes it as a terrorist organization.
Lest you think the timeline is all scandal, users next see a recap of the biggest, most memorable headline to come out of 2020. If you think that’s the Covid-19 pandemic, try again. Of course, it’s Melania Trump’s South Lawn tennis pavilion, which “unifies the tennis court, Children’s Garden, and Kitchen Garden, enhancing recreational opportunities for First Families.” If that’s not major, it’s hard to say what is.
BRUSSELS — The European Union on Friday said Meta and TitTok had breached their transparency obligations after an investigation that could result in billions of dollars in fines.
The inquiry found both companies had violated the Digital Services Act, the EU’s trailblazing digital rule book that imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online, including making it easier to report counterfeit or unsafe goods or flag harmful or illegal content like hate speech, as well as a ban on ads targeted at children.
“We are making sure platforms are accountable for their services, as ensured by EU law, towards users and society,” said Henna Virkunnen, the EU’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy in a post on X. ““Our democracies depend on trust. That means platforms must empower users, respect their rights, and open their systems to scrutiny. The DSA makes this a duty, not a choice.”
The 27-nation bloc launched investigations in 2024 into both Meta and TikTok. They found that the companies did not allow easy access to data for researchers. They also found that Meta’s Instagram and Facebook did not make it easy for users to flag illegal content and effectively challenge moderation decisions. “Allowing researchers access to platforms’ data is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA, as it provides public scrutiny into the potential impact of platforms on our physical and mental health,” according to a statement by the European Commission, the EU’s executive body. The inquiry found both Facebook and Instagram deployed “dark patterns” or deceptive interface designs for its protocol for flagging malicious content like child sex abuse or terrorist content. That led to a kind of obfuscation, with the Commission saying it was “confusing and dissuading” and “may therefore be ineffective.”
Meta spokesperson Ben Walters said the company disagrees with the findings but would continue to negotiate with the EU over compliance. “We have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” he said. TikTok said Friday that it would review the findings but said that the transparency obligations of the DSA conflict with the EU’s strict privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation. “If it is not possible to fully comply with both, we urge regulators to provide clarity on how these obligations should be reconciled,” said Paolo Ganino, a spokesperson for TikTok.
Meta and TikTok can now file a response to the inquiry. Ultimately, the EU could fine the companies up to 6% of their annual profits — which could be in the billions.
The 15-hour disruption to Amazon Web Services, a cloud-based computing service, on Monday shook internet users around the world, disrupting everything from travel to financial transactions — and underscoring the fragility of a system reliant on only a handful of tech giants.
Monday’s problems at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, spawned 11 million total outage reports, with 3 million reports stemming from U.S. users, Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages, said on Facebook.
While other cloud providers support the world’s businesses — including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure — AWS has the largest foothold in the market. Since it debuted in 2006, the company has grown to control 38% of the cloud computing infrastructure market, according to research and advisory firm Gartner.
Experts say Monday’s outage reveals the vulnerabilities of a system where a small number of companies provide such a large chunk of the internet’s backbone.
“[The] outage is a stark reminder of the massive ‘concentration risk’ the global economy has accepted by building on a handful of cloud providers,” Dave McCarthy, who leads global research for cloud services at the International Data Corporation, told CBS News.
AWS’ rolodex of customers include government departments, universities and businesses, and platforms such as Venmo, Netflix and Snapchat.
“Frankly, many customers may have been unaware that a service they used relied upon AWS and are only learning that now, due to system failures,” said Craig Shue, a professor and the head of the computer science department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
As Shue explained, companies that are not technology-centric may seek out a cloud service like AWS to host their web servers and databases, allowing them to focus on their day-to-day operations. Amazon, meanwhile, handles the more technical aspects such as server maintenance and responses to fluctuations in customer demand, he added.
Amazon declined to comment directly on the incident, instead sharing a statement from their website published on Oct. 20.
How the AWS outage started
The outage started Monday morning in Northern Virginia, home to AWS’ oldest and biggest cloud computing hub in the U.S. AWS refers to the cluster of data centers in Virginia as US-EAST-1. The company also has cloud computing hubs in California, Ohio and Oregon.
According to expert accounts and Amazon’s own explanation, the issue was partially tied to AWS’ domain name system (DNS), which is called DynamoDB. As Shue explained, this is the part of the internet that takes domain names like Amazon.com and converts them to IP addresses, numerical labels that identify locations on the internet.
The service can be used to distribute traffic to multiple servers to make things faster, Shue said.
“It is akin to waiting in a checkout line that then splits off to multiple cashier lanes,” Shue explained. “A staff member can direct the customer at the front of the line to the first available server that can handle the job.”
This function was disrupted on Monday, leading to a backlog of server requests without anything to route them. It’s still unclear how the disruption began, experts said.
For people on the ground, this meant they were unable to carry out simple web-based functions like checking their flight time on an airline app or sending a payment on Venmo.
While the issue started in the eastern U.S. region, its effects were global. Experts say it’s difficult to quantify the impact in dollar figures. McCarthy, however, noted that it appears to be one of the most significant outages in recent years.
Amazon said that the issue was resolved around 6 p.m. EDT on Monday, or more than 15 hours after the company first reported a problem on the AWS Health Dashboard, where it tracks service disruptions.
“This wasn’t a minor glitch; it was a cascading failure originating in US-EAST-1, the very nerve center of AWS, which took down everything from gaming and social media to critical financial and educational platforms,” he said.
Will the outage impact AWS?
While the incident may have sparked a small reckoning with cloud services, it’s not expected to shake up the landscape too much, experts told CBS News.
McCarthy doesn’t expect the outage to lead to a mass exodus of AWS customers, but he said it could compel companies to diversify their cloud services so they’re not reliant on a single provider. That way if one goes down, the company can still keep some operations going.
OpenAI said Tuesday it is launching an artificial intelligence-powered website browser, heightening the company’s competition with Google, the Alphabet-owned unit that has long dominated online search.
The new browser, called ChatGPT Atlas, is for now only available on Apple laptops that run the company’s Mac operating system. Access will soon expand to Apple’s iOS, Microsoft Windows and Google’s Android platforms, OpenAI said.
In the company’s launch video, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described Atlas as an AI-powered web browser built around ChatGPT that will allow people to converse with web pages. In a video presentation, he also expressed confidence that a chatbot interface will eventually supplant a traditional browser’s URL bar.
“Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of browser innovation since then,” he said.
What the Atlas browser can do
Like other search engines, Atlas has a home page with a search bar where people can ask questions, similar to Google’s landing page. Users can also toggle through different tabs across the top of the browser to find news stories, images and other content.
But a few features set the browser apart, according to OpenAI. One is a ChatGPT side bar, which users can activate by clicking an “Ask ChatGPT” button in the upper right-hand corner of the browser.
“It’s basically you inviting ChatGPT into your corner of the internet,” said Ryan O’Rouke, the lead designer for Atlas, in OpenAI’s video unveiling the browser.
The technology functions like ChatGPT but takes into account what web page people are on. In practice, that means users can ask questions about whatever content they are looking at. Users can also call on the ChatGPT function while drafting emails. In the demo, O’Rouke shows how he uses it to ask for edits on an email.
“It’s using the internet for you,” Altman said.
Atlas also has an “agent mode” that can take action on a person’s behalf, armed with what it has learned from users’ browsing history and what they are searching for. The agent also can help people complete a range of tasks, such as booking a flight, editing a document or ordering groceries. For now, agent mode is only available for plus and pro users, according to Altman.
OpenAI has said ChatGPT has more than 800 million users, although the San Francisco-based company has yet to turn a profit. Google’s Chrome browser has roughly 3 billion worldwide users and has been adding some AI features drawing on the company’s Gemini AI technology.
BANGKOK — BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday.
Myanmar is notorious for hosting cyberscam operations responsible for bilking people all over the world. These usually involve gaining victims’ confidence online with romantic ploys and bogus investment pitches.
The centers are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretenses, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities.
Scam operations were in the international spotlight last week when the United States and Britain enacted sanctions against organizers of a major Cambodian cyberscam gang, and its alleged ringleader was indicted by a federal court in New York.
According to a report in Monday’s Myanma Alinn newspaper, the army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime center, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime.
It published photos displaying seized Starlink equipment and soldiers said to be carrying out the raid, though it was unclear when exactly they were taken.
KK Park is located on the outskirts of Myawaddy, a major trading town on the border with Thailand in Myanmar’s Kayin state. The area is only loosely under the control of Myanmar’s military government, and also falls under the influence of ethnic minority militias.
Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park.
The allegation was previously made based on claims that a company backed by the Karen group allowed the land to be leased. However, the Karen, who are part of the larger armed resistance movement in Myanmar’s civil war, deny any involvement in the scams.
Myanma Alinn said the army ascertained that more than 260 buildings were unregistered, and seized equipment, including 30 sets of Starlink satellite internet terminals. It said 2,198 individuals were detained though it did not give their nationalities.
Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company and the terminals link to its satellites. It does not have licensed operations in Myanmar, but at least hundreds of terminals have been smuggled into the Southeast Asian nation.
The company could not be immediately reached for comment Monday but its policy bans “conduct that is defamatory, fraudulent, obscene, or deceptive.”
There have been previous crackdowns on cyberscam operations in Myanmar earlier this year and in 2023.
Facing pressure from China, Thailand and Myanmar’s governments launched an operation in February in which they released thousands of trafficked people from scam compounds, working with the ethnic armed groups that rule Myanmar’s border areas.
Cookies, you’ll remember, are those little pieces of code that websites use to track your activity across the internet. It’s how advertisers are able to target you with products they know you’re interested in because they know how you spend your time online.
Chrome, the world’s most popular browser, was going to lead the charge by blocking third-party cookies by default. Instead, it came up with an alternative, called Privacy Sandbox, which would let marketers measure and target ads without directly spying on anyone.
In a blog post full of corporate phrasing—ecosystem feedback, interoperable attribution standards, and collaboration with stakeholders—Google announced that it’s retiring almost every piece of Privacy Sandbox. Topics, Attribution Reporting, Protected Audience, IP Protection, Shared Storage, SDK Runtime—are all deprecated. What’s left are a few technical odds and ends like CHIPS and FedCM, and some vague promises about “continuing engagement.”
That’s a polite way of saying Google is giving up.
The thing is, Google was the only company that could have forced the web to change. More specifically, it’s the only company that could have forced the internet to respect your privacy. If Google flipped the switch, the rest of the web would have to adapt.
The reason it isn’t is more complicated than you might think. It’s not that Google is maintaining cookies so it can continue tracking what you do online. It doesn’t have to—it already knows basically everything about its users because they literally type the thing they’re looking for into Google’s search box.
Killing cookies wouldn’t hurt Google’s data business. It would, however, hurt everyone else’s. And that’s a big problem.
If Chrome had actually followed through and killed cookies, it would have devastated the entire ad-tech ecosystem. Independent publishers would lose revenue overnight. Smaller ad platforms would vanish. Every marketer would rush to Google’s first-party systems—Search, YouTube, Display—because they’d be the only places left where personalization and measurement still worked.
In other words, fixing privacy would have made Google’s dominance unavoidable. Killing off third-party cookies would have meant killing the competition.
That seems like it would be great for Google, but using Chrome to make it impossible for the rest of the ad industry to target customers would have just confirmed everyone’s worst fears about its power.
There is another reason, which is that hardly anyone really cared. Sure, they did at first. The idea that Google was going to eliminate cookies as a form of tracking seemed great for consumers. But, over time, as Google slowly backed off its plans, no one really made a big deal.
It turns out, most people just click “accept all cookies” to get to the next page. After a decade of headlines about data breaches and tracking scandals, the average user is numb.
We say we want control over our data, but really, we just use the internet without really thinking about it. Google figured that out long ago. It didn’t take much to see that the outrage had faded. Or, at least, to see that the outrage wasn’t actually reflected in the behavior of most users.
And, so, third-party cookies will stay. Chrome will keep talking about “user choice,” and advertisers will keep tracking people in slightly more polite ways.
Google, for its part, will keep doing what it does: printing money. It’s already the most successful advertising platform in the world. That’s because it has what is probably the single greatest business model in the history of the internet, and nothing about cookies was going to change that.
I used to think that Google decided that making the internet respect our privacy was too hard. It turns out, it just realized long ago that most people don’t think it’s actually worth caring about.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Thousands of networks—many of them operated by the US government and Fortune 500 companies—face an “imminent threat” of being breached by a nation-state hacking group following the breach of a major maker of software, the federal government warned on Wednesday.
F5, a Seattle-based maker of networking software, disclosed the breach on Wednesday. F5 said a “sophisticated” threat group working for an undisclosed nation-state government had surreptitiously and persistently dwelled in its network over a “long term.” Security researchers who have responded to similar intrusions in the past took the language to mean the hackers were inside the F5 network for years.
Unprecedented
During that time, F5 said, the hackers took control of the network segment the company uses to create and distribute updates for BIG IP, a line of server appliances that F5 says is used by 48 of the world’s top 50 corporations. Wednesday’s disclosure went on to say the threat group downloaded proprietary BIG-IP source code information about vulnerabilities that had been privately discovered but not yet patched. The hackers also obtained configuration settings that some customers used inside their networks.
Control of the build system and access to the source code, customer configurations, and documentation of unpatched vulnerabilities has the potential to give the hackers unprecedented knowledge of weaknesses and the ability to exploit them in supply-chain attacks on thousands of networks, many of which are sensitive. The theft of customer configurations and other data further raises the risk that sensitive credentials can be abused, F5 and outside security experts said.
Customers position BIG-IP at the very edge of their networks for use as load balancers and firewalls, and for inspection and encryption of data passing into and out of networks. Given BIG-IP’s network position and its role in managing traffic for web servers, previous compromises have allowed adversaries to expand their access to other parts of an infected network.
F5 said that investigations by two outside intrusion-response firms have yet to find any evidence of supply-chain attacks. The company attached letters from firms IOActive and NCC Group attesting that analyses of source code and build pipeline uncovered no signs that a “threat actor modified or introduced any vulnerabilities into the in-scope items.” The firms also said they didn’t identify any evidence of critical vulnerabilities in the system. Investigators, which also included Mandiant and CrowdStrike, found no evidence that data from its CRM, financial, support case management, or health systems was accessed.
The company released updates for its BIG-IP, F5OS, BIG-IQ, and APM products. CVE designations and other details are here. Two days ago, F5 rotated BIG-IP signing certificates, though there was no immediate confirmation that the move is in response to the breach.
According to Downdetector, a website that monitors service provision failures, the outage has been widespread, hitting users in cities including New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix and Atlanta.
Data published by Downdetector showed the number of people reporting outages exploded at around midnight ET, hitting a peak of 1,244 reports at 0.56 a.m. ET.
Downdetector reported that 50 percent of problems reported by Verizon users involved cell phones, while 32 percent were about 5G home internet.
SAN FRANCISCO — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania.
And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology as a whirlwind of investments and excitement about artificial intelligence has propelled the stock market to new highs.
Chambers took a similarly meteoric ride in his early days running Cisco, which had a market value of about $15 billion in 1995, when networking equipment suddenly became must-have components for the buildup of the internet. The feverish demand briefly turned the firm into the world’s most valuable company — worth $550 billion in March 2000 — before the investment bubble burst. The crash caused Cisco’s stock price to plunge more than 80% during a period that Chambers still recalls as the worst of his career.
Cisco bounced back to deliver consistent financial growth to help establish Chambers as one of Silicon Valley’s most respected leaders before he stepped down as CEO in 2015, but company’s stock price has never approached the peak it reached a quarter century ago.
While remaining Cisco’s chairman emeritus, Chambers is now as fascinated by the AI’s transformative powers as he once was by the internet revolution. Only this time he is advising CEOs as a venture capitalist investing in AI startups rather than running a company himself. Chambers, 76, recently discussed the promise and perils of the AI boom with The Associated Press. The interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: Does the current AI mania remind you of the internet boom of the 1990s?
A: Absolutely. There are a lot of parallels but there are also some spectacular differences. AI is moving at five times the speed and will produce three times the outcomes of the internet age. In the internet age, a startup would develop products for two years and then in year three, they would take that out into the market. Today, AI startups develop the product in a month and sometimes in a week, and then they bring it to market in one or two quarters.
In the internet age, there was an irrational exuberance on a really large scale. In this AI one, there is a lot of tremendous optimism that does indicate a future bubble for certain companies. Is there going to be train wreck? Yes, for those that aren’t able to translate the technology into a sustainable competitive advantage, how are you going to generate revenue after all the money you poured into it?
Q: Do you think AI is going to eliminate a lot of jobs?
A: It happened with the internet. The problem this time is that if I am right about AI moving at five times the speed of the internet, we are going to destroy jobs faster than we can replace them. Will we be able to replace them over time? Yes, but there is going to be a drought while we have to re-educate lots of people.
Q: Does that worry you?
A: Big time!
Q: What do we need to be doing to be prepared for this upheaval?
A: We need to change education. Entry-level jobs, both white and blue collar, are going to disappear fast. We are creating more productivity, but we have to create more jobs as well. If companies start making more money, they are either going to increase the dividend or invest in new areas. Hopefully, the majority will invest in new areas to create new jobs.
You will see successful companies expand and grow dramatically, but you are probably going to see 50% of the Fortune 500 companies disappear and 50% of the executives of the Fortune 500 disappear. They won’t have the skills to adjust to this new innovation economy driven by AI because they were trained in silos they were trained to move at the speed of a five-year cycle as opposed to a 12-month cycle.
Q: Do you think this is one of the most uncertain times you have ever seen?
A: It’s the most uncertain time on a global basis, ever. I would argue that this is the new normal. With the speed the market is moving at now, you have to be able to reinvent yourself, which most CEOs and business leaders don’t know how to do, especially with AI.
Q: What’s your view of how Big Tech has been working with President Donald Trump during his second term in office?
A: Let’s be realistic. Silicon Valley moved right, there shouldn’t be any doubt. They did it for economic reasons. And practicality, they did it for their shareholders but also regulation was getting out of control. They weren’t able to grow and China was plainly beating us.
Q: How worried are you about China?
A: I think China has full intention to win at the U.S.’s expense. In China, there are no rules, there is no intellectual property, there are no issues about misusing the power. They intend to blow past militarily, economically, and in every other way. I do not view them as a partner, I view them as a serious competitor on all fronts and someone I don’t trust. I think over time people are going to recognize it’s in the U.S.’s best interest and it’s in China’s best interest for us to get along. So go out 10 years, and that’s the most likely outcome. But I think the next five years are going to be really bumpy and dangerous. We should have no illusions that they intend to crush us.
NEW YORK — It’s official: AOL’s dial-up internet has taken its last bow.
AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans.
Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes.
AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the World Wide Web for the first time when its dial-up service launched decades ago, rising to prominence particularly in the 90s and early 2000s.
The creaky door to the internet was characterized by a once-ubiquitous series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone line used to connect your computer online — along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.
Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to dominance, doing away with dial-up’s quirks for most people accessing the internet today — but not everyone.
A handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services connected over telephone lines. In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.
While AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, it wasn’t the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as other relics of the internet’s earlier days continue to disappear.
AOL itself is far from the dominant internet player it was decades ago — when, beyond dial-up and IMs, the company also became known for its “You’ve got mail” catchphrase that greeted users who checked their inboxes, as famously displayed in the 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan by the same name.
Before it was America Online, AOL was founded as Quantum Computer Services in 1985. It soon rebranded and hit the public market in 1991. Near the height of the dot-com boom, AOL’s market value reached nearly $164 billion in 2000. But tumultuous years followed, and that valuation plummeted as the once-tech pioneer bounced between multiple owners. After a disastrous merger with Time Warner Inc., Verizon acquired AOL — which later sold AOL, along with Yahoo, to a private equity firm.
AOL now operates under the larger Yahoo name. A spokesperson for Yahoo didn’t have any additional statements about the end of AOL’s dial-up when reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday — directing customers to its previous summer announcement.
At the time Verzion it sold AOL in 2021, an anonymous source familiar with the transaction told CNBC that the number of AOL dial-up users was “in the low thousands” — down from 2.1 million when Verzion first moved to acquire AOL in 2015, and far below peak demand seen back in the 90s and early 2000s. But beyond dial-up, AOL continues to offer its free email services, as well as subscriptions that advertise identity protection and other tech support.
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban government on Wednesday rejected reports of a nationwide internet ban in Afghanistan, saying old fiber optic cables are worn out and are being replaced.
The announcement was the Taliban’s first public statement on a communications blackout that has disrupted banking, commerce and aviation.
Several provinces last month confirmed an internet shutdown because of a decree from the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to combat immorality.
“There is nothing like the rumors being spread that we have imposed a ban on the internet,” Taliban officials said in a three-line statement shared in a WhatsApp chat group with Pakistani journalists.
The statement posted on social media platform X cited Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying ongoing nationwide disruptions were the result of “decaying fiber optic infrastructure” that is now being replaced.
The statement did not say when or if services would be restored.
The outage was first reported Monday by internet advocacy group Netblocks, which said internet connectivity was collapsing across the country, including in the capital Kabul, and telephone services also were impacted.
Afghan carrier Kam Air told local TV channel TOLO News it would likely resume flights to Kabul later Wednesday, after fully halting operations since Monday due to the outage.
Aid officials have warned that humanitarian organizations face major challenges because of the blackout, urging authorities to restore connections.
“Reliable communications are essential for our ability to operate, to deliver life-saving assistance, and to coordinate with partners,” Save the Children said in a statement Wednesday.
If the future of the internet looks like a constant stream of amusing videos generated by artificial intelligence, then OpenAI just placed its stake in an emerging market.
The company behind ChatGPT released its new Sora social media app on Tuesday, an attempt to draw the attention of eyeballs currently staring at short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube or Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.
The new iPhone app taps into the appeal of being able to make a video of yourself doing just about anything that can be imagined, in styles ranging from anime to highly realistic.
But a scrolling flood of such videos taking over social media has some worried about “AI slop” that crowds out more authentic human creativity and degrades the information ecosystem.
“These things are so compelling,” said Jose Marichal, a professor of political science at California Lutheran University who studies how AI is restructuring society. “I think what sucks you in is that they’re kind of implausible, but they’re realistic looking.”
The Sora app’s official launch video features an AI-generated version of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking from a psychedelic forest, and later, the moon and a stadium crowded with cheering fans watching rubber duck races. He introduces the new tool before handing it off to colleagues placed in other outlandish scenarios. The app is available only on Apple devices for now, starting in the U.S. and Canada.
Meta launched its own feed of AI short-form videos within its Meta AI app last week. In an Instagram post announcing the new Vibes product, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a carousel of AI videos, including a cartoon version of himself, an army of fuzzy, beady-eyed beings jumping around and a kitten kneading a ball of dough. Both Sora and Vibes are designed to be highly personalized, recommending new videos based on what people have already engaged with.
Marichal’s own social media feeds on TikTok and other sites are already full of such videos, from a “housecat riding a wild animal from the perspective of a doorbell camera” to fake natural disaster reports that are engaging but easily debunked. He said you can’t blame people for being hard-wired to “want to know if something extraordinary is happening in the world.”
What’s dangerous, he said, is when they dominate what we see online.
“We need an information environment that is mostly true or that we can trust because we need to use it to make rational decisions about how to collectively govern,” he said.
If not, “we either become super, super skeptical of everything or we become super certain,” Marichal said. “We’re either the manipulated or the manipulators. And that leads us toward things that are something other than liberal democracy, other than representative democracy.”
OpenAI made some efforts to address those concerns in its announcement on Tuesday.
“Concerns about doomscrolling, addiction, isolation, and (reinforcement learning)-sloptimized feeds are top of mind,” it said in a blog post. It said it would “periodically poll users on their wellbeing” and give them options to adjust their feed, with a built-in bias to recommend posts from friends rather than strangers.
————
AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.
A rescue dog from Michigan has melted hearts online after his owners shared pictures of the pup they describe as the “silliest” mix of breeds they’ve ever seen.
Gina Dufftt, from southeast Michigan, introduced the world to Bowie, a 30-pound, low-to-the-ground rescue with mismatched eyes and a calm, quirky charm, in the Facebook group Dogspotting Society.
Despite being told he’s a corgi mix and just four months old, Bowie displays none of the typical high-energy puppy behavior. Instead, he has quickly become a laid-back, lovable companion.
“We named him Bowie because of his awesome heterochromia,” Dufftt told Newsweek. “We know David Bowie didn’t actually have two different colored eyes, but the effect is there. His name when we adopted him was Mr. Pants, which we loved too—so his full name is officially Mr. Bowie Pants.”
Pictures of Bowie the dog enjoying the backyard at his new home. Pictures of Bowie the dog enjoying the backyard at his new home. Gina Dufftt
Bowie was adopted through Bottle Babies Rescue, a local foster shelter. The group recently held an adoption event where 18 dogs found their forever homes. “They were wonderful,” Dufftt said.
Although Bowie’s exact breed mix remains a mystery, the family has submitted a DNA test through Embark and hopes to receive results in the coming weeks. “Honestly, we have no idea what his breed is. We were told he was a corgi mix and that’s it,” Dufftt said. “I truly only shared his picture online to get feedback. I had no idea so many people would offer so many great opinions.”
The post has drawn hundreds of comments from dog lovers. Tiffany-Renee Bradner wrote: “A corgi mixed with anything is 1000% adorable.” Others speculated that Bowie could have Old English Sheepdog in his genes, while many simply focused on his cuteness. “I don’t know what else he is besides cute!!!!” said Amber Dezelle.
Pictures of Bowie the dog who has captured hearts online for his unusual looks. Pictures of Bowie the dog who has captured hearts online for his unusual looks. Gina Dufftt
This isn’t the first time a dog with an unusual breed mix has melted hearts online. Like Kiki, a Belgian Malinois-Aspin mix who was affectionately dubbed by her owner as a “Wish.com corgi,” or Scooby, a 3-year-old golden mountain dog—the name given to a mix of golden retriever and Bernese mountain dog.
For the Dufftt family, Bowie’s arrival came at an especially meaningful time. “He has brought us a lot of joy since we brought him home, having just lost our longtime dog, Dale, a few weeks ago,” Dufftt said. “We are super glad he seems to have touched hearts all over the place.”
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
A Taliban crackdown to “prevent immorality” is spreading across Afghanistan, with more provinces losing access to fiber-optic internet after the country’s leader imposed a complete ban on the technology
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — A Taliban crackdown to “prevent immorality” is spreading across Afghanistan, with more provinces losing access to fiber-optic internet after the country’s leader imposed a complete ban on the technology.
It’s the first time a ban of this kind has been imposed since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, and leaves government offices, the private sector, public institutions, and homes without Wi-Fi internet. Mobile internet remains functional, however. Officials say alternatives are being found “for necessities.”
The northern Balkh province confirmed a Wi-Fi shutdown on Tuesday, with reports of severe disruption in other parts of the country. On Thursday, officials in the east and north said internet access was cut off in the provinces of Baghlan, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Nangarhar, and Takhar.
Siddiqullah Quraishi, from the Nangarhar Culture Directorate, confirmed the shutdown to The Associated Press. The governor’s office in Kunduz shared a message in an official WhatsApp group.
The Afghanistan Media Support Organization condemned the ban and expressed its concern.
“This action, carried out on the orders of the Taliban’s leader, not only disrupts millions of citizens’ access to free information and essential services but also poses a grave threat to freedom of expression and the work of the media,” it said.
Last year, a spokesman for the Communications Ministry, Enayatullah Alokozai, told the private TV channel TOLO News that Afghanistan had a fiber-optic network of more than 1,800 kilometers (1,125 miles) and that approval had been given for an additional 488 kilometers (305 miles).
Most Afghan provinces have had fiber-optic services until now.
LOS ANGELES — A California judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon against The New York Times and TMZ that claimed the newspaper’s reporting on the tribe’s first exposure to the internet led to its members being widely portrayed as technology-addled and addicted to pornography.
The suit was filed in May by the Marubo Tribe of the Javari Valley, a sovereign community of about 2,000 people in the Amazon rainforest.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Tiana J. Murillo on Tuesday sided with the Times, whose lawyers argued in a hearing Monday that its coverage last year was fair and protected by free speech.
TMZ argued that its coverage, which followed the Times’ initial reporting, addressed ongoing public controversies and matters of public interest.
The suit claimed stories by TMZ and Yahoo amplified and sensationalized the Times’ reporting and smeared the tribe in the process. Yahoo was dismissed as a defendant earlier this month.
Murillo wrote in her ruling that though some may “reasonably perceive” the Times’ and TMZ’s reporting as “insensitive, disparaging or reflecting a lack of respect, the Court need not, and does not, determine which of these characterizations is most apt.”
The judge added that “regardless of tone, TMZ’s segment contributed to existing debate over the effects of internet connectivity on remote Indigenous communities.”
“We are pleased by the comprehensive and careful analysis undertaken by the court in dismissing this frivolous lawsuit,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement Wednesday to The Associated Press. “Our reporter traveled to the Amazon and provided a nuanced account of tension that arose when modern technology came to an isolated community.”
Attorneys for TMZ did not immediately respond to an email request for comment Wednesday.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the tribe, community leader Enoque Marubo and Brazilian journalist and sociologist Flora Dutra, who were both mentioned in the June 2024 story. Both were instrumental in bringing the tribe the internet connection, which they said has had many positive effects including facilitating emergency medicine and the education of children.
N. Micheli Quadros, the attorney who represents the tribe, Marubo and Dutra, wrote to the AP Wednesday that the judge’s decision “highlights the imbalance of our legal system,” which “often shields powerful institutions while leaving vulnerable individuals, such as Indigenous communities without meaningful recourse.”
Quadros said the plaintiffs will decide their next steps in the coming days, whether that is through courts in California or international human rights bodies.
“This case is bigger than one courtroom or one ruling,” Quadros wrote. “It is about accountability, fairness, and the urgent need to protect communities that have historically been silenced or marginalized.”
The lawsuit sought at least $180 million, including both general and punitive damages, from each of the defendants.
The suit argued that the Times’ story by reporter Jack Nicas on how the group was handling the introduction of internet service via Starlink satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX “portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography.”
The court disagreed with the tribe’s claims that the Times article falsely implied its youth were “addicted to pornography,” noting that the coverage only mentioned unidentified young men had access to porn and did not state that the tribe as a whole was addicted to pornography.
Nicas reported that in less than a year of Starlink access, the tribe was dealing with the same struggles the rest of the world has dealt with for years due to the pervasive effects of the internet. The challenges ranged from “teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography,” Nicas wrote.
He also wrote that a tribal leader said young men were sharing explicit videos in group chats. The piece doesn’t mention porn elsewhere, but other outlets amplified that aspect of the story. TMZ posted a story with the headline, “Elon Musk’s Starlink Hookup Leaves A Remote Tribe Addicted To Porn.”
The Times published a follow-up story in response to misperceptions brought on by other outlets in which Nicas wrote: “The Marubo people are not addicted to pornography. There was no hint of this in the forest, and there was no suggestion of it in The New York Times’s article.”
Nicas wrote that he spent a week with the Marubo tribe. The lawsuit claimed that while he was invited for a week, he spent less than 48 hours in the village, “barely enough time to observe, understand, or respectfully engage with the community.”
Danny Rensch grew up in a village on the edge of a great forest, in the mountains outside Payson, Arizona. He spent his days with roving packs of children, building forts, playing cops and robbers in the woods, or splashing around in a septic dump, unmindful of the shit and of the bears and javelinas that sometimes came down from the hillsides in search of food and water. When Rensch was nine, he saw a movie, “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” about a boy in New York City who plays chess in a public park with homeless men and discovers that he’s a prodigy. Rensch and his friend Dallas found a cheap chess set and started playing constantly. One day, Dallas took Rensch to play chess with his grandfather Steven Kamp.
Kamp was not just Dallas’s grandfather; he was the leader of a cult to which almost everyone in the town, Tonto Village, belonged. The members of the Church of Immortal Consciousness, also known as the Collective, followed the teachings of a Dr. Pahlvon Duran, who, they believed, lived the last of his many lifetimes as an Englishman in the fifteenth century. Duran spoke to the Collective through Steven’s wife, Trina, and he preached that the goal of life was to fulfill one’s “Purpose” and to live “in Integrity.” Ego was discouraged. So was private property. Families were moved from house to house, and were sometimes reconfigured, too. Rensch had only recently learned that Dallas was actually his stepbrother.
Like most of the members of the Collective, Rensch often didn’t have enough to eat. At times, he didn’t have shoes. Kamp had his own house. He had Cheerios and cigars. He also had books about chess and his own wooden set. He had been following the world championship in New York between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand. Kamp, a good chess player, saw that Rensch had talent. “Chess made me special,” Rensch writes, in “Dark Squares,” his new memoir, “and to be special in the eyes of Steven Kamp is to be special in the eyes of God.”
Chess has been viewed as a measure of intellectual potential for centuries, and Kamp was eager not only to promote the Church of Immortal Consciousness but to dispel the notion that it was a death cult or a dangerous militia group. What if he could boost the profile of the Collective with a successful chess team? The group’s children were in a unique position to undertake such a project. They shared a sense of common mission, instilled in them by Kamp. Traditional schooling was easily ignored. And chess could become a means to privileges: trips to McDonald’s and Taco Bell and out-of-town tournaments.
The kids played for hours every day, with a sense of freedom, and, for a time at least, they had a lot of fun. In 1996, the Shelby School—an unchartered charter in a tiny town on an Arizona mountainside, which the kids attended—placed fourth at the national elementary-school championships, conducted by the United States Chess Federation. In 1997, the school won the U.S.C.F. Super Nationals scholastic championship. In 1998, it won the national elementary-school championship, the K-9 championship, and finished in the top fifteen of the K-12 championship, despite not having any high schoolers. “Cults work,” Rensch writes. “Until they don’t.” Rensch won the national elementary-school championship that year. Trina, channelling Duran, told Rensch that chess was his Purpose.
For a time, Rensch was moved to a house that the Collective owned in Phoenix, to be near the city’s chess club, a hangout for oddballs, chess enthusiasts, and one honest-to-God chess genius, a raging alcoholic named Igor Ivanov, who’d defected from the U.S.S.R. and suffered the usual deprivations of a vagabond professional chess player. Ivanov became Rensch’s personal coach. Most mornings, Rensch would find the man sprawled naked on a bed, and would dutifully fix him the day’s first screwdriver. After Rensch’s rise in the game slowed, when he was fourteen, he was taken from his mother and installed in the home of Kamp’s right-hand man—who happened to be Rensch’s biological father, and who seemed to harbor no feeling for him. Kamp told him this was all for the good of his Purpose.
Rensch’s Purpose, according to Kamp, wasn’t just to play chess. It wasn’t even to become a grand master, though that was the marker of his ambition. His Purpose was to save chess. Doing so, as Rensch puts it in his book, “would prove to the world that [Kamp’s] spiritual vision held the key to understanding human nature and the meaning of life.” Rensch was convinced. “I believed it because I was a child and it’s what I’d been raised to believe,” he writes. But he also wanted to do it for his own reasons. He wanted to make the game seem fun and normal, not “dysfunctional and weird.” He wanted to make it so that the pinnacle of chess achievement didn’t look like tormented, self-destructive figures such as Ivanov but a guy like him, Danny Rensch.
At the age of eighteen, not long after winning the national high-school chess championship, Rensch’s eardrums exploded on a flight on the way home from a tournament. He tried to return to serious competitive chess in his early twenties, but it was becoming clear that his progress had stalled and his goal of becoming a grand master, let alone a top one, was fading. By then, he was married—in the Collective, early marriages were common—and had two kids. (He and his wife, Shauna, eventually had two more.) He was still driven by a belief in his chosen status, but his life was a mess. He began to make a little money coaching chess. He also started drinking, taking painkillers, suffering from panic attacks, and compulsively buying up chess domain names: chessface.com, chesscoachlive.com, and so on. The one he wanted, Chess.com, was already taken. But, at a tournament in 2008, he met the guys who owned it—Erik Allebest and Jay Severson—and badgered them into giving him a job. Only later did he realize that he was lucky that he didn’t badger them out of one.
Maybe they were lucky, too. In 2010, they created ChessTV, with Rensch as its star. I first encountered Rensch in 2016, on a Chess.com YouTube show called “ChessCenter.” My boyfriend, now my husband, had introduced me to the game, and I’d quickly become obsessed, waking up at 4 A.M. to play on my phone. Some couples watch Netflix together; we watched Sicilian Defense instructional videos. We also tuned into live streams of pro tournaments, and we caught up on news by watching “ChessCenter,” which was a little like ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” if “SportsCenter” ’s soundstage was the walk-in closet of a law office in Payson.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a new cottage industry of rage has arisen. And while anger and horror at this act of violence are understandable, they’re also taking Americans to some dark places, where retribution must be had against anyone who said negative things about Kirk after his death and politicians posture about punishing people who (crassly, but nonviolently) celebrated Kirk’s death. A lot of this seems to hinge on the idea that hateful “rhetoric” is responsible for Kirk’s killing; one particularly prevalent strain of this specifically indicts online speech and social media.
It’s social media that led to Kirk’s assassination, the refrain goes, and it’s social media that’s driving all sorts of political violence.
You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth’s sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage.
But social media platforms don’t kill people. People kill people.
That seems banal to point out, I know. Reductive, perhaps. But so much discourse right now attributes an almost supernatural influence to social media and to online speech and communities. And that’s reductive, too—in addition to being pretty unmoored from reality.
“I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Meet the Press yesterday. Social media companies “have figured out how to hack our brains” and “get us to hate each other,” Cox said.
It’s not just politicians spewing a mind-control theory of political violence. “I think the main problem here isn’t this killer’s ideology,” posted the pundit Noah Blum on Friday. “It’s that the internet radicalizes people to do increasingly greater violence on a scarily regular basis and nobody really knows what to do about it.”
We hear some version of this in the aftermath of many tragic or senseless events. It’s not enough for people to blame disturbed or immoral individuals who do bad things. It’s not even enough to blame the dubious influence of “right-wing extremism” or “left-wing extremism” or “political polarization.” People blame tech companies, sometimes even suggesting they’re directly responsible because they failed to stop hateful speech—or misinformation, or divisive rhetoric—on social media.
But the idea that people—especially young men—would not be radicalized if it weren’t for social media belies most of human history.
I’ve been listening recently to a podcast called A Twist of History. One episode details Adolf Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in 1923. Another episode features a riot during a Shakespearean performance in New York City in 1849, fomented by Ned Buntline, a nativist newspaper pundit with ambitions of fame and notoriety. Both instances featured fringe political elements, violence, and deaths.
History is littered with examples like these: men driven to violence by people in close physical proximity, sometimes with the help of inflammatory political rhetoric printed in pamphlets and newspapers.
The type of violence that people engage in does seem somewhat era-dependent. Sometimes it was more likely to be large group violence, acting as part of political movements or criminal gangs. Sometimes it was more likely to be small group violence, committed by racist clubs, radical activist groups, and so on. (And, surely, many manically violent men throughout history have been killed in wars or bar fights before they had a chance to do other damage.)
Ours is an era of lone-wolf violence, though it is not the first one.
Because of our hyper-connected world, and because of the sensationalistic nature of public shootings, it can feel like things are worse than ever. In another time, we wouldn’t have have heard of every racist lynching, every street gang fight, and so on.
But even from what we can glean, looking back, it seems clear that we’re not living in some exceptionally violent time.
Is the internet capable of radicalizing people?
On some level, the answer is yes,of course. But this is simply because the internet, and social media, are such huge parts of our lives. They are where people spend time, spread ideas, and consume ideologies. They are locusts of just about everything good, and everything bad, about our offline world.
“The internet is culture now, the way television once was for our parents, our grandparents, maybe even us,” Katherine Dee wrote on her Substackthis week. “Every aspect of our lives flows through it. There’s no such thing as ‘very Online’ or ‘not Online.’ It’s all of us, all the time, always.”
People will point to algorithms and profit motives, epistemic closure and endless scroll—all sorts of things that supposedly make social media or the internet generally a unique breeder of polarization and radicalism and misinformation. But we have an ever-growing body of research suggesting that, for the average person, being on social media isn’t making things worse (and, in some ways, could be making it better).
We live in ideologically charged and politically polarized times. A lot of our media and our political debates and our discussions with each other reflect this. But the fact that so much of this comes seeping out on social media may simply be a symptom.
Online speech is the most visible manifestation of any rot in our system or culture. But it does not mean that Facebook, or TikTok, or X, or any of the countless niche forums out there are the cause of the rot.
Yes, the shooter was steeped in internet meme culture, as evidenced by messages printed on his bullets: “an internet-specific brand of trollish nihilism adopted by many recent shooters,” as my colleague C.J. Ciaramella put it. But I think it’s foolish—a combination of determined presentism, tech panic, and lack of imagination—to suggest that Kirk’s shooter pulled the trigger only because of ideas or attitudes that he encountered online.
For one thing, we can’t actually say what spawned the shooter’s idea that assassinating someone was a good idea, or his belief that Kirk was an appropriate symbolic target for his agenda. Maybe people around him offline encouraged it. Maybe voices in his head told him to. At this point, we don’t know.
But if he encountered bad ideas online, it’s because the internet is now where we encounter ideas. If he cloaked his violence in the language of internet memes, it’s because that’s where culture is these days.
In another era, he may have encountered bad ideas at a town hall and dressed up his horrific act in different slogans. But a man with a capacity for such premeditated and dramatic violence is a man with a capacity for such things in any era. And conversely, countless billions of people encounter the same online ecosystem without committing assassinations.
Reaching for modern technology as the explanation reeks of an ideological agenda of its own.
None of this is to say that particular vectors of online radicalization shouldn’t be identified. People can and should study such routes, and consider ways to combat them, just as their predecessors tried to stop people from being sucked into the Ku Klux Klan, the mob, and so on. But looking for particular pathways here (if such a thing can be done) is different from condemning social media and the internet universally. We might as well have blamed the buildings where extremists gathered, or the paper and ink that allowed them to communicate.
“Social media is simply the way we talk and communicate in this day and age, for better or worse,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said yesterday on ABC’s This Week. “What I would focus on is condemning the act of violence. It’s not the free speech that led to this. It’s not the fact that people can talk and communicate online. It’s the actions of an unhinged, evil individual.”
More Sex & Tech News
@seungminkim/X
• Kaytlin Bailey, founder and executive director of the sex worker rights group Old Pros, will be debating Melanie Thompson of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women about whether paying for sex should be a crime. The debate, part of the Soho Forum, is happening live tonight in Manhattan and will also be livestreamed on Reason’s YouTube channel.
• The Trump administration is referring to birth control as an abortifacient (that is, something that causes abortion). “President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world,” a United States Agency for International Development spokesperson told The New York Times when asked about birth control pills, IUDs, and hormonal implants that had been slated for low-income countries. “The administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.”
• “Federal regulators and elected officials are moving to crack down on AI chatbots over perceived risks to children’s safety. However, the proposed measures could ultimately put more children at risk,” writesReason‘s Jack Nicastro.
• Korean “comfort women” are suing the U.S. military.
• “OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is supporting a California proposal to impose age verification requirements on app stores and device-makers, adding to the chorus of tech giants praising the measure hours before state lawmakers’ deadline to approve bills for this year,” reportsPolitico.
• A new study pitted some researchers against humans in debates and some against artificial intelligence chatbots. Can you guess who fared better? (The answer is not as straightforward as one might expect.)
Today’s Image
Turning Point USA booth at CPAC | 2014 (ENB/Reason)
An Airbnb guest in Kelowna, British Columbia, says she and her friends were left horrified after making an unexpected discovery at the home they were staying in.
When Jade, who did not share her surname, and her friends pulled back the drapes, they discovered something unusual—strands of hair pinned to the walls.
“We noticed the hair as soon as we arrived, which was 11 p.m. on a Thursday evening,” Jade told Newsweek. “It was scary because we were five women alone. At first we were really scared but didn’t really feel we had options to leave since it was so late.”
According to Jade, the host explained that the hair display had been left behind as part of a prank when the owner’s daughter once lived in the home with friends. “If you zoom in you can see they look like faces. It’s a ‘core memory,’ so they didn’t want to take it down,” she said.
Pictures from the viral video where the women shared the unusual Airbnb detail. Pictures from the viral video where the women shared the unusual Airbnb detail. @jadenicole10/TikTok
An Airbnb spokesperson told Newsweek: “Airbnb requires hosts to meet our ground rules on accuracy and cleanliness, and guests can contact us 24/7 in the rare event they encounter an issue. We are in contact with the guest to continue supporting them, and we are taking action to address this with the host.”
Instead of removing the strands, Jade said the hosts offered paper and tape for the group to cover it up themselves. “They offered to give us paper and tape to cover it up but not take it down. I shared the TikTok so I could validate that it was super insane because the host clearly didn’t think so,” she said.
She shared the moment on TikTok where it gained more than 2.3 million views, and people shared their reactions in the comments.
One commenter quipped: “I’d add a lock of my own hair. Confuse whatever serial killer is keeping trophies.”
Another wrote: “Um, Ma’am, is that a trophy wall? I’ve watched too much true crime for this.”
Some users thought the strands resembled small faces with mustaches, pointing to shiny pink dots visible above the hair. Others joked that perhaps past guests had carried on the tradition without the owners realizing.
This isn’t the first time an Airbnb has included something unusual. Earlier this week, a couple shared how they discovered a “hidden” door and “secret” third floor space in their vacation rental.
While in 2024, a viral post shared the chilling note left in an Airbnb in the Appalachian mountains that prompted the poster to say they were “so scared right now.”
All of the prices above are for a single line paid monthly. Google periodically offers half off and other specials, usually only if you bring your own phone.
Activate Your Chip
Once you’ve picked your plan and signed up, Google will mail out a SIM card. It took a couple of days for my physical SIM to arrive, but I’ll gladly take the slight delay if it saves me from setting foot in a physical carrier store. If you’re using an iPhone, Google Pixel, Samsung phone, or other device that supports eSIM, you can set up Fi with an eSIM instantly.
Once your chip arrives, you’ll need to use a SIM tool to pull out the SIM tray and insert the SIM card into your phone. Then, download the Google Fi app (you’ll need to be on Wi-Fi to do this since your chip won’t connect to the network yet), and follow the steps there. If you’re porting in your old phone number, it may take a little longer. For me, after setting up a new number, Fi was up and running after about 5 minutes. That’s it, you’re done.
I have traveled and lived in rural areas for the past 7 years, and I’ve tried just about every phone and hotspot plan around—none of them are anywhere near this simple. The only one that comes close is Red Pocket Mobile, which I still use in addition to Google Fi. There are cheaper plans out there, but in terms of ease of use and reliability, Fi is hard to beat.
Using Google Fi as a Hotspot
You can use Google Fi as a simple way to add cellular connectivity to any device that accepts a SIM card, like a mobile hotspot. You’ll need to activate your Google Fi SIM card with a phone using the Google Fi app, but once the activation is done, you can put that chip in any device your plan allows. If you go with the Unlimited Plus plan, that means you can put your chip in an iPad, Android tablet, or a 4G/5G mobile hotspot. You are still bound by the 50-gigabyte data limit, though, so make sure you don’t go too crazy with Netflix.
Alternatively, consider ordering a data-only SIM. Google allows you to have up to four if you’re on the Unlimited Premium or Flexible plans, meaning you can keep four gadgets—a spare phone or tablet—connected to the internet. The caveat is that they can’t place phone calls or receive texts. You don’t have to use your phone to activate the SIM first. You can order a data-only SIM in the Plan section of your account, under Devices & subscriptions. If you have an eSIM-only device you want to connect, you can tap Connect your tablet and Fi will offer a QR code you can scan to activate the SIM.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a Google account? Yes, you do need a Google account to sign up for Google Fi, but you don’t need to be all-in on Google to use Fi. I have an Android phone, and I use Google apps since that’s what we use here at WIRED, but outside of work I do not use any Google services other than Fi, and it still works great.
Is Google Fi tracking my every move?Yes, but so is your current provider. Google Fi’s terms of service say Google doesn’t sell what’s known as customer proprietary network information—things like call location, details, and features you use—to anyone else.
I’m traveling and want to use Google Fi abroad. Will that work? Fi’s terms of service require you to activate your service in the US, but after that, in theory, it should work anywhere Fi has partnered with an in-country network. WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu has used Fi in multiple countries while traveling. However, based on feedback from WIRED readers, and reading through travel forums, it seems that most people are being cut off if they’re out of the US for more than a few weeks. I would say don’t plan on using Google Fi to fulfill your digital nomad dreams.
Tips and Tricks
There are several features available through the Google Fi app you might not discover at first. One of my favorites is an old Google Voice feature that allows you to forward calls to any phone you like. This is also possible in Google Fi. All you need to do is add a number to Fi’s forwarding list, and any time you get a call, it will ring both your cell phone and that secondary number—whether it’s a home phone, second cell, or the phone at the Airbnb you’re at. This is very handy in places where your signal strength is iffy—just route the call to a landline. Similarly, it can be worth enabling the Wi-Fi calling feature for times when you have access to Wi-Fi but not a cell signal.
Another feature that’s becoming more and more useful as the number of spam calls I get goes ever upward is call blocking. Android and iOS calling apps can block calls, but that sends the caller directly to voicemail, and you still end up getting the voicemail. Block a call through the Google Fi app, and the callers get a message saying your number has been disconnected or is no longer in service. As far as they know, you’ve changed numbers. To set this up, open the Fi app and look under Privacy & security > Manage contact settings > Manage blocked numbers, and then you can add any number you like to the list. If you change your mind, just delete the listing.
One final thing worth mentioning: I have not canceled my Google Fi service despite switching to Starlink for most of my hotspot needs. Instead, I just suspended my Fi service using the app. That way, should I need it for some reason, I can reactivate it very quickly.
LAGOS, Nigeria — When residents of Equatorial Guinea’s Annobón island wrote to the government in Malabo in July last year complaining about the dynamite explosions by a Moroccan construction company, they didn’t expect the swift end to their internet access.
Dozens of the signatories and residents were imprisoned for nearly a year, while internet access to the small island has been cut off since then, according to several residents and rights groups.
Local residents interviewed by The Associated Press left the island in the past months, citing fear for their lives and the difficulty of life without internet.
Banking services have shut down, hospital services for emergencies have been brought to a halt and residents say they rack up phone bills they can’t afford because cellphone calls are the only way to communicate.
When governments shut down the internet, they often instruct telecom providers to cut connections to designated locations or access to designated websites, although it’s unclear exactly how the shutdown works in Annobón.
The internet shutdown remains in effect, residents confirmed alongside activists, at a moment when the Trump administration has considered loosening corruption sanctions on the country’s vice president.
The Moroccan company Somagec, which activists allege is linked to the president, confirmed the outage but denied having a hand in it. The AP could not confirm a link.
“The current situation is extremely serious and worrying,” one of the signatories who spent 11 months in prison said, speaking anonymously for fear of being targeted by the government.
In addition to the internet shutdown, “phone calls are heavily monitored, and speaking freely can pose a risk,” said Macus Menejolea Taxijad, a resident who recently began living in exile.
It is only the latest of repressive measures that the country has deployed to crush criticisms, including mass surveillance, according to a 2024 Amnesty International report.
Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, is run by Africa’s longest-serving president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who, at 83, has served as president for more than half his life. His son serves as the vice president and is accused of spending state funds on a lavish lifestyle. He was convicted of money laundering and embezzlement in France and sanctioned by the U.K.
Despite the country’s oil and gas wealth, at least 57% of its nearly 2 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank. Officials, their families and their inner circle, meanwhile, live a life of luxury.
The Equatorial Guinea government did not respond to the AP’s inquiry about the island, its condition and internet access.
Located in the Atlantic Ocean about 315 miles (507 kilometers) from Equatorial Guinea’s coast, Annobón is one of the country’s poorest islands and one often at conflict with the central government. With a population of around 5,000 people, the island has been seeking independence from the country for years as it accuses the government of disregarding its residents.
The internet shutdown is the latest in a long history of Malabo’s repressive responses to the island’s political and economic demands, activists say, citing regular arrests and the absence of adequate social amenities like schools and hospitals.
“Their marginalization is not only from a political perspective, but from a cultural, societal and economic perspective,” said Mercè Monje Cano, secretary-general of the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization global advocacy group.
A new airport that opened in Annobón in 2013, which was built by Somagec, promised to connect the island to the rest of the country. But not much has improved, locals and activists say. The internet shutdown has instead worsened living conditions there, collapsing key infrastructure, including health care and banking services.
In 2007, Equatorial Guinea entered into a business deal with Somagec, a Moroccan construction company that develops ports and electricity transmission systems across West and Central Africa.
Annobón’s geological formation and volcanic past make the island rich in rocks and expands Malabo’s influence in the Gulf of Guinea, which is abundantly rich in oil. Somagec has also built a port and, according to activists, explored mineral extraction in Annobón since it began operations on the island.
Residents and activists said the company’s dynamite explosions in open quarries and construction activities have been polluting their farmlands and water supply. The company’s work on the island continues.
Residents hoped to pressure authorities to improve the situation with their complaint in July last year. Instead, Obiang then deployed a repressive tactic now common in Africa to cut off access to internet to clamp down on protests and criticisms.
This was different from past cases when Malabo restricted the internet during an election.
“This is the first time the government cut off the internet because a community has a complaint,” said Tutu Alicante, an Annobon-born activist who runs the EG Justice human rights organization.
The power of the internet to enable people to challenge their leaders threatens authorities, according to Felicia Anthonio of Access Now, an internet rights advocacy group. “So, the first thing they do during a protest is to go after the internet,” Anthonio said.
Somagec’s CEO, Roger Sahyoun, denied having a hand in the shutdown and said the company itself has been forced to rely on a private satellite. He defended the dynamite blasting as critical for its construction projects, saying all necessary assessments had been done.
“After having undertaken geotechnical and environmental impact studies, the current site where the quarry was opened was confirmed as the best place to meet all the criteria,” Sahyoun said in an email.
The residents, meanwhile, continue to suffer the internet shutdown, unable to use even the private satellite deployed by the company.
“Annobón is very remote and far from the capital and the (rest of) continent,” said Alicante, the activist from the island. “So you’re leaving people there without access to the rest of the continent … and incommunicado.”
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
