Tech
More Than Half of Child Care Providers Have Gone Hungry, New Report Finds
An early childhood center director in Washington re-draws the weekly menu to contend with the rising cost of food. A home-based provider in Arkansas stays up late crunching the budget numbers, stretched thin between food and health insurance. A provider who watches children of her friends, family members and neighbors has a sleepless night worrying about if the growing children have enough to eat.
Discussions have long swirled around children’s food insecurity, most recently peaking with the paused Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamps program. That program is reinstated, though its requirements are changing by the end of next year.
Now, a new study has found that children’s caretakers, too, are struggling with hunger more than ever.
According to a survey from the RAPID Survey Project at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, more than half (58 percent) of child care providers surveyed experienced hunger in June 2025 — which is one of the highest percentages the organization has seen since it began collecting data in 2021. Some respondents – including the providers from Washington and Arkansas mentioned previously – shared personal experiences with hunger, such as those mentioned above.
“I think most people think we’re in a very prosperous country and with hunger, there’s something of a mindset around it of abject poverty,” says Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center for Early Childhood and founder of the RAPID Project. “But we’re starting to talk about these issues as a canary in the coal mine; there’s signals it’s starting to spread to a much wider swath of population.”
The latest findings are a bump from June 2021 to May 2025, when an average of 44 percent of the surveyed child care providers reported experiencing hunger. The spike, while alarming to Fisher, was not surprising. The cost of groceries is rising, and there have also been cuts to programs that provide food for food banks.
“It’s likely people are seeking free food where it’s available, but that is becoming harder and harder to access,” Fisher says, adding his son, who runs a food bank in rural Washington state, has seen an increased demand.
“Food insecurity” is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a household’s access to adequate food. The RAPID Project considered a respondent “hungry” if they experienced at least two of the five food insecurity scenarios:
- If the food you bought went bad, could you not afford to replace it?
- Can you not afford to eat balanced meals?
- Did you or other adults in your household ever cut the size of your meal or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food? If yes, how often did this happen?
- Did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough money for food?
- Were you ever hungry but didn’t eat because there wasn’t enough money for food?
Poonam Gupta, a research associate at the Urban Institute in the Tax and Income Supports division, says while “hunger” is an immediate condition, the usage of the “food insecurity” label showcases a longer-term issue.
“Even if you’re not currently hungry in the moment while taking the survey, you can still be food insecure,” she says.
The reported food insecurity spanned across all types of child care providers. Fisher said center-based directors had the lowest rates of food insecurity among the group, followed by home-based providers, with center-based teachers and providers of family, friends and neighbor care seeing the highest rates.
“There’s been a ton of reporting on how broken the child care system is and a lot has to do with low wages,” he says. “So it’s not surprising it’s across the board.”
Gupta added early childhood education teachers, and other low-income workers with hourly wages, are in a particularly tough spot because of the instability that comes with weekly schedules.
“A lot of attention is paid in general to the low-income workforce, but folks that have non-traditional or inconsistent hours tend to be at the highest risk,” she says. “There’s a type of instability in not being able to predict when your hours are. And if you’re an early childhood education provider and have children of your own, it’s difficult for you to afford child care and even more difficult to meet the work requirements to get SNAP benefits.” The program requires recipients to work at least 80 hours per month.
Early childhood care providers’ schedules can be particularly volatile, where workers can get sent home if, for example, not enough children are in attendance on a given day.
Hunger is widespread for children and adults, with 1 in 4 households experiencing food insecurity in 2024, according to the Urban Institute. But Fisher and Gupta believe the general public isn’t well aware of hunger among adults. They pointed out that most efforts — both from organizations and in research projects — largely focus on children’s food insecurity.
“I think the images they show perpetuate these ideas that the people who are hungry are in an extreme margin,” Fisher says, rather than the reality that much of the general public is at risk for going without adequate food.
The issue points to an irony at the heart of how child care works in the U.S. Child care costs families more than ever, with Child Care Aware of America finding that parents in most states pay more for child care each month than for rent or mortgages. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average pay for a child care worker is below $12.25 per hour. Child care workers with a college degree get roughly $14.70 per hour.
Gupta estimates that food insecurity, including among early childhood care providers, will get worse. Upcoming changes to SNAP are slated for October 2026 and include an increased age limit and removing exemptions for veterans, those experiencing homelessness and those aging out of the foster care system. According to 2024 data from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley, roughly 43 percent of child care workers receive some form of public assistance, including SNAP and Medicaid.
“If anything, we only expect this to get worse in the coming year because of all the disruptions being made, mainly to the SNAP program,” she says.
A state-sponsored threat group has compromised dozens of networks of government and critical infrastructure entities in 37 countries in global-scale operations dubbed ‘Shadow Campaigns’.
Between November and December last year, the actor also engaged in reconnaissance activity targeting government entities connected to 155 countries.
According to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 division, the group has been active since at least January 2024, and there is high confidence that it operates from Asia. Until definitive attribution is possible, the researchers track the actor as TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619.
‘Shadow Campaigns’ activity focuses primarily on government ministries, law enforcement, border control, finance, trade, energy, mining, immigration, and diplomatic agencies.
Unit 42 researchers confirmed that the attacks successfully compromised at least 70 government and critical infrastructure organizations across 37 countries.
This includes organizations engaged in trade policy, geopolitical issues, and elections in the Americas; ministries and parliaments across multiple European states; the Treasury Department in Australia; and government and critical infrastructure in Taiwan.
Source: Unit 42
The list of countries with targeted or compromised organizations is extensive and focused on certain regions with particular timing that appears to have been driven by specific events.
The researchers say that during the U.S. government shutdown in October 2025, the threat actor showed increased interest in scanning entities across North, Central and South America (Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago).
Significant reconnaissance activity was discovered against “at least 200 IP addresses hosting Government of Honduras infrastructure” just 30 days before the national election, as both candidates indicated willingness to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Unit 42 assesses that the threat group compromised the following entities:
- Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy
- the network of a Bolivian entity associated with mining
- two of Mexico’s ministries
- a government infrastructure in Panama
- an IP address that geolocates to a Venezolana de Industria Tecnológica facility
- compromised government entities in Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Serbia
- an Indonesian airline
- multiple Malaysian government departments and ministries
- a Mongolian law enforcement entity
- a major supplier in Taiwan’s power equipment industry
- a Thai government department (likely for economic and international trade information)
- critical infrastructure entities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, and Zambia
Unit 42 also believes that TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619 also tried to connect over SSH to infrastructure associated with Australia’s Treasury Department, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance, and Nepal’s Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.
Apart from these compromises, the researchers found evidence indicating reconnaissance activity and breach attempts targeting organizations in other countries.
They say that the actor scanned infrastructure connected to the Czech government (Army, Police, Parliament, Ministries of Interior, Finance, Foreign Affairs, and the president’s website).
The threat group also tried to connect to the European Union infrastructure by targeting more than 600 IP hosting *.europa.eu domains. In July 2025, the group focused on Germany and initiated connections to more than 490 IP addresses that hosted government systems.
Shadow Campaigns attack chain
Early operations relied on highly tailored phishing emails sent to government officials, with lures commonly referencing internal ministry reorganization efforts.
The emails embedded links to malicious archives with localized naming hosted on the Mega.nz storage service. The compressed files contained a malware loader called Diaoyu and a zero-byte PNG file named pic1.png.
Source: Unit 42
Unit 42 researcher found that the Diaoyu loader would fetch Cobalt Strike payloads and the VShell framework for command-and-control (C2) under certain conditions that equate to analysis evasion checks.
“Beyond the hardware requirement of a horizontal screen resolution greater than or equal to 1440, the sample performs an environmental dependency check for a specific file (pic1.png) in its execution directory,” the researchers say.
They explain that the zero-byte image acts as a file-based integrity check. In its absence, the malware terminates before inspecting the compromised host.
To evade detection, the loader looks for running processes from the following security products: Kaspersky, Avira, Bitdefender, Sentinel One, and Norton (Symantec).
Apart from phishing, TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619 also exploited at least 15 known vulnerabilities to achieve initial access. Unit 42 found that the threat actor leveraged security issues in SAP Solution Manager, Microsoft Exchange Server, D-Link, and Microsoft Windows.
New Linux rootkit
TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619’s toolkit used for Shadow Campaigns activity is extensive and includes webshells such as Behinder, Godzilla, and Neo-reGeorg, as well as network tunneling tools such as GO Simple Tunnel (GOST), Fast Reverse Proxy Server (FRPS), and IOX.
However, researchers also discovered a custom Linux kernel eBPF rootkit called ‘ShadowGuard’ that they believe to be unique to the TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619 threat actor.
“eBPF backdoors are notoriously difficult to detect because they operate entirely within the highly trusted kernel space,” the researchers explain.
“This allows them to manipulate core system functions and audit logs before security tools or system monitoring applications can see the true data.”
ShadowGuard conceals malicious process information at the kernel level, hides up to 32 PIDs from standard Linux monitoring tools using syscall interception. It can also hide from manual inspection files and directories named swsecret.
Additionally, the malware features a mechanism that lets its operator define processes that should remain visible.
The infrastructure used in Shadow Campaigns relies on victim-facing servers with legitimate VPS providers in the U.S., Singapore, and the UK, as well as relay servers for traffic obfuscation, and residential proxies or Tor for proxying.
The researchers noticed the use of C2 domains that would appear familiar to the target, such as the use of .gouv top-level extension for French-speaking countries or the dog3rj[.]tech domain in attacks in the European space.
“It’s possible that the domain name could be a reference to ‘DOGE Jr,’ which has several meanings in a Western context, such as the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency or the name of a cryptocurrency,” the researchers explain.
According to Unit 42, TGR-STA-1030/UNC6619 represents an operationally mature espionage actor who prioritizes strategic, economic, and political intelligence and has already impacted dozens of governments worldwide.
Unit 42’s report includes indicators of compromise (IoCs) at the bottom of the report to help defenders detect and block these attacks.
Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.
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from the shoot-first,-ask-questions-never dept
In the grand scheme of things — the wanton cruelty, the routine violations of rights, the actual fucking murders — this may only seem like a blip on the mass deportation continuum. But this report from Dell Cameron for Wired is still important. It not only explains why federal officers are approaching people with cellphones drawn nearly as often as they’re approaching them with guns drawn, but also shows the administration is yet again pretending it’s a law unto itself.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security published new details about Mobile Fortify, the face recognition app that federal immigration agents use to identify people in the field, undocumented immigrants and US citizens alike. The details, including the company behind the app, were published as part of DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, which federal agencies are required to release periodically.
The inventory includes two entries for Mobile Fortify—one for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and says the app is in the “deployment” stage for both. CBP says that Mobile Fortify became “operational” at the beginning of May last year, while ICE got access to it on May 20, 2025. That date is about a month before 404 Media first reported on the app’s existence.
A lot was going on last May, in terms of anti-migrant efforts and the casual refusal to recognize long-standing constitutional rights. That was the same month immigration officers were told they could enter people’s homes while only carrying self-issued “administrative warrants,” which definitely aren’t the same thing as the judicial warrants the government actually needs to enter areas provided the utmost in Fourth Amendment protection.
The app federal officers are using is made by NEC, a tech company that’s been around since long before ICE and CBP become the mobile atrocities they are. Prior to this revelation, NEC had only been associated with developing biometric software with an eye on crafting something that could be swiftly deployed and just as quickly scaled to meet the government’s needs. This particular app was never made public prior to this.
ICE claims it’s not a direct customer. It’s only a beneficiary of the CBP’s existing contract with NEC. That’s a meaningless distinction when multiple federal agencies have been co-opted into the administration’s bigoted push to rid the nation of brown people.
As is always the case (and this precedes Trump 2.0), CBP and ICE are rolling out tech far ahead of the privacy impact paperwork that’s supposed to filed before anything goes live.
While CBP says there are “sufficient monitoring protocols” in place for the app, ICE says that the development of monitoring protocols is in progress, and that it will identify potential impacts during an AI impact assessment. According to guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, which was issued before the inventory says the app was deployed for either CBP or ICE, agencies are supposed to complete an AI impact assessment before deploying any high-impact use case. Both CBP and ICE say the app is “high-impact” and “deployed.”
This is standard operating procedure for the federal government. The FBI and DEA were deploying surveillance tech well ahead of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) as far back as [oh wow] 2014, while the nation was still being run by someone who generally appeared to be a competent statesman. That nothing has changed since makes it clear this problem is endemic.
But things are a bit worse now that Trump is running an administration stocked with fully-cooked MAGA acolytes. In the past, our rights might have received a bit of lip service and the occasional congressional hearing about the lack of required Privacy Impact Assessments.
None of that will be happening now. No one in the DHS is even going to bother to apply pressure to those charged with crafting these assessments. And no one will threaten (much less terminate) the tech deployment until these assessments have been completed. I would fully expect this second Trump term to come and go without the delivery of legally-required paperwork, especially since oversight of these agencies will be completely nonexistent as long as the GOP holds a congressional majority.
We lose. The freshly stocked swamp wins. And while it’s normal to expect the federal government to bristle at the suggestion of oversight, it’s entirely abnormal to allow an administration that embraces white Christian nationalism to act as though the only holy text any Trump appointee subscribes to was handed down by Aleister Crowley: Do what thou wilt. That is the whole of the law.
Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, dhs, facial recognition tech, ice, mass deportation, surveillance, trump administration
Companies: mobile fortify, nec
Most 3D design software requires visual dragging and rotating—posing a challenge for blind and low-vision users. As a result, a range of hardware design, robotics, coding, and engineering work is inaccessible to interested programmers. A visually-impaired programmer might write great code. But because of the lack of accessible modeling software, the coder can’t model, design, and verify physical and virtual components of their system.
However, new 3D modeling tools are beginning to change this equation. A new prototype program called A11yShape aims to close the gap. There are already code-based tools that let users describe 3D models in text, such as the popular OpenSCAD software. Other recent large-language-model tools generate 3D code from natural-language prompts. But even with these, blind and low-vision programmers still depend on sighted feedback to bridge the gap between their code and its visual output.
Blind and low-vision programmers previously had to rely on a sighted person to visually check every update of a model to describe what changed. But with A11yShape, blind and low-vision programmers can independently create, inspect, and refine 3D models without relying on sighted peers.
A11yShape does this by generating accessible model descriptions, organizing the model into a semantic hierarchy, and ensuring every step works with screen readers.
The project began when Liang He, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas, spoke with his low-vision classmate who was studying 3D modeling. He saw an opportunity to turn his classmate’s coding strategies, learned in a 3D modeling for blind programmers course at the University of Washington, into a streamlined tool.
“I want to design something useful and practical for the group,” he says. “Not just something I created from my imagination and applied to the group.”
Re-imagining Assistive 3D Design With OpenSCAD
A11yShape assumes the user is running OpenSCAD, the script-based 3D modeling editor. The program adds OpenSCAD features to connect each component of modeling across three application UI panels.
OpenSCAD allows users to create models entirely through typing, eliminating the need for clicking and dragging. Other common graphics-based user interfaces are difficult for blind programmers to navigate.
A11yshape introduces an AI Assistance Panel, where users can submit real-time queries to ChatGPT-4o to validate design decisions and debug existing OpenSCAD scripts.
A11yShape’s three panels synchronize code, AI descriptions, and model structure so blind programmers can discover how code changes affect designs independently.Anhong Guo, Liang He, et al.
If a user selects a piece of code or a model component, A11yShape highlights the matching part across all three panels and updates the description, so blind and low-vision users always know what they’re working on.
User Feedback Improved Accessible Interface
The research team recruited 4 participants with a range of visual impairments and programming backgrounds. The team asked the participants to design models using A11yShape and observed their workflows.
One participant, who had never modeled before, said the tool “provided [the blind and low-vision community] with a new perspective on 3D modeling, demonstrating that we can indeed create relatively simple structures.”
Participants also reported that long text descriptions still make it hard to grasp complex shapes, and several said that without eventually touching a physical model or using a tactile display, it was difficult to fully “see” the design in their mind.
To evaluate the accuracy of the AI-generated descriptions, the research team recruited 15 sighted participants. “On a 1–5 scale, the descriptions earned average scores between about 4.1 and 5 for geometric accuracy, clarity, and avoiding hallucinations, suggesting the AI is reliable enough for everyday use.”
A new assistive program for blind and low-vision programmers, A11yShape, assists visually disabled programmers in verifying the design of their models.Source: Anhong Guo, Liang He, et al.
The feedback will help to inform future iterations—which He says could integrate tactile displays, real-time 3D printing, and more concise AI-generated audio descriptions.
Beyond its applications in the professional computer programming community, He noted that A11yShape also lowers the barrier to entry for blind and low-vision computer programming learners.
“People like being able to express themselves in creative ways. . . using technology such as 3D printing to make things for utility or entertainment,” says Stephanie Ludi, director of DiscoverABILITY Lab and professor of the department of computer science and engineering at the University of North Texas. “Persons who are blind and visually impaired share that interest, with A11yShape serving as a model to support accessibility in the maker community.”
The team presented A11yshape in October at the ASSETS conference in Denver.
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Aiming to encourage app development and celebrate the most creative participants, Apple’s Swift Student Challenge is back and the winners will get to visit Apple Park.
Apple’s 2026 Swift Student Challenge is open for applications — image credit: Apple
As it has done now every year since 2020, Apple is running a Swift Student Challenge. Applications for the contest to find innovative new app developers are open now and close on February 28, 2026.
Applications are sought from students working with Swift Playground 4.6 or Xcode 26, or later. As well as only around two weeks to apply, there are many eligibility requirements.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Everyone knows Super Bowl commercials are expensive, bombastic, and designed to be talked about. What we didn’texpect was an AI startup using the biggest ad stage of the year to throw shade at a rival’s advertising strategy. That’s exactly what Anthropic has done. The company bought Super Bowl airtime to broadcast a simple message: “Ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude.” Its ads depict a chatbot spitting product pitches mid-conversation, ending with a clear contrast to its own ad-free promise. Even ads these days aren’t what they used to be. Video: Can I get a six pack quickly?, uploaded…
This story continues at The Next Web
The 2026 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will air on NBC this Sunday, Feb. 8. The game will also stream on Peacock. If you don’t have NBC over the air and don’t subscribe to Peacock, there are still ways to watch Super Bowl LX — and Bad Bunny’s history-making Halftime Show — for free. Here’s how to tune in.
How to watch Super Bowl LX free:
Date: Sunday, Feb. 8
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
Location: Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
TV channel: NBC, Telemundo
Streaming: Peacock, DirecTV, NFL+ and more
2026 Super Bowl game channel
Super Bowl LX will air on NBC. A Spanish-language broadcast is available on Telemundo.
How to watch the 2026 Super Bowl for free
You can stream NBC and Telemundo on platforms like DirecTV and Hulu + Live TV; both offer free trials and are among Engadget’s choices for best streaming services for live TV. (Note that Fubo and NBC are currently in the midst of a contract dispute and NBC channels are not available on the platform.)
In addition to hosting NBC’s Super Bowl broadcast, DirecTV’s Entertainment tier gets you access to loads of channels where you can tune in to college and pro sports throughout the year, including ESPN, TNT, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS Sports Network, and, depending on where you live, local affiliates for ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.
Whichever package you choose, you’ll get unlimited Cloud DVR storage and access to ESPN Unlimited.
DirecTV’s Entertainment tier package is $89.99/month. But you can currently try all this out for free for 5 days. If you’re interested in trying out a live-TV streaming service for football, but aren’t ready to commit, we recommend starting with DirecTV.
Peacock is the streaming home of the 2026 Super Bowl.
While a regular Peacock subscription begins at $10.99 a month for a Premium Plan and goes up to $16.99 for the ad-free Premium Plus plan, you can get an ad-supported subscription for free if you’re a Walmart+ subscriber.
Walmart+ members actually get their choice between Paramount+ or Peacock included in their membership at no additional cost. A monthly subscription to Walmart+ costs $12.99, and an annual plan usually costs $98. But you can try the service out totally free. Beyond free Peacock, Walmart+ has additional perks like five free months of Apple Music, discounts on Cinemark movie theater memberships, free shipping and delivery on Walmart purchases, discounts on gas and much more.
Instacart+ subscribers are able to get an annual Peacock Premium plan (a $109.99 value) for free. After a free 14-day trial, Instacart+ plans cost $99/year, meaning you’ll save more on Peacock simply by subscribing to the delivery service, but you’ll get tons of extras, like free grocery and restaurant delivery and a free subscription to the New York Times Cooking app.
What time is the 2026 Super Bowl?
The 2026 Super Bowl kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 8. Green Day will be performing a pre-game special starting at 6 p.m. ET.
Who is playing in the Super Bowl?
The AFC champions, the New England Patriots, will play the NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks.
Where is the 2026 Super Bowl being played?
The 2026 Super Bowl will be held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., home of the San Francisco 49ers.
Who is performing at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show?
Bad Bunny is headlining the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performance. You can expect that show to begin after the second quarter, likely between 8-8:30 p.m. ET. Green Day will perform a pre-game show starting at 6 p.m. ET. If you’re tuning in before the game, singer Charlie Puth will perform the National Anthem, Brandi Carlile is scheduled to sing “America the Beautiful,” and Grammy winner Coco Jones will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
More ways to watch Super Bowl LX
Verdict
Hot water delivered at the precise volume and temperature that you want, the CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser is a brilliant alternative to a kettle. It’s a little fiddly to get a full water tank, but that’s a minor complaint about a device that’s cheaper and more convenient than a kettle.
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Precise flow control -
Simple to use -
Heats fast
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Water tank is fiddly to fill
Key Features
Introduction
Kettles aren’t a particularly efficient way of heating water, as it’s hard to only heat the exact amount of water that you want. Far easier is a product like the CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser, which dispenses the level of water you want at the temperature you want.
This model is simple to use and heats well, but it has only basic water filtration, and the tank is a touch fiddly to fill.
Design and features
- 5°C temperature increments
- 50ml volume selection
- Water filter
Neat looking and slim, the CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser doesn’t take up any more counter space than a regular kettle, so it’s easy to do a like-for-like swap. All you really need is enough space at the back to lift out the 2.7-litre water tank.
Once plugged in, there’s not too much setup. The CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser does need rinsing through with hot and cold water, but that’s a one-time job.
A universal filter is provided in the box, which needs commissioning by soaking it in water before it can be used. This then drops into the filter holder that splits the 2.7-litre water tank in two.
While the design is easy to use, the way the filter works means that you have to fill the top part of the reservoir first, let water drain through the filter to the bottom, and then top up with tap water. Then, as water is pulled from the tank, the water at the top slowly filters through.
It’s a slightly more laborious process than being able to just fill the entire tank in one go, so you need a bit of planning when refilling. I find that it’s best to keep an eye on the tank, and top up as it gets half-empty or so.
With the Milky Plant The Watery, which is much bigger, the entire tank at the back is filled, and then the water is automatically filtered into the jug at the front, providing a larger reservoir, making the machine slightly more convenient to use.
Water filters typically need replacing every four to six weeks, and bulk packs are available for about £5 per filter.
Lastly, don’t forget to adjust the water hardness control. Setting it accurately is essential because it determines when the descale indicator will activate.
On top is a control panel. There are buttons for temperature, which can be set to 0°C for room temperature water, or between 40°C and 100°C in 5°C increments for hot water.
There’s a favourites button that you can use to quickly recall a preset, which is handy if you, for example, always have a tea at a set temperature and amount.
There’s also a volume control that you tap to cycle through the options: 50ml to 400ml in 50ml increments.
Hit the Play button when you’re done, and the CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser starts dispensing water: instantly for cold water and with a short delay for hot water, while its thermoblock is heated.
All cups and mugs will fit under the spout, but you’d struggle to get a saucepan under there, so you may want to keep a kettle for cooking, or just boil water directly on a hob.
Performance
- Precise amounts of water dispensed
- Heats fast
- Accurate heating
Putting a measuring jug underneath, I dispensed 200ml of boiling water. There was a short heat-up time before the water started to pour, but the final result was within a few ml of what I’d selected.
I also measured the temperature of the output. Set to 100°C, the final temperature in a warmed mug was 95°C, which is very similar to what I’d get from a regular kettle.
At full temperature, the CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser drew a maximum of 2400W. However, as it’s only heating the amount of water you want to dispense, and there’s a very low minimum, you’re only ever heating the water you’ll actually use. With a kettle, you’ll often have to boil more water than you want to use.
The filters are designed to remove chlorine and pollutants, prevent bacterial growth and increase the life of the hot water dispenser. Using a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter I found that my tap water gave me a reading of 307ppm; after filtering it was 293ppm.
A more powerful water filter will remove even more, but here the focus is on specific things in the water. And, the final water does taste better than tap water.
Should you buy it?
You want precise amounts of hot water fast
Hot water at the temperature and volume that you want, delivered at the touch of a button makes this cheaper and more convenient than a kettle.
You want better water filtration
There’s just a basic water filter here. If you want more removed from your source water, you’ll want a water heater with a reverse osmosis filter.
Final Thoughts
The CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser provides more temperature control than the slightly cheaper, but otherwise very similar, CASO Design HW 660 Turbo Hot Water. If you regularly have drinks that like specific temperatures, then the HW 770 is well worth buying.
If you’d rather have a kettle, then check out my guide to the best kettles.
How We Test
We test every kettle we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
- Used as our main kettle for the review period
- We measure the temperature of the water for different settings
- We test water purity with a TDS meter for any device that has a filter
FAQs
They should last between four and six weeks each.
There’s not enough space to get anything other than cups and mugs under the spout.
Test Data
| CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser |
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Full Specs
| CASO Design HW 770 Turbo Hot Water Dispenser Review | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | – |
| Size (Dimensions) | x x INCHES |
| Release Date | 2021 |
Material won a $1.25 million contract from the US Air Force to validate the 3D-printing technology earlier this year. The 18-month project aims to demonstrate how printed, conformable batteries could transform design freedom for defense and aerospace hardware.
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This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here.
I’ve attended my share of professional development sessions as an educator. Too often, I’ve walked away asking the same question: Is this really how we expect teachers to learn?
I still remember one session on trauma-informed teaching held in a school cafeteria. The tables and attached seats were too small for most of us, while the lights hummed overhead. For two and a half hours, the facilitator read from an endless slide deck about the importance of connection and empathy. There was minimal context building, limited discussion and no reflection. By the end, the facilitator smiled and said, “Now you are all trauma-informed teachers!” I think my eyes rolled so far back they almost stayed there.
Sitting and listening to someone talk for 45 to 60 minutes is not learning, let alone two and a half hours. My body knows it before my brain does. I get restless, my mind drifts, I check the time and take a walk to refill my water bottle. In that first hour, disappointment sets in fast.
Minimal conditions for adult learning have become the norm. I used to resent that; now I fear it. Because the longer I sat in those breakout rooms, the quieter I became. My curiosity dulled, the topic’s urgency faded and I started doing what was expected: showing up, signing in and leaving seemingly unchanged. That terrified me. I could feel myself becoming the kind of learner I never wanted my students to be. Even the most dedicated teachers can wilt in the wrong conditions.
And here’s what often goes unspoken: teachers already give so much of their time to these sessions, spending hours after school on professional days and during planning periods. That investment deserves more than compliance-based sessions that leave teachers unchanged or walking away with a checklist of “next steps” that never take root.
After experiences like that, I find myself returning to familiar questions: Why do we accept for ourselves what we would never accept for our students? What if we taught students the way we teach teachers? We’d call it ineffective, parents would complain and administrators would intervene. Yet, the same approach is accepted for teachers’ professional development: lecture-heavy, one-size-fits-all and compliance-driven. I knew better for my students and kept accepting less for myself. That contradiction began to haunt me.
As a high school English teacher, I built lessons around engagement, differentiation and relevance so students could connect learning to their lives. They deserved instruction that met them where they were and balanced support with challenge. When it comes to teaching teachers, we need the same shift — from professional development done to us, to professional learning created by, for and with us.
A Different Way Exists
I remember one of the first times I felt what real professional learning could be. Around 2013, when Edcamp was spreading across schools, my administrators used this format for one of our PD days. These grassroots “unconferences” turned the familiar model upside down. There were no pre-approved presenters or hour-by-hour agendas. Teachers built the schedule on the spot and moved freely between conversations. If one wasn’t helpful, you left and found another. The emphasis was on curiosity and choice.
I led two sessions that day: one on digital tools for learning and another on equitable grading. I didn’t stand in front of the group; I sat in the circle. We tested tools in real time, pried into long-held grading beliefs and argued about what being fair really means in high school grading. What I remember most wasn’t the content but the energy in the room and the buzz of teachers thinking, building, disagreeing and learning together.
It was the first time I realized how much trust professional learning requires: trust in teachers’ intelligence, instincts and creativity. We talk so much about empowering students, but rarely about empowering teachers. Edcamp, brief as it was, made me wonder what would happen if we trusted educators the way we expect them to trust their students.
That lesson deepened through the Rhode Island Writing Project at Rhode Island College, where “teachers teaching teachers” wasn’t a slogan but a practice. During the summer institute, I joined a community of educators from across the state. We wrote together, shared feedback and listened, really listened, to each other’s classroom stories and the complex and messy overlap between personal and professional life.
That summer changed me. I saw what it meant to honor teacher knowledge, and to treat professional learning as a dialogue, not delivery. It ruined me, in the best way. Once you’ve experienced learning that is alive, reciprocal and demanding, it’s hard to sit quietly again while someone reads from slides.
But here’s what I know: those moments were rare. Outliers.
Most professional development since that summer has looked more like paperwork than pedagogy. Neatly packaged, disconnected and efficient to a fault. For many educators, PD is still something that happens to them, not with them. I’ve seen what that does. It breeds cynicism and convinces brilliant teachers that their professional growth is optional, even disposable. Novice and veteran teachers alike found ways to get through or get by during especially disconnected sessions. Not out of defiance, but self-preservation.
As a district administrator, I find myself in a very different position where I receive more structured opportunities for professional learning than I ever did in the classroom. I attend multi-day workshops on leadership frameworks, statewide coaching institutes and even regional conferences focused on instructional design. They’re well-planned, reflective, energizing and respectful of participants’ needs. Nothing like the one-off PowerPoints teachers sit through during the school day or after school.
That contrast is hard to ignore. It reminds me just how uneven our systems can be. The higher up you go, the more development you’re offered; the closer you are to students, the less you get.
I carry that discomfort with me every day. I think about the teachers in sessions I once led or attended who expressed their skepticism and tiredness of being told what to value or what new requirement to add to their already stacked list of classroom responsibilities. My job now is to make sure the professional learning I help design never repeats that pattern — that it respects their time, their expertise and their humanity. I don’t want them to feel the quiet resignation I once did.
This problem runs deeper than any one district or leader. A recent report from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University affirmed Rhode Island’s commitment to investing in professional learning. The report highlights state-level efforts such as expanding instructional coaching, building in common planning time and fostering cross-district collaboration. These are the supports I wish I’d had years ago.
The report also reminded me of what I’ve seen firsthand: resources and structures only work when the design honors teachers’ time and trust.
How We Teach Teachers
How we design professional learning makes visible the value we place on teachers. When PD is treated as a formality, the message is that teacher growth is optional. But when it’s treated as authentic learning, the message is clear: adult learning matters, and investing in teachers is investing in students.
If we want professional learning that serves educators and the students they teach, we must move beyond seat time and toward structures that honor teacher expertise and foster continuous improvement. The elements of strong professional learning aren’t mysteries; they mirror the same principles of good teaching.
A few approaches that work include teacher-led inquiry cycles that invite educators to identify problems of practice and design solutions together; offering choice and voice in sessions that make learning relevant and personalized; building in time for application and reflection; and creating job-embedded opportunities where teachers can learn in context alongside their colleagues and students.
The future of our profession will be defined by what we choose right now and whether we can model the kind of learning we say we want for our students.
About 4% of all public commits on GitHub are now being authored by Anthropic’s Claude Code, a terminal-native AI coding agent that has quickly become the centerpiece of a broader argument that software engineering is being fundamentally reshaped by AI.
SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor and AI research firm, published a report on Friday projecting that figure will climb past 20% by the end of 2026. Claude Code is a command-line tool that reads codebases, plans multi-step tasks and executes them autonomously. Anthropic’s quarterly revenue additions have overtaken OpenAI’s, according to SemiAnalysis’s internal economic model, and the firm believes Anthropic’s growth is now constrained primarily by available compute.
Accenture has signed on to train 30,000 professionals on Claude, the largest enterprise deployment so far, targeting financial services, life sciences, healthcare and the public sector. On January 12, Anthropic launched Cowork, a desktop-oriented extension of the same agent architecture — four engineers built it in 10 days, and most of the code was written by Claude Code itself.
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