The Meta Quest Pro, the new, souped-up VR headset from Facebook’s parent company, got its public debut yesterday at the Meta Connect event.

The high-end headset, which retails for $1,499, boasts new lenses that make it less bulky than its predecessors, and improved tech for mixed reality in full color. And it represents the first big product launch since the social media company rebranded last year and pivoted to developing a metaverse.

Meta’s bet the house that immersive augmented and virtual worlds will constitute the next stage of the internet. And the company needs this to work out—CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new vision for the company was prompted by a slump in its existing platforms as young people fled to competitors like TikTok, and Apple’s new privacy rules took a $10 billion bite out of Meta’s advertising business.

But the metaverse is still not quite ready for primetime, and even Meta’s own employees don’t seem totally on board yet.

• When pushed to have meetings inside the company’s professional VR app, many staffers had to scramble to get headsets before their managers realized they didn’t have them, according to The New York Times.
• The company’s VP of Metaverse has said its Horizon Worlds VR social network is too buggy to provide a good experience, and chastised the team building it for not using it enough, per The Verge.

Meta’s high-stakes trip to the metaverse can’t be called a failure just yet. The Quest 2 is the most popular VR headset on the market, its Oculus VR app has been downloaded 21+ million times, and Horizon Worlds has about 300,000 monthly active users (though Facebook itself has 2.9 billion monthly users).

Bottom line: It’s possible those metaverse user numbers will keep growing as the tech improves, but there’s a risk that even if the metaverse takes off like Zuck thinks it will, it may not happen fast enough for Meta.—AR

Federal officials traded stocks where they ate. Thousands of officials in the executive branch disclosed stock investments in companies that were advocating for chummy treatment from those same agencies, a WSJ investigation found. For example, nearly one-third of senior EPA officials had investments in companies that were lobbying them. The investigation comes as members of Congress have been scrutinized for their own stock trades.

Elon Musk denied chatting with Putin before posting his peace proposal. Quite the sentence, right? It’s real, and here’s what happened: Yesterday, Vice reported that Ian Bremmer, head of risk consultancy Eurasia Group, wrote in a note to clients that he learned from Musk that Musk had spoken to the Russian president shortly before tweeting a peace plan that was bashed by Ukrainian leaders. Musk denied that the conversation occurred, and said he only spoke to Putin once, about 18 months ago. “The subject matter was space.”

Prosecutors drop charges against Adnan Syed. The man whose case rose to national prominence on the podcast Serial had his murder charges dropped by Baltimore prosecutors yesterday, less than one month after his conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee was overturned. Syed’s lawyer said that DNA tests proved his innocence, while prosecutors have previously identified two alternate suspects in the murder. Syed, who spent 23 years in prison, could potentially seek wrongful conviction compensation.

The Labor Department released a proposal yesterday that could clear a pathway for regulators to grant thousands of gig workers employee status—giving them access to benefits like overtime, health care, and the ability to unionize. Shares of major gig companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash all dropped significantly on the news.

This isn’t something that will grant Uber drivers a minimum wage overnight. The proposal is essentially a return to an Obama administration “test” that courts and regulators can apply when considering if workers at a given company are independent contractors or employees. Some of the questions:

• Is the work integral to the company’s business?
• What investments do workers make (buying equipment, etc.) to do their jobs?
• How much control do workers have over their hours and responsibilities?

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement that the department has seen many cases of companies misclassifying employees as contractors, depriving them of their full pay, and that the proposed test would help decrease instances of misclassification.

Zoom out: Estimates show that labor costs for companies like Uber and Lyft could increase 20%–30% if their drivers were reclassified as employees. For years, the companies have spent hundreds of millions fighting classification laws.—MK

249 years later, the Boston Tea Party is getting a coffee-inspired remake. Dunkin’ fans are in revolt over the company’s revamp of its award system last week, which makes getting free coffee more expensive.

Once-loyal customers have been decrying the policy change on the Dunkin’ subreddit, pledging to uninstall the app and defect to Starbucks. “I no longer run on Dunkin’,” wrote the Thomas Paine of the group.

What did Dunkin’ do to set off the revolution? For one, it upped the amount you had to spend at the store to get free drinks. Previously $40 = free coffee. Now, $40 just gets you tea (gross), and you have to spend $50 for coffee, $70 for cold brew, and $90 for some lattes. Dunkin’ also stripped away the unalienable rights of Americans to cop freebies on their birthdays by eliminating free b-day drinks.

Dunkin’ defended the update, claiming that drinks have gotten more expensive to make and the changes would be beneficial for its franchisees. Dunkin’ also had one of the more generous rewards programs in the industry, an analyst told Insider, so the tweaks bring it more in line with rivals like Starbucks.

We’re excited for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s upcoming Broadway musical of this saga: Affleck.—NF

Stat: Yesterday, British artist Damien Hirst set 1,000 of his paintings on fire as part of an NFT project. We’ll explain: Hirst launched a collection last year of 10,000 NFTs corresponding to 10,000 original artworks. Buyers could choose to trade in their NFT for the physical art, but if they chose to keep the NFT, then Hirst would burn the original artwork, which he began to do yesterday. “A lot of people think I’m burning millions of dollars of art but I’m not, I’m completing the transformation of these physical artworks into nfts by burning the physical versions,” he wrote on Instagram.

Quote: “I have been unjustly smeared in the media.”

In a rare public statement, former NFL star Brett Favre said that he had done “nothing wrong” in relation to Mississippi’s vast welfare scandal, in which $77 million worth of government funds intended for poor residents were redirected to the state’s elite. Text messages unveiled in a court filing showed that $5 million in welfare money went toward a volleyball facility Favre was trying to get funded. Favre has not been criminally charged in the investigation.

Read: How a new anti-woke bank stumbled. (Wall Street Journal)

On Imposters, we sit down with titans of industry, sports, and entertainment to discuss the personal challenges they’ve overcome to get where they are today. It’s honest, raw, and a reminder that we’re all just doing the best we can. Check out some recent popular episodes:

• How Michelle Williams overcame her depression after Destiny’s Child
• Julia Haart reveals how she left her insular community to become a CEO
• How to make it in Hollywood without an agent, with comedian Amanda Seales

This editorial content is supported by Ac+ion.

Take notes, Draper: Here are the 10 best marketing ads of all time.

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Picdoku: Reminisce about trading toy cars on the playground with today’s Hot Wheels-themed Picdoku. Play it here.

Independence trivia

On this day in 1968, Equatorial Guinea gained its independence from Spain. But it was just one of dozens of African countries that won independence from European colonizers throughout the 20th century. In today’s quiz, we’ll give you the name of an African country, and you have to name the European country it gained its independence from.

1. Egypt (1922)
2. Morocco (1956)
3. Kenya (1963)
4. Mozambique (1975)
5. Rwanda (1962)

What’s the best financial advice you’ve ever received? We asked strangers for tips in the most expensive city in the US. Watch here.

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