Now there’s an AI gas station with robot fry cooks Screenshot: Wes Davis / The VergeThere’s a little-known hack in rural America: you can get the best fried food at the gas station (or in the case of a place I went to on my last road trip, shockingly good tikka masala). Now, one convenience store chain wants to change that with a robotic fry cook that it’s bringing to a place once inhabited by a…

Apple’s second-gen AirPods are available at a rare discount Apple’s second-gen AirPods still deliver a lot of value for Apple fans given how well they integrate with other iOS devices. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeWe don’t often recommend five-year-old earbuds, but Apple’s second-generation AirPods are one of those rare gadgets that have stood the test of time. They’re still a good option…

Hello to you as well, Starbucks Screenshot: Chris Welch / The VergeI’ve become almost numb to the deluge of notifications that hit my phone every day. But when an app sends a simple, very human “Hi!” message, apparently that’s enough to stop me in my tracks. And Starbucks just sent exactly that push notification to god knows how many devices a few minutes ago. For what purpose…

Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers Photo: BrotherIt’s been over a year since I last told you to just buy a Brother laser printer, and that article has fallen down the list of Google search results because I haven’t spent my time loading it up with fake updates every so often to gain the attention of the Google search robot. It’s weird because the correct answer to the query “what…

A better keyboard than QWERTY Image: Alex Parkin / The VergeThere are fewer things more ubiquitous in technology than QWERTY keyboards. If you type anywhere, you almost certainly type the QWERTY way. But why? It turns out that by almost any objective measure, the keyboards we use are decidedly unoptimized. Commonly used keys are too hard to reach; your fingers have to move s…

Alaska is gonna try and use a robot to scare wildlife from around an airport As per this still from an Anchorage Daily News video, Aurora is already hard at work spooking the local animals. | Image: Anchorage Daily NewsThe Alaskan government has a new four-legged friend keeping migratory birds and other animals away from the runways at Fairbanks International Airport: a dog-like Boston Dynamics robot dubbed “Aurora.” The…

Jon Stewart on AI, Lina Khan, and the other things Apple didn’t want him to say Jon Stewart interviews Lina Khan. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The VergeIn the months since the cancellation of The Problem With Jon Stewart on Apple TV Plus, the former host of the show, Jon Stewart, has revealed details here and there about the acrimonious relationship with Apple. While interviewing FTC Chair Lina Khan yesterday on The Daily Show…

Now Apple Vision Pro Personas can float freely across different apps You’re not limited to hovering in FaceTime. | Video: AppleStarting today, Vision Pro personas will be able to do more than hover like a ghost in FaceTime calls. Now, you can use them in SharePlay-enabled apps to collaborate, play games, or watch media with other people. Apple is calling this a “spatial Persona.” The idea is to make it feel like…

Google Podcasts is gone — and so is my faith in Google Google Podcasts was a simple but good podcasts app — and now it’s gone. | Image: GoogleGoogle Podcasts is dead. It has been dying for months, since Google announced last fall that it was killing its dedicated podcast app in order to focus all its podcasting efforts on YouTube Music. This is a bad idea and a big downgrade, and I’d be more mad if …

Tesla’s year-over-year sales dropped for the first time since 2020 Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeTesla delivered 386,810 vehicles this quarter, falling short of its fourth quarter 2023 deliveries by nearly 100,000 and marking a year-over-year sales drop from Q1 2023’s 422,875 vehicles. As Bloomberg notes, the company hasn’t delivered fewer vehicles than the same prior-year period since 2020 and has…

YouTube says it’s not slowing down Firefox — just ad blockers Illustration: Alex Castro / The VergeUsers on Reddit and Hacker News are complaining that YouTube seems to have inserted an intentional five-second delay before video pages will load in Mozilla’s Firefox and occasionally some other browsers. YouTube tells The Verge that these users are right about the delay, but the browser has nothing to do wit…

Spotify’s new royalty scheme picks the winners Illustration by Nick Barclay / The VergeThis is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Happy Thanksgiving week! I will be out tomorrow making twice baked potatoes, putting together holiday baby outfits (many tiny overalls will be worn!!), and attempting a night drive to Long Island withou…

OpenAI drops a big new ChatGPT feature with a joke about its CEO drama Illustration: The VergeChatGPT’s voice feature is now available to all users for free. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI announced users can now tap the headphones icon to use their voice to talk with ChatGPT in the mobile app, as well as get an audible response. OpenAI first rolled out the ability to prompt ChatGPT with your voice and i…

Tesla workers report explosions, concussions, and grisly robot injuries at Texas factory Image: GettyAs Tesla prepares to deliver its first Cybertrucks to customers, a new report paints a grisly picture of the Texas factory where the truck is being built, including a casting machine explosion and a robot allegedly goring a worker. The Information reported some of the gruesome incidents that have occurred at the Gigafactory in Austi…

Dave Filoni gets the keys to the Star Wars franchise Dave Filoni in April at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London. | Photo by Jeff Spicer / Getty Images for DisneyDave Filoni just got rewarded for the success of Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, and other Star Wars shows with a promotion to chief creative officer of Lucasfilm. According to details in a new Vanity Fair interview, he’ll work alongside head d…

GameMaker ditches subscription model for indie developers Image: Devolver DigitalChristmas has come early for indie / solo game developers. GameMaker, the game engine software program used to make Undertale, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Hotline Miami 2, and more, has announced that it’s making significant changes to its pricing structure — but don’t worry, they’re the good kind of changes. Starting today,…

Flipboard is abandoning X for Mastodon FlipboardFlipboard is the latest company to end its presence on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a Medium post published Tuesday, the company said it would no longer be “actively monitoring or posting updates on X,” save for the occasional retweet. Instead, Flipboard will be refocusing its efforts on Mastodon and other open social p…

Raise your hand to speak, please Video conference service Google Meet is adding gesture recognition to make it easier to ask a question during a video call. | Image: GoogleGoogle Meet can now recognize when your physical hand is raised on camera during group video calls and alert the host. This means you don’t have to fiddle with clicking the “hand raise” button on the screen a…

Sonos plans a 2024 loaded with new products — including headphones and a set-top box As the company has strongly hinted in recent weeks, Sonos will indeed release its first-ever pair of headphones next year. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who pegs a release as early as April. The over-ear headphones are rumored to cost between $400 and $500 — very premium territory for a company that’s brand new to the category. A…

OpenAI rival Anthropic makes its Claude chatbot even more useful Anthropic gives Claude more abilities. | Image: AnthropicWhile OpenAI is in the middle of an existential crisis, there’s a new chatbot update from Anthropic, the Google-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI engineers who left over disagreements about the company’s increasingly commercial direction as its Microsoft partnership went on. Anthr…