Wes Davis

Former Weekend Editor

Wes DavisMay 18, 2025

Gemini is getting colorful on Nest speakers.

Some Reddit users are reporting seeing a blue-and-purple gradient, rather than the usual white LEDs, on their Nest Audio speakers, 9to5Google reports. My colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is seeing the same.

It’s the color scheme for Gemini, Google’s AI assistant that it’s slowly replacing Google Assistant with. The company started testing Gemini on its Nest smart speakers in December. You need be enrolled in the Google Home Public Preview and opt into experimental AI features to try it out.

China begins assembling its supercomputer in space

Wes DavisMay 18, 2025

Amazon claims it’s ‘constantly inviting’ new customers to Alexa Plus

Wes DavisMay 17, 2025

Amazon says ‘hundreds of thousands’ now have access to Alexa Plus.

An Amazon spokesperson gave the figure to Reuters, adding, “...of course, some are employees and their families, but the overwhelming majority are customers that requested early access.”

However, Reuters says it found no evidence of Alexa Plus in the wild when searching “dozens of news sites” and social media.

Update May 17th: Amazon Spokesperson Eric Sveum emailed this statement to The Verge:

It’s simply wrong to say that Alexa+ isn’t available to customers—that assertion is false. Hundreds of thousands of customers have access to Alexa+ and we’re constantly inviting more customers that have requested Early Access.

reuters.com

[reuters.com]

How a DoorDash driver scammed the company out of $2.5 million

Wes DavisMay 17, 2025

Outdoor Boys says goodbye.

Luke Nichols, who runs the nearly 15-million-subscriber-strong YouTube channel, partly blames fame:

...Because of people stealing my content and posting it on other platforms, my family and I have been viewed about 4 billion times, in addition to the 2.8 billion views on YouTube. The sheer volume of fans trying to contact me, trying to take pictures with me, or just trying to come up and talk to me in public can be overwhelming ... The time to stop is before this problem gets so out of hand that my family and I can’t live normal lives.