Technologies

Wing Drone Deliveries Are Expanding to the San Francisco Bay Area This Year

Some Bay Area residents will be able to get groceries and meals delivered by drone.

Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area may soon get their meals, grocery items and over-the-counter drugs delivered by drone, with last-mile delivery company Wing announcing that it’s rolling out its drone delivery service to the region in the coming months in a blog post on Monday.

Wing — a last-mile drone delivery company under the umbrella of Alphabet, which also owns Google and driverless taxi service Waymo — describes the arrival of its aerial deliveries in the Bay Area as a «homecoming,» alluding to its fledgling years as a Google experimental X Labs «moonshot project» testing drone deliveries across Google’s Mountain View campus in 2012.

In 2018, Wing was spun off into an independent company and began making deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2022. It has since expanded operations to include deliveries in the Atlanta, Houston and Charlotte, North Carolina, markets, with plans to expand to more major cities that will make drone deliveries possible for around 40 million people. To date, Wing says its drones have made over 750,000 residential deliveries across the US and Australia.

Wing’s drones use a hybrid vertical take-off, fixed-wing design to automatically pick up and deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds to customers, typically within a 6-mile operating radius of their base, dropping their payload right into a customer’s yard with the aid of a motorized tether. Customers access the service via the Wing app, where they can request items for delivery in as little as 10 minutes.

A partnership with Walmart announced earlier this year gives Wing access to the retail giant’s inventory of groceries, retail items and over-the-counter medicines, as well as use of its parking lots as distributed bases for drone charging and package pickup — expanding the footprint of its delivery network. A similar DoorDash partnership brought food and drink delivery to the service.

Monday’s announcement doesn’t specify which Bay Area neighborhoods will be the first to receive their eggs or phone chargers via drone, nor when the service is expected to roll out. Eager San Francisco residents — as well as residents of Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, and Tampa and Orlando, Florida, which have also been announced as future Wing delivery markets — can sign up for updates on Wing’s website to be alerted when aerial deliveries come to their area.

Technologies

FCC Bans Foreign-Made Routers as a ‘National Security Risk’

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for March 24, #1739

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for March 24, No. 1,739.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a tough one, with a tricky double letter. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has one vowel, but it’s the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with B.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with D.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a family of young animals, especially birds.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is BROOD.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, March 23, No. 1738, was SERIF.

Recent Wordle answers

March 19, No. 1734: REHAB

March 20, No. 1735: OASIS

March 21, No. 1736: SLICK

March 22, No. 1737: BASIL

Technologies

Save $70 and Get a Free Game With Asus ROG Cetra Wireless Dual-Mode Gaming Buds

The ROG Cetra True SpeedNova earbuds are marked down to $150 ahead of Amazon’s Spring Sale.

Every gamer needs a good headset or earbuds. Because no matter how great a gaming laptop you own, its speakers can’t deliver sound with the power and precision you want or need. And even if you have a desktop rig and a good set of speakers, those you cohabitate with — a spouse, significant other, sleeping child or roommate — might not enjoy hearing the chatter, gunshots and explosions coming from your computer.

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale doesn’t start until Wednesday, but sale pricing has already begun. The Asus ROG Cetra True Wireless SpeedNova gaming earbuds are marked down to $150 for a savings of $70. The earbuds are available in black or white; only the black model is on sale at Amazon. They come with a free digital copy of Resident Evil Requiem, a $70 value.

While a set of earbuds might not have the full sound of an over-the-ear headset, it’s more versatile. These earbuds are dual-mode, letting you switch between 2.4GHz for low-latency audio for gaming, and the convenience of Bluetooth for listening to music or talking on your phone. And they can be paired with two devices simultaneously via 2.4GHz and Bluetooth modes. In 2.4GHz mode, the earbuds offer high-res 24-bit/96kHz audio.

The ROG Cetra True Wireless SpeedNova features adaptive noise canceling so you can hear your game over the rambling of your roommate and bone-conduction AI microphones to help eliminate background noise when you’re speaking. Asus says you’ll get up to 46 hours of battery life, and it takes only a five-minute charge to add an hour of battery life.

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Device support is broad. Bluetooth mode supports PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch, while 2.4GHz mode supports PC, Mac, Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.