Google's new speaker and your smart home questions

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of ultra wideband door locks. I'm your friend David Pierce. And today on the show, we are answering your questions about the smart home. We get a lot of questions about the smart home. I would say that is the single most popular thing on the Vergecast hotline, 86611 or send us an email, vergecast@theverge.com. So every once in a while, Jen Tuohy comes on the show and just answers as many of your questions as we can. We also have the new Google Home speaker in house. We've been testing this new smart home device from Google, and we both have some thoughts about what this thing actually is. We're gonna get to all of that in just a second. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is ninety seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, 06/24/2026. OpenAI just revealed its first AI chip, which is for some reason called Jalapeno. I don't know. It's specifically an inference chip, which means it's not for training huge models, but for interacting with them. OpenAI has been working with Broadcom on these chips, and if they're good, they're actually a huge deal. NVIDIA became the world's most valuable company in large part by having the best AI chips around, and everyone else would love to control their own destiny a little more and stop needing NVIDIA so badly. Plus, OpenAI desperately needs to figure out a way to make AI usage cheaper and more energy efficient, all of which it says jalapeno will do. We'll see about all that when it launches later this year. Meanwhile, big day for price reveals. We finally know what Grand Theft Auto six will cost when it finally, actually, apparently, for real, seriously launches this November. It's gonna be $80 for the standard version, which is unfortunately increasingly the price of high end games, or a $100 for the ultimate version. Preorders start tonight, and you get some cool added gear, and you might even get the game early if you preorder. But you know what you apparently can't get at all? Is a disc with the game on it. Imagine, even the quote, unquote physical version of GTA six is just a box with a download code in it. Does that even count as a physical version? That's up to you. I say no. It absolutely does not. Meanwhile, the Slate truck, the extremely minimalist pickup truck with no paint or speakers or power windows, finally has a price tag. It's gonna start at $24,950. That makes it the cheapest pickup and the cheapest EV you'll find pretty much anywhere on the market right now. People have been really interested in this thing, and I suspect the price tag is only gonna be good news. And finally, it's Amazon Prime Day, and we're tracking all the best deals everywhere, but here's my main recommendation. A lot of Apple gear is on sale …