Yesterday, there was finally a reason other than playing Beat Saber to dust off your Meta Quest headset: to watch Mark Zuckerberg talk for 40 minutes.

The Meta CEO highlighted new hardware and product features in his keynote address at the MetaConnect conference—including the Orion AR glasses that he called “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.”

The new specs aren’t available to buy…and probably won’t be for awhile. But Zuckerberg introduced the lightweight augmented-reality glasses prototype to show that the company has actually been building something with the billions it’s been pouring into its metaverse dreams.

• The glasses use eye-tracking and a new “neural interface” that, via a wrist strap about the size of a Fitbit, allows users to navigate apps with gestures and movement.
• The Verge editor Alex Heath reported that Meta also plans to sell the wristband separately, since it will work with some of Meta’s other hardware.
• According to Heath, some parts of the glasses are a little clunky, and he described the graphics as good but not good enough to watch Avatar.

Meta had even more wearables news…

Its popular Ray-Ban Meta glasses will soon be able to translate conversations in real time between English and French, Italian, or Spanish. The Ray-Bans will also be equipped with AI video processing, so you can ask your glasses what the heck is going on right in front of you instead of just looking.

Meta is also releasing the Quest 3S, a $300 version of its $650 Quest 3 VR headset. After Apple’s $3,500 headset flop, Meta stopped trying to push metaverse board meetings and gave the people what they really wanted from VR tech: something cheaper with more games. Users are also getting an official Twitch app for the device and will be able to play Wordle without a New York Times subscription.

Oh, and Meta AI will start talking to you with the voices of Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, and John Cena on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.—MM

Evacuations begin as Helene approaches Florida. The storm gained strength yesterday, on a course to pummel Florida and the Southeast, potentially making landfall today as the strongest hurricane to hit the US in over a year. Thousands of Florida residents evacuated in anticipation of dangerous rainfall, winds, and storm surge. States of emergency have been declared in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

OpenAI reportedly plans to become a for-profit company. The ChatGPT-maker, currently overseen by a nonprofit entity despite its $150 billion recent valuation by investors, is planning to restructure to become a for-profit company, multiple news outlets reported yesterday. The change, which could impact OpenAI’s approach to the risks associated with sophisticated AI models, would also give CEO Sam Altman an equity stake. The news broke shortly after Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who was briefly installed as the company’s interim head when nonprofit board members ousted Altman, announced she’d be leaving her post after six and a half years.

Google made an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in Europe. Even Big Tech thinks Big Tech can be too big sometimes. Google, itself a regular target of antitrust regulators, escalated a long-running fight with Microsoft over cloud computing. It filed a formal EU antitrust complaint claiming its rival uses the licensing terms for its business software and Azure cloud platform to make it hard for customers to switch to competitors. This is a fight among titans: Google is the third-biggest cloud provider, behind Amazon Web Services and Azure.—AR

Like your upstairs neighbor’s leaky bathtub, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts are beginning to trickle down: Mortgage rates are gradually declining, and to take advantage, homeowners and prospective buyers submitted a wave of refinancing and loan applications last week, new data revealed yesterday.

Federally insured mortgage rates dipped below 6%—a “psychologically important” level, Mortgage Bankers Association VP Joel Kan said—while the the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage slid to 6.13%, down from a high of nearly 8% last year. According to the MBA:

• Refinancing applications shot up 20.3% last week compared to the week prior, and mortgage apps jumped 11%.
• Both hit their highest levels in more than two years.

But buying costs could still get worse. The median home price has spiked 50% over the past five years, so homeowners who locked in pandemic-era 3% mortgage rates likely don’t feel inclined to move. That’s partially why first-time homebuyers still have to compete for a small pool of houses for sale, which could push listing prices higher and seep into rental competition.

Slow roll: With wage growth expected to outrun inflation and mortgage rates projected to keep sliding with additional Fed cuts in the coming years, Goldman Sachs sees homebuying returning to “normal levels” of affordability by…2030.—ML

Imagine enduring years of heartbreak and all you get is a commemorative ticket. Grown men will weep this afternoon as the storied Athletics play their last game in Oakland, California, in farewell to the team that’s been a community pillar for over 50 years.

The Oakland A’s are shipping east to Las Vegas, where the MLB team’s universally despised owner, John Fisher, is building a new stadium. In a poorly received letter to fans this week, the billionaire apologized for failing to keep the team in Oakland, saying, “We tried.” Last year, Fisher ended discussions with Oakland officials about a new waterfront stadium.

“End of an era” is a colossal understatement. In the 1970s, Oakland was home to three championship teams—the NBA’s Warriors, the NFL’s Raiders, and the A’s. With all three gone (the Warriors to nearby San Francisco and the Raiders to Vegas), Oakland will be without a major professional sports team for the first time since 1960.

So long…the sold-out game is expected to be an emotional one as nearly 47,000 lachrymose fans bid farewell to local celebrities like Right-Field Will, who has sat in the same spot at every home game for 20 years. The A’s will play the next three seasons at a minor league field in Sacramento while their new stadium in Vegas is built.—CC

It’s not just you: Most shoppers give up when confronted with the need to either possess good enough break-in skills to join Danny Ocean’s crew or wait for a store employee to come unlock the toothpaste. A recent survey by Consumer World found that two out of three shoppers won’t get a worker to free merchandise from a locked case, our friends at Retail Brew report. More than half (55%) of the online survey’s 1,124 respondents said they try to buy the item they want somewhere else, while 13% try to find something similar in the same store that’s not under lock and key. Stores started keeping their wares locked up to prevent theft (a problem some argue isn’t as big as retailers have claimed), but it looks like that decision is taking a bite out of potential sales.—AR