• Boston Dynamics is testing Spot, its robot dog, for delivering packages to your doorstep.
• Spot can take packages from delivery vans to houses, the company said Tuesday.
• It could bring automation to the “final frontier” of delivery, Boston Dynamics said.

Getting deliveries from a truck to your front door might soon involve a robot dog.

Robotics company Boston Dynamics is testing Spot, its canine-shaped robot, as a delivery worker that can ride along in trucks and hop out to leave packages at customers’ doorsteps.

The delivery-focused version of Spot includes a conveyor belt. A video posted by the company on Tuesday shows a human worker placing packages on the conveyor belt, followed by Spot walking up to houses and rotating the belt to set them down.

Robots are already carrying some deliveries most of the way to their destinations. Spot, though, is meant to tackle the last few feet of those deliveries — the “porch gap,” as Boston Dynamics calls it.

“So much of logistics is already automated, but we believe that the final frontier of logistics automation is that last 50 feet,” Marco da Silva, vice president and general manager for Spot at Boston Dynamics, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Boston Dynamics said it’s in talks with major logistics companies to test Spot for making deliveries. The robot has previously been used for other applications, from security to site inspections, Boston Dynamics said.

Loading deliveries into autonomous delivery vehicles and getting them from curbs to doorsteps are challenging, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said last year. It’s one aspect of the delivery that human workers can navigate more easily than robots can, Xu said.

DoorDash has been using Dot, its autonomous delivery robot, for some deliveries in Arizona. The stroller-sized robot is small enough to fit through doorframes and travel on surfaces where full-sized cars can’t — an advantage for picking up and delivering items directly to customers’ doors, DoorDash has said.

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AI is redefining the work of software engineers, and fueling growth in a new crop of companies. The CEO of vibe-coding startup Emergent joins Business Insider’s Dan DeFrancesco for a live Q&A to discuss his company’s exponential growth. Mukund Jha also shares what he looks for when hiring software engineers, and how vibe coding is changing his industry.

• US forces are conducting strikes on Iran day and night following the collapse of the ceasefire.
• The attacks will continue to intensify in the coming days, Trump said.
• Iran has attacked commercial vessels and US allies in the Middle East in response.

The US military has been striking Iran for days now, and while most of the strikes have come at night, it executed the latest round of strikes in the middle of the day.

US forces have resumed combat operations against Iran after the collapse of a shaky ceasefire following repeated setbacks and impasses in negotiations, triggered by Iranian aggression and US retaliatory strikes.

US operations are targeting military installations and capabilities, particularly those that threaten civilian shipping and key waterways, namely the strategic Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump said earlier this week that strikes would continue to intensify in the coming days.

On Wednesday, US Central Command, the combatant command overseeing the Middle East, said its forces had completed a round of strikes against Iran that began at 6 am ET, roughly 1:30 pm local time. It wrapped up in an hour and a half.

“CENTCOM launched precision munitions against coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Greater Tunb Island during the 90-minute wave. The strikes further degraded Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” the command said.

Greater Tunb Island is located in the Persian Gulf just west of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran seized it in 1971 from what would later become the United Arab Emirates.

A video published by CENTCOM showed one of Wednesday’s strikes against Iran. The command did not identify the specific target or the munition employed.

Trump declared the ceasefire over last Wednesday, effectively ending a fragile agreement that had failed to fully halt exchanges of fire between the US and Iran. That night, the US struck targets in Iran in what it said was an effort to degrade Tehran’s ability to threaten civilian shipping.

Attacks that followed from Saturday through Tuesday were carried out late or in the middle of the night in Iran. Now, the US is also striking during daylight hours.

“We’re going to hit them very hard tonight,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “We’re gonna hit them really hard the night after.” The president has said that the strikes will continue until he determines it’s “enough.” He also warned that future targets could include power plants and bridges.

The US has said its new attacks on Iran are in response to Tehran’s attacks on vessels passing through the strait. In addition to strikes, US forces have also resumed the blockade of the strait.

While many strikes have been conventional, some others have been experimental. Earlier this week, CENTCOM announced it had used naval drones in combat for the first time, launching them against what appeared to be an unguarded submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. The Corsair uncrewed surface vessels hit the port, causing a massive explosion.

Iran has also been firing missiles and drones at US allies across the Middle East, including Bahrain and Kuwait.

Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, said in a statement that “over the past seven days, Iran has intentionally targeted civilians across the region by attacking seven commercial ships, resulting in nearly a dozen civilian crew members killed, missing, or injured.” He added that “Iranian forces have also launched dozens of missiles and drones toward neighboring Gulf countries.”

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has threatened to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade on Wednesday, and Tehran has vowed to continue its response to US strikes.

• Old Ebbitt Grill claims to be the capital’s oldest restaurant, with a history dating back to 1856.
• Located steps from the White House, the restaurant has reportedly hosted politicians and presidents.
• Its best-known offering is the oysters, which the Old Ebbitt Grill claims are “the safest in town.”

With America celebrating its 250th anniversary this summer, it was only fitting to visit one of the capital’s most historic establishments.

Old Ebbitt Grill, which traces its history to 1856, claims to be Washington, DC’s oldest restaurant and has reportedly hosted a variety of high-profile guests over the decades, including US presidents and lawmakers.

Although Old Ebbitt has occupied several addresses over its history, it has operated at its current location just steps from the White House since 1983.

The restaurant and its history are intertwined with the nation’s, and scenes from the capital city’s past can be found throughout the restaurant and its walls.

Take a look inside the oldest restaurant in Washington, DC.

Old Ebbitt Grill started out as a boarding-house saloon that attracted prominent figures.

According to the restaurant’s history, in 1856, innkeeper William E. Ebbitt purchased a boarding house in Washington, DC, that welcomed high-profile politicians and future presidents. William McKinley is believed to have resided there while in Congress.

The boarding house’s saloon bar was said to be a popular gathering destination for the capital’s elites — US presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Warren Harding are believed to have visited the establishment.

The boarding house closed in 1925, and throughout the 20th century, the saloon relocated a few times to buildings on streets neighboring the White House and the Treasury Building. It moved to its current location in a Beaux-Arts building on 15th Street NW in 1983.

Today, the restaurant hosts a mix of lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers, journalists, and tourists.

When I visited on a summer holiday weekend, the tourist presence was strong, overshadowing any mystique that the restaurant’s clientele may hold on weekdays.

While table reservations can be competitive, I was able to casually walk in and sit at the bar as a solo diner.

Inside, the restaurant is dark, and the ambiance is intimate.

The restaurant’s dimly lit interior with dark wood paneling is broken up by large oil paintings depicting classic Victorian scenes. The booths are lined with plush green velvet and surrounded by greenery, making each table feel intimate and providing diners, including high-profile patrons, with a sense of privacy.

The restaurant has four separate public bars and a private dining room downstairs.

The main bar is adjacent to the main dining room, separated by hand-carved glass panels depicting iconic government institutions: its neighboring White House, the Capitol, and the Treasury.

Tucked around the corner from the bustling main bar is the Oyster Bar, where patrons can watch the master shuckers work up close — this is where I opted to dine.

The third and most intimate bar is located to the left of the restaurant foyer, up marble steps, and a fourth bar is hidden in the back of the main dining room, providing a quieter experience than the front of the house.

The Cabinet Room, the restaurant’s private dining room where the most high-profile figures may opt to dine during their visits, is tucked away downstairs.

Toward the back, the restaurant’s oyster bar sits in a corner, adjacent to a full bar.

The Oyster Bar had the most empty seats during my early-dinnertime Saturday visit.

While I didn’t choose it with the oyster aspect in mind, I found it an exciting spot. Watching the shuckers work made oysters feel like the obvious choice for my meal.

I got started with the menu’s most popular drink and a side of fries.

When I asked the bartender what the most popular or signature drink was, he pointed to the Strawberry Fields ($16.99), which features vodka, prosecco, strawberry basil, soda, and lemon.

The drink was a rather basic, sweet, citrusy spritz cocktail that reminded me of strawberry lemonade in the summer.

I also got a side of fries ($5.99), which were thick and crunchy, and were the most filling part of my meal.

Instead of a traditional entrée, I opted to try some of the restaurant’s most notable offerings.

Beyond its history, there’s another thing Old Ebbitt is known for: its oysters.

The restaurant claims that every oyster hits the table within five minutes of shucking to ensure freshness, and that it sources from the “finest growers on both coasts.”

The menu also claims that these are “the safest oysters in town” and notes that the restaurant conducts lab tests on oysters from each of its suppliers’ farms at least every two months to ensure they meet the in-house safety standards, which it claims “are significantly higher than the FDA’s.”

A half-dozen oysters, which I ordered, costs $23.99 regularly, but drops to $15.99 during the restaurant’s daily happy hours between 3 and 5 p.m. and again after 11 p.m.

I ordered one of each of the six oyster types on the menu.

Shortly after I ordered them, the oysters came out, shucked and chilled, on a metal plate.

They were served with crackers, lemons, mignonette, and a cocktail sauce topped with horseradish.

The six varieties I got included the Smokey Bay from British Columbia, the Point Prim from Canada’s Malpeque Bay, and four Massachusetts varieties: the Duxbury Select and Standish Shore from Duxbury Bay, the Fiddler’s Cove from Falmouth, and the Wellfleet from Wellfleet Harbor.

The oysters were the best I’ve ever had.

As an oyster non-connoisseur and very casual enjoyer, these blew any others I’d previously had out of the water.

They were incredibly fresh, briny, and flavorful, with an interesting variety of flavors I wouldn’t have noticed unless comparing them to one another.

The bartender guided me through each oyster’s flavor profile, pointing out the West Coast oyster as the most distinctive, thanks in part to its smoky, sweeter profile.

For dessert, I went for the Key-lime pie at the bartender’s suggestion.

When the bartender heard me mention I’m from Florida to a woman sitting next to me, he suggested that I try the restaurant’s Key-lime pie ($11.99).

Other dessert options included peach cobbler, brownie with ice cream, carrot cake, peanut butter pie, chocolate chip bread pudding, truffle cake, crème brûlée, and ice cream.

A little overwhelmed with the number of options, I went with the bartender’s recommendation. I also felt the citrusy dessert would pair well with the oysters and the drink.

The pie was well-balanced, but I wished for a thicker crust.

The pie filling was well-balanced between tartness and sweetness, and the whipped cream added a fluffier counterpart to the rich custard.

I also found that the lime zest added a depth of flavor to the classic dessert.

I only wish I could’ve tasted more of the nutty crust, which was a little thinner than I had hoped.

Still, the dessert was a sweet ending to a long travel day.

As I ate, I enjoyed looking at the art on the walls.

Throughout the restaurant, paintings depicting unique images of the city’s history are showcased against dark wooden panels.

The art, dark wood furnishings, ornate chandeliers, floral decorations, and illuminated bottle displays give the restaurant a moody, intimate feel.

I ended up talking a lot to the woman sitting next to me. We were far from exchanging state secrets, but I could only imagine how many history-defining conversations must’ve taken place across Old Ebbitt’s various locations throughout the years.

While oysters are the restaurant’s crown jewel, its expansive menu is fit for long nights of conversation.

The full menu — which covers breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and dessert — includes local Mid-Atlantic seafood staples, American classics, and Mexican-, Italian-, and French-inspired dishes.

Some of the other menu highlights, many of which revolve around fresh New England seafood, include the jumbo lump crab cakes, the roasted trout, and the bacon-horseradish-glazed meatloaf.

From traditional entrées to burgers and tinned fish conservas to pair with drinks, the menu seems to cover every bite one might desire over many hours of conversation.

The kitchen stays open until 1 a.m. every day, a late-night feat that few restaurants can match.

After visiting, I understand why the Old Ebbitt Grill has remained a DC staple for decades.

From its central location and its expansive menu to its consistent late-night schedule, I understood how the Old Ebbitt Grill has endured.

Beyond its mystique and legend, the restaurant offers something far more important than an interesting history on the wall: It delivers a solid experience, whether you’re a Capitol Hill regular or a tourist on your first visit.

After tax and tip, my meal came to $79.13. While my dinner was on the lighter side, I felt the price was justified by the freshness and quality of the seafood and the level of care the staff showed.

It wasn’t the most luxurious fine-dining experience, but it felt elevated yet remained approachable for visitors like me who might be ready to decompress after a long day of walking around the capital.

• Twenty-six employees sued Meta, saying it used AI systems to help select workers for layoffs.
• The lawsuit says AI usage metrics penalized workers who took medical, parental, or disability leave.
• A Meta spokesperson said that the “claims lack merit and are not based on facts.”

Meta used AI-powered workplace systems to penalize employees for taking medical and parental leave and then selected them for layoffs, according to allegations in a new lawsuit.

The complaint, filed by 26 current and former workers on Monday in federal court in Northern California, alleges that Meta relied on AI-assisted tools and employee-monitoring data to score and rank workers before cutting about 8,000 jobs in May.

The plaintiffs allege that the process relied on metrics such as work output, software development activity, and AI tool usage that employees could not accrue while on protected leave. By failing to adjust those measurements for time away, the suit alleges, Meta effectively recorded medical leave, maternity leave, and disability-related reductions in output as underperformance.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the complaint says.

Instead, the employees allege, the company relied on systems including its internal AI chatbot, Metamate; AI usage dashboards; employee-trained “second-brain” agents designed to reproduce parts of a worker’s output; activity-monitoring data; and AI-assisted performance and calibration tools.

They allege that Meta ranked employees using internal AI-adoption categories such as “AI Native,” “AI First,” and “AI Enabled,” and that employees’ scores declined when they were away from work. The allegations have not been tested in court.

“These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider. “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

The case comes as Meta has pushed employees to use AI more heavily and tracked adoption through internal dashboards and leaderboards. Other major companies, including Disney, JPMorgan, and Visa, have also begun measuring employee AI usage.

The lawsuit against Meta referenced internal AI programs the company introduced this year. Meta had installed software on many US employees’ computers to capture keystrokes and mouse movements as training data for its AI models, prompting employee protests over privacy and the program’s mandatory nature, Business Insider reported in April. The lawsuit alleges that data from this monitoring program also helped feed Meta’s layoff-selection systems.

Meta paused the program in June after an internal leak made the data widely accessible across the company.

Meta also introduced a performance system called Checkpoint this year, placing greater emphasis on outcomes and giving the company’s top-rated workers significantly larger bonuses. The lawsuit alleges that an AI-enabled element of Checkpoint made employee AI adoption a “core assessment metric.”

The complaint says several employees were selected for layoffs while on approved leave or shortly after returning from it. One engineer alleged that his manager blamed a lower rating on the “broken time” caused by an injury that prevented him from working. Another employee says a manager warned that taking medically approved leave would lead senior leadership to “definitely” nominate him for layoffs.

The employees are asking a judge to pause their terminations while their claims proceed in arbitration and to order an independent audit of Meta’s layoff selection process. They also want Meta to recalculate the selections without counting protected leave or disability accommodations against workers.

The plaintiffs, who have chosen to remain anonymous, worked at Meta across several states, including California, Washington, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Reuters first reported on the lawsuit on Tuesday.

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• IBM warned investors of a shift in tech budgets as AI spending impacts other tech sectors.
• Security spending is increasing as companies react to AI-driven cybersecurity threats.
• As AI investment soars and memory prices surge, there’s only so much money to go around.

IBM‘s pre-earnings warning to investors reveals a new reality in the AI spending boom: There’s only so much money to go around, so some tech companies are winning at the expense of others.

The company said customers are shifting technology budgets in two important ways. First, they’re spending heavily on memory chips, servers, and storage to build AI infrastructure before expected price increases. Second, they’re diverting more money toward cybersecurity as companies race to defend against new AI-powered threats.

The result is what amounts to a giant sucking sound across corporate IT budgets. Money flowing into AI is leaving less available for other technology purchases, including IBM’s latest mainframe computers and the software that runs on them.

IBM said customers spent the final weeks of June buying servers, storage, and memory to lock in supply before prices rose, a much bigger shift than it expected. That hurt sales of its new Z mainframes and related software.

The company also blamed “rapidly evolving” cybersecurity concerns for delaying numerous large deals. IBM didn’t identify the cause, but Barclays analysts said the comments likely refer to Anthropic’s recently launched Mythos AI model, which has heightened concerns that AI can rapidly uncover software vulnerabilities. The analysts said companies appear to be accelerating security spending, potentially at the expense of other technology projects.

The market reacted accordingly. While IBM’s stock plummeted nearly 25%, shares of memory companies rose, with SK Hynix surging more than 20% on Nasdaq on Tuesday. Shares of cybersecurity vendors, including CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, also jumped.

The bigger question is whether IBM is experiencing a temporary budget shuffle or something more lasting. “There was no indication that this trend has yet abated,” BNP Paribas analysts wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday. They expect IBM to share more on its outlook when the company reports results on July 22.

Barclays analysts argued the spending shift is probably temporary, with customers delaying mainframe purchases while they absorb higher infrastructure costs.

And this isn’t likely the SaaSpocalypse: IBM’s other software businesses, including Red Hat, continued to perform well, with revenue growth actually accelerating.

Let’s call it the “Mainframe-alypse.” Not sure that one will catch on.

Anyway, IBM’s warning highlights a broader trend emerging across enterprise technology: AI is forcing companies to make difficult choices about how existing technology budgets are allocated, producing clear winners and losers.

There’s only so much money to go around.

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