Since its launch on September 30, OpenAI’s Sora app has dominated the iOS App Store charts, thanks to its easy breezy AI video generation and an initially loose interpretation of copyright laws. On Friday, its reign came to an end. Your new champion is … Dave’s Hot Chicken.

Yes! Not ChatGPT or Gemini or Threads or any of the other usual suspects. Dave’s Hot Chicken now rules over the App Store, where its slack-beaked, bug-eyed mascot icon expresses appropriate surprise at its ascent. How did it do it? How did it break the grasp of OpenAI’s golem TikTok? With something people love even more than large language models: free food.

“They’re running a promotion for free sliders in celebration of Drake’s birthday,” says Adam Blacker, PR director of the app analytics firm Apptopia. “Free food always gets the downloads flowing.”

If you’re wondering what Drake has to do with any of this, he invested in the fast casual restaurant chain in 2021, and presumably made a mint when the company sold a majority stake to private equity firm Roark Capital for a reported $1 billion. For the third consecutive year, the company gave away one (1) free slider to anyone who has downloaded the app in honor of Drake’s birthday. (The rapper and Raptors fan turns 39 today; the giveaway was Thursday.)

“We’re celebrating a celebrity that’s popular and that’s currently relevant, and also getting food in people’s mouths,” says Dave’s Hot Chicken chief technology officer Leon Davoyan.

And it truly is a lot of people. On a typical week, Davoyan says, Dave’s sees between 20,000 and 25,000 new sign-ups to its loyalty database. On Thursday alone the promotion drove 343,531 new accounts—a more than 10 percent bump to the brand’s overall membership in a single day, according to the CTO.

It was enough to knock Sora out of the top slot for the first time since October 3, an impressive stretch for an app that’s still invite-only. In the first 23 days since it launched, Sora racked up 3.2 million iOS downloads in the US, according to app analytics company Sensor Tower. That’s a much faster pace than even ChatGPT, which while similarly viral notched 2.3 million US downloads in the same time. (Sora is not yet available in the Google Play Store, but it’s incoming.) OpenAI declined to comment.

While Sora is likely to reclaim the top spot after the Drake promotion dies down, Dave’s Hot Chicken should continue reaping the benefits of its giveaway. Last year, according to Sensor Tower, downloads of the app in the four weeks following the same marketing push were more than 50 percent higher than the month leading up to it. All those free sandwiches are worth the long-term gains.

In the world of high-end gaming headsets, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless (8/10, WIRED Recommends) stands out with an impressive feature set and excellent audio. Right now, you can pick up the wireless model for just $300 from Amazon, an $80 discount off the usual price. That might sound like a lot for gaming headphones, but these offer quite a lot for the price.

This luxurious gaming headset is a great pick for daily gamers who want excellent sound quality and high-end comfort. They have big drivers that make sounds in-game pop, and an excellent mic with noise-canceling so good your friends won’t even know you have a dog. They’re super comfortable, with the SteelSeries signature ski-goggle strap to take the pressure off your head.

While they’re built for gaming, they also sound great listening to music or watching movies. They have a nice, punchy sound profile and spatial audio support for a more immersive experience. If you’re on a PC, the SteelSeries GG software gives you a ton of options for balancing your audio across multiple sources, and you can even set individual EQ profiles for different applications.

By including a USB DAC for wireless connectivity, the Arctis Nova Pro can achieve some unique and compelling features not found on other headsets. The range is impressive, thanks to more room for the antenna and power than you’d find in a smaller USB dongle. You can adjust the volume and audio mix from a generous knob on the front, and it has multiple audio inputs for switching between consoles.

Best of all, the hub can charge a spare battery for the headset, giving you essentially infinite run time as long as you’re seated at the computer. When you run down the 25 or so hours on one charge, just swap out the battery and the headset will reconnect and pick up where you left off. It’s the perfect feature for anyone with battery concerns, but don’t worry, you can also charge the headset via USB-C directly.

At $300, these aren’t cheap, and there are better gaming headsets for single-console or casual gamers, as well as an even more expensive model, but I think these are a great middle ground for anyone with a budget and a Steam backlog.

New York City’s roads and bridges already incur millions in annual damage from oversized trucks, and a new study warns the shift to electric freight could intensify that burden. As electric trucks replace diesel models, their heavier batteries could increase the city’s yearly repair costs by up to nearly 12% by 2050.

Led by C2SMART researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and published in Transport Policy, the study finds that oversized trucks already cause about $4.16 million in damage each year while permits bring in only $1.28 million. Electric trucks typically weigh 2,000 to 3,000 pounds more than diesel models, and in rare long-range cases as much as 8,000 to 9,000, so the financial gap is expected to grow.

“As electric vehicles become more common, our city’s infrastructure will face new and changing demands to support this transition,” said Professor Kaan Ozbay, the paper’s senior author and director of NYU Tandon’s C2SMART transportation research center. “Our framework shows that the city should adapt its planning and fee structures to ensure it can accommodate the costs of keeping bridges and roads safe as a result of more widespread adoption of e-trucks. “

Using New York City’s Overdimensional Vehicle Permits dataset, the researchers modeled how electric-truck adoption could play out through 2050. They found that switching to e-trucks could increase damage costs by 2.23 to 4.45% by 2030, and by 9.19 to 11.71% by 2050. More extreme scenarios tied to unusually heavy batteries produced higher figures, though the authors say those outcomes are unlikely as technology improves.

The impact would not be uniform across the city. Manhattan faces the greatest increase, with parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx also at risk due to heavy truck volumes and aging structures. Staten Island and many outer areas show lower impact. Bridges shoulder about 65% of the added costs because they are especially sensitive to increases in gross vehicle weight. Pavement, affected more by axle loads, wears down more gradually.

“We found that conventional oversized trucks in New York City already impose more than $4 million in annual damage,” said the study’s lead author Zerun Liu, NYU Tandon Ph.D. candidate in the Civil and Urban Engineering department’s recently established Urban Systems Ph.D. program, who is advised by Professor Ozbay. “With projected adoption of electric trucks, those costs could increase by an additional nearly 12%. That gap highlights the urgent need for new strategies to keep infrastructure sustainable.”

To manage the risks, the researchers created a susceptibility index identifying road segments and bridges most vulnerable to heavier vehicles. They recommend replacing flat permit fees with flexible, weight-based fees that reflect actual costs while still recognizing environmental benefits. They also call for expanding weight monitoring on high-risk corridors, especially in Manhattan, and factoring e-truck projections into city maintenance and capital plans to avoid expensive emergency repairs.

Although the study focuses on New York City, similar pressures are emerging elsewhere. The European Union allows zero-emission trucks to exceed weight limits by nearly 9,000 pounds, while U.S. rules permit an additional 2,000. The framework developed by the NYU Tandon and RIT team offers cities a way to balance climate goals with the realities of infrastructure wear.

Despite the added costs, the authors stress that the overall case for electric trucks in New York remains strong. Their scenarios suggest that widespread electrification could cut about 2,032 tons of carbon dioxide each year, improving air quality and public health.

“The proposed methodological framework can provide actionable insights for policymakers to ensure infrastructure longevity and safety as e-truck adoption grows,” Ozbay said.

In addition to senior author Ozbay and lead author Liu, the paper’s other authors are Jingqin Gao, C2SMART’s Assistant Director of Research; Tu Lan, a Ph.D. student in the Urban Systems Ph.D. program graduated under Professor Ozbay’s advisement; and Zilin Bian, a recent NYU Tandon Ph.D. graduate from the Civil and Urban Engineering department , now an assistant professor at RIT.