How to tip your Amazon driver

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

It sounded like a really nice holiday extra: you could tip your hard-working Amazon delivery driver by simply using your Alexa device (or the app on your phone) to thank your driver, and they would get a $5 tip from the company.

The program started on December 7th and was probably meant to publicize Amazon’s new feature that allowed users to thank their drivers through their Alexa apps. Available to all US delivery drivers delivering on behalf of Amazon, it didn’t last long. Amazon only offered the virtual tips in response to the first one million thank you’s — and that $5 million was apparently used up within a couple of days.

When you thank your driver, you will get an acknowledgment.

According to Lauren Samaha,...

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Kentucky Route Zero joins Netflix’s mobile games lineup

The esoteric indie title Kentucky Route Zero will be available Tuesday on iOS and Android as part of Netflix’s suite of mobile games. The narrative-focused game seems like one that will lend itself well to a mobile format, and after a more than six-month wait since publisher Annapurna Interactive said Kentucky Route Zero would be coming to phones, you can now get lost in its weird world from the smartphone in your pocket.

Kentucky Route Zero, from developer Cardboard Computer, is difficult to describe. It’s not so much a game as a magical realism story that you experience in an interactive form. I played it for the first time when the game’s final episode released after years of development, and I’ve never tried anything like it before...

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iOS 16.2 arrives with improved always-on display and iCloud end-to-end encryption

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s latest iOS 16.2 update is now rolling out and includes a number of new and improved features for iPhone users. iPhone 14 Pro owners will benefit from improved always-on display settings, which let users turn off the mode’s wallpaper and notifications if they’re distracting. Other new features include end-to-end iCloud encryption, the Apple Music Sing karaoke mode, and much more.

End-to-end iCloud encryption is being branded as Advanced Data Protection in iOS 16.2 and means data like Notes, iCloud backups, and Photos are now protected with end-to-end encryption. The protection covers 23 “data categories” now, up from 14, and includes device backups, messages backups, iCloud Drive, Notes, Photos, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Siri...

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Netflix’s Kaleidoscope looks like the perfect crime in new trailer

Image: Netflix

Netflix is getting a little experimental in the new year. The streaming service will be releasing its latest crime anthology, Kaleidoscope, on January 1st — and the latest trailer shows off just how intense of a heist it really is, with a few billion dollars on the line.

While Netflix has no shortage of crime and heist shows, what makes this one interesting is how it’s structured; the show is nonlinear, designed so that you can watch the episodes — which encompass a story spanning around 25 years — in any order. “All viewers will eventually see all episodes, but the order in which they watch the episodes will affect their viewpoint on the story, the characters, and the questions and answers at the heart of the heist,” the company...

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Logitech’s new iPad keyboard and stylus are a better buy than Apple’s

Logitech’s Combo Touch keyboard case and USB-C Crayon stylus for the 10th Gen Apple iPad.

Apple’s 10th-gen iPad is a bit of an enigma, a mix of newer design and technology with older features and limitations. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the accessory situation, where the 10th-gen iPad uses Apple’s older Pencil instead of the model used with the iPad Air, iPad Mini, and iPad Pro and the bafflingly expensive and limited Magic Keyboard Folio.

Fortunately, where there are frustrations, there are opportunities, and Logitech has swooped in to grab them. The company has released a Crayon stylus and Combo Touch keyboard case for the 10th-gen iPad that manage to do a better job than Apple’s devices while costing considerably less money to boot.

Logitech Crayon vs. Apple Pencil (first gen)

The Logitech...

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Instagram is adding a BeReal clone, a tweet-ish feature, and groups

Instagram’s take on BeReal is called “Candid.” | Image: Instagram

Instagram is announcing a suite of new features that could be big focuses for the company in 2023, including a BeReal clone called Candid Stories, the ability to post very short text “Notes,” and groups.

Candid Stories appear to mirror much of what has made BeReal popular. You’ll be able to share an image that includes a snapshot from both your front and back cameras, and you’ll be able to take a candid from a daily notification reminder. You’ll also be able to snap candids from the Stories camera or a multi-author Story.

Instagram confirmed it was testing this feature earlier this year, and Candid Stories will launch first as a test in South Africa beginning Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. If you just want to take a photo...

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Marco Rubio pushes TikTok ban in Congress

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has proposed legislation that would ban TikTok from the US, the latest in a series of political blows to the social media platform — albeit one that seems relatively unlikely to land.

The tortuously named Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party (or ANTI-SOCIAL CCP) Act would require President Joe Biden to block all US transactions with TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. It directs Biden to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to restrict access to the service, alleging that ByteDance’s collection of American user data and its vulnerability to Chinese government...

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Hogwarts Legacy is delayed yet again on some systems

The Switch version is particularly hard-hit. | Image: Warner Bros.

Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming Harry Potter-themed game, is being delayed yet again — the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game are being pushed back to April 4th, 2023, while the Nintendo Switch won’t be getting it until July 25th, according to a tweet from the developers. On the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, and PC, the game is still scheduled to release on February 10th.

This partial delay is the game’s third — it was announced in September 2020, set to be released the next year. But it wasn’t long before the team behind it announced that it would be coming out in 2022 instead, saying that they’d be “giving the game the time it needs.” The second delay, and the February 10th release date that was originally meant for...

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Qualcomm’s new Wi-Fi 7 platform supports mesh networks with up to 20 Gbps peak capacity

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Qualcomm has new Wi-Fi 7-capable chipsets that are part of its new “Immersive Home Platform” — built for home networking manufacturers that are ready to integrate the upcoming IEEE 802.11BE specification into its devices.

The new Qualcomm chips are currently being sampled to companies that make home routers and mesh Wi-Fi devices and are expected to be available in the second half of 2023. Once it is, you can expect to see far more Wi-Fi 7 routers to choose from — at more affordable price points — than the current options of TP-Link’s BE900 or Deco BE-series mesh routers.

Image: Qualcomm

Lots of routers today already use Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi chips, whether they’re Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E, including models like the Netgear...

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New Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse trailer is a window into the multiverse

Image: Sony

The latest trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) has just been released, offering a look at the chaos Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) encounter as they toss themselves into the multiverse.

During the trailer, the duo comes across several other spider-people, and that includes some new faces, like Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) and the Spider-Man from the Insomniac-developed PlayStation game. We also get a look at an artfully drawn fight scene between Morales and Spider-Man 2099, along with a brief cameo from the legendary Stan Lee.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a look at some of the other characters expected to appear in the film, such as The Spot, a villain made up of...

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Avatar: The Way of Water is a gorgeous rehash of all the first film’s triumphs and failures

Jake Sully and his daughter Kiri floating in the ocean. | Image: Disney

James Cameron’s second Avatar movie is a visually stunning but narratively uninspired return to Pandora that drowns some of its best ideas in military morass.

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

Last year’s terrific Kindle Paperwhite is on sale as part of a discounted bundle starting at $179.99. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving...

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Nuclear fusion power research passes milestone with ‘fusion ignition’

The west gate entrance to the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, US, on Monday, December 12th, 2022. | Photo by David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images

For the first time, researchers have created a fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain. The results, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, mark a significant step on the very long roadtoward generating clean energy from nuclear fusion.

“Last week, lo and behold, indeed, they shot a bunch of lasers at a pellet of fuel and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers going in,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar said at a press conference announcing the achievement in Washington, DC, today. “I just think this is such a tremendous example of what perseverance really can achieve.”

“A tremendous example of what perseverance...

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Pedro Eustache opens up about video game music and becoming the Flute Guy

Photo by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for Coachella

Pedro Eustache’s viral performance at The Game Awards was just one of many such moments he’s had over his decades-long career.

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DoNotPay is launching an AI chatbot that can negotiate your bills

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DoNotPay, the company that bills itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer,” is launching a new AI-powered chatbot that can help you negotiate bills and cancel subscriptions without having to deal with customer service.

In a demo of the tool posted by DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder, the chatbot manages to get a discount on a Comcast internet bill through Xfinity’s live chat. Once it connects with a customer service representative, the bot asks for a better rate using account details provided by the customer. The chatbot cites problems with Xfinity’s services and threatens to take legal action, to which the representative responds by offering to take $10 off the customer’s monthly internet bill.

Here it is! The first ever Comcast bill...

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The second-gen Apple Pencil is $40 off today

Right now, you can buy the second-gen Apple Pencil for $89.99 instead of $129.99. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The holidays are quickly approaching, and if you haven’t started shopping for gifts yet, you should probably stop procrastinating ASAP. That’s not necessarily because you’re running out of time — though you certainly are — but because we’re seeing some great deals on popular presents, some of which are even featured in our holiday gift guides.

One of these is the second-gen Apple Pencil, which makes a great gift for someone using an iPad Pro or newer iPad Mini and iPad Air models. Creatives can use the stylus to sketch on their tablet, while students can use it to jot down notes during class. Plus, it comes with a few perks that make it better than its predecessor, including customizable gesture controls and the ability to recharge while...

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Hayao Miyazaki’s next film hits Japanese theaters in 2023

Hayao Mizayaki | Photo by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

The next release from famed animation house Studio Ghibli is due to hit Japan next year. How Do You Live (still a tentative title), the latest feature directed by Hayao Miyazaki, will be in theaters in the country on July 14th, 2023. There’s no word on the international release yet, but as part of the announcement, Ghibli also put out this new poster for the film:

pic.twitter.com/i8AYiXhY1S

— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) December 13, 2022

Miyazaki and the studio have been working on the film for some time; the legendary director actually came out of retirement to lead the project, which was first announced in 2017, following the release of The Wind Rises, which was expected to be his final film. It’s an adaptation of a 1937...

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You can now wave at an Echo Show to get it to shut up

You can now dismiss timers by holding up your hand to the Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen) or 10 (3rd Gen). | Image: Amazon

Amazon’s Echo Show smart displays are finally getting a feature that Google’s Nest Hubs have had for several years — gesture controls. Starting today, December 13th, you can now stop a timer by holding up your hand with your palm facing the camera on an Echo Show 8 (second gen) or Echo Show 10 (third gen).

It’s a small addition, useful if you don’t want to shout or your hands are covered in food so you don't want to tap the screen to stop the timer.

Hopefully, it’s a precursor to some more gesture controls, such as to play or pause a song or video or to snooze an alarm. All of those gestures are available on the Nest Hub Max and second-gen Nest Hub. The latter doesn’t even use a camera, relying instead on its Soli radar sensor to “see”...

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How to avoid being victimized by porch pirates

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

It’s the holiday shopping season, and although people are once again visiting stores in person, most of us are also (or only) shopping online. That means there are a lot of packages being sent and received — and, unfortunately, stolen. Social networks and the media are full of warnings about “porch pirates,” thieves who take packages that are sitting in front of peoples’ doors. According to Security.org, 49 million Americans have had at least one package stolen in the past 12 months.

Whether or not there are more packages being stolen these days than before, the fact is that none of us want to have to deal with deliveries that have been mislaid, misdelivered, or misappropriated. While no method is foolproof, here are some ways you can...

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High on Life is a hilarious shooter where you fire as many bullets as jokes

High on Life | Image: Squanch Games

The latest release from Squanch Games, led by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, is an absurdist sci-fi adventure.

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WordPress debated taking down the New York Post Hunter Biden story

Photo by ALASTAIR PIKE / AFP via Getty Images

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says the New York Post’s2020 story on Hunter Biden forced parent company Automattic to weigh difficult moderation questions for the WordPress VIP hosting service — although the company concluded it shouldn’t take any action on the story.

In October 2020, the Post ran a report based on material it said came from an abandoned Biden laptop. Facebook and Twitter temporarily restricted links to the story as questions about the provenance of the laptop’s content swirled: Facebook limited its spread under potential misinformation rules, while Twitter placed a more extreme ban on links to it, citing rules against posting hacked materials. (It had previously enforced those rules against leaked police department...

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Google postpones Chrome changes that could have big impact on ad blocking extensions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google no longer plans to begin turning off the Chrome browser’s old extensions standard in January, the company’s developer advocate for Chrome Extensions Simeon Vincent has announced (via 9to5Google). The company is currently in the process of transitioning from the Manifest V2 (MV2) extension standard to Manifest V3 (MV3), which Google says will improve the security and performance of its browser. Critics, however, have claimed MV3 will make it harder for ad blocking extensions to work.

My former colleague Corin Faife wrote an excellent explainer on the controversy earlier this year. But the TL;DR is that MV3 swaps out a powerful API used by ad-blocking extensions called Web Request, for another called Declarative Net Request. The...

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How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

What can Elon learn from Tumblr?

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Sam Bankman-Fried charged with securities fraud tracing back to the ‘inception’ of FTX

Illustration: The Verge

About twelve hours after we learned authorities in the Bahamas have arrested FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed the first of multiple sets of criminal charges he’ll face.

The SEC complaint accuses Bankman-Fried of executing a “years-long fraud” while diverting customers’ funds from FTX to his crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, then spending some of the funds on investments, real estate, and political donations. These charges specifically cite the more than $1.8 billion FTX received from equity investors since 2019, which includes $1.1 billion from investors in the US.

According to the complaint, FTX was a fraud from the very beginning: “From the inception...

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iPhone 14’s emergency satellite feature arrives in select European countries

The feature prompts you to turn in the direction of the satellite. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Emergency SOS via satellite, a new safety feature introduced with the iPhone 14 that lets users contact emergency services when they don’t have regular cellular or Wi-Fi signal, is now available in select European countries. The feature launched in the US and Canada last month, but as of today it’s available in France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK.

The feature is aimed at helping iPhone owners in emergency situations by letting them send messages (but not make traditional phone calls) to emergency services if cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity isn’t an option. After you try, and fail, to call emergency services the traditional way, the iPhone 14 will prompt you to “Report Emergency” and will present you with a questionnaire to gather...

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Tuesday’s top tech news: The law comes for Bankman-Fried

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s been arrested. | Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

And an important fusion energy announcement is expected later today.

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Tim Cook admits that iPhones use Sony camera sensors

Tim Cook being shown an iPhone. | Image: Tim Cook

Tim Cook has tweeted an admission that Apple uses Sony image sensors in its iPhones as part of the CEO’s supplier tour of Japan. “We’ve been partnering with Sony for over a decade to create the world’s leading camera sensors for iPhone,” Cook tweeted, and thanked Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida for showing him around the Kumamoto facility. A photo shows Cook being shown his company’s own smartphone, which is objectively very funny.

Apple largely keeps tight-lipped about the specifics of the hardware components that go into each iPhone, so outright confirming that it’s used Sony camera sensors for over a decade is notable. Apple’s website tends to just list the specs of each iPhone’s camera — such as resolution, aperture, and field of view —...

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Westworld is leaving HBO Max

Is there going to be any HBO content left for the upcoming Max app? | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just over a month after HBO canceled its once-hit original show Westworld, it’s planning on yanking the back catalog from its streaming service, according to Variety, Deadline, IndieWire, and The Wrap.

It’s currently not clear when Westworld will be removed from Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship streaming service, but it likely won’t be alone. The reports indicate that HBO’s Love Life and The Nevers will also have to find new homes.

When we checked on Monday evening, all three shows were still available on the service. IndieWire points out a tweet from Gordita Chronicles creator Claudia Forestieri indicating this past weekend would be the last one for her show (which is also still streaming, for now), so the ax could fall very soon.

I...

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The Avatar-themed concept car is barely driveable but looks like a futuristic fever dream

The Avatar_-themed concept car has working scales and illuminated wheels that drive sideways._ | Photo by Daniel Golson for The Verge

Remember Mercedes’ Avatar-themed concept car with working scales? With James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water hitting theaters, the company let us drive this truly unique-looking EV. It wasn’t easy.

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FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas

Reports also claim that the US has filed criminal charges against. | Photo: Getty Images

Just over one month after the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy, Ryan Pinder, the Attorney General of the Bahamas, announced the arrest of its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).

According to a notice, the arrest came after the US government informed the Bahamas of criminal charges filed against Bankman-Fried and said it’s likely to request his extradition.

USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.

— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022

The US Attorney for the...

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