Wednesday’s top tech news: it’s-a-me, another Mario trailer

Anker has built a remarkable reputation for quality over the past decade, building its phone charger business into an empire spanning all sorts of portable electronics — including the Eufy home security cameras we’ve recommended over the years. Eufy’s commitment to privacy is remarkable: it promises your data will be stored locally, that it “never leaves the safety of your home,” that its footage only gets transmitted with “end-to-end” military-grade encryption, and that it will only send that footage “straight to your phone.”

So you can imagine our surprise to learn you can stream video from a Eufy camera, from the other side of the country, with no encryption at all.

After a conversation with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Elon Musk now says that Apple actually wasn’t threatening to pull Twitter from the App Store. On Monday, Musk claimed that Apple had “threatened to withhold Twitter” from the store, but according to a Wednesday afternoon tweet, Musk said it was a “misunderstanding” and that “Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.”

The clarification follows a cryptic tweet earlier in the day where Musk said Cook had given him a tour of Apple’s campus. In a video, you can see a shadow of two people: Musk and someone else that resembles Cook.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company would order Dave Chappelle’s comedy specials “again and again” at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday. Chappelle’s last comedy special, The Closer, came under fire by employees for being transphobic.

“We’re just trying to be the most exciting entertainment company and more,” Hastings said when asked about how Netflix deals with controversy. “That special was one of the most entertaining watch specials we’ve ever had. We would do it again and again.” Hastings then goes on to describe Chappelle as “very entertaining and provocative,” aligning with Netflix’s overall goal of being “about entertainment.”

When Fortnite maker Epic launched a war against the “Apple tax” in 2020, it began by throwing a cartoon hammer at Apple’s face. Epic’s main goal was launching an antitrust lawsuit against the iOS App Store, aiming to shut down its 30 percent fee on in-app purchases. But as it forced Apple’s hand by adding its own payment system for Fortnite, it invoked a moral attack. It debuted a #FreeFortnite campaign that parodied Apple’s famous “1984” ad and positioned the iPhone maker as a stodgy, overbearing monopolist — as IGN would later write, in a play that “weaponized Fortnite fans against Apple.”

Now, Elon Musk is throwing his own hammer at Apple. And its name is Ron DeSantis.

YouTube says it has fixed its iOS app after many users reported the app was crashing. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the problem was, but it did appear to affect quite a few users.

In a tweet from its TeamYouTube account at 2:19PM ET, YouTube said that “many” were dealing with crashes, and a lot of people reported crashes directly to the account. At one point, DownDetector indicated there were more than 7,500 reports of problems. I didn’t run into issues in my brief testing, but a colleague experienced the crashes.

FTX’s sudden and catastrophic collapse sent reverberations throughout the entire cryptocurrency industry. What was once the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange is now in a death spiral that has billions of dollars left in limbo.

If you’re wondering how FTX managed to get to this point, you’re in the right place. Here’s a play-by-play of everything that went wrong.

The problem with Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Sometimes a deal is so good, it’s gone before you can even hit the “checkout” button. Apple’s latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro was one of those devices that reached an all-time low during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but naturally, it seemed to sell out quickly. Luckily, the new Wi-Fi-enabled iPad Pro is on sale once again at Amazon in space gray with 128GB of storage for $999 ($100 off).

In addition to sporting Apple’s new M2 processor, the 2022 iPad Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E, if you have the right kind of router. It also comes with a new “hover” feature exclusive to M2-powered Apple devices that detects when the second-generation Apple Pencil is a distance of 12mm or less above the screen. As a result, you can preview where you’ll make a mark on the display so you could, say, mix watercolor paints and decide if you like the combination before applying them to your digital painting. Read our review.

The price of a Starlink satellite terminal has almost doubled in Ukraine, according to a report from the Financial Times, following increased demand for the SpaceX satellite devices and targeted Russian attacks on the country’s electrical grid that have caused communications networks to fail.

Starlink terminals in Ukraine are set to increase from the equivalent of $385 to about $700. The monthly subscription required to use the service will also climb from $60 to $75 on December 29th according to emails sent to Ukrainian Starlink customers, though this is still cheaper than its original $100 rate, which was dropped back in August to “reflect local market conditions.” For the sake of comparison, a Starlink dish costs $599 in the US, alongside a $110 monthly subscription.

Your Marvel Snap shop might look a bit different today. As The Verge reported last week, a new way to outright buy not yet unlocked cards is now live alongside some card updates, bug fixes, a new earnable currency, and a slew of new cards.

Known as Collector’s Tokens, the new currency is now available, hidden within Collector’s Caches that start popping up around the 500th level of the Collection ladder. Any player at or above that level should have also received a neat gift of Collector’s Tokens that they can use right away to start buying cards. The card shop seems to rotate pretty often, so you’ll need to check in at least a couple of times per day to see which cards are on offer. If there’s a card you like but don’t have the funds for, there’s a PIN button that’ll stop the card from rotating out of the shop until you’ve ponied up enough tokens.

Google will be issuing refunds for Stadia hardware purchased from the Google Store within two weeks, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. That means the refunds should arrive well ahead of the cloud gaming service’s impending January 18th shutdown. Purchases of the Stadia controller, the Founder’s Edition, the Premiere Edition, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages are all eligible for refunds, according to Google’s Stadia shutdown FAQ.

At the time of the shutdown announcement, Google committed to refunding hardware and software purchases, and it began software refunds earlier this month. Once your hardware refund has been issued, you’ll get an email confirmation, Google said in Wednesday’s email. Google expects the “majority” of Stadia refunds to be processed by the January 18th shutdown date.

The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced job cuts today, affecting 30 percent of its workforce, or around 1,100 employees. In a blog post, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell says the firm made the decision to help it weather the “crypto winter.”

Kraken, a platform that lets users buy, sell, and trade crypto, announced its plans to hire 500 new employees in June, but only as long as their beliefs aligned with the company’s “crypto-first culture,” which apparently means not calling out things said by others as “toxic, hateful, racist, x-phobic.” But now, Kraken’s pulling back on its spending after a period of rapid growth, citing “significantly lower trading volumes and fewer client sign-ups.”

San Francisco’s police will be allowed to use remote-controlled robots to kill suspects. The city’s board of supervisors last night approved a controversial policy that lets police robots “be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available.”

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said it does not own any pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm its current machines, reports Sky News. As SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie explained in a statement, the department’s robots can now be equipped with explosives “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” in “extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives.”

It’s been a few weeks since Apple officially announced its upcoming comedy series Shrinking from Brett Goldstein, Jason Segel, and Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence, but it turns out that the premiere date is right around the corner.

Shrinking tells the story of Jimmy (Segel), a therapist whose own ongoing experience with grief prompts him to start engaging with all of his patients a bit differently than they’re accustomed to. While Jimmy’s still committed to helping his patients deal with a wide range of issues, he’s less interested in being sensitive about how he deals with people or sugarcoating the advice he gives them. When Jimmy starts to tell everyone exactly what’s on his mind, his personal life begins to change in unexpected ways, and it starts to become clear to everyone around him that a little honesty goes a long way toward shaking things up.

So let’s talk about Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company. There’s a “show-and-tell” event coming at 6PM PT / 9PM ET today, November 30th, and ordinarily I would be providing you with the service of telling you where to watch it. But frankly, I don’t know, and like most Musk companies, Neuralink does not have a PR department.

Fun! It’ll be on YouTube, probably.

Honda will bring its hands-free highway driver-assist technology to the US by the end of the decade, making it the latest automaker to offer partially automated driving tech to customers.

Honda Sensing, the company’s Level 2 advanced driver-assist system (ADAS), is already available to car owners who have opted to add the feature to their vehicles. Two upgraded systems, Honda Sensing 360 and Honda Sensing Elite, will add new features thanks to more capable sensors and advanced AI software developed by the automaker.

DoorDash is laying off around 1,250 workers. The update, posted by DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, explains that the company grew too quickly during the covid pandemic, leading to an increase in operating expenses that could soon “outgrow” the company’s revenue.

“While we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business and operational metrics, we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth,” Xu writes. “That’s on me. As a result, operating expenses grew quickly ... This hard reality ultimately led me to make this painful decision to reduce our team size.”

Spotify Wrapped is here, and with it, a slew of year-end charts, data, and graphics ripe for sharing. In addition to the standard personal data (top artists, songs, etc.), Spotify is providing listeners with social-friendly stats the company hopes will generate the kind of buzz it has in the past, spurring competitors like Apple Music and YouTube Music to produce their own year-end roundups.

The splashiest new Wrapped goody is the “music personality” feature — a Myers–Briggs-esque system that analyzes how you listen and assigns you one of 16 flattering categories, such as “Adventurer,” “Fanclubber,” and “Specialist.” It’s a savvy move; whether zodiac sign or Hogwarts house, the kids simply love to be categorized.

The two biggest fantasy shows of the year this year were... not the fantasy stuff I grew up on. House of the Dragon had plenty of gore and dragons, but was largely a show about the political machinations of a big incestuous family, and The Lord of the Rings seemed to spend every moment focused on being a gorgeous show with a staid pace that Tolkien would have loved but I found slow as hell. But I want a big adventure when I watch a fantasy show. I want to get that buzz of excitement I got the first time I watched Dragonslayer or Ladyhawke or even Labyrinth. Or the original Willow.

And the new show, set more than 20 years after Willow ended, is that adventure. It’s a wildly good time that requires zero knowledge of the world it brings to life — just a willingness to enjoy something earnest, kind, and fun.

Microsoft is offering Windows 11 users a preview of an update that fixes some gaming performance problems. The software maker originally warned of issues with lower than expected performance in some games earlier this month, after some Windows 11 users that had upgraded to the latest 2022 Update (22H2) noticed problems.

“Some games and apps might experience lower than expected performance or stuttering on Windows 11, version 22H2,” said Microsoft at the time. “Affected games and apps are inadvertently enabling GPU performance debugging features not meant to be used by consumers.”

Today, Nintendo gave fans a second look at The Super Mario Bros. Movie with a new trailer, giving us another opportunity to hear Chris Pratt as the preeminent pixelated plumber. We also got the first official glimpse of Donkey Kong and Princess Peach and heard Anya Taylor-Joy’s rendition of the Mushroom Monarch.

It’s interesting that we’re getting a second trailer a little more than a month after the first one captivated the internet. The constricted release schedule might have to do with the fact that promotional materials for the film leaked after the first trailer. Ironically, shortly before today’s presentation, posters for the movie were also apparently leaked, giving us more looks at Toad, Luigi, and perhaps most distressingly, Princess Peach.