This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Amazon says Alexa Plus can find that movie scene you’re thinking about
3 Dec 2025, 3:00 pm by Jess Weatherbed
Amazon has launched a new AI-powered feature for Fire TV that lets you jump to specific moments of a movie by describing the scene to Alexa Plus. The feature, which was previously announced during Amazon’s hardware event in September, works with Prime Video and builds on the X-Ray feature that provides information about the content you’re watching.
“Our number one mission at Fire TV is getting you to what you want to watch — fast,” Amazon says in its announcement. “Just describe a movie scene like you would to a friend, and Alexa Plus will jump directly to that specific moment — no more searching required.”
The Alexa Plus feature “works with thousands of Prime Video movies by understanding scene descriptions, character names, and famous quotes,” according to Amazon. Users can skip to a scene by mentioning details about characters, actors, locations, and more, such as asking to find “the card scene in Love Actually,” or “where Joshua asks, ‘shall we play a game?’” in WarGames.
The feature is designed to make it easier and faster to locate and watch scenes compared to manually fast-forwarding through movies, giving Fire TV users fewer reasons to search for the same content on other platforms like YouTube. Amazon says the feature utilizes a variety of AI models, including Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude, and can identify movies without the title being included in the descriptions.
The Fire TV feature is currently limited to indexed scenes in select movies that have been purchased or rented from Prime Video, or are available to stream via a Prime membership subscription. Amazon says that the feature will soon be expanded to include more scenes and TV shows.
Anyone want to buy a car that drives itself?
3 Dec 2025, 3:00 pm by Andrew J. Hawkins
Earlier this year, a mysterious new company called Tensor announced itself to the world by claiming it would be the first to sell fully autonomous vehicles to customers at scale. The news didn’t make much of a splash. No one had ever heard of Tensor, so it was the kind of announcement easy to dismiss as vaporware. But the idea was not unfamiliar. In fact, some of the world’s biggest companies are interested in selling driverless cars to individual customers. After all, if you can already hail a fully autonomous vehicle, why not own one too?
But it won’t be easy. The technological and legal hurdles are immense. Today’s robotaxis are restrict …
India’s government backs down after Apple refuses order to preinstall app
3 Dec 2025, 2:08 pm by Stevie Bonifield
India’s government retreated less than a week after sending a private order to smartphone manufacturers instructing them to preload a state-backed app on all phones in the region. The reversal comes after industry sources told Reuters that Apple planned to refuse to comply with the order.
Sanchar Saathi is a security app operated by India’s Department of Telecommunications that includes features for tracking and blocking lost or stolen phones using their IMEI. Anyone can download it on the App Store or Google Play Store already, but India’s government order would have required phone manufacturers to preload it on all phones in the region and block users from disabling it.
India’s Ministry of Communications announced the reversal in a statement on Wednesday, but still asserted that “[Sanchar Saathi] is secure and purely meant to help citizens from bad actors in the cyber world.”
The statement doesn’t address the backlash and privacy concerns raised about the order to make the app mandatory. Instead, it attributes the policy change to voluntary app downloads, stating, “Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, [the] Government has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This keyboard and trackball combo are for the tinkerers
3 Dec 2025, 2:00 pm by Jay Peters
Do you love to tinker with your keyboard layout? Do you love trackballs and think that one that attaches magnetically to your keyboard would be the coolest thing ever? Are you willing to completely blow up your setup in pursuit of possibly huge – or possibly marginal – gains in comfort or efficiency? Then I have a keyboard and trackball recommendation for you, with some caveats.
In early September, I started dabbling with ZSA’s Voyager keyboard and new Navigator trackball attachment. The Voyager is a low-profile, wired, split mechanical keyboard with 52 hot-swappable keys in a columnar-staggered layout. When you buy it, you can pick from …
Spotify Wrapped 2025 turns listening into a competition
3 Dec 2025, 1:00 pm by Terrence O’Brien
It’s time for year-end lists, annual roundups, and, of course, Spotify Wrapped. The usual suspects are here, like your most listened to song, your total time listened, and your favorite artist. You also get your 2025 Wrapped playlist, which now shows how many times you listened to each of your top 100 tracks this year. But, as usual, Spotify is also adding a ton of new stuff to its annual tradition, including Wrapped Party, which pits you against your friends to see who is the bigger (or weirder) music fan.
Wrapped Party is an interactive feature that you “play” with friends. Granted, there isn’t much to actually do, since it’s mostly about what you’ve already listened to. You can’t go back in time and listen to a more obscure song than your friends, or retroactively listen to more horror audiobooks. Still, turning listening to music into a competitive sport is definitely a new twist on the annual Wrapped tradition.
As part of the competition, you’ll receive individual awards like “The Onion Chopper” for listening to the saddest songs. But your entire group will be judged based on how well your tastes lineup, from “Copy and Paste” when your listening habits are almost identical, to “Chaos Crew” when you don’t share a single artist in common.
Spotify is also bringing back its interactive song quiz and top artist sprint, which shows how your top five artists changed month by month. But the company will also be highlighting our top albums for the first time. In the past, Wrapped has been entirely focused on individual songs and on artists or genres. This year, the company is finally acknowledging that some of us still listen to albums from start to finish. Wrapped 2025 will also go further beyond music, highlighting your top audiobook genres for the first time.
Two other new features that aim to offer some insight into your listening habits are Clubs and Listening Age. The former is basically a more fun way of approaching your favorite genre. Rather than simply saying you listened to metal the most, you’ll be placed in the Grit Collective, which “believes in rebellion through music.” You’ll also be given a role in the club, such as Scout if you tend to be on the cutting edge of up-and-coming artists.
Where Clubs foster a sense of belonging, Listening Age seems more designed to highlight how you might not fit in with your generation. It looks at your listening habits and basically says, “You listen to the music of a 70-year-old,” even if you’re only 38. If you’re still spinning late ’90s Nu Metal, it’s gonna say your Listening Age is in your early 40s. Listening to stuff that primarily came out in 2025? Well, you might only be 18 then.
Spotify wasn’t first out of the gate with its annual Wrapped feature this year. Apple Replay launched on Monday, as did Amazon Delivered, and YouTube Music dropped its Recap before Thanksgiving. But while it might not be first, Spotify’s annual recap remains the most extravagant.
We played Metroid Prime 4, ask us anything
3 Dec 2025, 1:00 pm by Ash Parrish
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is one of those games that been a long time coming. Fans have been waiting almost a decade for the next entry in Samus’ first-person adventures. Early previews painted an alarming picture of overly chatty sidekicks ruining what’s traditionally a lonely and moody experience. Meanwhile formal reviews run a gamut of opinions, leaving the game in the interesting if tiresome discourse-inducing “7 / 10” range – not perfect, not awful, but possessed of a certain something that makes it uniquely more interesting than many higher scoring games.
So what exactly is that something? Does Metroid Prime 4 even have it and if it doe …
Mirumi the furry companion robot is now available on Kickstarter
3 Dec 2025, 12:00 pm by Andrew Liszewski
Among a sea of new TVs, robovacs, and smart glasses, Yukai Engineering’s Mirumi was a unique standout at CES 2025 earlier this year. The tiny robot has no practical purpose other than looking adorable and bringing a smile to people’s faces by simulating an inquisitive personality. The company planned to release the companion bot sometime in mid-2025, but mere weeks before the year ends Mirumi is finally available for preorder through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.
Yukai Engineering originally expected Mirumi to be priced at around $70, but a lot has happened around the world since January, and the tiny bot will actually cost about twice that. The earliest Kickstarter backers can preorder Mirumi with gray, pink, or ivory fur for 18,360 yen, or around $118 with discounts. If you drag your feet, the crowdfunding pricing will end up at 21,803 yen, or around $140, but that’s still discounted from the full retail pricing, which is expected to be $150.
Following the Kickstarter there will be a bit more waiting, as Mirumi isn’t expected to ship until April 2026 at the earliest, but as with any crowdfunded product, it’s not a bad idea to brace yourself for delays.
Instead of cleaning floors or mowing your lawn, Mirumi is positioned as a companion robot, but one that will benefit others more often. Using a long pair of arms the robot attaches to bag straps or handles and appears to curiously look around by turning and cocking its head from side to side.
Using a distance sensor Mirumi can also detect nearby people and appear to focus its gaze and attention on them, but will also simulate the bashful response of an infant by shaking and turning its head away when someone suddenly appears or touches it. Mirumi isn’t overpacked with functionality, and that could be its biggest appeal. It just hangs out with you and quietly watches the world go by while occasionally brightening someone’s day with just a look.
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
