Paramount+ is offering folks another way to watch ViacomCBS' vast library of shows. The streaming services now includes live channels (just like TV!). 

The initial batch of 18 channels includes one focused entirely on Star Trek, which will stream episodes from new shows like Discovery and Picard and classics such as Enterprise and The Next Generation. There are franchise-specific channels for Survivor, The Challenge, PAW Patrol and SpongeBob Squarepants too.

The other channels focus on themes and/or genres, including drama, comedy, adult animation, Black voices, crime and justice and reality shows. "Nostalgic Hits" showcases hit series from the '80s and '90s, including Cheers, Frasier and Wings. "TV Classics" goes a bit further back with episodes from the likes of I Love Lucy, The Love Boat and The Twilight Zone. 

There are several kid-friendly channels too, such as "Animation Favorites," "Kids & Family Fun" and "Preschool Corner." Later this month, Paramount+ will add two more live channels: Movies and one focused on RuPaul's Drag Race. In addition to these channels, the platform offers live sports, breaking news from CBSN and, for Premium subscribers, a live stream of their local CBS station.

ViacomCBS says the live channels, which are available to all paid Paramount+ subscribers, were "inspired and informed" by Pluto TV, its free streaming platform. Pluto TV founder Tom Ryan became president and CEO of ViacomCBS Streaming last year. 

Apple won't have to allow App Store developers to direct users to alternative payment systems for the time being. At the last minute, an appeals court judge granted Apple's motion to delay App Store changes that were to take effect on December 9th.

"Apple has demonstrated, at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court's determination that Epic Games, Inc. failed to show Apple's conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California's Unfair Competition Law," the decision reads, according to 9to5Mac. “Therefore, we grant Apple’s motion to stay part (i) of paragraph (1) of the permanent injunction. The stay will remain in effect until the mandate issues in this appeal.”

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who oversaw the case between Apple and Epic Games, issued an injunction in September to prevent Apple from stopping developers who wanted to include "buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing." Apple typically takes a 30 percent cut of in-app purchases, and these measures would have allowed developers to use other payment systems.

Apple filed an appeal against that permanent injunction in October, claiming that it would “take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues” that were required of such changes. Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied the appeal, but Apple took it to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In August 2020, Epic informed Fortnite players on both iOS and Android that they'd receive a discount if they bought the virtual V-Bucks currency if they bypassed Apple and Google's in-app payment methods. The latter two companies removed the battle royale game from their stores and Epic swiftly filedsuit against them both.

The Apple case went to trial in May. Judge Gonzales Rogers ruled in Apple's favor in almost all counts. Among other things, she determined that the App Store doesn't violate antitrust rules. Epic appealed the ruling a couple of days later.

Guerrilla Games has rolled out the latest Horizon Zero Dawn update on PC, which should improve the game's performance. The RPG now supports NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling tech. The game previously supported AMD's FidelityFX CAS. Guerrilla also says it improved the shader management system.

NVIDIA claims DLSS will improve Horizon Zero Dawn performance by up to 50 percent. Other PC games that are getting DLSS support this month include Lemnis Gate, Chorus and Icarus.

Meanwhile, Sony revealed more details about a PC version of another of its blockbuster PlayStation games: God of War. It too will support DLSS, as well as NVIDIA Reflex (which is minimizing system input lag).

Like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War will have unlocked framerates on PC. You can also expect HDR support, higher-resolution shadows and more detailed assets. Players can control Kratos with their keyboard and mouse, third-party controllers or Sony's DualShock 4 or DualSense peripherals.

Santa Monica Studio also announced the PC specs for God of War. You'll need at least an NVIDIA GTX 960 or AMD R9 290X GPU, 8 GB of RAM, 70 GB of storage and an Intel i5-2500k or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor.

God of War will arrive on PC on January 14th. Meanwhile, God of War Ragnarök is scheduled to hit PS4 and PS5 sometime next year.

Rockstar Games will soon release another big update for GTA Online, which includes a story mission featuring one of Grand Theft Auto V's main characters. "The Contract" centers around Franklin Clinton and his friends, who aspire to be problem solvers for celebrities and "rich folk who got rich folk problems."

One of those potential clients is Dr. Dre, who appears as himself in the story. A phone containing unreleased music from the rapper and producer has gone missing. As a potential partner for Franklin's new enterprise, it's your job to get it back.

You'll be able to hear those Dre tracks and other fresh music when the update arrives on December 15th. Rockstar is promising "an eclectic new radio station from some very special guest hosts" and big changes to current radio stations. Expect additional side missions, weapons (including an EMP launcher), vehicles, locations and more. Rockstar will reveal more details about "The Contract" in the coming days.

A few other well-known figures have appeared as themselves in the Grand Theft Auto series. Phil Collins was involved in several missions in GTA: Vice City Stories, while Katt Williams and Ricky Gervais performed stand-up sets in GTA IV.

Still, it's notable that Dr. Dre is taking a bigger role in GTA Online — he popped up briefly during 2020's Cayo Perico heist. Other major ongoing games like Fortnite include versions of real people and fictional characters from other properties. Perhaps GTA Online is becoming a metaverse too.

Amazon's Halo View fitness band is now available from its online storefront, and Amazon 4-star and Amazon Books locations. The company opened pre-orders for Halo View last month and said the fitness band would ship sometime in December. During the pre-order period, Amazon offered customers to snap one up for a $30 discount, but the device is back to the regular price of $80.

The fitness band is a new version of the original Halo, which emerged in 2020. It's the first Halo with a screen. The AMOLED color display shows activity history, sleep scores, blood oxygen levels, live workout tracking and more. The tracker weighs less than 22 grams and it's swimproof up to 50 meters.

The Halo View comes with a 12-month Halo membership. That provides access to personalized AI-powered features, recipes, sleep resources, body fat percentage analysis and workouts led by Halo coaches. The plan typically costs $4 a month.

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Polestar has released an over-the-air update that boosts the Polestar 2's torque and horsepower. It bumps up the EV's oomph to 469 horsepower (an increase of 67hp) and 502 lb. ft of torque, an increase of 15.

In practical terms, Polestar says those upgrades shave around a tenth of a second off the 0-60 MPH acceleration time, which is down to 4.4 seconds. The company suggests the biggest acceleration boost will be found in the mid-range. It claims that going from 50 to 75 MPH will take 2.2 seconds, which is around half a second faster than the typical Polestar 2 setup.

The update isn't free, however. It's available in the Polestar Extras store for eligible cars in the UK, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Austria, and it costs around €1,000 ($1,130). Polestar plans to offer the update in the US and Canada in the spring, with pricing to be announced later.

Polestar isn't the only automaker to increase EV performance via over-the-air updates. Tesla has also offeredpaid updates that boost acceleration in some models, such as Model 3 and Model Y.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is set to go on a test run for his future trip around the Moon. He's set to spend 12 days on the International Space Station alongside his assistant, Yozo Hirano, who will document the trip.

Along with cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, the pair will travel to the ISS on a Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft operated by Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. The launch is scheduled for 2:38AM ET on December 8th.

Maezawa has been training for the trip for 100 days. His stay on the ISS is another indication that civilian trips to the space station are becoming more commonplace. According to Agence France-Presse, he and his assistant will be the first space tourists to visit the ISS in more than a decade, though Roscosmos took a film director and actor there in October to shoot a feature film in space for the first time.

The billionaire announced in March that he was looking for eight other people to join him on his week-long lunar trip, which is tentatively set for 2023. All going well, he and his crewmates will become SpaceX's first lunar tourists. Mazewa, who bought out all of the seats on the flight, has become well-known for giveaways. In early 2019, he promised to give away over $900,000 to people who retweeted him. That led to him shattering Twitter's retweet record via his excellent handle, @yousuck2020.

Apple will fund and distribute a long-in-the-works movie about embattled Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Bad Blood will star Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, while Adam McKay will write and direct. Both are producers on the project, which is a coproduction between Apple Studios and Legendary.

The movie, which is based on the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start Up by former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, has been in development since at least 2016, as Deadline notes. The film will depict the rise and fall of Holmes and her company.

Hype around the blood-testing startup led to Holmes becoming the youngest self-made billionaire. Accusations and charges of fraud led to her stepping down as CEO in 2018 and the company liquidating later that year. Holmes is currently on trial for fraud.

Bad Blood is far from the only film and TV project about Theranos and Holmes. Hulu greenlit a miniseries in 2019 with Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon pencilled in to play Holmes. She dropped out earlier this year, and was replaced by Amanda Seyfried. An HBO documentary about the Theranos saga premiered in 2019.

Meanwhile, Lawrence and McKay recently worked together on the Netflix film Don't Look Up, which hits theaters this weekend and will be available to stream on December 24th. It's a satire about two astronomers (played by Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) who try to warn humanity about a catastrophic comet that's set to collide with Earth.

Many Tesla vehicles allow drivers to play a selection of games on the infotainment system while the car is in motion, according to a report by The New York Times. The company rolled out an update in the summer that reportedly let drivers play Solitaire, jet fighter game Sky Force Reloaded and strategy title The Battle of Polytopia: Moonrise while on the road.

The touchscreen is said to display a warning before a game of Solitaire starts. “Solitaire is a game for everyone, but playing while the car is in motion is only for passengers," the message reads, according to the Times. That indicates Tesla knows the game is playable while the car's moving.

Although players have to acknowledge that they're a passenger, the driver can tap that button and play the game. Even if a passenger is playing something, it's possible that a driver will divert their attention to the screen to see what's happening anyway.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 3,142 people died in crashes involving distracted drivers in the US in 2019. A 2017 study suggested that many infotainment features absorbed drivers' attention too long for them to be safe. Researchers at the University of Utah found that, when drivers used voice-based and touchscreen systems, they "took their hands, eyes and mind off the road for more than 24 seconds to complete tasks."

Drivers are supposed to keep their hands on the steering wheel when Tesla's Autopilot is engaged, but a recent study suggested drivers become less attentive when the mode is active. In August, the NHTSA said it was investigating Autopilot following a number of crashes with parked first responder vehicles. Those resulted in one death and 17 injuries.

Other automakers lock many touchscreen and infotainment features when the car is in motion. Stellantis (fka Fiat Chrysler), for instance, lets drivers and passengers watch a DVD on the dashboard screen in some vehicles, though only when the car's parked. NHTSA guidelines urge automakers to ensure that cars with infotainment devices prevent drivers from carrying out "inherently distracting secondary tasks while driving.”

Tesla has addeda numberof games to its infotainment system over the last few years. Until a few months ago, they were only playable while the car was parked. The Times says Tesla and CEO Elon Musk didn't respond to requests for comment — the company no longer has a PR department. Engadget has contacted the NHTSA for comment.

A Canadian hacker named Gary Bowser (yes, like Mario's nemesis) has agreed to pay the company $10 million to settle a civil piracy lawsuit. Bowser, who was part of Switch hacking group Team Xecuter, was accused of being part of a "cybercriminal enterprise that hacked leading gaming consoles," as Eurogamer notes. Nintendo argued Bowser violated the company's copyright and it seems the hacks were not in another castle.

News of the settlement emerged several weeks after Bowser pleaded guilty to multiple federal hacking charges. He was fined $4.5 million in that case and faces up to 10 years in prison. Bowser, who was arrested in the Dominican Republic in October 2020 and deported to the US, admitted to having "developed, manufactured, marketed, and sold a variety of circumvention devices" that let people play ROMs on consoles.