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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Facebook has launched a new professional mode for profiles that will let eligible creators earn money without the need to create a separate Page. The feature is part of Facebook parent Meta's $1 billion investment in creators that includes bonuses for Instagram influencers and an expansion to the Stars program announced yesterday by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The biggest feature of professional mode profiles is the addition of the Reels Play bonus program that allows creators to earn up to $35,000 a month based on views of qualifying reels (videos). Previously, that program was only open to users with Pages. It'll be invitation-only for professional profiles to start with, with more information about how to create reels here.
As part of Reels, Facebook is planning to add the ability to create longer, 60 second reels, save drafts mid-creation and create compositions from multiple clips. Those features are coming "soon" and it's planning to expand Reels to more countries next year, too. Professional Mode also lets profiles see the same kind of post and audience analytics data that Page users get, including shares, reactions and comments. You can also see your follower growth over time.
There's a caveat that, not surprisingly, involves privacy. Once you turn on professional mode, "anyone can follow you and see your public content in their feed," Facebook said. However, you'll still be able to limit specific posts or updates to friends only.
Facebook is playing catchup to rival platforms with the creator community, particularly TikTok, which recently passed 3 billion downloads and is ahead of Facebook in user engagement. On top of the new profiles, it recently introduced the Stars store website that lets creators earn cash from followers without paying app store commissions. Professional mode is testing with a limited number of profiles today in the US, but will be expanded to more people in the US "soon" and more countries in the coming months.
Apple Music's recently announced Voice Plan will launch alongside iOS 15.2, according to the patch notes the company shared for the update's release candidate. The changelog was first spotted by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci. When Apple first announced the more affordable tier at its fall Mac event in October, the company said it would become available "later this fall" in 17 countries, including the US, UK and Canada.
It's iOS 15.2 RC time! Apple also confirmed Apple Music Voice Plan will launch with iOS 15.2 pic.twitter.com/6uHeaTdr41
The plan will offer access to Apple Music's entire song catalog for $5 per month, provided you're willing to rely on Siri for control. You can play specific tracks and playlists, as well as complete albums on your Apple devices. What the tier doesn't offer is access to the Apple Music interface.
We've reached out to Apple to confirm it plans to launch the Voice Plan alongside iOS 15.2. The update will add a handful of other new features, including a toggle that allows iPhone 13 Pro owners to turn on and off the camera's included macro mode. Based on the timing of the release candidate, Apple is likely to push out iOS 15.2 soon.
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.
Twitter is testing a new process for reporting tweets in what it says is a major overhaul intended to make it easier to flag harmful behavior on its platform. With the change, the company is changing how it allows users to flag tweets and significantly expanding the criteria that can be included in reports.
In a blog post, Twitter says it’s revamping the process to take a “people first” approach, in which the reporting process begins by asking users “what happened” rather than expecting them to figure out which of the company’s complex policies may have been violated. That’s a significant change from the current process, which requires users to navigate through a series of menus and identify specific rules that were broken by the tweet in question.
Instead, the new reporting flow allows users to specify who was targeted and then describe how it happened. For example, it includes much more detailed ways to report hate speech, including hate speech targeting groups of people. Then, once users have described the incident, Twitter will suggest which of its rules may apply.
Twitter
The company says this process is both simpler for users, and could help the company improve its policies and process further. “The more first-hand information they can gather about how people are experiencing certain content, the more precise Twitter can be when it comes to addressing it or ultimately removing it,” the company writes. “This rich pool of information, even if the Tweets in question don't technically violate any rules, still gives Twitter valuable input that they can use to improve people’s experience on the platform.”
Twitter is currently testing the new reporting flow with a “small group” of users in the US, and plans to expand it to more people in 2022.
Ron Swanson is coming to the world of The Last of Us. Yesterday, Murray Bartlett, a cast member on the upcoming HBO show based on the video game, said that he recently shot scenes with Nick Offerman, a person who hadn't yet been linked to the production. Now, Naughty Dog has confirmed a report from Variety that Offerman is playing the loner Bill in The Last of Us. Bill had a small but crucial role in the original game that was played by W. Earl Brown, who said earlier this year he wouldn't be reprising the role in the HBO show.
Offerman is not the first person to be cast as Bill. The role was originally offered to Con O’Neil, who previously had worked with show runner Craig Manzin on his Chernobyl series (also on HBO). According to Variety, O'Neil had to back out of the role due to scheduling conflicts.
In addition to filming scenes with Bartlett, Offerman should get plenty of screen time with series leads Pedro Pascal, who is playing Joel, and Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie. While there have been plenty of leaks from location shooting around Canada that shows this production is well underway, there's no word yet on when The Last of Us will arrive on HBO. It's expected sometime in 2022, though.
Facebook Gaming is about to become more interactive. Two features are rolling out today that should help creators and their fans seamlessly play games together, and give viewers other ways to get involved with streams.
Play With Streamer is self-explanatory. There will be a button on livestreams that lets viewers play Pac-Man Community (a version of Pac-Man developed in partnership with Genvid and Bandai Namco) with streamers and other community members. Pac-Man Community includes a four-player co-op mode, a mobile-optimized maze creator, rankings and community challenges.
Facebook Interactives, meanwhile, are interactive layers viewers will see on top of livestreams. When Pac-Man Community's Watch Mode is enabled, they can help or hamper an AI-controlled Pac-Man or the ghosts through the in-game video player. Facebook says these features form some of the first steps of its vision for the metaverse.
Other platforms have long had ways for players to interact directly with streams. On Twitch, viewers can control Pokémon and other games by entering commands in the chat. There are also extensions that let viewers impact the game the streamer is playing by, for instance, granting them extra items or even instantly killing their character. With Stadia's Crowd Play feature, viewers can play with a streamer who's broadcasting their gameplay on YouTube, as long as they also own the game and have a sufficient setup.
The best thing I can say about Halo: Infinite is that it gets better as it goes. The single-player campaign starts out as a basic first-person shooter dripping in nostalgia juice, and it ends up as a rudimentary open-world shooter swimming in sci-fi tropes, starring everyone's favorite emotionless space soldier and his co-dependent AI assistant.
As the first open-world entry in the Halo franchise and with more than a year of extra development time, I had high hopes for Infinite. Maybe too high. And even with a grapple hook, this game just can’t reach them.
I say all of this with love in my heart. I’ve been a Halo fan since Combat Evolved, and I have two decades of happy memories associated with the franchise, most of which I’ve re-lived while playing Infinite. That part has been a treat — there’s nothing like turning the corner in a random metal-lined corridor, or driving a Warthog down a narrow mountain path, and feeling that warm, gleeful sense of familiarity. This happens over and over again in Infinite.
Engadget
Revamping old environments is the easy part, though. Halo Infinite is the first open-world entry in the franchise’s history, promising more exploration and spontaneity for Master Chief than ever before. However, in practice, the world of Zeta Halo is contained and largely linear, offering few surprises and little incentive to travel off the beaten path. There are bases to capture and hordes to defeat, but with such a cramped map, these sidequests pop up naturally along the path of the main storyline, and the game automatically switches the objective to whatever mission is nearby. Sidequests are folded into the campaign like this, and they become indistinguishable from the main missions.
By the time I felt ready to get out and explore the Ring, I realized I’d already hit all the icons on my map.
Engadget
That said, Infinite introduces new mechanics and tools that are really fun to play with, and the best of these gadgets is the grapple hook. There are no invisible walls in Infinite, and the grapple hook allows players to take advantage of Zeta Halo’s vertical space, scaling mountains and buildings in a series of pops and swings. The grapple hook opens up fresh vantage points for every battle, and it saved my Master Chief from falling to his death many times over. (I may have even sang, "Spider-Chief, Spider-Chief..." under my breath every now and then. Maybe.)
Playing with an Xbox controller, the grapple hook lives on the D-pad, alongside three other tools that get added to Chief's arsenal as the game progresses: a shield, radar darts and a dash move that I rarely use. I’ve tried to deploy the dash, but I really don’t see the point when the grapple hook does the same thing, but faster and in more directions.
Switching among these options on the D-pad takes some practice, but once that becomes second-nature, the hook, shield and radar make each fight more dynamic than Halo’s ever been. The grapple hook allows Master Chief to pick up objects from afar like guns and throwable explosives, it eventually shocks enemies on contact, and it lets players smoothly take over enemy vehicles. Infinite is at its best when it provides a rich environment for grappling, shielding and landing floaty in-air headshots, with enemies attacking from all sides.
Engadget
Now I’m going to talk some shit about the grapple hook. I know, I just sang its praises, and I stand by everything I said, but I have to put it all in context. From my perspective, the most obvious innovation in Halo Infinite is its use of vertical space, aided by the grapple hook — but that’s hardly a new idea at all, and frankly, other games have done it better.
To name just a few recent examples: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild made headlines in 2017 for rethinking vertical exploration in an open-world space; last year, Doom Eternal beautifully demonstrated the power of parkour mechanics in an FPS environment; and Insomniac’s Spider-Man series has perfected the art of high-swinging action. In comparison to games like these, Infinite’s mechanics aren’t innovative at all.
I bring this up because I think it’s a disservice to compare Halo Infinite only to other Halo games, rather than its competitors. After all, competition is the root of evolution — and that's kind of Halo's jam. I expected more from a pioneer of the FPS genre as it ventured into open-world gaming. Just because it’s new for Halo doesn’t mean it’s new for the industry.
Even with the fresh toys and larger world, Infinite plays like a classic Halo game. The levels are repetitive and mazelike, and the story is packed with military stereotypes, sarcastic robots, women in skin-tight bodysuits and cheesy dialogue. There are a handful of cool new weapons, like the reticle-shifting Heatwave and the revolver-like Mangler, and the entire map is generously stocked with loose ammo and guns. It’s a blockbuster action movie in interactive form, and it has high-energy, entertaining moments, but these are largely overshadowed by the simplistic grind of it all.
Overall, Halo Infinite lacks surprise and intrigue, from the map to individual fights. Failing a boss battle, for instance, rarely feels like a failure of strategy. These encounters generally take place in simple settings with repetitive attacks, and I don’t feel like I’m learning anything new with each runthrough; I’m just going through the motions until I catch a lucky break and I can follow the yellow diamond to my next checkpoint. And then the next. And the next.
Engadget
All of this should make for an incredibly fun multiplayer component, and so far, it seems like that’s the case. Maybe Infinite’s campaign is more engaging in split-screen co-op, historically my preferred way to play, but that mode won’t be available until next year. Neither will Forge mode, for that matter.
If Halo Infinite had launched day-one with the Xbox Series X and S, I likely wouldn’t have many complaints. The fact that 343 Industries and Microsoft took an extra year to build this game, hyping it up the whole way through, shifted my expectations a bit. Maybe too much.
Regardless, I’ll see you in the Halo: Infinite multiplayer lobby on December 8th.
There may soon be more ways to get your friends to pay their share of the check. Facebook (or its parent company Meta) announced today that it's testing Split Payments, "a free and fast way to share the cost of bills and expenses." Starting next week, users in the US will be able to charge their friends in a group chat or from the Payments Hub in Messenger.
In a group chat, you'll need to hit the "Get Started" button to initiate the payments, and then you can choose to divide a sum of money evenly or decide what each person owes. You can also choose to include yourself and add a customizable message. The money will be sent through Facebook Pay, and after you submit, your request will be sent to the group's chat room.
Facebook also said it's added new custom group effects from four additional creators: King Bach, Emma Chamberlain, Bella Poarch and Zach King. Earlier this month, the company also released new "soundmojis" tied to the Stranger Things soundtrack and Taylor Swift's remaster of her album Red.
This week, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss the significance of Jack Dorsey leaving Twitter. Will the social network thrive, or stumble, after losing its co-founder for a second time? Also, Cherlynn explains what’s up with all of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chips for phones, computers and… portable gaming consoles? Is it enough to take on Apple’s M1 chips? Or will Windows once again hold Snapdragon PCs back?
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
What is Twitter without founder Jack Dorsey? – 1:21
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip – 22:38
Updates from the Theranos / Elizabeth Holmes trial – 45:44
Spotify’s Wrapped feature is available this week – 51:41
Working on – 56:18
Pop culture picks – 59:20
Video livestream
Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Producer: Ben Ellman Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
