Month: June 2018

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

It looks like there's finally going to be a Halo TV show.

Showtime has commissioned 10 episodes of a Halo drama with a working title of, er, Halo. Set in the 26th century, it will tell the tale of humanity's battle against the Covenant and will use characters from the game series including Master Chief himself. Production is due to start early next year.

Serious talk about a Halo TV show started way back in 2013. Back then, Microsoft intended to produce a range of original live-action TV shows for distribution through the Xbox One, and Steven Spielberg's name and Amblin production company were attached to the Halo project.

BradleyWarren Photography

The compact SUV has been around for a couple of decades, if you consider the Suzuki Samurai to be the first of its ilk. As SUVs have grown in popularity, especially in North America, almost all manufacturers have gotten in on the action, with models to fit all sizes of parking space.

Jaguar was slow to arrive on the SUV scene, only launching the F-Pace for the 2017 model year. The car maker seems to be content to let its corporate sibling Land Rover build larger SUVs, as Jaguar's second entry into SUV land is the subcompact E-Pace. Starting at $38,600 (you'll want to spend more, naturally), the E-Pace is an incredibly fun car to drive, albeit with a few quirks.

Enlarge (credit: Walmart)

The longer we wait to take serious action on climate change, the more necessary it becomes to remove some of the CO₂ we've already put in the air. In fact, the scenarios in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in which warming was limited to 2°C relied heavily on CO₂ removal.

Adoption of the necessary technology still seems too far off, given the current lack of market incentives and supporting policies. The technique seen as most likely to scale up involves growing biofuel crops and burning them in power plants that capture the CO₂ so it can be injected into underground storage. Like any scheme, this has drawbacks—it could compete with food crops for farmland, for example.

A new study led by the University of California, Santa Cruz's Greg Rau highlights another tool for our CO₂ removal toolbox: splitting seawater to produce hydrogen gas for fuel while capturing CO₂ with ocean chemistry.

Enlarge / Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is moving more and more into healthcare. (credit: Getty | Franziska Krug)

In a long-awaited move into the drug supply chain, Amazon is acquiring the online pharmacy PillPack, the two companies announced Thursday. The news rattled the drug-retail business, sending stocks of CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid plunging.

The Boston-based startup PillPack primarily caters to customers who take multiple medications. PillPack streamlines delivery of prescription and over-the-counter medications by pre-sorting them into handy dose packets sent directly to customers’ doors nationwide in monthly supplies. The company boasts that it works with doctors and insurance companies to manage refills and cost coverage on customer's behalf. To do so, it holds pharmacy licenses in all 50 states, developed proprietary pharmaceutical software, and is an in-network pharmacy with most pharmacy benefit managers, including Medicare Part D plans—features that were likely eye-catchers for Amazon.

PillPack

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is led by a deal on the Apple Watch Series 1, which, when combined with an extra watch band, is going for $159 at Walmart. Apple's pricing for the smartwatch normally starts at $249.

This is the entry-level Apple Watch, and grabbing it means giving up a little speed, water resistance, screen brightness, GPS, and LTE support for the lower price. But if you plan on using a smartwatch for casual workouts, notifications, and, well, telling the time, the Series 1 is just fine. It's still far from slow, it's comfortable, its design looks virtually identical to the newer Series 3 watch, and it's one of the few smartwatches that doesn't look out of place on smaller wrists.

It can be just as useful as a basic fitness tracker for tracking walks and jogs, and while you shouldn't expect it to be a smartphone replacement for your wrist, being able to see an incoming email or text from your wrist is still convenient if your hands are full. Apple may possibly launch a new Watch model in the coming months, but the company has already confirmed the Series 1 will support the upcoming watchOS 5 update, so it won't be obsolete anytime soon.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | ljhimages)

AT&T has been offering free HBO to its unlimited data customers since last year, and you might have expected that deal to continue unaltered now that AT&T owns HBO thanks to its acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

But AT&T revamped its two unlimited mobile plans this week, and in the process it raised the price for the entry-level plan by $5 a month while removing the free HBO perk. The entry-level unlimited plan now starts at $70 instead of $65.

Existing customers can keep their old plan and the free HBO, but new customers or those who switch plans will have to buy the more expensive unlimited plan to get HBO at no added cost.