Month: November 2021

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  How much would you like to customize your multiplayer Spartan? [credit: Xbox Game Studios ]

As part of its Xbox 20th anniversary celebration livestream today, Microsoft announced the surprise launch of Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer mode, which is available now for Xbox One, Series S/X, and PC (the game will be available on Xbox Cloud Streaming "later today").

Today's launch, which comes after two limited multiplayer "technical preview" test weekends in recent months, is still being described as a beta launch ahead of the full release planned for December 8. That's when the game's single-player campaign is also expected to launch (though co-op mode will have to wait).

As such, 343 Industries warns that "you may experience some bumps and bugs during this beta period." That said, the company sees today's roll out as the official launch of the game's "Season One," which is titled "Heroes of Reach" and will run through May 2, 2022 (subsequent seasons will run for three months). Any progress made in the beta will carry over to the full launch.

Enlarge / The Fully Jarvis Standing Desk. (credit: Corey Gaskin)

The Dealmaster has been rounding up the best early Black Friday deals we can find for the past few weeks, but today we wanted to highlight an especially notable sale on standing desks and related home office accessories from Fully, which we've previously recommended in our guide to gearing up your home office.

Up through November 30, the company is taking 15 percent off nearly all of the standing desks, desk frames, converters, chairs, monitor arms, shelving, and other home office accessories in its online store. Many of these discounts have also been duplicated on Fully's Amazon's storefront via on-page coupons, if you'd rather shop from there. For context, street prices on Fully desks (among others) have steadily risen over the past several pandemic-addled months, so the discounts here don't bring the lowest prices we've ever tracked. Still, for those wanting to adopt a standing desk today, the sale is a good opportunity to save on a few options we like.

Among the discounted items we've tested and recommended are Fully's Jarvis Standing Desk and the Cooper Standing Desk Converter. While the Jarvis isn't our top overall standing desk pick—Uplift's V2 desk offers a handful more customization options, though it isn't as accommodating to shorter frames—it's still an appealing choice from both an aesthetic and functional standpoint. The sustainably sourced bamboo top on our test model helps the desk fit in like semi-high-end furniture, classing up the room while making the office feel less office-y. You can also choose from desktops made of laminate, natural wood, and whiteboard materials. Each varies in price, with laminate costing the least, and sustainably sourced natural wood fetching a higher price. And yes, you can use dry-erase markers on the whiteboard top.

Enlarge / Biogen Inc. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Biogen Inc. shares soared after its controversial Alzheimer's disease therapy was approved by US regulators. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Seniors throughout the US will see a hefty increase to their health care premiums next year thanks in large part to Biogen's Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm, which is priced at $56,000 per year and is not proven to be clearly effective at treating Alzheimer's.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Friday that the standard monthly premium for Medicare Part B will rise from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 in 2022, an increase of $21.60 or roughly 14.5 percent. It is the largest increase ever in terms of dollars and among the largest percentage increases in recent years.

CMS officials said Friday that Aduhelm was responsible for about half of the rise in Part B premiums, according to the Associated Press. Though the CMS is still determining how it will cover Aduhelm under Part B, the agency said the prospect of paying for Aduhelm at all required "additional contingency reserves."

Enlarge (credit: Asus)

Asus' latest machines aimed at creators offer the latest and not-so-latest Nvidia mobile graphics. Armed with newer tech, like an OLED panel with up to a 90 Hz refresh rate and 11th-gen Intel and AMD Ryzen 5000-series mobile CPUs, the Asus Vivobook Pro 14 and 15 OLED laptops announced today also have some interesting choices for graphics: either the current-gen RTX 3050 or the GTX 1650, a card that first debuted two generations ago.

The mobile GTX 1650 originally came out in 2019 with GDDR5 memory. But in 2020, as current-generation cards were virtually impossible to find at anywhere near MSRP, Nvidia released a new variant with GDDR6 memory, boosting bandwidth from 128 to 192 Gbps. At the time, Nvidia told PC Gamer that "the industry is running out of GDDR5."

Asus' new Vivobooks employ the Max-Q version of the GTX 1650, allowing the 14-inch laptop to measure just 0.76 inches (19.25 mm) thick and the 15-inch version 0.74 inches (18.9 mm). The trim GPU carries 4GB of GDDR6 memory and is said to be specced to hit a clock speed of up to 1,245 MHz with a total graphics power (TGP) of 35W. For comparison, the RTX 3050 is only available in the 15-inch version Vivobook Pro OLED with 4GB of GDDR6 and up to 1,500 MHz at 35W (50W with Dynamic Boost).

Enlarge / Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (R) and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson (L) at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing about the AT&T/Time Warner merger in December 2016. (credit: Getty Images | Mark Wilson )

Former Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says that he and other board members were surprised that AT&T mismanaged the media company after buying it in 2018. Bewkes is quoted about the aftermath of the $108 billion merger in a James Andrew Miller book called Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers, which will be released on November 23.

The Wall Street Journal received an advance copy of the book and published an article today describing Bewkes' comments:

While Mr. Bewkes doesn't express regret over the decision to sell to AT&T, he said he is angry about how his team of top executives and the staff were treated.

Among the high-profile departures were HBO's former boss, Richard Plepler. Mr. Plepler left after clashes over strategy with John Stankey, who was tapped to run the entity—rebranded as WarnerMedia—and now is chief executive of AT&T.

"The most disappointing thing to me about the AT&T merger," Mr. Bewkes is quoted in the book as saying, is that he and his board thought AT&T "would basically leave our people alone." That didn't happen, he said. "We didn't think they would go to such a level of malpractice as to not listen to anybody… even though they themselves had no experience in those areas."

Bewkes suggested merger with AT&T

Bewkes was Time Warner CEO from 2008 to 2018 and was previously the CEO of HBO. He apparently proposed the sale to AT&T several years before it happened.

Enlarge / Samsung's One UI 4, aka, Android 12.

Samsung is shipping Android 12 to its flagship phone in record time. The OS shipped for Pixel phones slightly less than a month ago, and today already, Samsung is pushing out Android 12 updates for the flagship Galaxy S21 series.

Samsung's version of Android 12 is called "One UI 4" and is heavily skinned. It paves over all of Google's Material You design in the new OS, replacing it with Samsung's own version. Material You's most striking feature is the ability to color-match your UI with your wallpaper, which hasn't survived in Samsung's skin. You can manually pick a "color palette" through a UI that looks a lot like Material You, but the color isn't applied in as many places as Google's UI. Mostly it seems to color buttons and switches.

With no new UI, you're mostly getting the under-the-hood changes and features. The Android 12 privacy indicators made the cut, which shows a green indicator in the top-left corner any time the camera or microphone is active. Samsung also has its own take on the Android 12 Privacy Dashboard. Most of the changes seem to be Samsung revving its own Android skin, though, with features like new widgets for Samsung-specific apps like Bixby and Samsung calendar, new emojis, and changes to Samsung's custom share sheet and lock screen.