Halo Infinite fans aren't happy with the new free operation pass.

Halo Infinite's new Operation: Banished Honor battle pass rolls out on April 30, bringing a new 20-tier track of digital goods for gamers to unlock. Only...the tiers are a bit lackluster compared to previous passes. There's a big reason for that: 343 Industries wants to make sure you have enough UNSC space bucks to spend on bonus trinkets.

The devs just announced that Spartan Points are coming to Halo Infinite. That's not a premium currency--Infinite already has credits, which are sold for real money. Instead, Spartan Points are a "soft" currency that can be earned by playing the game. SP will roll out alongside the new Banished Honor pass, but there's just one issue: Spartan Points--which are free--apparently make up a big proportion of the free operation pass.

Spartan Points are coming to Halo Infinite, but thankfully they're still free.

343 Industries today announced some changes coming to Halo Infinite's cosmetic rewards. The developer will be introducing Spartan Points to Halo Infinite as part of the Operation: Banished Honor event on April 30, a new type of "soft" currency that isn't sold for real money. Halo Infinite will soon have Credits as the premium currency, and Spartan Points as the soft currency.

Spartan Points were originally introduced to the Halo Master Chief Collection in 2022, and back then, 343i had originally wanted to charge money for the points and sell them as premium currency. Massive backlash forced the studio to abandon these plans. The system is similar to the cR economy found in Halo Reach.

New PlayStation exclusive Stellar Blade appears to get a sales lift from positive reviews.

Reviews for Shift Up's new femme fatale action game are in, and the dust has settled on a strong 82 out of 100 on Metacritic. It looks like these positive reviews may have boosted Stellar Blade's game sales in the United States.

Stellar Blade has enjoyed a boosted position on the PlayStation Store's top 25 best-selling games. The Korean hack-and-slash is now in the #12 spot, beating out Overwatch 2 and Fallout 76 while brushing up against the mighty Roblox. At #12, Stellar Blade is higher today than it has been since I started tracking sales data a week ago. Just yesterday, Stellar Blade was at #17 - on April 17, Steller Blade was #21.

Apple TV+ has announced a new trailer for The Big Cigar, a new upcoming limited series that will see André Holland star as Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton. The show will also star Alessandro Nivola, Tiffany Boone, P. J. Byrne, Marc Menchaca, Moses Ingram, Rebecca Dalton, Olli Haaskivi, Jordane Christie and Glynn Turman.

The Big Cigar will make its global debut on May 17 with the first two episodes made available to stream on Apple TV+ around the globe. From there, viewers can expect new episodes to be made available every Friday through to the season's conclusion on June 14.

The six-episode show is based on the magazine article of the same name by Joshuah Bearman who also happens to serve as the show's executive producer. The show tells the true story of what Apple calls Hollywood revolution meeting social revolution. It tells the story of Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton escaping from the FBI to Cuba with the assistance of famed producer Bert Schneider. Amazingly, the whole plan involved a fake movie production and the escapade did not go according to plan. In fact, Apple says, it went wrong in every way that it possibly could.

There once was a time when the iPhone could do no wrong and Apple couldn't make them quickly enough to keep up with demand, but those times are now few and far between. According to a new report by the researchers at CIRP, Apple's share of the US smartphone activations has taken a tumble despite the fact that the report believes that Apple's installed user base is still higher.

The number of smartphone activations for Apple topped out at 40% in the first and second quarter of 2023, the report notes, But Apple experienced a new smartphone activation decline to 33%, a full third of all smartphone activations, in the United States during the first quarter of 2024. You don't have to be too great at maths to know that the figure means that two-thirds of all smartphone devices are not iPhones - and that means that they're all running Android.

The reason for that isn't always easy to come up with, but CIRP believes that Apple may be a victim of its own success. The latest iPhones are so good and they last for so long that people simply don't see the need to update so often.

Hot on the heels of huge success in designing its own custom chips for use in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and more, Apple is now reportedly turning its attention to designing the chips that will power its future AI endeavors. Apple is strongly thought to be working on new AI features for the iPhone and its other platforms and while some of the large language models and other components will run on those devices, a server in the cloud will also be required for some features. Now, it's thought Apple is working to design the chips that will power those servers.

That's according to a poster on the Weibo Chinese social network, at least. The user is said to have 25 years of experience in the integrated circuit industry, including work on the famous Intel Pentium chips, and suggests that the new AI server chips will be based on TSMC's 3nm manufacturing process. That process is already used to produce Apple's M3 Mac and future iPad chips as well as the A17 Pro that powers its best iPhones.

TSMC has long been a key partner in Apple's supply chain and is already producing some of its most important chips, including those that power the new Apple Vision Pro spatial computer. That means it's the obvious choice to produce future AI server components as well, and it's easy to see why Apple might want to go that route. By designing its own chips Apple can ensure that it has full control over what they can do and how they work. It's a process that has stood Apple in good stead in other products, and there is little reason why it won't do the same server-side.

The next non-Ultra Apple Watch may be thinner than previous models if a new report suggesting a thinner logic board turns out to be accurate. It's reported that the new Apple Watch will use resin-coated copper, a move which will allow Apple to make the wearable's logic board thinner than previous iterations.

Resin-coated copper is a thin layer of copper foil coated with a resin and while it's thought that such a move would have multiple benefits to the Apple Watch, the ability to make the logic board thinner is one that could be particularly notable.

By making the logic board thinner Apple could theoretically open up extra space within the wearable's chassis, allowing that space to be used for other things. The most obvious use would be to allow Apple to make the Apple Watch's battery larger, improving battery life. But it's also possible that Apple could simply make the overall Apple Watch thinner, a move that would be well received by some. However, with Apple thought to be working on new sensors that could monitor blood pressure and glucose levels, it's also possible that the saved space could be taken up by those sensors.

If you're yet to treat yourself to a new Apple Watch Series 9 and have been waiting for a way to get one and save money at the same time, you're in luck - especially if you happen to live in the United States. The watch, which was only released in September of last year, is now available in various configurations in Apple's refurbished store. All you have to do is place the order to save money.

First spotted by MacRumors, the refurbished Apple Watches start from $339 with savings of around 15% compared to the price you'd pay when choosing a brand-new model. These Apple Watches are only likely to be available for a limited time, however, with stocks often very fluid. Don't see the model that calls to you? Keep checking, these stock levels are likely to change regularly.

Refurbished Apple Watches are all checked thoroughly to ensure that they are working and they're cleaned so as to appear as if they were brand new. Products sold via the Apple refurbished store tend to be some of the best, arriving in condition so good that you'll be hard-pressed to spot a difference between it and a new model.

With Apple having already confirmed that it will be holding a new event on May 7 we were already pretty sure that we knew what the company intended to show off. Now, it seems increasingly likely that all of the rumors were right - the event will focus on new iPads and yes, a new Apple Pencil.

That's the assumption that we can now make after Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a post on the X social network that hinted as much. The post, embedded below, mentions the Apple Pencil and includes a gif of of one, essentially confirming the news.

The rumors over the last few months had told us to expect a raft of new iPads and accessories to be announced within weeks, and those rumors had started to settle on May being the big month. Now Apple has confirmed that it will stream ane vent on May 7 and while it hasn't said what it will be about, there are surely few doubts as to its content.

NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR aren't the only upscaling techs in town, lest you forget that Intel has its XeSS rival too - and Team Blue is continuing to push support for it.

To that end, VideoCardz picked up on the fact that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora just had XeSS upscaling added with a new patch. This is update 3.2 which weighs in at a 3GB download on PC - and a similar size on consoles, where it adds something else: support for a 40 FPS mode.

Horizon Forbidden West also just received a new patch v1.3 via Steam and the Epic Games Store, and this improves XeSS, delivering support for the newest version.

Following recent rumors that the 12.9-inch iPad Air that we expect to be announced next month would feature an impressive mini-LED display, the person who shared that rumor initially now says it wasn't right after all.

Display supply chain analyst Ross Young is normally extremely accurate when detailing information about which displays will feature in future products, but he says that he got this one wrong. Writing in a paywalled post on the X social network, Young said that he had heard from supply chain sources that the new 12.9-inch mini-LED display was destined for the iPad Air but that other sources have now said that won't be the case after all.

The news will no doubt be a disappointment for anyone who had originally planned to pick up a new 12.9-inch iPad Air, although the lack of mini-LED display does make sense. Such technology, currently employed on the iPad Pro lineup, is expensive and it never quite matched up with a place in the iPad Air lineup. However, it was a possibility that Apple could be using up older iPad Pro inventory, but that doesn't seem to be the case now.

Apple is holding a special event on May 7 with new iPads expected to be the stars of the show. One of those iPads is set to be an all-new 12.9-inch iPad Air, reports have suggested, but that won't be the end of the new tablet arrivals according to a new report.

Supply chain analyst Ross Young had previously suggested that the 12.9-inch iPad Air will feature a mini-LED display, but in a paywalled post on the X social network, he now says that isn't the case after all. However, there IS some truth to the previous rumor in the fact that there is indeed a 12.9-inch iPad of some description, featuring a mini-LED display, in the works.

What that unnamed and mystery tablet will be, nobody knows. Young believes that it will arrive in the fourth quarter of the year which means that it will come much later than the expected OLED iPad Pro and new iPad Air announcements next month. The news is interesting because the current 12.9-inch iPad Pro uses a mini-LED display and will be replaced by an OLED version soon. That would suggest that the new 12.9-inch tablet won't be an iPad Pro, and with a 12.9-inch iPad Air debuting next month also, that leaves little room in the lineup for another 12.9-inch device.

Sony has released a new air conditioner that sits on the back of your neck and either cools or warms you, depending on the environmental conditions.

The Reon Pocket 5 is the first such model to be made available outside of Asia, but while it's only on sale in the UK as well as certain Asian territories, the fact that it has made the leap to Europe indicates the invention could well come to the US.

Given the name, you might think the Reon Pocket sits in your, erm, pocket, but as mentioned, it fits neatly around your neck (the Reon Neck-brace 5 probably didn't sound like such a great name).

Microsoft has removed another piece of functionality from the Control Panel in Windows 11, redirecting folks heading to the Fonts section to its equivalent in the Settings app.

The old-style Control Panel still lurks in the background of Windows 11, making for an untidy contrast to the new Settings app - the problem being that there are so many settings in Windows that a bunch of legacy stuff is still yet to be migrated to the latter.

That process is happening, very slowly, but surely, and as Windows Latest spotted, the latest move is that when going to the Fonts page in the Control Panel, you'll be redirected to the revamped version of Fonts in the Settings app (which is already in place). Windows Search will also push you to Settings instead (whereas it currently highlights the old Control Panel when you search for Fonts).

Digital Foundry has done another discussion on what to expect from Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro, which recently had its specifications leak online, revealing what is under the hood of the coming console.

According to the leaks Sony's PS5 Pro will come with a range of performance improvements, with one being a 45% increase in GPU performance compared to the standard PS5. Digital Foundry explains the PS5 Pro will come with PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), Sony's new upscaling technology, and Ultra Boost mode, which is designed to help games using Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) achieve a higher framerate.

The YouTube channel says that games using AMD FSR 2 will likely benefit quite a lot from the PS5 Pro hardware, which would be titles such as Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI. Digital Foundry says all of the aforementioned titles, and any other title that specifically uses a VRR mode will benefit greatly with the PS5 Pro, likely clearing up issues of dynamic resolution scaling being overused resulting in image quality degrading at random times throughout the game.

Microsoft is charging full steam ahead with a Windows 11 update that will put advertisements for apps within the Start menu's "Recommended" section.

Microsoft began testing this new feature within its Insider program early this month, and now it appears as the latest optional update for Windows 11 version 22H2 and version 23H2. For those that don't know, Microsoft's latest move will introduce new applications to Windows 11 users within the "Recommended" section of the Start menu. According to Microsoft these apps will come from a "small set of curated developers" that will meet Microsoft's quality standards.

Many users aren't complaining about the Recommended apps themselves, but for the decision by Microsoft to put any advertisement within the Start menu at all. Luckily, previous reports that cite Insiders testing Windows 11 preview builds, users will be able to turn off advertisements within the Start menu by following these steps: Settings > Personalization > Start. Then switching "off" for "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."

Engineers from a university are reportedly closing in on a technology breakthrough that would enable submarines to travel as quick as a jet.

A new report from the South China Morning Post reveals engineers from Harbin Engineering University in Heilongjiang province are nearing the final designs of a new system that uses lasers to propel submarines to extreme speeds.

So, how does it work? Lasers generate plasma underwater that results in a "detonation wave" being produced. This wave has the potential to propel an object underwater, but for the 20 years it has been researched, engineers have struggled to come up with a design that can direct the generated force in a specific direction.

Apple recently announced that it will be holding an online, streamed event on May 7 and it's roundly thought that it will see the company announce new iPads including a pair of iPad Pros. Now, a new report suggests that while that remains true, actually getting your hands on one of the tablets in particular could be more difficult than buyers might like,

The tablet is the 11-inch OLED iPad Pro, the smaller of the two tablets and often the most popular for those who want to be able to get the most powerful tablet with the added portability of a relatively small display. However, display analyst Ross Young believes that stocks of the 11-inch model might be harder to find than those of the larger 12.9-inch version. And it's the display that buyers can blame.

Young was writing via a post on the X social network that now appears to have been removed, but not before it was picked up by various outlets including 9to5Mac.

Here's some good news for those of you with an older Android smartphone wanting to use Google's Gemini assistant, as the AI is now available for earlier versions of the mobile platform - plus a new 'conversation mode' is inbound for the app.

Previously, you needed a handset running Android 12 or better to use the Gemini app, but now, that has been pushed back to include phones with Android 10 or 11 installed on them.

Leaker @AssembleDebug on X (formerly Twitter) made this clear, as reported by Android Authority (via TechRadar).

The head of NASA appeared before the House committee to warn of a secret growing military presence in space and how the US is "in a space race" with China for the goal of arriving on the Moon first.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson testified before the House appropriations committee on NASA's 2025 budget, and said the space agency has reason to believe China is increasing its presence in space, especially within the last 10 years. However, China's space presence remains "very, very, secretive", and that a lot of the nation's civilian space program is actually China's military space program in disguise.

Nelson said he hopes Beijing will "come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses", but added: "We have not seen that demonstrated by China." Furthermore, Nelson said that the US is expecting to land on the Moon again before China, and the US is in a space race against China for landing on the Moon again as there is concern that Beijing could land before the US and say, "OK, this is our territory, you stay out,'" said Nelson.