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- Amazon's Halo fitness tracker will measure your body fat... and tone of voice? - CNET
- The Morning After: Sony will directly invite some gamers to pre-order the PS5 - Engadget
- Windows 10 update could be damaging your SSD - TechRadar
| Amazon's Halo fitness tracker will measure your body fat... and tone of voice? - CNET Posted: 27 Aug 2020 07:15 AM PDT A wristband without a screen. A service that scans your body through your camera. An always-listening voice analysis that offers guidance on emotional tone. Amazon's entry into the fitness space is odd indeed, and ambitious. And we're just getting our minds wrapped around it. Amazon has entered the health and fitness world with Halo, a subscription service and accompanying fitness band that unlocks an array of health metrics, including activity, sleep, body fat and tone of voice analysis, to determine your moods and your speech. The band itself looks a lot like a screenless Fitbit tracker, but with a few different elements: It has temperature sensing, much like Fitbit's newest smartwatch, the Fitbit Sense, and a microphone that continually scans a wearer's voice to determine emotional tone. Yes, it's a lot to take in. And the service is immediately available for early access. We haven't even had a chance to try it out yet.  The membership part will start at $65 for the first six months ($100 once the early access deal is over) and then $3.99 a month after that. (International prices aren't currently available, but $65 converts to about £50 or AU$90.) The subscription to Halo includes the basic fitness band that has one button, no screen and tracks your heart rate, steps and temperature. The lack of screen means you'll have to rely on the mobile app to see all your data, but it does a lot more than just count your steps and log your weight. An always-listening, emotionally analyzing Amazon health band that also lets you scan your body fat may sound like Black Mirror incarnate, but it's also opening up some ideas in fitness that we've never seen before.  Watch this: Amazon Halo: A fitness tracker and health subscription... 2:46 Body fat analysis with a smartphone cameraAmazon thinks the concept of weight loss is flawed, and that body fat is a much better predictor of health. Most of us have been conditioned to obsess over our weight. The entire diet industry was built on it with programs, apps and devices that revolve around ways to lose pounds. But weight can fluctuate daily based on factors including humidity, medication, menstrual cycle and illness. Plus muscle is more dense than fat, and a scale can't tell the difference between the two. You could literally work your ass off building muscle and burning fat, and not see the numbers on the scale go down. Rather than relying on weight, Halo focuses on body fat percentage, which is less volatile and takes a lot more time and work to change. The gold standard in the medical world for body composition analysis is a DEXA scan (dual-energy absorptiometry), which can cost up to $100 at a lab. The Halo app does it all using your smartphone camera. Once you take your photos, the app automatically eliminates everything else in the background, calculates body fat percent based on body indicators, and then creates a 3D model of your body, which is both cool and terrifying. The app requires you to wear minimal form-fitting clothing and trust Amazon to take a picture of you wearing it. The entire process takes seconds.  Amazon's Halo app makes a 3D render of your body to analyze body fat, while the fitness band keeps tabs on sleep and activity. AmazonIf you're feeling uncomfortable, that's not surprising: The idea of body-scanning with a camera is already an awkward proposition. Amazon doing this on a health platform makes it feel more so. The sample body-scan images Amazon showed me look very personal -- not necessarily something I'd ever want anyone else to see. That's why Amazon promises that the finished body scans stay on your phone and won't be shared with anybody, including the company, unless you opt into that. According to Amazon, "the images are processed in the cloud, but encrypted in transit and processed within seconds, after which they're automatically deleted from Amazon's systems and databases. All scan images are fully deleted within 12 hours. The scan images aren't viewed by anyone at Amazon and aren't used for machine learning optimizations." Watch that tone!Halo also offers a Tone analysis, which has nothing to do with body tone, but rather analyzes the emotion of your voice. It also lets you know when you sound out of line, weirdly enough. The fitness band has two built in mics to capture audio and is listening for emotional cues. The company says it's not intended to analyze your conversation, but rather the tone of your voice. You can opt out of this by tapping the side button and will know when the mic is off when a red LED lights up on the band. Otherwise, the voice scanning is happening continuously, pulling out the wearer's voice specifically and delivering analysis with related emotional-tone words (like "happy," or "concerned" in the Halo app). The idea, according to Amazon, is to help guide a wearer to deliver better tones of voice and speaking styles, almost a vocal form of posture. It isn't intended as a form of psychological analysis, but it seems awfully hard to draw the line on a concept like this. Amazon's been exploring the idea of emotional tone-sensing since at least 2018, but this is the first time it's approached the idea in any device. And according to Amazon, Tone is only happening on the Halo Band for now. Tone will be limited to the Halo band's microphone, but Amazon sounds open to exploring the idea on other devices, depending on how the early access response goes from first-wave wearers. It's a very odd add to a fitness band, and we have no idea what this is like to use yet. Amazon promises that Tone voice samples are encrypted and stored only on a wearer's phone (shared via the band via Bluetooth with the encrypted key), are deleted after analysis, and won't be shared to the cloud or used to build machine learning models. Sleep analysis with temperature trackingThe sleep analysis includes a body temperature to detect variations that may impact sleep. AmazonThe app provides a comprehensive sleep analysis with a breakdown of the different stages of sleep and overall sleep score, much like other fitness trackers. It also goes beyond the basics by keeping track of your overall body temperature during sleep and creating a baseline for each person. It then charts your average temperature each night relative to your baseline to help you identify variations that could affect your health and the quality of your sleep. The Halo Band won't provide a specific body temperature, similar to the way other temperature wearable devices like the Oura Ring already work. Temperature has become a trending wearable metric in the COVID-19 era: The Oura Ring has one and Fitbit's newest Sense watch has one too. Amazon's Halo team is pursuing research for COVID-19 symptom detection on its wearables, much like other health wearable companies, but no specific studies or plans have been laid out yet. Activity tracking: A week at a glanceThe activity app is based on a weekly point system. AmazonHalo also does basic fitness tracking based on the information from the band. It can automatically track walks and runs, but you'll have to go into the app and tag any other workouts manually. It rewards you for any type of movement or activity, but gives more points for more intense workouts and subtracts points for sedentary time. And it doesn't keep a daily tally of your activity, your score is based on the points you accrued during the entire week. The entire picture of exercise, sedentary time and active time is combined into one tally. Amazon's sleep and activity scores and other AI tools will require an Amazon Halo subscription; otherwise, the band will default to more basic tracking data. Much like Fitbit and its Premium service, this looks to be continuing a trend of fitness devices that expect a subscription model as part of the package. A lot of labs and partners, but no Google or Apple integrationA Labs section of Amazon Halo looks similar to what's on Fitbit's Premium service, with a lot of multiweek health and fitness goals to opt into, and partners lined up from OrangeTheory to Weight Watchers. Amazon promises these challenges are scientifically vetted, but it also sounds like these challenges will keep being added to over time. But at least at launch, Halo will not tie in to Apple's HealthKit or Google's Fit App which puts it at a disadvantage with people who are already deeply invested in either for health tracking. Amazon is leaning on Weight Watchers, John Hancock Vitality wellness program, and a few others that will be able to hook into Amazon Halo health data. The looming privacy questionThere's a lot of process in terms of features, and while some seem interesting and innovative, the biggest barrier to entry is privacy. Sharing any kind of health data (let alone unflattering seminudes) requires next-level trust, and you might not be prepared to give Amazon that trust. The company doesn't exactly have the most pristine track record when it comes to keeping user data private. Alexa-enabled devices have been in the hot seat for storing private conversations "for machine learning purposes." And Amazon's Ring doorbell has had a series of privacy dust-ups. Halo puts privacy in your hands by allowing you to opt out of data sharing with Amazon and third-party apps as well as disable the microphone on the band, but it's still going to be an uphill battle. That is unless its features prove to be earth-shattering and worth the privacy risk, which remains to be seen. Amazon is late on arrivalThe lack of connection to Apple or Google is telling. Amazon's making a play in the health and fitness data space, and with Google, Fitbit and Apple already deep in, it's a big question as to how Amazon will make waves. Or, where Amazon Halo will go next. It's a platform as much as a wearable, and it sounds like Halo's early-access experiment may just be the tip of the iceberg. |
| The Morning After: Sony will directly invite some gamers to pre-order the PS5 - Engadget Posted: 27 Aug 2020 04:40 AM PDT The latest news in the fight against COVID-19 is this credit card-sized test kit. The BinaxNOW system still relies on samples from nasal swabs, but its maker says it can give results in 15 minutes and will only cost $5. Abbott Laboratories developed the antigen test — which looks for proteins specific to the virus, but may be less accurate than slower PCR methods — in a format that's more like a pregnancy test strip.  Abbott The FDA granted it an emergency use authorization, and Abbott is apparently planning to produce as many as 50 million tests per month. As far as the accuracy, it said that in trials its test showed a sensitivity of 97.1 percent (correct diagnoses of people who have the disease) and specificity of 98.5 percent (correctly ruling out people who don't have it).  Abbott The other part of the setup is an app, which gives people with negative tests a QR code that may serve as a "digital health pass" to the kinds of gatherings we're currently avoiding. The jury's still out on how well that will all work. — Richard Google's Pixel 5 may be boring, and that's not a bad thingTried, true and affordable. Judging by the leaks and rumors, Google's next flagship phone is going to be a bit… plain. If that holds up, is it really a problem? Terrence O'Brien is ready for a "boring" Pixel 5 and he'll explain exactly why. Sony might send you an invite to pre-order the PS5Selections will be made 'based on previous interests and PlayStation activities.' Sony will invite some dedicated gamers to be first in line for its PlayStation 5. To get on the list for one of the pre-order invites, go to the PlayStation website and submit your PSN username on the form. If you're selected, then you can expect a chance to pre-order one of the PS5 consoles, as well as whatever accessories you need. Sponsored by YahooThe Yodel: a daily rollup of news, sports, finance, and more going on in your world.A quick read that you'll finish before your first cup of coffee. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer quits just three months after taking the jobThat was fast.In spring of this year (after the pandemic started), Kevin Mayer was still an executive at Disney, rolling out Disney+ streaming to the masses. Since then he took the top job at TikTok and now, just three months later, he's resigned. Of course, he admittedly didn't see a future where the presidential administration would take aim at the video sharing app and push for a sale of its US operations. In a letter to employees, he mentioned that a resolution should come soon, but "the role that I signed up for — including running TikTok globally — will look very different as a result." NVIDIA teases its next-generation RTX 3000 GPUsMore power. We're expecting NVIDIA to give us more details about its next generation of video cards, the RTX 3000 series, at a special GeForce event on September 1. To tide us over, the company has released a short technical video to give us a glimpse at its new GPU designs — likely the enormous leaked RTX 3090 card — and offers up some details about its plans. Watch our live unboxing of the Surface DuoIt's all glass and metal. The Surface Duo is real and in Devindra Hardawar's hands. Check out this video as Devindra and Chris Velazco go over the Microsoft foldable's slick hardware — an overview of its software chops will have to wait for a different day. But wait, there's more...'Fortnite' players on Apple devices are locked out of the new season Netflix cancels 'Altered Carbon' after just two seasons 'Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War' lands on November 13th Netflix will make a movie about Martin Shkreli's rare Wu-Tang album purchase Olympus' webcam software beta rolls out to macOS users Some Canon cameras can now upload images straight to Google Photos Cornell University's laser-activated robot is smaller than a paramecium |
| Windows 10 update could be damaging your SSD - TechRadar Posted: 27 Aug 2020 03:18 AM PDT  An upcoming Windows 10 update is expected to resolve a bug affecting the Optimize Drives tool that could be damaging the longevity of solid state drives (SSDs). Issues first arose with Windows 10 version 2004, pushed live in May, after which users began to report that the optimization tool was failing to record the last time a drive had been defragged. This meant Windows 10 was performing automatic drive optimizations far more frequently than it should, which could have implications for the lifespan of an SSD. Windows 10 defragging issueWhen a drive is defragmented, its contents is essentially reorganized in a way that allows data to be accessed more quickly. Defragging a heavily fragmented drive can result in stark performance gains, but the optimization process is also taxing for the drive itself. Traditionally, Windows 10 should record the last time a drive has been optimized to ensure it is not subjected to unnecessary wear and tear. In the case of SSDs, some experts believe it's not sensible to perform defragmentation at all, while others have previously stated that there are benefits to optimizing a heavily fragmented SSD roughly once per month. However, as a result of the Windows 10 2004 bug, the Optimize Drives tool is defragging drives every time the connected device is rebooted. In effect, this means many SSDs are being defragged circa 30x more frequently than is optimal. Microsoft has acknowledged the issue, first identified in June, and has already rolled out a fix for members of its Insider program with Windows 10 Build 19042.487 (20H2). While regular Windows 10 users wait for the fix to be tested in beta and rolled out the entire user base (which should take place sooner rather than later), it is advisable to turn off automatic defragging to prevent further damage to SSDs. |
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