Month: October 2017

Enlarge / We really, really hope 343 pulls off 60 frames-per-second split-screen combat in 4K with this anthology's long-awaited Xbox One X patches. (credit: 343 Industries)

In 2014, the Halo: Master Chief Collection anthology launched as a much-needed lineup filler for the struggling Xbox One. But fans' hopes of a lovely, 1080p collection of four classic Halo games, including a remastered take on Halo 2, were soon shattered by a litany of matchmaking hiccups, bugs, and other issues.

A series of patches in the game's first year resolved some issues, particularly with online matchmaking, but in spite of continued complaints about the anthology, Microsoft hasn't put out a H:MCC patch in over two years. And the company failed to capitalize on Xbox One X hype by implying in July that the anthology wouldn't see any 4K-specific updates for that new console.

Thankfully, on Tuesday, Microsoft changed its tune.

Enlarge (credit: Samuel Axon)

1. Google has begun testing a new feature on the iOS Gmail app: the ability to add non-Google e-mail accounts. The change would make the Gmail app more competitive with Apple's own Mail app and numerous other popular email apps on iOS like Spark, Outlook, and Airmail.

The test was announced in a post from Gmail's official Twitter account:

Calling Gmail iOS users! Help us test a new feature - check your non-Google accounts from the official Gmail iOS app https://t.co/qVG44ygii2 pic.twitter.com/WZlUDSOtWX

— Gmail (@gmail) October 17, 2017

If you try to sign up for the test, Google gives three criteria for eligibility: you must currently be using the Gmail iOS app, you must have an email account that's not Gmail with which to test, and you must be running iOS 10 or later on your device. Google hasn't said anything about when this feature could exit testing and go live to the public, or even if it will. Some beta tests at Google have lasted weeks, others have gone on for years, and others never resulted in a publicly available feature or product.

On Google's competing Android mobile platform, the Gmail app is the default email app, and it already supports third-party accounts. The app wouldn't be very useful as a default email solution if it didn't. But iOS users who use Gmail accounts in addition to others—say, iCloud or Exchange—have needed to either use a non-Google app for Gmail, thereby potentially missing out on some Gmail features. Or they've had to use two different email apps.

Enlarge / Microsoft in Dublin, Ireland. (credit: Red Agenda / Flickr)

Hackers broke into Microsoft's secret, internal bug-tracking database and stole information related to vulnerabilities that were exploited in later attacks. But the software developer never disclosed the breach, Reuters reported, citing former company employees.

In an article published Tuesday, Reuters said Microsoft's decision not to disclose details came after an internal review concluded the exploits used in later attacks could have been discovered elsewhere. That investigation relied, in part, on automated reports Microsoft receives when its software crashes. The problem with that approach, Reuters pointed out, is that advanced computer attacks are written so carefully they rarely cause crashes.

Reuters said Microsoft discovered the database breach in early 2013, after a still-unknown hacking group broke into computers belonging to a raft of companies. Besides Microsoft, the affected companies included Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. As reported at the time, the hackers infected a website frequented by software developers with attack code that exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle's Java software framework. When employees of the targeted companies visited the site, they became infected, too.

Enlarge (credit: Peter Linehan / Flickr)

The Los Angeles Police Department, one of the nation’s largest municipal police forces, approved a one-year pilot program for drones—making it the largest city in the nation to undertake such an evaluation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the LA Police Commission approved a set of policies that limits "their use to a handful of tactical situations, searches or natural disasters." Each drone flight must also be signed off by a "high-ranking office on a case-by-case basis." The drones are also not to be weaponized. The decision, which was announced Tuesday, was made despite vociferous protest.

Already the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department uses drones, as do other agencies in California, including the Ventura County Sheriff's Department and the Alameda County Sheriff's Organization.

At this point, retro-game lovers are well used to fan-made "hacks" of classic titles that can do anything from adding modern players to Tecmo Bowl to adding an egg-throwing Yoshi to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. What we can't recall seeing before, though, is the original developer of a decades-old console game returning to fix it via a downloadable, emulator-friendly patch.

That's exactly what Traveller's Tales founder Jon Burton is planning for Sonic 3D Blast. Burton announced via video that he's going to make a "Director's Cut" that fixes gameplay problems and adds new features to the original Genesis and Saturn title. Burton's roadmap includes fixing the game's infamous slippery momentum (which often makes Sonic feel like he's running around on ice), enabling a pre-existing hidden-level editor, adding Super Sonic, adding an in-game save system, and more. A follow-up video shows more specifically how Burton is removing many of the control and gameplay frustrations that helped lead to middling reviews for the 1996 release (and subsequent ports to more modern platforms).

Burt notes explicitly that this is "something I'm doing on my own time, for fun, and not connected to Sega or anyone else," so it's hard to call this an "official" remastering of the original game. That said, Burton's history with the title and his pedigree with Traveller's Tales set this effort apart from other unofficial retro-game mods. And Sega's wholesale embrace of 16-bit game modding via Steam is practically a stamp of support for this kind of modern rejiggering of classic titles.

Enlarge / Oddly, Microsoft's Mixed Reality house has no windows. (credit: Microsoft)

It has arrived: Windows 10 version 1709, build 16299, the Fall Creators Update. Members of the Windows Insider program have been able to use this latest iteration for a while now, but today's the day it will hit Windows Update for the masses.

As with the Creators Update earlier this year, the Windows Update deployment will be slow to start off with. After a spate of issues around the Anniversary Update, which shipped in 2016, Microsoft took a more measured approach with the Creators Update. It took about five months for the previous update to reach two-thirds of machines, as the company rolled the operating system out first to systems known to be compatible, then expanded its reach to an ever larger range of hardware and software, and finally opened the floodgates and offered it to (almost) any Windows 10 machine.

Again like the Creators Update, anyone who is impatient and wants to forcibly install the new version will be able to do so with the Update Assistant and Media Creation Tool when they get updated, presumably at some point today.