Microsoft just announced today that its database software SQL Server 2016 will be generally available on June 1, 2016. There will be four different SQL Server 2016 editions including Enterprise, Standard, Express and Developer. Earlier in March, the company announced that the Developer edition would be a free download for development and test only, and not for production environments or use with production data). Furthermore, the Redmond Giant also shared in March that it planned to bring SQL Server to Linux in “mid-2017” and that it would also allow  any user of Oracle’s services to move their databases to SQL Server for free.

According to Microsoft, SQL Server 2016 is the “the biggest leap forward in the Microsoft data platform history with real-time operational analytics, rich visualizations on mobile devices, built-in advanced analytics, new advanced security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios.” The company had previously released SQL Server 2016 Preview in May 2015 and expected the following features to be included in the final version:

• Always Encrypted – a new capability developed by Microsoft Research that is designed to protect data “at rest and in motion”
• Stretch Database – new technology that lets allows users to dynamically stretch warm and cold transactional data to Microsoft Azure
• Enhancements to Microsoft’s “Hekaton” in-memory technologies for real-time analytics
• New in-database analytics with R integration
• Polybase — an engine that, to date, has been part of the SQL Server
• Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance, for more easily managing relational and non-relational data
• Row-level security, allowing users to control access to data based on characteristics of the user, without modifications to applications
• Dynamic Data Masking — supports real-time obfuscation of data to prevent access to unauthorized dataTemporal database support for tracking historical data changes
• Query Data Store — a “flight data recorder” for database administrators
• Enhanced server management for Master Data Services
• Enhanced hybrid backup to Azure and faster restores to SQL Server in Azure virtual machines

Today, the company has released an exhaustive document explaining which features will be included in the four different SQL Server 2016 editions:

Last, you can already download and SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate (RC) 3 to get ready for the general availability of SQL Server 2016 in June. Please tell us in the comments what do you think of all the new features included in SQL Server 2016.

The folks at NetMarketShare have released the latest numbers for the month of April 2016, and there’s some bad news for Microsoft when it comes to browsers (via ComputerWorld). Google Chrome browser has surpassed Microsoft Internet Explorer for the month of April just by a small margin. Internet Explorer fell from 43.40 percent to 41.35 percent in the month of April, while the result for Google Chrome was opposite — it rose by 2.57 percent to 41.66 percent last month. The difference is really minor between the market share of both browsers, but judging by the trend, it seems Chrome will have a noticeable lead in the browsers market in the coming months.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is continuously declining from the past few months, despite the fact that the company released the Microsoft Edge browser with Windows 10 — which is also classed under Internet Explorer by NetMarketShare. On the other hand, people are switching to rival browsers such as Google Chrome. Things aren’t too great for Firefox either as it declines to 9.76 percent in April. Firefox was a decent browser some time back and it’s a little surprising to see that the company didn’t make an official statement about the continuous decline of the browser, or if they’re doing anything to improve it.

As for Apple’s Safari and Opera, the change was negligible with both operating systems residing at 4.91 and 1.89 percent respectively. Both these browsers have resided along this number over the past few months and we’re not sure if we’re going to see them in the top numbers any time soon.

Back in August 2014, Microsoft asked its users to make a switch to Internet Explorer 11 as the company will no longer provide security patches for the old browser. This may have had a negative impact on the browser usage and may have forced the consumers to make a switch to Chrome, which is much more stable and offers a lot of features to its users.

For anyone who needs to worry about keeping a website up to date, now may be the time to do a little bit of housekeeping. In a blog post, Microsoft has revealed the timeline they’re taking in regards to the phasing out of SHA-1 certificates and told us that websites running with SHA-1 won’t be valid very much longer.

Starting with the arrival of the Windows 10 Anniversary update, websites with SHA-1 certificates are no longer going to have the padlock symbol in the address bar guaranteeing security. While these websites will continue to function as they always have, users will no longer have the guarantee of their safety while browsing them and may be deterred from further use.

When February of 2017 rolls around, outdated certificates will be much more of a problem. After this deadline hits, websites that are still using SHA-1 are going to be blocked outright by Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, letting users know that the website isn’t secure and giving users a clear warning not to continue.

Starting with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer will no longer consider websites protected with a SHA-1 certificate as secure and will remove the address bar lock icon for these sites. These sites will continue to work, but will not be considered secure. This change will be in upcoming Windows Insider Preview builds soon, and will be deployed broadly this summer. In February 2017, both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer will block SHA-1 signed TLS certificates.

Limited edition consoles are some of the coolest things that a gamer can get into their collection. Whether it be a console that’s a slightly different color than the factory edition or something that sports a unique decal, collectors are always going to be chomping at the bit to get something that’s going to separate their collection the collections of others. If you’re an Xbox gamer and also a Marvel fan, then you may get especially giddy about the announcement of this amazing – albeit incredibly rare – limited edition console.

https://twitter.com/XboxFR/status/725356150019878912

This new Iron Man themed Xbox One comes to you courtesy of Tony Stark himself if you ask Microsoft. This gorgeous new machine not only comes in a sleek white color but comes with all sorts of grooves and contours – not to mention the Stark Industries logo and unmistakable arc reactor placed smack dab in the middle. It also comes with an Xbox One controller done in a similar theme to help you keep the whole package looking nice.

These consoles are part of a promotion being done for Captain America: Civil War, and if you’re looking to get your hands on one, your odds aren’t great. We only know that three of these exist at the moment, as you can only get one by entering the giveaway on Xbox France’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. It’s entirely possible that they’ve created more than one to be given out for each of the three giveaways, but the likelihood isn’t all that high.

With Xbox France giving away this Xbox console for #TeamIronMan, it’s entirely possible that we’ll be seeing a console in the near future for #TeamCap, themed in red white and blue. Even if that’s the case, there’s little doubt that anyone – regardless of which “team” they’re on – would be happy to get their hands on either of these custom consoles.

In an effort to help voters make the right choice this year, Microsoft will provide tech support for both the US Democratic and Republican Conventions. The ability to see polling results in real time will allow voters at both conventions view election results accurately and securely.

Microsoft began working with convention committees in 2000, in the hopes to create an objective way to allow voters to view election results. Microsoft will use three basic principles when dealing with this year’s US Democratic and Republican Conventions:

“First, we act in a bipartisan manner and provide similar levels of support to both conventions. Second, we make a special effort, as do many companies in our industry, to provide the conventions with technology tools to help enable this part of the American democratic process to operate efficiently and accurately. And third, we do not endorse either political party or its nominee. We’ve been committed to all three of these principles through four presidential elections, and this year will be no exception.”

Microsoft hopes to avoid the embarrassing Surface Pro technical issues that some think caused the New England Patriots to miss playing in the Super Bowl. Instead of making a cash donation to either US political party, Microsoft will instead lend its products and services to help run each respective convention.

Office 365, Azure, Surface, and other products will be readily available at both conventions. Microsoft believes no matter the political party preference, Microsoft and other technology companies should provide their products and services in an effort to make the democratic process better.

Given all the drama and intensity of this year’s US elections, technology will play a more important role than ever. Microsoft hopes that it will be able to provide voters with the most accurate information available to make an informed decision when the general election rolls around in November of whom will be the next leader of the free world.

The Microsoft Edge team continues its efforts in developing an interoperable web browser that’s meeting the demands of modern internet users by building and issuing its new API Catalog. According to Edge engineers, the new API Catalog tool that allows developers to “find the similarities and difference between the type systems of all browsers, to compare how core global functions namespaces, objects and interfaces are exposed.”

API Catalog’s primary selling point, however, is its ability to parse vast amounts of data and represent it in a clear and easy viewable interface.

The API Catalog has two views: a visualization and a table view. The former is a high-level visualization of the browser and specification landscape in the form of an interactive Venn diagram. You can select and compare any three data sets (browsers or specifications) to see a graphical representation of both intersecting and unique APIs.

The table view allows you to browse the full list of known APIs that are either defined in a specification we have crawled or detected in the type system of a browser. You can search and filter to examine specific subsets of APIs. For example, you might filter to see only APIs from the Beacon specification that are detected in all browsers.

Developers can find raw CSV files on GitHub as well as using the API Catalog to expose or illustrate bugs in other browser type systems such as Webkit bug 49739 and Chrome bug 43394.

In developing the API Catalog, the Microsoft Edge team is attempting to do away with the locked-gate proprietary shackles that once plagued older versions of Internet Explorer while also offering the most robust toolset for web developers. Whether or not that translates into consumer and developer attention anytime soon, remains to be seen, but at least the building blocks are being laid.

For more information on the API Catalog, visit Microsoft’s Edge Dev Blog for a walkthrough of features as well as some background of the data that can be collected by developers.

The days of Clipart being the butt of many software jokes may soon be coming to an end. Microsoft and Swedish aggregated image bank Pickit have entered into a collaborative partnership to provide Windows 10 and Office users high quality and content related images.

For over thirty years, clip art files have represented the most generic of generic images plugged into personal and commercial projects. Clipart images, particularly on Windows and in Office were a godsend for users before the rise of easy internet searching, but an eye sore for anyone growing up in the age of matured internet browsing.

However, as more users became computer savvy and search literate, Microsoft’s focus on its Clipart lessened to the point of becoming laughable at the gallery it housed. However, Microsoft is putting a renewed focus on the utility and with the help of PicKit, users should see an improvement in the built-in image search capabilities of Office as well as rise in the quality of images at their disposal with a Windows 10 app.

Henrik Bergqvist, CEO, and Co-Founder of Pickit, comments:

Pickit will take the role of the leading image provider within both Windows and Microsoft Office applications, opening up the world’s largest photo market of 1.2 billion customers, all of whom are in need of images.

Pickit makes the sourcing of presentation images easier, faster and more inspiring. Rather than trawling search engines for photos where the original owner never gets credited or paid for their image, Pickit offers a genuine alternative that rewards photographers for their creative efforts.”

The Office Add-in for Pickit is now live as well as a Universal Windows app for Windows 10 users can be found in the Windows Store. Windows 10 and Offices users can now say goodbye to the generic handshake image or the collection of shadow people used to represent a group of business employees.

 

Smart cities – cities being driven with progressive ideas about the applications of data and technology – have been serving as beacons to every other community in the United States. Smart cities demonstrate a real passion for helping everyone within their borders to do great things, and with a goal like that; you know that Microsoft is going to be somewhere behind the scenes helping out.

In Navigant’s latest findings, Microsoft was ranked third on the list of smart city suppliers, right behind IBM and Cisco. These rankings were decided upon by looking at ten different criteria: vision, go-to-market strategy, partners, product strategy, geographic reach, market presence, sales & marketing, product performance & features, product integration, and staying power. Against these criteria, Microsoft was placed very highly in the “contender” category – just a step behind the coveted “leader” role.

 

Microsoft’s spot on the list further cements the fact that the tech giant’s focus remains in empowering people and is successfully driving them to help communities and businesses alike in their journey to being the best they can be. When Navigant next revisits these rankings, it’s doubtful anyone will be surprised when Microsoft climbs to the “leader” category.

The latest addition to the Raiden series has the shoot ’em up addicts and collectors once again fighting off the threat to humanity. Raiden V featured multiple new stories, a higher number of stages than any other game in the series, and an increasingly massive collection of weapons to take on the alien enemies.

The simple and unique gameplay pits players in the never-ending quest to fight for dominance on the scoreboard. After Raiden V had an exclusive release in Japan on February 25, fans globally felt that they had been left out after an impressive 25-year run. But earlier today, Raiden’s official Twitter account has announced that Raiden V will be released overseas next month.

While the game will continue only be sold on the Xbox One, Raiden V will be unlocked through the online store for North America, Europe, and Aisa. In celebration of the announcement, MOSS is also giving the game a free content update today. The patch includes the addition of English voice-overs and translated text throughout the game. They also added three new upgrades for the main weapon.

The game boasts some major upgrades compared to its predecessors such as amazing graphic improvements, stunning soundtrack, and smoother gameplay. Other features with Raiden V include:

• Cheer System – Players can encourage their friends and other players by using a single button on the game controller.
• Reactive Environment – The battlefield responds and changes in real-time due to actions of the player, which increases the challenge.
• Tracking – Players can trace their friend’s movements to find and help them out.

As the tweet says, nobody expected for MOSS to spring this surprise on its fans. There isn’t a detailed release date or price for Raiden V, but some fans seem to be expecting the same as the retail price in Japan which was approximately $64.99 USD.

 

Xbox One owners who have an Xbox Live Gold subscription are being given full access to the entire Madden NFL 16 game this weekend.

All Xbox Live Gold subscribers need to do is download the game to their console for free and begin playing. The Xbox Live service will detect the Gold subscription and behave as if the active account owns the game outright.

The special promotion will run between 12:01 PM PT on April 28th to 11:59 PM PT on May 2^nd, which is actually more than two days’ worth of access. Madden NFL 16 is also available to play throughout the year through the EA Access Vault with an active EA Access Membership and the game can be purchased by itself without any subscription whatsoever.

Here are some of the game’s features:

• Total Control Passing – Place the ball where only your receiver can get it with body-relative throws including high-point, low-point, back-shoulder, and the ever-popular touch pass.
• Receiver/Defender Controls – Dictate the outcome of each passing play while the ball is in the air for the first time ever in Madden.
• Connected Franchise – Whether playing solo or online with friends, your quest to build an NFL dynasty comes complete with a brand new scouting and draft system as well as all-new dynamic goals throughout each game.
• Madden Ultimate Team – Build your ultimate team with your favorite NFL players from the past and present while dominating the opposition in head-to-head seasons, solo challenges, and more.
• Skills Trainer – With 60+ tutorials and drills, Skills Trainer focuses on teaching the strategy behind different passing and run concepts, as well as how to play Madden for new users to the series.

Madden NFL 16 has been out for almost a year now so offering a chance to play it for free is a good way to encourage more users to play it. Such a strategy also has the potential to attract more players to the franchise and prepare them for any future entries that may be on the horizon.

Will you play Madden NFL 16 this weekend on your Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below.

The Windows team is  in the midst of its Bug Bash event and has issues another round of quest released for Insiders today. Arguably, some Windows Insiders feel as though every day is a Bug Bash event for them as they deal with various kinks and quirks the come along with each new build release.

Windows Insiders: The next set of Bug Bash quests are available in the Feedback Hub. Check them out! https://t.co/QE098ZkPk9

— Windows Insider (@windowsinsider) April 28, 2016

However, for this well-publicized event, the Windows team has been assigning very specific quest for users to test for the past two days that include checking items such as language settings, keyboard accessibility, and Japanese text inputs.

Today’s list of Bug Bash quests includes checking the suspend and restore functions of the Alarm Clock in Windows 10, Power management and smart standby, Bluetooth connectivity, Graphics and 2D Geometry as well as ink and photos effects in Windows 10.

Other quests involve testing text, emoji and font graphics, sleep and resume and its effects on re-rendering graphics, the connecting and disconnecting of displays and its effects on graphic content and the capturing and viewing of DNG images on a Windows Mobile device. Keep in mind, the quests are limited time investigations as the Windows team has only another 48 hours to cover the rest of the operating system.

It’s clear: the Windows team has very specific issues it is looking to tackle over the next two days. With the help of a portion of its 7 million Insiders, the Windows team should be well on its way to delivering a stable update to consumers later this year with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Insiders, head over to the Feedback Hub to see the latest details on Windows 10 development, regardless of your participation in the Bug Bash event. For everyone else, let us know if you’ve been participating in the Bug Bash Quests and whether or not you’ve found it useful, in the comments below.

Microsoft has, for quite some time now, made security and privacy one of their most important corporate commitments. They’ve focused on security in Windows, and across their entire line of cloud services. Azure is no different and the company continues to find ways to ensure that Azure provides strong methods for keeping customer information secure.

One of the most important aspects of security is encryption and this field has received quite a bit of attention from Microsoft. Most recently, they’ve both added and removed various ciphers, as outlined on the Azure blog:

We continue to execute on that commitment by announcing additional enhancements to encryption in transit based security. To date, this has included usage of best-in-class industry standard cryptography, including Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), 2048-key lengths, and updates to operating system cipher suite settings.

In addition to these cryptographic changes, the default Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Secure Socket Layer (SSL) cipher suite configuration has been enhanced and includes changes such as removal of SSLv3 support and mitigation of issues such as POODLE.

Today, we are announcing the removal of RC4 from the supported list of negotiable ciphers on our service endpoints in Microsoft Azure. This encryption work builds on the existing protection already extant in many of our products and services, such as Microsoft Office 365, Skype and OneDrive.

In addition, The TLS/SSL cipher suite enhancements are being made available to customers, by default, in the May 2016 Azure Guest OS releases for Cloud Services release. Learn more about Azure Guest OS releases here.

You can find out more about these enhancements by reading their article Updates to Microsoft Azure SSL/TLS Cipher Suites. As always, we’ll work to keep you updated on everything that Microsoft is doing to enhance security and privacy.

Microsoft will be presenting more recent advances coming to our devices at the ACM CHI 2016. The conference being held from May 7th – 12th in San Jose, California is focused on improvements in human-computer interaction. Microsoft’s presentations will be about making it easier to retrieve and manipulate information with our devices.

Virtual Reality

The depth of virtual reality has given many users perspectives that they had never experienced before such as walking on Mars. But even now, we have a severe limitation of sensory developments beyond sight. Microsoft’s plans are to improve haptics, that is the sense of touch, and integrate those into the illusion of virtual reality. It’s not an easy task, though. The entire environment needs to be redrawn for the new haptic retargeting framework to be implemented. Research for the ‘hacking’ of human perception can be read online.

Precognitive Touch

Many people would think that touchscreens probably couldn’t be any more innovative than they already are. However, Ken Hinckley at Microsoft has been researching a different technique of interaction. Utilizing the motion of the finger or hand, pre-touch screens would be able to sense when a finger is hovering over a specific item on the device and open up menus regarding the content. Not only that, but users would be able to hold the phone with one hand and the ambidextrous sensors will open up menus within the thumb’s limited reach. The interface also supports utilizing multiple gestures and touches for more subcategories making the pre-touch sensing stand out as the potential future for mobile interaction.

Coding Without Known Variables

Probabilistic programming has encouraged Microsoft to conduct research on how students and novice developers interact with the environment. As a result, a new tool will be showcased combining a conventional text editor and chart visualizations. In testing, it has proven to reduce time, keystrokes, and deletions common for beginners. The tool could prove beneficial to providing stepping stones for future developers.

Finding E-Mail Anywhere

Microsoft researcher Abigail Sellen contributed to one study that resulted in Microsoft nabbing a Best Paper award from the CHI conference. The Best Paper awards are offered to publications that exhibit a clear and innovative goal to improve how humans interact with their devices. The study explained that email isn’t accessed by only multiple devices now, but by multiple accounts as well. Being able to interact with our email no matter where the content is used and stored will better suit the flexibility of human lives. The goals of the research is to find a means to not just make it possible within a few email applications, but to integrate it across an entirety of applications and services.

Falling in line with the list of presentations and hopeful advances in human-computer interaction, researchers and engineers have received a total of seven Best Paper awards for their publications. Research manager, Mary Czerwinski, quoted that the conference “has been one of the premiere venues for disseminating research in the area of human-computer interaction, and has been one of the best vehicles for Microsoft’s mission: To empower every person and every organization to achieve more.”

With the event only another week away, the ACM CHI 2016 conference has already proven to be a major highlight of this year for Microsoft. Head over to Microsoft’s MSDN blog for a complete list Microsoft contributions to ACM CHI 2016.

Applications have at least two states in which they are used. They can either be running or not running. For Universal Windows Apps, however, the processes can have a third state: Suspended. The suspended state allows the app to continue running paused in the background while users interact with other content on their devices. While the application is suspended, it goes into a hibernation mode to free up resources and can be recovered without any data lost to the user. When developers don’t utilize these correctly, apps with poor lifecycles can leak memory and use battery unintentionally.

There are multiple ways that an application can be terminated by the user or the device. They can use a gesture or click the x, select an exit option from within the app itself, force it closed via processes or task manager, or it can have an error and crash. But when an app is in suspension and is determined to be using too many resources, it will switch to terminated leaving the user’s data to be completely wiped. Developers s can catch this problem at the pass by handling the Application.Suspending event and overriding the Application.OnLaunched event. Editing these will enable the program to make a temporary save with the user’s data as the program is switched to suspended, and then recovered upon launch.

A recent blog post from the Windows team goes into more detail about the lifecycle of a Universal Windows Application and how developers can alleviate the drain of resources while in Suspended mode. Along with some examples and coding tips, the article gives insight on methods to debug and test your projects. Handling the flags between Suspending and Launched will enable applications not only to conserve battery and memory but will make it easier for users to access their data without even knowing the difference.

Microsoft announced yesterday the renewal of a patent cross-licensing agreement covering a range of consumer audio-video products with Japanese company Funai Electric. While you may not be familiar with the Funai name in the US, the company is actually a worldwide manufacturer under FUNAI and other multiple brands including Philips, Magnavox, DX Broadtec, Emerson, Sanyo and Kodak.

President of Microsoft Technology Licensing released the following statement in the press release:

“Microsoft and Funai Electric will continue to benefit from each other’s innovations in building enhanced experiences for our customers. This cross-licensing agreement is another example of the advantages of an IP-led economy, encouraging product interoperability and accelerating research and development advances across companies.”

Microsoft started its IP licensing program in December 2003 and has since entered into more than 1,200 licensing agreements to increase collaboration and innovation across a range of industries. Do you think Microsoft’s commitment to licensing IP can be beneficial for customers? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Two more Xbox Arcade titles have just been added to the list of backwards compatible Xbox 360 games. Major Nelson announced on Twitter that Frogger and Galaga Legions DX are the latest additions to the growing list of Xbox 360 games you can play on your Xbox One.

Frogger and Galaga Legions DX are now available on Xbox One Backward Compatibility https://t.co/qPMRNrLoTQ pic.twitter.com/7qfjwApFUx

— Larry Hryb ????????☁ (@majornelson) April 28, 2016

Galaga Legions DX was originally released in 2011 and is a shooter game where you fly a ship around in space from a top down view shooting enemies. Think of the mechanics of Asteroids. And in face Galaga Legions was a sequel to the original 30 year old Galaga, which was similar to Space Invaders.

The other game added to the list today is Frogger. Now those of you,  like George Costanza, who are fans of the classic arcade game can play Frogger on their Xbox One. In the game you play as a simple frog dodging traffic and as you cross a street and stream on your way home. Frogger, coincidently, was released in 1981, the same year the original Galaga was released.

Today’s additions to the Xbox backwards compatibility list makes for a total of seven arcade games added this week. And in addition to other big names which recently joined the list, like Left 4 Dead 2, Halo Wars, Saints Row IV, and Dead Space, the list growing at a steady clip. Hopefully the rate at which the list is growing gives Xbox 360 fans some solace after the announcement of the end of production for the last generation console.

If you already own Frogger or Galaga Legions DX on your Xbox 360 you can download them now on your Xbox One. And if you don’t own them you can now buy backwards compatible Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One. You can buy Frogger for $4.99 and Galaga Legions will cost you $9.99.

Last week, Microsoft finally released Build 14328 to Windows Insiders, and it packed a significant number of new features. As usual, many users on the My Digital Life forums have posted about and investigated this new build, as they’ve done with many other prior builds.

One user, abbodi1406, examined build 14328’s EditionMatrix.xml file, leading the user to think that there would be new editions in RedStone RTM.  In the file, the user finds the following new SKU’s:

According to the user, “ProfessionalCountrySpecific” would be a special Windows 10 Edition for China. The user also notes that regular core & professional can be upgraded to Professional Education, but other editions are separated.

This is no doubt an interesting find for anyone who needs to plan Windows 10 licensing for an educational organization, and it something we would love to hear your thoughts on. So, if you also find the discovery interesting, please drop us a comment below and tell us what you think this means for the future of the Windows 10.

Real Earth won the first place in Microsoft’s Indoor Localization Competition, a well-known annual competition wich brings together real-time or near real-time indoor location technologies to compare their performance in the same space. During the event which featured nearly 50 competitors in 2D and the more challenging 3D category, each team had 15 minutes to locate 15 markers in a large facility in Vienna, Austria, before all results were compared to ground truth.

Real Earth’s STENCIL product was the only one to not rely on infrastructure in the 3D category and only used onboard sensors and efficient algorithms to provide localization. At the end of the competition, Real Earth’s device had the most accurate localization with 0.16-meter average error compared to ground truth.

Real Earth CEO Kevin Dowling shared the following statement in the press release:

“It has been exciting to be part of this competition and watch our algorithms perform in difficult and dynamic environments. I have seen LiDAR devices evolve since the 1980s from expensive large and heavy devices the size of a microwave oven to the small and lightweight devices of today, such as the Velodyne units. The developments in the near future will prove to be even more exciting as both autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles incorporate these devices.”

While GPS transformed the way people navigate outdoors, accurate indoor localization could transform the way people navigate indoors in a similar way. Microsoft Research adds that “over the last 15 years, several indoor localization technologies have been proposed and experimented by both academia and industry, but we have yet to see large-scale deployments.”

Quantum Break developer Remedy announced two weeks ago that it was working on various fixes for both Xbox One and Windows 10 editions of the game, but we just learned via Windows Central that an update has just started to roll out on Xbox One to improve players’ overall experience. The update should download automatically if you enabled “Instant-On” in your Xbox One’s power settings, otherwise you will see the prompt the next time you launch the game on your console. Please find the full list of updates below:

Act Fixes/Updates:

• Act 1 Part 1: Fixed a rare instance of taxi being missing from the intro cinematic
• Act 1 Part 2: Fixed assets disappearing if players backtrack
• Act 1 Part 2: Fixed an issue where players could not kill the guard in the parking lot
• Act 1 Part 3: Fixed backtracking issues where some parts could unload
• Act 1: Fixed overlapping audio in opening cinematic
• Act 2 Part 1: Fixed Nick pathing issues
• Act 2 Part 1: You can no longer get underneath the puzzle at the security station
• Act 2 Part 2: First Chronon source renders properly
• Act 2 Part 3: Added collision on time machine corridor to prevent player’s accidentally falling to their death
• Act 2 Part 3: Fixed backtracking issues where some parts could unload
• Act 2 Part 3: Fixed rare NPC issues where Amy or Nick could be killed or block the door
• Junction 3: Fixed Hatch being hidden if the user skips a future vision too quickly
• Junction 4: Fixed flickering environment outside office building
• Act 5: Fixed last subtitle going by too quickly to read
• Act 5: Fixed missing line in Portuguese audio in a cinematic

General Fixes/Updates:

• Fixed issue where ambient sounds disappeared when mashing buttons during a cinematic
• Removed unnecessary loading screens showing up
• Updated credits
• World no longer visibly unloads after Jack lets Beth and NPC into the Swimming Pool front door
• Amy no longer remains still and without pathing towards gate in train yard
• Fixed Jack’s subtitles not showing in some cinematics
• Unlock descriptions for Will Diary 1 and Will Diary 2 are no longer reversed
• Fix for blinking lights, where flares would blink excessively bright after resuming from suspend mode
• Fixes for making Xbox Live integration more fault-tolerant
• Remedy logo fix*
• Fix for a rare bug that accidentally wiped progress after completing the game
• Fix for some TV screens sometimes showing a really grainy image
• Fixed circular progress bar alpha in the junction stats screen
• Fixed video playback not always ending if the video was synced to audio
• Fixed two rare instances of stalls when loading
• Fixed a rare crash with the video texture system
• Fixed crash in download menu when switching profiles
• Fixed “Waiting for install to complete” text not being localized when changing the language
• Game/story/collectible progress hero stats no longer display incorrectly when player has less than a percent of progress
• Fixed rare instances of cloud saves failing and causing loss of progress

For those of you who downloaded the UWP version of the game from the Windows 10 Store, Remedy explains that it’s still working with Microsoft to fix some performance issues:

Microsoft has identified a Windows 10 memory management issue which may cause Quantum Break to crash on some GPUs. This crash is seen more frequently at higher game settings. Microsoft plans to fix this in a future Windows Update.

Xbox head Phil Spencer also announced during Build 2016 that Microsoft would fix current UWP games limitations by bringing G-Sync and FreeSync support to Windows 10 in May, so we may get a much better gaming experience on Windows 10 UWP games very soon. In the meantime, you can visit Remedy Entertainment’s community forums to get more details and the latest updates on Quantum Break.

 

Many morning news viewers spit out their coffee in laughter as Microsoft displayed what was possibly the most genius advertising ever.

Meteorologist Metinka Slater from KCCI 8 News was in the middle of her daily routine when a familiar pop-up came to her display. “Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10” stretched across the doppler radar causing Metinka give a little chuckle.

The meteorologist recovered nicely, but we bet they won’t forget to upgrade to Windows 10 now!

Check out the video below!