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When you write about the game industry for a while, you can end up writing about fan game projects that have been shut down by the original publishers with depressing frequency. Everyone from Square Enix to Blizzard to Nintendo (especially Nintendo) has sent cease-and-desist letters to passionate fans over games based on their popular properties. The companies often cite the need to protect their legal copyrights to characters and related works.

So it’s nice when, on occasion, we’re able to write about a fan game that actually gets some level of tacit approval from the developer of the original title. That’s what is happening with Installation 01, a Halo fan-game project being built in Unity in order to recapture the classic feel of Halo 2 and Halo 3 for Windows, Mac, and Linux players. Apparently, the team behind that game has worked out an arrangement to continue development without any legal trouble from the Halo-makers at 343 Industries or its corporate parent Microsoft.

The Installation 01 team wrote in a community update this week that they have been “maintaining a level of contact with 343 Industries over the past several months,” eventually culminating in a meet-and-greet to talk about details of the project and its legal status. After what the team calls an “incredibly informational and very positive” phone call, they say “we have been ensured that Installation 01 is not under imminent legal threat, provided we remain non-commercial in nature and scope, and continue to follow Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules to the letter.”

Enlarge / Monalisa Perez (left), seen here the day before the shooting of her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz III (right). (credit: YouTube)

A Minnesota woman has been charged with manslaughter after she shot and killed her boyfriend as part of the pair’s attempt to become YouTube celebrities.

According to court documents, Monalisa Perez called 911 on June 26 at around 6:30pm local time to say that she had shot Pedro Ruiz III. The two had set up two video cameras to capture Perez firing the gun at Ruiz while he held a book in front of his chest. Ruiz apparently convinced Perez that the book would stop the bullet from a foot away. The gun, a Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistol, was not hindered by the book.

Ruiz, who was found with a single gunshot in his chest, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Enlarge / Vice President Mike Pence visited airmen and women at Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever AFB, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Colorado, last week. (credit: U.S. Air Force/Christopher DeWitt)

The key member of the council will be its chairman, Pence, who has shown a burgeoning interest in space matters. In early June, the vice president visited Johnson Space Center in Houston to address NASA’s newest class of astronaut candidates. And last week, Pence visited two key space command facilities in Colorado, Schriever Air Force Base, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. Two sources have also told Ars that he will visit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida next week.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Steven Puetzer)

The data comes from a report by researchers who evaluated Federal Communications Commission data in order to shed more light on broadband deployment, or lack thereof. The FCC’s own reports on this data show the percentage of developed census blocks that have ISPs offering broadband at various speeds. The researchers attempted to improve upon that analysis by comparing the census block information to household data from the US Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey in order to determine how many homes have or don’t have high-speed broadband access.

“We believe that looking at the household access counts is a better measure of access because many un/under-served census blocks are in very remote areas with few households,” they wrote. (The report was written by Hal Singer of Economists Incorporated and Ed Naef and Alex King of CMA Strategy Consulting.)