Month: April 2019

Enlarge / PARIS - APRIL 15, 2019: Emergency services tackle a fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, a Catholic cathedral founded in the 12th century. (credit: Stoyan Vassev/TASS/Getty Images)

After a long night of work by over 400 Paris firefighters, the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral is beginning to cool as of 7:00pm Eastern Time (1:00am in Paris). We're still not sure about the extent of the damage, but as Paris and the rest of the world watch the fire slowly dying, attention starts to shift to what can be salvaged and rebuilt. And art historians and architects have incredible records of the cathedral, which has been damaged, rebuilt, nearly abandoned, and renovated many times throughout its long history.

Roof and main spire destroyed, extent of damage unknown

Notre Dame's roof and its support structure of 800-year-old oak timbers had almost completely succumbed to the flames. Firefighters reported the cathedral's bell towers safe and said that many works of art had been rescued or were already stored in areas believed safe from the fire. The main spire—750 tons of oak lined with lead—collapsed in flames around 2pm ET, landing on the wooden roof.

The trees that made up the roof's wooden structure were cut down around 1160, and some sources estimate that the beams accounted for 13,000 trees, or about 21 hectares of Medieval forest, many of which had been growing since the 800s or 900s. "You have a stage in France where deforestation was a problem; these buildings consumed huge amounts of wood." That's according to Columbia University art historian Stephen Murray, who spoke with Ars Technica. All that wood, he said, supported an outer roof of lead—until the wood burned and the roof collapsed.

Enlarge / Martin Winterkorn, former Volkswagen Group CEO. (credit: Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)

On Monday, German prosecutors filed a criminal indictment against former Volkswagen Group CEO Martin Winterkorn for participating in the fraud that led to the diesel-emissions scandal that rocked the company in 2015. Four other managers were also indicted today, but their names were not released.

In 2015, US officials accused VW Group of putting illegal software on diesel Audis, Volkswagens, and Porsches. The software would essentially kill the cars' emissions-reduction systems during real-world driving to improve performance, but under laboratory conditions, the cars would pass emissions tests easily. Later, it was discovered that VW Group's diesels were using the same mechanism to subvert European Union vehicle emissions standards. Winterkorn and other VW Group management said they had no knowledge of this software and blamed its presence on "rogue engineers."

Winterkorn stepped down from his position shortly after VW Group's cheating was made public.

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  Google's teaser #1.

A few years have gone by since we've seen hardware at Google I/O, but it looks like this year that will change. Today, a teaser on the Google Store promises "something is coming to the Pixel universe" on May 7, the first day of Google I/O. Considering we've been expecting the Pixel 3a and 3a XL—cheaper versions of Google's Pixel 3 flagship—to be released sometime this summer, it's a good bet this is referring to these devices.

Google's teaser page is extremely vague, for what it's worth. It's mostly an ad for the Avengers: Endgame movie due out April 26, complete with an Avengers-themed Google logo and a crossover video ad for the existing Pixel 3 and the new movie. Just like with Stadia, though, we'll remind you that the Google Store is for hardware, not software, and it's hard to imagine teases like "something big is coming to the Pixel universe" and "meet a new hero" are not referring to a new phone. Stephen Hall of 9to5Google even claimed he heard whispers of a May 7 release date for the Pixel 3a a few days before this teaser.

The "Pixel 3a" and "Pixel 3a XL" are supposedly stripped-down versions of Google's existing flagship smartphone. We've seen reports of a "mid-range" Pixel going all the way back to last summer, and pictures of a real device first started popping up about five months ago. We've seen a few spec lists reported, but the latest claims the devices will have OLED displays, a Snapdragon 670, and 4GB of RAM. According to reports, part of the cost cutting involves swapping out the glass back of the Pixel 3 for plastic. Two big things to note: the mid-range Pixels will reportedly have the same amazing camera as the more expensive Pixel 3s, and the mid-range devices improve on the flagships with the addition of a headphone jack.