Month: May 2019

Enlarge / A photo taken of the brief video clip CBS showed at the Upfronts. (credit: Kate Aurthur)

We now have our first look at Patrick Stewart in character as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Jean-Luc Picard since the film Star Trek: Nemesis back in 2002.

The image is a photo of a video clip shown at CBS' Upfronts presentation. Upfronts are hosted by TV networks like CBS to show off the next season's slate of shows primarily to advertisers, but sometimes to press as well. Press and advertising professionals who presented at the event shared the details on Twitter. The image itself was shared by Kate Aurthur, Buzzfeed's chief Los Angeles correspondent.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV critic Rob Owen described the brief scene in a tweet, writing that the clip featured "a Starfleet officer asking Jean-Luc, 'May I have your name, please, sir?' as Picard appears incredulous."

Enlarge / The Falcon 9 rocket, on the launchpad, with its Starlink cargo tucked into the payload fairing. (credit: SpaceX)

If the weather and Falcon 9 rocket cooperate, the first batch of SpaceX's Internet satellites will launch from Florida on Wednesday evening. With a mass of 18.5 tons, this will be the company's heaviest launch to date for either the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket.

Wednesday's rocket will boost 60 Starlink satellites, each weighing 227kg, to an altitude of 440km. This is the first block of Starlink satellites for what should eventually be a much larger constellation, and they will help SpaceX gauge its performance and conduct tests of several key systems. Over the coming months, these first satellites will be joined by six additional launches carrying similarly sized payloads. These launches will bring the constellation to an initial "operational" capability.

There is no guarantee all will go well, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said during a teleconference with reporters on Wednesday evening. "This is very hard," Musk said. "There is a lot of new technology, so it's possible that some of these satellites may not work. There's a small possibility that all of these satellites will not work."

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  Yes, you can stack Goombas, or any characters, in Super Mario Maker 2. And more. Much, much more. [credit: Nintendo ]

With only six weeks to go before launch, Super Mario Maker 2's new and updated features have mostly emerged thanks to tiny teases. That changed on Wednesday with a whopper of a Nintendo news video that revealed, among other things, the series' first-ever online-versus mode—and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the series' first online-subscription requirement for some of its content.

The game will launch on June 28 at a standard $60 retail price, though Nintendo will also sell Super Mario Maker 2 as a $70 bundle with a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online subscription code. If you're already a paying NSO member, that code will stack on top of however-many months you've already purchased (currently $4/mo or $20 for a 12-month subscription).

That bundle will hit store shelves for good reason, as Nintendo will gate much of the original Wii U game's content behind a paid-online requirement—including the ability to upload custom-made levels and to search for and download other users' creations. Should you wish to play a slew of custom levels offline, SMM2 will support offline play for any levels you've already downloaded to your Switch. As of press time, Nintendo did not clarify whether the game will require any routine online check-in to access those downloaded levels after, say, being offline for over a week or canceling a NSO membership.

Enlarge / Google's Pixelbook. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Just under a year ago, there were signs that Google was modifying the firmware of its Pixelbook laptop to enable dual booting into Windows 10. The firmware was updated to give the Pixelbook the ability to boot into an "Alternative OS" ("AltOS" mode). The work included references to the Windows Hardware Certification Kit (WHCK) and the Windows Hardware Lab Kit (HLK), Microsoft's testing frameworks for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 respectively.

Google now appears to have abandoned this effort. A redditor called crosfrog noticed that AltOs mode was now deprecated (via Android Police). Pixelbooks are going to be for Chrome OS only, after all.

The dual boot work was being done under the name Project Campfire. There appears to have been little development work on Project Campfire since last December. This suggests that Google actually decided not to bother with dual booting many months ago.

Enlarge / Composed circa 1420, the 240-page Voynich manuscript is considered by scholars to be the most interesting and mysterious document ever found. (credit: Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

The Voynich manuscript is a famous medieval text written in a mysterious language that so far has proven to be undecipherable. Now, Gerard Cheshire, a University of Bristol academic, has announced his own solution to the conundrum in a new paper in the journal Romance Studies. Cheshire identifies the mysterious writing as a "calligraphic proto-Romance" language, and he thinks the manuscript was put together by a Dominican nun as a reference source on behalf of Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon. Apparently it took him all of two weeks to accomplish a feat that has eluded our most brilliant scholars for at least a century.

So case closed, right? After all, headlines are already trumpeting that the "Voynich manuscript is solved," decoded by a "UK genius." Not so fast. There's a long, checkered history of people making similar claims. None of them have proved convincing to date, and medievalists are justly skeptical of Cheshire's conclusions as well.

What is this mysterious manuscript that has everyone so excited? It's a 15th century medieval handwritten text dated between 1404 and 1438, purchased in 1912 by a Polish book dealer and antiquarian named Wilfrid M. Voynich (hence its moniker). Along with the strange handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is heavily illustrated with bizarre pictures of alien plants, naked women, strange objects, and zodiac symbols. It's currently kept at Yale University's Beinecke Library of rare books and manuscripts. Possible authors include Roger Bacon, Elizabethan astrologer/alchemist John Dee, or even Voynich himself, possibly as a hoax.