Month: May 2020

Enlarge / Reconstruction of the angle of entry into a cranium collected during the excavation of the burial ground of a medieval Dominican friary in Exeter, England. (credit: Oliver Creighton/University of Exeter)

The English longbow was a powerful medieval weapon said to be able to pierce an opponent's armor and may have been a decisive factor in several key military victories, most notably the Battle of Agincourt. A recent paper published in the Antiquaries Journal by a team of archaeologists at the University of Exeter in the UK has yielded evidence that longbow arrows created similar wounds to modern-day gunshot wounds and were capable of penetrating through long bones.

Historians continue to debate just how effective the longbow was in battle. There have been numerous re-enactment experiments with replicas, but no medieval-period longbows have survived, although many 16th-century specimens were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose. The University of Exeter's Oliver Creighton, who led the latest study, and his co-authors argue that such experiments are typically done over shorter ranges, so the arrows are not fully stable and spinning in flight. This, in turn, would affect the kinds of injuries combatants sustained. He and his team believe their analysis shows the importance of osteological evidence in helping to resolve such debates.

It's relatively rare to find direct evidence of violent trauma from weapons to skeletal remains in medieval burial sites, with the exception of mass burials from known historical battles. The best-known such sites are associated with the 1361 Battle of Visby in Gotland, Sweden, and the 1461 Battle of Towton in North Yorkshire, England. Per the authors, data from these sites has yielded useful information on "the realities of medieval warfare—how people fought and were killed, which weapons were used and what sorts of injuries these caused, and what armor (if any) was worn." Evidence of trauma specifically caused by arrowheads is even rarer.

Enlarge (credit: Epic Games / Getty Images / Aurich Lawson)

Since the rise of Fortnite as a popular game and Unreal Engine 4 as a popular game-making toolkit, Epic Games, the studio behind both, has been keen to capitalize on this momentum. That has included an aggressive push to lock down game makers in its ecosystem, and Tuesday saw Epic announce its most generous developer-specific offer yet: a massive increase to its "royalty-free" grace period.

As of today, any game or software maker who uses Unreal Engine for commercial purposes doesn't owe Epic Games a penny until a single piece of software exceeds one meeeeeeellion dollars ($1,000,000) in gross revenue. This is on top of the company's existing policy to not charge Unreal Engine users a monthly fee, whether they're using the software suite for commercial or educational purposes.

Previously, Epic offered a royalty-free grace period for a game or app's first $50,000 of revenue, then began requiring payment of 5 percent of the software's "worldwide gross revenue" from that point on, including DLC, crowd-sourced fundraising related to the software, and other related revenue streams. That 5-percent fee still applies, but it now leaves game makers unaffected until a $1 million threshold is hit.

Enlarge / A Verizon booth at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles in September 2018. (credit: Verizon)

5G is one of the most hyped technologies in recent memory, but 5G hype continues to outpace evidence that it will meaningfully change the mobile experience for the majority of smartphone users in the US.

Verizon Communications CEO Hans Vestberg said yesterday during a J.P. Morgan investor conference that most 5G mobile users will see a "small" upgrade at first, and he stressed the continued relevance of 4G. Vestberg reiterated previous Verizon statements that the biggest improvements will come on millimeter-wave spectrum in the most densely populated and trafficked areas.

But millimeter-wave frequencies don't travel as far as low- and mid-band radio waves and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles, making them unsuitable for nationwide coverage. As such, Vestberg was asked whether consumers will see a noticeable difference between 4G and 5G in areas without millimeter-wave coverage. Vestberg said that customers will eventually see "dramatic improvements," but not in the near term.

Enlarge / Elon Musk. (credit: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images)

Tesla resumed manufacturing activities on Monday in Fremont, California, in defiance of public health officials in Alameda County, where the plant is located. On Tuesday morning, Tesla picked up a high-profile endorsement for its reopening plan:

In reality, the state of California had already given the green light for companies like Tesla to resume operations. It was health officials in Alameda County that were seeking a delay of at least an additional week to allow time to review Tesla's worker safety plans.

But those officials signaled late on Tuesday that they were ready to come to terms with the electric car maker. In a series of tweets, they said they had reviewed Tesla's reopening plans and "held productive discussions today with Tesla’s representatives about their safety and prevention plans.