Month: May 2023

Enlarge / Researchers examined folio 843 of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus to determine the cause of mysterious black stains. (credit: Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan)

Researchers at the Politecnico di Milan in Italy examined mysterious black stains on a folio of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus and confirmed the presence of starch and vinyl glues in the affected areas. The glues were most likely applied during an earlier restoration effort some 50 years ago, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. They also identified a likely cause of the dark stains: nanoparticles of a mercury sulphide called metacinnabar in the protective paper holding the folio, although it is unclear how this unusual black crystalline phase might have formed.

Da Vinci produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. The notebooks contain all manner of inventions that foreshadow future technologies: flying machines, bicycles, cranes, missiles, machine guns, an “unsinkable” double-hulled ship, dredges for clearing harbors and canals, and floating footwear akin to snowshoes to enable a man to walk on water. The notebooks also contain da Vinci's detailed notes on his extensive anatomical studies. Most notably, his drawings and descriptions of the human heart captured how heart valves can ebb blood flow 150 years before William Harvey worked out the basics of the human circulatory system.

The largest single set is the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, in which (among other observations) da Vinci foresaw the possibility of constructing a telescope when he wrote of “making glasses to see the moon enlarged”—a century before the instrument’s invention. The codex was subjected to a major 10-year restoration effort from 1962 to 1972, in which each individual folio in the 12 volumes was framed by a "passe-partout": a protective paper cover consisting of three modern paper layers glued to each folio so they could be more easily handled and displayed. It also enabled the double-sided documents to be read and examined. The codex is currently housed in the Biblioteca Ambrosia in Milan.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek)

Since late 2022, Mastodon has increasingly become a popular alternative to Twitter for millions of users. This is partly because its CEO and founder, Eugen Rochko, has emphasized that the decentralized social network—which operates as a non-profit—will never be bought by a chaotic billionaire.

However, some would-be Mastodon users fleeing Twitter apparently never made it through Mastodon's slightly more complicated sign-up process. Some of them quickly abandoned Mastodon after creating an account, becoming instantly confused when they were asked to find a server to join. Because of this unfamiliar extra step that's not required to join most mainstream social networks, it seemed like Mastodon was missing out on a major opportunity to attract and retain Twitter users. These stakes likely only got higher after top Twitter influencers started joining another Twitter rival called Bluesky.

As Bluesky gained steam, Mastodon decided to listen to user feedback and take an unexpected step to make its platform more accessible than ever. Now, Mastodon will do what social networks traditionally do and default users to a server operated by Mastodon when they sign up. Acknowledging that Mastodon's sign-up process "can be confusing," Rochko announced that this tweak to Mastodon removes "friction from decentralized features" and makes it "as easy as possible" for new users to "get past the sign-up process and more quickly engage with others."

Enlarge / The author, awakening to a horrific era in which he finds himself eternally lusting after games you can play without a connection, driven mad by his impulses to the point where he can no longer keep up his human facade. (credit: Arkane/Bethesda)

I have played Arkane's new co-op vampire loot-shooter Redfall for about five hours. From what I've seen and experienced, the reviews are right: The set design, art, music, sound, and voice acting are all solid, sometimes splendid. But the actual gameplay is mostly uninspired marker quests, inventory stat comparisons, and brain-dead-enemy shooting with awkward-feeling guns.

I might have liked to play more. We received our review codes at Ars mid-day Thursday, with an embargo set for Monday night. Being a fan of Prey, the whole Dishonored series, and Deathloop, I planned to pack in as much time as I could in what I assumed would be a rich world. I had to travel over the weekend, but no matter: I'd bring my trusty Steam Deck and a good-enough laptop and get some time in on trains, planes, and idle hotel moments.

But Redfall does not want you to spend any time offline in its haunted, leaf-strewn New England town, nor on a slow connection. You need a Bethesda.net account to play Redfall, even though the platforms it's available on, Xbox and Steam on PC, both have their own matchmaking and voice chat capabilities. All the buttons and "host/join" prompts make starting a single-player game feel like starting a multiplayer game, just lonelier. But eventually, you can play Redfall by yourself after a few clicks.

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  The new Moto G, at the ultra-rare $250 price point. [credit: Motorola ]

Motorola is pumping out a new set of phones today. The most interesting is the new mid-range Moto G, and it also sounds like the flagship Motorola Edge 40 Pro is getting repackaged for the US as the Motorola Edge Plus.

First up, the mid-ranger. The Moto G hits a pricing sweet spot at $250 and will arrive in stores sometime this month. For $250, you get a 6.5-inch 1600×720 LCD with a surprising 120 Hz refresh rate, 4GB RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery. The SoC is a Snapdragon 480+—that's two ARM Cortex A76 cores and six A55 cores build on an 8 nm process with an Adreno 619 GPU.

There's a fingerprint reader somewhere, but Motorola's spec sheet doesn't say where. The phone has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi 5 support, and 15 W charging. The body is plastic, a big downside is that there's no NFC, and while the "water-repellent" design can protect against "accidental spills," it's not submersible. For cameras, you get a 48 MP main sensor and a just-for-looks 2 MP "macro" lens. The front camera is 8 MP.

Enlarge / NYC Mayor Eric Adams holding an AirTag. (credit: NYC Mayor's Office/YouTube)

The New York Police Department (NYPD) and New York City's self-proclaimed computer geek of a mayor are urging resident car owners to equip their vehicles with an Apple AirTag. During a press conference on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams announced the distribution of 500 free AirTags to New Yorkers, saying the technology would aid in reducing the city's surging car theft numbers.

Adams held the press conference at the 43rd precinct in the Bronx, where he said there had been 200 instances of grand larceny of autos. An NYPD official said that in New York City, 966 Hyundais and Kias have been stolen this year thus far, already surpassing 2022's 819 total. The NYPD's public crime statistics tracker says there have been 4,492 vehicle thefts this year, a 13.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year and the largest increase among NYC's seven major crime categories.

Adams, as the city did when announcing litigation against Kia and Hyundai on April 7, largely blamed the rise in car thefts on Kia and Hyundai, which he said are "leading the way" in stolen car brands.

Enlarge (credit: Drew Angerer | Getty Images)

Microsoft is planning to offer a privacy-focused version of the ChatGPT chatbot to banks, health care providers, and other large organizations concerned about data leaks and regulatory compliance, according to a report from The Information.

The product, which could be announced "later this quarter," would run ChatGPT on dedicated servers, separate from the ones used by other companies or other individual users using the versions of ChatGPT that Microsoft is baking into Edge, Windows, and its other products. This would keep sensitive data from being used to train ChatGPT's language model and could also prevent inadvertent data leaks—imagine a chatbot that revealed information about one company's product road map to another company just because both companies used ChatGPT.

The catch is that these isolated versions of ChatGPT could cost a lot more to run and use. The report says that the private instances "could cost as much as 10 times what customers currently pay to use the regular version of ChatGPT."