FazzNoth

'We had to make that calculated decision to get out now,' says co-founder Nate Salpeter For years, Kevin the pig, Gizmo the cow, and Paco the llama enjoyed the Coastside air and sprawling pastures of Half Moon Bay's nonprofit animal sanctuary Sweet Farm. They even achieved a certain level of celebrity, popping up in virtual meetings with corporate executives as a part of the "Goat-2-Meeting" program. However, in May, Kevin, Gizmo, Paco and around 150 of their friends found themselves packed into 50-foot trailers headed on an impossibly complicated 47-hour road trip, one that Sweet Farm co-founder Nate Salpeter says his operation was forced to make. Parents grimace with frustration when packing their children into a car with piles of snacks and fully-charged tablets, but Salpeter assumed the far more daunting task of transporting his farm's animals, all of them rescued from potentially traumatic situations, from California to New York. Since 2015, Sweet Farm has sheltered animals rescued from petting zoos and overencumbered farms, cultivated organic fruits and vegetables and raised over $10 million for startups solving challenges affecting our food systems. Husband-and-wife co-founders Salpeter and Anna Sweet (also the CEO of JJ Abrams' Bad Robot Games) are climate experts and entrepreneurs advancing a mission that aligns with Silicon Valley's interests in sustainability and venture capital. So what motivated them to spend $250,000 to move over 100 clucking chickens and bleating sheep, and why are other farms following their lead? The Coastside conjures images of foggy skies and condensation gathering on the grass, but a couple of years ago, Sweet Farm's buckets of striped squashes and oblong tomatoes started disappearing from its farm cart and CSA boxes months earlier than ever before due to drought conditions. Since then, the farm's wells have dried up to the point where they can no longer irrigate fields of fruits and vegetables. Sweet Farm's agricultural program also hosts field trials for tech companies focused on feeding the planet's increasing po[CENSORED]tion. For example, the fields would receive a treatment of biochar, organic matter burnt at high temperatures with limited oxygen, produced by a local waste management company. However, scientific trials and experiments became ineffective when the wildly changing climate complicated the scientific process. Help sustain the local news you depend on. Your contribution matters. Become a member today. "There's a strong importance around the ag program being consistent, rote and robust. And really having predictable seasons … it just became untenable to operate a strong program (in Half Moon Bay)," says Salpeter. Beyond agriculture, finding housing for Sweet Farm's employees also became a challenge. It's difficult to receive the permitting to build housing on Coastside farmland, and the cost of living was outpacing Sweet Farm's salaries even though they were far above market rates. Then in August 2020, the CZU Fire spread suffocating smoke across Sweet Farm, which was located on Tunitas Creek Road in the southern portion of Half Moon Bay. Salpeter and Sweet witnessed the evacuation line inching toward their property, and they joined other locals in evacuating their animals. Thanks to an emergency response group operated by Robin Camozzi of Half Moon Bay Feed & Fuel, trailers crossed up and down the Coastside and Santa Cruz Mountains, herding animals across the Bay Area. Sweet Farm's staff acted rapidly but needed to control their emotions considering that the rescued animals don't respond well to panic. "Maintaining your wits about you helps them make it through a stressful situation," Salpeter says. It was two weeks before Sweet Farm's animal residents were able to return. Meet the winners! At this point, Salpeter asked himself, "What does the long term look like if these fires are becoming more and more commonplace?" Salpeter and Sweet then traveled to upstate New York to take care of Sweet's parents and started considering a new home for Sweet Farm, or at least a second location. After some investigating, the couple began envisioning a property with rows of farmworker housing and productive partnerships with businesses connected to the nearby Cornell Center for Excellence for Food and Agriculture. More Info: https://mv-voice.com/news/2022/07/22/why-a-coastside-animal-sanctuary-had-to-make-a-new-home-on-the-east-coast

Attack denounced as a “spit in the face” to the U.N. and Turkey, who worked to broker the agreements. Russian missiles hit the city of Odesa Saturday, hours after Moscow and Kyiv signed deals allowing grain exports to resume from the Black Sea port, officials in Ukraine said Saturday. The strikes were denounced as a “spit in the face” of Turkish President Recep Erdogan and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres who helped broker the deals, by Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine's foreign ministry. “It took less than 24 hours for Russia to launch a missile attack on Odesa's port, breaking its promises and undermining its commitments before the U.N. and Turkey under the Istanbul agreement,” Nikolenko said in a statement. “In case of non-fulfillment, Russia will bear full responsibility for a global food crisis,” he added. Two missiles hit the port’s infrastructure and Ukrainian air defenses brought down two others, the Southern Command of Ukraine's military said in a statement. It did not specify whether there were any casualties or what damage was caused. NBC News was not able to independently verify the claims. Nikolenko called on the U.N. and Turkey to ensure that Russia complied with the commitments it made Friday. These included the establishment of a maritime “humanitarian corridor” free of naval ships, warplanes and drones, to clear the way for the shipment of millions of tons of grain from Ukraine. It also released some Russian exports of grain and fertilizer held up by the war. During a Friday signing ceremony in Istanbul, Guterres hailed the deal as “a beacon of hope, a beacon of possibility, a beacon of relief in a world that needs it more than ever.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-fires-missiles-odesa-port-hours-signing-grain-export-deal-rcna39691

Are you making fun of us or what? Did you read the reply's in your previous request? We are looking for serious and active members who respect the rules here. Contra.

I will keep this in mind. Your answers are good but remember that a moderator must make reports of members who respect the rules as it also counts as activity. I will give u pro. Good Luck!

I agree with my colleague but you deserve a chance. Pro.

https://csblackdevil.com/forums/profile/58212-salah-csbd/content/ I have reviewed your content, you started to do some activity on the forum in July and you only made one design on a project. You have less than 200 posts. You are not in any project and we are against those who -leave -back here. Contra.

Hello @Zahra, Even if you are very active, there are some things I want you to clarify in your request: It's mandatory to use TS3 here because if Mr.Love makes a meeting with his STAFF you must be there otherwise you will get a warning. Only a few days? Ok... I think it is not enough to be in contact with you... What about sending you a message on the forum? Can't you contact us here?

Nickname: @FazzNoth Video author: MKIceAndFire Name of the game: Stray Link video: Rate this video 1-10: 9/10

LG’s Tone Free earbuds bring us several of those ‘why-was-this-not done-before’ moments, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK A wireless earbud is a wireless earbud is a wireless earbud. Apple, Samsung and Jabra compete annually to raise the bar on in-ear sound quality. As a result, it becomes increasingly hard to differentiate between the numerous models on the market, and the purchasing decision is usually based on price or brand loyalty. Now LG is giving consumers a reason to rethink that choice. Its new Tone Free FP-9 earbuds, released in South Africa last month, offer two highly distinctive features. The first is one of those “why-was-this-not done-before” innovations, namely the industry’s only auto-cleaning UVnano charging case. It uses ultraviolet light to reduce bacteria on the earphone speaker mesh by a claimed 99.9% within five minutes of beginning charging. First introduced in 2020, it may well become an expectation that LG will create in the rest of the market. The Tone Free buds take the thinking a step further: they feature medical-grade, hypoallergenic ear gels. As they say in the cliché classics, but wait, there’s more. The FP series earbuds introduce LG’s new Whispering Mode, which allows users to hold the right earphone close to their mouth and whisper into its microphone, “enabling crystal clear and completely private phone calls”, according to LG. It cites public environments, like a library or crowded restaurant, but one can imagine numerous settings in which this feature would be a winner. We were tempted on several occasions to offer our devices on loan to people who violated phone etiquette during conferences and in restaurants – but mainly because they clearly had not heard of Whispering Mode. The problem was that, if we did dare to convince them, they would not wait the 5 minutes it would take us to zap the buds with UVnano and we don’t trust the auto-cleaning claims THAT much, to hand our buds to strangers. In all seriousness, though, the combination of these two features makes the FP-9 a serious contender against, well, any earbud on the market. In terms of standard features offered by most market leaders, it includes Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), which eliminates low-frequency sounds that are not blocked by normal earphones. Each unit contains three microphones that listen for ambient noises and neutralise them by producing identical, though inaudible, soundwaves. It pairs with PCs, gaming consoles, and other devices, either wirelessly or via a USB-C to AUX cable. This means one can also use an AUX cable to listen to music when Bluetooth is unavailable, for example in airplane mode. The LG Tone Free App provides an Ambient Sound Mode that allows sound to be adjusted to the volume of the surroundings, or have messages read without using one’s phone. A Find My Earbuds function on the app allows the buds to be located when misplaced. The Tone Free range also features Meridian Audio, a sound technology that uses digital signal processing to make sounds appear to originate from all directions. Its equalisers can be adjusted via the app. On top of that, it adds a 3D Sound Stage feature, which claims to “expand the sound point via spatial up-mixing and allowing you to hear your favourite tracks in a simulated 3D space”. Not only that, but “With larger, upgraded drivers and diaphragms featuring silicone edging, allowing for more flexibility and movement, the new Tone Free models now deliver more powerful bass without compromising on clarity or detail”. Let’s be honest here, or hear: your hearing must be pretty good to pick up all of that. Certainly, when compared with equivalent models, 3D sound does not set it apart from the competitors. What does it cost? The LG Tone Free FP series is available in South Africa in Charcoal Black and Pearl White. The FP5, FP8, and FP9 models retail for R1999, R2699, and R3699 respectively. Why should you care? As LG puts it, “wearing a headset for too long, especially during sweaty workouts, can result in irritated skin or painful ear infections.” Workouts aside, the ears are among the most germ-ridden parts of the body that come into regular contact with electronics, so it is quite astonishing that no other earbud maker has come up with an equivalent solution to the UVnano cleaning-and-recharge case. What are the biggest negatives? Its claims for audio innovation are incredibly complex, and may not tally with the average user’s experience. What are the biggest positives? Ergonomic design technology resulted in a sleek Arc Design, reducing the stem by 4.4mm for a more snug fit. Great battery, with 10 hours of play, another 14 hours of recharge from the case, and Fast Charging in 5 minutes for 1 hour of play. Also compatible with wireless charging. The most hygienic earbuds on the market. https://gadget.co.za/gadget-of-the-week-earbuds-that-clean-themselves/

Microsoft revises Store policy that technically banned open source software developers from making profits, even if it was only intended to ban copycat and misleading apps. Microsoft has revised the wording of its Microsoft Store policies after fears the previous wording would ban open source software developers from making profits from their apps on the store. Giorgio Sardo, general manager (GM) in the Experiences and Devices group at Microsoft and GM for the Microsoft Store, announced the changes today via Twitter concerning sections 10.8.7 and 11.2 of the Store policy document. These sections regard how much developers charge for apps and the copyright infringement reporting to Microsoft, respectively. The new wording for section 10.8.7 says: "In cases where you determine the pricing for your product or in-app purchases, all pricing … must not be priced irrationally high relative to the features and functionality provided by your product." The newly worded section scrubs previous references to open source software (OSS) and whether OSS developers or others can profit from it or free and OSS software via the Store. Sardo said in a tweet this week: "Last month, we shared a few updates to Microsoft Store policies to help protect customers from misleading product listings. We heard your feedback, and today we made a change to policy 10.8.7 and 11.2." But it took Microsoft a few weeks to knock its policy on charging for apps into shape. Questions about the previously worded section 10.8.7 were picked up in early July by Microsoft-watcher Rafael Rivera. Those changes were set to come into force on July 16. (Section 10.8 deals with financial transitions on the Store.) These changes, posted on June 16, were logged in Microsoft's store policy change history as: "Update to 10.8.7 to prohibit charging fees in the Store for open-source or other software that is generally available for free and restrict irrationally high pricing." The wording at the time said Store developers, when determining pricing, must not "attempt to profit from open-source or other software that is otherwise generally available for free, nor be priced irrationally high relative to the features and functionality provided by your product." By chopping any reference to open source and profits, Microsoft appears to agree that its previous wording was clumsy. The company has nothing against OSS developers making money on the Store, but was, as Sardo said this week, trying to prevent misleading and copycat apps profiting from OSS apps. The new section 11.2 highlights that infringement cases should be reported to Microsoft. But the previous wording raised several questions. For example, OSS developers put in work to make their apps Store-ready and the Microsoft Store should allow them to capture some of that value, Rivera had noted. The former version of 10.8.7 seemed a "bit restrictive given some OSS needs a lot of TLC to get working in AppContainer and devs that do the work should be able to recoup the investment," he wrote at the time. The proposed policy change gained wider attention after developer Hayden Barnes retweeted Rivera's post and said he was "disappointed" that the policy's wording seems to prohibit anyone from selling open source software in the Store. The Store gives OSS developers a way to sustain projects by allowing them to charge a "reasonable amount", he added. However, even he believed Microsoft intended merely to prevent copycats from profiting from OSS projects. But he wanted Microsoft to wording of the prohibition on profiting from OSS as it was too broadly defined. "I support language to block copycats but the policy language needs to be more narrowly tailored. As-is it sweeps in legit open source apps and, to me, possibly even proprietary apps with MIT/BSD dependencies if your apps cannot 'attempt to profit from open-source software'," he later added. Sardo had quickly confirmed to Barnes and Rivera that blocking copycat profiting was the intent and promised Microsoft would look into clarifying the wording: that job is done now. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-rethinks-rules-on-open-source-software-apps-in-its-microsoft-store/

Kudelski, a Swiss security firm, has launched a Secure IP portfolio for IoT products. The new offering provides a hardware enclave for baking security primitives into new chip designs while safeguarding secrets across the complete product development and deployment lifecycle. It allows IoT vendors to embed a hardware root of trust directly into chips, which is harder to hack than software only implementations. Kudelski has been a leader in protecting content on devices like set-top boxes and payment systems for decades. The new IoT support extends this expertise to more dynamic workflows required for IoT use cases. Michela Menting, digital security research director at ABI Research, told VentureBeat that this is part of an industry trend from silicon IP firms to add support for various security primitives directly into their chip design libraries. Silicon security provides better security than software alone because it is more difficult for hackers to penetrate. Securing the IoT hardware ecosystem Menting said that Arm was a forerunner in this space with security IP for various use cases. This helped pave the way for secure IP adoption and improvement by various semiconductor and hardware vendors. “Arm’s success initially for smartphones, with tech like CryptoCell and TrustZone and today for IoT, is really pulling the market forward and driving other silicon IP and semiconductors to target this market and also to innovate,” Menting explained. Various vendors are also developing secure IP building blocks in addition to Arm and Kudelski, including Intel, Intrinsic-ID, Inside Secure, Secure IC, Maxim, MIPS, Rambus, Silex and Synopsys, among many others. Other vendors are targeting the open-source RISC-V ecosystems, including companies like Dover Microsystems, Veridify, Hex Five and SiFive. These vendors are rallying behind emerging new IoT hardware security standards established by governments and vendors. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently launched the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140 series to coordinate hardware and software security systems. ARM Holdings introduced the Platform Security Architecture (PSA) specifications in 2017 and the first strategies went live in 2019. Another group of vendors, including ST Microelectronic, NXP Semiconductors and AWS, have developed the Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP). A complex process The new Secure IP offering from Kudelski supports all these emerging standards. Kudelski’s IoT senior vice-president Hardy Schmidbauer told VentureBeat that a key differentiator compared with other secure IP offerings is support for services to help IoT vendors implement secure processes across the silicon development and deployment lifecycle. This complex process involves steps like secure personalization and credential management. When an IoT vendor first creates a chip, it comes out as a complete blank, identical to others. In the personalization step, the vendor stamps a unique ID code into non-volatile memory on each chip and records this into its database. Credential management involves adding unique encryption keys to each chip, while also protecting these from being altered or captured by adversaries. The combination of managing the unique serial number and encryption keys helps create the foundation for all the processes for security updating software and protecting the integrity of each device. Kudelski has also added support for various security operations directly in a hardware security enclave that supports features like a random number generator, secure key storage and countermeasures against side-channel and fault attacks. The platform also allows vendors to support capabilities like remote feature authorization and over-the-air updates. This extensive set of services takes advantage of Kudelski’s over thirty years of experience in secure hardware design and system infrastructure. Menting said security IP is a big market that will continue to grow with the uptick of new IoT devices. But each device has different security needs depending on the use case and the risk it represents. An industrial control system will have different requirements than a home lighting controller. “Not all devices need the same things and so you can offer a broad range of different IP offerings for different use cases,” she said. Vendors are currently offering a wide range of security IP cores to support services like: Root of trust Secure boot Cryptographic accelerators True random number generators Physical, unclonable functions One-time programmable memory Trusted execution environments Memory protection units Tamper resistance Side channel analysis, resistance New hardware supply chain requirements This breadth of capabilities is required to extend the software bill of materials (SBOM) now mandated to protect software into hardware. “We are seeing growing interest within both the commercial and government sectors in the implementation of a hardware bill of materials (HBOM) to augment security compliance and assurance provided by a software bill of materials,” said Andreas Kuehlmann, Chairman and CEO of Cycuity (formerly Tortuga Logic), which provides tools for testing hardware security. The HBOM must cover the entire design supply chain from IP providers to chip development organizations, all the way to their integration into actual products. He argues that just as organizations should ensure the security of the supply chain, it is also essential to communicate to downstream partners and consumers about its due diligence and security assurance. Hardware security adds new requirements. Even when a trusted supplier conducts thorough security verification that vets third-party security IP, it also needs to ensure that risks such as the leakage of root device keys are not introduced during compliance and integration steps. The industry is in the early stages of developing the cohesive strategy required to ensure security across the hardware supply chain. “Currently, industry and government efforts have not mastered many operational aspects of building products, as most organizations aren’t coordinating and communicating a cohesive hardware security approach across the roster of supply chain partners to produce the final product,” Kuehlmann said. https://venturebeat.com/2022/07/20/kudelski-secures-iot-hardware-lifecycle/

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon wants to set the record straight: The storied investment bank isn't hitting the brakes on hiring despite the firm’s renewed efforts to watch costs into a potential economic downturn amid elevated inflation. “There is no hiring freeze at Goldman,” Solomon said on Yahoo Finance Live at Goldman’s 10,000 Small Businesses Summit on Tuesday (video above). “We're looking at all our resources around the firm, financial and otherwise, and we are slowing the pace of our hiring. So we've grown the firm enormously over the course of the last few years. We've done a significant amount of hiring. We had planned to do meaningful hiring in the back half of the year. And we're slowing it down. But we haven't frozen it." The comments come after a better-than-feared quarter from Goldman Sachs on Monday amid strength in fixed income and equities trading. Earnings of $7.73 a share beat analyst forecasts of $6.58 a share. Second-quarter sales and profits, though, did fall though by 23% and 48% respectively as the company was swept up into the industry-wide softness in investment banking activities. Investment banking sales dropped 42% from a year ago as companies delayed deal-making during a pickup in stock market volatility brought on by aggressive Federal Reserve rate tightening plans. More generally, with the stock market in bear market territory amid economic uncertainty and record inflation, the financial industry is facing potential layoffs. Goldman Sachs is now joining other big Wall Street banking firms like JP Morgan on clamping down on spending, ranging from travel expenses to hiring plans ahead of what could be a rocky period for the global economy. BlackRock recently announced it would also be curtailing new hires as rumors of layoffs continue sweeping through the financial sector. Goldman intends to reinstate its annual performance review for employees in an effort to curtail costs. (The review was previously put on hold during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.) "One of the things that's important to understand about Goldman Sachs and the way we operate it's a very performance-based culture," Solomon said. "We're always looking to make sure that people that aren't performing in our organization don't hang around because it prevents us from giving the opportunity to hire more people that can really perform." https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/goldman-sachs-ceo-there-is-no-hiring-freeze-despite-economic-slowdown/ar-AAZLDhk

Shell-shocked family pets started roaming around Ukraine’s capital with nowhere to go in the opening stages of Russia’s war A girl plays with a dog in a pet shelter in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, July 19, 2022. Shellshocked family pets started roaming around Ukraine's capital with nowhere to go in the opening stages of Russia's war. Volunteers opened a shelter to take them in and try to find them new homes or at least some human companionship. KYIV, Ukraine -- Shell-shocked family pets started roaming around Ukraine's capital with nowhere to go in the opening stages of Russia's war. Volunteers opened a shelter to take them in and try to find them new homes or at least some human companionship. Every day, Kyiv residents come to visit cats and dogs evacuated from cities on the frontlines or left without owners because of the nearly five-month war. Hrystyna Sairova and her 12-year-old daughter Anna walk rescued dogs three to four times a week. Many of them arrived at the temporary shelter with lost paws or other serious injuries, Sairova said. “They don’t deserve this, nor do humans. They are members of our families,” she said. The shelter occupies a small building that was once an exhibition space to showcase the achievements of the Soviet Union. Wooden kennels and leashes fill a corridor, and a playroom is furnished with bowls and toys inside the safe haven for animals that would not exist if Russia had not invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. “We could not ignore the fact that due to active hostilities, animals began to appear on the city streets,” said shelter coordinator Natalia Mazur, who also manages the Kyiv City Hospital of Veterinary Medicine. The shelter opened on May 31, around the time Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv region to concentrate attacks on eastern Ukraine. More than 195 animals have come through the doors, including 160 that either were reunited with their owners or found new homes, Mazur said. Like people, animals face trauma from war, suffering psychologically from bombing, shelling and shooting, Mazur said. Some of the animals were withdrawn and wouldn’t eat when they first arrived at the shelter. “To get out of this state, they need someone,” Mazur said. “The animal needs human care.” A Siberian husky arrived at the shelter from Lysychansk, a city in eastern Ukraine that came under siege last month and is 734 kilometers (456 miles) from Kyiv. He got separated from his owners during the chaos of a civilian evacuation and was found by a Ukrainian who helps with civilian evacuations and delivering humanitarian aid. The dog, which shelter volunteers have named Bourbon, had a fractured chest bone when he got to the shelter and has been recuperating there for several weeks. “We know these animals were left without owners because of the war, but they are very affectionate to human love. They are lonely here; they need us,” volunteer Sayirova said. The makeshift space fulfills more than one kind of need. When the staff held an open house last weekend, more than 1,000 people showed up to walk the 25 dogs then staying at the shelter along with 11 cats. On Sunday night, the dogs were tired out from taking so many walks. “People understand that someone is in worse conditions than they are. People now want to take care of someone,” Mazur said. The Ukrainian government does not have a program for evacuating animals in wartime, but there are many private and volunteer initiatives. The nongovernmental organization UA Animals even hired people and paid them a salary to rescue animals from combat zones. “We’re actually evacuating not the animals themselves, but the people, who won’t go anywhere without their pets,” UA Animals founder Oleksandr Todorchuk said. While there is no active fighting in Kyiv now, volunteers plan to keep the temporary shelter going as long as the war continues. Nadiya Oleksyuk has a full-time job in computer programming but goes to the shelter every morning “because she has to.” In a trembling voice, Oleksyuk explains she feels “a general guilt as a human being that the animals are in this situation." “It’s not the animals’ fault that war happened. They certainly didn’t have war in their plans,” she said. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/shelter-ukraines-capital-takes-animals-haunted-war-87120927

A burning apartment block hit by Russian fire in Siversk, eastern Ukraine Russian missile and rocket strikes have caused more widespread damage in towns and cities across eastern and southern Ukraine, regional officials say. Four civilians died in a strike on Siversk, a town in Donetsk region, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Civilian areas of Druzhkivka, in the same region, were also hit. A supermarket was destroyed and a large crater appeared nearby. The BBC was unable to verify details of the latest strikes. Russian ground forces do not appear to have made significant advances in the past 24 hours in their push to take the rest of Donetsk region. A suspected Russian missile gouged out this crater in Druzhkivka Ukrainian officials also reported Russian missile strikes on parts of Kharkiv, in the north, Mykolaiv in the south and Kryvyi Rih, a southern city north-east of Mykolaiv. Ukrainian forces are fiercely defending Mykolaiv, a strategic river port on a key route to Odesa, which is Ukraine's main export hub. The Russian navy is still preventing Ukraine from shipping grain out of Odesa. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has urged residents to leave Russian-occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. The warning appeared to herald further Ukrainian counter-attacks. The Russians are occupying the city of Kherson, but Ukrainian forces have taken back some parts of the region. Police in the region accuse Russia of deliberately destroying crops. In a Facebook post they show photos of burning fields and say: "Large-scale fires occur every day, hundreds of hectares of wheat, barley and other grain crops have already burned." They also accuse Russian troops of destroying granaries and agricultural equipment, and of preventing locals from extinguishing the fires. Kherson police say Russian troops are deliberately destroying crops (pic: Kherson police) In Kryvyi Rih, Russian Grad rockets damaged a school and housing, killing a 41-year-old woman, local governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. Russia's defence ministry said its forces had destroyed a hangar storing US M777 howitzers in Chasiv Yar, near Kramatorsk. The cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are expected to be Russia's next major targets in Donetsk. The US says it is supplying four more high-precision rocket systems to Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the HIMARS rockets are being used to hit ammunition depots and warehouses in Russian-held territory, making Moscow's attempts at resupply much harder. In the UK, British Army bases are now being used to train Ukrainians in combat, the UK government says. It aims to train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months. In a new intelligence update, the UK military says Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country to positions near Ukraine for future operations. But it says many of Russia's reinforcements are "ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62106446

Happy Birthday!

Where to start? That is always a good question when it comes to setting out my thoughts and impressions about a game. But with Blade Runner Enhanced Edition it is a little bit harder than usual. You see, this is a remaster/remake of a game from way back in 1997, a time when computers were slow and graphics were primitive. Fast forward to 2022, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that not a whole lot has changed in the intervening years; if you were to play this game, that is. oming from Nightdive Studios, who seem to have cornered the market on remaking older games, taking an original title by Westwood Studios, is Blade Runner Enhanced Edition. Now, I have a confession to make: I have never watched Blade Runner all the way through, as I find it intensely boring and always fall asleep. Can the game do any better in keeping my interest? Let’s jet off to Los Angeles, in the year 2019 no less, and find out. We’ll start with the story of Blade Runner Enhanced Edition; a traditional strong point for the older generation of video games. And the news here is good as the narrative is as strong now as it was back in the day, involving us trying to track a group of Replicants, dangerous androids designed to look and act like humans. We play a detective called Ray McCoy, and start off when we are called to a pet store to investigate a break in. In the future, animals are very rare and expensive, so why someone would break in, kill everything in sight and leave is a mystery. This sets the tone for the rest of the game, and obviously I won’t divulge any more of the narrative for fear of spoilers. Whilst that set-up may be okay, presentation wise Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is, being kind, a bit of a mess. Back in 1997, I’m sure that the graphics on display would have been absolutely cutting edge, with full motion capture of the actors involved and so on. The backdrops that these characters move in are all nicely drawn as well, but the problem comes with our expectations of what should be delivered in 2022, at least as far as graphics go. You see, the characters seem to walk on the backdrops, not in them, and the whole effect is like one of those puppet theatres we used to build as kids, with the players attached to cardboard sticks. The backdrops look a bit blurry as well, to be honest, and all in all it looks rubbish; the evidence of my own eyes tells me that it looks like a bit of a dog’s dinner. The news is better on the sound side of the equation, with several of the original cast lending their voices to characters, and the sound effects of the flying cars all being bang on as well. Now, the gameplay, how has this held up over the intervening years? Well, the news here is both good and bad. Being of a sunny disposition and very much a glass half full kind of guy, I’d like to start with the positives. Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is described as a “real time adventure game” and coming from Westwood, you can believe the claim. The way the game plays out is pretty much like a puzzler, with our character trying to gather evidence from various crime scenes, using this evidence to find Replicants. The Replicants that are found can be questioned on a special machine, the Voight-Kampff machine, that can be used to determine whether they are a Replicant or human by asking questions: once someone has been identified, you can choose to kill, arrest or let them go. Using this machine, which was in the bit of the film I managed to watch, and also ESPER, which is used to blow up photographs to find details that have been missed, is also pretty cool. There is a lot of leg work, and a lot of figuring out who did what, but all in all this is pretty interesting. A problem with the whole gameplay loop is the way that we interact with the screen. Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is played from a third person perspective, and the way we interact with the game is via the medium of a pointer. This pointer changes colour when we can interact with something: it goes grey to show we can move somewhere, blue to indicate we can change the screen, green to indicate that there is something to investigate or a person to talk to, and finally red if we can shoot something. However, the pointer is absolutely tiny, and as a result the colour change is really hard to make out unless your nose is actually touching the TV screen. It’s not just me being old and blind either, my eleven year old son, who has eyes like a hawk, also found it hard to tell when there was something to interact with. https://www.thexboxhub.com/blade-runner-enhanced-edition-review/

Mastercard is accelerating efforts to establish itself as the front running financial services provider in several parts of the world. In a new development, the US-based firm has partnered crypto gateway provider called Fasset to co-develop digital solutions to escalate crypto adoption in the country of Indonesia. The collaboration between Mastercard and Fasset aims to drive financial inclusion in Indonesia and get 92 million of its unbanked citizens to be part of the existing financial system. As per Yahoo Finance, 66 percent of the Indonesian citizenry is currently unbanked. Meanwhile, a survey by The Jakarta Post recently said that 41 percent of Indonesians own crypto assets. This partnership between Mastercard and Fasset intends to fill the financial cavities in Indonesia with appropriate digital tools.“The world is changing at an unprecedented rate. With more people relying on digital assets and technologies to become resilient, there is a need for key players in the public and private sectors to come together to create solutions that can lead to new opportunities and solutions for wider financial inclusion,” Navin Jain, the country manager for Mastercard Indonesia was quoted as saying. The development comes at a time when Asia is witnessing a constant growth in the crypto sector, especially from affluent investors. In nations like India, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand the holdings of crypto and other digital assets have risen multi-fold in recent years, a report by Accenture recently claimed. The findings indicated that Thailand and Indonesia dwellers hold the maximum percentage of digital assets in Asia, followed by India, Singapore, and Thailand. “Our partnership seeks to lower the barriers to digital finance and drive greater opportunities to benefit from the use of emerging financial services. The implications on the industry are greater legitimisation of crypto assets, their use cases and areas of applications,” Hendra Suryakusuma from Fasset told the media. As for Mastercard, this is not the first pro-crypto step that the company has taken to support the nascent Web3 industry. Back in June, Mastercard inked deals with a total of seven new partners in order to open NFT access via traditional card payments to help drive NFT commerce. Mastercard's new partners include metaverse player The Sandbox along with Immutable X, Candy Digital, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay. Mastercard has already been working with Coinbase in order to support cash payments on the crypto exchange's recently-launched NFT platform. In May, Mastercard official Harold Bossé had said that cryptocurrencies need to be stitched into the global economic structure so intricately that they become next to invisible. At this point, Bossé said, the lack of crypto knowledge is also a major factor that is obstructing its acceptance among the masses. He also noted that even at senior management levels, there is a crippling lack of crypto knowledge. Noise co-founder Amit Khatri joins Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, for a special episode. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on Twitter, Facebook, and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. https://gadgets360.com/cryptocurrency/news/mastercard-gateway-provider-fasset-drive-crypto-adoption-indonesia-3160335#pfrom=home-po[CENSORED]r

OnePlus has released the Android 12-based OxygenOS 12 Open Beta 1 for the OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G announced in February with OxygenOS 11.3 based on Android 11. The OxygenOS 12 Open Beta 1 brings refreshed UI and new features to the Nord CE 2 5G along with improvements to the OnePlus Shelf and Dark Mode. You can check the list of key updates below. System Optimized desktop icons with improved textures, by using a design inspired by brand-new materials and uniting lights and layers Optimized AI System Booster to 2.1 to support the system to run smoothly even when the load is high Optimized software algorithm and improved face recognition to better identify the features and skin color of different figures Dark Mode Newly added three adjustable levels, bringing a more personalized and comfortable user experience Shelf Newly added style options for Cards, making data contents more visual and easier to read Newly added access to OnePlus Scout in Shelf, allowing you to search multiple contents on your phone, including Apps, Settings, Media Data, etc Newly added OnePlus Watch Card in Shelf, to easily glance at your health status Work Life Balance Newly added Work Life Balance feature, allowing you to effortlessly switch between Work and Life mode via quick settings Newly supported automatic Work/Life mode switching, based on specific locations, Wi-Fi network, and time, also bringing customized App notification profiles according to the personalization Gallery Newly supported switching between different layouts with a two-finger pinch gesture, intelligently recognizing the best-quality pictures, and cropping the thumbnail based on the content, making the gallery layout more pleasing Canvas AOD Newly added diverse styles of lines and colors, for a more personalized lock screen experience with inspiring visuals Newly added multiple brushes and strokes and support for color adjustment But before you proceed to install the update, you should be aware of the issues it has. For starters, the time on the AOD is displayed abnormally, and video details don't include the location information. And if you create a clone of WhatsApp using the App Cloner feature, the cloned version might not play the sound when the smartphone's connected to wireless earphones. If you still want to try the OxygenOS 12 Open Beta 1 on your Nord CE 2 5G, you can head to the source link below for more details. https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_nord_ce_2_5g_android_12_oxygenos_12_open_beta_1_update-news-55080.php

NASA is testing a new form of waste disposal aboard the ISS that could help cut down on space waste in the future. The system was designed by Nanoracks, and it utilizes the Bishop Airlock aboard the International Space Station. Nanoracks recently tested it in collaboration with NASA’s Johnson Space Center. What makes the new ISS waste disposal system so interesting and genius is the sheer simplicity of it. While it relies on some incredible technology to pull off, the basic idea is as simple as throwing a garbage bag out the window. Nanoracks designed the system in collaboration with NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Based on the tests, it appears to be more efficient and sustainable than the current model for waste removal aboard the ISS. Currently, astronauts aboard the ISS have to horde their trash and wait for the arrival of the Cygnus cargo vehicle. Once Cygnus arrives and they unload the vehicle, they pack it with their trash. The small spacecraft is then released from the ISS and allowed to burn up in re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. the current ISS waste disposal model works but allows for months of trash to build up on the station. With the new ISS waste disposal system, astronauts can gather their trash and store it in the Bishop Airlock until the high-tech garbage bag that Nanoracks developed is full. The bag can hold up to around 600 pounds of trash. Once full, the station jettisons the bag into the atmosphere to burn up. It’s an interesting system, and one that could help make commercial low-Earth orbit operations more efficient in the long run. Once the bag has been expanded and jettisoned, they refit the airlock with a new bag. This allows the astronauts to store their trash and then throw it all away without having to wait months for the Cygnus cargo vehicle to arrive in between missions. Cooper Read, the Bishop Airlock program manager at Nanoracks says that waste disposal on the ISS is a long-standing challenge. The astronauts aboard the ISS can generate up to 2,500 kg of trash per year, which is roughly two cans worth a week. As more people move to live on LEO stations, that amount will grow. As such, testing the new ISS waste disposal system now is vital to help iron out any kinks. Once perfected, the more efficient method can help astronauts live in cleaner, more efficient stations. https://bgr.com/science/the-iss-just-tested-a-new-way-to-take-out-the-trash-and-its-absolutely-genius/

Drones are being used to survey the wreckage of the plane A cargo plane which crashed in northern Greece was carrying 11 tonnes of weapons - including land mines - to Bangladesh, officials say. People living within two kilometres of the site where the Antonov-12 came down have been warned to stay indoors. The aircraft was flying from Serbia to Jordan when it crashed late on Saturday close to the city of Kavala, killing all eight people on board. Eyewitness video showed the plane on fire and a huge fireball as it crashed. On Sunday morning, drones were being used to survey the site of the wreckage out of caution. State-run TV reported the army, explosives experts and Greek Atomic Energy Commission staff would not approach the site until it was deemed safe. "The (air) measurements at the moment have not shown anything but nonetheless instability in the field was observed," Lieutenant General Marios Apostolidis, of the Northern Greece Fire Brigade, told reporters. "In other words, intense smoke and heat, as well as a white substance that we do not recognise, so a special armed forces team has to inform us what it is and whether we can enter the field." The pilot had reportedly requested an emergency landing at Kavala airport due to an engine problem shortly after take off, but was unable to reach the runway. The plane was noticed at about 22:45 local time (19:45 GMT) by local residents. Aimilia Tsaptanova - who saw the plane come down - said she was amazed it hadn't crashed into their homes. "It was full of smoke, it had a noise I can't describe and it went over the mountain," she said. "It passed the mountain and turned and crashed into the fields. "There were flames, we were scared. A lot of cars came, but they couldn't approach because there were continuous explosions." Serbia's Defence Minister Nebojša Stefanovic said that the Antonov AN-12 was transporting almost 11 tonnes of Serbian-made weapons to Bangladesh. It was due to make stops in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and India before reaching its final destination of Dhaka. The plane was being operated by Meridian, a Ukrainian cargo airline, although so far, there is no indication of any connection with the war in Ukraine. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62195005

Awildfire whipped by gale-force winds blazed through vegetation in a southern suburb of Athens on Saturday, the fire brigade said, forcing residents to evacuate and damaging about 20 properties. The Greek Civil Protection agency issued an emergency appeal via SMS for people to leave Ano Voula as the flames reached homes. Officials reported no casualties but four more neighbourhoods were evacuated as the wind changed direction and drove the fire front towards the town of Vari, Grigoris Konstantelos, the mayor of Voula, told Skai TV. Kostantelos said around 20 houses were damaged. Six water-bombing aircrafts, three helicopters and municipal water tankers supported dozens of firefighters with 20 fire engines. “The situation is very difficult and the wind does not help,” said Giannis Konstantatos, mayor of Ellinikon-Argiroupoli, a neighbouring municipality. “The atmosphere is suffocating, we have difficulty breathing,” he told Athens News Agency. Police told people to leave their homes in images broadcast by Ant1 TV. The Fire Brigade told AFP that the wind has dropped a bit so they are hopeful that the fire will slow its pace. Skai TV showed footage of a burning house with flames licking inside. Giorgos Papanikolaou, the mayor of Glyfada, where the fire first broke out, said it began at a high voltage electricity power station, according to the agency. Later in the afternoon, a second fire broke out near Athens, in the village of Kouvaras but residential areas were not under threat. Late in the day, the Fire Brigade told AFP that the wind has dropped raising hopes the spread of the fire will slow. Last summer, Greece’s most severe heatwave in decades, which authorities blamed on climate change, saw fires destroy more than 100,000 hectares of forest and farmland, the country’s worst wildfire damage since 2007. More than 200 firefighters and technical equipment provided by European Union countries will be soon deployed to Greece to help boost the battle against large wildfires. Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Romania and Norway will take part in the deployment, coordinated by the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism. https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/world/greece-evacuates-athens-suburb-under-wildfire-threat/ar-AAY5t7U?ocid=EMMX&cvid=8c76f3c6cdd34cb886734a1d203bb18a

Nickname: @FazzNoth Video author: LegoUnlocked Name of the game: Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII Link video: Rate this video 1-10: 9/10

iQoo Neo 6 launch date in India has been confirmed to be May 31. The Chinese company announced that the smartphone will hit Indian markets with Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 5G chipset and 80W flash charge. This is different from the China variant of the iQoo Neo 6, which featured a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. The handset is expected to come in two colour options and house up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of inbuilt storage. Amazon had reportedly pushed out a notification last week indicating that the handset from iQoo will launch in India on May 31. Recent reports have also indicated that the sale of the smartphone may take place in the first week of June. iQoo 6 Neo 6 launch date iQoo Neo 6 launch date in India has been confirmed to be May 31 on Twitter, and there is a microsite on Amazon India that also teases the specifications. Earlier this week, the launch date was leaked by the e-commerce site when it reportedly pushed out a notification. Another report claimed that the sale of the upcoming iQoo smartphone would take place in the first week of June. https://gadgets360.com/mobiles/news/iqoo-neo-6-launch-date-india-may-31-expected-price-specifications-qualcomm-snapdragon-870-5g-features-2996998