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Name of the game: ARK: Genesis Season Pass Price: 29.74$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 7 June Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions) Processor: 2 GHz Dual-Core 64-bit CPU Memory: 4000 MB RAM Graphics: DirectX10 Compatible GPU with 1 GB Video RAM DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 40 GB available space Additional Notes: Requires broadband internet connection for multiplayer

Game Information: Initial release date: 1 Jun, 2021. Software Developer: MWM Interactive. Publisher: Flight School Studio. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Stonefly comes from the team behind Creature in the Well, but aside from sharing a gorgeous visual style, they have very little in common. This new game is an enjoyably peaceful experience about a world inhabited by tiny people living alongside the bugs in giant natural ecosystems. Humans get around by piloting bug-like rigs, allowing them to glide between oversized branches, gather resources, and fend off any pesky critters. You play as Annika Stonefly, a young mechanic who inadvertently loses her father's priceless rig, and goes out on her own to get it back. Early on you'll meet a small group that helps Annika get started, giving her a run-down mech to build up along her journey. This mech is the real star of the game — you will quickly upgrade its abilities to deal with harsher environments and bigger bugs, and you'll also be able to customise its look. The main thrust of gameplay is going out on excursions and gathering various minerals from the world, and then using these to either buy new parts or improve your rig's glide, jump, defences, and more. It's a simple loop, but it's a satisfying one. Mining for resources can be tricky when insects want those materials for themselves. Thankfully, your mech can stun and then push any bugs away with blasts of air, making for basic, non-lethal scuffles. It's a unique way to handle combat, but not particularly exciting. You can float about and gather materials as you please, which is pleasant, but the game doesn't quite have enough to hold your interest. Sadly, the story aspect falls a bit flat — the main thread is interesting but the writing isn't particularly engaging, and any cutscenes lack impact. Overall, the game is a tranquil journey through a unique world, but it doesn't quite have the narrative pull or gameplay bite that it needs. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 (64-bit) or later Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 / AMD Radeon 6970 HD DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 5 GB available space

Alienware X-Series Gaming laptops are coming, and Dell is pulling out all the stops to get great performance at up to 4K resolutions. With the latest UHD panels, and high-end GeForce cards, 4K gaming might actually be relevant in laptops now. The gaming PC stalwarts promise "several industry-first innovations" with these new designs, which will be available with the mobile versions of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 GPUs. The lineup includes the Dell Alienware x17, the company's thinnest 17.3-incher, and the x15 which takes the crown as the thinnest Alienware gaming laptop to date. For the x15, that's just 16.3mm (0.642-inch) with a 165Hz, 1080p panel, or 15.9mm (0.626-inch) for a 1080p, 360Hz or 1440p, 240Hz panel. And the x17 isn't far behind with 20.9mm (0.823-inch) for the 1080p, 360Hz panel, or 21.4mm (0.843-inch) for a 4K, 120Hz monitor, or the 1440p, 165Hz panel. The Dell Alienware X-Series configuration options are an 11th-gen Intel Core i7 11800H, or 11900HK CPU, with Nvidia RTX 30-series discrete GPUs. The x15's RTX 3080 model only comes with the 8GB GDDR6 variant, whereas the x17 offers the full16GB of VRAM. Y'know, for the pros. As for innovations, they'll both be getting some cooling love, with exclusive 'Element 31' Gallium-Silicone matrix thermal interfaces for configs sporting Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 GPUs. These are said to deliver a "25% improvement in thermal resistance over the previous generation." These X-Series lappys will also contain Alienware's new patent-pending Quad Fan and Smart Fan designs for better airflow and control, as well as Alienware's HyperEfficient Voltage Regulation tech for promised longer gaming hours. These are gorgeous looking laptops; very similar to the previous generation in terms of aesthetics, but with severely upgraded internals. I'm still not so sure about the AlienFX customizable touchpad look, though. You've gotta hand it to Dell for managing to jam more RGB in when it seemed there was nowhere left for it to infest. Alienware is optimistic that these new X-Series gaming laptops will deliver "the ultimate performance for gaming and content creation." We'll have to see about that when we get our hands on one for testing. Mainly, we're excited about high refresh refresh rate UHD panels hitting the mobile market now we have Nvidia's powerful 30-series cards to help those frames along.

The UK's Royal College of GPs (RCGP) has written to NHS Digital to call for better communication with the public about their rights in opting out of what has been dubbed the "biggest data grab in NHS history." The professional body, which runs GP accreditation in the UK, said it supported the principle of improved sharing of data for important healthcare planning and research. However, the doctors' group believes it is critical that this is transparent and that patients have confidence and trust in how the NHS and other bodies might use their information, said professor Martin Marshall, chair of the RCGP. "The job of informing the public must not be left to busy GPs, especially at a time of extreme workload pressures and focus on the COVID-19 vaccination programme, so we have written to NHS Digital urging them to undertake greater communications with the public about this new collection and their options for opting out," he said. Last month, it emerged that the NHS was preparing for a mass haul of GP patient data, giving patients little information or warning about the planned transfer of medical records to a central store for research purposes – and with no prospect of the data being deleted – with a 23 June deadline to opt out. GPs and campaign groups expressed fears the data could be used by private sector firms for gaining access to NHS markets. medConfidential, which works to ensure patients have a choice in how their data is used, said it had been struggling to guide the public through their choices due to what it termed a string of out-of-date and misleading messaging on the NHS Digital website. Meanwhile, NHS Digital, the non-departmental public body, which designs, develops and operates national IT and data services, has said it would "not approve requests for data where the purpose is for marketing... including promoting or selling products or services, market research or advertising." However, data available on the NHS Digital website already shows firms are using hospital patient data for this purpose. The organisation has been unable to say how criteria used for governing access to the data would change during the haul of GP data. The RCGP and the BMA, the UK doctors' union, have been working with the NHS on planning the new collection of data over the past three years through their Joint GP IT Committee. They had made representations on behalf of GP practices to ensure stronger arrangements were put in place over the security and intended uses of the data collected, they said in a joint statement. Prof Marshall said the new data haul was a legal requirement of GP practices and the organisations would "continu[e] to lobby NHS Digital to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place for how the data collected is used." ®

Youngsters today don’t idolise entertainers and sportsmen in the way that previous generations did. The unprecedented expansion of the internet into every aspect of life has given them many more ways to entertain themselves and find their heroes. Car lovers who grew up in the 1980s, for instance, would have to wait to be presented, once a week and for but an hour, Top Gear or World of Sport. People growing up now can effortlessly find practically endless content on any subject that interests them, and at literally any time. Hundreds of people today make a full-time living by attracting an online audience, and such is their po[CENSORED]rity that they’re now making the transition into what one might call reality. Among the most prominent is Olajide ‘KSI’ Olatunji, who has gone from making videos about football video games to smashing the viewing record for a white-collar boxing match and scoring a string of top 40 pop hits. Heck, you can now even go to watch Hashtag United, a football team founded for online exhibition matches, play in England’s ninth tier. The total accessibility of the internet means that fame can be found from anywhere, which is why the biggest online idol for those of a motorsport persuasion is a 29-year-old from Hastings who broadcasts from a glorified shed in his mum’s garden. “I’ve been playing racing games since I can remember,” Jimmy Broadbent tells us. “Then when I got a job, I discovered that I could spend all my money on toy steering wheels. I bought my first proper set-up in 2012, and it was absolutely my jam.” He soon started uploading footage of his hobby to YouTube. “Back then, it was just really fun to meet other people with the same hobby,” he explains, “because there wasn’t really anyone to talk to outside online forums.” And after a few years of honing his skills, ‘Sheddie Irvine’ started to live-stream his fun as well. It remained a hobby as his following grew slowly – before exploding.

Jaimini Jethwa’s script can hardly be faulted for freshness – the Hindu deities Vishnu and Brahma (or their Dundonian wide-boy avatars Vince and Barry) are in search of the goddess Lakshmi, who has also gone undercover deep on Tayside. With the trio fetching up in a badly-stocked Spar after hours, the prospect of the deities transformed into Dundonian minks and widos, indulging in the ‘banter’ that the (surely Oasis-influenced) title hints at – and all the effing and blinding that entails – does take some getting used to. Undoubtedly there will be some who affect to be offended by it, but they will almost certainly not bother to listen to it first. The end result is actually a sweetly philosophical piece in many ways, with ruminations on the nature of love and self hidden among the whities and minters. The dialogue does admittedly tend towards the ripe, but the local references never obscure the story. There is an almost recklessly bold ambition to Jethwa’s script, whether it is in the attempt to convey the divine in earthly terms or the conviction that Dundee is the best place to do that. If the home of the peh can be heavenly, of course, then pretty much anywhere can be, and it very nearly succeeds. The excellent Rehanna MacDonald gives Lakshmi tremendous energy, with Adam McNamara (Vince) and Daniel Portman (Barry) combining the earthy and high-flown with real skill.

Eleven employees of a Texas sheriff’s office have been fired and six suspended following the death of an inmate who was hit multiple times in the head by detention officers, authorities said on Friday. The Harris county sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, said he was “very upset and heartbroken” after a three-month investigation into the death of Jaquaree Simmons, 23, in February. Medical examiners ruled Simmons’ death a homicide from injuries to his head. “We have a duty to protect those in our care and that didn’t happen,” Gonzalez said. A sheriff’s office internal affairs investigation concluded Simmons had three fights with detention officers on 16 February, when the jail had lost power and water pressure during a deadly winter storm. The first use of force against Simmons took place that morning after he clogged the toilet of his jail cell and officers responded to clean it. That night, a detention officer hit Simmons in the face after he threw his meal tray at the officer and charged at him, according to authorities. When more officers were called in to take him for a medical evaluation, they hit him multiple times in the head, said Maj Thomas Diaz, who led the investigation. Simmons was evaluated by a doctor at a jail clinic and had a cut to his left eyebrow and upper lip but reported no pain. He was taken back to his cell but officers failed to bring him back to the clinic for follow-up X-rays, according to Diaz. Simmons was found unresponsive in his cell at 12.10pm on 17 February and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The investigation found detention officers failed to do visual checks of the inmates in the cell pod where Simmons was being held from 15 February until the moments before he was found, Diaz said. Usually these checks are done electronically but the system was down due to the winter storm. The officers fired or suspended were found to have violated policies including using excessive force, failing to document the use of force, not intervening when a fellow officer used force and making false statements to investigators, Diaz said. “These 11 people betrayed my trust and the trust of our community. They abused their authority,” Gonzalez said. “Their conduct toward Mr Simmons was reprehensible.” The 11 employees who were fired included nine detention officers, one detention sergeant and one deputy. The six suspended included four detention officers, one detention sergeant and one sheriff’s office sergeant. Their suspensions ranged from three to 10 days. Houston police are conducting a separate criminal investigation. The results will be presented to the Harris county district attorney’s office, which will determine if charges are filed. While Gonzalez declined to comment on the criminal investigation, he said he believes crimes were committed in connection with Simmons’ death. On 10 February, Simmons was booked into the county jail on a charge of a felon in possession of a firearm. Diaz said he had no health issues.

Name of the game: Satisfactory Price: 23.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 31 May Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 or later (64-Bit) Processor: i5-3570 3.4 GHz 4 Core Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Dedicated graphics card, GTX 770 2GB Storage: 15 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: TBD Processor: TBD Graphics: TBD Storage: TBD MB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 8 Jun, 2017. Software Developer: Dotemu. Publisher: Dotemu. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Over 25 years after the original release of Monster World IV, the cult classic 2D action-platformer has been remade for modern consoles. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World keeps the style and charm of the original, while updating the game to feature cel-shaded, 3D visuals. The game looks gorgeous, thanks to the eye-popping colours and bouncy animations. Even the soundtrack and sound effects have been updated for modern audiences. The game stars Asha as she and her pet Pepelogoo explore the interconnected world to find the four Elemental Spirits in each temple. From the temple designs to the main town, each part of the world is well designed with great puzzles and plenty of secrets to discover. Asha has access to a sword and shield, both of which can be upgraded with money found in the game. She can also purchase bangles that can extend her maximum health when equipped. Meanwhile, Pepelogoo allows Asha to double jump, glide, and is even used as a puzzle solving tool. This combination of traditional RPG and platforming elements blends together to create a fun, but simple to grasp adventure. Asha in Monster World’s biggest fault, however, comes in the updated save system. In the original game, the ability to save was locked behind the Sage of Save, a man who is located in several spots across the game. Saving would create a checkpoint next to the sage, who would then allow you to resume from that point if you died. While the sage is still located throughout the game in the remake, he no longer acts as a save point. Instead, you’re able to save at any time from the menu. While this is certainly more convenient, the absence of an auto-save makes it so that you will need to be constantly saving every few minutes in order to prevent yourself from losing all of your progress if you die. This ultimately kills the pace of the game, and is a major blemish on an otherwise fantastic remake. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World is a fantastic remake. While the save system feels as though it is painfully stuck in the past, every other aspect of the game is lovingly remade. For newcomers and longtime fans alike, this is a great adventure that you will certainly fall in love with. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Any Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000-5000 series (game in 720p) DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 1100 MB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 10 Processor: Any Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 1100 MB available space

Development of the first PCIe 5.0 SSDs just got a big boon with the industry's first ever PCIe 5.0 SSD controller, and Marvell spearheading the movement for the super speedy storage solution of the future. The big data being tossed around cloud data centres today spells a need for faster, higher bandwidth storage. Without it, cloud gaming is going to flop when the next generation of games come hurtling onto the scene, looking for intensely speedy service so you can play your games on any device you have lying around. According to Marvell's news post, with PCIe 5.0 support the Bravera SC5 "doubles the performance compared to PCIe 4.0 SSDs." As for security, Marvell say these new additions to the flash family "offer FIPS-compliant root of trust (RoT), AES 256-bit encryption and multi-key revocation," in order to comply with cloud data centres stringent security needs. All is looking up on the storage front then. With games getting larger by the day, and data security a top priority in our age of technology, we welcome such an advancement with open arms (and open slots). While this tech is initially touted for data centres, it won't be awfully long before even our desktop gaming PCs support the tech. Intel Alder Lake has planned support for PCIe 5.0, and while AMD is reportedly sticking with PCIe 4.0 for its next round of processors, I wouldn't suspect it to be long before it follows suit, too.

Apple and its security contractor Security Industry Specialists (SIS) were sued on Friday in Massachusetts as part of a multijurisdictional defamation and malicious prosecution complaint brought on behalf of Ousmane Bah, a New York resident misidentified as a shoplifter multiple times in 2018 and 2019. The lawsuit contends that Apple and SIS exhibited reckless disregard for the truth by misidentifying Bah as the perpetrator of multiple shoplifting crimes at iStores, leading to his unjustified arrest and to his defamation. The filing [PDF] in US District Court in Massachusetts aims to revive charges relevant to events in Boston that were excluded from related ongoing litigation in New York. A third related case is being heard in New Jersey. Apple and SIS have a qualified law enforcement privilege that allows them to err in store security-related accusations and not be sued for it. However, if they exhibit "reckless disregard for the truth" [PDF] – ignoring obvious facts, for example, they lose that privilege. Among the more startling allegations in the case is that an SIS VP falsely claimed that no SIS employee ever identified Bah to the NYPD or to Apple. The complaint points to an exhibit that's been submitted as evidence, an email from an SIS employee to an NYPD detective does in fact identify Bah as a shoplifter. The lawsuit also claims that Apple and SIS selectively deleted video evidence that would have exposed them to potential criminal and civil liability for filing false complaints with the police. In addition, it asserts Bah's apprehension was in part due to the application of unreliable facial-recognition technology in the shoplifting incidents in New York. Bah, who is Black, obtained a New York State temporary learner driver's permit in March 2018 at the age of 17, when he was an honors student at Bronx Latin Academy, a New York City high school. The document included his height, weight, date of birth, and eye color, but no photograph. According to the Massachusetts court filing, he had lost the temporary permit by May that year, but had obtained a permanent laminated copy that included his picture. ID or not ID In Greenwich, Connecticut in April 2018, Apple allegedly detained an individual for stealing store merchandise and identified the individual as Ousmane Bah based on the examination of the temporary learner's permit he is said to have had on him – this despite the fact that the ID says, "This temporary document is not to be used for identification purposes." The complaint states that the person detained was not Bah, who is 5'7" but a 6'1" impostor using the lost temporary learner's permit. Nonetheless, Apple personnel are said to have retained some video surveillance evidence and published the record with the name "Ousmane Bah" through an online system to make it available to SIS and Apple Stores in the Northeastern US. On May 24, 2018, SIS, acting in a security capacity for Apple, apprehended and handcuffed the impostor for allegedly stealing merchandise from a Parmus, New Jersey Apple Store. Again, it's claimed the impostor was carrying Bah's lost learner's permit and identified himself as such to authorities or tried to do so – the detained individual is said to have misspelled his stolen name as "Ousama Bah" before correcting the spelling. Yet the Paramus Police Department apparently did not make any further effort to verify the suspect's identity, content to accept the identification provided by the SIS employee who apprehended the shoplifter. It's also claimed SIS told authorities it had video evidence. "Without probable cause, SIS began linking prior thefts in the region involving the impostor to the Plaintiff," the complaint says, with SIS representing to police that video of these other thefts, such as one at the Short Hills Apple Store near Millburn, NJ on May 5, 2018. At this point, it's alleged that SIS, on behalf of Apple, distributed a "Be on the Lookout" (BOLO) notice with the impostor's image but the name "Ousmane Bah" as a "known shoplifter." This is said to have been sent not only to Apple Stores but to police departments in the region. Then there was the May 31, 2018 theft of a dozen Apple Pencils from an Apple Store in Boston. It's claimed that an SIS employee in his police report accused Ousmane Bah – who was not in Massachusetts at the time – of the thefts and said there was video to back that up.