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Everything posted by S9OUL.
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Hello. Please explain this part, do you mean that this account is led by 2 brothers or something like that? A question! For how long you are planning to stay here, I mean what kind of reasons would be if you left?
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Mini announced a new appearance package for the Countryman called the Boardwalk Edition back in December, and now the company has revealed how much it will cost. With the $850 destination fee, it rings in at $39,215 for the front-wheel-drive version, or $41,215 for the all-wheel-drive. That's not cheap, but it comes with quite a bit. Based on the Cooper S Countryman and painted in a unique Deep Laguna Metallic paint, it comes with a Pin Spoke wheels, external trim, and contrasting roof all in Piano Black. The interior is available with only one upholstery, Cross Punch leather also in black. A touchscreen nav package comes standard on Boardwalks, which includes Apple CarPlay, wireless charging, and real-time traffic. The Boardwalk Edition also includes equipment from the normally $2,000 Premium Package, including LED fog and headlights, power-folding and auto-dimming mirrors, heated front seats and automatic climate control. Additionally, the Boardwalk Edition also receives bespoke door sills, roof and dashboard graphics, as well as unique Boardwalk side scuttles standard. Compared to a a similarly equipped Signature trim with Premium Package, the Boardwalk Edition's price has a discount of a hair less than $1,000. If you like that package and the Deep Laguna color, then this is the trim for you. The Mini Countryman Boardwalk Edition will hit dealerships in April 2021. There's no word on whether a Park Place Edition will follow.
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White middle-aged women experienced the most severe, prolonged symptoms after being treated in hospital for Covid-19, research suggests. The study, led by the National Institute for Health Research, also found that 70 per cent of coronavirus hospital patients had not fully recovered five months after being discharged. This group were found to suffer persistently from nine symptoms including breathlessness, fatigue and muscle pains. The UK-wide study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, analysed 1,077 patients discharged from hospital between March and November 2020 following an episode of the virus. Figures showed that middle-aged, white women with at least two diseases such as diabetes, lung or heart disease suffered from more persistent symptoms compared to other groups. Chris Brightling, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Leicester and the chief investigator for the study, said: “While the profile of patients being admitted to hospital with Covid-19 is disproportionately male and from an ethnic minority background, our study finds that those who have the most severe prolonged symptoms tend to be white women aged approximately 40 to 60 who have at least two long-term health conditions, such as asthma or diabetes.” It also found that more than 25 per cent of participants had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety and depression, while 12 per cent had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder at their five-month follow-up But researchers noted that the participants in the study were younger than the 300,000 people in the UK that survived hospital admissions for coronavirus. A much smaller research project by the University of Glasgow found women under 50 were seven times more likely to be more breathless, and twice as likely to report worse fatigue than men of the same age who had had the illness, seven months after hospital treatment. Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer and co-lead for the NIHR, said: “We are in the foothills of our understanding of long-term effects of Covid. “It is important that we work out what exactly the various elements of what is currently termed long Covid are so we can target actions to prevent and treat people suffering with long-term effects.”
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The Brazilian company JBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has announced record profits a day after it pledged to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 – the first global meat and poultry company to do so. Surging exports to China and Hong Kong fed its record profit of 4bn Brazilian reais (£516m) for the last quarter of 2020 – up a staggering 65% on the previous year – the company said on Wednesday night. Sales to China and Hong Kong from Brazil grew by about 60%, it said. The results meant the world’s biggest protein producer had “plenty of money to spend in removing illegal deforestation from its Amazon supply chain”, as it promised to do by 2025, said Mauro Armelin, director of Friends of the Earth for the Brazilian Amazon. And it had no excuses if it failed to meet a target it originally promised to hit in 2011, he added. “They have enough money to invest in their production chain,” said Armelin. “Those billions and billions are not just to pay dividends to shareholders.” Booming exports to China and the collapse of the Brazilian real were key to JBS’s record profits, said Fernando Iglesias, an analyst at the consultancy Safras & Mercado (Harvests and Market). “JBS has always been one of the Brazilian companies that most benefited from China and always knew how to take advantage of this,” he said. The company said it proposed paying out R$2.5bn in dividends in 2021. Business is also blossoming for its Brazilian meat-processing rivals Minerva and Marfrig. All three Brazilian meat companies have come under intense pressure in recent years to eliminate illegal deforestation from their Amazon supplier farms. They monitor the finishing farms that sell to their abattoirs – called “direct suppliers”. But they are unable to control the “indirect suppliers” selling to finishing farms or other supplier farms. Last year both JBS and Marfrig announced plans to monitor all their Amazon supply chains by 2025 and Minerva is working on a solution using a system called Visipec. On Wednesday, Marfrig said that by the end of 2020 it was already monitoring 62% of its Amazon supply chain. On Tuesday, JBS promised to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. “Climate change is the big challenge of our time,” the JBS chief executive, Gilberto Tomazoni, said in a statement. “Agriculture can and should be part of the global climatic solution.”
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Name of the game: Tabletop Simulator Price: 9.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 29 March Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 SP1+ Processor: SSE2 instruction set support. Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities. DirectX: Version 10 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 3 GB available space
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Game Information: Initial release date: 24 Sep, 2020 Software Developer: Big Ant Studios. Publisher: Nacon. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. The wait for a good tennis game has, at times, felt longer than Roger Federer’s career – but Tennis World Tour 2 on PlayStation 4 offered a glimmer of hope last year. This new Complete Edition for PS5 repackages the original sports simulation and all of its DLC, but incorporates a number of key under-the-hood improvements as well. World-renowned pros like Andy Murray and Maria Sharapova have been added to the roster, as have a suite of animations inspired by real-world stars. Running at 60 frames-per-second in 4K, it looks a lot better as well – although player model close ups can be terrifying. The game is decent on the court, with its Top Spin 4-inspired timing based rallies. You tap your chosen shot button when you want to swing for a precision shot, and hold it to power it up; releasing the input at the right moment is crucial, as your timing correlates to the positioning and power of your swing. At its best, the sequel captures the flow of real-world tennis, allowing you to push-and-pull your opponent around the court, before finishing them off with a well-placed winner down the line. However, a lack of animations means it’s not always able to reflect your actions, meaning that you’ll snap into position so that the title’s logic can compensate. The difficulty curve also feels wrong when playing against the AI; there’s a sense of progression in Career Mode where you’ll struggle to initially go deep in competitions, which makes sense, but the computer absolutely batters us consistently when receiving our Max Power serves, crushing first-time backhand returns like they’re nothing – yet it leaves itself open to Break Points all the time. This makes for a frustrating and unrealistic experience, where the server often feels disadvantaged, which isn’t how tennis works. New arenas, and the addition of international tournaments like the ATP Cup, complement existing events like the French Open making for a much more complete overall tennis experience than before. We’re still not particularly fond of the cards system, which allows you to assemble decks of stat-boosting skills to play at opportune moments, although we understand the title’s intent of capturing those superhuman feats real-world players seem capable of when under the kosh. The vastly improved loading times do massively improve the flow of the release, while the overall image quality makes the many arenas a lot more visually appealing. You can find out a lot more about the game in our original Tennis World Tour 2 PS4 review, as although this version is more refined, many of the features remain unchanged. There’s undeniably a strong foundation for Nacon and Big Ant to work from here, it just needs to spend more time in the motion capture studio refining the gameplay and presentation. It’s been a long wait for a good tennis game, but we have a legitimate contender to Top Spin 4’s crown at last. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. OS: Windows 10. Processor: Intel Core i5-3470, 3.2 GHz | AMD FX-6300, 3.5 GHz. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760, 2 GB | AMD Radeon HD 7870, 2 GB. DirectX: Version 11. Storage: 11 GB available space.
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The European Union wants 20,000 GPUs to build a machine capable of running a full simulated digital twin of Earth. Get to the back of the line, bois. You know there's a graphics card crisis going on, right? Though I have found a GTX 1660 Super for $800, if that helps. Sadly, Destination Earth (or DestinE as the cool kids call it) isn't going to be the world's most detailed MMO, or some digital live service version of The Amazing Race, but a "high-precision digital model of the Earth to monitor and simulate natural and human activity." That full, GPU-heavy simulation is the end-goal for the project, which will bring together multiple 'digital twins' of the Earth, with each model simulating a different part of the planet's systems. Weather forecasting and climate change, food and water security, global ocean circulation, and the biogeochemistry of the oceans are all examples proposed by the scientists running the project. Rather ominously it's also being used "on a global scale to speed up the green transition and help plan for major environmental degradation and disasters." Because those, sadly, are going to be inevitable. The plan for the DestinE simulations is to have them to feed data into the EU's efforts to become carbon neutral by 2050 and help inform its environmental strategies going forward. It's all part of a $1.2tn (€1tn) investment in the bloc's green technologies. As well as standard modelling it will allow users to create different scenarios and see what happens if certain parameters are changed, both in the short term and over an extended period of time. The European Commission says that initially DestinE will only serve public authorities, but will eventually be opened up to serve the wider scientific and industrial communities. And to get all that information modelled as precisely as its scientists need it's currently estimated that they'll need at least four times the computational power currently inside the Cray Piz Daint supercomputer in Zurich. That's a machine with more than 5,000 Pascal-powered Nvidia Tesla P100 GPUs, which in turn means the scientists need to squeeze around 20,000 graphics chips into the final supercomputer to manage such a detailed Earthly simulation. And it's definitely going to be used for science, not a clever ploy for the EU to build the biggest Ethereum mining rig known to humankind. Absolutely not. As anyone who's paid attention to the trials of cryptocurrency mining knows, that sort of setup is also going to require a whole lot of juice to power it, with estimates putting it at some 20MW. And if that's built in a location which uses so-called 'dirty' power, the simulation itself will be contributing a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere simply by its own operation. It will need to be located in a place where renewable energy is plentiful to avoid being a problem that it's own computational power is attempting to solve.
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The GNOME project has released version 40 of its Linux desktop, with a new design for finding and launching applications and updated core apps. GNOME is the default desktop for numerous Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Red Hat and variants such as Fedora and CentOS Stream, SUSE, and many more. Version 40 is the first to use a new numbering scheme. The previous version was 3.38, but the project did not want to get to 4.0 out of concern that it would be perceived as too big a shift. "If we ever did release 4, then people would see it as a huge change in [that] everything's going to be broken again, and that's not really what we've got," executive director Neil McGovern told The Reg last year. There is history here: GNOME 3.0 caused considerable grief and was described by Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, as "crazy crap" and "really annoying". The messaging for GNOME 40 is mixed, though, since going from 3.38 to 40 is quite a jump, and the GNOME marketing people have created a dedicated site to trumpet the new release. From now, perhaps, the emphasis will be on smaller iterative updates. GNOME organises application shortcuts into Activities, and in version 40 the way these are displayed has been revamped. The Activities Overview shows workspaces at the top, below it a grid of shortcuts called the App Grid, and at the bottom a taskbar called the dash. The dash only shows in the overview, unless you install an extension called Dash to Dock. The idea is that users take advantage of keyboard shortcuts, like Super + Alt + up/down arrow for toggling the overview. "Super" means the Windows or Apple key. There is also improved Touchpad support, with a three-finger gesture for toggling the overview and switching workspaces. Changes in the core apps include a redesigned Weather app, updated tabbed browsing in the web browser, called simply Web or Epiphany, and a revamped file manager with a new preferences dialog. Users can also enable a Compose key, such as the little-used Right Super, making it easier to enter special characters. There are changes to multi-monitor support in GNOME 40, such as the introduction of the workspace navigator on secondary displays. There is also a change from workspaces being vertical (in a virtual sense) to horizontal. "Horizontal workspaces are a feature of every other desktop out there. Not only is it how every other desktop does it, but it is also how GNOME used to do it prior to 3.0, and how GNOME's classic mode continues to do it," say the team. It all ties in with a design theme in GNOME 40, a "film-strip of workspaces." Under the covers the big new feature is the use of GTK 4, a major new version of the GNOME toolkit used by developers to build applications (unless, guided by Canonical, they defect to Flutter). GTK 4.0 was released in December 2020 after four years in development – underlining that GNOME 40 is in fact more than just a point upgrade. There is also a push towards using Flatpak for packaging applications, for safer and easier deployment than traditional package managers. The current release is now GTK 4.01, released in January. A quick way to get hold of GNOME 40 is to install the just-released Fedora 34 beta, ahead of the full release towards the end of April. Ubuntu is sticking with GNOME 3.38 for the 21.04 release, with concerns including "the new shell design, is it going to be fully ready in one cycle? What's the impact on our desktop and extensions? It's likely that we will have design questions to resolve and non-trivial code changes." GNOME 40 can be expected in the Ubuntu October release.
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He now sits on three major automotive company boards, serving as vice-chairman of the board at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and a board member at Tata, which owns both JLR and TVS. Talking to Autocar sibling title Autocar Professional, current TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan said Speth has been chosen for the role because of his “enormous capabilities and proven leadership at JLR, which is today a global brand with outstanding quality and style”. He said TVS also hopes to exploit Speth’s “great domain knowledge” of the automotive industry to improve the company, which has recently been on an expansion drive, acquiring the UK’s Norton Motorcycles in April 2020. Speth, who was replaced as the CEO of JLR by ex-Renault chief Thierry Bolloré, had the helm at JLR for 10 years. He helped the firm grow substantially during that period, including leading its push into new markets, establishing factories in China, the US and Slovakia. Speth was also a driving force behind the expansion of JLR’s line-up, overseeing the introduction of the Range Rover Velar and the electric Jaguar I-Pace. It is this experience that TVS will be hoping to tap as it seeks to “build an entity that is faster, agile and more driven”. TVS Motor Company is the third largest motorcycle company in India and exports bikes to more than 60 countries.
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The Duke of Sussex has been working at his new job for a “few months”, his boss has revealed. Alexi Robichaux, chief executive of US professional coaching and mental health firm BetterUp, said he has been “impressed” with Harry’s “incredible attitude” following his appointment as chief impact officer. The duke is focusing on “helping to change the dialogue around mental health”, and his royal title is not used in the workplace, he added. Mr Robichaux told BBC News: “He’s been in the role for a couple of months and we’re really excited to share the news with the world. “He’s focusing on a few areas… helping to change the dialogue around mental health to focus on strength building and mental fitness. “The most impressing thing has been his focus singularly on how can he be of service, how can he advance his vision and his mission and how can we make a positive impact on the world together. “He’s got an incredible attitude and he is filled with energy and enthusiasm.” Mr Robichaux said the duke “likes to be called Harry in the workplace, so we just address him as Harry”. He refused to comment on how much the duke is being paid for his role and also declined to say how many hours he would work. Mr Robichaux also told Sky News: “We were just so impressed, and really I think there was such a natural chemistry and synergy around the insights and the contributions he can make creatively to BetterUp in ensuring that we achieve our mission. “Bigger than commercial success, this is about global impact. “And so as we crafted the role together, those four buckets of opportunities, we came to the title ‘chief impact officer’, really denoting that he’s focused on our mission and he’s focused on ensuring that we’re doing everything we can to achieve our mission on a bigger and larger and grander scale to impact the lives of more people.”
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The German government has agreed a draft law to naturalise some descendants of Nazi victims who were previously denied citizenship. Described by Berlin as a symbolic step, the measure helps close legal loopholes that had led to many victims’ descendants having their citizenship application rejected. “This is not just about putting things right, it is about apologising in profound shame,” said the interior minister, Horst Seehofer. “It is a huge fortune for our country if people want to become German, despite the fact that we took everything from their ancestors.” While Germany has long allowed descendants of persecuted Jews to reclaim citizenship, the lack of a legal framework meant many applicants were rejected before a rule change in 2019. Some were denied because their ancestors fled Germany and took on another nationality before their citizenship was officially revoked. Others were rejected because they were born to a German mother and non-German father before 1 April 1953. Passing the 2019 decree into law was a way of giving them “the value they deserved” while putting beneficiaries on a firmer legal footing, an interior ministry spokesperson said. Germany’s Central Council of Jews said the previous decree had been “inadequate” and it had long campaigned for a statutory right. “It is gesture of decency if both the victims and their descendants are able to claim German citizenship on legal grounds,” said the council’s president, Josef Schuster. The difficulties for some in using ancestry claims for citizenship came into focus partly due to the sharp rise in number of applications from Britons evoking Nazi persecution of their ancestors after the UK voted to leave the EU. From 43 such applications in 2015, the number soared to 1,506 in 2018, according to ministry figures. In 2019 Austria also changed its citizenship law to allow the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who fled the Nazis to be renaturalised. Previously, only Holocaust survivors themselves had been able to obtain Austrian nationality.
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Name of the game: Overcooked! 2 Price: 12.49$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: After 2 dasy Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: WIN7-64 bit Processor: Intel i3-2100 / AMD A8-5600k Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 630 / Radeon HD 6570 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 3 GB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Win7 -64 bit Processor: Intel i5-650 / AMD A10-5800K Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 / Radeon HD 7510 Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card
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Game Information: Initial release date: 26 Mar, 2021. Software Developer: Electronic Arts. Publisher: EA Originals. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Like its predecessor, It Takes Two is only playable in local or online co-op. In keeping with this theme of working together, associate editor Stephen Tailby enlisted the help of his girlfriend, Rachel, for this review. You'll hear from both of them below as they go over their thoughts on this shared experience, laid out in a back-and-forth style. Enjoy. Stephen: Alright, well, we should begin at the beginning. It Takes Two is a co-op action adventure from Josef Fares and his team at Hazelight. Like the studio's previous game, A Way Out, the action largely splits the screen in two and requires both players to work together to navigate the world, beat baddies, and solve puzzles. However, the team has really upped the ante this time. The game's all about Cody and May, a couple just about to get divorced. We also meet Rose, their daughter, in the opening sequence. What did you make of the introduction? Rachel: I think the set up of the situation was quite clear, but honestly Rose freaked me out quite a bit. Something about her was a bit lifeless, but you do get the idea of what's going on. Stephen: Yeah, I think we agree that her performance is quite robotic. If we could throw one real criticism at the game, it'd be a mix of some stilted acting and odd writing. Anyway, after wishing for her parents to become friends again, they transform into two hand-made dolls, and so begins their quest. Guided by a flamboyant book, the pair are forced to cooperate in order to return to normal. Once the game puts you in control, things start to improve, don't they? Rachel: For sure, you start off in a shed and end up arguing and fighting a vacuum cleaner that May had forgotten to fix. You then get given tools and you learn how to start working together on some parts. Very satisfying. I'm finding it hard not to give too much stuff away, being my first review, but I promise I won't give you any more specifics. Stephen: Don't worry, they can handle it. If not, I'll take the fall. Rachel: What a gent. Stephen: But yes, the game's greatest strength has got to be its sheer variety. As you said, players start off in the shed, but throughout the 12-14 hour runtime, you'll visit a large number of new environments, each one completely different from the last. I don't want to spoil anything in particular, but I think it's fair to say that players won't be able to guess where things go. Some of the levels are quite linear but others are vast, with lots to discover. Rachel: I love exploring the big levels with you, there's lots of really cute mini games to find (which I won many of... at least 10 per cent of the time), and interactive bits that you can just hang out at and have fun. Stephen: Yeah, lots of mini games off the beaten path (some of which are quite involved) as well as some fun distractions and Easter eggs to keep you amused. I think what's maybe more impressive than the variety in levels is the variety in gameplay. The controls are kept very simple throughout, but on a regular basis, the game is giving you new abilities or gadgets, some of which are only there for a few minutes. You're able to run, jump, dash, and swing from ropes, but "disposable" mechanics like flight or using magnets come and go all the time. All of these varied gameplay changes feel great too, and sometimes even the presentation changes to match what's happening. The game literally changes genre several times. It's all very dynamic, but controls remain consistent, which is great. Rachel: I have something to say about the controls. I'm usually the one who needs someone to take over as I just can't make a jump or aim and shoot at the same time, but I actually only needed help once (thanks Steve). And that was near the beginning. Come the end, I was swinging and jumping and aiming all at the same time, which is some kind of miracle. I think it's very cool that they made the controls simple enough for me to use. I even know what R3 is now. Stephen: It probably goes without saying, but to progress you need to work together, and there are some ingenious puzzles, boss fights, and platforming sequences that lean into this. It's a fantastic co-op experience, and the variety we've spoken about just means you'll probably never grow tired of playing. It's a refreshingly imaginative game that throws new ideas at you constantly. When it comes to story, this is where some small cracks start to form. The problem with a game starring an estranged couple is that they hate each other. For the first half of the game, they snipe and they pick at one another — as is to be expected I guess — but it doesn't make for a particularly enjoyable atmosphere. Rachel: Yeah, I don't actually think couples should play this together. Although the actual playing of the game is fun, whenever they argued it made me feel irritated, and if a couple are on the rocks, I just don't think this would be a game that would bring out your best sides. I mean, we made it through okay but do you think other couples need to be aware of this? Stephen: Well, I do think that's an interesting point! Certainly the first half, the hostility between the pair can be off-putting. It's good you bring this up, because I don't want Push Square to be held accountable for any real-world fallouts. Rachel: Fair. I also think May sniped more than Cody did, and she did sometimes bring a downer to a really lovely place. But it does make me think, maybe that's what the game does show; if you're not getting on with the person you're hanging out with, it can taint a place, no matter how nice it is. I don't want to give anything away, but at some points I did just think that they really should just part ways and be done with it. Stephen: What's odd about the narrative, though, is that the latter half sees quite a sudden change in their attitude. I was expecting a gentler, more gradual growth, but it feels like things accelerate rather quickly. There are some bizarre turns in the adventure too — some are delightful, but one in particular is downright disturbing. Rachel: I know the bit you mean. Just hope I don't have nightmares. Stephen: What I will say is that, nightmarish scenes or not, the game looks lovely. Some details don't fare well on close inspection, but the overall visuals are wonderfully vibrant, and there's some excellent texture work going on too. Plus, it all runs at a very solid 60 frames-per-second; I only noticed one moment where it dips. To be honest, this is a difficult game to review, because so much of the joy it provides is best experienced fresh. It's bursting with colour and invention, and the varied pace, gameplay, and levels mean Josef can keep his thousand dollars. Rachel: Agreed. I couldn't get bored playing this game, and I did really enjoy it. The imagination behind it is incredible, and I have never seen such gorgeous cushions. I want some so badly. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5 3570K or AMD Ryzen 3 1300x Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 or AMD R9 290X DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 50 GB available space
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More delays for the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti now, with a report from ITHome (via. VideoCardz) speculating another pushback of the release date. Looks like we may not be seeing these muscle-class GPUs as soon as we'd hoped. This most recent delay—the fifth one now—has set the RTX 3080 Ti back from its potential mid-April launch, to around mid-May time. Originally these cards were meant to greet us back in January, but the situation has deteriorated since then. Unsurprising in light of the current web of global shitstorms causing the GPU shortage, but still disappointing news. The two cards we expect to see in May then, if at all, are the RTX 3080 Ti 12GB and the RTX 3070 Ti 8GB. The 3080 Ti will be packing 10,240 CUDA cores against the 3070 Ti's 6,144, as well as memory bandwidths of around 864 GB/s (or 912 GB/s depending on who you believe) and 608 GB/s, respectively. We expect the 3080 Ti to come with a base clock of approximately 1,400 MHz, with boosts in the region of 1,700 MHz. We're betting on the base price being something in the region of $999, though the reality is that we're going to be seeing them sold all over the net for stupid money.
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Sync is here for the wafer-thin Venn intersection of Linux users running the Edge browser and those who are happy to sign in using a Microsoft account. Arriving last night from version 91.0.831.1 of Microsoft's Dev Channel, users would be able to synchronise their favourites, extensions, and passwords over devices. So long as they login with their Microsoft account, of course. While the thought of using a Microsoft account might cause the odd facial twitch or two among penguinistas, El Reg could point out that dipping a toe into the Redmondian waters by installing Edge in the first place sets one on a journey with an inevitable conclusion. The functionality requires a personal Microsoft account and the user must manually enable it as an experimental option. Kyle Pflug, Microsoft principal PM lead for the Edge developer ecosystem, said: "We hope to turn this on by default very soon." The update brings the Edge experience on Linux closer to that enjoyed by users on other platforms. There is, however, a way to go yet. The first preview builds of Edge for Linux arrived last October for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE, and was aimed squarely at developers. The goal was to give those developing under Linux a target for testing their sites and apps. Signing in with a Microsoft account was promised in a "future preview" and now here it is. Azure Active Directory support, however, remains absent. Probably not a bad thing considering the problems Microsoft has had with its authentication servers in recent weeks. The team has also tinkered with themes for the Linux version of the browser, although warned that some extensions, such as Microsoft's own Editor, tended to crash on install and be subsequently disabled. "We're currently investigating," said Microsoft. The Linux version of Edge has remained resolutely in the weekly updated Dev Channel and has yet to trouble the Insider Beta Channel, a precursor to being declared stable. ®
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Triumph is preparing to add at least one electric motorcycle to its range. It released sketches of a concept and images of a close-to-production drivetrain to illustrate the path it plans to take to the world of electrification. Called TE-1, the prototype depicted in the sketches wears a sporty design that doesn't scream, "Look at me, I'm electric!" Add an exhaust system, and it could easily pass as a gasoline-powered bike. That was intentional, according to the company. It wants the TE-1 to appeal to enthusiasts currently riding a piston-powered model. Triumph launched the EV project in May 2019 with funding from the Office of Zero-Emission Vehicles, meaning British taxpayers contributed to the bike's development. It enlisted the help of Williams Advanced Engineering, Integral Powertrain, and WMG at the University of Warwick. Nearly two years later, the quartet designed a system that reportedly strikes an ideal balance between power and energy. Triumph noted a lot of attention was allocated to the 15-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which was developed to deliver sustained power and quick charging times. Power for the TE-1 comes from an electric motor that delivers 174 horsepower at peak and 107 horses of continuous power. Triumph chose not to publish additional specifications, but Motorcycle News learned the bike weighs 485 pounds and offers up to 120 miles of range. Quick-charging technology zaps the battery pack with an 80% charge in about 20 minutes. Triumph stressed it aimed to give riders the performance of an internal-combustion-powered bike in an electric package, but what you see isn't necessarily what will land in showrooms. Triumph will begin testing the TE-1 prototype in the coming months, but it told Motorcycle News that it still needs to clear the cost hurdle before it approves the model for production. When it will do that is up in the air. "For us, it has to be at a price point where there's enough people willing to pay for it. While battery costs are coming down, they're still expensive, so the bike will come to the market when we can get it down to a price that we think people are willing to pay," concluded Steve Sargent, the company's chief product officer.
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THE Catholic Church has hit out at the British government over a threat to force the roll-out of abortion services in the north. In a statement, the northern bishops said they are "deeply concerned by the announcement that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intends to bypass the NI Assembly to force the Minister for Health here to commission some of the most extreme and liberal abortion services on these islands". "This is the latest in a line of unilateral interventions by the current Westminster government to portray a reckless disregard for the fragile checks and balances of the international peace settlement between these islands." They added: "What Westminster seeks to impose, against the clear will of a majority of people here, is a law which blatantly undermines the right to life of unborn children and promotes an abhorrent and indefensible prejudice against persons with disabilities, even before they are born." The statement called on all MLAs and political parties "not to meekly acquiesce in this effort to bypass internationally agreed devolved structures". "This is not a time for silence or strategic opting out." It came as Health Minister Robin Swann yesterday defended his handling of a Stormont stand-off over the commissioning of abortion services. He was answering an urgent oral question in the assembly on the failure to act a year on from the introduction of regulations liberalising the law. While individual health trusts are offering services on an ad-hoc basis, Mr Swann claimed he cannot commission services centrally without the executive agreeing to proposals tabled last year. "I'm obliged, under the ministerial code, to bring this matter to the Executive to discuss and agree before the matter can be proceeded," he said.
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Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have spotted an unusual signal in their data that may be the first hint of a new kind of physics. The LHCb collaboration, one of four main teams at the LHC, analysed 10 years of data on how unstable particles called B mesons, created momentarily in the vast machine, decayed into more familiar matter such as electrons. The mathematical framework that underpins scientists’ understanding of the subatomic world, known as the standard model of particle physics, firmly maintains that the particles should break down into products that include electrons at exactly the same rate as they do into products that include a heavier cousin of the electron, a particle called a muon. But results released by Cern on Tuesday suggest that something unusual is happening. The B mesons are not decaying in the way the model says they should: instead of producing electrons and muons at the same rate, nature appears to favour the route that ends with electrons. “We would expect this particle to decay into the final state containing electrons and the final state containing muons at the same rate as each other,” said Prof Chris Parkes, an experimental particle physicist at the University of Manchester and spokesperson for the LHCb collaboration. “What we have is an intriguing hint that maybe these two processes don’t happen at the same rate, but it’s not conclusive.” In physics parlance, the result has a significance of 3.1 sigma, meaning the chance of it being a fluke is about one in 1,000. While that may sound convincing evidence, particle physicists tend not to claim a new discovery until a result reaches a significance of five sigma, where the chance of it being a statistical quirk are reduced to one in a few million. “It’s an intriguing hint, but we have seen sigmas come and go before. It happens surprisingly frequently,” Parkes said. The standard model of particle physics describes the particles and forces that govern the subatomic world. Constructed over the past half century, it defines how elementary particles called quarks build protons and neutrons inside atomic nuclei, and how these, usually combined with electrons, make up all known matter. The model also explains three of the four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism; the strong force, which holds atomic nuclei together; and the weak force which causes nuclear reactions in the sun. But the standard model does not describe everything. It does not explain the fourth force, gravity, and perhaps more strikingly, says nothing about the 95% of the universe that physicists believe is not constructed from normal matter. Much of the cosmos, they believe, consists of dark energy, a force that appears to be driving the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, a mysterious substance that seems to hold the cosmic web of matter in place like an invisible skeleton.
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Name of the game: Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace Price: 15.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: After 20h Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7, 64-bit Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 2.6 GHz or AMD Phenom 9950 Quad Core 2.6 GHz Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or better DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 5 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
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Game Information: Initial release date: 23 Oct, 2020. Software Developer: Obsidian Entertainment. Publisher: Private Division. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos is the game's second and final expansion. Just like Peril on Gorgon, it's another solid adventure that takes you to a whole new location. This time around, the crew of the Unreliable find themselves on the Grand Colonial — essentially a massive hotel complex that orbits the atmosphere of Eridanos, a gas giant. As far as settings go it's certainly an intriguing choice, and its numerous environments are much more diverse than you might think. As the name of the DLC suggests, you're here to solve a murder — and not just any murder. The most recognisable face in the entire colony, actress Halcyon Helen, has been found dead in the hotel ballroom, with mysterious circumstances surrounding her sudden demise. Naturally, it's your job to point the finger. The first few hours of Murder on Eridanos are very promising. You journey to each of the Grand Colonial's main facilities in order to question suspects and gather clues, meeting all kinds of wacky characters. It's easy to become invested thanks to the expansion's typically excellent dialogue and subsequent dialogue options — many of which are brilliantly comical. You can fully embrace the role of a professional inspector if you wish — or you can bumble your way through the process, casually insulting people and jumping to conclusions. Either way, there's a lot of room for good role-playing. It's unfortunate, then, that the DLC really drops the ball later on. Although there's still enjoyment to be had in how unapologetically daft it all is, there's a distinct air of disappointment as the plot approaches its climax. It's admittedly difficult to write about without spoiling anything, but ultimately, it's a serious misstep that takes the edge off this otherwise eyebrow-raising adventure. As alluded, there's still enough to like about Murder on Eridanos for us to recommend it. There are a bunch of fun side quests to get stuck into and a number of secrets to discover — including some new endgame equipment that's cleverly hidden away — but it's hard to shake the feeling that this last hurrah could, and probably should, have hit a lot harder. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. OS: Windows 10 64bit. Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470. Storage: 40 GB available space.
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A Bloomberg report suggests that there is a new Switch on the way that will use a new system on a chip (SoC) from Nvidia. We've previously dreamed about the so-called Switch Pro being an awesome hand-held streaming client, but the promise of local DLSS powering upscaling to 4K caught our interest and has us salivating over the prospect of an updated Shield. The existing Nintendo Switch uses Nvidia's Tegra X1, while the most up to date version of the Nvidia Shield, The Shield TV Pro, uses a slightly updated version of that chip, the Tegra X1+. It boasts a 25 percent higher clock speed, but is otherwise the same. The ARM-based Tegra X1 has four ARM Cortex A57 cores and four inaccessible ARM A53 cores along with 256 Maxwell CUDA Cores running at 1GHz. The Shield TV Pro already supports AI upscaling for video, although it lacks the hardware to handle DLSS locally itself, nor can it match the fidelity that DLSS is able to achieve. Right now all the super sampling is handled on the server side for GeForce Now game streaming. A newer chip could handle a form of DLSS upscaling within the Shield itself, meaning that you wouldn't need such a phat internet pipe to play games at 4K. If the Tensor Cores in a new Ampere-based Shield could be used for a content-agnostic DLSS-analogue that worked on simple video streams, rather than needing to be added on a per-game basis, then you would only need a low-res stream from the source. The updated Shield could then do all the super-smart super sampling on the client end. Though what that might do for latency we're not entirely sure. Nvidia has released numerous iterations of its offerings SoC offerings since the Tegra X1 was first introduced, including the Pascal-based Tegra X2, the Volta-based Xavier, and most recently Orin. Orin would appear to have the digital makeup needed to deliver on the promise set out by the Bloomberg rumour. Orin was first announced at the GPU Technology Conference 2018, where Nvidia boasted it had 17 billion transistors and 12 ARM Hercules cores. Orin is Ampere-based and therefore has access to the Tensor cores necessary to weave the DLSS magic. Not only that, but while the Tegra X1 has 256 CUDA Cores, Orin has 2048 CUDA Cores. The assumption was that Orin was destined for the vehicle market, but if these rumours for the Nintendo Switch Pro are true, then it looks like a lot of the hard work would be done for a new Shield as well. A Shield capable of streaming using GeForce Now and upscaling to 4K at high refresh rates at the same time. Who knows, Nvidia could even try going back to making a Shield with a built-in screen so that our dream of a handheld GeForce Now streaming client could be made a reality. Fingers crossed.
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While its managers squabble, engineers at Microsoft and Google have put their heads together to ease some of the more severe developer pain points in browsers. Spoiler: it involves CSS. Those who remember Microsoft's shenanigans during the heyday of Internet Explorer will doubtless be feeling a twinge of irony at the thought of the Windows giant signing up to a browser compatibility initiative, but here we are. Google is very much the gorilla in the room when it comes to browsers nowadays and the Chromium project that underlies its Chrome browser forms the basis of many po[CENSORED]r web-surfing applications, including Microsoft's Edge and Vivaldi. The ad slinger's involvement in the Compat 2021 project augers well for progress. "Compatibility on the web has always been a big challenge for developers," said Google with breath-taking understatement, before noting research directing the efforts of engineers to five main pain areas, all of which fall under CSS (rather than, oh, maybe browser extensions?). Engineers at Microsoft, Google, and Igalia (regular contributors to Chromium and WebKit) will be working on fixing five areas in 2021 – CSS Flexbox; CSS Grid; transforms; the aspect-ratio property; and position: sticky. Progress can be measured on a handy dashboard, showing how well preview builds of Chrome/Edge, Firefox, and Safari are doing against those focus areas, with up to 20 points per feature assigned to the score for a potential total of 100. The goal of browser compatibility across vendors is noble, certainly for developers weary of the vagaries of CSS when dealing with Chromium, Gecko, or WebKit-based browsers. However, while focusing on five problematic areas is welcome, the initiative does not address other issues that might leave customers wondering just how compatible their chosen browser is, namely the habit some vendors have of blocking website functionality based on what is lurking in the User Agent string. If browsers do indeed become as compatible as Google, Microsoft, and the Compat 2021 initiative desire, then such shenanigans will not be needed. Right?
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