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The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has accused the EU of trying to erect a border down the Irish Sea as he told a US audience that it was the EU that had been doing most to threaten the Northern Ireland protocol and damage the Good Friday agreement. His remarks came at the end of a setpiece speech at the Aspen Forum in which he extolled Britain as a force for good determined to build a broader caucus of nations ranged against a dangerous minority determined to ransack the international system. His Northern Ireland remarks prompted the pro-Irish congressman Brendan Boyle to ask whether the UK was going to continue unilaterally delaying the implementation of the protocol. Boyle said the UK had twice now taken unilateral actions with respect to delaying the Northern Ireland protocol. He asked if the UK government was going to continue with its disruptive cycle. Raab said: “It is the EU that by trying to erect a barrier down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain that is challenging the spirit of Northern Ireland Protocol and the Good Friday agreement. He added: “I hope that our friends on the Hill on all sides of the house, and both houses, are equally robust in picking up when the EU undermines the agreement.” He said the brief invocation of article 16 of the withdrawal agreement by the EU had created “huge tensions across all communities”. Raab said: “The most overt political threat to the agreement and ultimately the Good Friday agreement has been the politicised way the EU has gone about things.” He also questioned whether the EU had made the same level of unequivocal commitment as the UK on refusing to set up any border infrastructure.

Name of the game: Far Cry 5 Price: 11.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 29 March Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.1 GHz or AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5 GHz or equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 or AMD R9 270 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 40 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) Processor: Intel Core i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.2 GHz or equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or AMD R9 290X (4GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 40 GB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 14 Jan, 2020. Software Developer: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD. Publisher: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. The Atelier Dusk Trilogy Deluxe Pack consists of three RPGs: Atelier Ayesha, Atelier Escha & Logy, and Atelier Shallie. This is a re-release of the ‘Plus’ version of these games but with a few improvements. As well as improved graphics there are some quality of life improvements such as the ability to increase the battle speed as well as your walking speed. They're not the most exciting of improvements, but these games are still worth a look if you missed them the first time around, as the Dusk Trilogy has some of the most interesting stories and overarching themes of all the Atelier games. The world that the trilogy is set in is a bit darker than you might expect from the Atelier series. It’s a world where crops are failing and seas are drying up. It’s a world that is slowly dying. While the games only briefly touch on this in the beginning, it’s a story point that comes into focus the further you get through the trilogy. All three games have different protagonists and tell very different stories: In Atelier Ayesha you’ll be trying to track down Ayesha’s missing sister who disappeared a few years ago. A mysterious stranger tells her to focus on learning alchemy and investigating the strange glowing flora. This sets her off on an adventure where you’ll have to travel across the land, investigating ruins while making friends along the way. Atelier Escha & Logy gives you two protagonists to choose from. Escha is the usual upbeat and charming character that we’ve come to expect from these games, whereas Logy is a much more reserved and serious guy. While the story is pretty much the same regardless of who you pick, some scenes will be different as they will play out from each protagonist's perspective. You’ll learn different background information as well as see different endings depending on who you play as. They both work for the local government in a small town and use their alchemy skills to help the local townsfolk as well as investigating ways to stop the decline of the world. Atelier Shallie also has two protagonists to pick from. Shallistera is trying to find a way to save her village that is in the midst of a crippling drought, whereas Shallotte is on a journey of personal growth and trying to find her place in the world. There are more differences between the two storylines this time around although their tales do eventually meet up and become intertwined. In all three of these games you’ll be spending the bulk of your time venturing out into the world to gather items and fight beasts. With all the goodies that you collect you’ll be performing alchemy to create new items which can either aid you in your adventures or be used to help other people. While all three games have a lot of similar gameplay mechanics there are also some pretty big differences between them which helps make each one feel fresh and different. In Atelier Ayesha you’ll have three years to try to investigate your sister’s disappearance, but you’ll have a lot of freedom within those years. As you explore, you’ll be given a number of different tasks which you can tackle in pretty much any order, such as beating up a load of monsters or investigating a town where all the inhabitants have vanished. The game doesn’t prompt you too much about the time-limit which is both a good and bad thing. It’s great that you aren’t made to feel constantly against the clock, but it does mean that you can run out of time if you allow yourself to get too distracted by other tasks that aren’t essential for moving the story forwards. Atelier Escha and Logy has a more rigid structure which is similar to Atelier Rorona from the Arland Trilogy. Every four months you’re given a new assignment that you have to complete as well as a bunch of minor tasks which will grant you bonuses for successfully completing them. The amount of time you have is normally more than sufficient to complete everything you need, it’s only really some of the later assignments where you’ll need to plan more carefully. The turn-based combat system has also been tweaked so that this time you can take double the usual number of characters into battle with you. Only three will be on the front line while the other three are in reserve, but you can switch characters in and out of battle as you please. This is really handy as those in reserve will gradually heal. This ability to switch between characters means that you can spend more time out exploring as you aren’t constantly having to go back to town to stock up on recovery items. In Atelier Shallie they do away with the time system completely. You’ll no longer be debating with yourself about whether you have enough time to completely explore an area or if you should head back to town to synthesise more items for upcoming assignments. It’s great to be able to focus on the parts of the game that you find the most enjoyable instead of just planning out what you need to do before the next deadline. All three games have a really different feel to them but even though they’re set in a grittier world they still have a upbeat and optimistic cast of characters. One of the great joys to be had in these games is heading back to town after a long stretch of exploring to see what new interactions there are. There are some side characters who will make cameos throughout the trilogy and it’s always a real pleasure to see their familiar faces. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. OS: Windows® 8.1, Windows® 10 (64bit required). Processor: Core i7 3.4GHz over. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX960 or better, 1920x1080 (Graphic Memory 2GB or better). DirectX: Version 11. Network: Broadband Internet connection. Storage: 17 GB available space. Sound Card: 16bit Stereo 48kHzWAVE.

The AMD Radeon VII was one of the worst graphics card deals of all time, and yet two years later it's actually the finest the red team has to offer GPU-based cryptocurrency miners. You might have assumed that the Radeon RX 6900 XT, with its $999 MSRP and powerful 7nm Navi 21 GPU would be the king of that much-maligned castle, but it's actually a long, long way behind the old Vega-based card. In fact, with some Linux tweakery the Radeon VII can push over 100 MH/s when mining Ethereum, which puts it within touching distance of the absolute top of the pile, the GeForce RTX 3090. Even without messing with AMD's first 7nm GPU the card is still capable of beating the GeForce RTX 3080. Ethereum loves itself some memory bandwidth, and thanks to the Radeon VII's high bandwidth memory (HBM) the Radeon VII has that in spades. At 1,028 GB/s it's actually rated higher than either the RTX 3090, at 936 GB/s, and the RTX 3080, at 760 GB/s. If you want any more evidence of the power of the Radeon VII when it comes to cryptocurrency mining then look no further than a quick Ebay search—there are a bunch of listings for pictures of the Radeon VII as people look to stick it to the bots scouring for mining GPUs. And definitely not to try and scam a quick buck; oh no, this is anti-mining activism. So, why was the Radeon VII such a bad deal when it first arrived? It was AMD's first stab at the ultra-enthusiast graphics card market in a long while, launching at the start of 2019, and its first 7nm silicon—hence the 'VII'. It just about matched Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti in terms of performance, well, in some places. Which also meant it was just a little behind the RTX 2080, but at the same power draw and price. And without any hint of the potential Nvidia was minting with its inaugural ray tracing GPU. It was competitive, however, and that was the main thing. The big problem, and the thing which makes me still feel sorry for the poor folk who forked out $699 at the time, was that the $399 Radeon RX 5700 XT launched just five months later and basically offered the same level of gaming performance, making the Radeon VII effectively redundant. But now cryptocurrency mining is back, and profitable again, and the Radeon VII is finally worth the money people paid for it, with a reason to be dropped into a live motherboard again. You can make yourself $10 profit per day mining Ethereum with it, or else ship it onto Ebay and sell it for $2,000. Not that I'm condoning the ecological disaster that GPU mining represents, but at least that way you might be able to afford the offensive price-gouging that's going on for actually worthwhile gaming GPUs.

Browser maker Vivaldi today rolled out an update for its eponymous surfing tool, laying claim to some impressive performance gains as well as adding native support for Apple's M1. Of most interest to the majority of users will be the performance gains of the Chromium-based browser, with new tabs opening twice as fast and a new window firing up 26 per cent faster than before. "We want to make sure," the company said, "that no matter how you choose to browse, your experience is faster than before." A test drive and a chat with a senior dev We took the new version 3.7 for a spin and, yes, it definitely feels snappier opening tabs and windows than it did on version 3.6, but we'd hesitate to call it twice as fast. Then again, we were running it on an Intel i7 with 16 GB RAM and Windows 10 tottering atop. Vivaldi's own tests were conducted on an Ubuntu 18.04 PC with a 2 GHz Intel Core i3 CPU and 4 GB RAM, hardly a speed demon by any stretch of the imagination and therefore better able to show off the benefits of the tweaks. Stack Tab by Hosts (click to enlarge) "The changes that were made are a fundamental reworking of the way the different components of the Vivaldi UI communicate with each other," Björgvin Ragnarsson, senior developer at Vivaldi, told The Register. "We streamlined the way the tabs store and access information about their state, so that they can access the information faster." "This has the knock-on effect of allowing other parts of the UI know about any changes in their state sooner, so those other parts also respond to changes more quickly." Because the performance improvements have been implemented in the Vivaldi-specific bits of the user interface, and so would not necessarily be common across Chromium-based browsers, a straight comparison of window and tab opening performance against the likes of Google's Chrome or Microsoft's Edge is difficult. Our very unscientific test gave Vivaldi the, er, edge, but your mileage may vary depending on a variety of factors, including what you have configured your browser of choice to actually do when a new tab fires up. Speed fans on new Apple hardware have also been gifted an M1-native version of the browser, which will be undoubtedly swifter on Apple silicon. The company laid claim to a doubling of browser performance on an M1 Mac, which seems reasonable considering widely reported benchmarks for Chrome last year that put a native version of Google's browser nearly 100 per cent swifter on M1 hardware at the end of last year. Other additions in this version include periodic reloading for web panel, decluttering via a Stack Tab by Hosts function and yet more customisation possible on the browser's menus. The company has also kicked off the process to add support for silent updates for the browser on Windows. ®

Name of the game: The Sogourn Price: 14.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 22 March Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 3 GB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD R9 290X series card or higher DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 3 GB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 29 Sep, 2020. Software Developer: Iceberg Interactive. Publisher: Iceberg Interactive. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. The Sojourn seems to have emerged from nowhere, but it's a pleasant surprise. It's a tranquil first person puzzle game that appears to be inspired by The Witness, with a similar art style and attitude to its storytelling. In practice, this puzzler has more in common with Portal; both are about reaching the end goal by cleverly navigating through increasingly tricky stages. Instead of flinging wormholes at walls, the puzzles here consist of various statues, each with different functions to utilise while in the dark world. There's a statue you can swap places with, one that temporarily mends fallen bridges, and another that allows you to stay in the dark world while inside its one way beam. A blue flame lets you enter the other side for a limited time, and later on, archways allow you to stay there with no restrictions. However, you won't always want to be in this state, and you'll often need to find clever ways to swap between realities. Of course, the game intelligently mixes all these (and more) elements together, and the result is a generally steady increase in challenge. A few hours in, you'll likely find yourself scratching your head as seemingly impossible puzzles best you. This can naturally be frustrating, especially as you move so slowly, but you'll feel like a genius once everything clicks. Many stages have optional bonus challenges once you solve them, earning you collectable scrolls complete with philosophical mumbo-jumbo. The main story is more interesting, told wordlessly through a series of dioramas, but it's the puzzles themselves that will keep you playing. It's not exactly original, but The Sojourn is a solid puzzler with well designed levels and some nice ideas. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: OS: Windows 10 64-bit. Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD R9 290X series card or higher. DirectX: Version 11. Storage: 3 GB available space.

Nvidia's mobile RTX 3050 Ti appeared a few days ago, leaked on the Asus website with reference to the Dash 15 laptop. Now we have the non-TI RTX 3050 appearing on Geekbench, as spotted by @TUM_APISAK. The leak appears to show that the GeForce RTX 3050 has 16 Compute Units, a maximum frequency of 1,060MHz, and 4GB of VRAM. The information on Geekbench doesn't reveal whether the GPU is running GDDR6, but that seems like a fairly safe bet at this point, as is the fact it'll probably feature a 128-bit memory bus. Those 16 Compute Units are possibly the most interesting reveal from the leak though, because assuming that Nvidia sticks with 128 CUDA cores per CU it gives us a total of 2048 CUDA cores in the new chip. For comparison, that's almost half the core count of the mobile RTX 3060 (3840 CUs), which would suggest that the RTX 3050 will be about half as powerful as the RTX 3060 in gaming as well. Despite this performance delta, if the GeForce RTX 3050 is ray-tracing capable and supports DLSS 2.0, then we'll still welcome it with open arms. The machine in question is a Samsung 760XDA, which also happens to house another unreleased chip at this point, the Intel Core i5 11400H. That's a 6-core, 12-thread CPU that is probably a 'Tiger Lake' processor. If you're interested in such things, the Core i5 11400H managed a score of 1,387 points in the single-threaded workload and 4,934 in the multi-threaded test. Both of these numbers are reasonable upticks compared to the equivalent previous-generation 'Comet Lake' Core i5 10400H.

Microsoft has taken the increasingly normal step of releasing an out-of-band update to deal with the printer issue it introduced last week. "Microsoft identified an issue that affects Windows 10 devices which applied the March 2021 security update released March 9, 2021," explained the Windows giant, "and a resolution has been expedited." The issue referred to is a Blue Screen of Death that occurred for owners of certain printers following an update last week. One Register reader, who works for a printer maker, reported issues with a variety of devices from around the world. Those afflicted would not simply be shown an error pop-up, as seen the last time Microsoft broke printing, but would instead be shown the door via a helpful BSOD. As with last year's print woes, Microsoft has rushed out an update to deal with its latest handiwork. Fixes have been emitted across the Windows 10 and Server spectrum, including versions 1803, 1809, 2004 and 20H2. The fix is, however, optional and requires the user to manually install it and even then only "if you are affected by this issue." Helpfully, Microsoft failed to specify which printers are affected. Instead, devices using "certain Type 3 printer drivers" might get a visit from the BSOD fairy. So if you've not tried printing since applying last week's patch, we'd suggest making sure everything is saved and backed up before crossing your fingers and clicking the Print button, just in case. It is unclear how Microsoft has managed to break printing in Windows 10 once again, less than a year since the last time it did so. Still, at least it managed to issue a fix, even as other parts of its empire came crashing to the ground in an outage last night that seemingly followed a botched change to an authentication system. It is almost as if the company does not test things properly before unleashing them on the world.

The Super Snake Speedster transforms the V8 muscle car into a two-seat roadster. Radically reworking the exterior, the conversion adds a convertible tonneau and bespoke paintwork. It also gains special floormats and door sill plates, while optional painted stripes, a widebody package and Penske track suspension are available too. The Super Snake is a spiritual successor to the one-off experimental car created by Shelby in 1967. Priced from $133,785 (approximately £96,000) in either coupé or convertible form, it's powered by an 825bhp reworking of Ford’s 5.0-litre Coyote V8 engine, paired to either a six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic gearbox. Shelby president Gary Patterson said: “The new Speedster is stunning. From a styling perspective, there's simply nothing like it on the road. With the widebody option, it’s a rare combination of sleek elegance and American muscle machismo. This is the automotive equivalent of a powerful heavyweight boxer fitted into a stylish, fine suit.” The new open-top car heads up the four-model Bundle of Snakes collection unveiled by Shelby to mark the occasion, including the GT, the 800bhp-plus GT500SE and the hard-top Super Snake. The entry-level GT model focuses less on brute power and performance and more on on “intense personalisation and daily driving,” according to the company. Powered by a subtly uprated 480bhp Coyote engine, it's distinguished from Ford’s standard Mustang by a deepened draw hood with functional vents, Ford Performance suspension and a Borla cat-back exhaust. It rides on 20in wheels and is available from $62,310 (£44,750). The GT500SE keeps the look of the standard GT and adds considerably more power. It's available from $104,900 (£75,340), and a portion of the sale from each car is donated to Carroll Shelby’s Foundation for automotive education. Shelby models are exclusive to the US market, but the Bundle of Snakes collection has been revealed as Ford detailed UK pricing for the retro-styled Mach 1 Mustang Flagship, which essentially replaces the now-retired Shelby GT350. It's the first Mach 1 to come to Europe and replaces the limited-run Bullitt as the European range-topping variant of the Mustang.

Hair today, gone tomorrow. A Queens man claims he was forced from his city Parks Department job because he refused to shave his beard. Former park ranger Ryan Stancu, 31, says in a lawsuit he wore the beard as part of his Christian beliefs but was driven to quit after being told facial hair wasn’t allowed. “We are not in the Stone Age here,” Stancu, of College Point, claims he was told, according to his Manhattan Federal Court complaint. After he told superiors his full but neatly trimmed beard was required of his faith, they demanded a letter from his Eastern Christian Orthodox church proving it, Stancu said in court papers. Stancu charges he was then prevented from being able to attend services because his bosses put him on a new schedule that had him working every Sunday. They also grilled him daily about the shape of his facial hair and failed to promote him, according to the lawsuit, in which Stancu is acting as his own lawyer. Stancu says he was eventually transferred to Washington Square Park, where the locker room and office were “infested with mold, rat poison and carbon monoxide,” according to the lawsuit. He claims he was repeatedly exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning. He was allegedly threatened for not issuing “enough tickets,” not given proper protective gear at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and was finally forced to leave May 10, according to the claim.

Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea. Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Más País announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. Talks have since been held, with the next meeting expected to take place in the coming weeks. “With the four-day work week (32 hours), we’re launching into the real debate of our times,” said Iñigo Errejón of Más País on Twitter. “It’s an idea whose time has come.” From New Zealand to Germany, the idea has been steadily gaining ground globally. Hailed by its proponents as a means to increase productivity, improve the mental health of workers and fight climate change, the proposal has taken on new significance as the pandemic sharpens issues around wellbeing, burnout and work-life balance. Leftwing parties in Spain – where a 44-day strike in Barcelona in 1919 resulted in the country becoming one of the first in western Europe to adopt the eight-hour workday – have seized on the idea. “Spain is one of the countries where workers put in more hours than the European average. But we’re not among the most productive countries,” said Errejón. “I maintain that working more hours does not mean working better.” While the exact details of the pilot will be hashed out with the government, his party has proposed a three-year, €50m project that would allow companies to trial reduced hours with minimal risk. The costs of a company’s foray into the four-day work week, for example, could be covered at 100% the first year, 50% the second year and 33% the third year. “With these figures, we calculate that we could have around 200 companies participate, with a total of anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 workers,” said Héctor Tejero of Más País. “The only red lines are that we want to see a true reduction of working hours and no loss of salary or jobs.” Tejero estimated that the pilot could get under way as early as autumn, ushering in the first national initiative to reduce working hours since France began moving towards capping the work week at 35 hours in 1998. “Spain will be the first country to undertake a trial of this magnitude,” said Tejero. “A pilot project like this hasn’t been undertaken anywhere in the world.” The party has suggested the pilot be guided by a panel of experts – including representatives from government, workers unions and business lobbies – who will also help analyse the results. What Más País is hoping to see is an echo of the experience of Software Delsol, the southern Spanish firm that last year became the first in the country to implement a four-day working week. “They saw a reduction in absenteeism, productivity went up and workers say they are happier,” said Tejero. A source with Spain’s industry ministry said talks over the pilot project were in their initial stages. At this point everything is up for debate, from the cost of the pilot to the number of companies involved and the timeline, she added. The idea has faced opposition in some quarters, with one of the leaders from the country’s main business associations describing it as “madness” in the wake of the country’s worst recession since the civil war. “Getting out of this crisis requires more work, not less,” Ricardo Mur of CEOE told a forum in December. As Spain inches forward with the fledgling pilot, its progress is being closely tracked in the UK and around the world. “My understanding is that this would be the first-ever national level pilot of the four-day week,” said Joe Ryle of the 4 Day Week Campaign. “We’re calling on governments across the world to follow the Spanish example in paving the way for the four-day work week".

Name of the game: Going Under Price: 9.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 20March Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, 1 GB | AMD Radeon R7 250, 1 GB DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 2 GB available space Additional Notes: 16:9 recommended RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5-3470 | AMD FX-6300 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, 4 GB | AMD Radeon R9 380, 4 GB DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 4 GB available space Additional Notes: 16:9 recommended

Game Information: Initial release date: 6 Nov, 2018. Software Developer: Wired Productions. Publisher: Wired Productions. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Combat racing games have been noticeably absent from present-day conversation. Kart racers continue to live on thanks to their accessibility and amiability, but modern combat racing games seem to have trouble breaking into the public gaming consciousness. GRIP seeks to bring a forgotten genre back while also boasting tight controls and a blistering sense of speed, but its inconsistent quality isn’t going to win over those who aren’t already fans. GRIP’s greatest strength is how it feels: steering is satisfyingly responsive, boosts are enticingly exhilarating, and weapons are delightfully impactful – everything feels great the moment you get behind the wheel and the vehicles handle much better than their bulky structures would indicate. While your handling capabilities are hindered at higher speeds, drifting around corners and minute positioning adjustments are always possible to execute with sufficiently precise inputs. All the power-ups you obtain feel good to use as well, but their lack of uniqueness and originality causes them to quickly grow stale. Your offensive capabilities are limited to a machine gun and a few rocket-based pickups. For support, there’s just a generic boost and a shield. Such an anaemic arsenal would have been run-of-the-mill fifteen years ago, and GRIP’s lack of creativity in that department makes the power-ups feel like they were included merely out of obligation. Their use is necessary as they slow down your opposition, but it’s far too tempting to just turn them all off whenever you have the opportunity. While the core racing is incredibly strong, the tracks you race through vary wildly in quality. Everything has post-apocalyptic vibes thanks to tracks that take place in desert wastelands and skyscraper-filled cityscapes. Except for one or two courses that consist exclusively of winding city streets, each track strings together sections that are startlingly open. The vastness of these areas, especially when compared to tracks in other combat racers, provides ample opportunities for experimentation. But, as a result, they also lack a clear sense of direction. Boosting off a ramp to do a bunch of flips through the air is cool and all, but you feel discouraged to do so when you’re not entirely sure where the track is. Launching yourself out of bounds causes you to respawn behind your opponents without any forward momentum which could easily cost the race. The baffling lack of track-telegraphing signs and the inconsistent terrain almost always cause confusion and frustration on the first lap. The tracks that take advantage of the unique nature of GRIP’s vehicles, however, are fantastic. The novel shape and structure of the cars allows them to be driven just as well while flipped upside-down. Certain tracks take excellent advantage of this by hiding shortcuts on ceilings or by incorporating portions that have you hopping between parallel surfaces to navigate complicated obstacles. It’s a shame that only a few of the game’s tracks make use of these elements because they’re what make it really stand out from the competition. GRIP is too eager to shy away from what makes it exquisitely unique. GRIP’s greatest weakness lies in its lack of longevity. There’s no shortage of things to do, but little of it remains entertaining for long. There are battle arena and ultimate race modes that spice things up by placing the emphasis on damaging other players. While they play very differently, they lean heavily on the power-ups which are far too uninteresting to warrant the modes based on them. The arena modes are especially weak since they don’t take advantage of GRIP’s great sense of speed. Most of your time in the arena modes is spent aimlessly driving around barren maps instead of actively engaging other drivers. On a more positive note, there are a few dozen 'Carkour' obstacle courses that are surprisingly refreshing as they test your mastery of more complex handling techniques, but they’re buried beneath the clunky menus and aren’t as substantial as they should be. Plain old racing is when GRIP is at its best, but even the most dedicated won’t be able to squeeze endless enjoyment out of the limited tracks and lacklustre modes. The inclusion of a meaty single player campaign is welcome, but it’s stretched too thin to remain enjoyable throughout. You take part in tiers of tournaments that consist of various races and competitions. As you progress to higher tiers, the game gradually introduces new mechanics, higher speeds, and different modes to ramp up the difficulty. The metered structure of the campaign progression works well as an introduction, but it doesn’t take long for the tournaments to start repeating tracks that quickly lose their lustre. It’s unfortunate that the hefty length of the campaign comes at the expense of fun and variety. You’ll also be participating in each of the handful of modes, but thankfully most of the campaign consists of the more worthwhile races. GRIP attempts to motivate by integrating a levelling system to dole out rewards at a steady pace, but very few of those rewards feel worthwhile. You gain experience for nearly everything you do whether it’s racing against legitimately competent AI or pitting your skills against other humans in the solid multiplayer suite that tragically lacks a server browser. While a few experience levels unlock new cars with different stats, most of the level rewards are car cosmetics. Those cosmetics would be much more enticing if they weren’t so indistinguishable from each other. There are a ton of tires, paint jobs, and decals to unlock, but none of them pop in the game’s dark and cel-shaded art style. Reaching a new level only to discover that you unlocked a set of tires that barely look different from your current set can be incredibly deflating. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 64bit or Newer Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K or AMD FX-8320 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia 970 or Radeon 380 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 8 GB available space Additional Notes: Microsoft Xbox Controller for Windows® (or equivalent) is recommended.

In 2017, Nvidia investors set in motion a class-action lawsuit against the chipmaker, accusing it of misleading them about how many of its sales were down to cryptocurrency miners rather than, you know, people who wanted Geralt's hair to look nice or whatever—information that would have allowed said investors to better prepare for the effects of the inevitable cryptocurrency crash. The lawsuit, when it was eventually filed in 2020, alleged that roughly 60 to 70 percent of Nvidia's sales in China were to crypto miners in 2017 and 2018, and that Nvidia kept this information from investors. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California granted Nvidia's request that the lawsuit be dismissed due to a lack of evidence that the company misled anyone. Though Nvidia didn't warn investors that it expected a decline in sales when the bottom fell out of Bitcoin until the first quarter of 2018, it's not like it was secret information. A drop of eight percent in Nvidia's stock price in August 2017 was attributed to fears of the crypto bubble bursting, over a year before the first Bitcoin crash finally came in November of 2018. These days Nvidia's GPUs are designed to reduce their value to crypto miners, with the RTX 3060 12GB coming with an Ethereum mining limiter, which could come as standard on future GeForce GPUs.

The Asahi Linux project has published the first progress report detailing its effort to port Linux to the Apple Silicon platform. The lengthy blog post describes in extensive detail the challenges faced by the project in understanding how Apple’s home-grown proprietary chippery works on a fundamental level, as well as the circumventing the various non-standard quirks that limit the ability to boot third-party operating systems. The report, written by kernel hacker and Asahi Linux co-founder Hector Martin, unfortunately doesn’t conclude with a link to a fully working Linux distro. It does, however, illustrate how widely Apple Silicon-based Macs diverge from standards you might typically see. The boot process, for example, isn’t what you’d expect to see on a conventional ARM64 system, but rather “a bespoke Apple mechanism” originating from the early days of iOS, with design elements derived from the Open Firmware specification as seen with the New World ROM Macs. This has forced the Asahi Linux project to develop a bespoke bootloader for Apple Silicon machines called m1n1, which aims to take care of as many ‘Apple-isms’ as possible. But it’s a bit more than that. The origins of m1n1 lie in mini, a project created by Martin as part of his research into jailbreaking the Nintendo Wii. While it supports the booting of third-party code, it also allows researchers to control the machine in real-time from a development computer. By using its interactive shell, or writing simple Python scripts, you can enumerate how the Apple Silicon processor works on a low, bare-metal level. This has allowed the Asahi Linux team to identify features that are distinct to the Apple Silicon M1 processor, such as configuration bits designed to improve performance when running x86 code in Rosetta. “Using m1n1, we’ve been hard at work documenting Apple’s custom Arm instructions, Apple-specific system registers, hardware such as the Apple Interrupt Controller, and more,” Martin wrote.

Shares of Lordstown Motors Corp fell as much as 23% on Friday after Hindenburg Research took a short position on the electric-pickup-truck maker's stock. "Lordstown is an electric vehicle SPAC with no revenue and no sellable product, which we believe has misled investors on both its demand and production capabilities," Hindenburg said. Lordstown said in January it had received more than 100,000 non-binding production reservations from commercial fleets for its electric truck. "Our conversations with former employees, business partners and an extensive document review show that the company's orders are largely fictitious and used as a prop to raise capital and confer legitimacy," Hindenburg said on Friday. Steve Burns, CEO of Lordstown, said in a text message to Bloomberg that "we always stated that pre-orders were non-binding. That is what pre-orders are." Burns denied the allegations made in Hindenburg's report. Lordstown said it will provide a detailed response in coming days, probably at its March 17 earnings report, its first as a public company. In response to an assertion made in the report that production is three to four years off, Burns said: "We are on track for betas this month and start of production in September. Any statement to the contrary is a lie." The short seller also took aim at Nikola Corp in September, accusing the electric-truck maker of fraud, leading to the resignation of its founder, Trevor Milton. Nikola had publicly rejected all accusations. In February, however, Nikola disclosed that the company and Milton had made several statements that were partially or completely inaccurate, after an internal review. Following Hindenburg's accusations, General Motors and Nikola in November announced a reworked agreement on a fuel-cell partnership, allowing the automaker to back out of taking a proposed equity stake in the startup.

Steve Briggs, lead clinician at SB Sports Injury and Physiotherapy Clinic in Shifnal, says people should not underestimate the link between pain and depression. “Depression can cause pain and vice versa," said Steve. “Together, pain and depression can create a vicious circle in which pain increases the symptoms of depression, which in turn worsens the pain. "Anxiety alone can cause muscles to cramp and referred pain to transmit through the nervous system. “People who suffer from chronic pain will often have disturbed sleep, leading to fatigue, concentration problems, loss of appetite and mood swings. "Over time, all these things can be responsible for an increase in sedentary behaviour or inactivity which may result in numerous physical health problems. “With people having to self-isolate, withdraw from social activity and undertake home working in less-than-ideal workspaces and positions, we have seen a steep rise in physical and mental health linked symptoms. "We must now educate people in understanding the connection and promote body and movement awareness. “Alleviating back pain and other physical symptoms that often accompany mental health problems can have a hugely therapeutic impact. "Physical approaches aimed at relieving physical symptoms can lift a person’s mood, increase their self-confidence, encourage physical activity and generally improve their quality of life. “As physiotherapists, we can not only help to alleviate the symptoms of pain but also help people to devise a safe and enjoyable exercise programme that will suit their own individual circumstances and lift their spirits."

Spanish police have announced the seizure of a homemade narco-submarine able to carry as much as two tonnes of cargo. Police discovered the nine-metre (30ft) vessel last month while it was being built in the southern city of Málaga, during a broader international drug operation involving five other countries and the EU crime agency, Europol. The semisubmersible craft was made of fibreglass and plywood panels attached to a structural frame, had three portholes on one side and was painted light blue. It had two inboard 200-horsepower engines. Rafael Pérez, the head of the Spanish police, said it had never sailed. “We think it was going to go to sea to meet a mother ship to take on board drugs,” probably cocaine, before returning to Spain, he told reporters. “It is like an iceberg,” he said. “In practice, nearly all of it goes underwater apart from the top, which is the only part that would be seen from another ship or a helicopter.” In 2019, a 20-metre semisubmersible craft was intercepted after running aground off the coast of Galicia. It was found to be carrying three tonnes of cocaine. Similar vessels have been discovered in the past in the Pacific and Atlantic, especially off Central and South America. They are rarely able to submerge fully. Police seized hundreds of kilos of cocaine, hashish and marijuana in various places in Spain in their wider operation this week, and 52 people were arrested. Spanish police said in a statement that their counterparts in Colombia, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Portugal also were involved in the operation.

Name of the game: Deep Rock Galactic Price: 19.49$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: After 33h. Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 64 Bit Processor: 2.4 GHz Dual Core Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770 /w 1GB VRAM DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 3 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64 Bit Processor: 2.4 GHz Quad Core Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA 970 / AMD Radeon 290 DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 3 GB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 8 May, 2018 Software Developer: Funcom. Publisher: Funcom. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Conan Exiles is surprisingly good. When we first learned about an open world survival game themed on the Conan universe, we were tempted to write it off as a cash grab. And that might have been the initial idea, but the result is not only a labour of love for the genre, but also the barbarian himself. Picture the scene: you're a completely naked, ripped, and very well-endowed male or female tied to a cross in some desert, left to die for an unknown crime. That is, until our favourite misogynist Conan arrives to free you because he's actually a pretty decent guy. He then leaves you naked, alone, and scared in the desert to fend for yourself. That's where the game starts, and it's incredibly compelling stuff. Your first priority will be on clothing yourself (after spending a lot of time speechless at the remarkably accurate genital physics), finding something to use as a weapon, and quenching your thirst and hunger. All of the above is trickier than it sounds – particularly if you're new to survival games. There's no tutorial, crafting is hidden inside a menu, and you probably won't even be able to differentiate between what you can and can't pick up. The only clue you get is "press square to interact" and you'll do that on everything until it works. That pretty much sums up the opening hour or so – you, fumbling about in a harsh desert, dying of thirst, starvation, and weird goblin creatures that explode. Slowly but surely, though, you'll figure stuff out. You'll learn that you can make clothes out of leaves, that your crudely-crafted pickaxe is a very poor weapon, and that you have to cook meat or you very well might die of food poisoning when you eat it. And before you know it, eight hours have passed and you've built a lovely house, crafted a sword, and started working on your first leather armour set. You might even have a proper bed, basic furniture, and a fence around your property to protect it. We could criticise Conan Exiles for a lack of tutorial or explanation of any kind, but that would sort of miss the point of a survival game. It's meant to feel harsh, and boy does this feel harsh. Ultimately, though, it does lead to some nice eureka moments, and overcoming an obstacle – be it enemy, cliff, or thirst – feels very rewarding indeed. And that sense of reward doesn't let up anytime soon. There's always a goal to work towards in Conan Exiles, and not knowing how to even go about achieving it makes it even more compelling. You'll hit a dead enemy with a pickaxe and get hides, then you'll venture a little too far out of your comfort zone and stumble across an iron ore deposit. The rewards are constant, and each time you return to your crude base you'll do so with a wealth of fresh knowledge about the world, as well as a ton of plans on how to conquer it. That you can do all of that with a friend or group in multiplayer is the cream on top, though. You can even choose a server with or without player killing depending on your preference. The servers are all dedicated too, and run the game super smoothly from our experience so far. You can save your progress and return at any point as well, and going inside your house keeps you safe from the dangers of the outside world. The only real thing letting Conan Exiles down is its general jankiness. It freezes at random (often inopportune) moments, has a less than stable frame rate even on a PS4 Pro, and some of the animations are, frankly, just a little bit rubbish. We also can't decide whether it's good looking or not. It varies wildly from environment to environment, with some reminiscent of the PS3 days while others are Monster Hunter World levels of gorgeous. The character models are terrific (maybe a bit too much so in some areas) while the hair is jarringly unrealistic. If you love open world survival games, you'll overlook that, though, because it's just so damn fun. That probably says more about the genre than Conan Exiles, however, because it doesn't do anything particularly different. In fact, unless you really like the aesthetics you probably won't stick around for very long if you're invested in the likes of Minecraft or Ark: Survival Evolved. But we still commend Conan Exiles for being more than the sum of its parts, and blending excellent survival mechanics with the harsh world of Conan. If you're a fan of either, this is well worth a shot. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64 bit Processor: Intel Quad Core i7 3770K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti/970 (High settings) and 1070 (Ultra settings) or AMD R9 290/AMD RX480 (High settings) DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 69 GB available space

The dangerous-titled 'unhackable' processor has survived its biggest hacking test remarkably unscathed. Created by the University of Michigan (UoM), the Morpheus chip design has now been attacked by more than 500 cybersecurity researchers resolutely going at the chip for three months straight. Just imagine what that room smelled like by the end... But in all that time not one has managed to exploit it. Now, three months doesn't necessarily mean it really is completely unhackable, but it certainly makes it pretty damned secure. Naming a chip 'unhackable', much like a certain GPU limiter we could mention, is tantamount to begging someone to come along and crack it, and that is exactly what the UoM has done in putting Morpheus into the Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering (FETT) Bug Bounty hunt from DARPA. Bounty hunting. FETT. Cute, eh? The research was also supported by the DARPA SSITH program too. Anyway, the bug hunting hackathon ran from June through August last year, and the RISC-V based chip resisted all attempts to compromise it. Dubbed Morpheus by its creators, the chip design uses a mixture of 'encryption and churn' to first, randomly obfuscate key data points—such as the location, format, and content of a program's core—and then re-randomise them all while the system is in operation. "Imagine trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube that rearranges itself every time you blink," says team lead, Todd Austin (via Hexus). "That’s what hackers are up against with Morpheus. It makes the computer an unsolvable puzzle. "Developers are constantly writing code, and as long as there is new code, there will be new bugs and security vulnerabilities. With Morpheus, even if a hacker finds a bug, the information needed to exploit it vanishes within milliseconds. It’s perhaps the closest thing to a future-proof secure system." This level of obfuscation and churn might sound like an absolute nightmare to code for, or even use, but Austin claims that the design is completely transparent to both software developers and users, because all the randomness occurs within data known as 'undefined semantics.' What's more, the action of churning those data points is proved to have negligible impact on the actual performance of the system, with the architecture paper (PDF warning) itself claiming just a one percent performance hit. So far, it's looking good for the 'unhackable' chip then.

Axe-happy Redmond has set the clock ticking on paid apps from its moribund Microsoft Store for Business and Education. The changes will be imposed from 14 April and the software giant has also demanded that an Azure Active Directory account be used for browsing – no more anonymous nosing. A wander through the support sections for the store confirmed that while users who had already bought a paid app could continue to use it, no additional licences will be purchasable. Free apps can still be acquired and the changes only apply to businessstore.microsoft.com or educationstore.microsoft.com. "This change doesn't impact apps in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10," added Microsoft. Great news for the three people that bother to use it. Microsoft's Store for Business and Education is a relic (indeed, the support site mentions Windows 10 Mobile). It "regularly releases new and improved features," according to its documentation. However, the last update was back in 2018. The company's plan was for its Stores to be places where developers could distribute Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps over all the supported platforms – Windows desktop, Phone, HoloLens, and so on. The Business and Education incarnations allowed IT admins to curate the contents of the Microsoft Store to meet the needs of their organisation. The cross-platform dream of UWP never truly materialised and Microsoft recently threw in the towel on a pure UWP future with Project Reunion, aimed at unifying legacy Win32 apps with UWP APIs. Microsoft released the Project Reunion 0.5 Preview earlier this week and broke a few developer hearts with the deprecation of the Pivot navigation control. The Register contacted Microsoft regarding the fate of its digital stores and will update should the company respond. Certainly, the imminent yanking of paid apps means the future doesn't look too bright for these particular avenues of distribution. A Microsoft spokesperson sent us a statement: "We announced via Microsoft Docs two feature updates to the Microsoft Store for Business and Education. We have nothing further to share at this time."

It seems Ford won't be the only automaker giving away off-road vehicles to deserving organizations. Land Rover has announced its Defender Above and Beyond Service Awards, in which it will give away seven specially customized Defender SUVs to non-profit organizations. There are seven categories of organizations to which Land Rover is looking to award a Defender. The first two under consideration are search and rescue organizations and coastal and marine conservation groups. While Land Rover hasn't said exactly how the vehicles will be customized, it has provided the two renderings shown in this post with factory accessories such as storage boxes, roof racks, tow hitches, snorkels and brush guards. To be considered, an individual or the group itself can submit a three-minute video about what the group does, how it helps the community, and how having a Defender would help its work. The video and accompanying forms can be submitted here. A panel of judges will decide the finalists whose videos will then be posted to the Land Rover consumer site for people to vote on a winner. The company is taking nominations on the first two categories now through April 7. The next nomination period will be from May 3 to June 1 and will be for animal welfare and first responder groups. The final set of organizations up for nomination will be environmental, urban improvement and fire services groups. Their window for submissions will be from June 28 to July 27.

This question was in part prompted by a recent Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for dal pitta, which, for the sake of ease, swapped freshly made noodle dough for roughly broken up lasagne sheets. And, as with much in life, soup is indeed a good path to tread here. “I would smash the sheets up really small with a little hammer, which is a fun job, or the kids can snap them with their fingers, then throw them into soupy stuff,” says Claire Thomson, author of Home Cookery Year. This could, she says, be a courgette, basil, cream and stock number, or a seasonal minestrone. “With spring coming up, I’d say peas, broad beans, a nice soffritto [chopped onion, carrot, celery], lots of herbs, chicken or veg stock, and then broken up lasagne to cook in the soup.” That sentiment is echoed by our Roman food correspondent Rachel Roddy, whose new book The A-Z of Pasta is out in July: “I love lasagne sheets, and I’m a big fan of maltagliati [‘badly cut pieces’].” She breaks said sheets into shards and adds them to members of the thick bean-soup family – pasta e fagioli, pasta e ceci, pasta e lenticchie; essentially, anything in which you might normally use small pasta shapes. Keep an eye on it while it’s cooking, though, Roddy warns: “You’ll sometimes need to add a bit of extra water so it stays soupy.” The brilliant thing about lasagne is, of course, that it can be treated simply as sheets of pasta. “If you parboil them briefly, so they’re floppy, you can then use a sharp knife to cut them into tagliatelle,” Roddy says. “Although they obviously wouldn’t be very long tagliatelle.” For Mitshel Ibrahim, chef-owner of east London’s Ombra, who has been running lasagne Sundays during lockdown, cannelloni are the obvious answer. “I’d boil the lasagne for a couple of minutes, then stuff them with ricotta and spinach,” he says, “or with a Neapolitan-style ragu.” Roll into tubes, submerge in tomato sauce and pop in the oven until slightly crisp on top. Although, Ibrahim admits, this is “still a pasta bake of sorts”. If you’ve got fresh lasagne sheets knocking about in the freezer, take your lead from London pasta joint Bancone, which turns them into “silk handkerchiefs”. Cut the sheets into 12½cm squares, then cook in a pan of salted boiling water for two to three minutes and serve with a walnut butter and confit egg yolk. Granted, that might not exactly be up Sarah’s children’s alley, but she could instead look to Liguria in northwest Italy and serve those pasta hankies with pesto alla Genovese. If in doubt, though, make like Roddy and break up any unruly excess lasagne sheets, then store them in a jar with other shapes from near-empty packets. “One of the nice things about a mixed jar of pasta is that the cooking times are all a little bit different,” she says, which proves particularly po[CENSORED]r with her partner, Vincenzo, who likes his pasta properly al dente. Then, Roddy adds, just start experimenting.