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Name of the game: Katamari Damacy REROLL Price: 9.89$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 6 may Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 64-bit (SP1) Processor: Intel Core i3-2125 or AMD Phenom II X4 965 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Integrated: Intel Iris Pro 580 or AMD Radeon Vega 8 Dedicated: GeForce GTX 750 or Radeon HD 6950 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 4 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 or AMD FX-4350 Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7850 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 6 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset

Game Information: Initial release date: April 30, 2021. Software Developer: Housemarque. Publisher: PlayStation 5. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Returnal is a much, much bigger game than you think it is. For all the noise surrounding the game's price point, Housemarque has produced its largest, most ambitious project by a country mile. This isn't a small scale title with a premium cost; the studio has made something on a whole new level. There's an awful lot of game here, and if you're a fan of rogue-likes, arcade shooters, or both, this delivers big time. The game takes place on Atropos, a mysterious, uncharted planet where space scout Selene, the protagonist, finds herself stuck in a never-ending cycle. After a crash landing wrecks her ship, Helios, she begins to explore her surroundings, on the trail of an unknown signal called White Shadow. The trouble is, whenever she dies, she finds herself back at the crash site, and the planet's terrain changes every time. Indeed, most of your progress is reset when you kick the bucket, and randomly generated environments mean a slightly different experience every time you set off — this is a rogue-lite through and through. Returnal will do little to sway people who dislike this structure, but it's a fantastic example of the genre, and one of the best we've played in a long time. This is partly because the narrative is so closely tied into the game's design; Selene's struggle as she adjusts to her Groundhog Day predicament is something you'll observe as you slowly inch forward through the game's six biomes. The story actually takes somewhat of a backseat for most of the game. Through audio logs and Xenoglyphs you need to translate, you'll get a little background on Selene and the planet's ancient alien race, but the vast majority of your time will be spent blasting neon nasties — more on that shortly. While we're on the subject of story, we have to mention the House. As you explore, a typical, American country home will appear in the environment from time to time, and you can go inside. As if the presence of the House in this eldritch hellscape isn't eerie enough, the camera pulls in and you explore the space in first person. There's an uneasy atmosphere in the murky corridors, and things only get weirder as you pay return visits. There was a risk that this sudden change in perspective would feel jarring or detached, but the game establishes first person moments from the off, and it's so integral to the story that it feels like it belongs. So, let's talk about the action. Housemarque is a studio best known for its flashy visual effects and fast-paced shoot-'em-up gameplay, and this might be some of its greatest work to date. Selene is an agile character who can dash through environments with ease, which is ideal, because Atropos is going to throw all kinds of otherworldly opponents at you, each with their own attacks and quirks. In combat areas, the game often has you dealing with multiple threats at once, and they're all very happy to attack you with bullet hell patterns and lasers. The game lights up like a Christmas tree as your screen is filled with vivid, deadly colours. If it wasn't going to kill you, we'd say it's a sight to behold — especially on a 4K display. You start out with a simple pistol, but it'll handle early enemies pretty well. As you take down baddies, your weapon proficiency level increases, and that means any guns you find will be that much more powerful. New weapons are introduced fairly steadily, and these mostly stick to stereotypes — a machine gun, a shotgun, and so on. However, later weapons get more experimental; the Rotgland Lobber throws out acidic rounds that deal damage over time, while the Electropylon Driver sends out rods that connect with damaging energy, and enemies tethered to them will be continuously weakened. Some weapons feel more useful than others, but powerful Alt-Fire attacks and Weapon Traits are randomly assigned, and can make a huge difference to whichever gun you have equipped. Fortunately, the combat is electric, whatever the case. Fights are frenetic and seriously intense — you're forced to fight aggressively to thin enemy numbers, but you also have to stay on the move. The rainbow of bullets, shockwaves, and lasers are relentless, and can come from almost any direction. It's no hyperbole to say that the game left us physically shaking at points, particularly some of the boss battles. Not everyone will enjoy the challenge, but this is pure arcade shooting at its finest. By the way, Returnal really does feel like a game purpose built for PS5. This game has the best haptic feedback since Astro's Playroom, it makes good, functional use of the adaptive triggers, the 3D audio is immersive (and helpful for pinpointing enemies), and load times are almost completely absent. It ticks all the next-gen boxes. Of course, the game also provides you with a ton of items that can be beneficial or detrimental. As you explore the planet's various environments, you'll find consumables, artefacts, Parasites, and much more that will augment your character in myriad ways. Everything stacks together in fun ways, and it's almost always worth looking into optional side paths, as you may find lots of useful goodies to save your skin. Inevitably, you will die, and most of your progress is lost. While this can be a touch frustrating if you're a hair's breadth from beating a boss, or you've only just found a new biome, the game does give you permanent upgrades to help you out. An early one is the Atropian Blade, which gives you a strong melee attack that can also cut down red vines, allowing you to find even more items. We'd say the distribution of these is a little inconsistent; permanent equipment comes fairly steadily until the second half, when things drop off for a while. This can make worlds four and five feel particularly tough, but following this, you're rewarded with a couple more upgrades in the sixth biome. What's odd about the game's overall structure is that you'll play through the first three biomes, and after that, there's a hard checkpoint which means you start your runs on world four instead of world one. For this back half, there's no way to get back to those early stages. You are eventually able to swap between these two sets of biomes, so you can do all six in one run — you just have to work for it. There are so many little ways the game will hook you back in. Fun Daily Challenges give all players the same loadout to chase scores on a leaderboard, letting you practice or even get a sneak peek at later weaponry. The adrenaline mechanic encourages you to avoid damage, as you'll gain some useful buffs as you kill enemies without dying. And of course, there's the mystery of Selene's story that'll pull you through. It never truly reveals its hand, keeping you guessing for almost the entire game. That can be a long time; we've clocked around 40 hours so far, and there's more to do post-credits. There are one or two weak spots — the review build is mostly solid, but has some bugs and small performance inconsistencies here and there. A day one patch should mean the experience becomes even smoother, however. While the game generally looks and sounds fantastic, we did notice some low quality textures in places, and the 3D mini map can be hard to read. We're nitpicking, though — Returnal is a joy to play, and had us glued to our screen for hours on end.

A chamber in the middle of the speaker contains a liquid that dances to the beat of whatever is played via the Bluetooth music maker, and you can even adjust the behaviour of that liquid on the fly by twiddling the knobs on the front of the box. The project involves reprocessing the magnetically attracted, dancing ferrofluid used inside the speaker to give it more of that smooth lava lamp aesthetic. Because ferrofluid has a habit of sticking to glass surfaces, treatment of the water was necessary to remove the spiky look you apparently often get when playing with ferrofluid and magnets. There's no note on the exact treatment used, but generally speaking the addition of isopropyl alcohol to the liquid should create the desired effect. The mechanism itself is operated via dials on the front of the case, which edit the behaviour of the ferrofluid using an electromagnetic device. Aside from the ferrofluid concoction, and fully 3D printed housing designed by Jung himself, an 'MSGEQ7' graphic equaliser display module was employed, along with a passive radiator, and two upward-facing speakers to complete the project. But you don't care about that... look at the dancing liquid, man. Though if you are interested as to how the ferrofluid speaker performs when faced with different kinds of music, here's a link to the Instagram page where Jung has posted some further sound tests. As always, keep on making!

Microsoft has acquired Kinvolk, a German open source company whose best known project is Flatcar Container Linux, a distribution designed for container workloads. Kinvolk was founded in 2015 in Berlin and its first project was building a container runtime, called rkt, for Container Linux (formerly CoreOS), a lightweight Linux distribution. CoreOS Inc, the company behind Container Linux, was acquired by Red Hat in early 2018. Anxious for the future of Container Linux, Kinvolk founder and CEO Chris Kühl said "Flatcar Linux is a friendly fork of CoreOS's Container Linux and as such, compatible with it." The rationale for Flatcar Linux was uncertainty about the future of Container Linux after Red Hat's acquisition. At the time, Red Hat product manager Rob Szumski said "Red Hat plans to continue Container Linux’s development" and promised that it would remain free. Kühl was sceptical and said: "The strongest open source projects have multiple commercial vendors that collaborate together in a mutually beneficial relationship. This increases the bus factor for a project. Container Linux has a bus factor of 1. The introduction of Flatcar Linux brings that to 2." Last year Red Hat formally killed off CoreOS Container Linux, pointing users towards Fedora CoreOS but noting that it had no guarantees around stability, did not include rkt, and could not replace Container Linux "for all use cases." 'We and Microsoft are committed to doubling down on the Flatcar community' Is Flatcar Linux now heading down the same road as Container Linux? Kühl said today that "this will not be a replay of the movie you’ve seen before. In fact, we and Microsoft are committed to doubling down on the Flatcar community: we want to expand the universe of partners, contributors, and users, to ensure a vibrant, successful and sustainable long-term future for Flatcar as a truly open, community-driven project." Kühl said that his team will be working on "the full potential of eBPF in Kubernetes", where eBPF is extended Berkeley Packet Filter, a low level technology for running event-driven code in the Linux kernel, and brining the Kinvolk open source capabilities to Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Arc. He added that the open source projects will be remain active and for use "across all platforms." Microsoft's Brendan Burns, corporate VP of Azure Compute and a co-founder of Kubernetes, said "we want to assure the Flatcar community that Microsoft and the Kinvolk team will continue to collaborate with the larger Flatcar community on the evolution of Flatcar Container Linux." Kinvolk projects include not only Flatcar Linux but also Inspektor Gadget, a set of tools for inspecting and debugging Kubernetes, and Lokomotive, a Kubernetes distribution. Burns did not go into detail about how Microsoft plans to use these, saying only "stay tuned for more technical details soon." Have we seen this movie before? It looks that way, but it is worth noting that Red Hat and Microsoft have different business models. Red Hat (which is owned by IBM) is in the business of licensing and supporting its Enterprise Linux products, which increasingly means OpenShift rather than merely RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Microsoft, on the other hand, operates public cloud infrastructure and profits (like AWS) when free software is run on Azure. Flatcar Linux joins a number of Kubernetes-related open source projects sponsored by the company, including Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime), KEDA (Kubernetes-based Event Driven Autoscaler) and Open Service Mesh. Whereas it was no real surprise when Container Linux transmuted into part of paid-for RedHat OpenShift, there is no such obvious path at Microsoft. That said, the logic behind Kühl's 2018 post could apply equally to this new takeover. Perhaps we can expect a "friendly fork" of Flatcar Container Linux soon.

This is our first look at the new Mercedes-AMG EQS - a high performance version of the brand’s newly minted all-electric luxury limo. It will make its debut later this year, and ahead of reveal AMG engineers have now been spied putting the car through its paces at the Nurburgring in Germany. The cladding on this Mercedes-AMG EQS mule hides a more aggressive front splitter, deeper side skirts and a reshaped rear bumper. Mercedes should also replicate its AMG-specific Panamerica radiator grille on the front of the EV, with a dedicated nose cone. Gorden Wagner, Mercedes’s chief designer, gave us a hint towards the car’s styling at the reveal of the regular EQS earlier this month: “There will be similar differentiation as you know it from other AMG models, which of course have the Panamericana grille with the vertical bars, so it could be likely that we do something similar for an electric car.” Mercedes will upgrade the EQS’s chassis to handle the extra power of the AMG-tuned EV powertrain. Sports adaptive air suspension will feature and, behind the wheels of this mule, we can spy some larger AMG-branded calipers and cross-drilled brake discs. The similarities with Mercedes-AMG’s petrol range should continue inside, with the EQS receiving sports seats, a new sports steering wheel and some dedicated AMG displays for its enormous 55.5-inch Hyperscreen MBUX infotainment system. We’re still yet to receive a detailed breakdown of the AMG EQS range, although Mercedes has confirmed that its future, pure-electric performance models will be powered by a new twin-motor, four-wheel drive powertrain. Auto Express understands that, like Mercedes’s petrol range, there’ll be more than one AMG version of the EQS. Trademark applications would support this: the brand has applied for EQS 63, 55 and 53 badges. At the top of the line-up, we’re expecting the AMG 63-badged variant to use the 751bhp confirmed by Mercedes at the reveal of the regular EQS. The brand also says the system will provide a 0–62mph time of “well under four seconds” and an electronically limited top speed of 155mph. An AMG EQS variant with around 600bhp would slot neatly between the 516bhp EQS 580 4MATIC and the eventual 751bhp AMG 63 variant, potentially as the first pure-electric AMG 53 model. Mercedes will also address the issue of sound (or lack thereof) on its new AMG EVs, with what it calls the “AMG Sound Experience.” The system sends a synthesised sound through the car’s loudspeakers, and feeds signals to a shaker and a sound generator in to make up for the lack of a combustion engine note. Copyright © Autovia Ltd 2021 (Autovia Ltd is part of Dennis Group). All rights reserved.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts have become po[CENSORED]r in recent years for a number of reasons. They don't require as much time as a regular workout (some can take as little as 10 minutes), and research shows they improve fitness, lower blood pressure and help people better manage their blood sugar levels – which may aid in weight loss and prevent disease, such as type 2 diabetes. And recently, a review has found that a form of HIIT workout called low-volume HIIT has benefits on cardiometabolic health. That means low-volume HIIT could induce similar – or greater – improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, blood sugar control, blood pressure and cardiac function compared to continuous aerobic exercise (such as a five-mile run). HIIT is characterized by alternating between low- and high-intensity intervals of exercise. For example, this might include cycling at an easy pace for a few minutes before increasing effort to a high or even maximal level for a short period of time before returning to an easy pace. This is then repeated throughout the exercise session with the total time spent at high-intensity typically low. Different categories of HIIT exist depending on the intensity of exercise required. The researchers of this study performed a topical review of current evidence on low-volume HIIT and its benefits for heart health. Topical reviews provide an up-to-date overview of the latest information in a particular field or area of research that's developing rapidly. They looked at a total of 11 studies. They defined low-volume HIIT as exercise in which the total time spent in active intervals (not including rest periods) was less than 15 minutes. Overall, they found that low-volume HIIT improved a person's capacity to burn fuel (such as carbohydrate and fat), which is directly related to blood sugar control – and may be important in preventing diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. They also found that supervised HIIT in healthy people and people living with obesity and type 2 diabetes is safe. Low-volume HIIT was also shown to improve the heart's structure – such as chamber enlargement. This increases the volume of blood the heart can pump to the rest of the body each heartbeat. These benefits were true for people without underlying health conditions, as well as for those with heart failure (where the heart is unable to pump blood around the body properly because it has become too weak or stiff). The fact that this review has shown low-volume HIIT also improves cardiorespiratory fitness is significant. Even moderate improvements to heart health have been shown to reduce adverse cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke by as much as 30 percent. These results show that even a short workout can improve health. Current guidelines from the World Health Organization recommend adults perform 150-300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75-150 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. Yet, lack of time is often cited as the main barrier to exercise for many people. Low-volume HIIT has the potential to be more time-efficient while offering similar or greater improvements in health outcomes as longer workouts. My own research suggests that low-volume exercise interventions can be used without feeling overly difficult or unpleasant, which is important for motivating people to continue an exercise regime. It may also be good for people who are inactive or have long-term health conditions. How does HIIT work? Regardless of the type of HIIT, it's thought the health improvements are caused by the rate – rather than the amount – at which skeletal muscle glycogen (carbohydrates stored by the body for energy) is used. Muscle glycogen is an important fuel reserve – so our body tries to replenish it as a priority. HIIT workouts deplete muscle glycogen at such a rate that the body increases the number and activity of mitochondria (powerhouses of cells) in our muscles to allow us to meet the energy demands of exercise. This in turn leads to improvements in fitness, metabolic function, and health. Limitations There are some limitations of research into HIIT. Most studies have been conducted in laboratory settings. This makes it hard to know how effectively HIIT would actually work as an exercise strategy in the real world. This review also has its own limitations. Typically, when analyzing the results of a wide body of research, experts use a systematic review or meta-analysis. These are considered to be the highest level of evidence within research designs. They systematically assess the quality of studies and use methods which limit bias. This allows us to draw reliable and accurate conclusions. But topical reviews don't do this – meaning this particular paper doesn't give the most objective possible view on the effectiveness of low-volume HIIT. Also, when considering the time included for a warm-up and cool-down, in addition to the time spent recovering between high-intensity intervals, not all HIIT workouts can be considered to be more time-efficient than traditional exercise. In this review, the average total time per workout was approximately 40 minutes – of which no more than 15 minutes were active. But this isn't to say that HIIT can't be an alternative to longer workouts – especially considering a growing body of evidence shows it has a number of similar benefits as other types of workouts. Current thinking also suggests that every bit of movement counts. So focusing on quality (intensity) of exercise, rather than duration, and finding ways to incorporate higher intensity movement into everyday activities might be helpful in improving our health and fitness. Matthew Haines, Head of Division of Sport, Exercise & Nutrition Sciences, University of Huddersfield. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Activists and protesters have tried fruitlessly for years to stop the construction of the controversial TransMountain oil pipeline in western Canada. Now, a tiny hummingbird have succeeded where others have fallen short, forcing construction on the multibillion-dollar project to halt for the next four months. Environment and Climate Change Canada has ordered work to stop until 21 August after the discovery of an Anna’s hummingbird nest in a tree felled during construction of the pipeline. The migratory bird is not endangered, but it is protected under federal law, and community groups in southern British Columbia had raised the alarm that TransMountain was chopping down trees in vulnerable nesting areas. “Cutting vegetation and trees or carrying out other disruptive activities such as bulldozing or using chainsaws and heavy machinery in the vicinity of active nests will likely result in disturbance or destruction of those nests,” the department said in a statement, adding that because of the season, “migratory birds are particularly vulnerable at this time”. Concerned residents have closely monitored construction near the city of Burnaby amid fears that protected birds and their nests were being ignored by the company as it presses ahead with construction. “Our members have confirmed eight active nests on this site, but there are hundreds, likely thousands more bird nests along the 1,500km of the pipeline route. And yet, construction continues without adequate government monitoring or protection,” Sarah Ross from Community Nest Finding Network said in a statement. TransMountain, which was purchased by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2018, said the stop-work order applied to a 900 meter tract of land but doesn’t impact its planned completion date in late 2022. It also plans to continue on whatever construction is still permitted under the order. Marred by cost overruns in recent months, the C$12.6bn ($10bn) project will nearly triple capacity of the existing pipeline, moving 890,000 barrels of crude oil each day to the Pacific Ocean when complete. In a statement, the company said it tries to clear trees outside of critical nesting seasons, but admitted “this is not always feasible”. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

Name of the game: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion Price: 11.99$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 20h Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Microsoft® Windows® 10 Processor: 1.2GHz processor (Intel Core i5 and up) Memory: 1 GB RAM Graphics: DirectX 10, 11, or 12 compatible card DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 600 MB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Microsoft® Windows® 10 Processor: Dual Core Intel i5 and above Memory: 2 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 700 series or greater DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 600 MB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 15 Apr, 2021. Software Developer: Mad About Pandas. Publisher: Versus Evil. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. In a world of fast-paced action and strategic decision making, sometimes it is nice to play the role of a bystander. Hitchhiker is a game that prides itself on taking you through a journey, instead of letting you create your own path. The end result is a monotonous but thought provoking journey that is closer to an interactive experience than a traditional game. Hitchhiker’s primary drive is the plot starring an amnesiac hitchhiker on a journey to uncover his past. After getting a ride with a raisin farmer named Vern, the hitchhiker discovers a photo of him and his girlfriend in Vern’s glove compartment. After Vern accidentally reveals that he knows more than he is letting on about the hitchhiker’s situation, the hitchhiker realises his girlfriend might be in trouble. He then sets out on a hitchhiking journey with strange occurrences to save his girlfriend and to remember his past. As the hitchhiker travels from car to car, he encounters several drivers with their own issues. While you are not explicitly solving their problems, the drivers each leave the player with philosophical questions ranging from human desire to the true power of AI technology. The interactions between the current driver and the hitchhiker are easily the highlights here, as the fully voiced dialogue is well-crafted and littered with references to other works, such as The Great Gatsby and The Matrix. Unfortunately, the gameplay is where Hitchhiker ultimately falls short. The game plays from a first-person perspective, with the hitchhiker interacting with his environment in minor ways, such as opening or closing a window. For the most part, you are just selecting a dialogue option or interacting with an object the game asks you to, but sometimes the game will sprinkle in a puzzle or two. The difficulty of these puzzles are all over the place, with some puzzles being self-explanatory while others are incredibly obtuse, breaking the pace. Even though the game is incredibly short at around three hours, Hitchhiker’s greater issue lies in its pacing, as it can drag immensely at points. The option to skip or fast forward the dialogue could have helped the monotony, but that feature is surprisingly absent. Additionally, the game struggles to run smoothly at points. Objects in the background constantly pop in, the game stutters during saving, and menus freeze up forcing a full game reset, severely breaking the story’s flow. While playing as someone not in the driver’s seat is a novel idea, Hitchhiker struggles to create an enjoyable gameplay experience. While the story is engaging, the game’s technical issues, inconsistent puzzle difficulty, and overall monotonous gameplay makes this a better movie than a game. If you are looking for a game that has you playing a more interactive experience, you should steer clear from Hitchhiker. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. OS: Windows 7 SP1. Processor: Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz or AMD equivalent. Memory: 2 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 450 or higher with 1GB Memory. DirectX: Version 11. Storage: 8 GB available space.

AMD is said to be doing an Alder Lake with Zen 5, following Intel's lead in mixing and matching different CPU cores within a single architecture and a single chip. Yes, welcome once more to speculation corner, where rumour and truth come together to spawn something… beautiful. Following recent rumours that, because of the current chip shortage, AMD has reportedly chosen to cancel its potential Ryzen refresh, we're now seeing suggestions that its far-flung future architecture—2024's Zen 5—is to be built using the increasingly familiar big.LITTLE hybrid design. That's the one Intel is using for Alder Lake later on this year and subsequently Raptor Laker next year. It's worth stating right off the bat these are completely unsubstantiated rumours, translated from MoePC.net, which offers no hint of a legitimate source for the information. So yeah, treat it with the scepticism it deserves, but consider it for the interesting hypothesis it might be. The short report notes that the Zen 5 design will be the next big architectural change for AMD and that its APUs will be code-named Strix Point . The suggestion here is that Zen 4 kinda won't be as big of a change, but that 5nm architecture still has its own fair share of unknowns too. The MoePC piece also has some oddly firm details about specs, suggesting that some core counts are already in place. That seems a strange thing to note when there will be multiple different SKUs for the Zen 5 chips, from low-end mobile chips all the way up to many-core server behemoths. Still, it suggests there will be a version with eight big Zen 5 cores and four little cores, though it doesn't state whether the little cores will still be nominally using the Zen 5 architecture or whether it will be a separate chip design altogether. With them, all manufactured on TSMC's upcoming N3 node they're potentially all pretty efficient slices of silicon, so it will be interesting to see what AMD might change between a big and little core for the purposes of our Ryzen 8000 processors. By the time Zen 5 rolls around in 2024 the N3 node will be well-used—it's entering into volume production towards the end of 2022, so will likely have a full year of commercial use before AMD switches over its whole Zen 5 range to the smaller production process.

Atlassian has released Jira Work Management, which it plans to slip into fields beyond the usual IT and software suspects. The Jira product itself, which Atlassian initially built its house on, is coming up on its third decade, having started life in 2002 as an issue tracker. It has grown over the years to encompass agile project management and, late last year, was extended to handle IT Service Management. It is therefore not too surprising that the company has turned its gaze to other areas of the enterprise with Jira Work Management, aimed at teams in HR, finance and marketing. While it may sound a little like the company might be impinging on areas occupied by ERP systems, chief revenue officer Cameron Deatsch told The Register that "the people's toes we're stepping on are email and spreadsheets" as the company seeks to extend its work tracking and assignment technology into pastures new. To tempt those reluctant to leave the embrace of Excel, there are views and default templates aimed at different areas of the business. Users preferring something with an .xlsx extension are catered for by the List view, Outlook hounds might prefer the Calendar view, Gantt fans have the Timeline view, while the Board display is a handy workflow visualiser. There is little here to scare the horses, and the changes feel more evolutionary than revolutionary. Status categories now have helpful colours and the language used has been switched from the stories and bugs of the software world to tasks and assets (in the case of something like marketing or design) or candidate (for recruitment). For companies already accustomed to Jira, it's a relatively straightforward extension once one is on the correct tier. While those on the freebie tier get access to the new toys, more than 10 users or extra storage requires a jump to the paid-for product. Atlassian told us that versions for the Premium and Enterprise tiers would be along soon but, alas, the new functionality was very much cloud only. "Jira Work Management is a Software-as-a-Service offering from Atlassian," explained Deatsch. "It's yet another carrot for our on-prem customer base to go off and start using our cloud." And, presumably, coughing up for those subscriptions. In its FY2021 Q2 results, the company boasted of a year-on-year growth of 23 per cent to $501m in revenue, of which $311m came from subscriptions while perpetual licence revenues continued to dwindle. Deatsch would not be drawn on the travails facing Jira rival Basecamp, but he did laugh: "No bullshit is actually one of our key values that we share."

We're not quite sure what the second Squadra Corse car is powered by, and we have no idea what it's called, but we can already tell it will look more menacing than any of Lamborghini's regular-production models. Posted on YouTube, the 32-second video shows enough of the track-bound coupe to whet our appetite. It's considerably wider than the Huracán, much lower, and fitted with a specific body kit that includes vents chiseled into the quarter panels, a huge wing, and an intriguing periscope that presumably channels cooling air to the engine bay. The silhouette and the proportions hint at the Huracán underpinnings, though nothing is official yet and a majority of the exterior parts look newly-developed. The bigger Aventador is near the end of its life cycle, its successor is expected to break cover in the next 12 months, and it already received the Squadra Corse treatment in 2018. Squadra Corse's involvement suggests we're looking at a Lamborghini developed exclusively for track use, and footage of the interior supports this theory. Instead of an instrument cluster, the driver will face a screen that presents key information about the car and its surroundings with a simple, easy-to-read layout. There's a full roll cage, too, and the side windows have been replaced with Plexiglas units to keep weight in check. Lamborghini hasn't announced when it will unveil its Squadra Corse's next new model, but the unveiling will almost certainly take place online. We're guessing production will be strictly limited, and it's not too far-fetched to speculate every build slot will be spoken for by the time we see the car in the metal in spite of a six- or seven-digit price tag. ©2021 Verizon Media. All rights reserved.

British Jewish and Asian communities have united in support of an emergency appeal amid the coronavirus crisis unfolding in India. The British Indian Jewish Association (BIJA) has backed a fundraising campaign to treat the hundreds of thousands affected by the virus in the sub-continent. This comes amid a huge surge in cases in India, with 320,000 reported on Tuesday, and 2,771 deaths, as the country’s healthcare system teeters on the brink. The British Asian Trust’s Emergency Appeal, backed by BIJA, has already raised almost £60,000 since launching on the weekend, and seeks to provide oxygen for patients amid rapidly depleting supplies. Backing the campaign, BIJA Co-Chairs Zaki Cooper and Dr Peter Chadha said: “We have all seen the distressing images in the media. People in India are suffering terribly and we wanted to do what we can to help. Our religions talk about the value and sanctity of human life. We know from our own communities’ experiences in the UK the devastation that Covid can bring. By supporting BAT’s appeal, we want to give an outlet for all those who wish to help India at this really hard time.” The Asian Jewish Business Network is also supporting the appeal, with director Russell Behar, saying: “We are dedicated to help and support BIJA along with British Asian Trust Emergency Appeal with the very unfortunate escalating COVID situation happening in India, we need your help. Together we can help, together we can make a difference, together we can make a change.” For £50, the campaign can provide oxygen for 40 patients, while £450 can fund a low-flow oxygen concentrator to help 900. £830 will go towards a high-flow oxygen concentrator to help 550, for the most seriously ill.

Google’s entire web presence in Argentina was last week briefly redirected to the website of a 30-year-old designer who bought the company’s domain name for just £2. Nicolas Kuroña, a resident of Buenos Aires, says he noticed that the company’s services were down when he began receiving messages from friends on WhatsApp. But rather than doing what many would have, and shrugging before returning to work – or taking the outage as a sign to have a tea break – he headed to the Argentinian domain name registry, NIC Argentina, to see if he could work out the cause. There, he says, a search for Google’s URL, google.com.ar, revealed that the domain name was available for the low price of 270 pesos – £2.09. “The domain expired, I was able to buy it legally,” he tweeted that evening, as other Argentine web users began to spot his name on the new records. “I have the purchase invoice, so I’m calm.” “When the purchase process was completed and my data appeared, I knew that something was going to happen ... I was really anxious,” he told the BBC later. “I could not believe what had just happened.” “I want to make it clear that I never had any bad intentions,” he added. “I just tried to buy it and the NIC allowed me to.” “Domain squatting”, the practice of buying up domain names for no reason other than their desirability to others, is a fairly common practice, and many countries have put in place policies to ensure that the rightful owner of the domain name can claim it for free. But the Argentinian case is unusual, since Google’s domain name shouldn’t have been up for sale at all: its licence was not due to expire until July this year. Even so, Kuroña hasn’t been able to keep the domain name he briefly held. It was transferred back to Google’s control shortly after he registered it – with no refund of the 270 peso fee. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

Name of the game: CRIS Price: 6.79$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 1 May Requirements: OS: Windows 7 or later Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6750 (2 * 2660) or equivalent / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ (2 * 2600) or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Geforce GT 430 (1024 MB) / Radeon HD 5570 (1024 MB) Storage: 4 GB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 16 Sep, 2021. Software Developer: Nacon. Publisher: Nacon, WRC. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. Annual games have a bit of a reputation for rehashing the same old thing year after year with only minor improvements. Some say it’s a license to print money. Rally is hardly in the mainstream, however, and neither is developer Kylotonn’s approach to the FIA World Rally Championship. With significant strides made with each new release, this is one series that has bucked the trend. It may not draw the crowds of other motorsports, but for pure gameplay, you cannot beat a good rally sim. And WRC 9 is a great rally sim. Make no mistake, this is no poor man’s DiRT Rally; neither is it an arcade-oriented alternative focused on accessibility. You can switch the difficulty toggles in the settings all you like, turn on traction control and the anti-lock breaking system, but you still have to navigate these overpowered hatchbacks down some of the most demanding off-road tracks from across the globe. It’s worth pointing out that this is purely focused on traditional point-to-point rallying, and within this it offers all of the modes you would want – daily, weekly, and monthly events with online leaderboards, multiplayer lobbies, and even a new Club mode, enabling you to rank up alongside your buddies in a series of online events. Not online? No problem, because this is precisely where WRC 9 shines the most, and not just because it includes a local split-screen mode. Just like its direct competitor, WRC 9 is a challenging simulator that rewards the patient but committed fan. As a single player experience, it even exceeds its contemporary in some crucial ways. In Career mode, you start out by signing for a team in the reduced Junior WRC. All teams at this level run front-wheel drive Ford Fiesta R2s, which are forgiving and fairly accommodating at easing you in. Throughout the season, you get opportunities to test drive cars from manufacturers in the higher four-wheel drive leagues. Impress them to increase your reputation with that firm, thereby improving your chances of receiving team offers and moving up the ranks through WRC 3, WRC 2 and eventually into the full WRC Championship. This allows you try out each of the cars and see which team takes your fancy for when the offers come rolling in. Career mode is an all-hands-on-deck effort that requires you to manage your finances, objectives, crew, R&D upgrades, and even the events you take part in. Each event costs money to enter, but each type has the potential for different payouts in return. Some events increase your team morale, for instance, or allows you to practice in your team car, achieving objectives and providing you the opportunity to get to grips with its unique characteristics. Other events, such as historic races, are fun distractions that are challenging but with the potential for big payouts. Here you to take control of classic cars like the famous Group B Audi Quattro A2, which is about as difficult to tame as a lion, just as you would want it to be, and the Lancia Delta Integrale, which feels exactly how you would expect a car that dominated the sport in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to feel. All of this is to say that WRC 9 handles absolutely beautifully. Gone are the early days of the series when cars were erratic, bouncing from side to side like a pinball machine. Now cars handle as you would expect, and they react to the environment and its elements. You’ll definitely want to make use of those extreme weather trials. During a heavy downpour in Germany, a river formed down one side of the road. You’ll soon learn to avoid that, carefully positioning your car away lest you spin out of control. Lighting has also massively improved over the last few entries, and while there’s no HDR in sight, there are still some beautiful vistas. Descending down the hillside into a valley of damp fog is often a beautiful thing. Just don’t look too closely at the foliage away from the track or you may notice some jagged edges. As a fully licensed property, all the official branding and teams are present, alongside all 14 rallies. Some of these are making a return from prior games, so series regulars may recognise routes they’ve already been down. There are, however, also new additions, including Japan, Kenya, and New Zealand. While the developer has clearly mastered the layouts of some of its older countries, we did find some of the newer rallies to be of varying quality. The Kenyan Safari, for instance, has some dull sections that remind us somewhat of the rudimentary twitch-based course design of the original V-Rally. That other countries, such as Turkey, Sweden, Wales, and Monte Carlo, feel so spectacular and varied serves to heighten the disparity. There are a couple of other minor complaints. We often have a hard time hearing the co-driver over the engine. We realise this is a sim and he is supposed to be wearing a helmet, but we’re not sure that the middle of an intense rally is the best time to perform Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. The game is also just a little too eager to punish you for veering off track. Warnings often pop up as soon as one side of the car touches the verge, and we’ve been given penalties for what we intended to be cute corner cuts, something that is usually encouraged and inconsistently punished. But let’s not get too bogged down by these relatively minor issues. The majority of the time, WRC 9 is a breathtaking rally sim that has come leaps and bounds from where it was a few years ago. Out of the box, it’s a more complete single player point-to-point rally game than its competition. It just lacks a smidgen of finesse in a few small areas. However, if you love rally, we think you will want to board this rollercoaster time and time again. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 | AMD FX-4350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650, 1 Go | AMD Radeon HD 7770, 1 Go DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 30 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 Processor: Intel Core i5-6600 | AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, 6 Go | AMD Radeon RX 590, 8 Go DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 30 GB available space

We are due to be swallowed up by the Sun in around seven to eight billion years, which means it will be nothing if not plentiful. The YouTube channel, 8-Bit Show And Tell (via Sweclockers), has shown the Bitcoin Miner 64 software running on a standard Commodore 64. And, I'll be honest, my eyeballs got a little moist at the sight of the beautiful old grey slab of personal computing joy. Even if it could only achieve a Bitcoin hash at a rate of every 3.5 seconds, or around 0.3 H/s. Given that current Bitcoin ASICs are being measured in terahashes per second, and not just straight hashes per second, you can see why it's going to take a while with the venerable C64. The 50 trillion year mark is also a ballpark figure for the upgraded SuperCPU accelerator add-on that 8-Bit Show And Tell used in their video to try and bump up the Commodore rig's performance; I don't want to get near the extreme numbers you'd run into at 0.3 H/s. With the accelerator in place we can see the hash rate leaps to a heady 10 H/s. That would net you 0.00000000000002 Bitcoin per year, and at 10 H/s on the 21W C64 that would still cost you around $22 per year to mine. And realistically the hashing difficulty might just creep up over the next 50 trillion years. We might run out of Bitcoins by then too. They note that the software they're using is written in C, but they could potentially achieve a speedup of up to ten times if it was written in machine code. Though that still wouldn't make any difference to your chance of turning a profit. Not sure how it would stack up against Ethereum, so we're still no closer to figuring out if it can take some of the strain off the beleaguered graphics card market, but we've got to hope that new Ethereum Bitmain ASIC will shoulder some of that burden for us.

Fedora 34, a feature-packed new release of Red Hat's leading edge Linux distribution, was released today, though the main Java package maintainer has quit, urging "affected maintainers to drop dependencies on Java." Fedora 34 is used by Red Hat to try out new features that are likely to end up in first CentOS Stream and then Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the commercial offering. What is new in Fedora 34? The full list of changes is here and includes: btrfs (B-tree file system), which has been the default for Fedora Workstation since Fedora 33, will now have transparent zstd (Zstandard) compression For audio, PipeWire will be used instead of PulseAudio and JACK - Systemd-oomd, which aims to mitigate out of memory conditions, will be on by default The LLVM toolchain is updated to version 12 with all its sub-projects - The Ruby language is updated from 2.7 to 3.0, and the Ruby on Rails framework to 6.1 Wayland will be used by default for KDE editions of Fedora (it is already the default for GNOME) The desktop is GNOME 40, described by Fedora project leader Matthew Miller as "the first time since GNOME 3.0 came out that there's a real rethinking of the basic desktop experience." Of these, the introduction of GNOME 40 will be the most visible to users, and the switch to PipeWire should improve audio handling significantly. Fedora program manager Ben Cotton revealed yesterday that Release Candidate (RC) 1.2 was approved for final release today – though the speed of the approval, with just five hours between the completion of the RC and the meeting to approve it, has caused concern. Cotton has said that he is "starting the conversation about how to prevent this in the future." Spoiling the celebrations, Fedora's main Java package maintainer Fabio Valentini said yesterday: "I can no longer in good conscience be the primary maintainer of (most) Java packages in Fedora." It is worse than that; in a post entitled "The Death of Java (packages)" he said "new versions and even security issues have been piling up for months," that "Java package maintainers from Red Hat have been exceptionally unhelpful, and have not substantially contributed to Java packages in Fedora in years," that the Eclipse Java-based IDE (the packages for which are maintained by someone else) is a "dumpster fire" and that "I see no way for the situation to improve." Valentini decided to orphan "all Java packages I am the main admin of" adding that "since this is the majority of remaining Java software in Fedora … I expect a decent amount of dependent packages will be affected." His solution is to "urge affected maintainers to drop dependencies on Java, if at all possible." Cup of Java bitter for many Miller and Cotton thanked him for his efforts, while others indicated agreement that maintaining Java is particularly burdensome. "This is a task that has burned out many people (including me)," said Aleksandar Kurtakov from the Red Hat Eclipse team; while Ankur Sinha from the neuro-sig group (neuroscience research) said "the neuro-sig reached a similar conclusion - that they're just too much work or just pretty much impossible to keep in Fedora. We've now accepted that documenting Java tools and asking users to install them directly from upstream is the most we can manage."

Praying mantises — with their angular features, huge eyes and centaur posture — often seem a bit alien. But researchers have recently found one mantis species that takes this otherworldly quality to the next level: Females of this species have an inflatable pheromone gland that protrudes from the back of the abdomen like a green, Y-shaped balloon. This odd organ is unlike anything seen in mantises before, researchers report online April 21 in the Journal of Orthoptera Research. In October 2017, herpetologist Frank Glaw was moving through the nighttime rainforest in Amazonian Peru at the Panguana research station, searching for amphibians and reptiles. His flashlight passed over a brown, leaf-mimicking mantis (Stenophylla lobivertex) in the tangle of vegetation, and he saw “maggotlike” structures protruding from its back. Those structures were quickly sucked back inside the insect after the light hit it, says Glaw, of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich, Germany. Glaw was reminded of “parasites that eat the animal from the inside,” having seen such fatally parasitized insects before. With the help of Christian Schwarz, an entomologist at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, and observations of some female specimens in captivity, the team figured out that the mantis was no parasite-riddled vessel. When left undisturbed in total darkness, the female mantises extrude a pronged structure inflated with body fluids, roughly the hue and luster of polished jade. It appears to be a highly modified gland for producing pheromones — chemical signals that help female insects attract mates (SN: 5/13/15). Other mantises have simple, noninflatable glands that are located in the same section of abdomen as S. lobivertex’s bifurcated contraption. This mantis species is rarely encountered by researchers and might be thinly spread throughout the rainforest, so locating receptive mates could be particularly challenging. The researchers think a large, protrusible pheromone gland with lots of surface area could be a workaround, more efficiently dispersing pheromones to be detected by the antennae of would-be suitors. “It is a kind of chemical ‘dating app’ in the jungle,” says Glaw, noting that the observations “emphasize the importance of pheromones in [the mantises’] reproduction in a vivid manner.” Females in some other mantis species are known to expose a pink, patchlike gland when doing their chemical call for mates, says Henrique Rodrigues, an entomologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History who was not involved with this research. “I can easily see something like that being the precursor of the protrusible gland,” says Rodrigues. He notes that since males have thin, hairlike antennae, “the other way to increase the odds of mate finding would be for females to increase the amount of pheromone released.” Glaw thinks it’s likely that similar glands might exist in the other two species of Stenophylla, and possibly other mantises. “If this organ is really an important tool to improve the finding of mates,” he says, “it would be an advantage for many other mantis species as well and might be more widespread.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2021. All rights reserved.

These new Porsche 911 spy shots suggest that the brand could be looking to reintroduce the 911 Sport Classic to the line-up. The limited edition badge was last used on the 997-generation car as an homage to the 1973 Carrera RS 2.7, with its very own ducktail spoiler, wider bodywork, fuchs-style wheels and a handful of performance upgrades over the regular 911 Carrera. If this is a new version of the Porsche 911 Sport Classic based on the 992-generation 911, it certainly follows the same formula, based on these new images. It has a similar ducktail spoiler, the same double bubble roof and a restyled diffuser with larger air vents behind the rear wheels. Like the old car, buyers could also get a set of deep-dish five-spoke Fuchs alloy wheels, styled to look like those fitted to the first-generation sports car. Also like its predecessor, the new 911 Sport Classic should share the same basic mechanicals as the Carrera S (note this mule’s lack of side intakes required to keep the Turbo’s engine cool), albeit with a couple of simple performance upgrades such as a tweaked ECU and a freer-flowing exhaust system. The standard Carrera S uses a turbocharged 3.0-litre flat-six petrol engine with 444bhp and 530Nm of torque. However, Porsche’s upgrades probably won’t push the engine’s output far past 500bhp as, when the Sport Classic was first introduced, it was more about handling and the “sensation of performance” rather than outright speed. In-keeping with this driver-focussed brief, we expect the new 911 Sport Classic will come as standard with a seven-speed manual gearbox. The option was introduced back into the 992-generation car’s line-up last year, following an outcry from enthusiasts. Porsche’s Active Suspension Management (PASM) system and adaptive dampers should also come as standard while, behind this mule’s alloys, we can see a set of ceramic cross-drilled brake discs with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston units at the rear. Porsche should make a few tweaks to the car’s interior, too, with fresh upholstery, unique dashboard trim and some dedicated badges all making an appearance. However, the car’s 10.9-inch infotainment system, dual seven-inch digital gauge clusters and analogue rev counter should be transferred onto the special edition model untouched. Prices for the new Porsche 911 Sports Classic are yet to be confirmed but, if the previous model is anything to go by, it won’t be cheap. Prices started from £140,000 – a figure which was further justified by the car’s exclusivity, as only 250 examples were made. By the time we’d added all the aforementioned performance equipment to a Carrara S on Porsche’s 911 configurator, we reached a figure of around £120,000. Factor in the cost of the body modifications and Porsche’s exclusivity tax, and this new model could comfortably eclipse the old car’s £140,000 price-tag. Copyright © Autovia Ltd 2021 (Autovia Ltd is part of Dennis Group). All rights reserved.

Israeli settlers have increased their harassment of Palestinian worshippers during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The Israeli extremists usually carry out their attacks with the full protection of Israel's occupation security forces after the Palestinians have performed the night prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem. Such violence is ongoing within the context not only of the occupation but also of statements by Israeli officials who incite against the indigenous po[CENSORED]tion. Last week, for example, the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King, called on Israeli police to execute Palestinian protesters who take to the streets of the holy city at night. Israeli TV Channel 7 reported King as saying that shooting the Palestinian protesters "is the only way which can end the night protests phenomenon." The Palestine Information Centre (PIC) reported last week that the Jewish Kahanist far-right group Lehava was planning to organise a rally of settlers in Jerusalem's Old City "to defend Jewish honour." According to Haaretz, the Jewish extremists patrolled streets within the occupied city and attacked Palestinian passers-by physically and verbally. Yedioth Ahronoth was also reported by the PIC as saying that a group of armed Jewish settlers planned to storm into Jerusalem's Safra Square and Jaffa Street wearing combat clothing and carrying weapons to attack Palestinians. This actually happened. Hundreds of extremist — and illegal — settlers marched to the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City chanting "Death to Arabs… Death to terrorists". They attacked the Palestinians, most of whom had been worshipping in Al-Aqsa, and wounded more than 100 of them, said the Palestinian Red Crescent. This prompted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to urge the international community to protect the Palestinians from the settler attacks. Abbas pointed out that such harassment and attacks were encouraged by the Israeli government, but it was to no avail. The international community remained silent and did nothing to stop or put pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to stop the daily settler violations against the Palestinians in Jerusalem. Certain countries only expressed "concerns", which is next to meaningless. They clearly didn't want to upset their influential pro-Israel lobbies, and so incidents were referred to not as settler violence or aggression, but "clashes" between settlers and the Palestinians, effectively blaming both sides. As the suffering of the Palestinians in Jerusalem continued without any effective deterrent, the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip decided to take a stand on their behalf and to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Jerusalemites. A warning was issued to Israel about the settlers' aggression. When this was ignored they launched several rockets targeting open areas near illegal settlements, sending a message to the Israelis that Jerusalem is a "red line". © Ardi Associates Ltd 2009-2021. All Rights Reserved

Trident could be forced to the US or possibly France if Scotland became independent because there is no alternative port immediately available elsewhere in the UK, according to a retired admiral responsible for Britain’s nuclear policy. Unless Scotland were to agree to lease back the Faslane submarine base to the rest of the UK, continuing Trident would probably require the help of an allied country or the nuclear deterrent would have to be halted completely, the expert said. The conclusions are contained in a European Leadership Network paper written by John Gower, a rear admiral at the time of the 2014 independence referendum, as Scotland prepares for the Holyrood elections, where the anti-nuclear SNP could win an overall majority. “A Scottish secession would therefore generate fundamental operational and fiscal issues for the UK’s nuclear deterrent,” Gower wrote, because Faslane base, the warhead loading site at Coulport, and nearby testing ranges are all based in Scotland or Scottish waters. The lack of options for basing Trident outside Scotland is well known in defence and policy circles but has become relevant as the SNP presses for a second independence referendum as part of its Holyrood election campaign. Far ahead in the polls, Nicola Sturgeon’s party, has long been against the retention of Trident. It means the most likely outcome – if Scotland were to vote for independence in the future – could entail some sort of lease arrangement allowing for Trident submarines to have “uninterrupted and continuously permissioned” access to Scottish territorial waters, which could be politically controversial. Alternative sites considered at the time Faslane was chosen, such as Milford Haven in Wales and Falmouth in Cornwall, are now industrialised in the case of the former or have a larger po[CENSORED]tion; while Devonport, where the submarines are refitted, would require significant engineering work and is close to the city of Plymouth. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

Name of the game: VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action Price: 10.49$ Link Store: Steam Offer ends up after X hours: 1 may Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7/8/10 Processor: 1.6 Ghz Memory: 1 GB RAM Graphics: 256mb Storage: 250 MB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 7/8/10 Processor: 2 Ghz Memory: 2 GB RAM Graphics: 1gb Storage: 250 MB available space

Game Information: Initial release date: 23 Apr, 2021. Software Developer: Square Enix, Toylogic Inc. Publisher: Square Enix. Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows Microsoft. NieR always deserved a second chance, and you could argue that the very well received NieR Automata was exactly that. The tale of 2B touched the hearts of many a player back in 2017, but for a while, it felt like the original NieR had been left behind and largely forgotten. After all, the NieR that we got here in the West — the one starring the grumpy father figure — divided opinion to an extreme degree. The 2010 release was an intriguing title that featured a bunch of unique and surprising ideas, but it was hamstrung by clunky gameplay, piss-stained PS3-era visuals, and a story that didn't go anywhere for about ten hours or so. And yet here we are, 11 years later, playing NieR Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139. Halfway between a remake and a remaster, it's based on the original NieR Replicant — the Japan-only version of NieR that featured a younger protagonist, instead of the aforementioned father figure that made it West. Right off the bat, this remake-remaster does away with what was arguably NieR's biggest problem: the inherent jank. Running at a super smooth 60 frames-per-second, the new NieR Replicant is a joy to play. The controls are tight and impressively responsive, allowing for the kind of satisfyingly slick motion that eluded the original NieR. Needless to say, it also looks a hell of a lot better than its PS3 predecessor. Although it still makes use of a rather muted colour palette, the infamous brown-grey-yellow filter that was so prominent on Sony's last-last-gen console is gone. What's more, character models have been overhauled — mostly for the better. We say that because there was a strange but somehow fitting ugliness to characters in the original NieR, but now, the main cast resemble immaculate porcelain dolls. We suppose that the change was inevitable, but hardcore NieR fans may not appreciate the alterations. Okay, so now we have to try and explain what NieR Replicant is all about. The gist of it is that you're a young boy with an even younger sister, and she's not well. Set far into the future, human civilisation is in ruins, and murderous monsters known as shades have pushed mankind to the brink of extinction. It's a dour setting for a dour story, but your duty as an older brother demands that you find a way to cure your sibling's mysterious illness. The opening hours of NieR Replicant are slow to say the least. You'll learn the ropes by accepting the most basic of jobs from people who live nearby, which mostly involve sprinting from one side of the village to the other more times than you care to count. Give it a bit of patience and the story does start to unfurl little by little, but for some players, it's going to be an exercise in frustration. And at this point, we really should mention the side quests, which are largely terrible. Almost as soon as you're free to explore the village, you'll find opportunities to help the locals with their unspeakably mundane tasks. The majority of these missions boil down to fetching a number of items, or delivering a message to someone on the other side of the map. To be frank, they're not worth your time, and NieR Replicant is a far better game when you stick to the main story. Thankfully, you can do just that. While there are a few diamonds in the rough when it comes to side quests — a handful do hinge on touching personal stories and interesting world building — the rest will quickly sap your will to play. What's more, there's no immediate value in pursuing every quest that you come across. Money is usually the sole reward, and on a regular playthrough, you don't need a whole lot of dosh. Now, we get why the side quests are there. As noted, they do give you insight into the state of the game's world, and the roles of the people that inhabit it. However, to lock somewhat important world building behind such mind-numbingly tedious tasks is one of NieR Replicant's greatest sins. It's this kind of design that no doubt put a lot of people off the original release, but look beyond the horrors of being asked to find ten different types of fruit, and NieR Replicant has an awful lot of heart. When the main plot finally kicks into gear and you're introduced to the rest of the game's main cast, the adventure begins to blossom. There's still an odd magic to NieR that's difficult to properly convey; a unique combination of sombre music, outlandish plot twists, and an underlying sense of otherworldly dread. The actual gameplay structure of NieR Replicant isn't all that special. The game's world consists of several towns, separated by relatively small stretches of wilderness. The story has you go back and forth between these settlements, again, slowly unravelling the mystery of your sister's disease. And from time to time, you'll traverse a dungeon, complete with platforming, puzzles, and combat encounters. It's really the subversion of expectations that makes NieR a cult classic. The structure might be quite formulaic, but there's a lot of creativity in the way that the game presents itself. Most notably, the title uses different camera angles to great effect, shifting the perspective during specific stints of exploration. For example, one dungeon later in the game forces a top-down, isometric view of the action, and transforms the adventure into what feels like a Diablo-esque RPG. It's these flourishes that make playing through NieR Replicant so memorable. The game's story also leaves a valuable impression when all's said and done. We obviously won't spoil anything here, but certain plot points elevate the entire experience. That said, the writing is borderline egregious at times — the kind of nonsensical slop that would make Kingdom Hearts blush — but NieR's fusion of oddball humour and anime-style swagger is enough to carry the game's more questionable moments. Overall, it's a great ride. Speaking of rides, combat can be quite the thrill. Even as a child, the protagonist is more than capable of swinging a sword, slicing enemies to ribbons with deft cuts and lightning fast movement. NieR Automata's influence can definitely be felt in the overhauled combat system, which is more fluid than what you'll find in the original game. Simplistic controls and easy-to-learn combos, combined with a generous dodge roll, give fights a fast but precise feel. It's fun stuff, even if it lacks the depth that was added in Automata. Boss battles in particular showcase the strengths of Replicant's high-energy combat. The best of them have you utilising all of your abilities — including the satisfying magical attacks that come courtesy of Weiss, a brilliantly voiced talking book and steadfast companion. Your other allies aren't bad in a brawl, either, but it should be noted that you have almost no control over them. As such, combat is more Devil May Cry than a party-based action RPG. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows® 10 64-bit Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 3 1300X; Intel® Core™ i5-6400 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon™ R9 270X; NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 26 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card Additional Notes: 60 FPS @ 1280x720 RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows® 10 64-bit Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 3 1300X; Intel® Core™ i5-6400 Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX Vega 56; NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1660 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 26 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card Additional Notes: 60 FPS @ 1920x1080

There was one small bit of information that we didn't know when we talked about Sapphire's new hybrid-cooled 6900 XT on Friday. We knew about the impressive cooling solution, which couples an onboard fan to keep the RAM and VRMs chilled with a dedicated liquid-cooled loop for the Radeon RX 6900 XTXH itself. We also knew about the Toxic Boost allowing the clocks to hit an incredible 2,730MHz. What we didn't know was the cost. Because some things are just too much for mortals to bear. That has now changed though, as Sapphire's PR got back to me late Friday with the one detail that was missing from the press release about Sapphire's most extreme graphics card to date. It costs an eye-watering $2,499. That's more expensive than my main gaming machine. That's probably more expensive than every PC I've ever owned (or close enough), and definitely the most expensive graphics card I've ever written about, and that includes some serious dual-GPU oddities from days gone by. You know the kind of cards that you can now look back on and wonder what anyone was thinking when they designed it. Maybe that's exactly how the Sapphire Toxic AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Extreme Edition will be remembered (apart from having a ridiculously long name). A card that was once at the cutting edge, albeit for a tiny fraction of time. Then again, if you're in the market for a high-end graphics card right now, that price tag is expensive, sure, but it's far from ridiculous. The likes of the RTX 3080 still tip up on eBay for this kind of money. Even normal renditions of the standard AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT roll in north of $2,000. They shouldn't, and we're not for a second suggesting anyone buys a used graphics card for this sort of money. But that's the market we find ourselves in. And people are clearly buying cards for this sort of money. Amazingly.