# Ret-H@CKer

i am in battle now vs roven . when i finish it , i will make one vs u

v1 : v2 :

> Opponent's nickname: @ROVEN > Theme (must be an image): https://i.imgur.com/JYjHTeF.jpg > Work Type: Avatar > Size & Texts: 150x250 RedSky > How many votes?: 20 > Work time: 24hrs

These settings are very important for many players, but these settings also depend on your pc. As you know and probably have encountered this problem when installing CS1.6 on the Steam platform, it's possible that the cs is not full screen, black striping or lag at the side, up to 60 fps. I'll make you a little tutorial: 1. Right click on the steam icon that is in the bar down the clock, then right click on the Collection (if you have the steam on the Romanian language) or the Library (if it is in English). 2. You will open the steam platform, right click on counter strike then advanced settings (in RO) or Properties (in EN): 3. Then Set the startup (RO) or Set launch option (EN) (1 in the next image), you will be opened a box where the settings (2 in the image) that I will post below and then OK 3 in the picture). The settings are as follows: -nomsaa -nofbo -32bpp + ex_interp 0.01 + lightgamma 0.9 -noforcemspd -noforcemaccel -noforcemparms What these commands do: -nofbo and -nomsaa -> These settings help to stop viewing players up or half of the screen. -32bpp -> forces the color depth to 32 bits if you have 64-bit pc set -64bpp instead of -32bpb + ex_interp 0.01 -> a very important setting + lightgamma 0.9 -> setting used for darker maps -noforcemspd, -noforcemaccel and -noforcemparms -> use mouse settings. 4. After you get ok, go into counter-strike (in play) and enter the following settings in your console or cfg (if you have these settings will be read every time you enter the game without you once again in the console): If you still have problems with these black-striped settings, check the video settings If you are in the game, follow the next steps, if you do not come into play, and then follow the next steps: Options (EN) or Options if you have the menu from cs in Romanian Select the Video tab OpenGl and display mode set Normal Set the resolution you want to play (image is my resolution so it should not be set exactly as in the picture): if you want to play the resolution 640x480 click the arrow next to the resolution, and select the resolution) 5. Depending on your PC: If you have a better PC just check the box with Enable HD models, if you have a weaker PC, just check the last box with Low video quality 6. Set as much as possible for better quality. 7.Apply. I hope I helped you with this little tutorial. Good luck and have fun This tutorial is a registered trademark of the CSBLACKDEVIL.COM community.

Hello ,i think it's this one :

Kingston has made the move to bring RGB to their ever popular FURY line of DDR4 memory modules. The Hyper X Fury RGB takes the same Fury DDR4 design signature we are all familiar with and adds quite the touch of color thanks to a nice diffuser placed on top of the DIMM. The lineup ranges from a single 8GB stick rated at 2400MHz all the way up to a kit of 4 16GB sticks rated at 3733MHz for those who demand extreme capacity and speeds. We were sent the kit of 32GB (2x16GB) Hyper X Fury DDR4 3600 rated at 3600MHz with timings at 17-21-21 and requiring 1.35v to do so. The kit was compatible with our Core i9-9900K paired with an EVGA Z370 Classified K motherboard as well as my Ryzen 9 3900X on an ASUS X370 Crosshair 6 Hero. But how about a closer look at the memory kit and how it performed in our growing lineup of memory modules. HyperX Reaches 3 Big Milestones – 65 Million Memory Modules, 10 Million Headsets, and 1 Million Keyboards Sold One of the more interesting features that Hyper X added to this lineup of RGB memory is their Hyper Infrared Sync Technology. For those unfamiliar, this is a great integration that solves the problem of 'RGB drift' that often occurs on memory kits that are cycling through color and slowly get out of sync for one reason or another. The Hyper X Infrared Sync Technology allows the DIMMs to communicate with each other directly through infrared sensors to maintain a perfectly synced color pattern. A Closer Look The kit comes packed in a standard blister pack, so no fancy box affairs like some other memory kits come in, but the box means very little so on to the memory itself. Sporting a black heatsink shroud with a brushed aluminum finish for the lettering and branding of the DIMMs. Sitting on top of the modules is the diffuser for the RGB modules that have the Hyper X logo printed onto it, so if you disable the lighting the module still looks attractive because sometimes you just have days where you want to disable the lights. RGB is supported by their own Hyper X Ngenuity software as well as the more po[CENSORED]r suites from vendors including; ASUS Aura Sync, ASRock's, Gigabyte's RGB Fusion 2.0, and MSI Mystic Light Sync. I found it integrating nicely with the ASUS Aura Sync on my Crosshair 6 Hero and the Hyper X Ngenuity software handled the RGB settings nicely on the EVGA Z370 test bench. Testing Setup The Hyper X Fury RGB DDR4 kits are packing Hynix IC modules, specifically the newer Hynix DJR modules. These are the same modules that you'll find in other competing memory kits from G.Skill in their Trident Z Neo. DJR memory modules are akin to a higher frequency version of Hynix CJR memory kits and in our testing, we found it compatible with the latest Intel Core i9-9900k and i5-8400 on the EVGA Z370 Classified K board, we also found the Ryzen 5 3600 and B450 Tomahawk to run it with ease. The Ryzen 5 3400G did not have the same luck running it past DDR4 3200 speeds. Much like the first time I published a review for storage I have access to limited hardware and had to develop a test suite for myself to use. Because of that the testing is still growing and open to suggestions by the readers. Right now we have a mix of Synthetic and Gaming benchmarks as I focus primarily on the PC Gaming angle with almost all hardware. Something I wanted to explore as we go through the results is more than just the memory's XMP Profile performance as sometimes people run into issues running memory at its maximum capacity, therefore I conducted a set of tests using the XMP Profile for rated speeds and timings, but then adjusted the frequency to see how the memory kits all performed at lower frequencies (and higher than XMP in the case of the Corsair Vengeance LPX kit). Hopefully, that'll give readers a better idea of where the Hyper X Fury RGB memory sits overall in terms of performance. Test System Hyper X Fury RGB 32GB DDR4 3600 Performance Aida 64 Bandwidth Using Aida 64 we are able to get a good idea of the overall bandwidth from the memory kits in Read, Write, and Copy performance. I separated them out into their own charts per each measurement so they would be easier to read and digest. A great aspect of this benchmark is that it is readily available to everyone to try out and see where your system's performance lands for a point of comparison. ROG RealBench Image Editing The ROG RealBench suite is a rather useful tool for measuring performance as it's built entirely out of open source applications that people use. For this test, we took the results from the ROG RealBench Image Editing benchmark that uses GIMP to measure performance while loading and applying many changes to photos. Needless to say, the results point out not much reason to be concerned with what memory you're using so long as you have enough. A great aspect of this benchmark is that it is readily available to everyone to try out and see where your system's performance lands for a point of comparison. WinRar WinRar's benchmark takes a measurement of the system's capacity for file compression and translates that to KB/s showing that it really favors overall speed for the highest output. A great aspect of this benchmark is that it is readily available to everyone to try out and see where your system's performance lands for a point of comparison. Rainbow 6 Siege Rainbow 6 Siege is a highly competitive multiplayer shooter that has shown itself to be fairly CPU intensive, and memory performance is one aspect that can really help boost speeds in games that are CPU constrained. This game proves this to be the case as well showing that there can exist up to and exceeding a 40FPS margin based on the memory speed. This was tested at 1080p Ultra Preset paired with an RTX 2080 Ti Conclusion The Hyper X RGB DDR4 3600 32GB memory kit delivered all around. Performance right in line with where it should be and good compatibility with all systems it was tested in. The profile of the memory allows for it to be put in most systems without any concern for cooler clearance, it is good to see manufacturers avoiding the skyscraper height memory modules as they're basically a pointless design unless you want to cause compatibility issues. The diffuser does a decent job of smoothing out the lighting but it's not the best on the market. With the LEDs turned off the memory is still clean in aesthetics to fit any builds motif.

By last Tuesday, the death toll from coronavirus in New York City had passed that of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The figure was reached only three weeks after the first coronavirus death in the city. The outbreak has placed New York at the centre of the global pandemic and put an unprecedented strain on the city's emergency workers and frontline staff. Over the course of Tuesday, six of those people - two doctors, an undertaker, two senior care home staff and a food delivery worker - kept diaries of their day and shared them with the BBC. This is their story. Midnight, Tuesday 7 April Kathleen Flanagan returns from a late shift at a nursing home. The TV is on in the living room, playing the sitcom That '70s Show. As has become the custom in her household she shouts "Hello" to let her family know that she is home and to make sure they avoid contact with her. She heads downstairs into the laundry room, takes off her clothes and showers. Everything she has worn at work must go into the washing machine before she sees her husband and children. When she heads back up the stairs, she is greeted by a bouquet of sunflowers in the kitchen. A card from her eight-year-old son reads: "Keep kicking butt Mom!" Two of her three sons are asleep on the couch waiting for her. She cooks eggs and spinach for dinner and shares details of her day with her husband - the good news is that coronavirus patients in one of the centres she oversees are starting to look better, but in another the situation is getting worse. She opens her laptop to do some work and falls asleep somewhere between 01:00 and 02:00. 01:57 Doctor Jennifer Haythe is woken by a call from the intensive care unit at her hospital, letting her know about a Covid-19 patient whose condition is deteriorating. The 46-year-old hangs up the phone and tosses and turns in bed, worrying about the patient. She rethinks the plan for them and then is met by the increasingly familiar feeling of loneliness. 'Like 9/11 every day': A New York paramedic's diary Like many healthcare professionals working with coronavirus patients, Jennifer is living separately from her family. She is staying in an apartment in Greenwich Village, while her husband and children are in their house upstate. Faced with an eerie silence outside and missing her loved ones, she does a deep breathing exercise: "In for four, hold for seven, out for eight." It must work because she falls asleep. 02:00 Outside the city, in the New York state town of Corinth, Faith Willett, a director of nursing at a care home, is woken by a member of staff reporting a high fever. She advises her to self-isolate and contact a doctor as soon as possible. Faith feels sick and struggles to fall back to sleep. She scrolls through her phone to see the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak, paying close attention to local updates that might be worrying residents and their families. The news feels so surreal that the 46-year-old nurse wonders if she's asleep. She wakes her husband to ask if she's dreaming. "No, babes, you're awake," he replies. He tells her to get some rest. After a few hours of disturbed sleep, she wakes to her alarm. She grabs her computer and scans the latest updates from her colleagues. She can breathe a sigh of relief. There are no confirmed cases - for now. 05:00 Funeral director Steven Baxter is already out of the house. His hours have completely changed since the virus struck, as he and funeral workers across New York struggle to keep up with the rising number of fatalities. The days of wearing a suit to work are gone. He now dons "scrubs" that he can throw out afterwards, without risking cross-contamination. The trainers he wears to work are always kept outside. He sets off to a nursing home, where he has to collect the body of yet another coronavirus victim. It is the first of several such visits he will have to make that day. 06:30 Back in Greenwich Village, doctor Jennifer Hayth wakes up to her alarm. She opens her eyes with the fleeting hope that the past few weeks have been a bad dream. She has a shower and gets ready for work. There are no dogs for her to walk, no husband to kiss goodbye and no children to prepare breakfast for. She heads to a coffee shop where a woman walking her dog notices her doctor's uniform and thanks her. In the cafe, the only other customer - a retired police officer - pays for her coffee. The Cat Stevens song Peace Train comes on the radio as she drives to work at Columbia University Medical Center. She hasn't heard it for a while and it makes her feel energised. She looks over the highway at the USNS Comfort - a Navy hospital ship docked in New York City where coronavirus patients are being treated - and thinks to herself that it seems almost majestic. Arriving at work, she puts on her mask, gown, gloves and other equipment required for working with coronavirus patients and heads over for another day in the ICU. 07:00 Nurse Kathleen Flanagan wakes to a hug from her eight-year-old son. Before she leaves the house, he performs a dance to the song High Hopes by the band Panic! At the Disco. She listens to it again in the car, applying the lyrics to her own life. Mama said don't give up, it's a little complicated... Had to have high, high hopes for a living As she listens to the song, she passes the traffic light where last month she received a phone call that changed everything. A colleague at a nursing and rehabilitation centre in New York City told her that two residents had fevers and respiratory symptoms - the first signs of coronavirus in any of the six Centers Health Care facilities she oversees. She was heading to a different centre at the time and was faced with the decision of whether to help remotely or change her plans and put herself on the frontlines of the outbreak. She turned her car around. Her normal job does not include direct patient care. But three weeks later, she continues to take a hands-on role at the centres with coronavirus patients in spite of the risks. 08:45 At the Glens Falls Center nursing home, Faith Willett has been at work for about an hour and there is already cause for concern. Before leaving the house this morning, she said her personal mantra aloud to herself in the shower: "We've got this." Like every day in recent weeks, she hoped there would be no signs of coronavirus in the centre. But as a nurse walked out of a resident's room during the routine morning checks, Faith could tell from her eyes it was bad news - the resident had a high temperature and was getting short of breath while reading her Bible. All the staff at the home know this might end up being the day the virus made its way in. Masks need to be issued and the door to the resident's room must be closed, with only designated caregivers in full protective equipment allowed in. Faith considers the order. You should never close a door to a resident's room unless they ask you to - it's a violation of their rights; it's forced isolation; it's mistreatment, she thinks. But she reminds herself that they must go against all their instincts as caregivers to save lives. A nurse in full protective equipment goes into the room to perform the test. There are tears in the nurse's eyes but they soften as she walks in. She completes the test, packages it and takes it to the lab. Faith admires the woman's bravery for being able to do it. 09:00 Steven Baxter is sorting through death certificates and other documentation at Gannon Funeral Home in Manhattan. The phone line has just opened so he is preparing for another day of calls from families who have lost loved ones to the virus. The 53-year-old recently converted the chapel in the funeral home into a morgue. He has a rule: the dead need to be treated with respect and given adequate space. But the number of bodies coming in is hard to keep up with. Later today he will need to take the bodies of eight Covid-19 patients to be cremated, and to chase a supplier about cremation boxes, which are increasingly in short supply. It will be about three weeks before the person he collected this morning can be cremated - the pandemic has put a strain on the system, creating major backlogs. All his days are merging into one at the moment. The "removal" this morning was like any other in the time of coronavirus - he put on a respirator and other protective equipment, and used disinfectant spray as he worked to ensure he was safely transferring the body. 09:34 People not directly on the frontline are also performing critical jobs to prevent the virus spreading. Since the pandemic began, doctor Michael Morgenstern has swapped his subway commute for a walk upstairs. This morning, he logs on to video conferencing platform Zoom for his first appointment of the day. Many of his patients are elderly and part of his role now is explaining the risks of coronavirus to them, and the precautions they should take. The first patient wants to go out and visit two other doctors. Michael asks the son, who is also on the call, to try to see if the appointments can be conducted over the phone or through a video platform. He is concerned about people exposing themselves to the virus and has spent much of his morning up to now working on a petition calling for the public to wear non-medical face masks, in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control. He repeats the mantra "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" to himself as he works. His legs shake as he begins his second appointment of the day. He's nervous about what's happening in the world. 10:00 Faith Willett gets a call from the nurse who fell ill - she can't get tested and has instead been labelled "presumed positive". Faith is angry about the lack of testing for a frontline worker. She worries that the residents may have been exposed and then finds herself wondering - selfishly, she thinks - if she too might have been. Five other people working at the home have been tested for Covid-19 because of symptoms - four were negative and the fifth is pending. Faith and her colleagues all worry about the same thing: they don't want to be the person who brings the virus into the facility. 11:00 At another nursing and rehabilitation home, Kathleen Flanagan has spent much of the morning checking on residents with coronavirus symptoms. The hospital calls to discuss returning one long-term resident, assuring her that he is alert and responsive. Two others are at the hospital. One is not doing well. When asked who his next of kin are, she replies: "We are his family." She urges the doctor to fight for him.n At the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, a hospital worker takes a moment to pause 11:23 Michael Morgenstern sees his next patient via video call. An elderly person with cancer. The cancer appears to be spreading but while the patient is continuing with chemotherapy, they are holding off on adding radiation treatment for now because of the Covid-19 risk. Michael is worried. He advises relatives who are still going outside to consider wearing face masks when they are around the patient. He continues to see patients and work with volunteers for his coronavirus campaign throughout the morning. One of the patients was born only shortly after the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, he thinks to himself. 12:00 Doctor Jennifer Haythe is carrying out rounds in the ICU. Everyone she sees is a Covid-19 patient. They are all on ventilators. She passes colleagues but can only see their eyes. In them she sees stress, but also hope and courage. A patient is transported through Jennifer's hospital in Manhattan As she attends to sick and dying patients she thinks about what it must be like for them and their families. "A hospital without visitors. What is that?" she asks herself. 12:30 Sarujen Sivakumar, a 22-year-old Lebanese-born delivery team manager for Eat Offbeat - a catering company led by immigrants and refugees - heads out to work. Like many businesses across New York, his company has had to re-model amid the pandemic and now sells coronavirus "care packages" of a week's worth of meals and snacks. As he begins his journey, he is struck again by how quiet the city is. In the six years since he arrived here as a refugee, he has never seen it like this. There are no groups talking to each other, no performers at the subway station. He feels almost as if he is in a video game. Before the outbreak, he would greet his colleagues with special handshakes and hugs. But as he walks into the kitchen today, he knows he has to keep his distance. 13:00 At the Glens Falls nursing home, it is visiting time. Faith and her colleagues bring residents into the dining room where there are big windows through which they can see their relatives. Families wait outside in their cars and take turns coming to the windows. They have agreed to limit their visits to 10 minutes each. As emotional reunions take place through the glass, Faith observes the range of tears being shed - joy, laughter, sadness and, of course, fear. 13:45 The chefs at Sarujen's company say they are too scared to take the train to work any more, but also worry about how they would survive financially if the company stops running. Sarujen knows how hard he and others at the company worked to get where they are today. He worries that if it closes, it won't be the same again in the future. There is little time to talk about it in depth as they have deliveries to get on with. 14:30 Steven Baxter heads to a funeral home to collect the body of another coronavirus victim. He received a call the previous day from a man whose father had died. He couldn't afford what the company was charging for a cremation and needed someone else to take over. As he collects the body, Steven is angry about what he sees as exploitation of victims of a health crisis. He believes the price that was being charged is four times the average in the city. 16:20 It's the news everyone had been dreading. The result for the fifth employee tested at Faith Willett's home comes back positive. She tells herself there's no time to feel - she needs to act. She begins the difficult process of alerting residents and their families. Image caption Messages in support of medical staff have appeared outside Mount Sinai West Medical Center 17:00 While speaking to a patient earlier in the day who was unable to get a mask, doctor Michael Morgenstern shows him how to fashion one out of a T-shirt. He decides others may also need to see how to do this so shoots a video and shares it online. 18:00 As Sarujen drops off his last package, he gets a call asking him to join a team meeting about the future of the company. At the meeting, they agree that the delivery drivers will take the chefs to and from work so they can avoid trains. He is happy that he can continue working but exhausted from stress over the virus and the day's concerns over his job. 20:00 Steven Baxter returns home from the funeral home but his day isn't over. His twin sons are playing basketball in the backyard. They ask him if he has to shower. When he says yes, they know what sort of day he must have had. For the next few hours, he deals with calls from more bereaved families. He doesn't have time to speak with his wife, who is also a funeral director. He falls asleep before his children. He has to be at another nursing home to collect another body at 04:00. 20:22 Jennifer has a hot bath and is ready to crawl into bed. Even though her hours haven't changed, she feels much more exhausted than before. As she responds to more texts about patient care, she reviews how she feels. Achy, tired, sore throat. She wonders if she should get tested. 20:40 Faith Willett gets a call from a nurse who says she can't do an upcoming shift. She isn't unwell but news has got around about today's positive result at the nursing home. The nurse's skills and training are invaluable. Faith can't understand the woman's decision, which she sees as jumping ship at a time of crisis. 21:00 Jennifer watches an episode of TV sitcom Friends. It is all she can manage to watch these days - she struggles to focus on anything too heavy. She has a goodnight FaceTime with her children before turning out the lights. She hasn't seen them in person for eight days. As she closes her eyes, she makes a mental note: "Thank the cast of Friends when this is over." 22:00 Kathleen Flanagan has been home for about an hour. It was the usual routine - a shout of "hello" to the family again, clothes in the washing machine again, a shower again. She has time for only one meal a day at the moment. Today it was eggs and spinach, again. She goes to sleep with The Office playing on Netflix. It is her winding-down time before she has to start again. But her phone stays close in case anyone needs her. 23:58 There are only a few hours before Faith has to start work again. She has been trying to get some rest but is woken by an email reminder from the department of health about an upcoming call about the virus. There has been no news from her nursing home of new or worsening symptoms. But that doesn't mean she can relax. Throughout this day, Tuesday 7 April, another 779 people died of coronavirus in New York state - a new high. This grim record is surpassed again the next day.

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Nvidia has officially released the second generation of Deep Learning Super Sampling, otherwise known as DLSS 2.0. It promises superior image quality with the new and improved AI image bot, along with vital easy integration upgrades to make for a swift turnaround when adding game support. All of which sounds like just what DLSS requires to really make a name for itself. In order to do that it needs to deliver higher frame rates—through the power of AI upscaling—with minimal impact on visual fidelity. That is, after all, what was promised with DLSS back at RTX 20-series launch in August 2018. The initial AI-based super resolution algorithm did deliver a hearty increase in frame rates but lost a great deal in picture clarity. As a result, the performance-enhancing feature, that was often key to bearable frame rates with ray tracing effects turned on, was left on the sidelines. So what's new with DLSS 2.0, and why should you take another look at Nvidia's technology? Perhaps the biggest enhancement with Nvidia's neural network are the new temporal feedback techniques, which it says can deliver sharper image details and improved stability frame to frame. What it claims should soothe a lot of the complaints of its users. But DLSS also requires support to gain notoriety. To lessen the burden on its own team—which have already put "blood, sweat, and tears" into DLSS—Nvidia has removed the requirement to train an AI network on a per game basis. The system will still need to be trained, and support added for a game individually, but it can do so with non-game specific information. Thus delivering the all-important flexibility that any fledgling game technology requires to get up-and-running across the industry. An RTX 20-series graphics card is still required for DLSS, however, which will keep the technology at arm's length for some. DLSS requires these cards' AI-accelerating Tensor Cores, which the Nvidia Turing architecture integrates into the die for AI workloads. You won't get far without them, unfortunately. But really what matters most of all is how DLSS 2.0 shapes up in-game. To answer that, I've put it to the test in two of the four currently supported titles: Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. One game offering the very best RTX implementation available today, and the other an up-to-date engine making the most of ray-traced reflections. Plus Wolfenstein's DLSS implementation is easy to use by comparison, a relative godsend in these times. Never one for modesty, I've opted for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 in the test rig, fit with 2,944 CUDA Cores and 368 Tensor Cores. That's paired with an Intel Core i7 9700K at stock speeds, 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory, and a pleasingly speedy WD Black NVMe SSD. Yet even an RTX 2080 can start to sweat with RTX on max at 1440p, especially when you're after 144Hz refresh rates. That brings us onto the two main pillars of DLSS: performance and quality. You're always going to be striking a balance between the two, as ever. With DLSS 2.0, Nvidia has integrated that very thinking into the options menu. It's obviously signposted in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, for example. Once DLSS is enabled, three tiers open up: Performance, Balanced, and Quality. In Control the DLSS signage doesn't shine quite so bright. The three tiers still exist, they're just down as three render resolutions, which is far from intuitive. With an output resolution of 1440p (this will depend on your monitor resolution), we can select between three presets: 1280x720, 1484x835, and 1706x960. These are then upscaled to your output resolution through the magic of AI and DLSS. Each value effectively represents one of the tiers: 1280x720 is equal to Performance, 1484x835 is Balanced, and 1706x960 is Quality. The lower the resolution, the worse the fidelity of the final image—but also the lower the load on the GPU, ergo greater performance. If your output resolution is set to 1080p or 4K, the three resolutions available to choose from will differ from those listed above. Not to worry, just pick the lowest resolution for best performance, and the highest resolution for the best quality. Nvidia is touting 4x upscaling with DLSS 2.0. Meaning, if you were to set your render resolution to 1080p and your output resolution to 4K, three out of every four of those pixels on screen will be generated by a neural network. Spooky, right? Let's start with Control. Like I said, I truly believe this is one of the best examples of ray tracing in games today. Let's see if that still stands when Minecraft with RTX rolls around later this year, but for now let's stick with what we know. With Nvidia's latest driver package, 445.75, which also optimises for DLSS 2.0, our Control benchmark run through the Oldest House, ducking and diving into combat with a select few enemies in an explosive environment, proved a demanding task for our RTX 2080. At the 'high' graphics preset it managed just 57fps on average for the run, with a 47fps minimum (99th percentile. That's with ray tracing turned off, too. Control DLSS 2.0 performance Avg (fps) Min (fps / 99th percentile) Native (445.75) 57 47 DLSS 2.0 Performance (1280x720) 124 99 Balanced (1484x835) 107 78 Quality (1706x960) 91 74 Control benchmarks were carried out at 1440p, high preset, with RTX disabled. Compare that to DLSS 2.0 in Performance mode at 124fps average and 99fps minimum, and it's clear the benefit of having Nvidia's neural network do all the heavy lifting. Yet that's nothing new. DLSS 1.0 sure cranked up the frame rate, but it was unable to do so without reducing your crystal clear image into a shadow of its former self. The same holds true in many respects for DLSS 2.0's Performance mode. Favouring frame rate over fidelity, it still washes the scene in a little too much fuzz for my liking, and I'd be hesitant to leave it on throughout a 10+ hour title—mostly for fear of missing out on experiencing the best of a world the devs spent so long to create. That's where DLSS 2.0 Quality mode comes in. Each frame takes a little more time to process, but, in doing so, Nvidia's AI net is able to run a fine-tooth comb through the scene. It uses this time to carefully select a polygon here, or a striation of hair there, and upscales them with the utmost accuracy. The results of DLSS 2.0 in Quality mode are something quite spectacular in Control. Strong detail emerges from even the background of the scene, such as the tent guy lines in the rear of the frame, or the cracks in Jesse's leather jacket that add a few more months of wear and tear to her outfit. Hair's still a sticking point, however, and aliasing where the AI has struggled to upscale the source material shows there's room to deliver more computer smarts per pixel in the future. Yet with a performance boost in the 60% range between DLSS 2.0 Quality and Native 1440p rendering, some foibles can be ignored. It's the difference between sub-60fps and resoundingly smooth gameplay even in the worst case scenario: native 1440p at 57fps average, and 47fps minimum; DLSS 2.0 quality at 91fps average, and 74fps minimum. Control also offers us an opportunity to play spot the difference first-hand between a DLSS scene upscaled from 720p (Performance mode) to a native 720p image. If you compare the images below, it's quite remarkable how the neural network is able to replicate the information required to fill in the gaps between the native 720p frame and the 720p image upscaled to 1440p with DLSS 2.0. As with Control, Wolfenstein's Performance mode (which is labelled clearly as such in the settings menu) delivers an admirable performance gain over native 1440p, ultra preset rendering. We're testing this title with RTX on, across both the Riverside and Lab X benchmark runs and averaging the results. While native rendering manages a steady 79fps average and 56fps minimum—near-enough the bare minimum we'd want to achieve—with DLSS 2.0 Performance enabled our averages shot up to 106fps and 79fps. If only the resulting image wasn't quite so fuzzy, or we'd leave it there. Balanced mode offers moderate improvements to the overall image quality, but once again leaves a hint of unwanted myopia to a scene—and I've enough of that already, thank you. Instead you'll want to be eyeing up Quality mode: this is where Wolfenstein: Youngblood and DLSS 2.0's gears mesh in perfect sync. From a native average of 57fps, the Quality setting offers a 60% performance uplift to 91fps. Similarly, you'll only see drops down to 74fps as opposed to native's 47fps. That alone wouldn't be too convincing if that shortsightedness was still enveloping the background. However, it's dissipated to an all too true image for something dreamed up by some neural net. Wolfenstein: Youngblood benchmarks were carried out at 1440p, Ultra preset, with ray-traced reflections enabled. Between DLSS 2.0 Quality and native rendering few of the telltale upscaling signs remain. Gratings, perforated objects, and other complex, repeated geometry are all but immaculately rendered copies of their native selves. Character models are clearly distinguishable from their surroundings, and even objects off in the distance are remarkably detailed for, what can only be, the result of an AI's best guess. What's truly surprising is that, true to Nvidia's word in some ways, the DLSS 2.0 scene is often a little more clearly defined than its native counterpart. I know, who saw that coming? Due to the intensive, heavy-handed temporal super sampling anti-aliasing (TSSAA) set as standard on Wolfenstein's Ultra preset, some textures, when viewed at certain oblique angles from a distance, lose their crisp detail. For example, the lines distinguishing the tiling on the floor in front of a row of computer screens in the distance. Or the cladding above the first staircase to the right of the scene. You could argue that, in some respects, the native resolution is truer to the source of what the developers intended, and therefore correct. Because, well, it is. And you're right. But in some places the native scene trips up in its need to apply further anti-aliasing to a scene. The below screenshots show the difference between three AA techniques in-game: TSSAA 8TX, SMAA 1TX, and FXAA 1TX. The latter two tend to blur the overall scene, foreground and background, to a greater extent than TSSAA, whereas it only tends to lose clarity the further into the background you explore. Frankly, all this only goes to prove one thing: I'm fickle, and I think a lot of you might be too when it comes to your game's visuals. I won't accept less than the limit for my hardware, no matter how worthy the numbers may look on paper. And they should be convincing enough. Just look at those performance improvements: 61% in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, 118% in Control. Despite my best interests when it comes to hitting my monitor's lofty refresh rates, I want to enjoy that game world with all its nuance and finely-crafted detail to its fullest without some newfangled AI coming in and messing it all up. Few of us seem willing to make that visual sacrifice, as evidenced with first-gen DLSS and the tepid response its limited first-wave release received. And so a purely performance-focused DLSS would, and has, faltered in gaining traction among the industry. And most importantly with us PC gamers at large. The AI's proclivity for recreating a million piece jigsaw puzzle with only a handful of the pieces available, and with near-perfect accuracy, is little short of startling. Rather it's the performance uplift, at little to no expense, delivered by DLSS 2.0's Quality preset that could, and I would like to think will, gain momentum. They say there's no such thing as free performance, but I think DLSS 2.0 and its successors will be as close as you can get once the necessary silicon is pervasive across an entire GPU lineup. And the progenitor to all that is Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Which does make you wonder what else can AI and machine learning achieve in gaming? And how long can AMD avoid such technology when the pace of improvement in neural network upscaling is so rapid year-over-year? An industry in waiting need only implement DLSS effectively across a majority of upcoming titles for Nvidia to be effectively able to tack on a performance improvement of some 60% without ever even touching its silicon. I don't doubt AMD will strike back in kind with a Radeon product to match—perhaps via the GPUOpen initiative. It's already got the workings of such a thing in FidelityFX Content Adaptive Sharpening (CAS). Advertisement Nvidia also has some hurdles before anything like DLSS becomes ubiquitous. Most of all implementation. We'll have to keep an eye on every nuanced use of the tech to see if they can shimmy under the bar set by Wolfenstein, and don't instead end up kicking out their heels and collapsing in a fuzzy heap. There's also the issue of how you convince users, no matter the results, to switch DLSS on in the first place. We can't exactly have it on by default, after all the market's not dominated by RTX 20-series cards capable of running it. What's a GPU giant to do? Which brings us onto another big hurdle, and that's of course the problem of getting silicon capable of DLSS into player's gaming PCs. It's up to Nvidia to deliver with its next-generation of graphics cards—and the cost of entry has to be lower than it is today with the $299 RTX 2060. Still, there's certainly something to be said for DLSS 2.0 and the team responsible for it at Nvidia. After a limited initial run with DLSS, I thought it surely a feature to be marked as tried and tested then left to wither on the vine. Instead, DLSS 2.0 is an effective and immediate gateway to a gratuitous performance bump with little to no visual impact. And its growing availability across a number of graphics cards and games could signal a groundswell in AI applications across gaming yet to come.

Following in the footsteps of HBO, Amazon, Epix, and AMC, Apple has unlocked several of its most po[CENSORED]r TV shows for everyone to watch, even if you haven’t bought an Apple product since November. According to TV Line, the promotion is rolling out today in the U.S. and around the world beginning April 11. To take advantage of the offer, you’ll need a device compatible with the Apple TV app, including any Apple device, Roku, Fire TV, Samsung and LG TVs, or a PC. You’ll also need to have an Apple ID, though no TV+ subscription is necessary to start watching. While Apple’s Golden Globe-nominated The Morning Show isn’t among the free offerings, some excellent inaugural season are available in their entirety: [ Further reading: The best streaming TV services ] Dickinson: A portrait of Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) with a modern flair. Helpsters: A kid-friendly puppet show about monsters that solve problems. For All Mankind: A revisionist take on the space race between the U.S. and Russia. Ghostwriter: A reboot of the cult 1992 kids series about a ghost that haunts a bookstore. Little America: Eight vignettes about immigrants in America. Servant: A horror anthology series about a baby brought back to life. Snoopy in Space: The timeless Peanuts gang help Snoopy become an astronaut. The Elephant Queen: A wildlife documentary about the matriarch in an elephant herd. You can find the promotion at apple.co/freeforeveryone once it’s live in your area. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

One great pioneer of British motor racing is one who sadly is not too well known any more: Selwyn Francis Edge. Born near Sydney, Australia in 1868, he and his parents moved to London when he was three years old. He became a keen cyclist and was talented enough that, aged just 23, he joined the England team for the inaugural Paris-Bordeaux race. He came third. His fame naturally found him employment within the burgeoning bicycle industry. While working for Dunlop, he was one of the earlier adopters of the new motor car, buying a De Dion-Bouton in 1896. Edge's passion for cycling had also led him to become friends with Montague Napier, of the Napier engineering company. Edge had been bitten by the automotive bug, so he asked his friend to fit his ex-racing Panhard with a Napier engine and to replace its tiller with a new-style steering wheel, bringing the Napier name into the car world. In 1900, now an established importer and seller of French cars, he realised from seeing the genesis of motorsport across the channel the marketing value of racing. So he entered the Thousand Miles Trial – from Newbury to Edinburgh and back – with a Napier car, winning in his class and being one of just 12 drivers (from 64) to be classified. What could be better publicity, though, than a world cup for cars? That was essentially the idea of the Gordon Bennett Cup, which was run by an American newspaper magnate. After a cancelled entry in 1901 due to worries over the mandatory tyres, Edge duly won the 1902 race, as his two British and three French rivals retired, with his 40hp special completing the 351-mile rally in just over 11 hours. Driven this week Porsche 718 Spyder 2020 road test review - hero front 10 APRIL 2020 CAR REVIEW Porsche 718 Spyder With an atmospheric flat six and all the expertise of Porsche’s GT division,... Porsche 911 Turbo S 2020 first drive review - road front 7 APRIL 2020 FIRST DRIVE Porsche 911 Turbo S 2020 review Range-topping version of iconic sports car gets a host of key technical... VW e-Up 7 APRIL 2020 FIRST DRIVE Volkswagen e-Up 2020 UK review VW's smallest EV gets a bigger range and smaller price and retains its... The old maxim goes 'win on Sunday sell on Monday' and indeed it's reported that Napier sales in France and British exports across the channel both tripled. After this, Edge became sales manager for the firm. His greatest achievement, however, came in the summer of 1907, when he christened Britain's first dedicated racing track by breaking the 24-hour endurance record, which had been set at 1094 miles by a National car at Indianapolis in the US, doing 1582 miles. Set up at Brooklands, reported Autocar, were "a small tent for the drivers, a couple of small cranes on wheels, stacks of Dunlop tyres mounted on detachable wire wheels and enough Shell petrol in tins to fill a small lake". This was in addition to not just Edge's 60hp six-cylinder Napier but also a pair of near-identical two-seaters that were to follow him (each with two drivers doing three-hour shifts) and no fewer than seven spare cars. Edge had also been wise to construct a small adjustable glass screen to protect himself from the elements. An average of 60mph was the target, and "as the cars went under the bridge, one could appreciate in a moment that their speed was higher than that of most express trains." "The first two hours were practically without incident," we continued. Edge pulled over for water after two hours but then didn't need to do so again for another eight. "As the dusk failed and night came on, the appearance of the track was most remarkeble. Round the top edge were placed Wells lights [a type of paraffin-fuelled blowlamp] with a screen behind each, so that the drivers never drove against the light. "Along the centre of the track was a line of storm lamps, these being placed on the lane at which the track is measured, the drivers running outside them to ensure the full distance being covered. "On the smaller of the two curves, the track is higher than the ground at the inside, so to prevent the possibility of an accident this portion was lined out with fairy lamps." So sufficient was this arrangement that, to our disappointment, the cars' headlights didn't need to be used. "The effect of the sustained speed on the tyres began to be apparent after 350 miles. It should be understood that no tyres were changed on the cars. Whenever a tyre gave out, the detachable wire wheel was taken off and a duplicate wheel with tyre inflated was put on in its place." Twenty-four wheels were changed (each took about half a minute if no petrol or oil was also required). This use of detachable wire wheels, rather than the usual wooden items, not only saved Edge some 7min per pitstop but also prevented possible total failure when, as happened a few times, the tyre was shorn from the rim. We continued: "Taken altogether, the whole event was a remarkable one. It broke entirely new ground. The organisation was excellent; the running of the cars extraordinary; and the endurance of Edge equally marvellous. "As to the cars, beyond replenishment with water, petrol and oil, they ran through without any mechanical derangement, with the exception of the red car, which broke a rear spring. On one of the pacing cars, too, it's stated a cylinder was cracked owing to the water level having been allowed to get too low. "When Edge passed the 1440th mile at 21hr 45min, there was much cheering, and the greatest enthusiasm was exhibited when he dismounted at the close of the 24 hours. "At the finish, all the drivers received an ovation, and Edge had some difficulty in extricating himself from his admirers and friends; everyone wanted to congratulate him and shake him by the hand." The record went on to stand for 18 years, with Edge himself failing to beat it in 1908. The Londoner was a guarded character, but a "soft place in his heart for his ancient friends of cycling days long past" enabled us an interview at his offices a few days later. Autocar: "It doesn't seem to have been such an impossible taking after all, then, Mr Edge." Edge: "No, oh no." "Didn't you find it frightfully slow, or at least monotonous?" "Not a bit. Quite the reverse, I assure you. I was astonished at the way the miles piled up. When Mr Ebblewhite came out to clock the total of the thousand miles I was quite surprised!" "But didn't you feel fagged at any part of that flying trip?" "No, never once, and as a matter of fact, I was only a little stiff and bruised when I finished. I took no solid food whatever, but kept myself going upon cocoa, beef tea, bananas and grapes." "Did you feel that the concave super-elevation of the banks made the car self-steering round the curves?" "Oh no, I had to steer round the curves; the car required holding on to its course. "Did you feel inclined to sleep during the drive?" "Oh no, not at all, but I turned in at 9pm on Saturday after a light meal and slept like a top." As for Brooklands itself, Edge noted that "a car that proves itself a great car on that track will assuredly show itself a great car on the road, but a car that at present we think is all that is desirable on the road will not show to much advantage over that stretch of cement". He added that "to race cars at 120mph at Brooklands", as had been po[CENSORED]rly suggested, "is asking for accidents of a most frightful charcter", saying that cars limited to 80mph "would be safe and every bit as thrilling, entralling, exciting and instructive". Napier dominated the first two years of racing at Brooklands under Edge's guidance, before he withdrew from racing entirely in 1908 following a quarrel with the French over his use of detachable wire wheels. Four years later, he fell out with his old friend Montague over company policy and sold his sales firm for £120,000 (the equivalent of £13 million today!) on the proviso he stayed away from the car industry for seven years. He went off to become a pig farmer in Sussex and, after a failed stint owning AC in the 1920s, retired altogether. He died in 1940, aged 71.

Internet service providers and large tech companies like Netflix are working together to perhaps permanently strengthen internet connections in the face of increased usage due to the coronavirus pandemic, a new investigation from the MIT Technology Review claims. The investigation begins by showing data about how the coronavirus pandemic has drastically increased internet usage. According to Cloudflare, recent internet activity has increased by around a quarter in many major cities as workers continue to shift from offices to homes. For both personal and business use, video calls are up, with more people using Zoom in the first two months of 2020 than all of 2019. Home entertainment is also on the rise, with last weekend’s Steam player count rating 25% larger at 24 million consecutive players than the same weekend last month. Certain areas are impacted even harder, with Cloudflare showing a 40% usage increase in Italy specifically. Meanwhile, as Tom's Hardware has reported, the hardware to use these online services is selling out globally. So, the Review then asks, how is the internet responding to this increased strain? Better than you’d expect, although you might not see it at home right away. Let’s start with some expected downturns. With so many users now working on home connections instead of in centralized locations, connection monitoring organizations like RIPE and Ookla are showing minor slowdowns in certain areas, as home connections often operate on outdated television cables meant only to receive information rather than send it out. This also affects companies like Dropbox negatively, as it’s much easier to manage masses of users connecting from one location as opposed to many separate ones. Additionally, companies like YouTube and Netflix are lowering video quality to preserve bandwidth, and video game companies like Valve and Sony are adjusting their updates to download when it’s not peak hours. “Anecdotally, the internet is struggling to keep up with the shift,” Matthew Roughan told the MIT Technology Review. A professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, Roughan leads a mapping project called the Internet Topology Zoo. “You tend to hear bad news stories at the moment.” However, and this is where news starts to pick up, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Paul Barford, who runs a similar project, told the publication that this local disruption doesn’t reflect the internet as a whole. “That’s the whole point of a distributed network,” he explained. Moving into positives, RIPE seems to agree, with its national network delay charts for one month prior to quarantine and its current charts looking relatively the same across countries. For instance, Comcast connections for one month prior to lockdown in the United States show a general median delay time of around 70 ms for both February and April, with minor fluctuations across each. BSKYB-Broadband connections for the same time periods in the UK also each rest around 20 ms. Meanwhile, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says that video service throttling isn’t a sign of degrading connection. Netflix and YouTube “Volunteering to do this in advance of any problem shows they’re good internet citizens,” he tells MIT Technology Review. The university publication states that these precautions are “just-in-case.” So, large scale operations are relatively on par with pre-pandemic procedure. But it gets better, the university publication states. This is because, even if delays aren’t as bad as anecdotal evidence would have you believe, corporations are shifting resources to adjust for them regardless. “In fact, far from bringing networks to their knees, COVID-19 is driving the most rapid expansion in years,” writes the MIT Technology Review. Here, they cite companies like Equinox and Netflix rushing out upgrades to their 200 global data centers, as well as Zoom’s recent partnerships with local broadband providers. “Equinox is in the middle of upgrading its traffic capacity from 10 to 100 gigabytes,” the university publication states. “The work was going to have been carried out over a year or two- but it is now being done in a few weeks.” Meanwhile, the article reports that Netflix vice president of network and systems infrastructure is now looking into installing hundreds of extra servers to supplement its usage in the second and third biggest hubs of each region where it operates, and Zoom is apparently “monitoring where most of its traffic comes from and partnering with broadband providers in those locations to set up dedicated connections.” I couldn’t find precise data elsewhere to back these claims, though a recent article from Data Center Knowledge does refer to a Kentik webinar yesterday where Zoom and Netflix’s infrastructure leads each spoke candidly about how the two companies are approaching quarantine. Both companies’ representatives said that they were looking to get more servers into ISP locations, while also upping Equinox and AWS cloud bandwidth by allocating extra capacity to users. In particular, Zoom senior manager of SaaS operations Alex Guerrero reportedly explained that the company usually keeps 50 percent more capacity on its network than its actual maximum usage, meaning that it is well prepared for cloud expansion, while it is currently peering with ISPs in order to be “as close to the customer as possible.” While Tom’s Hardware wasn’t on this call, it’s possible that this is where the MIT Technology Review is getting much of its information. On the ISP front, Comcast waived data caps halfway through last month, with publications like TechCrunch and Ars Technica using the opportunity to track how each network’s performance has maintained stability after the lift and call for the change to be permanent. Meanwhile, the South African government announced in mid-February that it is working to allow carriers to roll out cheap or even free data plans for mobile, as other broadband infrastructure doesn’t exist in many parts of the country. The MIT Technology Review's hope here is that, even after the pandemic subsides, these upgrades will remain. In that case, coronavirus will have spurred ISPs and other large netizens into action in a way that might not have happened otherwise. “The internet was built for this,” Prince told the publication. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

The school bell was chiming as I walked into Miss Ha's English class. It was a cheery melody to mark the start of a new day, the beginning of a new school year. But there were no students to heed its call. Instead, alone in an empty classroom, Miss Ha called out names into her laptop. "Subin, are you there," she asks hopefully. Eventually, Subin responds. "I've been spending my vacation social distancing," the 16-year-old tells her. "And since we've still been staying home for the last few weeks, my lifestyle has become more slack and lazy." He smiles. He's being very honest with his new teacher considering this is their first meeting and his first day of high school. Miss Ha, head of the English department at the Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, admitted to me that she was nervous before the class. "Scared even, because I've never used this technology before, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. It can never be like a proper class, but in a situation like this, it's the best option." Downstairs, after her English Culture class, Miss Yoo is more candid. "It's overwhelming," she said. "We have to adapt to so much change - it's so fast it feels like a tsunami." For teachers, the technology is one more thing to worry about on top of an already packed set of lesson plans. For students, the delay and uncertainty over the start of the school year is adding to anxiety about their future. Is S Korea's rapid testing the key to coronavirus? Why some countries wear face masks and others don't South Korea has one of the toughest education systems in the world. Students will often study late into the night at special cram schools, especially those who have to sit the notoriously difficult college entrance exam. The Collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test is a gruelling eight-hour marathon of back-to-back tests which is seen as a pivotal moment in your life in the country. The Ministry of Education has moved the test date by a few weeks to December, but 18-year-old Choi Yoon-jung is still feeling under pressure. "I was really happy when the start of school was postponed by a week. It soothed my nerves about my final year. But as the start date got pushed back again and again, it dawned on me - what would happen to our mid-terms and finals? These tests are the final stage to prep for our college entrance exam and what could happen if we can't take these exams?" Her friend, Yu Su-ha jumped in with her concerns. "Yeah, they started talking about substituting some mid-terms with a progress review. Then I was really panicking. I mean our school is notorious for being cut-throat on progress reviews. I was thinking, what if we can't go to college because of all this?" This is not what the South Korean government had planned. In fact, this is what health officials had hoped to avoid. For the last two weeks from the daily briefing room, the Korean Centre for Disease Control had urged the po[CENSORED]tion to adhere to social distancing guidelines. Think of the children and their education, was the message. But small clusters of Covid-19 infections still crept through the country. An outbreak at a hostess bar in Seoul, more cases confirmed within hospitals near Daegu, infections among those returning from the US and Europe - they all added to the nation's coronavirus tally . The start of the school year had already been delayed by five weeks. It could not be put off any longer. Teaching online was the only way. It will be a disappointment for a government that has been widely praised for its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak. Its aggressive approach to tracing and testing appears to have paid off. But even with all those measures and all that hard work, the risk was still too great to open classrooms. "Resuming school online is a new road we've never walked, we are in fact opening a new road," Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun told a press briefing. "Extending the school closure would be the way to evade responsibility and numerous difficulties... but we opted for online classes as this is the second best plan. "We will aim to make sure remote learning goes well but ultimately we'll do our best to stabilize the Covid-19 pandemic so our children can go to school." Logistically, even in technologically savvy South Korea, enrolling an entire country of children in virtual school has proved a challenge. Luckily, the government already helps out low income families with their internet bills, but there was still the issue of whether pupils had enough smart devices to connect with their teachers. A roll call was taken; 223,000 pupils said they did not have the tech they needed to start online school, prompting the Ministry of Education to start a lending service. A number of charities have also helped out donating tablets, portable internet devices and offering their tech know-how. In Seoul, the charity Good Neighbors has stepped in to support thousands of students from low-income families. They're even handing out food parcels to help students concentrate. For many, school can be a place of stability and a daily home cooked meal. As he packs another box with noodles and rice, Kim Sun-hong tells me that parents are less worried about access to smart devices and more concerned about their children's ability to learn without a teacher's supervision. "For many low-income, single-parent, or grandparent-children families, the biggest worry is about having to leave their children at home when they have to go to work. We try to help these families by either calling the children by phone to check up on them or by checking in by sending these food packages, and asking if they need any help." Others are concerned about long hours in front of a computer. "Even thinking about watching the monitor for seven hours makes me worried," said Choi Yoon-jung. "It really hurts eyes. My younger brother goes to Bae-Jae high school and everything is interactive. Korean, English, Maths, all interactive, all the time. Even PE! He told me his eyes were popping out and hurting as he looking at a small screen while chatting too." But Yu Su-ha decides to be more upbeat. "I would like to tell my fellow third-year high-schoolers that we can concentrate our minds and we can control our anxiety and work at our own pace. "We can all do this," she says, ending with the famous Korean rallying call: "Fighting!" The government admits this is an experiment and there will be trials along the way. They are once again urging the public to maintain social distancing guidelines until 19 April. If the number of new cases of the virus stays below 50 per day, then they may try to open some schools - or at least some classrooms. In many ways, and I feel guilty writing this, life feels very normal in Seoul. But it is what I would call the "new normal" in this year of Covid-19. Masks are a part of daily life, hand sanitiser is on every corner and every restaurant counter, some are even taped to lampposts. My phone is bombarded daily with emergency alerts warning me to be vigilant and not complacent. So the school bell will continue to chime through empty hallways. Online classes are as close to normal as the country's students are going to get, for now.

Convert Every File Format With Format Factory Format Factory is a file format conversion tool offered by PC Free Time. Converting files from one file format to another can be really time-consuming since most conversion tools only work for one specific file type. Format Factory is a multipurpose tool that can convert any file type. Whether it’s videos, music, or documents, Format Factory can convert it. Simple Interface Despite having a lot of purposes, Format Factory’s interface is simple and easy to use. At the right side of the screen, users will find a collapsible panel that’s divided into the different file types available such as audio, video, and pictures. Once you click on a file type, Format Factory will display all of the actions you can perform for each file type. Extra Features In addition to converting files, Format Factory can perform extra functions depending on the file type you are editing. For example, you can use Format Factory to record, mux, join, and crop videos. It can also be used to join and mix audio. For documents, Format Factory can be used to create archives for them. Supported File Formats Format Factory supports a wide range of file formats. For videos, it can convert to MP4, MKV, AVI, 3GP, FLV, and more. Blu-ray videos are supported as input files. It can convert audio files to MP3, WMA, FLAC, and AAC, among others. Documents can be converted to E-book friendly file formats as well. A Must-Have Everyone has had to convert files at some point, and Format Factory is a a light-weight and powerful solution that can cater to almost every conversion needs out there. It’s a good tool to have around just in case you’ll need to convert a file in the future.

Abkoncore has announced the T250 PC case, this case features front and left side panels to see the RGB fans and your PC components. This case also features a mesh design to have effective cooling for your high powered components. The mesh design is located on the sides of the tempted glass panel, and this design allows the aesthetic of this case to remain fantastic while not hurting any possible airflow. Abkoncore has unveiled the T250 PC chase, which features two tempered glass panels, one located as the front panel and another located as the side panel. This case also comes with four pre-installed case fans. The T250 PC case offers a fantastic aesthetic design with the included RGB fans as well as the tempered glass side panel and front panel. The RGB fans are the IRIS fans, and these fans are installed with three in the front and one in the rear of the case. The three fans in the front take in fresh air through the mesh design, while the fan located in the back act as an exhaust. On the case, there are two dust filters, one located on the top of the case, and another located on the bottom of the case. The T250 PC case has a broad array of compatibility, and this includes compatibility for ATX, mATX, and ITX motherboard. This case offers support for a GPU with a length of up to 315 mm and a CPU cooler of up to 160 mm tall, and a power supply with a length of up to 205 mm or 195 mm if the additional 3.5 mm drive cage is installed. This case features three SSD mounting locations and two HDD mounting locations; this allows for a large amount of storage to be installed on this case. For front IO this case provides one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 port, and the standard HD Audio, microphone in, power, and reset button. This allows for easy access to the USB ports and HD Audio and a microphone in port. This case is available now on Abkoncore and is currently priced at $48, making this fantastic case affordable.

The rapid global spread of the coronavirus is having a major impact on all aspects of society, including the car industry. Production facilities have been closed around the world, the dramatic stock market falls has hit the value of virtually every car firm, vehicle sales are dropping dramatically and most major motorsport events have been cancelled. This is Autocar’s round-up of how the car world is being impacted, which will be updated regularly with information and links to more in-depth stories. Thursday 9 April: Jaguar Land Rover and Ford increase support for emergency services, production to restart ● Daimler plans to restart production at some of its German plants as early as 20 April, as demand for cars from China is on the rebound. Car factories in Sindelfingen and Bremen are to resume work, alongside some van factories. However, the maker is extending shorter hours for German workers until the end of the month. ● Audi also plans to resume production at its factories in Neckarsulm, Germany and Brussels, Belgium on 20 April. The former produces the A4, A5, A6, A7 and A8, while the latter builds the E-tron electric SUV. ● Fiat Chrysler (FCA) has begun discussions with unions on restarting production in Italy as soon as the national shutdown is ended. The current shutdown expires on 13 April, and some reports indicate it may not be renewed as the country is over the peak of cases. FCA is discussing stringent health measures to put in place if it restarts production at that time. ● Jaguar Land Rover has expanded its support for emergency response organisations around the world by increasing the number of vehicles it's loaning to support services and commencing deliveries of 3D-printed protective visors. The firm had already loaned more than 160 vehicles from its press fleet to organisations including the British Red Cross and National Health Service (see Tuesday 31 March below) and has now deployed 312 vehicles globally. They include a total of 210 in the UK, 14 of which are being used by the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust to help test staff isolating with coronavirus symptoms. The firm has also loaned vehicles to Red Cross branches and other organisations in Spain, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany and Belgium. Jaguar Land Rover has also started delivering to NHS staff 3D-printed protective visors that it designed (see Friday 3 April below) and is producing at its Gayden base. It's aiming to produce around 5000 masks per week in the UK. It has also made the files open-source so other firms can produce the visors. Jaguar Land Rover Brazil has also started producing the visors at its facility in Rio de Janeiro. ● Ford UK has loaned around 200 vehicles from its marketing and sales fleet to the NHS and other organisations. It has provided 203 cars to 40 different organisations, including 10 NHS ambulance trusts, the British Red Cross and St John Ambulance. It has also loaned vehicles to care homes, police forces and local councils, among other groups. Ford is also working with service partner DHL to provide logistical support to the East of England Ambulance Service's fleet team. ● Nissan has become the latest car firm to offer free roadside assistance to NHS and key workers driving any of its vehicles, regardless of its age or warranty coverage. It has also confirmed that vehicle warranties will be honoured if UK customers miss a scheduled service or repair work due to the ongoing lockdown. ● The Volkswagen Group has donated €1 million (£860,000) to provide emergency relief for refugees in Syria, Turkey and Greece who are threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. The fund will be distributed via the German Red Cross and will be used to buy and distribute food and medical supplies, as well as providing training and equipment for volunteers. ● General Motors and partner Ventec Life Systems have secured a $489.4m (£389m) contract with the US government to produce 30,000 ventilators by the end of August. The units will be based on a Ventec design and produced at GM's Indiana plant. A fifth of the order is due to delivered by 1 June. GM had previously attracted the ire of president Donald Trump, who had accused it of not responding to the coronavirus outbreak and threatened to invoke the Defence Production Act to compel it to make ventilators. However, Bloomberg reports that GM and Ventec had already been working on the ventilator project for more than a week at the time of Trump's statements. ● Toyota has extended the production shutdown at all its North American factories until at least 1 May. Article continues below advertisement Wednesday 8 April: F1 season delayed further as Canadian GP postponed, Dacia deliveries ● The Canadian Grand Prix scheduled for 14 June has been postponed, further pushing back the earliest start date for the 2020 Formula 1 season. The French GP at Paul Ricard, due to run on28 June, is now the provisional season-opener, although F1 bosses are working on a revised timetable with a plan to hold 15-18 races. British GP bosses have previously said they will decide by the end of April whether the event can go ahead at Silverstone as scheduled on 19 July. Circuit officials have also said they are open to holding multiple races in 2020 if needed. Full story here. ● Meanwhile, F1 bosses have extended the current factory shutdown period by a further two weeks. They had brought forward the traditional 14-day summer factory shutdown to allow races to potentially be held in August. That shutdown has now been extended twice, meaning teams must have shut their design, research and development, production and similar departments for 35 consecutive days between March and May this year. A number of UK-based F1 teams, including McLaren, Williams and Racing Point, have placed a number of staff on the government's furlough scheme, while senior staff and drivers have taken temporary pay cuts. ● Dacia has scrapped the £250 home delivery cost for customers using its online shopping platform. Anyone who orders a car on the service now will receive priority when the firm's dealerships are allowed to open. Tuesday 7 April: UCL and Mercedes-AMG F1 make breathing aid design freely available ● The designs for a new breathing aid developed by UCL and Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, which makes the power units used by the F1 team, have been made freely available so that they can be produced elsewhere in the world. Mercedes-AMG HPP has now dedicated its entire factory in Brixworth, Northants to production of the unit. Full story here. Monday 6 April: Former McLaren boss to aid NHS workers with food, new Beijing motor show date ● Former McLaren boss Ron Dennis has launched an initiative to supply a million free meals to NHS front-line staff treating coronavirus patients. The SalutetheNHS.org scheme was launched with £1 million of funding from Dennis's Dreamchasing charity fund, and is headed by Dennis and Nigel Harris, the boss of catering firm Absolute Taste (which Dennis co-founded). Meals will be made by ingredients supplied by Tesco and Absolute Taste, and delivered to hospitals nationwide, starting with the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and Great Ormond Street. ● UK new car sales slumped by 44.4 per cent year-on-year in March as a result of the coronavirus lockdown that was in place for much of the month. Full story here. With the restrictions remaining in place, those involved in the UK industry can look to China for examples on how to spark a recover post-lockdown. Read our analysis here. Meanwhile, new car sales didn't just fall sharply in March in the UK: in Germany they dropped by 38% year-on-year, according to the registrations authority there. ● The BMW Group sold 477,111 cars worldwide in the first three months of this year across the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, a drop of 20.6% on the first three months of 2019. That drop included a 30.9% slump in China, where the impact of coronavirus was felt earlier, but the firm said sales there recovered in March. European sales were down 18.3%. ● The postponed Beijing motor show, originallay due to run later this month, has been rescheduled until September this year. Full story here. ● Hyundai UK has extended warranties by 1500 miles/three months for customers whose coverage was set to expire in March, April or May 2020. A spokesperson said the offer could be extended, depending on how long the lockdown lasts. Friday 3 April: Jaguar Land Rover's visors, more help for NHS workers ● Jaguar Land Rover has begun production of reusable NHS-approved protective visors, with the goal of eventually producing 5000 of the units a week. The new visor has been designed at the Advanced Production Creation Centre in Garden in consultation with NHS staff, with Jaguar Land Rover initially aiming to produce 1300 units per week using its prototype build operations. It will then work with other companies, including Pro2Pro in Telford to further increase production. The visors has been tested by staff at the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust. The device is designed to be easily dismantled and cleaned so that it can be used again, helping to combat equipment shortages. Jaguar Land Rover intends to make the open source CAD design files available to other manufacturers, so they can print further visors. ● Toyota and Lexus are offering free roadside assistance to all key workers who drive one of their cars or vans, regardless of its age. The firms have teamed with the AA for the initiative, which will be available until further notice. Meanwhile, the Japanese firms have given owners of their new or recently bought vehicles three extra months of roadside assistance cover free. ● Peugeot, Citroën and DS will join fellow PSA Group brand Vauxhall (see below) in offering its roadside assistance programme to all NHS workers who drive one of their vehicles, regardless of age. The brands say they have also increased goodwill payments to NHS workers whose vehicles are no longer within warranty. ● Ford UK has taken several steps to aid healthcare workers, local authorities, charities and volunteers, including loaning around 170 of its vehicles to support transport efforts. It has also donated personal protective equipment (PPE) from its plants to local healthcare authorities, with its Bridgend engine plant donating 13,500 pairs of gloves, 150 disposable safety suit and a large stock of protective glasses. Meanwhile, Ford's Dunton plant is currently trialling the fabrication of protective face shields. Ford has also confimed it will extend the suspension of vehicle and engine production at most of its European manufacturing sites until at least 4 May. The firm initially halted work at the plants on 17 March. Thursday 2 April: Vauxhall supports NHS workers ● Nissan has extended the production halt at its Sunderland plant "throughout April". Production has been suspended at the factory since 17 March, and Nissan says the majority of employees have been furloughed under the UK government scheme. The Japanese firm has also suspended production at its Spanish plants, introducing 'Force Majeure' temporary lay off measures at its sites in Cataluny and Cantabria. In a statement, Nissan said it was "grateful for the financial assistance offered by national governments to support our 15,000 direct employees in Europe, our partner companies and suppliers." ● Vauxhall has extended its Roadside Assistance programme, usually reserved for owners of new cars, to all Vauxhall-driving NHS workers. The move means NHS staff can call the manufacturer in the event of a breakdown, be it at home or on the road, and have their car repaired or recovered to an approved Vauxhall workshop. The offer is extended to all Vauxhalls, regardless of age, mileage and service history. ● Williams Advanced Engineering is one of a number of car firms part of a consortium helping to re-engineer an existing ventilator design in response to the Ventilator Challenge UK project. The firm, which was formed by the Williams F1 team to apply technology it had developed in other industries, is working with firms including McLaren, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and BAR Systems to re-engineer a Smiths Group ParaPAC300 ventilator design in order to rapidly manufacture 5000 units for the NHS. More than 50 WAE staff members have been involved in the project, with the firm developing 3D CAD modelling, re-engineering test equipment and working on rapid prototype development. ● Skoda is helping charities and volunteers in the Czech Republic by giving them free access to more than 200 vehicles and 150 electric scooters used by its HoppyGo car sharing platform. The firm is also working with the Czech Technical University in Prague to develop a 3D printing process to produce ventilators. ● This weekend should have been the inaugural Vietnam Grand Prix, so the sport's bosses are staging a second F1 Esport Virtual Grand Prix. Five current F1 drivers have signed up so far: Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Alex Albon, George Russell and Nicholas Latifi. Those five will be joined by an assortment of random guest stars including F1 race winner Johnny Herbert (who led the first Virtual GP after massively cutting the first turn) and cricket star Ben Stokes. With the new Hanoi circuit not featured in the F1 2019 game, this weekend's event will be staged on the Albert Park circuit used for the Australian GP. The event starts at 2000hrs on Sunday, with coverage on Sky Sports F1. ● If you're looking for distractions to fill your new-found time at home, why not configure your dream Bentley? Autocar has set up a competition for those who do, and you could win a tour of the British firm's Crewe factory. Click here for full details. Wednesday 1 April: Seat's windscreen wiper-powered ventilator ● Seat is the latest car brand to start producing ventilators, having started producing units at its Martorell factory near Barcelona for local healthcare authorities. The automated ventilators were designed by a team of engineers, and are now undergoing final testing before approval is given for mass production. The ventilators use a number of parts adapted from Seat cars, including windscreen wiper motors, gearbox shafts and printed gears. 150 employees will produce them. ● Volkswagen has extended the production suspension at its German factories by five days, saying the decision is primarily due to the sharp fall in demand for new cars and supply chain issues. Article continues below advertisement The firm is now intending to resume production at its car and components plants on 19 April, and says it is working on a number of measures to ensure the health and safety of staff. Tuesday 31 March: Jaguar Land Rover lends out press fleet, Lamborghini makes masks, PSA helping ventilators ● Jaguar Land Rover is lending more than 160 vehicles to organisiations including the British Red Cross and National Health Service to help deliver essential supplies to vulnerable people. The vehicles are taken from the firm's press fleet, and include 27 examples of the new Defender. Full story here. ● Lamborghini is helping the health service in Italy by producing surgical masks and plexiglass shields at its Sant-Agata factory. The Italian firm's in-house saddlery is currently producing 1000 masks a day, which are being donated to the Sant'Orsola-Malpighi Hospital in Bologna. The plexiglass shields are being produced at a rate of 200 units a day using 3D printers in Lamborghini's carbon fibre production plant and research and development centre. ● In the United States, GM is also temporarily moving into face mask production, having developed a new production line for them in seven days. It expects to deliver 20,000 masks by 8 April and says that, when up to speed, it will be able to produce 1.5 million masks a month. ● The PSA Group is part of a consortium that is aiming to produce 10,000 ventilators in response to requests by the French government. PSA, whose brands include Citroen, DS, Peugeot and Vauxhall/Opel, is working with Schneider Electric and Valet to help ventilator firm Air Liquide dramatically scale up its production capabilities. PSA has been working on the project sine 22 March, and will produce components for the ventilators that will be assembled at Air Liquide's base, where a number of PSA employee volunteers will be working. ● Ford has provided an update on its efforts to work with GE Healthcare to produce a third-party ventilator. The firm will begin production of a ventilator design licensed from medical firm Airon at its Rawsonville Components Plant in Michigan, with the target of producing 50,000 within 100 days – and 30,000 a month from then on, if needed. Meanwhile, Ford has delayed plans to resume car production at its other North America plants. It has initially planned on resuming production at various dates between 6 and 14 April, but these will now be pushed back. Monday 30 March: Car and motorsport industries ramp up efforts to help NHS, Detroit show postponed ● The Paris motor show due to be held in September has cancelled, although event organisers are still planning to run a number of smaller 'festival' and business-to-business events. Full story here. ● The Mercedes F1 team's Brixworth-based powertrain division has helped UCL to develop a new breathing aid that can help keep COVID-19 patients out of intensive care. The device took around 100 hours to develop, and is set to begin clinical trials soon. Meanwhile, a consortium that included Ford and the seven UK-based Formula 1 teams has received more than 10,000 orders for ventilators from the UK government, after the rapid development of a version that it can produce quickly to scale. Read the full story on both initiatives here. Article continues below advertisement ● The Detroit motor show is the latest major automotive event to be axed due to the coronavirus outbreak. America's longest running motor show was due to switch to a new June date this year, but organisers anticipate the exhibition centre in which it is due to be held being turned into a temporary hospital by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It is one of more than 100 convention centres and similar facilities across the USA earmarked for such use. That means the first summer Detroit show will be delayed until 2021, when it is planned to run on 14-26 June. The cornavirus pandemic has already led to the cancellation of this year's Geneva motor show, with the Beijing and New York shows both postponed. ● The PSA Group initially suspended production at all its plants, including the Vauxhall factories in Luton and Ellesmere Port, until 27 March, but it has moved this back to a new, unspecified date due to the continued impact of the coronavirus. PSA says it is developing a new health protocol to reinforce preventive measures for when production does resume. Steps will include regularly taking temperatures, wearing of masks on site, hourly cleaning of tools and work surfaces, and a three-hour waiting time during exchanges of parts. ● Volkswagen will release all of its employees in Germany with medical qualifications who volunteer to work in the country's public health service with full pay for up to 15 days. The firm has also arranged for around £35 million worth of medical equipment to be shipped from China to Germany, where it will be distributed to medical facilities in the Lower Saxony region. Friday 27 March: Ferrari plots return to production ● Some positive news from Italy: Ferrari is planning to resume production at its Maranello plant on 14 April. Full story here. ● Seven UK-based Formula 1 teams – Red Bull, Racing Point, Haas, McLaren, Mercedes-AMG, Renault and Williams – have put their rivalry on hold to form the Project Pitlane initiative, responding to the UK government's call for help producing medical equipment. The teams claim to have made "significant progress" in three areas: reverse engineering existing medical devices so they can be used to treat COVID-19 patients; support in scaling production of existing ventilator designs; and the rapid design and prototyping of a new ventilator design. In a statement, the teams said they would "pool the resources and capabilities of its member teams to greatest effect, focusing on the core skills of the F1 industry: rapid design, prototype manufacture, test and skilled assembly." They added that they "remain ready to support in other areas requiring rapid, innovative technology responses to the unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic." Thursday 26 March: MG loans EVs to NHS, Goodwood Festival of Speed delayed ● MG will supply up to 100 electric ZS models to National Health Service agencies, to support the fight against coronavirus by adding transport capacity. The machines will be loaned free-of-charge for up to six month, with distribution done by MG dealers. The first six models have been supplied to Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Trust. ● One of the biggest events on the UK motoring calendar, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, has been postponed. The event was due to be held in July, but organisers are now looking at dates in late summer or early autumn ● Meanwhile, one of the biggest events of the US motorsport calendar, the Indianapolis 500, has also been postponed. The 104th running of the flagship event of the IndyCar Series has been switched from 24 May to 23 August. It will be the first time in the events history that it has taken place outside of May. The event has only previously not been held during the First and Second World Wars. The Indy 500 is the culmination of a month-long build-up, which traditionally kicks off with an IndyCar race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's road course. That event has now moved to the weekend of 4 July, where it will be held as part of a double-header with the Nascar stock car race on the oval. It will be the first time America's top two motorsport championships have run at the same circuit. Tuesday 24 March: Aston Martin, McLaren and Morgan close plants ● Aston Martin, McLaren and Morgan have all suspended production at their UK plants following the latest government advice thar people should minimise travel and only leave their homes for essential work. Read the full story here. ● Trying to work out exactly what the coronavirus outbreak means for motorists? Click here to read our essential advice for drivers during the Covid-19 pandemic. ● Around the world, the car industry is stepping in to help with production of ventilators and other medical apparatus in a bid to combat the coronavirus. The UK government continues to work with a number of firms, and in the USA Ford has teamed up with 3M to start manufacturing Powered Air-Purifying Respirators, using off-the-shelf parts used, in part for the seat-cooling systems of the F-150 pick-up. Ford is also working with GE Healthcare to produce a simplified version of GE's ventilator. It is also starting to assemble more than 100,000 face masks for healthcare workers. Meanwhile, Tesla's Elon Musk says he bought 1255 ventilators from China and donated them to medical staff in Los Angeles. Musk says China had an oversupply of the ventilators. Tesla, along with GM and Ford, is believed to be in talks with the US government about ventilator production. ● The Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which had been due to take place on 7 June, is the latest Formula 1 race to be postponed. That means the Canadian GP on 14 June is the first scheduled event, although it also seems likely to be postponed. F1 bosses say they are still aiming to hold a 15-18 race season, both by racing during the usual August summer break and extending the season past late November. ● The UK motorsport calendar is also continuing to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Motorsport UK, which governs the sport in the country, has said it will extend the suspension of permits for motorsport events until at least 30 June. Motorsport UK chairman David Richards said the body "has a vital role to play with its community in reinforcing that, at this time of national emergency, we must all stay at home to play our part in protecting the NHS and ultimately saving lives." He added: "The government have required that we effectively lock-down for a period of three weeks, however given that the most vulnerable in our society are required to isolate for three months, it is evident that the most responsible course of action was to propose a longer suspension of our sport. When we reflect back on this time, it will be a brief, but vital, hiatus from our everyday motorsport life and we must put this in perspective." Article continues below advertisement ● In line with Motorsport UK's decision, the British Touring Car Championship has now postponed the first five events of its season, with the events at Thruxton on 17 May and Oulton Park on 14 June now delayed. Monday 23 March: More plant closures, US car firms to start ventilator production ● Driving tests and MOTs for heavy vehicles have been suspended for up to three months in England, Scotland and Wales. The move mirrors a separate decision made by the government in Northern Ireland. The UK government says people scheduled to take a test that has now been cancelled will be given first priority when they resume. But tests will still run for workers who have a critical need, including NHS staff and goods delivery drivers. The MOT suspension applies only to heavy vehicles, such as buses, lorries and trailers. Any vehicles with a test due in this period will be issued with a Certificate of Temporary Extension (CTE). MOTs for cars remain running but "under review" with the Department for Transport promising "an update in due course." ● Ford's Dagenham engine plant will be closed from today onwards, with the Bridgend engine plant in Wales following suit on Wednesday. The break in operations is currently scheduled for a four-week period, with the firm bringing forward its regular summer closure. The shutdown will be extended across non-business critical Ford UK operations, and workers will receive "payments at least equivalent to their base pay." ● Transport for London is suspending all road charging schemes in the capital from today, to ensure critical workers – especially those in the NHS – and supply deliveries can travel more freely. The move means drivers will no longer have to pay the Congestion Charge, Low Emission Zone or Ultra Low Emission Zone fees. TFL noted that it was key to keep the roads clear for emergency services and critical workers, urging people to travel as little as possible. ● In similar fashion to efforts seen in the UK, leading American car firms are set to step in to assist with ventilator production in the United States. In a tweet, US President Donald Trump said that Ford, GM and Tesla "are being given the go ahead" to make ventilators and other metal products. Few further specifics of what role the cars firms will play have yet to be announced. Friday 20 March: Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley close plants, China's lesson for the industry ● Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley have both closed their UK plants, effectively halting mainstream car production in the UK. Both firms are aiming to reopen their facilities on 20 April. Full story here. ● With the UK and wider European car production effectively shut down, automotive companies are facing huge financial challenges. So how can they cope? Some answers could be found in China, where the industry is slowly recovering as the country begins to get back to business as the number of coronavirus cases in the country declines. Jim Holder spoke to some car industry sources to pick up some tips. Read his in-depth analysis here. ● Volvo will close its plants in its home country of Sweden and Charleston, South Carolina from 26 March until 14 April to protect its workforce. It has already closed its Belgium factory, which will not reopen until at least 5 April. Volvo's Chinese plant reopened earlier this month. ● New Formula 1 technical rules due to be introduced next season have been delayed until 2022, to enable the tean teams to better soften the financial hit from the disrupted 2020 season. This year's championship won't begin until at least June after the first seven races of the year were either cancelled or postponed. Full story on the new rules delay here. ● If you're missing out on your Formula 1 fix, championship bosses have launched a Virtual Grand Prix esports series. Races will be held in place of every postponed or cancelled 2020 race, starting with the Bahrain Grand Prix this Sunday. Run using the PC version of F1 2019, this weekend's event will run on the Bahrain circuit and last 28 laps, half the F1 race distance. Races held on circuits not featured in F1 2019 will be replaced with alternative venues. Oh, and the performance of all the cars in the game will be equalised, so Mercedes will be unable to run a virtual version of its controversial Dual Axis Steering system... Thursday 19 March: Honda closes UK plant, driving tests postponed and more F1 races delayed ● Honda has suspended production at its UK plant, where the Civic hatch is built, "in light of increasing difficulties with supply chains and considering the wellbeing" or staff. The firm says it intends to restart production on 6 April, dependent on government advice and market conditions. ● Formula 1 bosses have officially postponed the Dutch, Spanish and Monaco grand prix. The expected postponement of the events, due to be held on the 3, 10 and 24 May respectively, means the season is now scheduled to start with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 7 June. F1 bosses are "studying the viability of potential alternative dates" for the races, having previously said they still hope to run a calendar or 17 or 18 races this year. ● The Driving Vehicle Standards Agency has postponed all driving tests in the UK due to take place today and tomorrow. In Northern Ireland, driving tests have been suspended for three months. ● Both Ford and GM will suspend production at their North American factories until at least 30 March. The two firms say they will take the time to clean and sanitise their plants in the USA, Canada and Mexico, and both are in talks with unions about keeping workers safe when production resumes. Audi has also suspended production in its Mexico plant due to supply chain issues. ● Hyundai has suspended production at its US factory in Alabama after a worker tested positive for Covid-19. The firm is working with local officials to sanitise the site and determining when it it safe for production to resume. ● With the motorsport world on hold, several race organisers are working with 'virtual' Esports series to help fill the gap. After a successful event last weekend featuring drivers such as Max Verstappen, Torque Esports will run a second All-Star Esports Battle at 1700hrs on Saturday 21 March. Meanwhile Nascar, which already sanctions an official iRacing championship, has set up a new eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series. It says the new series will be contested by a mix of current drivers from its various series, along with 'Nascar dignitaries'. The first event will be held on the virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway at 1730hrs UK time on Sunday 22 March. ● The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles has closed due to Covid-19, but will offer entertainment to anyone stuck at home by streaming hour-long virtual tours of its Vault. The 'tours' will cost $3 each, with the proceeds going to support staff. For a look at the Petersen exhibits in the main museum, check out Autocar's slideshow here. Wednesday 18 March: Rolls-Royce and Toyota close UK plants as European industry shuts down ● The Le Mans 24 Hours has been moved back from its planned 13/14 June date until 19/20 September. The organisers say the delay will involve rescheduling several of rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The world's most prestigious endurance race was first held in May 1923, but has since been run in June, with two exceptions. In 1956 the event was held in July, while in 1968 civil unrest in France caused the event to be delayed until September. The race has been cancelled ten times: in 1936 due to a labour strike, and between 1940 and 1948 due to World War Two. ● Rolls-Royce has confirmed it will suspend production at its Goodwood manufacturing plant from Monda 23 March. The suspension is currently planned for two weeks, and leads into the already scheduled two-week Easter maintenance shutdown. It added that day-to-day operations will be assured by non-production staff at the company's head office, or working remotely. Company boss Torsten Müller-Ötvös said: “This action has not been taken lightly, but the health and well-being of our exceptional workforce is first and foremost in our minds. We are a tight-knit community at the Home of Rolls‑Royce and I have no doubt that our resilience will shine through during this extraordinary time. "As a deeply customer-focused company we are aware that this decision to pause our production will possibly cause some discomfort or inconvenience to a few of our esteemed patrons, for which we apologise while seeking their understanding at this difficult time.” ● Porsche has announced that it will stop production for an initial period of two weeks. The decision will affects its Zuffenhausen and Leipzig plants in Germany, with the suspension starting from Saturday 21 March. The firm cited the protection of its personnel due to coronavirus, but added that bottlenecks in its supply chain no longer enabled "orderly production". The firm also said it is anticipating a decline in demand. ● Toyota is suspending production at all of its European plants, including its two UK facilities in Burnaston, Derbyshire and Deeside, Flintshire. Full story here. ● The BMW Group is also in the process of halting production at all of its European factories, along with its site in South Africa. They will all be closed by the end of the week, and is currently scheduled to last until 19 April. ● Honda will suspend production at all of its North American plants for six days from 23 March, due to an "anticipated decline in market demand". It said it will continue to pay staff fully during the suspension, and will also utilise the period to enhance deep cleaning measures. The move will affect plants in the USA, Canada and Mexico. ● The Tesla factory in Fremont, California is set to be forced to close, with officials in Alameda County having reportedly determined it is a "non-essential" business. The plant was originally set to stay open despite a "stay at home" order in the county, but county spokesperson Sargeant Ray Kelly told The Mercury News: "If Tesla was a hospital, if Tesla was a laundromat, if Tesla was a mechanic shop, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But Tesla makes cars, and that’s not essential for us to get through this health crisis.” Tuesday 17 March: Ford and VW Group announce plant closures ● Ford will suspend production at its factories in continental Europe from Thursday 19 March. The decision, which the firm expects "will continue for a number of weeks" will affect two plants in Germany and one in Romania. The firm has already suspended production at its Valencia factory after three workers were confirmed with coronavirus. The firm's two UK engine plants are not affected. The firm added that while dealerships in some countries have temporarily closed their sales operations, its dealers are committed to "provide essential maintenance and service across the continent". ● The Volkswagen Group is shutting down most of its factories in Europe, with boss Herbert Diess saying that it's “almost impossible” to forecast the company's 2020 financial performance. Full story here. ● The first three rounds of this year's British Touring Car Championship have been postponed following the lastest UK government advice on limiting mass gatherings. The season was due to begin at Donington Park this weekend. Governing body Motorsport UK is suspending all event permits until at lease April 30. Full story here. ● The Tesla factory in Fremont, California, US is remaining open, despite a "shelter in place" lockdown being issued for the area in which it's located. The plant, where the Model 3 is produced, has been deemed an essential business by Alameda County. According to the Los Angeles Times, Tesla boss Elon Musk has emailed the plant's 10,000 workers saying they can stay at home if they feel unwell or uncomfortable. ● The Goodwood Members' Meeting, which was due to take place at the Sussex race circuit this weekend, has been postponed due to UK government restrictions on public gatherings. Organisers say they're “exploring a range of alternative dates” for the event and will continue planning for July’s Festival of Speed and September’s Revival meeting “in the hope that both events will be able to go ahead as planned”. Monday 16 March: Automotive industry race to produce ventilators, Vauxhall's UK plant closed ● The UK government is in talks with major automotive manufacturers, including Ford and Honda, about producing ventilators for the NHS in their UK production facilities. Full story here. The idea has precedent: in China, the car industry is already helping to battle the spread of coronavirus. Chinese car maker BYD has created production lines at its Shenzen facility to produce face-masks and disinfectants. It says that it's producing 300,000 bottls of disinfectant and five million masks per day, making it the world's largest producer of the latter product. ● The PSA Group will stage phased closures of all of its factories across Europe, including the Vauxhall plants at Ellesmere Port and Luton. Full story here. ● Ford has closed its factory in Valencia, Spain after three worked tested positive for Covid-19. The site was due to shut for from Wednesday to Friday anyway. In a statement, Ford said: “We have had three positive cases for Covid-19 on the Valencia site in a 24-hour period, two of which involved more isolated workers that did not enter the assembly operations. We are taking quick action to follow the established protocol, including the identification and self-isolation of all employees who had close contact with the affected workers. We will take all other appropriate steps to ensure that risk from this situation is minimised.” Sunday 15 March: Ferrari shutters Maranello factory ● Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is closing the majority of its European plans until 27 March, including six in Italy and those in Serbia and Poland. Ferrari will also close its Maranello factory, while Italian brake manufacturer Brembo is also shutting down. Full story here. ● The World Rally Championship event in Mexico was halted early so that the competing teams would have extra time to get home, given the increase in travel restrictions. The next event, Rally Argentina, has been postponed. The impact so far The 2020 Geneva motor show scheduled for early March was cancelled after the rapid outbreak of the coronavirus in Northern Italy. The New York and Beijing motor shows, both scheduled for April, have been postponed.

Spain is close to passing the worst of its coronavirus outbreak, the prime minister said, as parliament debated extending the national state of emergency. “The fire starts to come under control,” PM Pedro Sánchez told MPs in Madrid, saying the country would have “total victory” over the virus. Spain has Europe's highest number of confirmed cases, with 152,446. As of Thursday, the country has reported 15,238 deaths. Mr Sánchez is the latest European leader to suggest the situation may be stabilising. A number of European nations are now considering how to ease restrictions as early as next week, amid growing worries about the economic impact of lockdowns. The European Commission is aiming to co-ordinate a possible "roadmap" to move away from the measures. Despite marathon talks from Tuesday into Wednesday, EU leaders are yet to agree to an economic support package. Financial crisis 'on steroids' facing EU leaders Coronavirus outbreak eats into EU unity Finance ministers will hold another teleconference from 17:00 Brussels time (1500 GMT) to try to sort out a bailout plan. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the BBC: "If we do not seize the opportunity to put new life into the European project, the risk of failure is real." What’s the latest in Spain? According to latest data from the past 24 hours, Spain has recorded 683 deaths – a drop from the 757 reported on Wednesday. Total confirmed cases now stand at 152,446, and Spain has now reported the second-highest number worldwide after the US, which has more than 400,000. Parliament is currently debating whether to extend Spain’s state of emergency until 26 April, keeping people at home for a further two weeks. It is widely expected the measure will pass. Spain has imposed some of the strictest measures in Europe. But Mr Sánchez said they had helped drastically cut the infection rate. Europe is still the region hardest-hit by the outbreak worldwide, suffering the majority of deaths and confirmed cases. How will lockdown be relaxed after Easter? Countries across the continent are however moving towards a gradual easing of lockdown measures, and leaders have begun to sound more positive in recent days. Small, non-essential shops are set to open in Austria and Czech Republic next week. Denmark’s schools and kindergartens will reopen on 15 April, and Norway’s on 20 April. In Germany, health minister Jens Spahn suggested on Thursday there could be “a gradual return to normality” after Easter if the current positive trend in numbers continues. Switzerland’s daily death tolls have decreased for almost a week, while Belgium has for the first time recorded a drop in the number of people being treated in hospital for the virus. Italy, which has the highest death toll worldwide, is also considering how to ease its restrictions. The infection rate there has slowed significantly from the peak of the outbreak, although Mr Conte warned the country still needed to be cautious. "We need to pick sectors that can restart their activity. If scientists confirm it, we might begin to relax some measures already by the end of this month,” he said. There are widespread concerns, however, about the Easter weekend, when people usually travel to see loved ones. Many countries have launched campaigns appealing for people to stay at home over the long weekend. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said nice weather was no excuse for gatherings, and said the situation remains “dangerous and deceptive, because the virus has not yet been defeated”. Portugal has tightened lockdown measures for Easter, with a ban on people leaving their local area without official documentation.

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Almost four years ago is when we first caught wind of AMD's ambitious Exascale Heterogeneous Processor (EHP). The concept was simple: it would combine a resounding 32 cores with Greenland graphics and HBM memory onboard. Fast forward 4 years, AMD has easily delivered on its 32-core dream but an APU of that scale remains elusive. If you thought the company had given up work on its EHP ambitions, here is some great news for you: they haven't. AMD's Exascale Heterogeneous Processor (EHP) will feature X3D packaging, dynamic memory management, heterogeneous deep learning architecture and more Twitter user Underfox discovered a treasure trove of patents indicating that AMD's EHP project is very much alive and kicking. In fact, the packaging that would allow the EHP to be constructed, namely X3D, was also demoed in a recent presentation on March 5, 2020. While most of the patents are highly technical there are some very interesting tidbits in there including one for dynamic memory management. AMD has already introduced a plethora of smart shifting (pun intended) technologies to handle constrained thermal and power envelopes in SoCs and dynamic memory management is something that would be a logical continuation of this optimization philosophy. While AMD has rolled out CPUs with massive core counts all the way up to 64 cores using their MCM philosophy, they have yet to do the same with a GPU. A chip that combines an MCM CPU with an MCM GPU (plus HBM) onboard a single X3D package will be an immensely useful chip that could well go on in the exascale data centers of tomorrow. While there is currently no supercomputing cluster that is exascale (ignoring distributed computing platforms like Folding@Home), if AMD delivers on its EHP ambitions, we would not only see numerous exascale locations go up but cheaply! If you look at AMD's old diagram for the EHP, you will notice that the company has already delivered half of it in the form of its Rome and Naples platform (32 Cores at that time were almost certainly exascale territory). This is why we have to keep in mind that even if these patents don't necessarily trickle into an EHP immediately, they will trickle down into consumer products that are a derivative of the same. I am very much looking at AMD to roll out an MCM-based design within a year or two and once we have that an EHP chip becomes inevitable. Another thing the patents mentioned were a heterogeneous approach to deep learning for AI acceleration. Maintaining coherency in deep learning networks and reducing latency is key to a successful enterprise chip nowadays and it appears that even in this area, AMD's Exascale Heterogeneous Processor (EHP) will be a monster. For any engineers reading this, I would encourage you to go through the patent list compiled by Underfox and see the complete list of technical features for yourself. With Intel already on the path to building an MCM based GPU (the Intel Xe HP), I would expect AMD to have already started working on their own design as well (if they didn't a long time back). The MCM GPU wars are not just a possibility - in my opinion - they are an eventuality and with reduced individual die sizes and increased economies of scale comes the standard reduction in the cost of computing power that has marked these last couple of years. Relentless innovation is always a sight to behold and I for one can't wait to see the first such GPU.