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At least half the car models in the market are not accessible immediately with customers forced to wait up to eight months, making dealers change their booking pattern. Dealers of passenger vehicles (PVs) are not accepting bookings for vehicles whose delivery may not take place within two months from the date of booking according to a senior executive of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA). This executive did not want to be named. Booking amount This means dealers forgo the booking amount from buyers. The amount actually isn’t much and certainly not worth the trouble automobile dealers often have to face in the form of enquiries from buyers. FADA boss Vinkesh Gulati said his organisation does not have any data on the total amount of money held by dealers in the form of booking amounts. “But this amount is not huge. Booking amount starts from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 and varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. For the Thar, for example, it is Rs 21,000, whereas for Magnite, it is Rs 5,000,” Gulati said. Typically, a dealer accepts a total of 150-200 bookings, which are from a vast network of dealerships. Car market leader Maruti Suzuki, for instance, has nearly 1,400 dealerships while Nissan has around 123. The booking amount thus parked with dealers is negligible. A mix of healthy demand and low supplies from manufacturers has led to unusually low inventory levels at dealerships, which, at the end of January, stood at just 10-15 days against the usual 35-40 days for PVs. “The demand is very good but the point is that we are losing a lot of opportunities because of the shortage in supply. And now, slowly the waiting is affecting fast-moving products also. At least 50-70 percent models are on a waiting list and are not available across the counter,” Gulati said. Peak capacities, semiconductors shortage main factors Manufacturers are struggling to raise production either because many are operating their production lines at peak capacities or are facing a supply shortage of semiconductors. Models like the Mahindra Thar, Nissan Magnite, Kia Sonet, Hyundai Venue, Maruti Wagon R, Maruti Ertiga, Tata Nexon, Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos, Tata Altroz and Hyundai i20, many of which have been launched in recent months, carry a waiting period of several weeks. Mahindra & Mahindra, for instance, is struggling to increase the production of the Thar because it cannot get the required number of semiconductors from its supplier Bosch. This has led to the Thar’s waiting period stretching to an unprecedented nine months. “The dealer, on his own, avoids taking bookings for more than a month or two because it becomes very difficult to handle customers later,” added Gulati. Newly launched Nissan Magnite, which is available in 36 combinations, has amassed cumulative bookings in excess of 35,000 units since its launch in December. Its waiting period has increased to six months on certain variants. Nissan, which has been delivering the Magnite since December, has not shared pending orders for Magnite. Though decadal low auto loan rates, attractive finance options and robust demand from non-urban pockets have helped turn around market sentiments faster-than-expected and the surge in demand has stayed even after the festive period, there’s a short supply. Maruti Suzuki, which does wholesales of about 140,000 units a month, has a pending order for about 215,000 vehicles. Its dealers, like the rest of the industry, are running an all-time low stock. Till now, Maruti Suzuki’s production has not been impacted by the semiconductor shortage. “Things will start looking good by April, and, by June, supplies are expected to become normal,” added Gulati.

Osama Hamdy, MD, PhD Osama Hamdy, MD, PhD (Joslin) Intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) programs can lead to long-term benefits in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), cholesterol, and serum creatinine even if patients are unable to maintain their weight loss, according to new research. However, the study also showed that patients who regained the weight lost during the program saw rapid deterioration in hemoglobin A1c and serum triglycerides, but not systolic blood pressure (SBP). Obesity is a major contributing factor to rising rates of diabetes, and patients who develop diabetes and are obese are at a higher risk of complications such as kidney disease. As such, these patients are often recommended for weight-loss programs or, in some cases, surgical intervention. Investigators from the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School wanted to find out what would happen to real-world patients who took a 12-week ILI program called Why WAIT? (Weight Achievement and Intensive Treatment) and then were tracked for 5 years. Specifically, the investigators wanted to know how the program would affect long-term weight loss and renal function in patients with diabetes. To find out, they recruited 104 patients with diabetes, 86.6% of whom had type 2 diabetes; the remainder had type 1 diabetes. The patients had an average age of 53.8 years and had a median duration of diabetes of 10.7 years. After 1 year, patients were stratified into 2 groups: those who had maintained at least 7% weight loss (Group A; 49.1%) and those who had not (Group B; 50.9%). At baseline, the 2 groups had similar scores in terms of serum creatinine, eGFR, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and albumin/creatinine ratio, or cardiovascular risk factors. The only area where a significant difference existed at baseline was triglyceride levels, which was significantly lower in Group B than Group A (117.9 mg/dL vs. 149.3 mg/dL, P = .04). The patients in both groups lost an average of 8.8 kg at 1 year, and after 5 years, the average weight loss was 6.2 kg. The 5-year weight-loss broke down to an average of 8.3 kg in group A and 4.2 kg in group B. Both groups saw improvements in SBP, but only group B’s improvement reached statistical significance (from 128.6 mmHg to 121.4 mmHg, P< .05). Both groups saw decreases in serum creatinine (group A: from 0.92 mg/dL to 0.85 mg/dL, P< .01; group B: from 0.92 mg/dL to 0.84 mg/dL, P< .01). eGFR also increased in both groups (group A from 86.0 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 97.7 mL/min/1.73 m2, P< .001; group B from 84.3 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 97.2 mL/min/1.73 m2; P< .01). No changes were noted in albumin/creatinine ratio. On the other hand, A1c decreased by 0.3% in group A (P< .001) but increased by 0.9% in group B (P< .001). Corresponding author Osama Hamdy, MD, PhD, and colleagues said there are several possible reasons that renal function appeared to improve in these patients regardless of blood pressure or glycemic control improvement, such as a reduction in chronic inflammatory processes related to obesity and diabetes, or perhaps specific features of the Why WAIT program, a diet that includes low glycemic index carbohydrates, higher monounsaturated fat and fibers, and less sodium. However, the investigators said the current study was not designed to compare the Why WAIT program to other programs, and thus its particular benefits would need to be studied in a subsequent trial. The authors noted some limitations, such as the lack of a control group and the fact that the study was conducted at a single tertiary care center. Still, the authors said the study gives an important window into the long-term effects of ILI, showing that some of its renal function benefits are durable for 5 years. “This improvement is seen with weight change over time and is not related to weight maintenance or weight regain after the intensive weight loss period,” they concluded. "This improvement is also independent of the change in systolic blood pressure and glycemic control.” The study, "The Effect of Intensive Lifestyle Intervention on Renal Function in Patients with Diabetes and Obesity in Real-World Practice: A 5-Years Longitudinal Study," was published online in Human Nutrition & Metabolism.

On a second page of more than 20,000 members, also with a history of posting anti-vaccine misinformation, a post celebrates that the government "won't be able to distribute their COVID-19 fear-mongering and propaganda to the Australian public". A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) analysis has found "publishers of low or dubious credibility have remained unaffected by the ban". Meanwhile, the number of posts sharing links to major Australian news sites on Australia-based Facebook pages has fallen by half since Wednesday, the analysis found. This has led to concerns Australian Facebook will see a spike in vaccine scare stories and anti-vaccine sentiment only days before the country rolls out its first COVID-19 vaccine. Public health experts have slammed Facebook's "hypocrisy" in trumpeting its work on misinformation while simultaneously creating the ideal conditions in which this misinformation may spread unchallenged. The Facebook pages of federal politicians Craig Kelly and George Christensen, which have been found to have spread health misinformation, have also been unaffected by the ban. "Some highly partisan Facebook pages that are known spreaders of misinformation" remain on the platform, said Daniel Angus, an associate professor at QUT's Digital Media Research Centre. "Some of these sites self-declare themselves as 'news organisations', yet Facebook has allowed them to remain How does Facebook decide what is 'news'? Asked how it decided what was "news", Facebook said it used a very broad definition. It said this was in response to the "all-encompassing" definition used in the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code Bill. The bill covers any kind of news content that "reports, investigates or explains": "Issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or "Current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level" Interestingly, Facebook said this definition includes both "news entities and news sources", which may be why non-news pages that have shared links to news sites have been caught up in the ban. For example, this may be why the Bureau of Meteorology, which often shares ABC weather stories, has been banned. But why have pages known for spreading disinformation been able to duck the ban? One theory is that the chaos has been intentional. "The false positive rate for sweeping up non-news sources in the ban is not unintended," said Tim Graham, also at QUT's Digital Media Research Centre. "It is about sending a message about how embedded Facebook is to social and economic infrastructure." His colleague Edward Hurcombe said Facebook may be demonstrating the apparent vagueness of what counts as "core news" under the bargaining code. "This 'randomness' is in a crucial way, deliberate," he said. ulie Leask, a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Sydney, and one of Australia's leading experts on vaccine hesitancy, said Facebook was displaying "breathtaking hypocrisy". "They make a song and dance about censoring anti-vaccine content for public health at the same time as they're restricting users' access to local news," she said. "This is particularly egregious when they do it at the very beginning of the vaccine rollout when we need local, relevant news more than ever." Earlier this month, Facebook announced it was running "the largest worldwide campaign to promote authoritative information about COVID-19 vaccines." This includes giving millions of dollars in ad credits to health ministries and cracking down on false claims about vaccines on Facebook and Instagram. The spread of hoaxes and debunked scare stories about COVID vaccines could lead to more people choosing to not take the vaccine, which would make the vaccination program less effective. Misinformation spreads in a vacuum of factual information, said Professor Leask, who has advised the World Health Organization on vaccine communication. In public health circles, preventing this vacuum from growing too large is known as 'minding the gap'. "All the advice we give to governments is you need to 'mind the gap'," she said. "'If there's misinformation out there, it's very important that if it starts to gain traction, it's debunked in a very timely way. "If news organisations and the voices of science and advocacy for vaccination can't access audiences to debunk misinformation, then other voices will fill that gap." Studies show that Australians turn to news during natural disasters and other crises. A recent University of Canberra report found Australians accessed significantly more news during the pandemic compared to the year beforehand. It found 39 per cent of Australians use Facebook for general news, and 49 per cent are using it for news about COVID-19. "There's so many people who don't access mainstream media except through social media like Facebook," Professor Leask said. "We won't be able to reach people to let them know the vaccine is due. "If the only way to reach people is to pay for ads, then we're in a kind of bizarre information dystopia."

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Software changes constantly. There is an ever-shifting and constantly evolving demand for more software application development as users’ use cases continue to change. This perpetual dynamism comes about because industries and world markets change, commercial relationships alter, workplace methods evolve, new devices come to market and enterprise and consumer demands cross chasms and become markedly different. Quite apart from all those reasons, software platforms, protocols and processes themselves change, which (you guessed it) creates software change. Floppy disks become terabyte servers, ‘old-fashioned’ approaches to networks become instances of cloud computing, traditional programming models get shaken up with new maverick ideas… and all manner of legacy software gets slowly consigned to the ‘where are they now’ file as we find new ways of creating apps. With the current renaissance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that drives automation (bots and more) and autonomous computing, the growth of big data analytics and the future promise of quantum power, things show no signs of slowing down either. IBM Garage: software spanners, sockets & soda Working to try and anticipate what comes next, how to harness current programming methodologies and build software for tomorrow and the day after is Dr Holly Cummins in her role as worldwide development community practice lead for IBM Garage. As detailed here, IBM’s Garage initiative is a combination of consultancy services, shortcuts, best-practice templates, reference architectures and the chance to work with coders in the code garage, getting greasy, or at least virtually greasy, especially in times of lockdown. Having seen her fair share of the good, bad and perhaps even ugly side of software application development, Cummins says she has led enterprise-grade software projects to count fish, help a blind athlete run ultra-marathons in the desert solo, improve health care for the elderly and change how city parking works. She came to ‘love’ computers from an early age because her father had a PC at home, even before there were IBM PCs. It was a CP/M machine – now lost in programming history - but very applicable to use for learning the BASIC programming language and playing a few games. MORE FOR YOU Health-Tech’s Tough Pill To Swallow Is ‘Data Ingestion’ An AI Engineer Walks Into A Data Shop... After Localization, Software Needs ‘Countrification’ But Cummins (who often goes by Dr Holly) didn’t study computer science at university. She thinks that this is one of the brilliant things about computing as a career and insists that it is truly accessible and people can come into it from all backgrounds, which enriches the whole field. She says that there’s a debate raging at the moment about whether you need a computer science degree, because some of the best developers she has worked with have English majors. Before DevOps, we still did dev & ops Given the fact that IBM Rational events were talking about conjoined developer & operations techniques some 20-years before the term DevOps was coined, does Cummins think that the market has simply productized and po[CENSORED]rized an approach that IBM was already championing? “The reason DevOps, as an idea, is being regularly reinvented is that ‘true DevOps’ is really hard. Rather than doing it, we often just misuse the DevOps term for other things. We often say DevOps when what we mean is Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) – and even with that, the integration and delivery isn’t continuous at all, but happening at intervals, like every six months, so it’s actually just I/D i.e. Integration & Deployment. True DevOps, by which I mean weaving together developers and operations in the first place needs to overcome a lot of barriers; people are the hardest part of computers. Making sure the people are aligned doesn’t happen easily, which is why we’re still having this conversation,” she said. Cummins speaks of her ‘running an accelerator’ reality theory that advocates expecting the unexpected. This is a concept in two parts: frontloading the value and frontloading the risk. She explains that we’re often in the habit of doing things the way we’ve always done them... and in an accelerator context, but that just doesn’t work. We need to first identify the bit that’s really hard and even though that’s the most uncomfortable part, it’s the bit we need to do first. This comes down to the fact that organizations today need to maximize value in time-scales of one week, rather than six months. The key is to focus on the people and the problem that they have – focusing on the problem, instead of the technology and the solution. Technologists don’t always want to do this, but ultimately, is what will unlock innovation. “Here’s an example. A few years ago, chatbots were really po[CENSORED]r, so a client wanted to do a chatbot to allow factory workers to reset their password when they got locked out of the corporate IT system. A chatbot was pleasingly similar to the employees’ current way of operating i.e. doing it through their phone - but the most similar option isn’t always the right one. We had to unpeel the layers of an onion to get to the real problem. The reason users kept locking themselves out and required so many resets was because they had really heavy gloves on and only had three attempts to enter their password on a little handheld device. So the actual solution came down to making sure that they had six attempts, rather than three. The most valuable solution wasn’t a big tech investment but a modification of an existing process,” explained Dr Holly. Method in the mechanics: inside the IBM Garage In terms of what’s going on inside IBM Garage right now, Cummins and team say that - despite the upheavals of 2020 - there are some home truths surfacing. As a self-confessed ‘methods’ geek, she says that one thing the Garage team has witnessed over the last half decade is the fact that an implementation method that started out for small businesses getting to the cloud and adopting AI, actually makes sense for large businesses too. “As a transformation accelerator, Garage is really good at getting people aligned on the problem we want to solve. Often, clients will come to us with a big pile of data and just say: let’s use this. But Garage lets us step back collectively and figure out the questions we want to answer – what will really make the biggest difference to modernize their business - before diving into the data,” she said. Dr Holly is sanguine, measured and generally upbeat about what comes next in IT and is aware of some of the hype that’s out there in terms of emerging (and fast growth) technologies such as serverless, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, orchestration and observability. Of these, she points to RPA as a point of interest. “‘[In terms of RPA], the whole point of computers is that they take things we don’t like doing and do them for us. Everything going on with digitalization and automation is liberating the human spirit to work on more interesting things. Similar to this, AI is also about understanding our limits as people and what computers can do that we can’t, but also remembering what we can do as emotional empathy-aware humans that computers have no hope of doing. We want to get to a point where AI does what it is good at and people do what they are good at,” said Cummins. She also points out the eco-benefit climate change potential that we can potentially achieve by using serverless computing techniques. If we can strip out a bunch of stuff from what we’re doing to compute and move towards more managed infrastructure by pulling resources that are more efficient for everyone, both financially and ecologically, she thinks that’s great. Being brutally realistic and honest on the subject of orchestration and observability (which we generally use to talk about cloud asset insight and management), she hopes that we soon get to a point where orchestration and observability are a) taken more seriously and b) more baked-in almost as computing utility, so that we can get on with higher level concerns. Living the quantum computing dream “Another are to mention is quantum. When I did a PhD in quantum computing, we didn’t actually know if there would ever be a quantum computer. But now, you can just go to the cloud and use a quantum computer and that’s incredible. I think we’re going to continue to see this incredible progress. The thing that’s really interesting is that we don’t know yet what problems it should be solving – we just know there are unsolvable problems, so we don’t even formulate the question. Now we have to go back and find the new questions to see what we can solve,” said Dr Holly. She also speaks about the perils of micro-optimization, over-containerization, the frustration of over-orchestration and (a very lovely term) kubesprawl in the world of Kubernetes (let’s call it kubesprawlerization for consistency), so does she think we have become too granular in computing? “I think the issue there isn’t necessarily granularity but focusing on the shiny obvious problem rather than the key problem we need to solve. We too narrowly articulate a problem and lose sight of what would have the most impact. We wind up spending too much time thinking about our orchestration, for example, because it seems like we’re adding value. You shave 20% performance off some process and you think you’re a hero, but you step back and realize that you do that process every three months. Maybe there’s another process you do multiple times a day and you’d see huge savings by focusing there instead – even with a smaller optimization,” said Cummins. Looking ahead to whenever the next big thing is coming, Dr Holly is positive about open source and insists that it is the ‘bedrock’ of modern computing. After all, it’s powering all of the most progressive tech of our time, including quantum, AI and cloud. At the risk of being a bit philosophical, she suggests that open source also shows something inspiring for us as humans i.e. it shows the best and most successful things happen if we bridge our differences and collaborate together for the common good. Pointing out that companies are now adopting an open hybrid cloud approach, she reminds us that developing open source skills is just common sense – they’re more transferrable across the developer community and ecosystem and across different companies. “Cultivating open source skills makes us better prepared to work together to solve the big problems. But, sometimes (probably most times) you never know the next big thing until you are looking back in the rearview mirror. At the time it seems like incremental improvements, but when you look back, you realize that there was a really huge change,” she concludes. It’s easy to think of IBM as that ‘old’ technology company. It’s been around a long time, some of its execs still wear dark suits at its annual user conferences (not that we’ve seen one of those in a while) and it adopts a fairly serious matt-color-scheme approach to most of what it presents whenever it goes on public show (whether that’s conference stands, mainframe housing units or promotional T-shirts). It may take a while for IBM to completely change those spots. Perhaps it won’t. Maybe it’s just not in its nature. Of course, there will be naysayers in every market for every product, IBM won’t be trying to adopt a new Hi-Viz orange and lime green livery for its brand reinvention any time soon. So we need to look inside divisions like IBM Garage to see where real innovation is still breaking new ground and ask purists to the cause like Dr Holly how the cogs are really moving on the inside. Big Blue is still blue, but it’s still big too.

NVIDIA has finally conceded to the overwhelming mining demand facing the GPU market right now and launched a lineup of dedicated cryptocurrency mining GPUs (can we even call them that considering they have no display port?) called CMP. This is short for Cryptocurrency Mining Processor While AIBs have previously rolled out mining variants of GPUs without display ports, this is the first time we are seeing an official product launch straight from NVIDIA itself. It is accompanied by an action that will likely be very controversial: software limiting the hash rate of NVIDIA's RTX 3060 GPU (which will be launching on the 25th) to just 50% of its actual rate. NVIDIA launches Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) series and halves RTX 3060 hash rate Before we go any further, NVIDIA is announcing a total of 4 CMP (GPUs?) out of which two, the NVIDIA CMP 30HX and 40HX will launch in Q1 and CMP 50HX and 90HX will launch in Q2. At this moment it is unclear which HX correlates to which GeForce GPU although you can make some decent guesses using the memory size (which correlates to bus width and can give away the rough model number) we can also use the hash rate and TDP to arrive at similar conclusions. With hash rates of up to 86 MH/s (and these are likely unoptimized considering NVIDIA always underpromises and over-delivers), it is clear that the company has plans to ensure a full lineup. Here is the thing though, the RTX 3070 for example has a hash rate between 50-60 MH/s. None of the CMPs in the table match this rate. I have a suspicion [caution: educated speculation] that what we are looking at also contains lower binned dies of the GeForce models with slightly lower core counts. This would allow NVIDIA to retarget some of those wasted dies more efficiently. Designed for professional mining operations NVIDIA CMP allows a fully open, airflow-optimized bracket and is configured to allow a greater number of GPUs to be controlled by one CPU. Optimized for best mining performance NVIDIA GPU architecture allows you to mine more efficiently and recoup your mining investment faster. Available from authorized partners Available from authorized partners, including ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and PC Partner. It is also unclear at this point how their decision to halve RTX 3060 mining rate will be received. Some would argue that if you are buying the hardware, you reserve the right to use it to its full potential. Another obvious problem could be the fact that software blocks are usually overcome quite easily when the wider internet puts its mind to it. We have even seen AMD GPUs get bios flashed to their higher-end siblings so this would be child's play for an enthusiastic coder unless NVIDIA took hardware-based steps to mitigate this. Since a full GeForce GPU offers resale value - which is part of the ROI - a multi-million USD mining operation would likely have enough resources to bypass this block. In other words, this restriction would likely only impact the retail miner and disallow actual gamers from recouping some costs by putting their GPU to mine part-time. Here is the full press release about NVIDIA CMP series: We are gamers, through and through. Yet NVIDIA GPUs are programmable. And users are constantly discovering new applications for them, from weather simulation and gene sequencing to deep learning and robotics. Mining cryptocurrency is one of them. With the launch of GeForce RTX 3060 on Feb. 25, we’re taking an important step to help ensure GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers. RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent. To address the specific needs of Ethereum mining, we’re announcing the NVIDIA CMP, or, Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, product line for professional mining. CMP products — which don’t do graphics — are sold through authorized partners and optimized for the best mining performance and efficiency. CMP lacks display outputs, enabling improved airflow while mining so they can be more densely packed. CMPs also have a lower peak core voltage and frequency, which improves mining power efficiency. Tell us what you think of NVIDIA CMP:

Update: As anticipated, Frogwares has officially confirmed that The Sinking City will launch worldwide on the PlayStation 5 from 19th February. There'll be no next-gen upgrade due to ongoing legal issues, unfortunately, but the Ukrainian developer has "thanked" fans for understanding. Original Story: A next-gen version of Ukrainian developer Frogwares’ Cthulhu-inspired Lovecraftian sandbox The Sinking City has appeared on the New Zealand PS Store, and is available to purchase right now. The game has been embroiled in a legal battle, which culminated in the removal of the PS4 version from Sony’s storefront, but it looks like the developer is self-publishing this PlayStation 5 port. According to the description, the release will run in full 4K at 60 frames-per-second on PlayStation’s new platform, and it’ll boast improved graphic fidelity, faster loading times, and DualSense support. There’s also a Deluxe version available, which bundles in various additional quests and content, and there are discounts for PlayStation Plus members. While a free PS4 to PS5 upgrade would be nice, there’s no mention of that, and given the legal battles that have occurred around this release – well, we wouldn’t bet on one. We’ll check in with Frogwares all the same, as this version of the open world detective-‘em-up is technically yet to be officially announced – even if it’s available for purchase right now.

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As automakers like General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford Motor make bold promises about transitioning to an electrified, emission-free future, one thing is becoming obvious: They will need a lot of batteries. Demand for this indispensable component already outstrips supply, prompting a global gold rush that has investors, established companies and start-ups racing to develop the technology and build the factories needed to churn out millions of electric cars. Long considered one of the least interesting car components, batteries may now be one of the most exciting parts of the auto industry. Car manufacturing hasn’t fundamentally changed in 50 years and is barely profitable, but the battery industry is still ripe for innovation. Technology is evolving at a pace that is reminiscent of the early days of personal computers, mobile phones or even automobiles, and an influx of capital has the potential to mint the next Steve Jobs or Henry Ford. Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm, estimates that electric vehicles will make up 18 percent of new car sales by 2030. That would increase the demand for batteries by about eight times as much as factories can currently produce. And that is a conservative estimate. Some analysts expect electric vehicle sales to grow much faster. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Carmakers are engaged in an intense race to acquire the chemical recipe that will deliver the most energy at the lowest price and in the smallest package. G.M.’s announcement last month that it would go all electric by 2035 was widely considered a landmark moment by policymakers and environmentalists. But to many people in the battery industry, the company was stating the obvious. Unlock more free articles. Create an account or log in “This was the last in a wave of big announcements that very clearly signaled that electric vehicles are here,” said Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches battery technology. Battery manufacturing is dominated by companies like Tesla, Panasonic, LG Chem, BYD China and SK Innovation — nearly all of them based in China, Japan or South Korea. But many new players are getting into the game, and investors, sensing the vast profits at stake, are hurling money at start-ups that they believe are close to breakthroughs. “I think we’re in the infancy stage,” said Andy Palmer, the former chief executive of Aston Martin and now the nonexecutive vice chairman of InoBat Auto, a battery start-up. “There is more money than there are ideas.” QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley start-up whose investors include Volkswagen and Bill Gates, is working on a technology that could make batteries cheaper, more reliable and quicker to recharge. But it has no substantial sales, and it could fail to produce and sell batteries. Yet stock market investors consider the company to be more valuable than the French carmaker Renault. Editors’ Picks Pizza Was the Restaurant Hero of 2020 Is Valentine’s Day Canceled? The Wedding Is Postponed. Again. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story China and the European Union are injecting government funds into battery technology. China sees batteries as crucial to its ambition to dominate the electric vehicle industry. In response, the Chinese government helped Contemporary Amperex Technology, which is partly state-owned, become one of the world’s biggest battery suppliers seemingly overnight. The European Union is subsidizing battery production to avoid becoming dependent on Asian suppliers and to preserve auto industry jobs. Last month, the European Commission, the bloc’s administrative arm, announced a 2.9 billion-euro, or $3.5 billion, fund to support battery manufacturing and research. That was on top of the more than €60 billion that European governments and automakers had already committed to electric vehicles and batteries, according to the consulting firm Accenture. Some of the government money will go to Tesla as a reward for the company’s decision to build a factory near Berlin. The United States is also expected to promote the industry in accordance with President Biden’s focus on climate change and his embrace of electric cars. In a campaign ad last year, Mr. Biden, who owns a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette, said he was looking forward to driving an electric version of the sports car if G.M. decided to make one. Several battery factories are in the planning or construction phase in the United States, including a factory G.M. is building in Ohio with LG, but analysts said federal incentives for electric car and battery production would be crucial to creating a thriving industry in the United States. So will technological advances by government-funded researchers and domestic companies like QuantumScape and Tesla, which last fall outlined its plans to lower the cost and improve the performance of batteries.

Why People Are Ditching City Life for Country Living Even in an unpredictable 2020, the lifestyle and country real estate market was on fire. United Country Real Estate, which specializes in these types of properties, announced it experienced large, double-digit growth in the areas of farmland, ranches, land, country homes and hunting land for sale across the country. “It is interesting to look at what is driving this huge migration and to consider the implications for 2021 and beyond,” said Mike Duffy, president of United Country Real Estate. “There are some long-standing truths, trends and things about country life that have attracted nearly everyone who has ever driven off the interstate onto a backroad for more than a mile. Add the recent political, societal, health and technological changes, and there’s a combination of motivators to make the move or at least have a place to escape to for the weekend.” Redfin reported that the housing supply in rural areas dropped 44% in 2020, helping to drive the overall shortage of homes for sale nationwide. Many United Country agents said they were flooded with buyers searching for homes and land outside bigger cities. An extremely strong market has caused inventory of properties for sale to be at historic lows. As a result, agents continue to seek more properties to list in 2021. “As for 2020, the words that come to mind are unpredictable and ever-changing,” said Travis Hamele, broker/owner of United Country | Midwest Lifestyle Properties in Wisconsin. “I think the trend of people wanting out of densely po[CENSORED]ted areas will continue this year. People want peace and to be able to have chickens or a couple cows and sit out on their deck, overlooking a lake and drink coffee. If there’s a rural property that checks all the boxes and is affordable, it sells fast. That’s what we’re seeing. Now it’s about educating sellers that with this type of movement, it’s time to sell.” There were many reasons more homebuyers chose rural areas in 2020. Societal changes caused by COVID-19, social unrest in urban areas and political turmoil all led people to a quieter, more peaceful area of the country where social distancing is a way of life. Factors such as retirement, the ability for employees to work from home, affordable gas prices and record-low mortgage rates continue to drive the trend in 2021. There are also many health benefits to country living. This tranquil lifestyle can reduce stress levels by double digits. The risk for anxiety is 21% lower and mood disorders are 39% lower in rural areas compared to their urban counterparts. Studies have shown that ridding one’s self of pollution, traffic, noise, congestion and other stressors found in the city can actually reduce depression. So, heading to the country can possibly have a positive impact on one’s overall health and well-being. Whether someone is a survivalist, or just prefers to live “off-the-grid,” the country is where they’ll find self-sufficient and sustainable properties. In addition to food sources, some “survival properties” have innovative off-grid power sources like solar, wind, battery and self-contained fuel, allowing a person to live on their own for months at a time. “Living in the country or in a lifestyle market for example, in the mountains or on the waterfront, is great,” Duffy said. “It’s a healthy way to live that also provides serenity and gives you a sense of freedom.” To learn more, or to find a property for sale near you, visit www.unitedcountry.com, where you can search by property type, location and keyword(s).

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2021 file photo an officer stands in front of a sign advising of vaccine appointments at a drive-up vaccination center at City College of San Francisco during the coronavirus pandemic in San Francisco. San Francisco is the latest California city to temporarily shutter a mass vaccination site due to lack of vaccines, joining Los Angeles in pausing inoculations amid a national shortage. Officials said mass vaccinations are on hold at Moscone convention center for one week until supply ramps up. On Tuesday, Feb. 16 two new mass vaccination sites with doses from the federal government will open in Oakland and in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu,File) California reopenings on way as virus numbers improve California Gov. Gavin Newsom says a substantial number of counties could see fewer restrictions on businesses starting next week as coronavirus numbers improve. The governor spoke Tuesday at the site of a new federally supported mass vaccination site in Los Angeles that opened Tuesday along with a similar site in Oakland. Both are intended to vaccinate people in communities hit hard by the pandemic. California expects to get about 6,000 doses of vaccine a day for each site. That's separate from the state's regular vaccination allocation. California got 1.08 million doses this week and expects to get 1.28 million doses next week. In two doses of welcome good news, vaccine efforts were increasing to nearly 1.7 million new doses administered per day. And both coronavirus deaths and new cases have plummeted in recent weeks. RELATED: FEMA opens first mass vaccine sites as bad weather hampers efforts State releases latest COVID-19 statistics On Tuesday, the state of California announced a state total of 3,412,057 confirmed cases of COVID-19. California on Tuesday reported 64 new deaths from COVID, bringing the total to more than 47,107. As of Tuesday, Feb. 16, it's estimated that at least 6,262,781 vaccines have been administered to Californians. RELATED: White House: Weekly vaccine supply to states up 57% since Biden took office Yolo County vaccinating frontline workers starting this week Yolo County is expanding its vaccination efforts to include all frontline workers in Phase 1B of California's vaccination framework. That means people working in education, childcare, emergency services, food and agriculture can all start applying to get their vaccine. The county is offering a small number of appointments this week for frontline workers that live or work in the county, but they are adding more clinics starting next week. Right now, it's only the county that is offering vaccines for frontline workers, so people in these fields must register to get their vaccine from the county, not a health care provider. Yolo County is already vaccinating those over the age of 65 and healthcare workers. The county is also allowing these frontline workers to register for the vaccine clinic in Woodland on Saturday, Feb. 20. If you are eligible to register for the clinic, click HERE to register or call 2-1-1 for help registering. FEMA sites open in California Today, Tuesday, Feb. 16, two new mass vaccination sites with doses from the federal government open in Oakland at the Oakland Coliseum and in Los Angeles at the California State University campus. The two sites will be jointly run with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is part of President Biden's effort to create 100 mass vaccination sites nationwide in 100 days. According to ABC7 in the Bay Area, 6,000 coronavirus vaccine doses should be distributed each day at the Oakland site. Oakland Coliseum and in Los Angeles at the California State University campus. Gov. Newsom plans to be at the opening of one of the sites, joined by local and state leaders. He'll also provide an update on the state's latest vaccine news.

AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs come excruciatingly close to a major clock speed milestone. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is the fastest and able to push a core or two up to 4.9GHz but (officially) nothing more at stock speeds. But what if I told you that 5GHz was within reach and that you'd have to do next to nothing to hit it? That's what ClockTuner for Ryzen creator Yuri Bubliy is promising with an upcoming update to the CPU tuning app. ClockTuner for Ryzen is an automated overclocking application that first launched for Zen 2 CPUs last year. It uncovers which of the core complexes on Ryzen CPUs are prime candidates for overclocking and applies a profile of tweaks and changes that push performance while balancing temperature and voltage requirements. With version 2.1, which is currently in beta and available to Bubliy's Patreon subscribers ahead of a full release, you'll be able to apply a new Hybrid OC setting to Zen 3 chips, too, complete with a new high-performance 'PX Profile'. This new profile will see the effective frequency reach over 5GHz on AMD's latest high-end Ryzen processors, Bubliy says, and it does so with less voltage at 1.45V compared to the standard 1.475V. How it goes about that will depend on the processor you own and its core count, but it'll offer up anything from two to six 'best' cores prime for juicing. The application will then set the frequency for all these cores while running the remaining at a reduced speed for greater stability. You can dive into the specifics in the slides posted by Bubliy in the tweet below, but to over-simplify: a constant measure of power and temperature data with effective on-the-fly profile switching ensures the processor runs at an optimal speed at all times and for the given workload. CTR 2.1 & 500 All in all a promising piece of software for AMD Ryzen CPU owners, then, or something to consider if you're still waiting in line for your chance to purchase one. There's not a great deal of overclocking performance in the latest Zen 3 chips, so a system that takes care of all that for you for, what are claimed to be, effective gains might be a handy alternative. Bubliy hasn't announced a public release date just yet, so watch out for the full release in the near-future or sign up to their Patreon for early access and help support development. You can download the current version of ClockTuner for Ryzen here. It also supports Zen 3, but doesn't yet offer the full sweep of features listed above.

Has cryptocurrency mining elevated the prices of your favorite GPU to ridiculously high rates? Are you looking to pay a premium upwards of 50% on an AMD or NVIDIA GPU just because of miners and scalpers? Well, HP is here to save the day because, during their President's Day promotion, not only all GPUs included in OMEN pre-builts be near MSRP, some will even be below! All deals are valid while stocks last. HP's President Day Sale Is Live: Insane Discounts Of Up To 60% And OMEN Prebuilt PCs With GPUs At Roughly MSRP! Full list of deals here Let's start with the NVIDIA GPUs that are practically impossible to find nowadays: the RTX 3000 series. While NVIDIA wanted the MSRP of RTX 3070 to be around $499, scalpers on Amazon have jacked up prices to as high as $1249 (at the time of writing) for an EVGA RTX 3070! This is a price of almost 300% the original MSRP! You can also use the following coupon codes on any HP product while the promotional period is live: Additional 5% OFF products above $599: 5PDS2021 Additional 10% OFF products above $999: 10PDS2021 The good news is, you can grab an NVIDIA RTGX 3070 at MSRP pricing by simply buying the amazing OMEN 30L PC shown below: Handpicked Deal 1: OMEN 30L Gaming PC With NVIDIA RTX 3070 8GB for just $1340 (Amazon Price of RTX 3070 ONLY Is 1249) (Read details and coupon code below) Claiming this offer is easy. First, click here and head over to the HP Omen PC product page. Click customize and buy and upgrade the GTX 1660 Ti (which is also at MSRP!) to an RTX 3070 GPU. Hint: Don't go for the RTX 2080 Ti since we are using MSRP pricing and that offers lower performance per dollar. Click checkout and add the following coupon code to bring the price down to $1340: 10PDS2021 Enjoy your fully equipped gaming PC with a GPU bought at MSRP! The full specifications of the OMEN 30L gaming PC is as follows: OMEN 30L Glass Side Chasis Cooler Master 750W Platinum PSU Intel Core i5 10600K with RGB AIO Pump (upgradeable) HyperX 8GB DDR4-3200 RAM (upgradeable) WD Black 256 GB SSD (upgradeable) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6 (downgradeable to a GTX 1660 Ti) FREE Keyboard and Mouse This is an absolutely amazing deal considering the price of an NVIDIA RTX 3070 on Amazon is $1249 and for just $91 bucks more you are getting a full-fledged gaming system with a beautiful chassis to go with it! Handpicked Deal 2: OMEN 30L with NVIDIA RTX 3090 for $2799 (Amazon Price of RTX 3090 ONLY is $2898) This is a deal which is an absolute no brainer. The price of an RTX 3090 on Amazon right now is $2898. This Omen 30L PC has the exact same PC and is absolutely tricked out with other PC components and costs almost $100 less! This is because the RTX 3090 inside the belly of this gaming behemoth has been priced by HP at roughly MSRP and constitutes the deal of the century! Claiming this offer is easy. First, click here and head over to the HP Omen PC product page. Click checkout Enjoy your fully equipped gaming PC with a GPU bought at MSRP! The full specifications of the OMEN 30L gaming PC is as follows: OMEN 30L Glass Side Chasis Cooler Master 750W AMP Platinum PSU Intel Core i7 10700k @5.1 GHz RGB AIO Pump (upgradeable) HyperX 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM (upgradeable) WD Black 512 GB SSD (upgradeable) NVIDIA RTX 3090 with 24GB GDDR6X FREE Keyboard and Mouse Handpicked Deal 3: Ryzen Omen 25L with AMD RX 5500 XT GPU for just $759 (Amazon Price of RX 5500 XT ONLY is $459) (Upgradeable to RTX 3070 ) The MSRP of an RX 5500 XT as originally envisioned by AMD was just $169, but scalpers have driven the prices up to $459 (at the time of writing) on Amazon. With HP's amazing looking OMEN 25 L gaming PC, you can get a sweer Ryzen powered PC along with an RX 5500 XT for just 759 USD! Claiming this offer is easy. First, click here and head over to the HP Omen PC product page. Click checkout and add the following coupon code to bring the price down to $749: 5PDS2021(Note: if you upgraded the PC and the price now exceeds $999 use 10PDS2021 instead). Enjoy your fully equipped gaming PC with a GPU bought at MSRP! The full specifications of the OMEN 30L gaming PC is as follows: OMEN 25L Glass Side Chasis Cooler Master 750W Platinum PSU AMD Ryzen 5 3500 with RGB AIO Pump (upgradeable) HyperX 8GB DDR4-3200 RAM (upgradeable) WD Black 256 GB SSD (upgradeable) AMD RX 5500 4GB (upgradeable to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6) FREE Keyboard and Mouse The full list of desktop deals can be found here. Handpicked Deal 4: OMEN New Gaming Laptop with Intel Core i5 10300H and GeForce GTX 1650 for just $759 (was $1099) Okay let's look at some laptop deals now. HP's new OMEN laptop with an amazingly robust cooling system (which is critical if you want to game for extended sessions) is down to just $759 from its initial list price of $1099. The specifications of the laptop are given below and don't forget to use the coupon code: 5PDS2021. It includes an Intel Core i5 10300H clocked at 4.5 GHz, and a 4GB GTX 1650 GPU. The screen is a 15.6 inch FHD IPS panel and the drive is a blazing fast 256GB NVME M2 SSD. Handpicked Deal 5: HP X360 Premium Convertible Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, 8GB RAM and Vega Graphics for just $664 This is an amazingly stylish laptop from HP which is down almost $140 from its list price of $799. It features a 7nm AMD CPU, Vega graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD and a full hd 15.6 inch display. You can buy it here.

Crystal Dynamics has revealed that the PlayStation 5 version of Marvel's Avengers will release on 18th March 2021 alongside the free Hawkeye expansion. Upgrading to the current-gen version will be free for pre-existing PlayStation 4 owners, and the second superhero to be added to the game after launch won't cost anything either. The latest War Table livestream from Square Enix goes into detail about both these important milestones for Marvel's Avengers, with all gameplay footage from a PS5. Check it out above. Over on the PlayStation Blog, Leyla Karasuma of Crystal Dynamics speaks to what Clint Barton brings to the loot-based title as well as touching on his moveset. "In Future Imperfect, a storyline inspired by Marvel Comics’ Old Man Hawkeye series and the Hawkeye (2012) “My Life as a Weapon” storyline, you will be taking Clint on a perilous journey to a future Earth and stepping into a new biome known as the Wasteland to find the missing Nick Fury, come face-to-face with the villain Maestro, and save the world. Did we mention his canine pal Lucky will also be featured in this Operation?" As previously confirmed, Marvel's Avengers will offer two different graphical modes on PS5. One targets 60 frames-per-second at a dynamic 4K resolution, while the other bumps up the visuals even more. Load times are also said to be much shorter on Sony's new machine. Will you give Marvel's Avengers another shot on PS5? Let us know in the comments below.

Good activity .

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Hello u must join projects and make good activity on projects and come with new reqasut next 30 days from me

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