_Happy boy

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GitOps is a term which is gaining momentum recently. As an advanced model of DevOps, it scales up the system architecture and ensures transparency, efficiency and feasibility in the process. It leverages Git as the single source of truth, for creating a mechanism that control, create and delete the system architecture. By definition, GitOps is an inter-disciplinary code-based infrastructure that intertwines the Infrastructure as a code (IaC), and DevOps practices. It empowers the system developers to perform tasks that fall under the paradigm of IT operations. A paper titled, “GitOps On AWS: Increase Velocity of your DevOps team”, by Amazon Web Services, states that GitOps helps DevOps teams to be more productive and autonomous by enabling continuous deployment through the tools they work in every day. GitOps puts Git at the centre of the DevOps toolchain and as the source of truth to analyze what should be deployed on the system infrastructure cluster. The research paper cites four principles, through which GitOps works effectively. It states that the entire system infrastructure gets described in Git. Once the system is described, all the changes, operations and applications get transitioned to Git as a single version of the truth. The changes are automatically applied using cloud-native tools. Additionally, the Software agents continuously monitor the Git repo to meet any changes or divergences from inside the cluster. While creating a DevOps framework, developers are often unable to understand the Ops part. As a result, the full potential and benefit of DevOps is not realised by the team. The paper states that by utilizing the GitOps in the infrastructure deployment, monitoring and managing Kubernetes, the DevOps can increase their overall output by 2-3 times, with advanced security and compliance regulations. As Kubernetes manage containerized workloads and automation by facilitating both declarative configurations and automation, leveraging GitOps becomes important to increase the overall output and productivity. The paper cites that by using GitOps, the DevOps team can roll back or revert any catastrophic event. The team can also build an audit log for cluster changes, and establish an end-to-end continuous integration and continuous everything principle, driven by pull requests and fully reproducible through Git. The DevOps team can also embed security by leveraging Git’s correctness and strong cryptography, for tracking and managing changes across the entire cluster. Moreover, GitOps uses declarative specification to describe every process of the whole system, which is a transparent process and anyone can view the entire audit trail process, the time stamp, changes made and the committer information. This implies that the application can be audited using the software development and delivery. The concept of GitOps is fairly nascent established in the year 2017 but have significantly deployed by organizations such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM for efficient DevOps procedure.

You’ve put all the components of your rig together with help from our best gaming PC build guide, you’ve installed your OS, and you’re ready to start playing – but there’s a few steps you’ll want to go through before you jump into your favourite game. Here’s our guide on PC optimisation, with a few steps you’ll want to go through for the best PC experience, helping you boost fps in games, and generally make your rig that much snappier. This might be the least exciting part of the build, but it’s essential in getting the most out of the expensive components you’ve lovingly built into your brand new gaming PC. But don’t worry, it won’t take long to get you up and gaming. New PCs don’t stay running smoothly forever, and they’ll slow down over time without a bit of maintenance. On the other side of the same coin, you might be looking to improve the performance of your PC that’s getting on a bit. Whichever camp you’re in, following these steps should bring a lease of life to your older gaming PC too. Let’s start with something easy. 1. UPDATE YOUR GRAPHICS CARD DRIVERS Updating your graphics card driver is one of the simplest ways to take full advantage of the best graphics cards and boost fps. They are released regularly, bringing new features, performance updates, and optimisations for the latest games. Whether you have an AMD or Nvidia graphics card, all you’ll need to do is head over to their sites to download Radeon Adrenalin or GeForce Experience respectively. There’s even a possibility you’ll already have this installed, which you can check in the Windows tray if you’re running Microsoft’s OS. Once installed, you’ll be able to auto-detect when the latest driver for your graphics card is released, replacing the old one. 2. OPTIMISE YOUR SETTINGS IN GAME If you’ve tried all possible optimisation and you’re still not getting the frames you want, you’ll want to look at reducing the graphical settings in your games to boost fps. Some particularly demanding general settings in games include Render Distance and Texture Quality. Lowering the screen resolution is an option as well – go for resolution scaling if the game has that as an option, letting you run games at a lower resolution, while keeping the HUD and menus at their native resolutions, which can look pretty unsightly if not kept at native resolution. If you’ve got an SSD and HDD combo, you’ll always want Windows installed on the SSD, then any other games that benefit from the increased speeds of solid state if there’s any room – special mention to Cyberpunk 2077, which recommend an SSD for the intended experience.3. DEFRAGMENT YOUR HARD DRIVE We’d always recommend running the best SSD for gaming if you want your games to run speedy, but if you’re still running things from a mechanical hard drive, then you will need to defragment it whenever possible. If you are solely using a high capacity SSD though, defragmentation isn’t necessary – data spread across different sectors of a solid state drive doesn’t slow down access speeds because there’s no physical drive head, like in a hard disk drive. As data is added and removed on a conventional hard drive, the empty spaces on the disc become separated. If a new file is then added, it’s data may be fragmented over multiple sectors of the drive, increasing movement of the disk head, lowering access speeds which leads to longer loading times in games, or when loading any file in general on your PC. Defragmentation should be done once a month, ideally – it moves all the pieces of your system files into one sector, and groups together all the empty space on the drive. This reduces the distance that the disk head has to travel to open a file as it’s all in one place, speeding up access time. It’s really simple on Windows 10 – simply type ‘defrag’ and press enter on the start menu, select the drive you want to defrag, then click optimize. You can set Windows to automatically carry out defragmentation, too4. CHECK YOUR BACKGROUND APPLICATIONS AND STARTUP PROCESSES You’ll want to shut any unnecessary background applications before running games, especially if you have a limited amount of RAM. Web browsers like Chrome and Firefox use a surprisingly large amount – if you have a dozen tabs open, you could be looking at over 2GB of RAM used. You might want to consider increasing the RAM capacity in your PC if you’re really struggling.Also have a look at what applications are opening when you startup which can hinder boot times – Press ‘Ctrl+Shift+Esc’ to enter task manager, navigate to the ‘Startup’ tab and disable any programs you don’t want opening when you boot your PC. Task manager will also show you how much of your RAM you’re using at any given time.5. OVERCLOCK YOUR RAM Alongside watching out for how much memory capacity you’re using, you should also check the speed of your RAM. As you might’ve guessed, the bigger the megahertz, the faster your memory will run, but it’s not as simple as buying 3,200MHz DDR4 sticks and just slotting them in. In order to account for different motherboards, RAM often defaults to a lower speed, such as 2,133MHz, requiring you to overclock it to its intended speed. If your motherboard can support faster RAM, then you can set up your memory profiles in the BIOS, which you can access when booting up your gaming PC by tapping one of the Fn or Delete keys – it should tell you what key to hit for your system. Once exclaiming you’re in, much like a hacker in a 90s movie, navigate to the overclocking tab in your BIOS and enable ‘XMP’ to match the MHz to what your RAM supports. While you’re in the BIOS, you may as well get your fan speeds set up, too, as keeping things cool does allow your components to work harder and your games to run smoother. Many BIOSes have performance/quiet mode fan curve profiles, with the former keeping temperatures low and preventing throttling at the expense of the louder whirr of each fan. Or, if you’re looking to overclock your CPU, you could go ahead and manually set your CPU fan higher. 6. PERFORM A BIOS UPDATE Speaking of the BIOS, when should you consider updating it? This is one of those things where ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Updating your BIOS for no reason isn’t going to net you any performance, and if during a BIOS update your power was to go out, there’s always the risk your motherboard could be bricked – so only update if you’re experiencing documented bugs, or to enable support of new hardware – like AMD adding Zen 3 CPU support on 400 series motherboards. Although interfaces can differ per motherboard, it’s a pretty similar procedure across the board. BIOS USB flash utilities, which allow you to update without even a CPU or keyboard/mouse plugged in, used to be reserved only the highest-end motherboards, but most motherboards in recent years support this now – still, it doesn’t take the risk out of a BIOS update, but it’s perfect if you need to update your BIOS to support newer processors and don’t have a compatible spare lying around. If you need to, it’s a pretty simple process – go to your motherboard manufacturer’s website, find your motherboard then download the latest update onto an empty USB drive. You’ll then want to start up your PC and go into the BIOS, look for available devices, select the USB drive with the update, then let it do its job. Sometimes, no amount of optimisation is going to let you run the latest titles well. It’s important to make sure you’re meeting the minimum system requirements and upgrading components if you’re lacking in any department. If you don’t want to sink the money into a CPU upgrade, however, you can just learn how to overclock your CPU and GPU to squeeze some extra performance out of your gaming PC – although this works better when your processor is paired with the best CPU cooler. But hopefully, once you’ve gone through all the steps above, you should have a well tuned gaming PC sat in front of you, ready to go and play the latest titles on Steam, Uplay, GOG, Origin, or whichever platform you prefer. Just don’t forget to bag yourself the best gaming monitor with a high refresh rate so you can see the increase in frames. The only thing that’s left to say is good luck, have fun! Get involved in the conversation by heading over to our Facebook and Instagram pages. To stay up to date with the latest PC gaming guides, news, and reviews, follow PCGamesN on Twitter and Steam News Hub. We sometimes include relevant affiliate links in articles from which we earn a small commission. For more information, click here.

Doom Eternal is now on Xbox Game Pass for PC, but it’s not the only game coming to the home computer version of Microsoft’s subscription service this month. Game Pass is loaded with excellent offerings in December, from day one launches for gorgeous-looking indie titles to massive additions from major publishers. In addition to the titles announced a few weeks ago, Microsoft lifted the veil on a bunch of new additions at The Game Awards. Though a host of further Yakuza games is coming to Game Pass for PC, we sadly won’t be playing those until next year. We will be playing Morkdredd, a cooperative physics-driven puzzle game focused on light and shadow, which just launched on December 10, and has joined both console and PC Game Pass on the day of release. (While you may have seen Skyrim is coming to the subscription on December 15, that’s only on console – so sorry, if you somehow don’t own a PC version yet.) Among Us is by far the biggest game in the new Game Pass announcement, and if you haven’t yet joined the millions already playing, you’ll soon have no excuse. The social deduction game will be available through Game Pass PC starting on December 17. December 17 is the big day for a lot of titles. We’re getting narrative-driven horror game The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, racing game MotoGP 20, and acclaimed puzzle game Wilmot’s Warehouse. We’ve already gotten a big chunk of games in December, including the long-awaited addition of Doom Eternal. There’s Haven, a brand-new, gorgeous-looking indie take on JRPGs. December has also brought us VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action and Yes, Your Grace to complete the hat trick of excellent indie games. If you’re looking for something massive, Game Pass now offers Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition, a new-and-improved version of one of the best RPG games in recent memory. There’s also Call of the Sea – the mysterious narrative adventure you might recall at the Xbox Series X gameplay debut earlier this year – as well as Chucklefish’s Starbound. Then we’ve got Unto the End, which the devs describe as a “cinematic platformer” – think Limbo, but with more sword fighting. If you were distracted by the Cyberpunk 2077 release date, there were also two notable additions on December 10: GreedFall, and Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair – the latter of which is, incidentally, one of the finest 2D platformer games this side of Donkey Kong Country 2. Those are the standalone games, but there’s one more big addition to Game Pass this month: EA Play. As of December 15, you’ll get access to a giant library of EA titles as part of your subscription, including games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. This benefit does not include the Pro tier of EA Play, which gets you access to new EA games on the day of their release – that’s still exclusive to Origin on PC. Of course, Game Pass taketh away as much as it giveth. On December 15, we’ll lose access to Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Infinifactory, Metro: Last Light Redux, MudRunner, Pathologic 2, The Turing Test, and Ticket to Ride. Then, on December 30, the service will drop Farming Simulator 17 and Football Manager 2020. Get involved in the conversation by heading over to our Facebook and Instagram pages. To stay up to date with the latest PC gaming guides, news, and reviews, follow PCGamesN on Twitter and Steam News Hub. We sometimes include relevant affiliate links in articles from which we earn a small commission. For more information, click here.

Luca Pininfarina, nipote di Sergio e figlio di Andrea, ha due società per la coltivazione di nocciole, bambù e canapa Gli Anni 50 e 60 sono stati il periodo di massimo splendore dei carrozzieri italiani, tanto è vero che realtà come Bertone, Ghia, Pininfarina, Touring e Zagato si sono conquistate un posto nella storia dell’auto. Da allora però il mercato è cambiato radicalmente e poche di queste realtà sono ancora attive. Le nuove generazioni di queste celebri famiglie hanno iniziato a guardare al di là dell’automobile, cercando di affermarsi in altri settori, come il caso di Luca Pininfarina, nipote di Sergio e figlio di Andrea, scomparso tragicamente nel 2008, che ha fondato l’azienda agricola PininAgri.MERCATO IN CRESCITA— Commenta per primo Con la PininAgri, basata a Moncalieri, nell’hinterland torinese, Luca Pininfarina, che ha seguito gli studi in scienze agrarie, si occupa della coltivazione di nocciole e bambù. Tuttavia, insieme a tre soci, ha avviato da quasi tre anni un’attività parallela, la Fact (abbreviazione di Fattoria Agricola Cannabinoidi Torino), specializzata in un settore molto promettente: la coltivazione della canapa e la sua trasformazione in prodotti derivati, fra cui oli, burri e creme con estratti di cannabinoidi in quantità legale (il Thc, il principio attivo, deve essere inferiore allo 0,6%). Con il Thc sotto tale quantità, i prodotti a base di cannabinoidi hanno effetti analgesici, ansiolitici, antinfiammatori e antidepressiviSTRADE DIVERSE— Il fratello maggiore di Luca, Sergio, è rimasto invece nel mondo dell’auto e ha fondato la Tuc.Technology, azienda che ha creato un pianale modulare per auto elettriche: grazie ai connettori nel pavimento, permette di spostare i sedili, rimuoverli e variare la configurazione interna; in modo da allestire l’abitacolo nel modo più economico e veloce rispetto ad un pianale tradizionale.

There has been an increase in stress and anxiety among people since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, says a new study. The study surveyed over 10,000 Indians to understand how they have been coping with the new normal. Conducted by Delhi-based The Center of Healing (TCOH), a preventive healthcare platform, the study noted that stress and anxiety levels have been on the rise with 74 per cent and 88 per cent Indians suffering from stress and anxiety respectively. Data showed that 68.6 per cent therapists reported an increase in the number of people they see and in the hours they spend taking therapy, and 55 per cent therapists said the number of first-time therapy seekers has risen since the outbreak of Covid-19. “Everyone’s mental health is getting impacted during lockdown but we wanted to specifically focus on whether stress and anxiety had increased and whether people who were no longer in therapy were experiencing relapses,” said Gurpreet Singh, founder – TCOH. Ever since the pandemic hit India over nine months back, followed by an unprecedented lockdown, mental health experts have pointed out how stress and anxiety are on the rise. According to the study, 57 per cent respondents were suffering from mild stress, 11 per cent were feeling moderately stress, four per cent were facing moderately severe symptoms of stress and two per cent reported severe stress. “The past months have been unexpected. The situation has taken a major toll on the mental health of citizens. With the series of lockdowns, anxiety, job cuts, health scares, and the overall volatile environment, stress levels are at an all-time high,” said Swati Sahney, co-founder – TCOH.

Douglas County’s health department and the local COVID-19 Unified Command team released a new epidemiological dashboard Friday to provide more data about virus cases within the community. The dashboard is on the health department’s website, ldchealth.org, and will be updated each weekday. While the county has provided daily updates with some virus statistics, the dashboard will provide information that the county hasn’t shared before, such as the county’s COVID-19 incidence rate, the percent positivity rate by city and the percentage of emergency department visits where patients reported COVID-19-like symptoms. The incidence rate shows how many people per 100,000 county residents tested positive in the past 14 days, and the positivity rate shows the percentage of tests done over the past 14 days that came back positive. According to the dashboard, Douglas County currently has a COVID-19 incidence rate of 567.39 per 100,000 people. The dashboard also shows that Eudora is the city with the highest positivity rate — in the past 14 days, 7.9% of virus tests in Eudora came back positive. In Baldwin City, the positivity rate was 7%; in Lawrence it was 6.1%; and in Lecompton it was 5.8%. The dashboard also features some specific demographic information that will be updated once a week, including case breakdowns by age, sex, race and ZIP code. “We are excited this dashboard is ready as another tool to communicate with our community and give them information about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all of us,” said Sonia Jordan, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health’s director of informatics. “It gives an opportunity to present more data and provide context, particularly about how COVID-19 is affecting our community members by race and ethnicity. These perspectives will be important, particularly as all work together to address health disparities that COVID-19 will exacerbate.” The dashboard also includes information that has appeared in the county’s daily COVID-19 updates before, such as the 14-day moving average of new cases, Douglas County’s cumulative case count and the numbers of new cases, active cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Douglas County reported 5,512 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, an increase of 50 cases since Thursday. In Douglas County, 4,457 out of the 5,512 cases are inactive or beyond the infectious period, according to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, meaning 1,055 cases are active. The county has averaged about 48 new cases per day over the last 14 days, according to a 14-day moving average graph updated weekdays by the health department. The current average of 48.36 new cases per day is down from a recent high of 74 cases per day in mid-November and up from a recent low of 17 cases per day in mid-October. Twenty-four patients at Lawrence’s hospital had COVID-19 on Friday, one more than Thursday. Of those 24 inpatients, 16 have active COVID-19 cases and eight are recovering. Twenty-nine Douglas County residents have died of the virus. To sign up to receive the new dashboard updates each weekday, go to bit.ly/37RKBuJ. Two new cases at Lawrence Presbyterian Manor Two employees at Lawrence Presbyterian Manor have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a news release from the assisted living facility. Lawrence Presbyterian Manor has been doing surveillance testing biweekly, and the two positive cases were detected in testing done on Monday and Wednesday. One of the employees is an essential health care worker who last worked on Nov. 29, the release said; the other employee does not work in a direct care role and had not worked since Nov. 23. Both employees were screened before their shifts and wore personal protective equipment while working. Next week, the assisted living facility will move from biweekly to weekly surveillance testing because of the county’s positivity rate.

Start vote ❤️ V1 : V2 : Good luck .

> Opponent's nickname: @King_of_lion > Theme (must be an image): https://imgur.com/sx8B2X9 > Work Type: avatar > Size & Texts: size: 150×250 text: free > How many total votes?: 10 > Work time: 24hour

i will vote for V2 good text .

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Ahmedabad: SheerDrive, a Mumbai-based digital used-car platform, has successfully closed its seed round funding with Group Landmark, a TPG portfolio company, and India's leading automobile retail chain with more than 80 facilities across 27 cities. SheerDrive aims to transform and streamline the way pre-owned cars are bought and sold. It offers an online platform for real-time pricing with the goal to drive the used car market higher. With its array of new digital tools and services specifically designed for OEMs, new and used car retailers, SheerDrive seeks to solve legacy issues of convenience, transparency, and pricing. Auto dealers will form a key part of the value chain. "We believe our advanced digital tools, resources, and unique car sales and exchange propositions will not only drive better new car sales but also take the consumer buying experience, digitally and in-store, to a new high. We can effectively resolve the problems of dealing with pre-owned cars and bring about much-needed infrastructure to car dealerships," said Ravi Mehra, the CEO, and Co-founder of SheerDrive, shedding light on the platform. Ravi Mehra is a veteran in the pre-owned vehicle space has been a part of the core team at CarTrade for many years, he also spent time in Africa as Head of the Cars division for the ROAM Group, which is the leading online marketplaces company in Sub Saharan Africa. "The association with SheerDrive fits into our strategy of partnering with tech-enabled companies in the automobile value chain and SheerDrive's offerings fit well with our digital growth goal. At Group Landmark we have made digital as a cornerstone for the future. With the pandemic further accelerating the demand for pre-owned cars (due to inclination for personal modes of transportation), we, definitely, see merit in creating a value-driven digital platform which benefits everyone in the ecosystem," said Harshal Desai, Director, Group Landmark, commenting on this development. This is the second investment of this type made by Group Landmark, having previously invested into the aftermarket garage aggregation platform Pitstop earlier this year.

International hospitality group edyn will expand its lifestyle aparthotel brand Locke outside of the UK for the first time in December with the opening of Zanzibar Locke in Dublin. Situated on Ormond Quay, overlooking the River Liffey, Zanzibar Locke draws on its rich architectural heritage to inform its design. Developed on the site of the legendary Zanzibar Nightclub, the Georgian building has been sensitively restored by local contractors, joiners and artists to retain its original character, while combining the aspirational design, beautiful living space and custom furniture synonymous with Locke. Each of Zanzibar Locke's 160 studio apartments come equipped with fully fitted kitchens and living areas; as well as access to complimentary co-working, meeting and events space, workout studio, food and drink outlets and varied cultural programme. Generously sized apartments create a sense of freedom unique to the Irish market, where guests can enjoy the option of a short stay in a City Studio (average 25sqm) or retreat to a larger premium Duplex Suite (average 80sqm) for a long-term stay. The aparthotel will also house BARAZA - an all-day restaurant by local foodie favourites NolaClan, serving Irish-inspired small plates and craft cocktails. Parent group edyn, which also operates serviced apartment brand SACO, Wittenberg in Amsterdam, and The Moorgate in London, showed resilience during the COVID pandemic, largely to its well-designed and efficiently operated brand portfolio. From March to October 2020, edyn properties maintained an average occupancy of 60% across the group; the latest addition to the Locke portfolio, Bermonds Locke, has retained an outstanding average occupancy of 75% since opening in September - cementing the brand as 'one to watch' in the new future of travel. "We have been incredibly fortunate that the extended-stay sector has performed comparatively well throughout the pandemic. While this year has been challenging for us all, at edyn we have benefited from the resilience and adaptability of our business model, combined with the financial strength and long-term outlook of our investors. This allowed us to push forward with our expansion plans in a time when very few hotels were opening. Our portfolio has never felt more relevant and we look forward to further Locke openings across Europe in 2021, along with exciting transformation and growth plans for other edyn brands." - Stephen McCall, CEO, edyn. Having established itself as a serious contender in the long-stay market, edyn aims to sustain this performance as it expands Locke across Europe in 2021. The brand's fourth London property is slated to launch in January in London's vibrant Dalston neighbourhood, followed by further openings in Europe with a second location in Dublin (Beckett Locke, opening March) plus two openings in Munich (Schwan Locke and WunderLocke, opening May). Opening rates at Zanzibar Locke start from €109 per night. For more information about Zanzibar Locke, please visit

Over 550 people in Eluru town of Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district have been suffering from convulsions, seizures, dizziness and nausea since last Saturday evening. The seizures last for 3 to 5 minutes followed usually by vomiting or loss of consciousness. Doctors at the Eluru Government Hospital, where most victims are being treated, say the patients are fine within one or two hours and are discharged. People of all age groups, men, women and even small children are among the victims. While on Saturday night at least 90 people were brought to hospitals, the figures drastically rose on Sunday and Monday. Only since Tuesday evening has the number of victims come down. On Wednesday, less than 20 persons were brought to hospitals but most of them did not suffer convulsions or seizures. The initial panic has subsided by Thursday and less than 20 persons are undergoing treatment or are under observation. Eluru illness: What has caused the sickness? The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi found traces of lead and nickel in blood samples of 25 victims out of the 45 samples sent by the state government. Public health experts and scientists from various agencies are awaiting detailed reports of analysis of blood and water samples but the primary suspicion is on water contamination by heavy metals. Scientists suspect that pesticide or insecticide has seeped into drinking water sources. The district administration and Eluru Municipal Corporation officials are also investigating if excessive use of bleaching powder and chlorine in sanitation programmes as part of Covid-19 prevention measures caused water contamination. Experts from National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad who collected water, blood, and food samples from Eluru say there are indications of lead contamination but can confirm this only after detailed test reports. Eluru ‘mystery’ illness |Excessive bleach, chlorine used in Covid sanitisation drives may have contaminated water, experts say Eluru receives water through canals from both Godavari and Krishna rivers. The canals pass through agricultural fields where runoff laced with pesticides mixes with water in the canals. Many aspects of the mystery illness have baffled scientists. People who only use packaged drinking water have also fallen sick. There are many instances where only one or two persons in the family fell sick. Over 70 per cent of Eluru town is affected. Even areas outside of Eluru Municipal Corporation to which it does not supply drinking water are also affected.📣 Follow Express Explained on Telegram Who is involved in the investigation? While AIIMS, New Delhi is testing blood, water and milk samples for heavy metals, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) Hyderabad, is testing for pathogens. National Institute for Nutrition, Hyderabad, is testing samples of urine, blood, water, vegetables, fruits and other consumables for traces of heavy metals and pesticides. The Indian Institute of Chemical Technology is testing water and blood samples for traces of pesticides. A two-member WHO team is in Eluru to monitor the situation. During the household survey, water samples taken locally were tested but no traces of lead or pesticides were found. While lead and pesticides continue to be concentrated upon, investigations pertaining to other pathogens, probable sources also being carried out. What action is the state government taking? The West Godavari district administration has deployed 62 medical teams to monitor residents in the town and nearby areas affected by the mystery illness. The medical and relief teams have conducted two rounds of household surveys to check the condition of people, and even on Thursday, the teams were conducting checks on residents to make sure they are safe.Teams of officials have spread out to check all sources of water to find out the source of suspected contamination. Officials were scouring garbage dumps where batteries may be leaking and contaminating groundwater. Teams are also tracing the two canals that bring water to Eluru to check for any source of contamination.

Software maker C3.ai, which was founded by former Oracle Corp. executive Tom Siebel, is pricing its initial public offering (IPO) above the marketed range, aiming to make $651 million, Bloomberg reported, quoting unnamed sources familiar with the goings-on of the company. The company, based in Redwood City, California, sold 15.5 million shares on Tuesday (Dec. 8), pricing them at $42 a piece after initially putting them at $36 to $38, according to the unnamed sources. Based on the outstanding shares listed in C3.ai's filings, the company is likely to have a market value of $4 billion at $42 a share. The IPO is being backed by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, according to Bloomberg, and the company's shares were expected to begin trading Wednesday (Dec. 9) under the symbol AI. Some of the big name backers for C3.ai will acquire shares in a private placement as part of the listing, including Microsoft, which would buy $50 million at IPO price, and Spring Creek Capital, which plans to buy $100 million in common stock, Bloomberg writes. PYMNTS reports that the company's good fortunes have come from investors flocking to tech stocks, and Siebel, in a statement, said the company's focus is to leverage its tech leadership, first mover advantage and management leadership to access a new global position. If it succeeds, he said, C3.ai will be "one of the world's great software companies." Other big tech companies have also capitalized on the current hunger for tech stocks, including Palantir Technologies, Snowflake and Unity Software, which all went public this year. DoorDash launched a successful IPO soon after seeing its revenues soar because of the increased need for delivery during the pandemic. Earlier this year, the company entered into a partnership with Microsoft and Adobe on a new customer-relationship management software intended to compete with Salesforce.com's, according to Bloomberg.

NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 3080 Ti flagship has been spotted in an HP driver courtesy of StefanG3D (via Videocardz). According to the source, RTX 3080 Ti is the final name for the GA102 based 20GB graphics card that NVIDIA is preparing to take out the big Navi lineup. NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 3080 Ti 20GB graphics card finally starts popping up in drivers User T4CFantasy also confirmed to Videocardz that the spotted GPU ID indeed belongs to the RTX 3080 Ti:According to T4CFantasy to whom we reached out, those names are 99% correct. He is sure that 2205 ID belongs to the RTX 3080 Ti because he had already seen traces of this new SKU through the software that he wouldn’t name. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti was originally supposed to be based on the PG132 SKU20 (although NVIDIA decided to rename it) and has been in the pipeline for quite some time. While the exact CUDA core count is not yet confirmed, it will have twice the amount of memory when compared to the vanilla RTX 3080. To be clear, even the nomenclature is not confirmed as the SUPER suffix could appear anywhere in the name should Jensen deem it so. We highly recommend users (that want to buy an NVIDIA card) to go for the RTX 3090 (if they can afford it) or wait for the RTX 3080 Ti/SUPER 20 GB. With this amount of shading power, you will want to have a complimentary memory buffer. According to Videocardz, the card will be landing in January 2021. Considering the fact that killer apps like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 already chomp away all the vRAM the 2080 Ti had to offer, 10 GB is going to feel tiny after a year or two. Next-gen consoles are already driving games with asset-streaming of large worlds, so vRAM is going to start becoming a lot more crucial than before. With AMD rocking a flagship card with 16GB of vRAM, NVIDIA had to reply with their own high vRAM card. According to Kopite, the RTX 3080 Ti will be based on the GA102 and will have specifications between an RTX 3080 and 3090. The exact chip nomenclature is GA102-250-A1 and will feature a 384 bits bus with GDDR6X memory. The bus-size means NVIDIA will either be using a 12 GB buffer or a 24 GB one. Considering Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is already bottlenecked by the 11 GB ram on the RTX 2080 Ti, it would be disappointing to see NVIDIA ship another powerful GPU with a small memory buffer. With RTX IO and asset streaming (Unreal Engine demo for next-generation consoles) becoming a thing in the next year or so, every bit of buffer will help in this paradigm shift.It is also unclear at this point how the revelation of this new GPU fits into the rumors about NVIDIA planning a move back to TSMC. It does however lend credence to the belief that the RTX 3000 series, at least for now, is staying on the Samsung 8nm process. The company initially faced less than ideal yields and supply constraints at launch but those are expected to significantly improve as we enter into the new year. This is going to be an insanely powerful card with 34 TFLOPs of power. That said, the current API, driver, and application infrastructure cannot fully take advantage of all this raw power. This is the actual reason why NVIDIA's insanely powerful cards don't scale linearly with TLFOPs. The company essentially made cards that are ahead of their time when compared to the surrounding software ecosystem. The hard evidence for this lies in the fact that the RTX 3000 series has been experiencing non-linear positive scaling when going down the stack. An RTX 3070 which has slightly more cores than the RTX 2080 Ti beats the former flagship - putting to rest any rumors or allegations about the CUDA cores in the Ampere series not being as strong as the Turing series or misleading blames at architecture design with lacking INT performance. AMD's big Navi series drops later today and it remains to be seen how the GPU market shapes up as we enter into the holiday season. NVIDIA's pricing is great but it needs to work with developers to fix the API and driver stacks to properly take advantage of the raw performance offered by the Ampere series (fine wine of the highest order) and in the meantime, AMD is going to churn out budget-friendly performance cards with what appears to be ample supply. They have also taken a lot of steps to make sure that the bot-scalping that happened with NVIDIA does not happen at their Radeon RX 6000 series launch.

Good old SUPERHOT VR is back with another free update for the PlayStation VR version of the game that adds a mode themed entirely around the day after Christmas. This Boxing Day patch goes live today, featuring a new endless level, a new scoring system, and a festive soundtrack to suit the mood. You will have to beat the original game before gaining access, but who hasn't done that by now if they own a PSVR headset? Check the mode out in action above. There's more to the PSVR update though as SUPERHOT Team explains it has reworked the entire game from scratch to make for a better performing experience. "As well as the Boxing Day update, PlayStation VR players will also be receiving a massive SUPERHOT VR patch that brings numerous quality of life improvements, bug fixes, improved performance, and graphical enhancements. The game has been reworked from scratch and better than ever before. It’s the biggest bug-squashing exercise since the launch of SUPERHOT VR on PlayStation VR." Sounds like it's worth checking out, that's for sure. Will you take a break from Cyberpunk 2077 and get in the Christmas spirit with this holiday-themed update for SUPERHOT VR? Don't punch us in the comments below.

Policy push will help it leverage MNCs’ ‘China Plus 1’ supply chain model A new future beckons the Indian auto components industry. Potential exists for the sector to not only grab a larger share of the world trade but also, in the process, make some homegrown brands globally recognised and respected. Many favourable factors have set the stage for it. The global supply chain realignment, a drive to make India self-reliant, and the Centre’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme have all supported this progress. While the domestic auto parts industry has emerged as a strong export-led one with about a quarter of its production exported worldwide, its share in the $1.3-million global automotive trade is still a minuscule 1.3 per cent. Increased enquiries To start with, the realignment of the global supply chain is real and the Indian auto parts makers have started to feel its benefits. They are seeing several enquiries and, in some cases, orders from buyers who were till recently sourcing from China. A strong domestic market and a significant exposure to exports make the auto components sector ideally placed to grab a share of the China market. While China will remain the biggest and fast-growing market ($550 billion in size as against India’s $50-billion industry), the key message coming home to auto parts companies is the ‘China Plus 1’ model that global automotive players are embracing. Several leading auto parts companies such as Sundram Fasteners, Wheels India and the Rane Group have started getting orders due to ‘China Plus 1’. However, industry analysts reckon that India needs to get its act together to grab a greater share as countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia are viewed as being more attractive now. Policy instability An unstable policy regime in India is one of the major worries for investors. For instance, the axle load carrying capacity is suddenly hiked by 25 per cent. Result: it sets the CV market back by two years. Then there is the sudden leap to BS-VI norms. BS-VI migration Unlike other nations, the auto industry here managed to migrate to BS-VI in a very short time. But localisation suffered and, today, BS-VI components are among significant imports. “The policy and regulatory framework should be a well-agreed-upon road map and, once decided, it shouldn’t be tinkered with. Because, the cost of capital in India is one of the highest in the world and there should be visibility to make investments,” said an industry representative. The industry has been localising aggressively. “Localisation always works in the interests of the industry as we are in a very price-sensitive market,” said Vinnie Mehta, Director General, Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA). “Every 5-6 years, the amount of devaluation has been about 15 per cent on an average. So, imports are getting expensive, while localisation helps in keeping the prices steady for the customers; it also helps in continuous design improvements and innovation.” Incentive to localise The recently announced PLI scheme is expected to give a much-needed boost to the companies to localise faster. “What is heartening is the support we are getting from the government in all these developments,” said Mehta. The Centre has earmarked about 40 per cent of the overall allocation under the PLI scheme to the auto sector. The auto industry, a key contributor to the economy, has lauded the move and most players are awaiting the details. “We are waiting for full details to see whether to make any structural changes like hiving off some thing as a special unit to seize the emerging opportunity. We will decide based on the final details of the PLI scheme,” said L Ganesh, Chairman, Rane Group. Global aspirations Indian auto parts makers see themselves as back-end boys. Their quality is recognised globally. What they lack is the aspiration to become big. The conditions are ripe today for them to take the plunge. An Indian Bosch, Continental or ZF could be round the corner.

Sore eyes are the most significant vision-based indicator of COVID-19, according to a study led by an Indian-origin scientist which provides more understanding of how the novel coronavirus travels through the body. Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the UK asked people who had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis to complete a questionnaire about their symptoms, and how those compared to before they tested positive. “This is the first study to investigate the various eye symptoms indicative of conjunctivitis in relation to COVID-19, their time frame in relation to other well-known COVID-19 symptoms and their duration,” said study lead author Professor Shahina Pardhan, Director of the Vision and Eye Research Institute at ARU. The study, published in the journal BMJ Open Ophthalmology, found that sore eyes was significantly more common when the participants had COVID-19, with 16 per cent reporting the issue as one of their symptoms. Just 5 per cent of the participants reported having had the condition beforehand, the researchers said. While 18 per cent of people reported suffering from photophobia or light sensitivity as one of their symptoms, this was only a 5 per cent increase from their pre-COVID-19 state, they said. The study found that of the 83 respondents, 81 per cent reported ocular issues within two weeks of other COVID-19 symptoms, and of those, 80 per cent reported their eye problems lasted less than two weeks. The most common reported symptoms overall were fatigue — suffered by 90 per cent of respondents — a fever seen 76 per cent and a dry cough which was reported by 66 per cent. “While it is important that ocular symptoms are included in the list of possible COVID-19 symptoms, we argue that sore eyes should replace ‘conjunctivitis’ as it is important to differentiate from symptoms of other types of infections, such as bacterial infections, which manifest as mucous discharge or gritty eyes,” Pardhan said. “This study is important because it helps us understand more about how COVID-19 can infect the conjunctiva and how this then allows the virus to spread through the body,” she added.

Advisory panels of infectious disease experts this week will assess a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech -- a vaccine that Britain began administering to its most vulnerable citizens on Tuesday. The committees will then turn their attention next week to a second vaccine developed by Moderna. Approval of either or both vaccines will begin the largest vaccination effort ever undertaken. The transition from hazy lab science to a very real vaccine-laden needle raises many questions for Americans. But experts have some answers: When will the first Americans get their vaccines? U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committees will review the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week, and if the nod is given then the vaccine rollout could commence at startling speed, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious disease with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. "It could well be that the first people to get the vaccine could be within the next week or week and a half," Schaffner said. Because Operation Warp Speed paid manufacturers to start producing doses even as their vaccine candidates underwent clinical trials, there will be stockpiles of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that are ready to ship the second the green light is given, Schaffner said. Warp Speed paid Pfizer nearly $2 billion to manufacture and deliver 100 million doses, and Moderna received about $1.5 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. "We've stored a lot of vaccine already. It's one of the reasons we were able to move so quickly. We didn't wait until the trials were completed to start making and storing the vaccine," Schaffner said. Who's in charge of distributing the vaccine? Operation Warp Speed and the CDC will oversee national distribution of the vaccine, working in conjunction with the pharmaceutical companies, Schaffner said. However, each state's health department will identify the specific locations that will receive the vaccine prior to individuals receiving their inoculation, Schaffner said. Because the first two vaccines are based on highly fragile messenger RNA (mRNA), they need to be kept frozen at extremely low temperatures. "The Pfizer vaccine has to be kept so cold, almost minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, in really deep freeze, otherwise it begins to degrade," Schaffner said. "It will be going to a relatively small number of institutions, usually hospitals, where they have the facilities to deal with that and they have personnel who can be trained to administer the vaccine." Upcoming vaccine candidates produced using more traditional methods are expected to be more hardy, and those likely will be distributed directly to pharmacies and the offices of participating physicians, Schaffner said. How quickly can the vaccine be produced? One advantage of the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna is that they are fully lab-manufactured, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "It's a synthetic molecule. You just make it in the lab. You don't have to worry about growing it up in cells, as is true for more classic vaccines," Offit said. Because of this, Offit is hopeful that large amounts of these vaccines can be quickly churned out. "The Pfizer vaccine is a 30-microgram dose. A microgram is a millionth of a gram. You can make kilograms of this stuff," Offit said. However, there are 7.8 billion people in the world. Even with manufacturers working at a fast clip, it will take months to produce two doses for every adult on the planet. And the United States will have to wait in line with other nations competing for the same resource. Pfizer has told the Trump administration that, because other countries have rushed to buy up most of its supply, substantial additional doses above the 100 million the U.S. government purchased earlier this year will not be available to the United States until late June or July, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Other vaccine candidates receiving approval in subsequent months could speed up efforts to immunize everyone, but at this point it's not clear how soon those will receive their turn at bat. U.S. officials expect to have about 40 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna distributed by the end of the year -- just enough to immunize 20 million people with the two-dose vaccine, the Post said. Who will get the vaccine first, and in what order? The CDC has decided that health care workers and people working or living in long-term care facilities will be the first folks to get the COVID-19 vaccine. There are about 21 million health care workers and about 3 million people at long-term care facilities, so their inoculations will account for the first 48 million doses of the two-dose vaccine. It's not clear who will be next in line. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet in the coming weeks to make recommendations for the groups to be included in subsequent waves. The next phase of priority vaccinations could focus on essential workers such as educators, food and agriculture workers, utility workers, police, firefighters, corrections officers and transportation employees, according to a slideshow presented at the Dec. 1 meeting of the ACIP. This represents about 87 million people, and also would promote vaccination among minority communities that have been hit hard by the pandemic, the Post reported.

In the summer, Microsoft revealed it would kill off defunct web browser Internet Explorer (IE), with plans for a phased termination brought to a close by mid-2021. In light of the announcement, Google has now confirmed that its Workspace product suite - which includes the likes of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive etc. - will also abandon the much denigrated browser. As set out in a Google blog post, Workspace users will be required to upgrade to a supported browser before March 15 2021, in order to “avoid any possible disruptions in service such as degraded performance or security vulnerabilities”. Check out our list of the best productivity software around Office 365 vs Workspace: Which is the best office software? Here's our list of the best spreadsheet software right now Over the next few weeks, Google will begin to display banners for Google Workspace customers still using IE 11, reminding them of the need to switch. And admins are advised to set the upgrade process in motion immediately. Internet Explorer end-of-life Internet Explorer, which first hit the scene in 1995, has suffered an almighty fall from grace over the past decade. Ridiculed for speed issues and its clunky user interface, the browser was dropped in favor of newer, more feature-rich offerings. In a bid to claw back lost users, Microsoft has put all its energy behind its new flagship service, Edge. The arrival of the new Chromium-based browser earlier this year was the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin. “Customers have been using IE 11 since 2013 when the online environment was much less sophisticated than the landscape today,” explained the firm. “Since then, open web standards and newer browsers - like the new Microsoft Edge - have enabled better, more innovative online experiences.” As part of the sunsetting process, Microsoft 365 applications will withdraw support for Internet Explorer over the coming months - and the same is now true of Google’s product suite too. To avoid complications that might arise as a result of the end of IE support, Google has advised users to switch to one of a handful of supported web browsers. Unsurprisingly, the company’s own Chrome browser sits at the top of the recommended list. Rival offerings Firefox, Safari and Edge, meanwhile, are said to “work well with Workspace”, but do not support offline access to Google products. Here's our list of the best email services right now Receive notifications from TechRadar?