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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have the power of a god – the power to change the fate of someone’s life? Chinese developer WMY Studio’s visual novel-style adventure WILL: A Wonderful World puts you in this very position, entrusting you with the fates of mortals wishing for better than the unfortunate situations in which they find themselves. Players are encouraged to follow a path of "absolute kindness," resolving requests while also facing the possibility that no matter how you try to save people from suffering, they will continue to encounter danger and hardship. Through mature portrayals of love, murder, hope, and depression, this game whips between perspectives and genres, though it regrettably slips into absurdity along the way, and it turns out you don’t have nearly as much power as your status would imply. Players assume the role of Myth, an amnesia-afflicted god with the appearance of a pig-tailed girl. Myth receives cries for help in the form of letters, except they are really more of a gateway into the sender’s thoughts and emotions than handwritten messages. Your companion and instructor is a talking dog named Will, who gifts you a pen capable of rewriting the order of events within these letters. Okay, it doesn’t actually write, despite being a pen; instead it plucks sentences from each letter to then be rearranged. As a simple example of your capabilities, one letter describes a character practicing tennis at night who is unable to find her house keys when the court’s light suddenly burns out. If you correctly reposition the text specifying the moment the light fails, now after leaving the court she will have picked up her keys without issue. As the sole gameplay mechanic, this text mani[CENSORED]tion proves to be considerably more restrictive than it initially appears. Still, there’s no question that it is a great concept to ensure player involvement in a story-centric game. Before getting into more particulars, let me give a rundown of the extensive cast. Li Wen is a high schooler and skilled athlete who finds herself overcome with unexpected feelings for her teacher. Jimmy is a spoiled rich kid and expert hacker, as well as Li Wen’s secret stalker. Grief-stricken painter Wen Zhaoren is their art teacher. Elsewhere, Park Sang-Gun is a twelve-year-old with an abusive father who cruelly sends him away to an asylum. Carlos finds himself embroiled in China’s criminal underworld after leaving Mexico to find his missing sister Alicia, who gets her own tragic tale illuminating her disappearance. In Busan’s police department, Chang Gyeong-Min is a rookie cop with a childlike concept of justice. His superior, Kang Baek-Ya, operates a task force of specialized officers while simultaneously battling darkness within himself. Then we have Spottie, a stray cat trying to make his way in a city of uncaring humans. Additionally, there are a few one-off chapters with minor roles and a mystery character whose identity is really not much of a surprise at all. The cast is both full and diverse, and their individual stories assemble an eclectic compilation of genres – romance, crime thriller, horror, action, comedy – all underlined by drama and personal tribulation. The contents of their letters are notably mature in theme, including suicide and torture. Victimizing characters is a common go-to for stories seeking audience sympathy, but much of the writing here, or perhaps the translation, is beholden to melodrama when subtlety would be more affective, or to a passive voice where emotion is needed. The former makes high school drama scenes come off just as dire as the life-or-death urgency portrayed in scenes with gunfights, while the latter issue makes a scene depicting rape feel oddly callous. The events you are given to rearrange are all pre-determined (there’s a joke about fate in here somewhere), and where you can place these events in context for each letter is typically limited to the middle of two chunks of text – you cannot start or end with the moveable events. The process becomes more complicated, and more interesting, when the game pairs two letters, allowing you to swap select events from one story to the another. Creativity is rarely rewarded, unfortunately, apart from an occasion where I swapped one person’s gun with a dried fish from another tale, which led to humorous results. Fact is, there isn’t much experimentation at all, as wrong choices typically lead to fail states, more often than not with the characters dying or being knocked unconscious. Thankfully, you can simply click the retry option and arrange the story differently without having to read through the whole story again. Conclusions to letters are ranked according to how agreeable the results are. With fourteen stories in all, each divided into their own chapters (or letters) of varying tone and length, a single playthrough should last approximately fifteen hours. Depending on your level of enjoyment, you may be inclined to reload your save after the credits and try for different results to completed letters. Strangely, WILL gives you tutorials on many rules that don’t see much use overall. Swappable events in letters might be accompanied by numbers in which higher values cannot precede lower values. Another condition you will seldom need to adhere to pertains to events conflicting with each other and thus cannot be present in the same letter, only switched between letters. You can even run into a situation where the result of one scenario prevents future events from happening, meaning a character’s story could reach a dead end until you achieve a different conclusion in a previous letter. Once again, though, this is rare, or at least I didn’t run into it too often even while insisting on retrying chapters until I finished with the highest rank. Certain text is highlighted in a few colors to get your attention: orange indicates pertinent information; blue is clickable and gives you an educational description of the term in question, covering topics like spies, pandas, blood types, “massage” parlors (yes, that kind), and human sticks (this one being among the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard of); and red for hints in solving a letter’s dilemma. These hints are unavailable on the hard difficulty setting to supposedly make solutions tougher to decipher, but honestly I don’t think there is much of a difference because I was forced to resort to guesswork most of the time anyway.

Ray Spark’s indie game Slaughter is a 3rd person shooter for Android devices in which you play a mercenary named Russell attempting to escape from captivity in an abandoned town of madmen. The single player campaign offers a threadbare story, taking the player character Russell through a bunch of levels ranging from alleys between some houses, to a logging house, and even a gas station. There’s no discernible reason you’ve been imprisoned making it seem a bit generic, but there are still some shining moments for individual characters throughout. Notably, the bosses Russell encounters all have small intro videos and it gives us insight into their personalities and each one of them are strangely memorable. Despite the bosses only being around for the scene of the battle, those moments really stuck with me long after I finished the main game and that is something very important that many larger budget games tend to lack. The only game I can think of that has that same sort of effect is the Borderlands games- the boss intros are all unique and entertaining. The gameplay itself consists of running around through the levels and mowing through hordes of enemies with bullets. You’ll be solving small puzzles, like finding a battery to activate a bridge or finding an object to give to someone, and shooting everyone on your path to freedom. Health packs and ammo are plentiful enough to leave you a small safety net, but not enough to allow for an effortless run. Each of the guns feel distinct allowing for players to kind of lean towards their own play style. Enjoy shotgunning someone with a giant blast to the face? You can do it. A nice SMG to pepper enemies from mid-range is another option, as are pistols, and even longer range rifles with scopes. There’s plenty of options when it comes to slaying the mobs of crazy people you’ll need to deal with. You also pick weapons up in combat, because occasionally shotguns run out of ammo swiftly, but you’ll also have a backup secondary weapon. The controls are very simple, but also very effective. The left side of the screen controls the movement, and the right controls the camera, while the weapon aim is a specific area on the right side with firing happening automatically when a target is in the crosshairs. My only complaints about the controls are that the melee could use a bit more animation outside of a singular slash motion, and when enemies are right in your face bullets seem to go through them without hitting. Adding some extra content to the game’s replayability is the arena survival mode, where you fight off wave after wave of enemies trying to stay alive as long as you can. Through each wave you are earning money to buy new guns, recruit helping soldiers, or even a portable sentry turret to deploy to obliterate all nearby enemies. After each wave you can also level up helping you unlocking access better weapons and the ability to earn money more quickly, and subsequently aiding in reaching the harder rounds. Ray Spark’s (aka Venomized Art) Slaughter is a genuine treat for anyone that likes short and sweet 3rd person shooter games. It’s got decent controls, lots of action, plenty of subtle humor, and is an overall fun as hell indie title.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC Pros: Spectacular action in stunning scenery Four great villains, each with their own style More immersive and organic than previous Far Cries Brilliant specialists and animal allies Cons: Sometimes sticks too closely to old Far Cry templates Loses pace when the Seeds aren’t around Get past its off-kilter politics – turns out, the doomsday-prepping gun-lovers are the good guys – and Far Cry 5 is a brilliant retooling for the series, tossing tired elements aside (watchtowers are switched out for prepper caches, for instance) and doubling down on the mayhem with a team mechanic that lets you recruit the perfect squad for your goals (Shotgun dude and helicopter? Stealth-lady and sniper? Ah, sod it, rocket-man and bear again). The way you’re snatched from its sandbox world to do story missions is absolutely maddening and the post-endgame vibe is oddly unsatisfying, but once you’re done with the main game a never-ending array of user-submitted Arcade mode levels is the way to go. Oh, and you can throw shovels at people. Redemptive!

Pro he is old admin

You are new but You should follow the model to req for admin REQ Again after 1 week with read rules n follow the model G/L Rejected

PRO

REJECTED YOU KEEP SPAMMING LIKE THIS WE DONT WANT BAD ADMINS + NO READ RULES + NO FOLLOW THE MODEL G/L

I know him he play on sv i have seen him n he read rules to so PRO

Give him a chance !

Analysis Imagine for a moment the possibility that macOS 10.15, due to arrive later this year, will run only apps signed with a valid Apple developer certificate, with no option to white-list unsigned apps via the company's Gatekeeper security mechanism. That would mean the only application code you could run on macOS 10.15 would be software created and signed by registered third-party developers, who right now have to pay $99 a year for said status. Unsigned code you build yourself wouldn't, therefore, run on your own hardware, with that OS installed. The aim, we presume, would be to stop unsigned malware running accidentally, primarily. Right now, the latest version of macOS can be told to run software only from the Mac app store, the app store and certified devs, or from anywhere with no restrictions. It's been suggested that Apple is planning to ban all unsigned programs in macOS 10.15 and onwards, and a Register reader within the industry has insisted to us he's heard this on good authority. It's equally plausible the scenario has been fabricated or overblown to encourage Apple to tip its hand. We've asked around about this, and have been unable to confirm it. We asked Apple, but the company seldom answers our inquiries. The last time this reporter got an immediate, unequivocal response from Apple was in 2006 when, after asking about the health of then CEO Steve Jobs (visibly frail at the time and two years after Jobs disclosed his cancer diagnosis), the company's comms chief herself sent an email insisting, "Steve’s health is robust and we have no idea where these rumors are coming from." Apple, of course, has no obligation to its customers, developers or the general public to address speculation. But it's refusal to do so makes the claim at least worth discussing, given that it's not very far from changes delivered in macOS Mojave (10.14). The Mojave update introduced the concept of app notarization, a pre-distribution code-scanning service performed by Apple that looks for malicious content and signing problems in developer-signed apps. Successfully vetted apps get appended with a ticket that provides extra information to Gatekeeper, for more streamlined installation prompt and signing key audits. Basically, a green light to macOS to smoothly install the software seeing as it's been screened by Apple and determined to be safe. Apple has said app notarization is optional under Mojave but will be mandatory in the future: "Note that in an upcoming release of macOS, Gatekeeper will require Developer ID signed software to be notarized by Apple," the company explains on its developer website. We suspect that those whispering the supposed looming changes have mistaken the foretold notarization requirement with a slightly broader restriction affecting not just developer-signed apps but all apps. Skepticism When we asked Cabel Sasser, co-founder of macOS and iOS app biz Panic, about this, he suggested as much. Steve Troughton-Smith, who develops apps for High Caffeine Content, expressed skepticism that Apple would go so far as to ban unsigned code entirely. "Seems at odds with how Apple is positioning the Mac right now as a workstation for professionals; they already have a consumer OS that goes to those lengths, iOS. Plus, on the Mac, all the security can be turned off anyway," he said. At the same time, the distance between what Apple has said it will do with mandatory notarization and what it could do by closing Gatekeeper to any unsigned code is small. With macOS Sierra, Apple began hiding the option to install apps from unidentified developers. Currently, the company provides a way to whitelist unidentified apps in Gatekeeper by control-clicking on the app in Finder, selecting the Open menu and then authenticating with your username and password. But it clearly wants to discourage reliance on unsigned apps due to the potential security and privacy risks. Getting rid of this mechanism would make macOS more like iOS, where all apps must be signed. And given that Apple is working on a common framework (Marzipan) to make it easier to write iOS apps that work on macOS (and vice versa), there's a certain logic to harmonizing security policies across Apple's desktop and mobile platforms. Asked about the possibility that Apple might require code signing for all macOS apps, Felix Schwarz, who runs iOS and macOS app biz IOSPIRIT, said he hadn't heard that and suggested it would be a "bittersweet solution" if true. "If Apple wants to really require signing for all apps with 10.15, I really hope that Apple has thought about these issues and put viable, working solutions for them in place," he said. "I fear, however, that it could be a continuation of the kind of platform security changes macOS has seen in more recent history: well intentioned, but not well made." Schwarz said he believes one of the reasons these cumbersome changes have proliferated is that Apple has different requirements for its own apps and for those of third-party developers. "Special code signatures that are only available to Apple often effectively save Apple from their own dog food – and it shows," he said. Potential problems, he said, would be that unsigned legacy software might not run and any open source software currently distributed without being signed would have to pay the annual fee for an Apple developer account, take on the legal responsibility for signed code and deal with the secure maintenance of private keys.Simeon Saëns, co-founder of development biz Two Lives Left, told The Register, he had no specific knowledge of a plan to require signing for macOS apps and wondered whether the rumor might just be about notarized apps, which wouldn't be a big deal. If Apple required all macOS apps to be signed, he said, it would make Mac developers very angry, but he'd be okay with it. "As a developer I don’t trust developers with the right to run arbitrary code on their users’ devices without restriction," he said. "The number of developers that will throw in an analytics framework without thinking or asking the user to opt-in is disgusting. And developers very rarely respect user privacy." Saëns said many developers believe they have the right to distribute executable code without restrictions. "I believe that for your own personal device, you should be allowed to run whatever code you want," he said. "But as soon as your code touches another user’s device it should be locked down, sandboxed and reviewed. Your right as a developer to run arbitrary code ends outside of your machine." ®

It hasn’t been more than a few hours since Intel revealed the details about its upcoming Gen11 architecture and the first benchmark has already leaked out courtesy of TUMAPISAK. Intel’s Gen 11 GPU will mark the first time an integrated GPU hits the 1 TFLOPs mark (to put this into perspective, the Xbox One was originally designed to have 1.3 TFLOPs of power). Early ES benches of Intel Gen 11 integrated LP GPU leak out – 100% performance gain over UHD620, equal to an NVIDIA MX130 Keep in mind that the benchmarks you are about to see are 1) almost certainly that of an engineering sample 2) will have early drivers and 3) represent a processor in low power conditions (this is a mobility chip). That said, the performance is pretty much spot on of what I would expect from a Gen 11 GPU. Intel’s Gen 11 iGPU showcases performance comparable to an NVIDIA MX130. The Intel Gen 11 GPU ES sample scores 20.4 fps on average in the low 1080p setting. An Intel UHD 620 achieves roughly 10 fps while an MX110 and MX130 achieve 17.7 and 20.1 respectively. In other words, the Intel Gen 11 iGPU makes the MX110 and MX130 redundant. This is great news for PC builders that do not have the budget to upgrade at the time of the build but still want to get in some casual gaming (think MOBAs) and of course, the entire mobility scene. This Gen11 GPU will be perfect for the ultrabook scene as right now a lot of the OEMs have to put in separate cooling solutions for an MX110 or MX130 (the MX series is the brand of choice for ultrabooks) which adds complexity to the design and more points of failure. With an integrated GPU capable of achieving the same level of performance, OEMs will be able to cut costs and offer the same performance for lower price levels – so the gamer wins here. The MX150 still remains comfortably ahead of the Gen11 GPU however, at 28.9 fps and what you would consider the minimum acceptable level of performance for the low 1080p bench. That said, since this is the LP version with what is almost certainly early drivers, it is possible that Intel is able to pull the fine-wine rabbit out of the hat on this and put a full powered variant within spitting distance of the MX150 in scenarios where power isn’t necessarily limited.

Hailey Baldwin has opened up about social media critics that have looked to undermine her marriage to Justin Bieber and has taken aim at 'dumb followers' who try to live their lives through celebrities. In a week in which 22-year-old Hailey has been urged to divorce her new husband, for the sake of his mental health, she has hit out at Justin's fans, who "really want to see you fail, for whatever reason." Speaking to Cosmopolitan , Hailey has opened up about the stresses of being married to 25-year-old Justin, saying: "I don't know if it's because they want to be able to say, ‘I told you so' or because they want to be right, I don't really know what the idea is behind trying to tear somebody's relationship down, or person down, whatever it may be." Hailey Baldwin and Justin Bieber (Image: Robert O'neil / SplashNews.com) Hailey has hit out at social media users (Image: SplashNews.com) Hailey said that their feeling of 'owning' Justin has led them to being nasty to her in comments. She continued: "The problem too is kids become possessive over people and feel like if they think they're hurt, they feel hurt for them and they're hurt too, or whatever it is. "They just think they know these people who are famous because their life is so exposed. Hailey said: "What's really weird to me is they create scenarios in their head of what they think is happening or what they think should happen, and I'm just like, ‘This is just so dumb. It's so dumb.'" Trying to cope with the abuse had led to Hailey to develop a coping mechanism, so that it doesn't "affect your soul." She continued: "I feel like if you don't want it to get to you, then don't read it and allow it to affect your soul." This is easier said than done and Hailey explained: "You still care to a certain extent. You really have to train your brain to be like, ‘Okay, why do I even care? I don't know these people, they don't know me, they're not a part of my life or my relationship.'"

Prime Minister M Imran Khan and his Malaysian counterpart have agreed to combat corruption and negative perceptions surrounding Muslims. “There is a feeling of fear and enmity towards Muslims across the world,” said Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, while addressing a joint press conference with PM Khan on Friday. “The feeling of hatred is generated by the way things are reported in the media,” he remarked. “We can not always win by fighting back. In Malaysia, we believe in winning peoples’ hearts.” We have to improve the perception of the Muslim world, he said. We need to reduce the atmosphere of hatred towards Muslims, he remarked while speaking about a terrorist killing 50 people after opening fire on two mosques in New Zealand’s Christchurch last week. Mahathir Mohamad is a Muslim statesman who changed his country, remarked PM Khan. “We admire you for that. We admire you for taking a stand on issues that affect the Muslim world. Very few leaders take a stand on them.” The Muslim world is suffering from many problems, such as the war on terrorism and Islamophobia, among others, he said. Prime Minister Imran Khan greets the Malaysian PM on his arrival to PM House on March 22, 2019. Photo: Government of Pakistan/Twitter It is sad that not a single Muslim country is considered ‘developed’, said the Malaysian PM. “Malaysia hopes to become a ‘developed’ country by 2025. All Muslim countries must strive to develop themselves too.” Corruption Imran Khan said that Pakistan admires the way the Malaysian PM combatted corruption and helped the country progress. “People aren’t poor, corruption makes them poor,” he said. Related: Malaysian Prime Minister will be the chief guest at the Pakistan Day ceremony Everything costs more when there is corruption, said PM Mohamed. “We are concerned about corruption too. We must exchange information on how to combat corruption.” Trade The Malaysian PM expressed the desire to increase trade with Pakistan. “We have identified many areas where we can enhance our relationship with Pakistan. If we increase trade, it will benefit us both a lot,” he said. “We are happy to renew our relations with Pakistan.” He was presented with a guard of honour upon his arrival to PM House Friday morning. He was accompanied by PM Khan and Finance Minister Asad Umar. PM Mohamad arrived in Pakistan for a three-day visit on Thursday night. He was given a 21-gun salute on his arrival. The Malaysian PM is visiting on invitation of PM Khan. He will attend the Pakistan Day parade on March 23 as the chief guest.

Android looks a little less open now that Google has begun to enforce draconian new rules on accessing a phone's call and text logs. Developers have been forced to remove features or in some cases change the fundamental nature of the application. One example is BlackBerry's Hub, an email client which also aggregated notifications from a variety of apps and presented them chronologically in a timeline. This application has lost its ability to includes calls and texts in that timeline. Exceptions created by Google don't seem to be honoured, developers complained. One said that an enterprise archiving app – a category specifically exempt from the clampdown – has been broken. Another developer, Miroslav Novosvetsky of MobileSoft, rued that he might have to withdraw his Callistics usage monitor app altogether. Another application that had to remove functionality was antitheft security app Cerberus, which used to issue remote control commands to a device via SMS. The changes were intended to counter rogue applications that access the phone's personal call and messaging databases. Google made an exception for backup, archiving and spam detection apps, and applications and services that need to read a text message for 2FA. But particularly hard hit are applications where reading a text is an ancillary function. Tasker, the most used automation app on Android, was excluded, but later formally blessed with an exception. The changes have been roiling Android developers since early October; Google had intended the axe to fall on 1 January but extended the deadline. BlackBerry didn't get an exception and has renamed the application to reflect its new status: it's now "Hub+ Inbox". Seamless "Inbox consolidates all your emails and calendar events in one unified app, and Inbox seamlessly integrates social notifications from Facebook, WeChat, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and more," is how the company describes it. "Old text messages and sent text messages are no longer available due to a Google Play policy change," BlackBerry support explained. Users appeared to be surprised by the changes. "All my texts have disappeared and phone is running really slow," complained one. "Those were my text messages, with numbers that I don't have in my contacts book so have no way of replying to now. I'd like them back please!" (The texts haven't been deleted – they're still visible in Google's SMS app Messages, but the confusion is understandable.) Another howled: "The HUB used to be this amazing one stop shop for all or my calls – emails – texts and all of my correspondence. But The Google has now deemed that that is no longer acceptable. What is the point of seeing my texts if I can only see what they wrote and not my response? The HUB used to be just that – a HUB for everything. Now it is just a router to Google's apps." The experience varies as some BlackBerry-branded devices appear to be exempt, but Hub+ running on non-BlackBerry phones has been blitzed. Devices running older versions of Android, which don't update to the latest versions of the apps, should not be affected. Wi-Fi access is now more strictly controlled too, posing further issues for automation apps. Developers who fall outside the exemptions and haven't removed the permission requests to access call and SMS logs can expect to have their applications removed.We contacted Google for comment. ®

NVIDIA held its investor day recently and one of the more interesting declarations at the event was the fact that the company actually sold a lot more Turing GPUs than Pascal in the first 8 weeks of desktop revenue. The revelation of this metric is undoubtedly intended to restore investor confidence in the company and considering they have had a pretty bad quarter, it makes a lot of sense. NVIDIA: 90% of the install base is below the $279 GTX 1660 Ti performance levels Pascal was released almost a full three years ago in 2016 during the month of May. It turned out to be a truly revolutionary architecture and NVIDIA’s greatest success story to date. It exceeded expectations in every way and was able to quickly reign supreme. Turing was supposed to one-up the predecessor but so far, its launch has been marred with NVIDIA’s finally broken quarter streak and the aftershocks of the cryptocurrency crash. But if NVIDIA’s stats are to be believed (and we have no reason to doubt them) then Turing GPUs are actually doing better than Pascal did initially. The first 8 weeks would undoubtedly represent the cryptocurrency-free region of sales because crypto started to really kick in during the year 2017. This is, therefore, a sterile period where you can remove the effects of crypto and compare without concern. NVIDIA is essentially trying to say that if you remove the impact crypto had on the market, Turing is actually faring almost 45% better than Pascal did. Another major quote that the company left us with was the fact that 90% of their install base is currently below the GTX 1660 Ti performance level, which is actually not expensive at all (MSRP is a mere $279). What this means essentially is that NVIDIA is positioning the GTX 1660 Ti as the bread and butter of its gaming lineup and plans to tap into this sub-1660 Ti install base and make them upgrade over to the affordable but powerful option. The GTX 1660 Ti is based on the Turing architecture but without the extensive RT and Tensor cores and will be able to provide the standard upgrade path over Pascal without any of the added bells and whistles of the RTX lineup. As of right now, 2% of the install base has shifted to Turing, while 50% is on Pascal. This leaves almost 48% on older generation architectures as well which is another source for upgrades. NVIDIA has also stated that the majority of its users are buying upwards, which is a natural part of commodities purchase habits. As users disposable income increases with time, they are able to spend more and more on luxury commodities like a discrete GPU. This also includes the mobility side by the way where the GTX 1660 Ti is being positioned to reign as the undisputed mobility GPU. The company even had a quote thrown in to emphasize to that effect. All in all, I think the company has done a great job of pointing out and reminding people about its core competencies and we can see that they are humbly going back to the basics with the GTX 1660 Ti – an affordable yet very powerful graphics card for the masses. The market seems to be thinking along the same lines as well because at the time of writing their stock is up 4% – which considering AMD announced its partnership with Stadia, is a pretty decent amount. It is also clear that the company will continue to develop its RTX philosophy but only time will tell whether that succeeds.

German prosecutors investigating the Volkswagen Dieselgate case have unearthed recordings of private phone conversations about the scandal between former Volkswagen Group engine boss Wolfgang Hatz and other high-ranking managers, according to the Handelsblatt newspaper. The recordings were made by Hatz’s wife over a hands-free car speaker, according to Handelsblatt’s sources. Prosecutors discovered them as an attachment to an email in a mobile phone belonging to her. They are said to include recordings between Hatz, who also served as Porsche research and development boss, and figures including former Volkswagen Group chairman Matthias Müller, current Porsche chairman Oliver Blume and Michael Steiner, who was initially selected by the Group to lead an investigation into Dieselgate. In one recording, Hatz is claimed to have asked Müller how his particular situation as part of the diesel emissions affair was likely to continue. Müller reportedly answered: “I don’t want to deceive you; I can’t do anything against the decision of the Volkswagen supervisory board.” Hatz replied by denying involvement with what he described as “cheat software”, suggesting it was “the crap of the parent company”. Müller is then reported to have replied: “I'm really trying to get you out… but as soon as my name appears somewhere, then it will be difficult. Keep your nerve.” During a recording of a conversation with Blume, Hatz is claimed to regularly lay blame for the inclusion of cheat software in diesel engines with the Volkswagen Group. He is also reported as saying the cheat software used by Audi was the result of “unhappy parameters” developed by “idiots”. Hatz is claimed to have exchanged engineering details with former Porsche research and development boss Steiner, who apparently said in relation to the US Environmental Protection Agency: “We haven’t tried to fool them a second time.” Hatz was arrested in Germany in September 2017 on suspicion of harbouring knowledge of the events leading to the decision to install illegal emissions mani[CENSORED]tion software in various diesel engines used by the Volkswagen Group. He was released on bail in June 2018.

Filmmaker Richie Mehta was at first reluctant to make Netflix’s latest Indian series, documenting the aftermath of the notorious gang-rape and murder of an Indian student that made global headlines. Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, was violently raped and assaulted and left for dead by five men and a teenager on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012. The horrific crime shone an international spotlight on India’s high levels of sexual violence, and sparked weeks of protests and eventually a change in the law to introduce the death penalty for rape. “Initially I was against the idea. I thought it was inappropriate for anyone to do it,” the Indian-Canadian director told AFP during an interview in Mumbai. “But after I read the verdict and met some of the officers involved, I was amazed. The verdict detailed the manhunt and who these people were and how they were found. “I realised that this analysis of hunting these guys is also a way of understanding why these things happen,” he added. Delhi Crime, a seven-part series written and directed by Mehta, will be released on Netflix worldwide on Friday. The thriller recreates the police investigation, tracing the pursuit of the six men behind the shocking crime. Related: Sacred Games season 2: Something big is coming in 14 days Four of the adults accused received death sentences, while one died in prison by a suspected suicide. The teenager was released after three years in a youth detention home. Mehta said Delhi’s police commissioner at the time of the atrocity, Neeraj Kumar, had first suggested to him that the investigation would make a powerful film. The filmmaker disagreed at the outset. But gradually he changed his mind and went on to spend four years interviewing police officials involved in the case. ‘Too painful’ It is their perspective on the case that he tells. “When the crime happened, there was a lot of anger pointed toward this institution. But when I got to know their point of view I realised the police were trying their best, especially given the statistics. “As we say at the start of the show: ‘11,000 heinous crimes are reported every year (in Delhi). Prevention is nearly impossible with half the police force stuck on traffic duty and VIP protection’,” he added. The series, filmed in English and Hindi, was well received at its premier at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It stars Shefali Shah (“Monsoon Wedding”) as the lead investigating officer, and also features actors Adil Hussain (“Life of Pi”) and Denzil Smith (“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”). Nearly 40,000 rape cases were reported in India in 2016. But activists say that is just the tip of the iceberg, with many victims too scared to come forward. Politicians and religious leaders initially blamed Singh for inciting her own murder, echoing prevailing attitudes in India where rape victims face overwhelming prejudice. Related: Netflix’s next interactive show will take you on an adventure with Bear Grylls Even one of the perpetrators blamed her, saying women who went out late at night attracted men. Indian authorities banned the broadcast of a BBC documentary by British film-maker Leslee Udwin about Singh in 2015, saying they would not allow anyone to use the incident for commercial purposes. Mehta said he spoke to Singh’s family to assure them their daughter’s horrific murder would not be depicted in the drama. But her father, Badrinath Singh, said the series would still open too many old wounds. “We will not watch it because it will be too painful,” Singh told AFP. “Of course we can’t ever forget what happened to our daughter but we don’t want to be taken through the horror all over again. The pain will be too much to bear for my family.”

Microsoft has booted out a Postgres GUI for those moments when the command line is just too scary. Azure Data Studio received a preview of support for PostgreSQL last night. Its stablemate, Visual Studio Code, has been given a corresponding extension. The thinking has been that while users may be used to hacking away at the psql command line, something a little more visual can often be a delightful palette cleanser. Or simply a less intimidating way of getting users acquainted with the database. Users are spoiled for choice these days when it comes to graphical tools. DBeaver, for example, has done a sterling job of wrapping a variety of po[CENSORED]r databases up in a cuddly-ish front-end – and if PostgreSQL is your thing there is always the venerable pgAdmin. As with many things in the open-source world, devs will have their own personal preference and be terribly passionate about it. Microsoft's foray into the PostgresSQL GUI world can now be added, and with the cross-platform, open-source VS Code proving po[CENSORED]r among developers, having the functionality accessible through an extension will appeal to many. Connecting to databases is simple enough, and the server can be on-premises, lurking in a VM or exposed as a service by a cloud provider (Microsoft has not insisted on Azure). Disappointingly for VS Code users, the connection has been set up for a default port and requires tinkering with configuration files if you've opted for something different. This is preview code after all. Once in, servers may be grouped and database objects viewed via an explorer-type navigator, as one would expect. Azure Data Studio has also come equipped with a terminal, so devs can always drop into psql if needed. The query editor, while not as complicated as some, includes IntelliSense's context-aware code completion and allows developers to jump to the definition of objects. In an entirely unscientific test, I took Azure Data Studio out for a spin and, having installed the preview extension, pointed it at a locally running PostgreSQL server. Generally, performance was good and having the database objects navigable within the GUI was handy. It was clearly not as full-featured as some alternatives, but it was quick and easy to get into. Users expecting a full-on administration experience will be disappointed, but as a quick query tool it is an admirable first effort. It is also very, very preview and I'd advise against letting it loose on anything production-like just yet. The gang are keen to get the community involved, and that default port issue? Already in GitHub. ®

NVIDIA promised us a world of difference with RTX, but applications so far have fluctuated between disappointing to moderately impressive improvements to visual quality. So I think it’s only fair that NVIDIA took the time out at their recent GTC 2019 conference to showcase just how powerful a properly implemented RTX implementation can be. With Quake II RTX, NVIDIA breathed new life into a game, that after 22 years, might convince you to buy another new graphics card! NVIDIA uses Quake II to showcase the difference properly implemented raytracing makes To avoid any confusion and to answer those who are wondering, the Quake II build NVIDIA showed off is very different from Q2VKPT which you saw before – which was the project by a single developer that implemented path tracing. This one, however, has had involvement of NVIDIA’s dev team and the polish is also vastly different. With properly implemented RTX, there is no grain that was there in the original third-party build and the lightning and global illumination is just spot on! Here’s what NVIDIA had to say on it: Released in January, Q2VKPT was created by former NVIDIA intern Christoph Schied, a Ph.D. student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The “PT” in its name stands for Path Tracing, a compute-intensive ray tracing technique that unifies all lighting effects (shadows, reflections, et cetera) into a single ‘pure ray tracing algorithm’. With Ray Tracing being all the rage, word of a developer making a beautiful, real-time ray-traced version of Quake II made headlines around the world. But path tracing has a downside: its random sampling algorithm introduces ‘noise’ that makes gameplay appear grainy and speckled, as seen in 2016’s Q2PT. To solve the problem, Christoph and his university colleagues built upon ideas originally conceived in 2016 during his NVIDIA internship, when he co-invented a fast way to remove said graininess by combining the results of multiple game frames, in a manner similar to that used by Temporal Anti-Aliasing. As Christoph states on his site, Q2VKPT is the basis for future research, and a platform for more ray tracing goodness. So, we reached out shortly after Q2VKPT’s release to ask if our own ray tracing experts, many of whom he worked with previously, could develop some additions. He said yes, and this week NVIDIA is presenting the newly-created Quake II RTX with Christoph at GDC 2019. All of this is possible thanks to the fact id Software made their Quake II engine open source back in 2001 and which allows developers to quickly modify the source code without worrying about pesky things like licensing. In any case, I doubt you have come here to read this wall of text so I will leave you to enjoy the simplistic yet utterly spectacular beauty of a properly lit Quake II arena

KARACHI: International football legend Carles Puyol was welcomed by the star studded cast of the Legend of Maula Jatt as it collaborated with World Soccer Stars to bring in the Pakistani entertainment element to the first of its kind event expected in April, stated a press release. Fawad Khan, Mahira Khan, Hamza Ali Abbasi, Gohar Rasheed and Faris Shafi met and mingled with the FC Barcelona defender where the cast talked to the player about how Karachi has given him such a warm welcome.Carles Puyol headed to Karachi to kick off sales for the World Soccer Stars event scheduled in April where Pakistan will witness the world’s biggest soccer stars come together to play exhibition matches in Lahore and Karachi with a music headline act by AKON. The World Soccer Stars event aims to highlight a softer image of Pakistan to these world legends who are expected to visit the country on such events to help build football in Pakistan.In an effort to make Puyol feel welcomed, the Legend of Maula Jatt cast came to meet and greet Puyol and talk about how integrated sports and entertainment is in the country. Puyol upon watching the trailer of The Legend of Maula Jatt asked for the infamous gandasa and took pictures in the signature style of Maula Jatt with Fawad Khan. Puyol even tried recreating some dialogues in Punjabi with the cast as he announced the release of the movie with Hamza Ali Abbasi stating, “Maula Jatt vekho choti eid te”.The cast then finally welcomed the player on PSL Final and introduced him to a crowd full of cricket fans, giving him the infamous Pakistani welcome. Carles Puyol states, “It has been a wonderful experience being in Karachi and I am thankful to you all for the warmth and excitement that you have shown me. I am excited to come back in April with all my fellow World Soccer Stars!”Football, Cricket and entertainment all came together for Pakistan sending out a united message that Pakistan is thriving on all fronts. As cricket season comes to an end, the next big tour is the World Soccer Stars Event scheduled in April on the 27th in Karachi and 28th in Lahore where Pakistan will witness the world’s biggest soccer stars coming together playing exhibition matches with music headlined by the icon AKON.

BEIRA, Mozambique: More than a thousand people are feared to have died in a cyclone that smashed into Mozambique last week, while scores were killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe. The city of Beira in central Mozambique bore Cyclone Idai’s full wrath on Thursday before the storm barrelled on to neighbouring Zimbabwe, unleashing fierce winds and flash floods and washing away roads and houses. “For the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area… this morning to understand what’s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address. “This is a real humanitarian disaster,” he said. “More than 100,000 people are in danger”. Survivors have taken refuge in trees while awaiting help, the president added. Aerial photographs released by a Christian non-profit organisation, the Mission Aviation Fellowship, showed groups of people stuck on rooftops with flood waters up to window level. “The scale of damage… (in) Beira is massive and horrifying”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said. Ninety percent of the city of some 530,000 people and its surrounding area has been “damaged or destroyed,” it said in a statement. “The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,” the IFRC’s Jamie LeSueur said. “Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible.” A large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said. Sofala province governor Alberto Mondlane warned that the “biggest threat we have now, even bigger than the cyclone, is floods because it’s raining more and more”. – ‘A perfect storm’ – Emma Beaty, coordinator of a grouping of NGOs known as Cosaco, said: “We’ve never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique”. “Some dams have broken, and others have reached full capacity, they’ll very soon open the flood gates. It’s a convergence of flooding, cyclones, dams breaking and making a potential wave: everything’s in place so we get a perfect storm.” Nyusi said the Pungwe and Buzi rivers in central Mozambique “have burst their banks and engulfed entire villages.” “Communities are isolated and bodies are floating” on the waters, he said. Beira international airport was closed because of cyclone damage but later reopened. – Zimbabwe hit – In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai left 98 dead and at least 217 more missing, according to the information ministry. Families started burying their dead on Monday in damp graves, according to an AFP photographer. The storm swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that acting defence minister Perrance Shiri said “resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war”. Some roads were swallowed up by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods. “This is the worst infrastructural damage we have ever had,” Zimbabwe’s Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said. The eastern district of Chimanimani was worst-hit, with houses and most of the region’s bridges washed away by flash floods. The most affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights. Two pupils and a worker at a secondary school in the area were among those killed after a landslide sent a boulder crashing into their dormitory. Soldiers on Sunday helped rescue the surviving nearly 200 pupils, teachers and staff who had been trapped at the school in Chimanimani. Joshua Sacco, lawmaker for Chimanimani, told AFP that “150 to 200 people” are missing. The majority of them are thought to be government workers, whose housing complex was completely engulfed by raging waters. Their fate was unknown because the area was still unreachable. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa cut short a visit to Abu Dhabi, returning home on Monday. “With every hour and day that passes, our worst fears become increasingly real,” he said in a statement. “Many drowned while others were killed in their sleep from swift and unexpected rockfalls which demolished their homes”. His government has come under fire for failing to evacuate people in time.