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The full extent of how far short the UK government's expensive, digital-first identity assurance scheme has fallen was revealed today by a brutal report on Verify by the country's spending watchdog.Among other figures in the damning 32-pager was the number of people and government services using the service: currently at less than 20 per cent of early targets. The latest assessment of what was intended to be the Government Digital Service's flagship programme comes from the National Audit Office, and will make for difficult reading in GDS as it lays out the huge margins by which it missed aims. The abysmal performance includes missed targets on user numbers, uptake by government services, success rates and cost savings. It has rendered the scheme so unattractive that only the UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) remains committed to it – largely because one-benefit-to-rule-them-all Universal Credit relies on it. However, it isn't clear what will happen to DWP's use of the system after April 2020, which is when the government will farm Verify out to the private sector, having decided last year to pull the plug on public sector funding. The NAO also questioned how departments would be charged to use Verify after April, and warned that the government might end up paying for 380,000 users to be "re-verified" now that two private providers have dropped out of the scheme. The report is the latest in a long line of problematic assessments of Verify. Both the service and its predecessor have been through 20 internal and external reviews since 2011, which have repeatedly revised targets downwards. The aim was for Verify to become the default way for people to prove their identity when interacting with the government. Those wanting to sign up are asked to pick from a list of identity providers – such as Barclays, Experian or the Post Office – which check documents like a passport or against data they hold, like credit histories. The person then gets a login for different services. It was expected to cost some £212m, and bring in benefits of £873m between 2016-17 and 2019-20, but the latter figure was lowered to £217m in 2019, largely due to poor take-up. In both the 2015 and 2016 business cases, GDS said 25 million people would use Verify by 2020. However, as the NAO said, the reality is "significantly lower" than these predictions. As of February 2019 there were just 3.6 million people verified, just 2.3 million more than figures released in March 2017. Based on current trends, the NAO said sign-ups would reach 5.4 million by April 2020 – 20 per cent of the target. The number of government services signing up to Verify is also much lower than expected. In 2014, this was estimated at 100, a figure that was revised to 50 in 2015 and 46 in 2015. But in February 2019, just 19 government services were using it. Moreover, only eight of these have Verify as the only route, with HMRC's services all offering its own Government Gateway, on the grounds it didn't trust Verify. This was a major issue for GDS's Verify: not only did HMRC have its own, established system that it carried on maintaining, it even developed a replacement, which was due to take over from Government Gateway at the end of last month. HMRC said it didn't adopt Verify because the system couldn't deal with business customers or people acting on behalf of someone else – the taxman also felt the early iterations of Verify wouldn't encourage people to use digital services, which it was desperate to do. The NAO noted that this echoed problems with the Cabinet Office's shared services programme, which faced implementation difficulties as departments said a centralised solution didn't meet their specific needs. This had a huge impact on user numbers: GDS had thought it would capture all annual PAYE users – in fact, just 4 per cent of HMRC's customers use Verify. There have also been major issues with success rates: in 2015, GDS said 90 per cent of people signing up should have their identities successfully confirmed by Verify's providers. But overall, the success rate is at 48 per cent – and this doesn't include people who signed up but can't use the service they want to because the data they had verified doesn't match that on the government's systems. For instance, 2018 stats from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) show 38 per cent of people trying to access its services through Verify were able to set up an account – but 8.3 per cent of these gave info that didn't match DVLA-held data. Problems with verification have also caused knock-on problems for departments: because only 38 per cent of Universal Credit claimants trying to use the service managed to do so, DWP's operational costs will rise by £40m over a decade. Meanwhile, GDS's plans for the service to be self-funding by March 2018 also fell flat. To date, it has put in about £154m – although the NAO said the real figure was likely higher – and, a year past the deadline, Verify is still centrally funded. To add insult to injury, GDS has failed to get departments to pay what they owe, as departments and agencies were supposed to pay £1.20 a year for each user who accessed their services through Verify. Only one department, HMRC, has paid – despite invoices being raised for others. The taxman has handed over £6.7m for its use of Verify between 2015-16 and 2017-18, while a total of £2m remains outstanding from DWP, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DVLA, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Home Office. However, it seems some of this is down to user error: the NAO reported that the DVSA's invoice was initially sent to the wrong address. About that private sector plan In the face of poor take-up and obvious problems with throwing money at the proverbial dead horse, the government said in October that it will only spend £21.5m more on it and intends to cut off all funding in April 2020. However, the NAO said that in order for this to happen, the cost of verifying identities would need to fall by 95 per cent. At the moment, the government hands over cash to providers for each successful identity verified. Although the aim was for these costs to decrease as users increased, this hasn't been the case, with costs remaining at more than £20 per identity verified between 2013-14 and 2018-19. The new contracts drawn up in October – when the government announced plans to shift Verify onto the private sector – do offer providers less for each sign-up, with reductions as volumes increase. Two providers out of the initial seven – Royal Mail and Citizen Safe – decided not to sign up to the new terms, and the NAO said it was likely that the 380,000 people would have to re-verify with another provider, which would mean the government paying twice for those users. Ahead of the October 2018 decision, the government set itself two tests: first to ask whether introducing a lower level of assurance would boost take-up – it didn't – and second, to see whether DWP, HMRC and the DVLA would continue their commitment – and only DWP did. After April 2020 there is even less certainty for these departments, because it isn't clear what the model for use will look like when it is led by the private sector providers. "One possibility is that departments would procure and pay for Verify's services directly from providers," the NAO said. "It is not clear what price would be charged for verifying identities, as this would be set by the new market." The NAO said the Infrastructure and Projects Authority plans to conduct a final review of Verify as it comes to the end of its time as a government project. That will assess GDS's assumptions that moving Verify into the private sector is a viable option, and what impact it will have on departmental Verify users, especially smaller ones that don't have alternative identity verification options. ®

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 has just received a major price cut which makes one of the most po[CENSORED]r gaming graphics card more reachable to budget users. The GeForce GTX 1060 was launched back in 2016 and became a hit amongst the gaming audience and with a proper successor on its way, the card will be getting a nice drop in price. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Graphics Cards Get Price Cuts – 6 GB Variants Now Available For Just 179 Euros According to a report by Cowcotland, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 has seen frequent price drops since October 2018. The card is currently at its lowest selling price for about 179.99 Euros. This is a 10% drop in price compared to the previous week as mentioned in a report. The specific variant is also the 6 GB model and not the 3 GB models which could end up being even cheaper given these price cuts.Now, what is interesting is that there could be multiple reasons behind this price drop. First of all, NVIDIA is still sitting on top of a large inventory of GP106 GPUs which were overproduced during the crypto-mining scene but due to miscalculations and the crypto market crashing in the previous year, the fallout became overwhelming for NVIDIA. Hence they are now trying to get rid of extra inventory before the next quarter. The other reason is the launch of the true successor to the GeForce GTX 1060, the GeForce GTX 1660. We know that the GeForce RTX 2060 is in a league of its own when compared to the GTX parts but price wise, the GTX 1660 is what would be matching close to the $249 US price point of reference GTX 1060 graphics cards. At $229 US, the GeForce GTX 1660 will exceed the graphics performance of a GeForce GTX 1060 by a fair margin while featuring the newer Turing architectureThe price cut is definitely nice and once it hits globally, we can see many cheaper Pascal GTX 1060 cards which are still great for 1080p gaming. The GeForce GTX 1060 has been the most po[CENSORED]r gaming graphics card according to Steam’s hardware survey and has remained so far the last two years with more and more users buying it each month. The price cut would definitely mean more gamers on a budget would end up buying the GTX 1060 while those looking for slightly better GPU performance will be choosing from GeForce GTX 16 series Turing cards.

The new X3 xDrive30e is due to go into production in December this year, alongside the current petrol-engined version of the third-generation Audi Q5 rival. The PHEV machine features a four-cylinder turbo petrol engine mated to an electric motor, with a combined output of 248bhp, and an additional 40bhp available on demand from the electric motor on a temporary basis.The all-wheel-drive machine can go from 0-62mph in 6.5 secs, and BMW says it will be capable of 31 miles of electric-only running, with a claimed fuel economy of 117mpg. The lithium ion battery for the electric motor is located under the rear seats, ensuring an identical 450-litre boot to the petrol version. The firm is gearing up to launch the full electric iX3 SUV in 2020. The X3 PHEV is on display at Geneva alongside a raft of other BMW plug-in hybrids, including PHEV versions of the 3 Series, 7 Series and X5. It is part of the firm’s large electrification programme, which will include 12 models by the end of 2019, and 25 by the end of 2025.

PARIS: It's so small wags joke that it can only hold a single Tic Tac, but French brand Jacquemus' teeny weeny bag, ‘Le Mini Chiquito’, is arguably the biggest thing at Paris fashion week. Never has something so tiny excited so much fashion passion and hilarity on social media. The handbag, or should we say finger bag made its debut last week on the opening night of the Paris shows. A shrunken version of the miniature and already cult $500 (440-euro) ‘Le Chiquito’ bag which has the likes of Rihanna and Kim Kardashian have been spotted clutching between their thumb and forefingers ,it is merely 5.2 centimetres (two inches) long. Jacquemus has sold ‘tens of thousands’ of Le Chiquito bags in the last year, according to Cosmopolitan magazine, with fashionistas so desperate to get their fingers on them that there are lengthy waiting lists for some colours. Although the brand told AFP that they have yet to set a price for Le Mini Chiquito, if the reaction on Instagram and Twitter is anything to go by, demand could be equally brisk.

The Pakistan Navy detected an Indian submarine on Monday night trying to enter Pakistani waters and successfully thwarted the attempt, the Navy's spokesperson said on Tuesday — exactly a week after India's aerial violation of the Line of Control that sent tensions soaring between the two nuclear-armed states. "The Pakistan Navy used its specialised skills to ward off the submarine, successfully keeping it from entering Pakistani waters," a statement from the spokesperson said. This is the second time since 2016 that the Pakistan Navy has detected an Indian submarine trying to enter Pakistani waters. Pakistan territorial waters is 12 nautical miles while its seabed territory — the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) — grew to 290,000 square kilometres in 2015. EEZ signifies an area of coastal water and seabed within a certain distance of a country's coastline that cannot be entered without permission or prior information. Screenshot from the footage shared by Pakistan Navy shows the Indian submarine detected on Monday night. The fact that an Indian submarine laden with modern technology was detected by the Pakistan Navy is a loss for the Indian navy, said the spokesperson, adding: "Keeping in view the government's initiative of peace, the Indian submarine was not targetted by the Pakistan Navy." Read: It is nice to be on the right side of war Learning from this incident, India should also work towards peace, the statement added. "This great feat is a testament of the Pakistan Navy's superior skills. The Navy will keep defending Pakistan's naval border. The force has the capability to respond to any aggression." The latest provocation by India comes a week after the Indian Air Force (IAF) violated Pakistani airspace on February 26 following the Pulwama attack in Indian occupied Kashmir. The IAF returned unsuccessful after the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) "immediately scrambled" its jets. According to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Indian aircraft released their payload "in haste" as they returned. Read: 'Challenges not over yet, keep your guard up,' Air chief tells PAF personnel PAF the next day, on Feb 27, targeted non-military targets across the Line of Control to demonstrate Pakistan's aggressive capabilities, and shot down two Indian Air Force jets after they crossed the LoC. An Indian Air Force pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan, was taken into captivity of Pakistan's armed forces. He was freed the next day and handed over to Indian authorities at Wagah border. Prime Minister Imran Khan had termed his release as a "peace gesture" — a move lauded by people on both sides of the border as well as the international community that had urged restraint. No such move or gesture for de-escalation, however, has been made by India so far.

The largest swelling of demand in software development occurred in the role of blockchain engineer, or so says recruitment biz Hired. Arguably the most overhyped technology in the past ten years, blockchain nonetheless appears to appeal to companies, at least to the extent enthusiasm can be generalized from Hired's survey of 700 job seeking developers and its internal data. The survey responses are augmented by 170,000 interview requests and job offers over the past year in a marketplace connecting some 10,000 companies and 98,000 job seekers. According to the Hired's report, to be trumpeted on Thursday, demand for blockchain engineers has surged 517 per cent from a year ago. The Register finds this baffling, so we asked Mehul Patel, CEO of Hired what's doing on. "We've seen a lot of interest in blockchain," said Patel in a phone interview. Companies, he said, appear to be keen to build blockchains but there isn't enough blockchain talent to meet demand. But he didn't have much of an explanation for blockchain mania beyond noting, "People see blockchain as next wave of technology." Some people. There are also naysayers. Take Kai Stinchcombe, CEO of True Link Financial, who last year observed, "...nobody has actually come up with a use for the blockchain – besides currency speculation and illegal transactions." Or consider Vint Cerf's widely circulated answer to the question, "Do I need a blockchain?": "No." Absent an obvious explanation for the blockchain fascination, Patel suggested familiarity with the technology has become important for a growing number of jobs, even though they may not have "blockchain" in the job title. The second-most increase in demand for job candidates was for security engineers, whose role saw interest rise 132 per cent from a year ago. After that, it's embedded systems engineer (+76 per cent), data engineer (+38 per cent), backend engineer (+33 per cent), machine learning engineer (+27 per cent), mobile engineer (+15 per cent), full stack engineer (+7 per cent), and front-end engineer (+4 per cent). Location, location, location When it comes to salaries, location matters. In the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley, the highest paid position on average was search engineer ($157K or £118K), security engineer ($156K or £117K), and blockchain engineer ($155K or £116K). In New York, it was gaming engineer ($147K or £110K), blockchain engineer ($137K or £103K), and backend engineer ($136K or £102K). In Toronto, the top three positions by salary were natural language processing engineer ($83K or £62K), machine learning engineer ($80K or £60K), and blockchain engineer ($79K or £59K). In London, it's embedded engineer ($90k or £68K), blockchain engineer ($89K or £67K), and data engineer ($87K or £65K). Hired's survey found that Python is the most loved programming language, with 51 per cent naming it their favorite. JavaScript came in second in esteem, at 49 per cent, and first in actual usage, at 62 per cent. Java managed to rate simultaneously as the third-most-loved and second-most-hated language; Objective-C is the third-most-hated and PHP, the survey says, is loathed the most.A 2017 Stack Overflow survey singled out Perl as the most hated coding language, though PHP placed second in scorn at the time. Globally, the Go programming language is the most widely sought after among employers, though only 7 per cent of developers say they work with it primarily. In San Francisco and Toronto, it's TypeScript that's desired. In New York, it's Ruby. Across all markets, R was the least sought after. Hired's report also sees coding bootcamps being more widely accepted. "The tide is slowly shifting as coding bootcamps are getting the workforce job-ready, with 13 per cent of survey respondents saying they have participated in a bootcamp, and 76 per cent of those saying it helped prepare them for a software engineering job." Among employers, 57 per cent said they'd consider a bootcamp grad for an open position, 36 per cent said they're not sure, and 7 per cent said no. Showing no concern for safety, Hired's survey asked whether developers preferred tabs or spaces. Tabs won, with 56 per cent of the vote, while spaces captured 24 per cent. Presumably the remainder of respondents had no opinion or feared persecution for voicing one. ®

The full coverage water block has full RGB capabilities as shown in the marketing. Not only does it support its own RGB capabilities but it also has addressable RGB support which means you can set the RGB lighting to match your style on a compliant motherboard. The BYKSKI A-Radeon VII-X will be featuring support for ASRock RGB LED, ASUS Aura Sync, MSI Mystic RGB and Gigabyte RGB Fusion technologies. FEATURES Finest Craftmanship Designed to Fit Standard G1/4 Thread Fittings SLI/Crossfire Compliant SPECIFICATIONS Model: A-Radeon-VII-X Brand: BYKSKI Material: Electroplated High Purity Copper / Clear Acrylic COMPATIBILITY (Including but not limited to the following models) AMD RADEON VII (full compatibility will be updated ASAP) Fittings:G 1/4 Thread Talking a bit about the block itself, it makes use of an acrylic cover which lets you see the internals and water flow clearly. The block is composed of a nickel-plated copper base which channels the water flow on top of the GPU and VRAM since Radeon VII has both featured on the same chip that is part of the interposer. The water block has a rated thermal efficiency of 401W/mK. There’s also proper channeling over the MOSFETs area to keep the electrical components and power delivery running smooth. BYKSKI also mentions that the block will support its digital module that can be purchased separately and display real-time temperatures.The block is readily available on Taobao for a price close to $100 US or around 600 Chinese Yuan. For those who are waiting to get hands on a water block, BYKSKI is the only one currently offering it although EK Waterblocks has mentioned previously that they will have a water block for the AMD Radeon VII out soon too. The block is also available on Primochill.com for a price of $139.99 US.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan and Pakistan have turned out to be gainers while his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and India have proved to be losers in the limited armed conflict between the two neighbours. It was universally argued among the knowledgeable circles of New Delhi and Islamabad that Modi would certainly embark upon a misadventure against Pakistan during his campaign for the upcoming Indian general elections in a bid to raise his prospects for triumph. However, his strike against Pakistan has boomeranged, and he has sustained political losses instead of any benefits. His rivals amply hammered this point after the downing of an Indian jet and the capture of its pilot by Pakistan. One of his party politician said that his Bharatia Janata Party (BJP) would pocket at least 22 additional seats because of this attack. But one of his adversaries taunted him by asking how many dead bodies Modi wants to bag 300 seats in the Lok Sabha in the next polls. This kind of denunciation is raging in India. In addition, the Indian polity is more polarised in the wake of the intrusion. Besides, India and Modi have exposed themselves before the world as warmongers, who struck their neighbour without any credible proof and evidence to back the reason on which they based their aggression. Also, India’s self-acclaimed military superiority over Pakistan stood dented. Conversely, not only Imran Khan but also Pakistan substantially gained at home and in the global circuit as well. In the first instance, Pakistanis were dejected because of the intrusion of the Indian planes on the Line of Control (LoC), but became cheerful and thrilled after the Indian fighter was brought down and its pilot seized as they felt that they have won the first round of the conflict by adequately responding to India. Pakistani politicians, who hardly agree on anything due to the deep animosity on internal issues, spoke with one voice amidst the Indo-Pak armed clash. Although Pakistanis were demoralised when the Indian fighters had intruded the LoC, the political lot did not raise a finger at the government, and instead kept extending a helping hand to it. And when the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down the Indian aircraft, they were jubilant and unanimously hailed the armed forces and the real hero, pilot Hassan Siddiqui. Imran Khan and Pakistan presented themselves before the world as peace mongers, who made it clear with their words and actions that they have the sincere desire to cool down the temperature and have no urge to aggravate the armed hostilities. Even at the height of the fracas on the day of the downing of the Indian plane, the prime minister offered the olive branch to resolve the issues through dialogue. The release of arrested Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan was a concrete step Imran Khan took to send a powerful message to New Delhi that Islamabad has no plan to continue or hype antagonism. His hectic efforts to hold a telehphonic conversation with Modi were also meant to achieve the same objective. There is nothing positive that has so far come out from Modi in response to these credible and solid moves. While Abhinandan’s release was hailed by some Pakistanis, others described it as a hasty step and argued that the pilot should have been handed over to India after a few days. A strong feeling still prevails among several Pakistanis that given the king of belligerence and hatred Modi has against Pakistan and considering the crucial nature of the upcoming Indian elections, Modi will resort to some sort of adventure so that he could beef up his chances for poll victory. The increased firing by Indian troops at the LoC, resulting in civilian casualties, is part of this strategy and to come out of the immense embarrassment Modi has suffered. In Pakistan’s parliamentary polls, the “India card” has never been played by the contesting parties barring one exception when some political entities chanted the slogan of “Modi ka yaar” against the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the last polls in Azad Kashmir. But the mantra brought no electoral dividends at all for such elements and rather the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had a landslide victory, never secured by it before. A decisive factor that quickly helped downgrade the Indo-Pak confrontation, which had the potential of turning into a full-fledged war, was the United States for the mere fact that Washington wants to come out of the Afghan imbroglio without loss of more time. The US is beholden to Pakistan for its meaningful assistance in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban. Washington is poised to be focused on these talks and did not want to see this opportunity fritter away because of Indo-Pak fight. More than once, top American officials have expressed their gratitude to Islamabad for the help being extended by Pakistan in the peace process, which has entered a crucial phase. Modi has to introduce some other stunt to win the elections as his first adventure against Pakistan has misfired to bring any benefits. Besides, the Kashmir dispute has been internationalised. This is what acclaimed Indian intellectual Arundhati Roy has written: By goading Pakistan into a counter-strike, and so making India and Pakistan the only two nuclear powers in history to have bombed each other, Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to prevent it. He also echoed the widespread view prevailing among Indian writers that strike against Pakistan was intended to gain in the elections as she wrote that on the whole, it has to be said, this absurd waltz looks and smells more “pre-election” than “pre-emptive. With the election fever gripping India or even without it, it is impossible for Modi, who is a divisive figure, to have all the political parties on board against any future adventure against Pakistan. But for Imran Khan it is a golden opportunity to heal the wounds and break bread with his political rivals. He did praise the opposition parties in his parliamentary speech for showing solidarity against India, but he did not go any step further and continued his old unhelpful trajectory when none of his opponents is raising accusing fingers at him for repeatedly voicing his keenness for peace with India. There is a serious need for change of mind sooner than later.

Pro

Canonical has announced support for Containerd in its upcoming 1.14 releases of Charmed Kubernetes and Microk8s on the same day that the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) stamped "Graduated" on the container tech. Canonical said the release will improve the "security and robustness" of its container range but will carry on supporting the good old Docker runtime in its Kubernetes lineup. It will also leave the tech alone during upgrades – Clusters will stick with whatever runtime was originally chosen rather than enduring a forced update. Containerd has its origins, unsurprisingly, in Docker, where development kicked off back in 2014. The tech was initially envisioned as a lower-layer runtime manager for the Docker engine before being accepted into CNCF in 2017, becoming what the organisation modestly described as "an industry-standard container runtime focused on simplicity, robustness and portability". Now Containerd is all grown up and flinging its mortarboard into the air as it joins alumni such as Kubernetes and CoreDNS in becoming the fifth project to have graduated. Product manager for Kubernetes Carmine Rimi claimed: "Enabling Kubernetes to drive Containerd directly reduces the number of moving parts, reduces latency in pod startup times, and improves CPU and memory usage on every node in the cluster." Quite the vote of confidence. Although you'll have to wait until 1.14 of Charmed and Microk8s to try it out. At the time or writing, the stable release of Microk8s stands at 1.13.3. Canonical is not alone in the embracing of Containerd. Dan Berg, of IBM's Cloud Kubernetes service, is also a fan. "Moving to Containerd has helped to simplify the Kubernetes architecture that we configure and manage on behalf of customers," he said. If Linux isn't your thing, the daemon will also cheerfully run on Windows, managing the complete container lifecycle of the host system, from image transfer and storage to container execution and supervision. As for when the likes of Canonical's Microk8s will hit 1.14, the stable channel should see an update a week after the Kubernetes team itself punts out 1.14. The Kubernetes release is currently scheduled for 25 March, and the team emitted 1.14.0-beta.1 last week. Devs keen to get their hands on the latest toys can, of course, hop on the candidate or beta for an update within hours of an upstream release. Otherwise, sticking with the default stable snap channel would seem prudent. ®

AMD’s next-generation GPUs, namely Navi and beyond, may utilize new shading techniques to deliver better performance in games. In a patent filed by AMD back in 2017, which was recently made public, it is stated that AMD was investing resources in developing advanced GPU shading technologies, namely, Variable Rate Shading (VRS) as found by Tomshardware. AMD Next-Gen Radeon GPUs To Feature Variable Rate Shading – Better Game Performance on Navi Graphics Cards and Beyond The said feature isn’t something new in the industry as NVIDIA has already introduced Variable Rate Shading on their Turing architecture-based graphics cards. NVIDIA explains that their VRS (Variable Rate Shading) technology increases rendering performance and quality by applying varying amounts of processing power to different areas of the image.In simple terms, VRS will apply full details on sections of the frames where most of the attention is focused while reducing the rendering load on other parts, thus increasing overall performance. This method specifically helps when running games at higher resolutions. Following are some of the benefits of VRSBenefits of Apply Variable Rate Shading Variable Rate Shading is a new rendering technique enabled by Turing GPUs. It increases rendering performance by applying full GPU shading horsepower to detailed areas of the scene, and less GPU horsepower to less detailed areas. Variable Rate Shading works by varying the number of pixels that can be processed by a single pixel shader operation. Single pixel shading operations can now be applied to a block of pixels, allowing applications to effectively vary the shading rate in different areas of the screen. Variable Rate Shading can be used to render more efficiently in VR by rendering to a surface that more closely approximates the lens corrected image that is output to the headset display. This avoids rendering many pixels that would be discarded before the image is output to the VR headset. Coupled with eye tracking, Variable Rate Shading can be applied to maximize quality in the foveated area where the eye is directly looking and reduce the shading rate in the periphery. This method can improve rendering performance without noticeably impacting image quality. When talking about overall improvement in games that utilize VRS, we can again take an example of NVIDIA hardware which utilizes this technology. The recently released NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti features VRS and as such, it helps increase performance by up to 50% in Wolfenstein II, a game that currently supports the said feature. How this is achieved is also explained and you can see that rather than doing full rate shading across the image, specific frames are chosen where lesser shading can be applied while retaining the same image quality.Now talking about Radeon graphics cards. It will be a really good choice for AMD to adopt VRS in their upcoming graphics cards since it would give developers more reason to implement the new technology in their upcoming titles, especially when it will help deliver better frame rates without reducing image quality. AMD is expected to launch their next-generation Radeon cards based on the Navi GPU architecture this year so we may very well see them featuring VRS. Radeon Navi GPUs – AMD’s Brand New GPU Architecture, Aimed at Mainstream and High-Performance Gamers Coming to Navi, AMD’s next biggest GPU architecture release in 2 years, the company would be following a similar strategy of launching it close to the mainstream CPU family. This would give AMD an opportunity to highlight their upcoming mainstream Radeon family to potential buyers. AMD is expected to announce their first Navi GPU based graphics cards in July as per the rumor mill. We have also seen various reports which indicate that Navi GPUs would be the underlying graphics architecture of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft and since VRS also plays a huge role in making VR games better and faster, having VRS on Navi would indeed be a great choice for AMD graphics cards.

The McLaren Senna seen here could as easily have been any other hypercar or, indeed, top-flight supercar like a Ferrari 812 Superfast or Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. Similarly, although the Alpine A110 is undeniably well suited to the task in hand, a Lotus Elise would have sufficed. So those hoping for a David and Goliath contest where the little £50k sports car fells three-quarters of a million quid’s worth of carbonfibre-bodied hypercar are going to be sorely disappointed. There are some architectural and conceptual similarities between them – mid-engine configurations, seven-speed paddle-shift transmissions, an admirable focus on lightweight construction and so on – but probably the most significant thing they share, and what puts them in one of the most exclusive of automotive clubs, is that both come complete with five-star Autocar road test ratings. And nothing you’re about to read changes that in any way. Instead, we’re here in the Welsh mountains to ask a question and, hopefully, provide an answer. The question is simple: what is ‘enough’? I don’t really want to be more precise than that, because the moment I say ‘enough power’, then that has to be tempered with considerations of weight, torque and delivery. It would be better to call it ‘enough performance’, but to most people, that is simply a straight-line measure. Hold a gun to my head and I’d define the question as this: how much dynamic ability of all kinds can be used on even world-class public roads like these, and are those that provide more just wasting it, or is there a delicious pleasure in the simple knowledge that it’s there, which, in a very real way, adds further to the enjoyment of such cars? OUR VERDICT McLaren Senna McLaren Senna 2018 road test review - hero front Can Woking’s 'ultimate road-legal track car' make history at our dry handling track?So the real point of having these two here is that they are the absolute best at what they do. The Alpine is that rarest of things today: a genuine game changer in the way it combines extraordinary feel and response in daily-driver civility. I expect we’ve not seen an all-new car do that job so well for merely mortal money since the launch of the Porsche 911 55 years ago, and I don’t exaggerate one bit. The Senna? It may not actually change the game, but by moving it so far away from the reach of normal supercars, it might as well have done. In terms of genuine road car ability, pure, outright and all-round pace, I doubt a car has expanded the envelope of supercar ability so comprehensively since McLaren launched another quite useful device called the F1 almost a quarter of a century ago. There was a time, not that long ago, when a simple road tester like me would have approached a car of even the Alpine’s potential with a sense of, if not actual trepidation, then at least a certain nerviness derived from the fact that here was something different, something with a potential that it would be hard to find elsewhere. When I started doing this job 30 years ago, the fastest machine Autocar had a hope of being able to borrow was a Ferrari Testarossa. You took a big breath before aiming that up a mountain road, believe me, for I remember doing exactly that on exactly this road. And yet both its power-to-weight ratio and torque-to-weight ratio are only a fraction ahead of where the Alpine sits today. And the Alpine, with its Mégane powertrain, is a car that deliberately, almost wilfully, thumbs its nose at the more-more-more brigade. That is how far we’ve come. Indeed, the very purpose of its existence appears to act as an antidote for those who feel the arms race is out of control. So join me for a moment in its snug, compact yet surprisingly spacious cockpit. There’s a happy bark when you hit the button that brings it to life and it deepens a shade when you press the red ‘Sport’ button on its steering wheel. The road is long and quick, but sinuous, constantly moving in all three dimensions.The car feels right from the exit of the car park. Confidence courses through your arteries. Short shift into second and let it go. The car is accelerating hard – Testarossa hard, remember – its motor starting to howl, so you grab another gear. From now on, you’ll only be in third and fourth. It’s that kind of road. Underneath you, the Alpine feels so supple, so different from other cars. It’s breathing with the road, flowing across its surface and talking, always talking to you, through the steering in part but its chassis in the main. There’s no other car on sale in which it’s easier to establish a rhythm of driving. It’s a car that quite brilliantly turns back the clock in not just what it does but also how it encourages you to think. At first, you’re disappointed in yourself because those thoughts are time-expired road testing clichés – man and machine in perfect harmony, how you need only think it around corners, all that hoary old guff – before you realise there are two reasons we don’t communicate in such terms any more, and only one of them is because such terms were worn out decades ago. The perhaps more pertinent reason is that cars don’t feel like that any longer. Not once on that road did I crave another horsepower. Not once did I find myself lamenting its lack of apex speed. Out here in the real world, the £50k A110 with its 248bhp motor was the very definition of ‘enough’. Who could possibly want more? Driving done, parked up next to the Senna, the answer is me, I’m afraid. So let’s repeat the exercise in the McLaren. First thing you need to do is turn off the traction control, absurd I know, but I’ve learned from prior experience that if you leave it on, what you get is Diet Senna in such an unobtrusive form that you may not even realise you’re experiencing a fraction of its potential. And now the rules change completely. This is no longer an exercise in unbridling your enthusiasm. I know from the start that, most of all, this is going to be an exercise in saintly restraint. What this car can do is so far beyond what this road can safely take that the most I can hope for is a taste, a mere flavour of what it has to offer. We’ll forget the first two ratios straight away, and the top end of the power band, too. If this car is to be contained, it will be only on a gear-up, revs-down basis. Still, when the torque chimes in, you are instantly busy. Even like this, the Senna asks a lot of its driver. And do you know what? I don’t mind at all. It is a captivating, electrifying experience, a real challenge to your abilities as a driver. By which I don’t mean that it will spit you into the heather – although if you were casual with it, I don’t doubt that it would – but that if you’re to make the most of the experience, you’re going to need every mote of concentration you can gather. Try not to grip the wheel too hard. Accept that, with tyres that wide, it’s going to hunt about a bit. Try to relax. Try not to leap like a startled rabbit every time that 789bhp motor thinks of a new way to propel you through an entire delivery round of postcodes at a single prod of the pedal. Try to enjoy it. Ignore the slight sweat and don’t worry about that strange sound. It’s not the car making it. It’s you. Concentrate on keeping it clean. Find the apex and don’t fret about the grip: however ludicrously over-specified this car is in straight-line terms, it is even more so when it comes to corners. Be smooth, of course, but deliberate, too. You’re in charge even though, at times, it may not seem that way. Feel what it is like to bathe in an ocean of excess and to know its depths lie many miles out of reach. Is it glorious, or just frustrating? Well, both, but more the former than the latter, and this is what I found fascinating about the exercise. The single most significant factor in the sensation of speed is not actually how fast you’re going, but the environment in which you find yourself. Sit at 600mph in a Boeing 747 at 40,000ft and you’ll see what I mean. Just because you can’t savour all or even more than a small part of what a Senna can do when confined to the public road, this doesn’t mean that what it can do is any the less exciting for that. Indeed, knowing there is an effectively bottomless pit of ability provides a driving dimension all of its own. Just by seeing how deeply you can safely draw from it is a fascinating exercise in its own right, requiring techniques and rigour that simply don’t apply to the Alpine. Don’t mistake me: I’ve been lucky enough to have done many laps of a long and fast race track in a Senna, put it in Race mode and driven it as rapidly as I knew how, which was where it showed me things I didn’t think a road car could do. But even that was slightly frustrating because at Estoril it was still being held back, but this time by the current limits of street tyre technology. More than any car wearing a numberplate that I’ve driven, the Senna simply screams for a slick on the track, and when the GTR version arrives next year, a slick it will get. The point is that wherever you go, whatever you drive and however you drive it, there’s always going to be something sub-optimal. Not enough power, too much power, wrong sort of road, wrong kind of weather. The secret is to find a car that strikes the best balance and affords you the greatest opportunity to enjoy the best possible driving experience on the largest number of opportunities. And because it’s not interested in going fast, that is why the Alpine probably scores more highly in more areas than any other car on saleAnd yet the essential paradox remains: if I were to offer you a bottle of something nice from the Waitrose fine wine department or merely a taste of Château Pétrus, which would you choose? There is no correct answer: I’d probably go Waitrose because in wine, as in too many other things, I am a complete philistine. But there would be others who might have spent a lifetime wondering what it would be like to feel the world’s finest claret suffuse their taste buds. And the chance to experience it would be worth not a bottle or even a case of anything more mundane but a lifetime supply. The Senna is the Pétrus. Which would I take along that road again? Has to be the Alpine, doesn’t it? It exists at the very limit of what can sensibly be deployed in public. It is a joyous thing to drive, a result of some exquisitely clear thinking, maybe even a work of genius.

Patriotism sells and Bollywood is a living, breathing proof of it. Amid escalating tension between India and Pakistan, Bollywood producers are cashing in on the current situation of the neighbouring countries, reported Huffington Post. They are all set to trademark the titles of few films such as Pulwama Attack, Surgical Strike 2 or Abhinandan. The Indian Air Force’s ‘air strike’ on Pakistan led to social media speculations that a film titled Surgical Strike 2 could be made.Ever since Vicky Kaushal’s film URI: The Surgical Strike earned gold at the Indian box-office, Bollywood producers are showing more interest in making ‘patriotic’ films. February 26 was a busy day at the Indian Motion Pictures’ Producers’ Association (IMMPA) office in Andheri in Western Mumbai. Representatives of at least 5 different production companies rushed to reserve jingoistic movie titles they hoped to make in the future. “PULWAMA: THE DEADLY ATTACK,” a middle-aged Bollywood producer present at one of the conversations as narrated in the article said to his mousy assistant. “Kaisa laga? (How is it?)” The assistant wrote down.Ek Aur Likho (Write one more) — Pulwama Attack Versus Surgical Strikes 2.0,” the producer said, before turning to Huffington Post’s correspondent.. “You’ve got to think of long, complicated titles. The straight ones like Pulwama, Surgical Strike 2.0, Balakot are all gone.” A person present at the office described the scene as “a khichdi,” saying producers fought to register titles like Balakot, Surgical Strikes 2.0, and Pulwama Attacks. “After a point, they started discussing amongst themselves, suggesting variations of the same title,” said the person, who begged off being identified for the fear of upsetting Bollywood bigwigs. “It was quite a sight.” The trick, he confided, was to come up with a sentence that had all the key words.Then, just reduce the font of the rest of your title and highlight only Pulwama/Balakot/Surgical Strikes 2.0 in big, bold letters,” he said. “Isn’t it a solid idea?” The producer clapped. “Bring out the cash” The assistant took out the money. The deed was done. Pulwama: The Deadly Attack joined an ever-increasing list of titles pending the producers’ guild approval. Abhinandan Varthaman is the name of Indian Air Force pilot who was captured by Pakistan army on February 27. Since then people in India have been praying for his return. Pakistan PM Imran Khan himself confirmed that they will release Abhinandan on March 1.According to data provided by the trade magazine Complete Cinema, after Pulwama terror attack, titles like Pulwama: The Surgical Strike, War Room, Hindustan Hamara Hai, Pulwama Terror Attack, The Attacks of Pulwama, With Love, From India, and ATS – One Man Show have been registered.

Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was handed over at the Wagah border crossing today (pictured, flanked by a Red Cross representative and Pakistani military officers) in what Pakistan's PM called a 'peace gesture', intended to defuse military tensions between the nuclear-armed nations. The pilot has been praised for his stoic professionalism after he swallowed vital military documents and fired warning shots as locals went after him on the ground in Kashmir on Wednesday. Thousands of flag-waving supporters gathered at the border to welcome him home this morning but crowds had dwindled by nightfall as the handover dragged on for hours without explanation. Shortly before 9.30pm Indian time (4pm GMT) he finally appeared at the border checkpoint escorted by military officers and crossed the frontier into India. As Islamabad released him they also published another video of the pilot, in which he apparently praised his 'very professional' Pakistani military captors, who had rescued him from a mob.

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Click your heels together three times and say 'there's no OS maker like Microsoft' Having finally inflicted a 19H1 build of Windows 10 upon Windows Insiders on the Slow Ring, Microsoft has admitted that the minty-fresh test code has some problems. Build 18342 was pushed out earlier this week, having spent some quality time in the hands of Fast Ring testers. The latter found themselves blocked if they were using certain Intel CPUs, something Microsoft swiftly fixed with Build 18343. However, those preferring life in the slow lane got 18342 this week. 18342.8, to be exact, as Microsoft back-ported the CPU fix. The issue that has delayed the Slow Ring build for so long, anti-cheat code for video games making Windows 10 poorly, is also still present. However, the gang at Redmond appear to have lost patience with the company responsible. A roadblock has been thrown up to stop the update being received by systems with the most common games afflicted by the Green Screen of Death* (GSOD) error. The team has also blocked PCs with the base language ZH-CN due to a problem making many common Chinese games crash on launch. Getting Slow Ring insiders on board is becoming critical as the final release of 19H1 nears and Microsoft seeks to maximise the number of configurations on which the code is tested. Things aren't going well. It appears that some users must adopt the Beetlejuice approach to running the build. Say "Brandon LeBlanc" three times, and presumably the Insider supremo will appear, along with a working 19H1 Slow Ring install. The issue, which is hitting a subset of users, manifests itself during the early part of the install and boots the user back to the previous build of Windows 10. The Insider gang has said that on the fourth go, the upgrade path should change, and everything will be gravy. Add this to the array of known problems, including the aforementioned and Windows Sandbox falling over intermittently. However, Windows Subsystem for Linux lovers in the slow lane will be happy to see Linux files inside the Windows File Explorer, and the Light Mode in 19H1 makes a pleasant change from the Dark Mode with which much of the tech world seems obsessed. And as for the borked installer? As Microsoft would be the first to point out, it is a test build after all. All the cool kids use 20H1 While Slow Ringers were joining the 19H1 party, Microsoft gave us a peek at build 18845 of the 20H1 branch of Windows 10, due for release just over a year from now. Guinea pigs enjoying grappling with the known issues in that build, including wobbly Windows Sandbox and (yes, still) anti-cheat games software, will be positively over the Moon to learn that Emoji 12.0, finalised in February, is now present and correct in the Windows Emoji panel. Need a picture of an ice cube in your text? Worry not! Fancy unwinding with a game? Er, that might still be a problem. ®

NVIDIA is launching more GeForce 16 series graphics cards in the coming months and while we did talk about them in a previous post, there is some new information on the most entry-level graphics card based on the Turing GPU architecture. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 To Feature 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM Spec’d at 8 Gbps – Priced at $179 US, Launches in April So there are some interesting new details surrounding the GeForce GTX 1650, one of the GeForce 16 series cards to be introduced soon. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 will be targeting the budget and low-tier segment with a price of $179 US. The sub-$200 US market is a crucial market for the green team which could help them cope up the GeForce Gaming financial losses incurred during the previous quarter. RELATED NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 and GeForce GTX 1650 Prices, Launch Dates Leak Out – $229 US For GTX 1660 on 15th March and $179 US For GTX 1650 on 30th April According to the latest leak from TUM APISAK, the GeForce GTX 1650 indeed features the GDDR5 memory which was indicated before. The graphics card would feature 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM that would operate across a 128-bit wide bus interface at speeds of 8 Gbps (2000 MHz effective clock speed). This would result in a total bandwidth of 128 GB/s which would prove to be a good boost over the 112 GB/s bandwidth on the GeForce GTX 1050 series graphics cards.Also when it comes to clock speeds, the card reportedly operates at 1395 MHz base and 1560 MHz boost. Earlier, it was reported that the base clock of the GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card would be 1485 MHz but that could very well be a factory overclocked variant. The card also seems to use the TU107 GPU core rather the TU117 but that’s not confirmed yet.It will be interesting to see how many CUDA cores that card features. It is highly likely that we are looking at around 896-1024 since the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti already featured 768 CUDA cores and we have seen with the Turing gen that each card has received a core count bump over its predecessor. The GeForce GTX 1650 will end up being faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti but we have to wait for the final specifications to provide a proper estimate that’s close to the real product* = To be confirmed Talking specifically about shading performance which will be the main technology and architecture feature of the GeForce GTX cards, it looks like we are looking at an average 50% improved shading performance per core compared to Pascal. This is not the overall performance increase but rather the rate at which Turing improves upon its predecessor in shader performance.The new mainstream lineup would definitely let NVIDIA gain some ground in the budget market. Their GeForce RTX cards, although good products, weren’t able to grab much attention by the high-end market, due to higher prices and the little support for RTX features in games at launch. The GeForce 16 series cards can, however, play a very positive role in terms of sales in the gaming side of things for NVIDIA.

The new machine will make its European debut at the Geneva motor show, and Toyota has confirmed that reservations have been received for every car destined for the UK and Europe in 2019. Given the demand for those 900 cars, Toyota says it will shortly open reservations for the 2020 allocation. Toyota says it is in the process of converting registrations into customer orders, and people are still welcome to register their interest and be added to the waiting list, which "runs into thousands across Europe". The fifth-generation Supra retains the front-engined, rear-wheel-drive, two-seat layout of previous versions. The Porsche 718 Cayman rival has been honed by Toyota’s Gazoo Racing performance division and was developed alongside the BMW Z4, with which it shares its turbocharged 3.0-litre six-cylinder engine, producing 335bhp and 362lb ft, and an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The entry-level Supra is priced at £52,695, rising to £56,945 for the fully loaded, limited-run A90 edition. Deliveries will begin in the summer. The BMW-developed straight six engine used in the Supra features a twin-scroll turbocharger, with direct fuel injection and variable valve control. It has been tuned, says Toyota, to offer "segment-leading" torque from very low revs. The maximum 362lb ft is available between 1600 and 4500rpm. That gives the Supra 52lb ft more torque than the 310lb ft the Porsche 718 Cayman S produces from 2100-4500rpm and, at a claimed 4.3sec, the Toyota is 0.3sec quicker from 0-62mph. The 335bhp developed by the Supra’s engine is 10bhp down on the 718 Cayman S. The Supra offers Normal and Sport drive modes, launch control and a special ‘track’ setting that reduces the influence of the stability control system. In Europe, it will be sold exclusively with an active differential. The car is based around a ‘condensed extreme’ concept, the long bonnet and bubble roof reflecting the famed Toyota 2000GT of the 1960s and front and rear styling that nods to the fourth-generation Supra. It also features prominent curved rear wings that, according to Toyota, approach the limits of what can be manufactured at high volume. Toyota says the dimensions were set around achieving a “golden ratio” between the wheelbase and the track widths. The new Supra has a wheelbase of 2470mm – compared with 2570mm for the existing 2+2 GT86 – with a track width of 1594mm at the front and 1589mm at the rear. Overall width is 1854mm, excluding door mirrors. The Supra sits on double-joint MacPherson struts at the front and a five-link system at the rear. It has 19in alloy wheels with Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres – slightly wider at the rear than the front – and four-pot Brembo brake calipers. Toyota Gazoo Racing’s development team was key to refining the car’s handling, which was honed both on public roads and race tracks including the Nürburgring. Toyota says the Supra has higher structural integrity than the Lexus LFA supercar, a lower centre of gravity than the cheaper Toyota GT86 and 50/50 weight distribution front to rear. Achieving the latter involved pushing the engine as far back as possible beneath the bonnet. The car’s styling features a large central grille with air intakes and six-lens LED headlights, which lead into the long, low bonnet, which, along with the double-bubble roof, has been designed to minimise drag. Inside, Toyota says the Supra cockpit has been inspired by single-seat racing cars, with a low dashboard to maximise forward views and the main controls tightly grouped together. Reflecting its development alongside the Z4, the interior of the Supra makes extensive use of BMW switchgear. There is a three-spoke, leather-covered steering wheel, racing-influenced Alcantara-covered seats and an 8.8in digital instrument display, along with an 8.8in central multimedia display that can be operated via touchscreen or a rotary controller. The boot measures 290 litres, compared with 281 litres for the Z4. The regular Supra will be launched with two trim levels, called Active and Premium. Higher-spec Premium models gain black leather upholstery, a 12-speaker JBL sound system, a head-up display and a wireless smartphone charger. The limited-edition A90 – offered to the first 90 European customers – will come with a Storm Grey matt paint finish, black alloy wheels and a leather interior. While the Supra will be a comparatively low-volume product, its importance to Toyota as a halo model is demonstrated by the fact that Akio Toyoda, the company’s president, tested the car on the Nürburgring before giving it his final approval.

Ed got married a few days before Christmas. It was very quiet — just Ed’s oldest school pals, limited family and the priest,” an unnamed source told the tabloid. The 28-year-old, one of the best-selling artists in the world, has known Seaborn since his childhood in Suffolk, eastern England. They have reportedly been dating since 2015. The Sun reported that there were only about 40 people at the ceremony at his estate in Suffolk. “He wanted no fuss and he wanted it to be something entirely for them — a tiny winter wedding,” the source said. However, the couple are said to be planning a “festival-style party” in the summer. Sheeran announced his engagement on Instagram in January 2018, saying: “We are very happy and in love, and our cats are chuffed as well.” Sheeran’s record label did not immediately respond to requests for comment

Heil Hitler' and 'Filthy Jews' crept into comments on a video report on a desecrated Jewish cemetery, pushing French authorities to raise pressure on social media to banish hate-based content. Virulent anti-semitism has become commonplace on forums like Facebook and Twitter. Yet, efforts to cull the loathing have struggled to make headway. President Emmanuel Macron visited a desecrated Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, eastern France last week. A regional television channel covering the event was forced to cut the report from its Facebook page as result of dozens of scathing comments. Jewish graves in Quatzenheim were desecrated the day of nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacksFrench President Emmanuel Macron looks at a grave vandalised with a swastika during a visit at the Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, on February 19, 2019, on the day of a nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Around 80 graves had been vandalised In early January, French Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa, who condemns the growing anti-Semitism, said that she had received thousands of insults, notably 'Jewish whore'. The internet and social media give anti-Semites a stage that widens their audience, and tools to organise networks, says Sacha Ghozlan, head of the French Jewish Students Union. 'We have seen in the past 15 years that people who used to just express themselves in dark basements now have a much bigger audience,' Ghozlan told AFP. And the internet allows such people 'to ally anti-Semites of varied and normally opposite tendencies on shared hatred of Jews,' he added, pointing to groups at the extreme right and left.

Brave ran some benchmark tests on the Android version of its browser, and – funnily enough – found it to be less power-hungry than a handful of competitors. Specifically, the benchmark involved running battery-historian, an open-source testing tool. Using a Samsung Galaxy S9 running Android 9.0, Brave's researchers compared Chrome, Firefox, and Edge alongside browsers designed or configured to block ads including Firefox with uBlock Origin plugin, Adblock Browser, Firefox Focus, and Kiwi. The testing tool loads a series of websites in a new tab, waits five seconds and scrolls over the page multiple times for about 30 seconds. This routine gets executed over about 11 minutes, and gets repeated five times per browser, amounting to about an hour of browsing time per browser. "In our research, we show that Brave consumes 40 per cent less battery than po[CENSORED]r browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, thanks to a combination of bandwidth savings and lower CPU pressure," explained the San Francisco-based software maker on Monday. Compared to the ad-blocking browsers, Brave still consumed less battery power, as much as 20 per cent less, though Firefox with uBlock Origin, at 90mAh, on average, was close to Brave's sub-80mAh. The bandwidth savings, and associated lower CPU usage, come from Brave's blocking of third-party tracking code and ads. With less data to download, there's less Wi-Fi usage, less for the CPU to process, and ultimately less demand for battery power. Not too exciting Blocking ads and trackers has long been known to improve browser performance. In 2017, browser maker Opera reported that on desktop browsers, ads and associated code account for more than half the load time of web pages. Also, it said that laptop battery life drops by about 13 per cent when ad blocking is disabled. Earlier this month, a former Google engineer published details on the performance cost imposed by third-party advertising and analytics scripts. And the resource usage of such code has been known for years. Back in 2011, researchers from Stanford University and Deutsche Telekom published a report on mobile browser energy consumption and found JavaScript is "one of the most energy consuming components in a web page," along with CSS and images. It's worth noting that JavaScript on mobile phones takes significantly more time to parse and execute – 2x to 5x – than it does on desktops, so stripping out JS tracking and ad code is beneficial. But Brave owes its efficiency to more than just exiling ads. It also also bested ad blocking browsers, or so the company claims, with battery savings of about 20 per cent. That's the result of lower CPU usage, the company contends. Via Twitter DM, Brave CEO Brendan Eich explained one of Brave's advantages over Firefox and the Firefox-based Adblock Browser. "We block using native C++ code from the network thread," he said. "Not JavaScript from an extension." In terms of bandwidth consumption, however, Brave scores about as low as the Adblock Browser. Brave's benchmarks may soon change however: the company last month began testing opt-in ads in its developer build, and is in the process of making its own ad system more widely available. ®

Remember the FreeSync Windmill Demo? Yeah, it’s now long since retired but was a good way to showcase the benefits of FreeSync technology but is dated and nearly impossible to find if you didn’t save it or can find someone who archived it. Today AMD Radeon showcased their new FreeSync 2 HDR Oasis Demo, not to be confused with a benchmark tool. The demo is designed to showcase the benefits of FreeSync like the Windmill demo did, but this time with a large array of control features and supporting HDR which is one of the key features of FreeSync 2. The older demo only gave you a few controls over the image on screen which was basic at best, this time you’re in full control. You get the ability to move forward and reverse along the timeline, control the panning speed, along with resolution, textures, view distance, and many more to really throw your system for a loop. Just like before it has FPS control and autosweep to really see the variable refresh rate in action.If you are looking to download the demo prepare to hold on a bit. The video mentions a lot regarding the demo but there are no links to the demo itself in the description. You are however treated to a link on AMD’s website, full of information regarding FreeSync 2 and its benefits. This push for really exploring their benefits with FreeSync 2 makes a lot of sense with the recent Adaptive Sync support coming from the competition now that GeForce is allowing it and by the end of 2020 we’ll see Intel doing the same with their dedicated graphics cards. For those curious FreeSync 2 has all of the same benefits of traditional FreeSync but boasts additional features like guaranteed support for Low Frame Rate Compensation, guaranteed support for HDR content, and a low latency requirement. We’ll update this article with a link to the FreeSync 2 HDR Oasis Demo when it becomes available.