--Alien--

Writing top-quality code may be about to get a whole lot easier thanks to a new release from Amazon Web Services. AWS has announced the launch of CodeGuru, a programming tool that uses machine learning to squash bugs, fix errors and suggest improvements in lines of code. The company says that CodeGuru can provide huge savings in terms of productivity and efficiency, freeing up workers from spending hours trawling through individual lines of code or application logs in order to try and spot errors. Amazon CodeGuru The platform includes two main tools that AWS says should help developers across a number of industries. As mentioned above Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer can help to improve code quality by scanning for critical issues, identifying bugs, and recommending how best to remediate them. The platform has been trained on several decades of code reviews at Amazon.com and over ten thousand open-source projects on GitHub, giving it extensive knowledge on a large number of common issues. Amazon CodeGuru Profiler helps developers find an application’s most expensive lines of code, providing specific visualizations and recommendations on how to improve this code to save money and make their processes more efficient. Amazon says it used the system to make previous Prime Day shopping events run smoothly, seeing huge increases in CPU efficiency and lowering costs. “Our customers develop and run a lot of applications that include millions and millions of lines of code. Ensuring the quality and efficiency of that code is incredibly important, as bugs and inefficiencies in even a few lines of code can be very costly. Today, the methods for identifying code quality issues are time-consuming, manual, and error-prone, especially at scale,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President, Amazon Machine Learning at AWS. “CodeGuru combines Amazon’s decades of experience developing and deploying applications at scale with considerable machine learning expertise to give customers a service that improves software quality, delights their customers with better application performance, and eliminates their most expensive lines of code.” Amazon CodeGuru is available today in a number of AWS regions acros the US, EU and Asia, with availability in additional regions coming soon. The news comes shortly after the release of Amazon Honeycode, a no-code app development program that lets users create mobile and web apps with no programming required. Amazon Honeycode provides users with a web-based visual app builder that the company says takes a lot of the complications out of development, with the platform built on the power of AWS.

We often joke that we “need more RGBs.” Sure, you can have colorful LEDs on your gaming mouse and keyboard and might even have some on your monitor. Your SSD may twinkle with colors, motherboards aren’t left out of the mix, and your best PC case is welcome to hop on the trend. From PC components to the peripherals you can connect to them and even your gaming laptop, there’s a way to RGB it up. But Corsair doesn’t think that’s enough. The company wants the option to RGB your world. Today, the vendor released the Corsair iCue LT100 Lighting Towers that are basically a set of RGB sticks you can connect to your PC. Corsair’s answer to alternatives like the Philips Hue Play light bar, you can connect 2-4 towers that light up with 11 hardware-stored effects or your own software-made design. At $129.99 for the two-tower starter kit and $59.99 for each additional tower, it’s a hefty overlay for something that’s purely about looks. But if you’re a streamer, want to set your gaming den aglow or are plain addicted to the RGB lifestyle, Corsair’s LT100 Smart Lighting Towers bring new meaning to the idea of RGB everything. Corsair LT100 Smart Lighting Towers Specs Corsair LT100 Smart Lighting Towers: Hands-On Maybe smart lighting towers isn’t the best way to categorize Corsair’s Smart Lighting Towers. I usually associate smart tech as products that are connected to the internet. These sticks are actually connected to your PC. If we could do some rebranding we’d go for LT100 Reactive RGB Towers, but we’re being literal here. The starter kit gives you two towers, and you can go up to four if you buy two expansion kits. I received one starter kit and one expansion kit for three towers total. Despite being in a very sunny room, the lights never looked washed out. Instead, they always shined brightly and cast a glow on my wall and on my desk. Depending on the effect you choose or customize, you can have the sticks look like RGB is dripping from the top of the tower to the bottom base before moving to the next tower or shine brightly with a static color. Rainbow prisms are a po[CENSORED]r go-to, while spring-themed colors can craft a trippier, cosmic effect. Of course, everything is more fun in the dark. But the towers are bright enough that you don’t have to be a nocturnal gamer to enjoy them. The LT100 Smart Lighting Towers are as mesmerizing as you’d expect three standing foot-and-half sticks of colorful lights to be, so your use may vary. At worst, these bright lights could distract you from the battlefield. Sadly, only the static color setting has brightness adjustment. It’s not like you have to have pillars of bright lights staring at you at all times. Some effects flow from one tower to the next, so only a portion of one tower is lit up at a time. Another setting can tell you your CPU’s overall or individual CPU cores’ temperature range through one of three colors. There’s also text, which the iCue describes as “an abiment white lighting effect that will dim the lighting for optimal on-screen reading of content on your monitor.” The effect wasn’t immediately gratifying, and I don’t see how effective it can be without knowing where the towers are positioned in respect to your screen. If you’re looking to set a mood, I couldn’t resist using the Fireplace preset to bring a cozier feel to my Brooklyn apartment that only gets flames from the stove and candles. Corsair LT100 Smart Lighting Towers’ reactive audio lighting (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) One of the standout features of the LT100 Smart Lighting Towers is the ability to react to audio levels from your PC’s speakers or microphone. This worked well out of the box. The tower turned pink, but a light blue bit jumped out of the base to accompany a song’s vocals. That light blue light got taller and greener as the singer got louder. Corsair LT100 Smart Lighting Towers can match colors on your screen. (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) The lights can also match colors on the screen. Corsair software lets you map out a portion of the screen to focus on (Philips Ambilight style). However, this feature’s hard to appreciate. Usually, a game scene, movie or website will have plenty of colors on display at a time. Even if the LT100 towers match the specified section of the image perfectly, chances are there are plenty more colors at play on your monitor. As mentioned, Corsair isn’t the only vendor in the RGB lighting game. And while Corsair delivers with robust enough software that allows for ample customization and effects, we’re disappointed the gaming brand didn’t bring more features that work with games. There’s the reactive Video Lighting and Audio Lighting settings, but we’d love for the lights to be able to communicate in-game statuses. Perhaps, the LEDs could flash blue when you’re running out of ammo or flicker a dramatic red when you’re dying. A corsair rep told me in-game integrations “should be added in the near future.” Reacting to games is something rivals, like Philips Hue Play and Nanoleaf, offer in their LED products. And neither of those brands are known for their gaming prowess like Corsair is. I didn’t have any other Corsair products in its iCue RGB lighting ecosystem. If I did, I could’ve synced the products with the LT100 towers for ultimate RGB harmony. Corsair’s LT100 Smart Lighting Towers are available as a starter kit with two towers, and you can buy up to two additional towers separately. That means for about $250, you can have four RGB pillars hooked up to your PC. For humble RGB enthusiasts who think they could make do with just one RGB tower (what sacrifice!), that isn’t an option. You must buy the starter kit in order to get a tower with the necessary ports and control. Each tower is like a stack of 46 RGB LEDs. The light show is contained to a concentrated strip as well as the border around each tower’s base. The lights running up the tower shine through a soft, white silicone material that acts like a diffuser. Each tower must sit in its base, which has a touch of aluminum, but you can pop the tower out of its base in order to make it face the back of the base. Do you want colorful lights shining directly in your field of view or creating a subtle gaming-ready aura on your walls? The choice is yours. But while reversible sticks increase versatility, I’d like to see more. Allowing the sticks to face four directions instead of two would be a good start. With up to four towers and 184 RGB LEDs, you could get a vibe started with Corsair’s lighting system. The three towers I received to review weren’t bright enough to dominate or dramatically change the lighting in my bedroom, but they definitely grabbed attention and shined brilliantly, even when the room was flooded with bright sunrays. Without any mounting mechanisms, setup options are limited. As a cool high schooler, my room was decked out in blacklights that had holes in the base for anchoring them into walls. It’d be great if I could mimic this effect with Corsair’s sticks and have RGB showering down from my walls’ highest crevice. But this would result in many cables crawling down my walls. The required controller tower has three cables coming from it -- a power cable, a USB cable and RGB cable, and each expansion tower will have an RGB cable connected to it, too. You could ditch the USB connection and just use the hardware button toggle through 11 different preset effects and one customized in Corsair’s free iCue software, which offers a greater range of effects. If you get the starter kit, you could set up a single tower, although you’ll be wasting half of your investment. The towers each stand 16.6 inches high, but take a miniscule amount of space on the desktop, with the base measuring 3.7 x 3.7 inches. Your wireless Qi charger for your phone might take up more space. But keep in mind that with two bases you’re eating up 27.38 square-inches of desk space, and with four bases, that’s 54.76 square-inches. The towers don’t have to live on a desk though. You get 4.9 feet of breathing room between the tower and your best gaming PC, courtesy of the MicroUSB to USB Type-A cable. In addition to being connected to your PC, you’ll have to connect the control tower (the one with the button and all the ports) to the second tower via the 4.9-foot RGB cable. If you buy an additional tower (an LT100 Expansion Kit), you’ll connect that to the control tower via the included 4.9 foot RGB splitter cable You’ll also have to have the control tower plugged into an outlet, and that cable’s the longest out of the bunch, measuring 5.9 feet. With just the starter kit, you’ll have 15.7 feet feet of cables to deal with total, and at the max tower count of four, that’s 25.5 feet. Anyone buying this product is after admirable aesthetics, so this is something to keep in mind. There’s little point in beautifying with RGB if it results in ugly cable clutter. I also worried about the RGB cable that’s sticking out of each base. The clustered wires have some protection, but I can see it tearing if you’re not careful. Thankfully, you shouldn’t be moving these around much. There are sure to be a lot of people who hear about Corsair’s latest and think their purpose isn’t great enough. The LT100 Smart Lighting Towers have a tiny extra trick up their RGB sleeve. A removable plastic piece serves as a hook for your best gaming headset. This isn’t a game-changer, but it’s a helpful additional function, especially if you’re going to keep a tower on your desk. Final Thoughts Corsair’s LT100 Smart Lighting Towers are a shameless splurge. We could see streamers wowing with their highly controllable, amply bright and reactive tech. And any RGB enthusiast would be happy to get Corsair’s colorful sticks as a gift. But this is all a visual play, serving only to indulge the already-indulgent trend that is RGB lighting. Some will be horrified to see this product debut. Others will see their imagination run wild with new ideas of customizing their gaming den. There’s further reason to consider the LT100 Smart Lighting towers if you have other Corsair RGB products for syncing. However, the pillars will always be erect and don’t allow for any mounting. And we were disappointed by the lack of gaming-related features at launch, although this is allegedly coming soon via a software update. Corsair fans and those who can appreciate the company’s premium design will lean toward the LT100 and get plenty of different effects and enough brightness to entertain night or day. If you literally need all the RGB, then the LT100 Smart Lighting towers are a smart consideration.

NVIDIA's AIB partners are silently adding a new GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card to their inventory known as the GeForce GTX 1650 Ultra. The new graphics card is based on the Turing architecture & features the TU106 core along with increased memory capacity which may be one of the reasons it is referred to as the Ultra edition. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ultra Graphics Card With TU106 GPU Core & 6 GB GDDR6 Memory Spotted The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card has seen so many variants that its literally insane just mentioning all of them again. We got to see the original GeForce GTX 1650 with the TU117 GPU, the GeForce GTX 1650 D6 with TU117 GPU, GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER with the TU116 GPU, & we're now getting a fourth variant, the GeForce GTX 1650 Ultra with TU106 GPU. The GeForce GTX 1650 Ti and the mobility lineup are also made up of various revisions and refreshes but the main focus is here is the desktop GeForce GTX 1650 discrete graphics card. Coming to the specifications of the graphics card, GALAX (via Momomo_US) has so far been the first to list down the GeForce GTX 1650 Ultra along with its technical specs. The card features the TU106-125 GPU so its making use of the same chip that's featured on the GeForce RTX 2060 and the GeForce RTX 2070, except, the 125 SKU is cut-down significantly. The GPU houses 896 CUDA cores so that's a 14 SM unit design. The core clock for the chip is maintained at 1410 MHz base and 1590 MHz boost clock. The major upgrade on the card is its increased VRAM size which has been extended to 6 GB from the standard 4 GB cards. The 6 GB memory comes in GDDR6 flavor and is featured along a 128-bit bus interface at 12 Gbps. So that's a total bandwidth of 192 GB/s which should be enough to keep the card running with further room for memory overclock as the GDDR6 chips tend to overclock to around 14 Gbps with relative ease. NVIDIA GeForce GTX "Turing" Family:

A host of different services will now let you put a website online, quickly and easily, no coding skills required – but if you're looking for something to show off your talents as a musician then you need a more specific set of features. Primarily, a way of uploading and sharing your tunes in a simple and secure way, even if it's just snippets of songs rather than whole tracks or indeed albums. If you're a musician for hire then it can be useful to have some kind of booking system in place as well, or at least a contact form. On top of that, there are all the extras you might be interested in, like support for your own domain name or gallery pages to show just how many people came to your last gig. Here are our picks for the best website builder for musicians to create a presence online. We’ve also picked out the best website builder for photographers 1. Bandzoogle Designed specifically for musician Sell music, tickets and merch : BandZoogle Lite $8.29/mth Plug in all your social accounts : BandZoogle Standard $12.46/mth Not the most flexible theme editor : BandZoogle Pro $16.63/mth You won't find too many website builder services aimed specifically at musicians, but Bandzoogle gleefully jumps in to provide a bespoke service specifically for bands and artists. While it lacks some of the polish of the big names, because it focuses on the musician niche in particular, it has everything you should need. That includes, of course, the ability to upload your own tracks and let visitors stream them from your website. You can get tracks organized into entire albums if you really want to go to town, or just share (or even sell) single tracks. And then, as well as that, you've got simple ways to post gig dates, blog updates, and so on. Whether you need to build a contact form or a video diary, Bandzoogle makes it easy, no coding required – you can really make a site that's as simple or as complex as you like, and the end result is something that looks like you hired a specialist. You've got over 100 themes to choose from (there is even one for crowdfunding), they're all straightforward to edit and tweak, and connecting up social accounts (including the likes of SoundCloud and Bandcamp) only takes a few clicks as well. As an added bonus, you can sell fan subscription, merchandise and tickets right through Bandzoogle as well.

The latest update for Windows 10 brings good news for power browser users. Microsoft Edge Principal Product Manager Kim Denny announced this week that Windows 10 memory management procedures have been modernized and that browser users should see improved browsing immediately. Google Chrome browsers, in particular, are notorious RAM hogs Microsoft introduced SegmentHeap, an improved management system that handles allocation of memory space. Its efficiency means lower memory usage and faster browsing results. Microsoft tests show RAM usage under the new segment heap system can be reduced up to 27 percent. Microsoft plans to update its new Chromium-based Edge browser to accommodate the new memory system and will build the revised browser into Windows 10 later this year. Google Chrome is also expected to see similar boosts. Google announced it has been testing Chrome with SegmentHeap. Test results show several hundred megabytes of memory can be freed with the new implementation. Researchers caution, however, that results may vary widely. They explain that systems benefiting the most from the new memory-allocation system will be those with multiple-core processors. Chrome is by far the most po[CENSORED]r browser in use today, with roughly seven out of 10 people using it for daily surfing activity. Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox are far behind, each capturing only about 7 percent of users. Despite its po[CENSORED]rity, a common complaint for years about Google Chrome is its tendency to hog memory assets. This is especially so for users who maintain several active browser tabs and visit sites with increasingly heavy RAM demands. Bruce Dawson, a Google Chrome programmer, says an updated version of Chrome is expected soon. But he noted that "mysterious" bugs have pushed back plans for release. "We could enable it now but that would cause build warnings," a Google post said. "Therefore enabling it is blocked on a switch to the Windows 10.0.19041.0 software development kit, which is currently blocked on some mysterious build failures." Microsoft's web browser for years relied on its own engine, EdgeHTML, and the Chakra JavaScript engine, but redesigned the browser in 2019 using the Google Chromium system. The first public release was this January. Google Chromium is a free and open source project. In addition to Microsoft Edge, Google's own Chrome browser, as well as Opera, are based on Chromium infrastructure. The Windows 10 May 2020 update containing the new memory management system update is the operating system's first major upgrade this year. It is already appearing on some new PCs.

Looking for a Raspberry Pi project that can take you to the skies? This handheld flight simulator project by Adrien Castel definitely comes close! Castel's handheld began when he found a Sky Fighter F-16 tabletop game from a company called Dival. Castel was able to fit a Raspberry Pi 3 A+ module inside the unit along with a new TFT LCD screen. The original Sky Fighter F-16 device came with a red joystick. Unfortunately, the unit picked up by Castel was missing this critical component. However, this piece was easy to replace and fit nicely with the help of a custom 3D printed jig for the inside. Castel also had to 3D print a custom frame for the TFT LCD display. In addition to these upgrades, he changed out the microswitches for newer ones with increased sensitivity. RecalBox, an emulation platform based on both Emulation Station and RetroArch, made it possible for Castel to create a custom front end that resembles a jet fighter. The rig is perfect for playing with open-source flight simulators like FlightGear. If you want to read more about the project, you can check out the full feature from MagPi magazine.

Original release date: October 26, 2018 Music: Woody Jackson Awards: The Game Award for Best Performance, PLUS Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, Microsoft Windows Appointments: Game Award: Game of the Year, PLUS Modes: Solo, Multiplayer Editor's note: Red Dead Redemption 2 is now out on PC, and we spent 10 hours with the game on its new platform. Despite consistent game crashes on launch day, we were able to get the game running stably, and two updates were issued by Rockstar in response to the issues. Our experience has been largely positive. A roster of graphics options and the ability to play with a high frame rate helps the PC version separate itself from its console counterparts, given you have high-end specs; Red Dead 2 is a demanding game. It was already visually stunning on Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, and the same is true in our case for PC. While some rare visual bugs appeared, they were inconsequential to the experience. Red Dead 2's control scheme has transitioned well to keyboard and mouse, too, though there are a few kinks to work around. Gamepad support is seamless. Red Dead 2 remains a superb game and a gripping experience with gameplay systems that connect you to the world and the characters that embody it; you can read more in our original review from 2018 below. For more detail on the PC version specifically, be sure to read our full thoughts on Red Dead Redemption 2 as a PC port. -- Michael Higham, November 7, 2019 Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game about consequences where you have only the illusion of choice. Yes, there are some decisions to be made, and those decisions will shape your character and the world around you. But some of the most disastrous choices were made for you before the game even begins, leaving you to deal with the fallout. And because it's a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, you also (probably) know how the story ends. All that's left is discovering what happens in between and making the most of it. To that end, you fight against the repetitive nature of missions, frequent moral dilemmas, and the inconvenience of doing what's right. For the most part, the frustration that tension can cause is also what makes the story impactful, and when it all comes together, your effort is not wasted. At the beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2, the Van der Linde gang is already on the decline we know from the previous game is coming. After a heist gone wrong in Blackwater, they're on the run, down a few members, and on the verge of capture, starvation, and succumbing to a snowstorm. There are familiar faces--Red Dead Redemption protagonist John Marston chief among them--as well as new ones. As senior member Arthur Morgan, you're in the privileged position of being Dutch Van der Linde's right hand, privy to his machinations and included in the most important outings. Once the gang escapes the storm and settles into a temporary campsite, you're also put in charge of the camp's finances, meaning you pick out all the upgrades and supplies. If Dutch is the center of the gang, Arthur is adjacent to all its vital parts at once, and that gives you a lot of power. With that power, you're encouraged to do as you see fit and at your own pace. A lengthy series of story missions early on introduces you to some of the ways you can spend your time, including hunting, fishing, horse-rearing, and robbery. There are a lot of systems, and covering the basics takes several hours. While they're not so cleverly disguised as to not feel like tutorials, the actual learning is paced well in its integration with the story, and the missions also acquaint you with the characters and the surrounding area. For example, the fishing "tutorial" has you taking young Jack Marston out for the day, since John is not exactly great at fatherhood. Jack is pure and sweet--and incredibly vulnerable to all the gang's wrongdoings--and the mission is memorable for it. In addition to the mechanics of various activities, you're also presented with a few elements of semi-realism you need to contend with. Mainly, you need to eat to refill your health, stamina, and Dead Eye ability "cores," which deplete over time. Eating too much or too little results in weight changes and stat debuffs. Eating itself isn't a problem, and neither is maintaining cores in general, but eating enough to maintain an average weight is intrusive; despite experimenting with what and how often I ate, I couldn't get Arthur out of the underweight range, and eating any more frequently would be too time-consuming to justify. You don't have to sleep (though you can to pass time and refill your cores), and surviving hot or cold temperatures comes down to choosing the right outfit from your item wheel, so managing your weight sticks out as superfluous rather than conducive to immersion. Limited fast travel options are the better-implemented side of Red Dead 2's realism, perhaps counterintuitively. There's next to no fast travel at the beginning and few methods in general, so you have to rely on your horse to get around. It can be slow, but there's no shortage of things to do and see along the way. Chance encounters are plentiful and frequently interesting; you might find a stranger in need of a ride to town or a snake bite victim who needs someone to suck the venom out of their wound. You can stumble upon a grotesque murder scene that sets you entirely off-track, or you can ignore someone in danger and just keep riding. And just as you can decide to rob or kill most anyone, you'll also run into people who will do the same to you. Even the longest rides aren't wasted time, and it's hard not to feel like you're missing something if you do opt for fast travel. Red Dead Redemption 2's version of America is vast and wide open, stretching from snowy mountains and the Great Plains down to the original game's New Austin in the southwest. Further to the east is the Louisiana-inspired Deep South, which is still feeling the effects of the Civil War after nearly 40 years. There's a distinct shift when traveling from region to region; as grassy hillsides become alligator-filled swamps, Union veterans give way to angry Confederate holdouts, and good intentions and casual racism turn into desperation and outright bigotry. The variety makes the world feel rich, and it both reacts to you and changes independently of your involvement; new buildings will go up as time goes on, and some of the people you talk to will remember you long after you first interacted with them (for better or worse). Incidental moments as you explore make up a large part of the morality system, in which you gain and lose honor based on your actions. "Good" morals are relative--you're a gang member, after all--but generally, it's more honorable to punch up rather than down. Helping an underdog, even if they're an escaped convict and even if you need to kill some cops or robbers to do it, can net you good guy points. In these situations, it's easier to be noble than a true outlaw. Committing a dishonorable crime is hard to do undetected, even in remote locations, and usually requires you to track down and threaten a witness, run and hide from the law, or pay a bounty down the line. While you'll earn money more quickly doing "bad" things, high honor gets you a pretty discount at shops, and you'll make good money either way through story missions. In many ways, you're nudged toward playing a "good" Arthur. The gang members he's closest to from the beginning are the more righteous, principled ones who are motivated by loyalty and a desire to help others, while he insults, argues with, and generally reacts negatively to those who are hot-headed and vicious. The most rotten of them is Micah, who's so easy to hate that it's hard not to follow Arthur's lead and take the higher road. Unlocking camp upgrades like one-way fast travel and better supplies also essentially forces you into being honorable; although everyone donates, you have to invest hundreds of dollars yourself if you want to afford anything, and that automatically gets you a ton of honor points whether you like it or not. One of the best, most understated details in the game is Arthur's journal, in which he recaps big events as well as random people you've met and more mundane, everyday things. He sketches places you go, doodles the plants and animals you find, and writes out thoughts he barely speaks out loud. The journal changes with your level of honor, but at least for a relatively honorable Arthur, the pages are filled with concerns and existential crises--inner turmoil over being either good or evil, for instance--that make you want to see him become a better person. Like any good prequel, there's an incredible amount of tension in knowing what happens without knowing exactly how. It's a lot harder to feel like a good guy when doing the main story missions, though. Arthur, along with nearly everyone else, is loyal to the gang first and foremost. This means following Dutch into trouble, busting friends out of jail, and committing a number of robberies in the interest of getting money for the gang. Even if you're trying your hardest to be good, you'll inevitably slaughter entire towns in mandatory story missions--stealth and non-lethal takedowns aren't always an option, and the snappy auto-lock aim makes shootouts a far easier option anyway. The dissonance is frustrating to play through in the moment, but it's incredibly important to Arthur's arc as well as your understanding of the gang as a whole. To say any more would venture into spoiler territory. That extends to the structure of story missions, which start to get predictable around halfway through the game. It's not that they're boring--the opposite is true, actually, and you see a lot of action from beat to beat. But after a while, a pattern emerges, and it's easy to figure out how any given heist or raid is going to unfold. This too becomes frustrating, partially because you often have no way of significantly affecting the outcome despite any decision-making power you thought you might have had. But your weariness is also Arthur's, and that's crucial. The mid-game drags in service of the narrative, which only becomes apparent much later. There's also enough variety betwe Like any good prequel, there's an incredible amount of tension in knowing what happens without knowing exactly how. If you played Red Dead Redemption, you know who survives and as a result who probably won't make it to the end of the game. Even during the slower parts, you're waiting for betrayals and injuries and other events you've only vaguely heard mention of before. You're waiting for characters to reveal their true selves, and watching as everything unravels is riveting and heartbreaking if you know what's to come. You can still enjoy the story in its own right without that background knowledge, though. Some of Red Dead Redemption 2's best moments have almost no relation to its predecessor. One mission takes you to a women's suffrage rally, and a painful side mission has you facing a woman whose husband you killed and life you ruined. The new characters are among the best, too; Sadie Adler is a personal favorite for reasons I won't spoil. Another, a young black man in the gang named Lenny, mentions how the Southerners treat him a little differently; Arthur says that he hasn't noticed anything weird, to which Lenny replies, "All respect, Mr. Morgan, you wouldn't notice." Generally, Red Dead 2 tackles pertinent issues of the era with care. Rather than defining any of its characters by the bigotry they may experience, it allows them the room to be well-rounded individuals while still not ignoring that things like racism and sexism exist. One arc focuses squarely on a very serious issue, and here, the lack of real choice in the story's direction--and your resulting involvement in what transpires--will likely make you uncomfortable in a powerful way. While Red Dead Redemption was mostly focused on John Marston's story, Red Dead 2 is about the entire Van der Linde gang--as a community, as an idea, and as the death rattle of the Wild West. It is about Arthur, too, but as the lens through which you view the gang, his very personal, very messy story supports a larger tale. Some frustrating systems and a predictable mission structure end up serving that story well, though it does take patience to get through them and understand why. Red Dead Redemption 2 is an excellent prequel, but it's also an emotional, thought-provoking story in its own right, and it's a world that is hard to leave when it's done. System Requirements (Minimum) CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7 SP1 VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 150 GB

A malware campaign is behind the meteoric growth of one of the biggest websites in the UK, research has suggested. Bitcoinnewstoday(dot)me is already labelled as a "dangerous website" by most search engines and trying to access it will bring up a bright red page on most. Users of Microsoft Edge, for example, will see a warning that, "Microsoft recommends you don’t continue to this site. It has been reported to Microsoft for containing misleading content that could lead you to lose personal info, financial data, and even money." Yet, according to website analytics company Similarweb, the site experienced a massive growth globally in May 2020, growing by a staggering 320x to reach 23rd place in its UK readership leaderboard. These are the best anti ransomware tools around today Check out our pick of best antivirus for Windows 10 Secure your device with the best Android antivirus options With almost 76 million monthly visits (and 51 million unique visitors) during the month, it is bigger than far more prominent websites like Paypal, Argos or Linkedin. A closer analysis of the site reveals that it has a global rank of 784 and nearly 96% of the visits occurred via mobile. Worryingly, most apparently spent more than 40 minutes on the page visiting on average 1.37 pages. In other words, most visitors were stuck on page one for a long, very long time. Malware In a statement to TechRadar Pro, a spokesperson for Avira Protection Lab told us that the site could be what security expert call a "rotator". These forward unwitting visitors to a random advertisement, and more recently, pages that cover fake crypto-exchanges (aka a bitcoin scam). The page appears to be part of a wider network, with the domain name registered in November 2019 in Russia using dummy data. The site has been active since December 2019, with traffic disappearing in April 2020 and surging back in May. Fake registrant data was used, which is often a common tactic for malware, phishing or scam domains. The web hosting of the site is likely to be located in Germany. Avira added: "Refer selection is done via geo-location, so you get a different page if you are in the UK compared to France. They have partner pages for pretty much all European countries such as the UK, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Spain, France, Sweden, Romania and even smaller ones such as Lithuania. They don’t seem to have pages for anything outside Europe, e.g. connecting with a Russian or Japanese IP just forwards you to e.g. the UK pages, while trying to connect with an US IP results in a forward to google.com. Funnily enough, Italian IPs also get redirected to google.com" "Sadly there are dozens of these out there, and often they don’t exist very long especially if they are getting flagged."

A new entry of Intel's Rocket Lake Desktop CPU has been spotted which shows an 8 core and 16 thread chip. The Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPU family will be branded under the 11th Generation Core banner and will feature a brand new core and graphics architecture for the desktop segment. Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPU With 8 Cores and 16 Threads Spotted - Clocks of Up To 4.3 GHz & Xe Graphics The Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPU spotted within the Geekbench 5 database (via TUM_APISAK) looks very similar to the previous entry we got to see in 3DMark a whole month back. There's no official name for this particular chip yet but we do get to see its specifications which are very interesting. For starters, the Rocket Lake CPU features 8 cores and 16 threads. The Rocket Lake CPUs are based on a brand new core architecture that is post-Skylake but there have been reports that it could be a hybrid between the Sunny Cove (Ice Lake) and Willow Cove (Tiger Lake) cores. The whole CPU is a Frankenstein of a design since it will be making use of a 14nm process node while backporting 10nm architectures to 14nm. The CPU will also come equipped with an Xe GPU which we will talk about in a bit. As for the clock speeds, the CPU features a base frequency of 3.2 GHz and a maximum boost frequency of 4.3 GHz. Here we can see the similarities with the 3DMark entry. As far as cache goes, the CPU retains 512 KB of cache per core and 16 MB of L3 cache. This points out to cache design similar to Sunny Cove since Willow Cove cores feature a heavily upgraded L2 cache with 1.25 MB per core. Coming to the GPU part, we see the Gen 12 graphics chip listed here which decodes to the Xe graphics architecture. The Xe GPU on the Rocket Lake CPU features a total of 32 Execution Units that are clocked at 1150 MHz. Other interesting features of the platform is that it made use of 16 GB DDR4 memory and that's about it. The performance was measured in the OpenCL benchmark so its not the CPU cores that are being pushed here but rather the GPU core. The OpenCL score is reported at 6266 points under Windows 10. For comparison, a stock clocked Core i7-10700K with UHD Graphics 630 chips that features 24 Execution Units with a clock speed of 1200 MHz scores 6360 points. Once again, like the previous benchmarks, this ES chip is definitely not tuned and optimized as a final retail chip should be. We also saw poor results with the same chip in the previous benchmarks and same is the case here. Since Rocket Lake is planned for later this year, my guess is that Intel is still prioritizing its mobility Tiger Lake lineup which ships out in a few months before moving to final driver and optimizations delivery on the Rocket Lake desktop platform. Here's Everything We Know About The 11th Generation Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Intel's Rocket Lake-S desktop CPU platform is expected to feature support on LGA 1200 socket which will make its debut with Comet Lake-S CPUs although on 400-series motherboards. The Intel Rocket Lake-S processors will be launching alongside the 500-series motherboards but it has since been confirmed that LGA 1200 motherboards will offer support for Rocket Lake-S CPUs, especially given the fact that PCIe Gen 4.0 is a prominent feature of Z490 motherboards which would only be enabled with the use of Rocket Lake-S desktop CPUs. Main features of Intel's Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs include: Increased Performance with new processor core architecture New Xe graphics architecture Increased DDR4 speeds CPU PCIe 4.0 Lanes Enhanced Display (Integrated HDMI 2.0, HBR3) Added x4 CPU PCIe Lanes = 20 Total CPU PCIe 4.0 Lanes Enhanced Media (12 bit AV1/HVEC, E2E compression) CPU Attached Storage or Intel Optane Memory New Overclocking Features and Capabilities USB Audio offload Integrated CNVi & Wireless-AX Integrated USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20G) 2.5Gb Ethernet Discrete LAN Once again, the reason I think that Rocket Lake is using Willow Cove cores is that Tiger Lake with the same architecture features Xe Gen 12 graphics while Ice Lake with Sunny Cove cores is using the Gen 11 GPU. So expect more information on Rocket Lake CPUs once Intel has released its 11th Gen Tiger Lake mobility family. Intel Desktop CPU Generations Comparison: DIscrete Intel Thunderbolt 4 (USB4 Compliant)

380/5000 Original release date: September 19, 2000 Designer: Neversoft Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, iOS, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Game Boy, Mac OS, Xbox Awards: Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Video Game Developers: Neversoft, Vicarious Visions, Activision, Treyarch, Edge of Reality, Aspyr, Natsume, LTI Gray Matter Modes: Solo, Multiplayer Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. The mere concept of a sequel to last year's surprise hit is enough to send chills down the spines of the game's die-hard fans. Luckily, those chills are not in vain - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is the perfect example of how to make a sequel to an already amazing game. The levels are bigger, the trick catalog is more plentiful, the number of goals per level has been doubled, and the already stunning gameplay has been honed even further. All of the professional skaters from the first game have returned, and new skaters like Rodney Mullen, Eric Koston, and Steve Caballero have been added to the roster. Also, you can create your own skater, choosing from different skin and model types. All of the first game's modes are back. You can opt to skate a two-minute single session, freely skate around a level with no time limit, or enter the career mode. The career mode here is much more than the first game's. Completing level goals in career mode earns cash, and you spend that cash on higher attribute points, new boards, and new tricks. This makes the game pretty customizable - if you don't like your skaters tricks, a little money and some time on the trick screen and you can set any trick to almost any button combination you want. With the exception of the three competition levels, each level in the game has ten different goals, each with a different dollar value assigned to it. Three of the goals are score-based, and you still have to spell skate and collect a hidden tape as well. Four of the goals are fairly level specific. In New York, you'll do things like collect subway tokens, 50-50 grind on a sculpture, and grind on a set of subway rails. In Philly, you'll have to drain a fountain, find four lips and do lip tricks on them, and collect small liberty bells. In Venice, you'll ollie over five "magic" bums, tailslide the Venice Ledge, collect spray paint cans, and find four specially marked transfers. Finally, the goal in each level is completed when you've completed the other nine goals and collected every piece of spinning money. In competition levels, you earn 90 percent completion by earning the gold medal, and the remaining 10 percent comes from collecting all the cash in the level. Later levels are opened up when you've collected a certain amount of cash. You don't need to get 100 percent completion in each level to beat the game's final level, but you'll be too addicted to the game to settle for anything less. The multiplayer game is just as exciting as it was in the original. With the exception of horse, all of the other modes are played simultaneously. Trick attack is a timed score contest. Graffiti tags a surface with your skater's color when you include it in a trick - if you do a better trick on a surface owned by your opponent, it switches to your color. Tag gives each player a timer, which only counts down when you're "it." The first player to run out of time loses. The game still runs at full speed in the two-player split screen modes, though most of the levels have been altered a bit for multiplayer - for instance, the Skatestreet level loses its outdoor areas, and the Bullring no longer allows you to get up into the stands, which have been replaced by draw-in shrouding fog. Tony Hawk 2 looks so good that you may occasionally have trouble believing it's a PlayStation game. The textures are large and colorful, and some levels include lots of nicely detailed graffiti. The levels themselves are absolutely enormous, each containing at least one hidden area. Yet even with the large levels, the game runs at a nice, solid speed at all times. The camera works extremely well in almost any situation, though it would have been nice to see a look function in the game, like the skater's eye function found in Sony's extremely Hawk-like Grind Session. The only real problem with the original Tony Hawk's audio was that the soundtrack was a little singular - if you didn't like that style of music, you were essentially out of luck. Tony Hawk 2 breaks up the monotony nicely, a wide range of artists including Naughty By Nature, Powerman 5000, Rage Against the Machine, Dub Pistols, Papa Roach, Anthrax (featuring Public Enemy), and Bad Religion. The game's sound effects are outstanding, mixing a nice balance of ambient sound (nearby cars, trains, announcers at the skate competitions, and so on) and the sounds of skating, such as the clink of your trucks hitting a rail, the different textured sounds of varying surfaces, and, of course, the sound of your skater's body slamming to the pavement. The first game already had extremely tight gameplay - the levels were designed with big trick combos in mind, but there was room for personal style and innovation. Tony Hawk 2 opens up the concept even further with the addition of manuals - essentially front or back wheelies - which you can use to link trick combos together when crossing flat land. The larger levels of Tony Hawk 2 are extremely manual-friendly, yet the manuals never give the game a gimmicky feel. Instead, they really give you even more control over your skater and open up the scoring for even bigger combos. Also, the first game had gaps - small bonuses that gave you points for transfers, jumps, and long rails. Tony Hawk 2 is packed with these gaps; some levels have well over 40 different gaps. A gap checklist on the options screen helps you keep track of which gaps you've yet to find. Another amazing addition is the skate park editor. The editor gives you an empty room and lets you fill it up with rails, ramps, pools, boxes, and just about anything else. It's extremely easy to use, and you can set it up for single-player and multiplayer play. Also, in case you aren't feeling terribly creative, Neversoft has stashed a ton of levels on the disc for you to mess around with. The skate park editor is great on its own, and it justifies owning DexDrive, as well. Surely a smattering of fan sites will offer large collections of created levels for download to such a device. Near the end of a platform's life , most of its software falls into one of two categories. The first is shovelware - cheaply produced games hoping to cash in on the platform's large installed user base. Games in this category fail to innovate and come off as games that would have been decent three or four years ago, but simply can't compete with a system's better offerings. The second category is a fairly elite club, containing games from developers that clearly know how to exploit the aging hardware for all its worth. The PlayStation's final year is coming to a close, and in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Neversoft has put together a game that clearly belongs at the top of the second category. As most major publishers' development efforts shift to any number of next-generation platforms, Tony Hawk 2 will likely stand as one of the last truly fantastic games to be released on the PlayStation. System Requirements CPU: Intel Core i3-560 3.3GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 805 RAM: 8 GB HDD: 10 GB GPU: AMD Radeon RX 560X 4 GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 OS: Windows 7, 64 bit DirectX: Version 11 Screen Resolution: 720p Network: Broadband Internet connection

AMD's Matisse Refresh CPUs which include the Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, Ryzen 5 3600XT have once again been benchmarked and this time, we get to see both single-core and multi-core performance results of the refreshed lineup in Geekbench. AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT & Ryzen 5 3600XT Tested in Geekbench Single & Multi-Core CPU Tests - Up To 5% Performance Improvement Over 'X' Series Chips AMD officially announced its Ryzen 3000XT 'Matisse Refresh' lineup a few weeks back. The lineup consists of three processors based on the 7nm Zen 2 architecture but feature a slightly enhanced design allowing for higher boost clocks than their Ryzen 3000X series brethren. While availability is planned for 7th of July, users will have to wait to see if the new processors will be worth buying as reviews are planned to go live the same day as launch. We have seen some performance benchmarks leak before but the latest single-core and multi-core tests have been spotted within the Geekbench database by TUM_APISAK. There are benchmarks of each CPU on the same platform so performance should be somewhat consistent. The test setup is made up of a Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master motherboard along with 64 GB of DDR4-3200 memory. In terms of performance, the single and multi-core performance results were compiled in a single picture. First of all, the slower memory speeds will definitely lead to a lower performance output on the Matisse Refresh platform but TUM_APISAK also shared a score of Ryzen 9 3900XT operating on a system with the same X570 AORUS Master motherboard with 16 GB of DDR4-3600 memory but it produced slower performance than with DDR4-3200. Summing up the benchmarks, all three parts come close to the 1400 points mark in single core CPU benchmark. The Ryzen 5 3600XT falls slightly behind which could be due to its slightly lower TDP of 95W compared to the 105W TDP of the Ryzen 9 3900XT and the Ryzen 9 3800XT. In multi-core CPU performance, the Ryzen 5 3600XT scores up to 7914 points while the Ryzen 5 3600X features multi-core score averaging around 7500-7600 points marking a 5% performance uplift from a 100 MHz boost. The Ryzen 7 3800XT scores 9795 points which is around a 25% increase over the Ryzen 5 3600XT and and a 8% performance uplift over the Ryzen 7 3800XT which averages around 9000 points. In the same manner, the Ryzen 9 3900XT scores 12970 points which is up to a 32% increase over the Ryzen 7 3800XT and around 65% increase over the Ryzen 5 3600XT with twice the cores & threads. The Ryzen 9 3900XT is about 5% faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X which scores about 12300 to 12500 points in the same benchmark. AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT - 12 Cores at 4.7 GHz For $499 US The AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT is the fastest XT part featuring 12 cores and 24 threads. It's surprising for AMD to not release a Ryzen 9 3950XT variant but I believe that is due to the fact that the chip relies on a heavily pre-binned Zen 2 die and there's little to no room for improvement on that particular chip. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT will additionally pack 70 MB of complete cache with a TDP of 105W. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT is suggested to feature a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.7 GHz (single-core) compared to a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.6 GHz on the existing Ryzen 9 3900X CPU. Pricing for the chip will be kept at $499 US while the original Ryzen 9 3900X can be found for around $400 US on several retail outlets. AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT - 8 Cores at 4.7 GHz For $399 US The Ryzen 7 3800XT will become AMD's fastest 8 core solution to directly tackle the Intel Core i7-10700K. This chip will offer 8 cores and 16 threads but with increased boost clocks. The base clock will be retained at 3.8 GHz but the boost clocks will be increased to 4.7 GHz for more performance. In addition to the clock speeds, the chip will retain its PCIe Gen 4.0 capabilities and offer up to 36 MB of total cache in a 105W TDP design. AMD has priced the Ryzen 7 3800XT at $399 US which is the same as the MSRP for the 3800X but that could be had for around $300 US at almost every major retailer around the globe. AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT - 6 Cores at 4.5 GHz For $249 US Finally, we have the entry-level XT model, the Ryzen 5 3600XT. The Ryzen 5 3600XT is going against the Intel Core i5-10600K with 6 cores and 12 threads. The chip will pack 35 MB of the total cache at 95 Watts. The Ryzen 5 3600XT will offer a 3.8 GHz base and 4.5 GHz boost frequencies which are a definite improvement over the stock Ryzen 5 3600X. It'll just be slightly lower clocked than the Intel Core i5-10600K while offering tremendously better IPC and multi-threading performance out of the box, giving AMD the opportunity to reclaim its position in the mainstream market. However, it remains to be soon how the market responds to the prices of these particular CPUs, especially considering that the current non-XT models feature near-identical performance at vastly lower price points. AMD Ryzen 3000 'Mattise Refresh' Desktop CPU Family: AMD themselves claim a 4% average performance improvement in single-threaded workloads while featuring a 40% increase in power efficiency than competing chips. While the boost looks good on paper, it should be noted that these processors will live alongside the existing Ryzen X series family which has seen massive price cuts up to $100 US over the official MSRPs. The new CPUs will retain the MSRP prices for a while at $499 for the Ryzen 9 3900XT, $399 for the Ryzen 7 3800XT and $249 US for the Ryzen 5 3600XT making them a hard purchase over existing parts in terms of their value proposition. Note - Expreview reports that the AMD Ryzen 3000XT CPUs have a lower starting MSRP than the original Ryzen 3000X CPUs. The Ryzen 9 3900XT has an MSRP of 3899 CNY compared to 3999 CNY of the Ryzen 9 3900X, the Ryzen 7 3800XT has an MSRP of 3049 CNY compared to 3199 CNY of the Ryzen 7 3800X while the Ryzen 5 3600XT has an MSRP of 1859 CNY compared to 1999 CNY of the Ryzen 5 3600XT. Also with Zen 3 based Ryzen 4000 'Vermeer' desktop processors launching later this year, I think a better choice would be to get the existing and much cheaper Ryzen 3000X series CPUs and wait till Q4 2020 to get your hands on the next-generation chips.

Amazon is making it easier for wannabe developers to quickly create apps with a new coding offering that requires little to no programming. The new Amazon Honeycode platform allows users to build mobile and web applications, no matter their level of expertise The company says Honeycode is built on "the full power and scale of AWS", and is available in beta from today in certain regions, with more coming soon. Amazon Honeycode Amazon Honeycode provides users with a web-based visual app builder that the company says takes a lot of the complications out of development, as well as reducing reliance on shared spreadsheets that constantly need emailing around a business. Users can choose from a number of pre-built templates, or elect to create their own using the spreadsheet-based set-up, adding in functions and services using Excel-esque formulas Among the templates available are apps for process approvals, event scheduling, customer relationship management, user surveys, to-do lists, and content and inventory tracking. Data from these apps is then taken and processed by a database built on AWS, which Amazon says can be scaled up to 100,000 rows per workbook, meaning users don't have to worry about the underlying infrastructure, and can instead get on with building their apps. Amazon Honeycode is free to use to build applications for up to 20 users, however anything bigger than that will require payment depending on the number of users and the storage needs required. “Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them,” said Larry Augustin, Vice President, Amazon Web Services, noting that Slack has already been signed up as a Honeycode customer. “Now with Amazon Honeycode, almost anyone can create powerful custom mobile and web applications without the need to write code

Original release date: October 27, 2009 Music: Christian Linke Engine: Game specific Version: 10.12 (10/06/2020) Game mode: Online multiplayer Awards: BAFTA Games Award for Persistent Game, PLUS League of Legends is not just a game: it's a cutthroat competitive digital sport where the winners roar in victory and the losers whimper in defeat. You don't need to play on the same level as the pros to experience the thrills of these online battlegrounds, however. Blending elements of action role-playing, real-time strategy, and tower defense games into an engrossing amalgam of awesome, League of Legends is a free-to-play game that ensures each play session yields a unique and explosive experience. Each player in a match controls a single champion. In the default game mode, Summoner's Rift, two teams of five champions are pitted against each another with the ultimate goal of destroying the opposing team's nexus, which is guarded by three lanes of towers. The catch is that at the start of a match, your champion is only level 1 with no items to back up his or her quest for victory. To power up to a level sufficient enough to take on the enemy's base, a champion must first focus on killing AI-controlled minions for gold and experience. The gold can be spent at the shop at each team's respective base in order to purchase items like the appropriately named B. F. Sword (a big freakin' sword), or its mage-friendly counterpart, the Needlessly Large Rod. Once you're appropriately equipped, your goal shifts from slaughtering the endless waves of minions to pushing your army down the lanes by destroying the towers. Of course, your enemies won't stand idly by and watch you destroy them. League of Legends erupts in beautiful savagery once the teams of five group and fight as a unified force. As the two teams engage one another in a semi-chaotic brawl, players dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge skill-shots and target abilities in order to survive and kill the opposition. Team fights can make or break a match, as victory in a single battle means there will be no resistance to the siege of towers for some time. Trailing teams may attempt to turtle around a tower in order to use its power to make up for their weakness, and then mount a defense that turns the tides of battle into an epic comeback. Team fights don't always erupt around towers, however. An elder lizard and an ancient golem both spawn in each team's jungle, and slaying one grants special sigil buffs. In the early stages of a game, some of the tensest moments occur when a team tries to steal away a buff from the opposing team. These skirmishes may not even result in a kill, but denying an enemy champion the mana regeneration of their ancient golem's blue sigil can grant a power play during which you may assert your dominance over the middle lane. Along the river, there are far more powerful neutral monsters which grant global gold to the team that bravely battles them. The dragon is a powder keg of early game team fights; combatants wage a war of vision-granting wards in order to ensure both, or neither, have vision over the dragon's pit so they may exterminate the beast out of sight of their foes. Failing the Baron fight or having the enemy steal the kill quickly turns the tide into a tsunami of aggression against you and your teammates. Late in the game, the powerful Baron Nashor serves as a cold war catalyst. You seek to kill him for the enormous stat boost he grants, but you also fear being nuked by a lurking enemy team, and so you wisely wait to fight him until you know your foes cannot contest. The stalemates over Baron are some of the most intense moments League of Legends has to offer, making the catharsis of overcoming a mighty challenge even greater. Beware, though, as failing the Baron fight or having the enemy steal the kill quickly turns the tide into a tsunami of aggression against you and your teammates. Every match is a challenge, and with over 100 champions to choose from, there are countless ways for a team to overcome it. Whether your style involves dropping a flaming bear on the opposition to stun them all, flying in as a frozen phoenix to summon a wall of ice and cut off a path of retreat, or slashing through minions in a fit of undying barbaric rage, League of Legends has you covered. Champion designs draw influence from regional legends and mythology, though others are Riot's own unique creations. Although most can be categorized as a role-playing archetype (mage, marksman, assassin, tank, fighter, or support), some champions blend two or more archetypes and allow you flexibility in how to play. Riot has worked to ensure that new players don't immediately mix with veterans. League of Legends requires new players to reach level 3 by playing tutorial matches and cooperative matches versus the AI before being allowed to queue for matchmaking. If you're a complete novice, however, it's best to avoid facing other humans until you are certain you understand the basics of the game. Some veteran players may lurk on lower-level accounts, while others have slipped past bans issued by Riot's automated tribunal system, and their familiarity with the game will give them an unfair advantage. In spite of the tribunal system, which removes particularly unsavory players from the player pool, plenty of combatants use the chat window to vent their frustration toward others. Underperforming, arrogant, and impolite players are still unfortunate hurdles you must occasionally overcome. To keep you invested in the game, Riot allows you to unlock champions permanently using influence points (earned by playing matches in the game) or Riot points (purchased with real money). Riot points can also be spent on boosts to increase IP gain, but the most common reason you may end up purchasing RP is to unlock skins. The pricier skin options also tweak champions' animations, spell effects, and even voice-overs in the case of legendary and ultimate skins. Skins have no actual effect on a champion's combat ability, so spending money on the game doesn't offer any actual gameplay advantage. Don't be fooled by the free-to-play moniker, though: you might eventually find a skin that finally convinces you to pay to support the game, and soon find yourself staring at a vast library of looks. However, the influence points earned through participating in matches can offer distinct gameplay advantages by adjusting the stats of a champion. Runes, which can only be purchased with influence points, can offer a flat bonus to a stat, or a bonus that gets more powerful over the course of a game as a champion levels up. All in all, you may assign up to 30 runes to your individual rune pages, with a new rune slot becoming available every time you gain in summoner level until you reach the cap at 30. Rune and mastery setups allow you to customize your champions' stats as you see fit, and dedicated theorycrafters will relish the ability to make a seemingly weak champion smash perceptions and succeed. Also unlocking at summoner level 30 is the true focus of the more hardcore players: ranked solo/duo matchmaking queues. You may queue alone or drag a friend along for the ride as you play games with slightly higher stakes than the normal games. Winning or losing in a ranked game grants or deducts league points from the summoner account. League points help to sort players into tiers ranging from bronze to challenger, with the challenger tier being available only to the cream of the crop among League of Legends players. If you're a player with an insatiable competitive appetite, ranked queues are where you'll find your home. If you don't find the initial Summoner's Rift map appealing, you'll be glad for the other vibrant battlefields on offer. Crystal Scar, Twisted Treeline, and Howling Abyss maps each stamp League of Legends with their own unique marks. Crystal Scar is a five-versus-five map with a focus on capturing territories in order to damage the opponent's nexus. Twisted Treeline plays mostly like Summoner's Rift, but with a limit of three players per team. And Howling Abyss, affectionately dubbed "Murderbridge" by the community, pits teams against one another in a single lane, with the queue for that map randomly selecting an available character to assign to each player in the game mode referred to as "ARAM" (short for "all random, all mid"). It's difficult to resist the constant thrill of the game's diverse battles. Differences between League of Legends and Dota highlight LoL's focus on a cleaner learning curve for new players as well as the (normally) healthy competitive environment. The unintuitive mechanic of denying, in which you kill a minion or tower on your own team so that the opposition may not earn gold, does not exist. Although this slightly reduces the control you have over the lane and where minions meet, it also frees you up to focus more on interacting with the opposing champions, rather than with the minions. Additionally, randomized elements, such as a chance to do anything (critical hits excepted) have been removed from League of Legends, ensuring you have a greater ability to predict the outcome of a given situation. The game is still expanding, with a new playable champion being introduced roughly every month. Riot is highly proactive in keeping the game as balanced as possible as new gameplay trends are discovered and rise in po[CENSORED]rity. For instance, a robust spectator tool and multiple game modes have appeared over the game's four-year history. The only missing feature that could be labeled a staple for competitive games is a replay feature, but even that is currently in development, with an iteration available for testing on the test realm. League of Legends is a fantastic game with something for players of all skill ranges to enjoy. Although it's better to play with friends, you are not left to your own devices if you tend to keep to yourself. The early hours can be frustrating as you learn the ropes, but once you are swept away by the ebb and flow, it's difficult to resist the constant thrill of the game's diverse battles. Once League of Legends has its hooks in you, don't be shocked to find you've spent a few hundred hours seeking digital fame in one of video gaming's finest battlegrounds. CPU: Info CPU SPEED: 3 GHz processor (supporting SSE2 instruction set or higher) RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (Windows XP and Vista are no longer officially supported by Riot) VIDEO CARD: Shader version 2.0 capable video card PIXEL SHADER: 2.0 VERTEX SHADER: 2.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 8 GB

Mr Rolfe conducted a sobriety test on Mr Brooks in the car park A police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks, a black man killed last week in Atlanta, will be charged with murder and assault, officials say. The other officer involved plans to testify as a witness in the case, the Fulton County District Attorney said in a news conference on Wednesday. The decision comes in the wake of nationwide protests over the deaths of black Americans in police custody. Lawmakers in Washington are currently debating new police reform laws. Garrett Rolfe, who has already been fired from the Atlanta police force, will face 11 charges related to Mr Brooks' death. If convicted of the charges, he could face the death penalty. Officer Devin Brosnan, who was also present for the arrest, will be charged with assault for standing on Mr Brooks' shoulder as he lay dying. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said that this was the ninth time that an Atlanta police officer had been prosecuted for homicide. He added that he believed it was the first time a police officer had offered to testify against a member of his unit. Which US police reform plan might become law? Seven solutions to US police problems Mr Brooks failed a field sobriety test on 12 June after he was found asleep inside his car, blocking a drive-through lane at a Wendy's restaurant. For over 40 minutes, video shows him complying with officers as he consented to a weapons search and provided them with his identification details. District Attorney Howard said that eight videos from the scene showed that Mr Brooks "displayed no aggressive behaviour during the 41 minutes and 17 seconds" that he was questioned, and posed no physical risk to the officers in that time. However, as officers tried to handcuff him, he began struggling. Mr Brooks punched an officer, grabbing one of their Tasers and turning back to fire it at them as he fled. Mr Brooks suffered two gunshots to the back that caused organ injuries and blood loss. One police bullet also hit a witness' vehicle, nearly killing the driver, investigators say. Garrett Rolfe, who fired the fatal shot, has already been sacked from the Atlanta police force. Officer Devin Brosnan, who was also present for the arrest, has been placed on administrative leave. Mr Brosnan has become a state witness, and plans to testify in the case, according to Mr Howard. The struggle that cost Rayshard Brooks his life Video shows Mr Rolfe saying "I got him". For two minutes after Mr Brooks was shot, neither officer provided medical attention as police are required to do, prosecutors said. Instead, Mr Rolfe kicked Mr Brooks while he was on the ground, and Officer Brosnan stood on Mr Brooks' shoulder immediately after the shooting, Mr Howard added. The shooting came amid nationwide unrest over the death in police custody of another unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis. The four officers involved in Mr Floyd's arrest have been sacked and are facing charges of second-degree murder, or aiding and abetting murder. Rayshard Brooks (undated photo) The Wendy's restaurant where Mr Brooks died was burned by arsonists after about 1,000 protesters turned up there in the hours after his death. The decision to press charges comes only five days after Mr Brooks died, and as his family prepares for his funeral. He leaves behind a wife and four young children.

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India and China have been locked in a border dispute for decades At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese forces in Ladakh in the disputed Kashmir region, Indian officials say. The incident follows rising tensions, and is the first deadly clash in the border area in at least 45 years. The Indian army initially said three of its soldiers had been killed, adding that both sides suffered casualties. But later on Tuesday, officials said a number of critically injured soldiers had died of their wounds. India's external affairs ministry accused China of breaking an agreement struck the previous week to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Galwan Valley. BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says violence between two armies high up in the Himalayas is very serious, and pressure will grow on the two nuclear powers not to allow a slide into full-scale conflict. What have both sides said about the incident? Early on Tuesday the Indian army said three of its soldiers, including an officer, had died in a clash in the area. Later in the day, it released a statement saying the two sides had disengaged. It added that "17 Indian troops who were critically injured in the line of duty" and died from their injuries, taking the "total that were killed in action to 20". China did not confirm any casualties, but accused India in turn of crossing the border onto the Chinese side. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said India had crossed the border twice on Monday, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides", AFP news agency reported. Both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades, and the Indian army said on Tuesday that "no shots were fired" in this latest skirmish. How a clash that did not involve an exchange of fire could prove so lethal is unclear. There are reports that it was fought with rocks and clubs Local media outlets reported that the Indian soldiers had been "beaten to death". How tense is the area? The LAC is poorly demarcated. The presence of rivers, lakes and snowcaps means the line can shift. The soldiers either side - representing two of the world's largest armies - come face to face at many points. But there have been tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks. India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh's Galwan valley and says China occupies 38,000sq km (14,700sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes. The two countries have fought only one war so far, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat. In May, dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border in the north-eastern state of Sikkim. And in 2017, the two countries clashed in the region after China tried to extend a border road through a disputed plateau. Tensions have risen over a road built by India in Ladakh There are several reasons why tensions are rising now - but competing strategic goals lie at the root, and both sides blame each other. India has built a new road in what experts say is the most remote and vulnerable area along the LAC in Ladakh. And India's decision to ramp up infrastructure seems to have infuriated Beijing. The road could boost Delhi's capability to move men and materiel rapidly in case of a conflict. India also disputes part of Kashmir - an ethnically diverse Himalayan region covering about 140,000sq km - with Pakistan. Over the past week, Indian media have been reporting that troops from both sides had been gradually moving back from their stand-off positions, and that efforts were under way to de-escalate the tensions. So it will come as a surprise to many to hear of a violent clash in which three Indian soldiers were killed. The last time the two sides exchanged any gunfire along the border was 1975, when four Indian soldiers were killed in a remote pass in north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The details of the latest skirmish, and the emergency measures being taken to defuse it, are still unclear. Whatever the result, the latest incident is likely to trigger a fresh wave of anti-China sentiments in India. It will also present daunting foreign policy and security challenges to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, which is struggling to contain a surge of Covid-19 infections and revive an economy which looks headed for recession.

One in three women are suffering from loneliness in lockdown, new research suggests. According to a study carried out by economists at the University of Essex, women are experiencing more problems with mental health than men during the coronavirus outbreak. For example, the number of people reporting at least one underlying mental health issue has risen from seven per cent to 18 per cent during the pandemic. For women, this figure has risen from 11 per cent to 27 per cent. The researchers suggested the difference could be because of the greater demands placed on women in terms of childcare and domestic duties. “Using rich data we document a similar finding for the UK. We add to these existing studies by showing that much of the gender gap in well-being can be explained by gender differences in social factors and increased feelings of loneliness. “We also show that gender differences in family-related time use and caring responsibilities appear to play a role.”