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Apple has seen fit to release the final build of its latest iOS 12.1.3 update along with watchOS, macOS and tvOS updates. Apart from this, Apple has also updated the software for its smart speaker. The latest build jumps up the software version to 12.1.13. So, let’s dive in to see what the new HomePod software update has in store for users. Apple Has Released HomePod Software Update With Bug Fixes And More If you’re interested in installing the latest HomePod Software Update, make sure that your iPhone is running the latest iOS 12.1.3. If so, the HomePod Software Update will be installed automatically on the smart speaker. The latest build fixes some crucial bugs in the software which were causing an issue with the smart speaker. The HomePod Software Update fixes an issue which was causing Apple’s smart speaker to restart automatically. Additionally, it also addresses an issue in which Siri stops listening to user commands. Here’s the entire changelog for the update: This update: Fixes an issue in Messages that could impact scrolling through photos in the Details view Addresses an issue where photos could have striped artifacts after being sent from the Share Sheet Fixes an issue that may cause audio distortion when using external audio input devices on iPad Pro (2018) Resolves an issue that could cause certain CarPlay systems to disconnect from iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max This release also includes bug fixes for HomePod. This update: Fixes an issue that could cause HomePod to restart Addresses an issue that could cause Siri to stop listening HomePod is available in the United States, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Mexico, China, and Hong Kong. Be sure to update your HomePod Software to the latest build to avoid potential issues. There will be more to the story, so be sure to stay tuned in for more details on the matter. This is all for now, folks. What are your thoughts on the matter? Share your views with us in the comments section below.

The latest Intel Client CPU roadmap has leaked out which details desktop and mobility product plans till 2021. The roadmap shows Intel’s upcoming 14nm and 10nm products lines which will launch in the coming years. Intel’s Latest Desktop and Mobility CPU Roadmap Leaks Out – No 10nm For Desktop Platforms Till 2022, 10nm Ice Lake and Lakefield CPUs For Mobility Arriving In 2019 The latest roadmaps come from Tweakers and detail both, the Client Commercial CPU products and the Client Mobile CPU products which would be introduced in the future. The authenticity of these roadmaps cannot be confirmed but they are referenced back to the Intel’s SIP program and DELL so there might be some legitimacy to them. Intel Desktop Client CPU (2019-2021) Roadmap Starting off with the desktop side of things, we are looking at the S-Series and Xeon E series family. The S-Series lineup is based around Socket-H (LGA 115*) and has various 35W/65W/95W SKUs. The lineup is currently made up of 14nm++ based Coffee Lake-S Refresh parts which fall under the 9th Generation banner. These include up to 8 core SKUs with the flagship product being the i9-9900K. It looks like Intel will stick with 14nm++ for a while as the roadmap reveals. Around Q2 2020, Intel will launch their Comet Lake-S processors, featuring up to 10 core SKUs. These would be followed by Intel’s Rocket Lake-S parts which would also be based on an optimized 14nm process node. It looks like we can expect a 10nm or sub-10nm part from Intel only around 2022 which is about the same time Intel is expected to launch their Ocean Cove CPU architecture. Ocean Cove is a future chip architecture under development at Intel which will launch after Golden Cove (2021), the successor to Willow Cove (2020) which itself is the successor to Intel’s Sunny Cove (Ice Lake) core’s architecture. As for the Xeon E side, we currently got the new Coffee Lake-E series parts featuring up to 8 cores but the upcoming family, which will be called Comet Lake Xeon-E will feature up to 10 cores while supporting PCIe Gen 3 in Q1 2020. Its successor will be Rocket Lake Xeon-E which will also feature up to 10 cores and support the new PCIe Gen 4.0 standard and launch in Q1 2021. Now there are a few things to consider here, first is that relying on 14nm for as long as 2021 when your competitor would be moving to 7nm+ (EUV) or even sub 7nm doesn’t sound well for Intel’s mainstream/client desktop plans. Also, their entry-level workstation platform or Xeon-E would be much late to support the PCIe Gen 4.0 standard which is expected to be introduced on AMD’s X570 platform, next month. Intel Mobile Client CPU (2019-2021) Roadmap Moving over to the mobility side, the chances of getting 10nm here are much higher than the pure desktop parts. The top-end H/G SKUs which have 45W and 65W TDPs will get the Comet Lake-H to refresh in Q2 2020, featuring up to 8 / 10 cores on 14nm. Over at the U-series which includes 28-15W SKUs, Intel will first be introducing their Ice Lake-U series dual and quad-core processors. These will have limited production while the actual volume production would be given to Comet Lake-U (14nm) which will have up to 6 core SKUs. The Ice Lake-U series will be introduced around Computex while Comet Lake-U series would be introduced in Q3 2019. There’s also Rocket Lake-U which will feature up to 6 core SKUs (14nm) and also 14nm or 10nm graphics chips when it arrives in 2020. These would most possibly off die chips rather than the on-die chips that Intel currently uses on their mobility GPUs. Much like the G-Series Kaby Lake parts that Intel introduced last year that featured off-die AMD Vega graphics but this time, they would have their own GPU architecture powering the graphics. Intel’s Lakefield SOCs using the Forveros multi-die packaging technology is expected to hit retail around mid of 2019 and will be based on a mix of 10nm and 14nm IPs. There’s also Ice Lake-Y 2 core SKUs (10nm) planned for Q2 2019 and marked as limited while it’s successor, Tiger Lake-Y 10nm) with 4 core options has no such markings. It looks like Intel’s 10nm yields would get better by mid-2020 so they can offer more mainstream products to the mass market. Intel would also simultaneously be offering up to 4 core (14nm) Comet Lake-Y parts around Q3 2019 so they’ll have both 14nm and 10nm Y-series products available around the same time. The roadmaps are definitely interesting and even if they are legit, one thing that needs to be confirmed is whether they are the latest ones or outdated. Intel has had product schedules changed over different roadmaps in the past and this may very well be an older one. It still provides us with some good information as to what Intel product names are called, as the 14nm Rocket Lake lineup was previously unheard of.

Volvo has launched what it claims is the “UK’s most comprehensive online new car buying service”. The initiative - live at www.volvocars.co.uk/order-online - allows buyers to configure their new car, part exchange their old one and, if necessary, sign a finance agreement online in less than 20 minutes, according to its creators. Volvos can be bought on factory order or from stock, with orders always linked to a retailer which will set pricing. Used Volvos could be offered at a future date. All sales will be subject to distance selling regulations, giving customers who choose to buy entirely online further consumer rights. Initially only the XC40 will be available through the Volvo configurator, but other models are available to buy online now and configuration will be rolled out from the 3rd of May. Buyers can purchase their car with cash, on a PCP or a PCH, however the latter will not be possible via an electronic signature until the second half of 2019. The configurator is set up to amend the monthly cost of leasing the car as a customer adds options, in order to give them a live quote. “Whether online or offline, the way people buy cars has changed. Customers now have much more control over the process, and Volvo Online helps them to take that one step further,” said Volvo UK managing director Jon Wakefield. “It makes life as easy as possible without compromising on choice or security, and lets customers drive the purchase process when it’s most convenient for them.” Other manufacturers, including Hyundai, Peugeot, Ford and Tesla, have unveiled similar online purchasing initiatives, although reports suggest that, to date, they have been more useful for gaining customer behaviour insight than profitability. “It is very clear that we are entering this space in order to learn,” said Wakefield. “By engaging in this way with our customers we will find out what they want. Our expectation is that a significant number will enjoy the process as part of the transaction, and as we learn we can adapt our service.” Volvo also faces strong opposition from intermediary sites that work with retailer groups to offer its cars, often at significant discounts. These include Autocar’s sister site What Car? which links buyers to retailers of cars at its Target Price - the most its mystery shoppers say you should pay for a new car - or below. However, Wakefield stressed that individual Volvo dealers will be able to set their pricing for the online initiative. “Our retailers will be free to set prices, but if you are wanting to buy on price alone then there are aggregators out there,” he said. “What we’re offering gives you a guiding hand, with a stress-free brand experience.” Volvo’s sales to date in the UK are up 39% year-on-year, driven by the ongoing success of the XC40 and new launches such as the upcoming S60. The UK recently overtook Sweden as Volvo’s third biggest market, behind China and the US.

Joe Biden: Will it be third time lucky in 2020? Former US Vice-President Joe Biden has declared a presidential bid, putting an end to months of speculation. In a video announcement, Mr Biden argued that the "core values of the nation... our very democracy, everything that has made America America, is at stake". The 76-year-old enters a crowded race for the 2020 Democratic nomination. He is up against 19 other hopefuls, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders. In his announcement, Mr Biden recalled President Donald Trump's much-criticised remark that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the deadly Charlottesville white nationalist riots of 2017. "With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it," Mr Biden said. "I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen." Mr Biden is the most experienced of the Democratic candidates. A six-term senator, he ran twice unsuccessfully for president - in 1988 and 2008 - and later served as President Barack Obama's deputy for two terms. Responding to the announcement, a spokesman for Mr Obama said selecting Mr Biden as his running mate "was one of the best decisions he ever made" and the two had "forged a special bond", but the former president notably stopped short of an endorsement. Joe Biden is currently leading in the national polls Mr Biden was tipped to run for president again in 2016, the year Mr Trump was elected, but ruled himself out after the death of his 46-year-old son, Beau Biden, from a brain tumour. He has enjoyed relative po[CENSORED]rity among Democrats in recent years, consistently leading every national poll of the Democratic primary tracked by the website RealClearPolitics. The sheer weight of his experience sets him apart from many of the younger 2020 Democratic hopefuls, and widespread name recognition makes him an immediate front-runner. Mr Biden is also betting on having the strongest appeal of the Democratic candidates across America's Midwest, where many low-income voters have abandoned the party in recent years in favour of Mr Trump. The former vice-president's campaign suffered a stumble before it began, when he was forced to address claims he had inappropriately invaded the personal space of women. He apologised, saying: "The boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset," he said. "I understand it and I'll be much more mindful." Joe Biden enters the Democratic presidential contest as a front-runner, if not the front-runner. He has near universal name recognition, a close connection to the halcyon days (at least, for Democrats) of the Obama presidency, and the potential to raise vast amounts of campaign money through traditional Democratic donor networks. Of course, so did Hillary Clinton in 2015 - and we all know how that turned out. Like the former secretary of state, Mr Biden in his launch video seems to be defining himself as much by who he isn't - Donald Trump - as what he wants to do. It was a oft-criticised strategy for Mrs Clinton in 2016, but with two years of the Trump presidency in the books, Mr Biden seems to be betting that a majority of Americans who have now seen Trumpism in practice have had enough. Which Democrats are running in 2020? Mr Biden shares some of the political weaknesses demonstrated in Mrs Clinton's presidential race as well. Her lengthy time in the public eye left a long record for her opponents to pick apart, and bound her to a status quo establishment many Americans had come to distrust. Expect the former vice-president's position against school bussing to end segregation in the 1970s, his chairmanship of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, and his support for the 2003 Iraq War and stringent anti-crime and bankruptcy bills to be spotlighted by the diverse and talented primary field opposing him. Then there's his advanced age, propensity for verbal stumbles, allegations of inappropriate physical contact and status as a two-time loser in past White House bids. The former vice-president has a lot going for him. He also has a lot going against him. The durability of his campaign is one of the big questions hovering over the early days of the 2020 Democratic race. Those questions will soon be answered. Who is Joe Biden? Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was born on 20 November 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of four children in an Irish-Catholic family. In 1972, Mr Biden was elected to the US Senate at the age of 29, and took office a few weeks later when he turned 30 - the minimum age to enter the Senate. Just before he took office, he was devastated by tragedy: his wife Neilia and infant daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash. Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia cutting his 30th birthday cake in November 1972 Mr Biden first ran for the presidency in the 1988 election, but he withdrew after admitting that he had plagiarised a speech by Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party in the UK at the time. After that bid he spent time rising through the Senate ranks, eventually becoming chairman of the judiciary and foreign relations committees. In 2008 he ran for president again, but failed to gain the political traction he needed and dropped out again. Instead, he joined the Obama ticket as candidate for vice-president.

Apple has seen fit to release beta 4 of its forthcoming watchOS 4.3 firmware update for the Apple Watch. The beta 4 has been seeded to developers for testing purposes. The fourth beta arrives a little over two weeks after the company seeded watchOS 4.2.3, which was a minor upgrade in terms of the forward facing additions part of the update. However, watchOS 4.3 will be different as it would incorporate several new additions which Apple Watch users do not currently possess. So let’s dive in to see some more details on the matter. Apple Seeds watchOS 4.3 With Portrait Nightstand, Music Playback Control Extension And More If you’re interested in giving the watchOS 4.3 beta 4 a swing, be sure to note that a proper profile is required. You can install it through the Apple Developer Center. The new beta 4 version of watchOS 4.3 can be installed through the dedicated Apple Watch app on your iPhone. All you have to do is navigate to the Apple Watch app and then tap on General then tap on Sofware Update. The new watchOS beta will be installed. The upcoming watchOS 4,3 will add support for the Nightstand mode in portrait orientation. This was only available previously when users placed their Apple Watch in landscape orientation. Apart from this, a new charging animation and app loading animation will be added as well. Activity data will also be displayed on the Siri watch face and the complication corresponding to the battery will now be more accurate. One other feature which was previously highly demanded by users was the ability to control music playback on the iPhone with the Apple Watch. So this would definitely b a welcome addition. Previously, only the music playing on the watch itself would be controlled via the Music app. Similarly, you would also have the option available to control music playing on the Apple TV with your Apple Watch as well. It’s a pretty nifty feature to have on a watch. Apple will possibly release the watchOS 4.3 in the springtime. There will be more to the story, so be sure to stay tuned in for more. This is all for now, folks. What are your thoughts on the upcoming new features in the watchOS 4.3? Share your views with us in the comments.

It’s that time again, time for Razer to refresh their Blade Series lineup with the Razer Blade 15 and Blade Pro 17 for 2019. This time they’re bringing newer higher refresh rate panels to the lineup, new 9th Generation Intel Core Series CPUs, and RTX 20 Series graphic cards across the board. The Razer Blade series has come quite a ways and continues to improve on features while maintaining a very elegant design package with their machined aluminum bodies and very slim profile, offering a great mix of work and play for a very well rounded higher end gaming laptop experience. Razer Blade 15 The Razer Blade 15 (15.6′ screen) gets a nice boost in productivity over the previous base model base model now sporting a 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H 6 core CPU. The GPU has been pumped up from the GTX 1060 and is now featuring the GeForce RTX 2060 along with a much more exciting 144Hz 1080p color calibrated panel. For those who have gamed or worked on a 144Hz panel will understand the significance of such a move. Storage comes in the form of a 512GB NVMe along with an empty 2.5″ slot for mass storage if needed and comes with 16GB of DDR4 Dual-Channel 2667MHz that is expandable to 32GB. Of course the Razer Blade 15 Advanced is still a thing and it gets some feature improvements as well. The CPU remains the same, but that’s nothing to complain about really, and the GPU gets pumped to either a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q or a GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q. You get two options when it comes to display panels on the Advanced model in the form of either a 240Hz 1080p panel or a OLED 4K Touch 60Hz panel. While I personally would lean on the 240Hz panel at 1080p for maximum performance after seeing the 4K OLED at CES earlier this year it would be pretty tempting. Storage comes in the form of a 256GB or 512GB NVMe but does not have an empty 2.5″ slot and comes with 16GB of DDR4 Dual-Channel 2667MHz that is expandable to 64GB. “The Razer Blade 15 is the perfect companion for hardcore gamers and power users,” says Razer Co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan. “Now we’re packing even more performance in the same slim form factor to satisfy the needs of even the most demanding gamers, esports athletes and content creators.” PRICE & AVAILABILITY Base Model – $1,999 USD; Advanced Model from $2,399 USD Razer.com – April 24th 2019 in the US & Canada, May 2019 for additional markets & channels Razer Blade Pro 17 The Razer Blade Pro 17 is the big daddy of Razer’s lineup but without being a monstrosity to lug around. The Blade Pro 17 gets the same 9th Gen Core i7-9750H treatment as the Blade 15 but rather than having a base and advanced model it is just one line with options for upgrades. Those upgrades are mostly in the form of which GPU you want which include the GeForce RTX 2060, the GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q, and the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q. Display configuration is easy to decide on with the Blade Pro 17 as there is only one, the 144Hz 17.3″ 1080p panel with an insane 6mm bezel. This allows the panel to be easily read and the overall size of the chassis to be kept to a minimum making it a fairly compact 17″ class notebook. Storage comes standard with a 512GB NVMe drive that can be upgraded to a 2TB SSD for those who need more storage. There is also an open M.2 Slot that supports PCIe and SATA SSDs to further expand your non-spinning storage desires. Memory comes in the standard 16GB DDR4 Dual-Channel 2667MHz but can be upgraded to 64GB. “The new Blade Pro is the most powerful and versatile Razer laptop ever, capable of replacing the most powerful desktop computers,” says Razer’s Co-Founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan. “It is the perfect laptop for gamers who demand a large display, an insane amount of connectivity options, and excellent performance with no room for compromise.” PRICING & AVAILABILITY Starting at $2,499 USD/ €2,699.99 The new Razer Blade Pro 17 will be available in May 2019 from Razer.com and select retailers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and China.

These included more details of a plan to profitability for the American electric vehicle (EV) maker during a period of additional financial turmoil. There is concern within Wall Street that demand for Teslas has slowed after an initial global rush this year, while short-term problems such as arranging successful deliveries globally has proved to be a sticking point. Musk forecasted that the company will become “extremely cashflow-positive” once it has established a network of “autonomous robotaxis”, beginning next year. He admitted that Tesla “won’t have regulatory approval everywhere” to run such a network but said he was “confident we will have at least regulatory approval somewhere, literally next year”. Acknowledging criticism of Tesla sometimes failing to deliver on its promises, Musk said: “All these things, I said we’d do them. We did it. We’re going to do the robotaxi things too. The only criticism – it’s a fair one – sometimes they’re not on time”. The reference may be to Musk’s frequent optimism for the advent of full autonomy, which appears to have been pushed back. Last month, Tesla started shipping cars that are said to be capable of fully autonomous driving, thanks to new hardware designed in-house. By the end of 2019, Tesla will reportedly have a wireless software update for that system ready, with a target to ensure the system is “safe” by the middle of 2020. Musk promised analysts back in January that the Full Self-Driving system would be granted for permission towards the end of this year. He added yesterday: "probably two years from now, we will make a car with no steering wheel or pedals". If regulators can be successfully convinced of the system’s safety, permission to launch an autonomous taxi service could be granted for the end of 2020. The taxi fleet will be largely made up of customers cars, with Tesla aiming to rent them out to users of a ride-hailing smartphone app. However, it’s expected that a number of new models will need to be brought in if the platform increases in scale during that time. During yesterday's event, Musk also said that Tesla plans in the near future to allow an “aggressive mode” for the Autopilot system that will introduce a “slight chance of a fender bender”, claiming this is "the only way to navigate Los Angeles traffic".

A wave of bombings that killed 290 people in Sri Lanka on Sunday was carried out with the support of an international network, officials said. The government has blamed a little-known local jihadist group, National Thowheed Jamath, although no-one has yet admitted carrying out the bombings. Another 500 people were injured in the suicide attacks on churches and hotels. Police arrested 24 people in a series of raids and the president's office declared a state of national emergency. The emergency declaration, which comes into effect from midnight (18:30 GMT) on Monday, will give police and military extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders. On Monday, another blast rocked a street near a church in the capital, Colombo. Police were attempting to defuse explosives in a vehicle used by the attackers when it blew up. It is not yet known if anyone was hurt. Sri Lankan authorities were warned about a bomb threat from National Thowheed Jamath a full two weeks before the attacks, cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said at a press conference. He said that the warnings were not passed on to the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, or his cabinet. Mr Wickremesinghe acknowledged that security services had been "aware of information" but had not acted on the information. Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando told the BBC that the intelligence "never indicated it was going to be an attack of this magnitude". "They were talking about isolated, one or two incidents. Not like this," he said. He said "all important departments of the police" were informed about the warning, but acknowledged that no action was taken. Suspicion of international support Mr Senaratne said that authorities believed the bombers had international support. "We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country," he said, adding: "There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded." A later statement said President Maithripala Sirisena would ask for foreign help to track down the international links to the attackers. "The intelligence reports [indicate] that foreign terrorist organisations are behind the local terrorists. Therefore, the president is to seek the assistance of the foreign countries," his office said. There were emotional scenes outside St Anthony's Shrine in Colombo A curfew is to be imposed from 20:00 (14:30 GMT) until 04:00 on Tuesday, the government said. A national day of mourning has been scheduled for Tuesday. Sri Lanka's National Security Council said a "conditional state of emergency" from midnight would target "terrorism" and would not limit freedom of expression. In another development, the US State Department issued revised travel advice urging greater caution, adding, "Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka." How did the attacks unfold? The first reports of explosions came at about 08:45 local time with six blasts reported within a small space of time. Three churches in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo's Kochchikade district were targeted during Easter services. Blasts also rocked the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in the country's capital. Police did not release a breakdown of how many people were killed and wounded at each location. All the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, officials said. Police then carried out raids on two addresses and there were explosions at both. One was in Dehiwala, southern Colombo, and the other was near the Colombo district of Dematagoda in which three officers were killed. An improvised explosive device - a 6ft-long [1.8m] plastic pipe packed with explosives - was also found and defused near the airport in Colombo. Police also recovered 87 low-explosive detonators from the Bastian Mawatha private bus station in Pettah, our correspondent reports. What do we know about the attackers? There was swirling speculation about who could be behind the attacks and the government restricted access to social media in the aftermath of the bombings. National Thowheed Jamath was later named by a government spokesman as the main suspect. The group has no history of large-scale attacks but came to prominence last year when it was blamed for damaging Buddhist statues. Addressing reports that officials had had prior intelligence of forthcoming attacks, Mr Wickremesinghe said: "We must look into why adequate precautions were not taken. Neither I nor the ministers were kept informed." A deep wound to the nation Anbarasan Ethirajan, BBC News, Colombo Very few here expected these massive attacks. The co-ordination, sophistication and timing may indicate international support, but it is not clear yet if National Thowheed Jamath, if it is indeed responsible, has links with global jihadist groups. It is thought that some Muslim youths in Sri Lanka were radicalised after clashes last year in Kandy district between the majority Sinhala Buddhists and Muslims. Videos posted on social media showed hardline Islamists and Sinhala hardliners promoting hatred. But why were the Christians targeted? They are also a minority in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Muslims are baffled by the attacks, as well as nervous and afraid. Sri Lanka has experience of such attacks - suicide bombers were used by Tamil Tiger rebels during the civil war. But the ruthlessness of the these new atrocities is a shock, and the number of dead is a deep wound to the nation, a wound that will take much time to heal. Who are the victims? The vast majority of those killed are thought to be Sri Lankan nationals, including scores of Christians who died at Easter church services. The ministry of foreign affairs said it had identified 31 foreign nationals among the dead, with 14 unaccounted for. The death toll included at least eight British citizens and at least eight citizens of India. They include three of the children of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, a family spokesman confirmed to the BBC. Mr Povlsen owns the Bestseller clothing chain and holds a majority stake in clothing giant Asos. British lawyer Anita Nicholson died alongside her two children, Alex, 14, and Annabel, 11, when a suicide bomber detonated a device in the breakfast queue at the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo. Her husband Ben Nicholson survived. "I am deeply distressed at the loss of my wife and children," he said in a statement. "Anita was a wonderful, perfect wife and a brilliant, loving and inspirational mother to our two wonderful children ... Alex and Annabel were the most amazing, intelligent, talented and thoughtful children and Anita and I were immensely proud of them both and looking forward to seeing them develop into adulthood."

The last major Windows update broke some systems with particular antivirus software installed, and it’s seemingly getting worse. Earlier this week we reported that Microsoft halted updates to Windows PCs running Sophos and Avast’s security solutions, following user complaints that their machines were locking up or failing to boot. Since then, the list of known issues for the rogue update was itself updated to acknowledge compatibility issues with Avira and ArcaBit antivirus installed, with Microsoft temporarily blocking updates to those affected systems, too. Today, Ars Technica noticed that Microsoft is investigating compatibility issues for systems with McAfee antivirus installed, though it hasn’t started blocking the April 9 update from those PCs just yet. Windows 7 and 8.1 computers can fall prey to the bug, along with some Windows Server installations. Windows 10 PCs don’t appear to be affected. If you need to do that, get your PC’s guard back up by activating Windows Defender in Windows 8.1, or downloading Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows 7. Both provide free real-time security for your computer. Alternatively, you could buy an antivirus solution from an unaffected vendor. Some of the affected antivirus vendors have already posted workarounds or updates for the problem. Microsoft’s issue tracker for the borked update includes links to the support pages created by AV vendors about this issue. As Ars Technica notes, the support pages from Avast and McAfee hint that the problem stems from changes made to the way Windows handles its Client Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS). Microsoft’s tinkering with core system components have recently caused other headaches with software that sinks deep hooks into your operating system. Windows Insider preview builds for the next major Windows 10 update, releasing in late May, suffered from “Green Screens of Death” if you ran a game with built-in anti-cheat software. Microsoft has been working with anti-cheat software vendors like BattlEye to correct the issue before the May 2019 Update’s final release.

Navi may skip ray tracing for the initial release, focusing instead on boost performance for the midrange sector. AMD hasn't released a truly new GPU architecture for its graphics cards since its RX Vega line in 2017, over 18 months ago. Sure, the Radeon VII and RX 590 are new models, but both represent die shrinks and tuning of the existing Vega and Polaris (respectively) architectures. The Polaris architecture dates back to mid-2016, a three-year hiatus for the midrange graphics card market, but there are rumblings coming from the earth suggesting that's about to change. AMD Navi release date After bringing the Radeon VII to the consumer market in February, I wondered if that might be it for AMD's 7nm GPU aspirations in 2019. Thankfully, it appears I was overly pessimistic, and there are plenty of indications that AMD will be unveiling both its Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi 10 GPUs at Computex in late May/early June. Or at least, the press will be briefed on the new CPUs and GPUs—several other rumors indicate a July 7 retail launch date for Navi. That's 7/7 if you're wondering, a not-so-subtle indication of AMD's use of TSMC's 7nm lithography. I'm not fully sold on the 7/7 launch date, but it's almost certain we'll see new AMD Navi GPUs sometime in the June to August time frame. As to what those GPUs will actually entail, things start to get a lot less clear. AMD Navi specifications It's no secret that AMD GPUs have fallen behind Nvidia offerings, in performance, efficiency, and features. This has been the status quo dating back to at least 2014, when Nvidia's Maxwell architecture doubled down on efficiency, without sacrificing performance. That left the Radeon R9 family to compete primarily on price. Each new family of GPUs largely failed to close the gap, especially when it comes to power efficiency and even die sizes. AMD does compete on price, to varying degrees, but it's time for a new design. We know very little about the actual specs for Navi, other than it will use TSMC's 7nm process technology. Budget and midrange focused Navi 10 models (and Navi 12, according to some rumors) will come first, and they'll forego HBM2, opting for more economical GDDR6 and maybe even GDDR5 memory. A higher performance Navi 20 design is expected to come later—though how much later isn't clear. That could use GDDR6 as well, or it might see a return of HBM2. The move to 7nm allows for a substantially smaller die size, higher clockspeeds, increased core counts, and new features. However, current indications are that AMD won't be adding any specialized hardware cores for ray tracing, at least not with Navi 10. Navi 20 (a variant of which is likely to find its way into the PlayStation 5) will be where AMD adds ray tracing hardware, and it will replace the current Vega and Radeon VII cards, but it likely won't be available until 2020. But for the initial Navi 10 GPUs, AMD will try to increase the performance it offers in the budget and midrange markets. That means more cores, and higher performance per core. Looking at the Vega 64 vs. Radeon VII core size, we can get at least a reasonable estimate of what can be done. Vega 10 (Vega 64) at 14nm is a 486mm^2 die with 12.5 billion transistors, Vega 20 (Radeon VII) at 7nm is a 331mm^2 die with 13.2 billion transistors. That's 32 percent smaller with 6 percent more transistors. With similar scaling, AMD could end up with a 200mm^2 die with 40-48 CUs (2560 to 3072 streaming cores). Toss in higher clockspeeds and lower power consumption, with more memory bandwidth thanks to GDDR6, and the top Navi 10 part could be competitive with RTX 2070. Another option is to just stick with similar core counts but focus on improving efficiency, shrinking the die size, and keeping cost down. GDDR6 can boost memory bandwidth by 75-100 percent compared to GDDR5, so Navi doesn't necessarily need more memory channels. Keep the 36 CU (2304 cores) of Polaris and just clock it higher, while shrinking the die size down to 150-170mm^2, and AMD could end up with a part that matches GTX 1660 Ti performance but costs less to produce. For now, it's not clear which approach AMD will take. AMD Navi models I've held off weighing in on the AMD Navi speculation for the past several months, largely because so many of the rumors have been wafer thin. Or if you prefer, many so-called leaks are just pulling numbers out of a hat and making up a "news" story. The model numbers of the Navi GPUs are still unknown as far as I'm concerned—and no, I don't think RX 3000 is likely. It could happen, or we could get the RX 600 series, or RX Navi, or maybe even RX 777—AMD seems to like the number 7, right? But whatever the new cards are called, AMD will stick with the usual approach of offering multiple levels of performance, based on varying GPU designs. The first Navi 10 cards are slated to go after the midrange market, priced around $250. They'll replace the current RX 590/580/470 line, most likely with two models. Whether they're called RX 680/670 or something else isn't really important. Below these will be at least one budget card, but the budget market is tough to get right. Look at the RX 560 vs. RX 570 right now: the RX 560 4GB starts at $100 and the RX 570 4GB starts at $120, but the 570 is nearly twice as fast. The difficulty is that there's a certain minimum amount of stuff that goes into a graphics card—the PCB, GPU, memory, capacitors, video outputs, cooler, etc. It's why most new GPUs start at $100, even if they're relatively slow, and it's also why we don't generally recommend the cheapest GPUs (eg, GT 1030 or RX 550). The $150-$250 range is typically where the best values lie, delivering good performance at a reasonable price. More to come… For now, there's very little concrete information on AMD's Navi GPUs. We strongly expect a launch this summer, with an unveiling at Computex. That's the earliest we expect to see the cards go on sale, and as Computex gets closer we'll probably start seeing more actual leaks rather than hypothetical GPUs. Some rumors hint at an RTX 2080 competitor, but Radeon VII already goes after that niche and it's difficult to imagine a replacement this soon, never mind getting one at a price below $300. If Navi does end up competing with the RTX 2080, I expect the price will start closer to $450-$500—but without ray tracing support or Tensor cores. As far as architectural changes, AMD hasn't gone into any detail on whether Navi will continue to use GCN, or if it features more fundamental changes. It will likely build off AMD's prior GPU architectures, perhaps with some improvements to memory compression and other techniques, but we'll have to wait for additional details. And as always, we'll want to run independent benchmarks before providing a final verdict. Check back later, as we'll be updating this article as additional information comes to light.

At Horsforth School we aim to educate the whole child. We want our students to achieve and be their best academically, but we also want to develop our students personally and socially. We aim to teach our students how to be reflective, responsible, tolerant and respectful. We want our students to be confident individuals, responsible citizens who feel safe and happy at school. We aim to teach students how to be healthy, make the right choices and be informed. If our young people feel healthy and cared for they will be ready to learn and they will fulfil their potential. As part of our work within Life Skills, we aim to be a healthy school; teaching our younger generations about making the right choices in terms of eating, drinking, physical exercise, drug use, sexual relationships and lifestyle choices is crucial for later life. Our Life Skills lessons play an important part of the curriculum which aims to support students’ spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development and prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life. Life Skills is our name for PSHCE - personal, social, health, citizenship education. Healthy Lifestyles at home A healthy lifestyle starts at home. The government recommends that all young people should be physically active for at least 1 hour a day. We ask that parents support their child’s education by; ensuring they have a nutritious breakfast each morning asking your child to bring a water bottle to school so they can access drinking water all day monitoring what your child is eating at school through ParentPay adhering to our food and drink policy – no confectionary or fizzy/energy drinks providing a healthy packed lunch using our guidelines encouraging your child to take part in extra-curricular clubs taking part in our “no car” zone days, allowing your child to walk or cycle to school considering the smart swaps challenge; swapping sugary/fatty snacks for those less in calories, with more nutrition.

The pitch is simple: these are the cars that do everything, the Gary Sobers, Kapil Devs and Freddie Flintoffs of the automotive world. Go extraordinarily fast? It’s a given. Make you appear suitably plutocratic wherever you turn up? Natch. Keep you endlessly entertained on any empty road? Just look at them. Carry you, your family and your luggage in hushed comfort and true luxury any damn place you want to go? I’m surprised you had to ask. But a pitch is one thing, reality quite another. We can see why you might think (and their creators suggest) that if any car can come close to being all things to all people, a Porsche Panamera or Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door might fit the bill better than any other. But the question here is not just to decide which gets closest, but whether either – or indeed any car – can be truly satisfactory in such disparate regards. Trying to be all things to all owners is the brief from hell, and as sure a recipe as exists for ending up with egg on you face. Press fleet availability means the Porsche and Mercedes seen here are close but not direct rivals, although today this actually helps because it allows us to answer another question, of which more in a minute. One thing both cars absolutely share besides their monstrously powerful twin-turbo V8 engines is stupidly long names. The Porsche is a Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Sport Turismo, the Benz an even more befuddling Mercedes-AMG GT 63 4MATIC+ 4-Door Coupé. But there are clues in these titles: the Porsche is the full-fat Panamera in both the literal and figurative senses of the word – ‘Hybrid’ signifying a 671bhp, electrically boosted power output and a staggering kerb weight of 2400kg, exactly 300kg more than the same car without the hybrid system. That 2100kg, incidentally, is the same weight claimed for the AMG. An ‘S’ model not being available, this poor thing has to slum it with merely 577bhp, not the 631bhp that would otherwise have been at our disposal. Yet even in such denuded form, it still posts a fractionally quicker 0-62mph time and a marginally higher top speed than the Porsche, as if such issues really matter. Any car weighing more than two tonnes that will nevertheless hit 62mph in three and a half seconds or less really is astoundingly fast. Before options, Porsche will charge you £139,297 for the Panamera, over £20,000 more than it wants for the non-hybridised version of the same car, which is a scant 0.3sec slower than the hybrid’s 3.5sec to 62mph. So you’re really going to want what the hybrid brings that the regular Turbo doesn’t, including through-the-floor CO2 figures with associated tax breaks, a claimed 31 miles of all-electric running (nearer to 20 in normal use) and possible congestion charge exemptions and so on. The Benz is less expensive at £121,350, although if you wanted to go the whole hog and get the 631bhp S, with its active engine mounts, rear electronic differential and assorted luxury additions, that knocks the price up to £135,550 and the 0-62mph time down by 0.2sec to a McLaren F1-matching 3.2sec. Finally, both cars are available with a choice of two or three rear seats. We start in the Panamera. You sit snug and low in a superb driving position which tells you that, for all its heft and gadgets, Porsche still wants you to think of this as a sports car. TFT screens bound the horizons, bewildering you with the information assault they mount. There’s some learning to do here, but once done it’s surprisingly intuitive, even if it still takes twice the time to perform certain simple tasks than it would with buttons and switches. If anything, the AMG is more sumptuous still. Its interior is more stylised (your eyes are drawn to those gorgeous turbine air vents), although its feel is more applied than designed in, as the Porsche’s is. You sit a little higher in seats that are a little firmer. Here, too, are endless expanses of screens, which are more attractive to me than those in the Porsche and more configurable but less easy to use, especially via a control pad rather than a wheel. The amount of available information is huge, surely more than any owner could need or want. If you ever wish to reconnect with your inner Luddite, there is no shortage of opportunity in either car. In the back there is no contest: the Porsche is just better. Indeed, having a BMW M5 along for the ride allowed the Panamera to show there is little or nothing to lose in either leg or headroom to a large executive saloon. Four six-footers would be happy to travel unlimited distances in here. The Mercedes is not cramped in the back, indeed its rear quarters are probably more in line with what you might expect from a car calling itself a four-door coupé, but there’s a little less room everywhere and if the person in the front seat has his or her seat as low as possible, it will be hard to slide your feet underneath. The cars’ respective shapes suggest the Porsche would have the bigger boot, too, and it does, although by less than I had expected: 520 litres versus 460 for the Merc. The drive over to the mountain road in the Porsche is informative. It rides well and, as importantly, like a Porsche: firm but never harsh. Out here, running with the traffic on all manner of roads save urban, it’s doubtful the hybrid is doing anything for the fuel consumption. I reckon it would be an unusually careful long-distance driver who got a genuine 25mpg from it. The lighter, less powerful Mercedes would do better, but not by much. And then we’re at our desired location, into Sport Plus mode and away. As we all know, weight is the enemy of all automotive engineering but there is a still a sense of occasion and a certain undeniable majesty to see how the powertrain picks up two and half tonnes of Panamera and Frankel combined, and flings us forward. First time out, I defy you not to laugh. There’s so much torque everywhere that the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission seems almost redundant. Yet everywhere you go, that mass goes too, and you are aware of it all the time. It numbs the steering in corners and challenges the dampers over crests. Grip is provided by four stupendously large contact patches, but this is not a car for chucking or even gently lobbing into corners. It needs to be guided, managed on a slow in, fast out basis, which makes it sound like a 911. But it’s not: on that road there were times it felt a little cumbersome and heavily reliant on its dustbin-lid brakes, whose incredible stopping power was in no way matched by its poor pedal feel. What, then, to expect of the Mercedes? Given how AMG has laboured to find the handling sweet spot in the more comfortable versions of its far lighter, more sporting and bespoke two-seat GT Coupé, possibly not that much. And yet, in reality, the car confounds expectations. First, even before you get to the corners, it’s even quicker than the Porsche. The difference is not great, but it’s there. It sounds better, too, at least inside. Outside I’m told the Panamera was in spectacular voice with its optional sports exhausts, but inside the AMG’s soundtrack is sharper and more exciting. And if its nine-speed gearbox – an automatic rather than a dual-clutch but with a wet clutch in place of a torque converter – is any slower than the Porsche’s ZF unit, I couldn’t spot it. But the real difference comes in the corners. I’m sure the Porsche’s case would have been improved had it been fitted with optional four-wheel steering (on the AMG it’s standard in the UK), but I can’t see it clawing back more than a little of the ground it loses here. The Mercedes feels better in every regard: more intimate, communicative and entertaining, while inspiring more confidence. And in cars this fast, vast and heavy, confidence is crucial. So accurate is its steering, so keen is its nose to sniff out an apex, so fluent is its damping, at times you could mistake it for a genuine sports car, which seems a ludicrous thing to write about a four-door car weighing so much. But I can report only as I find. The drive home gave time to ponder its other appeals. Is it as quiet and comfortable as the Porsche? Probably a touch noisier despite the Panamera’s fatter footprints, but maybe a tad more compliant with the dampers in their softest settings. But it doesn’t matter because both are unreasonably good in both regards. There is, then, a clear case for either car, and what’s curious is how each now trespasses on the other’s traditional territory. You’d expect a Mercedes to have more room for people and luggage and offer the better ergonomics, but it doesn’t. Likewise, you’d expect the Porsche to be the obvious driver’s choice, but it’s not. I expect the Panamera’s case would have been better served by the cheaper, lighter, barely slower standard Turbo, but enough to vanquish the Mercedes? I wouldn’t rule it out, but it is a little hard to see. Don’t let that detract from what AMG has achieved here: unless tax concessions and practicality are numbers one and two on your priority list (and you’re prepared to pay a substantial sum for them), the Mercedes is the better car. To answer the question posed at the start, it is an immense all-rounder, superb in many regards, deficient in none. In short, it is a clear and worthy winner. BMW M5 Competition So here’s a question: why would you spend another £25,000 even buying the Benz (let alone the Porsche) when a BMW M5 Competition is just as quick, lighter still and has a bigger boot than either? Style is clearly a factor: the AMG and Panamera don’t look like close relatives of everyday family saloons (even if, beneath the skin, the Merc has significant amounts of E-Class architecture). Their interiors are more luxurious, their sense of occasion more palpable. But out there on the road? Well, the BMW is not short of pace, it too has four-wheel drive and, like the AMG, can even be rear-drive only for the pleasure of the drift merchants. And yet I couldn’t get it configured the way I wanted for that road, the damping proving too soft in Comfort but too busy in Sport, let alone Sport Plus, and I expect that’s down to the Competition suspension mods. I’m sure they work brilliantly on the track to which no one will ever take theirs, but they are far less convincing on roads such as this. In the end, the M5 Competition poses some good questions of these two but fails to make them look like expensive indulgences by comparison. Had we a standard – and less expensive – M5 with us, those questions might have been not only interesting but likely properly awkward, too.