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WASHINGTON - Azhdarchid pterosaurs were massive flying reptiles that soared across the skies in the age of the dinosaurs, using their long bills to pick out their prey of fish and other river animals. One of the most intriguing things about them has been the extreme length of their necks -- estimated at up to three meters (10 feet), which is longer than a giraffe's and raised questions about how the animals could support its weight without snapping. By studying well-preserved vertebrae specimens excavated from Morocco, a team of scientists think they have the answer: a complex assemblage of extremely light yet weight-bearing spokes inside the bones. Cariad Williams, first author of a new paper that appeared in iScience, told AFP that the team had an idea that the inside of the vertebral column housed a sophisticated internal structure. Myanmar forces gun down at least 80 near Yangon Green dream features atomic superyacht Hun Sen threatens to jail Covid rule-breakers They sent the specimens off for CT scan, and "we just couldn't believe what we'd found -- it is one of the most unique structures that we've ever seen," said the Phd student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It has no known equivalent in the animal kingdom, either modern or extinct, and "I'm just surprised nobody found it sooner," added Williams. The neural tube, which carries nerves through the back bone, is in the center. It connects to the outer walls of the vertebrae via fine bones called trabeculae, that are radially arranged and cross over each other, just like the spokes of a bicycle. These fine bones also run up and down the length of the vertebrae in a helix-like arrangement, adding further strength. The team then collaborated with biomechanical engineers whose calculations suggested that as few as 50 of the spoke-like bones increased the amount of weight the animals could carry by 90 percent. Co-author David Martill from the University of Portsmouth said in a statement that the discovery "resolved many concerns about the biomechanics of how these creatures were able to support massive heads -- longer than 1.5 meters -- on necks longer than the modern-day giraffe, all whilst retaining the ability of powered flight." Relatively little is known about pterosaurs, and they have previously been dismissed as evolutionary dead ends, instead of being a research priority. Yet the new findings show them to be "fantastically complex and sophisticated," and worthy of much deeper study, added Martill and the team.

The Citroën C5 X challenges with its breakthrough architecture. Would a break variant prove to be more legitimate? We try to answer this question ... New Citroën C5 X: what would it look like in a station wagon? - With its divisive style, the new sedan of the Chevrons is far from unanimous, in terms of style . Its long rear overhang does not participate in the lightening of its line, while its raised trim is not necessarily to the taste of the ayatollahs of the "daddy's sedan". Wanting to mix genres too much, the new Citroën C5 X is difficult to pin down. But it is also what makes its strength, in a slowing niche that seeks to renew itself. A daring bet From next year, the Ford Mondeo will follow the same path as its French colleague, abandoning its classic architecture in favor of a raised line, taking inspiration from the world of SUVs . A trend that has been rather successful in the station wagon category, especially since the introduction of the Audi A6 Allroad in the 2000s. Therefore, why should the new Citroën C5 X not lend itself to such a conversion? She already has almost all the attributes. All it needs is a more spacious aft cabin and roof racks. All the ingredients for a good break Auto-Moto took care of this metamorphosis, through an exclusive illustration that we are presenting to you today. Thus transformed, the line of the Citroën C5 X probably gains in legitimacy. In any case, it would not be unworthy in the range, alongside the sedan. Do not hesitate to give us your opinion, about this Citroën C5 X station wagon, by leaving us comments on the site, or on our social networks. Who knows ? This may give ideas to the direction of the Chevrons ...

(Bloomberg) -- At 33, Ng Yu Zhi had all the trappings of a wildly successful trader: a Rolodex full of rich clients, a three-story villa in a posh Singapore neighborhood and a Pagani Huayra supercar reportedly worth more than $5 million. Local prosecutors allege Ng also had a dark secret: His lavish lifestyle, they say, was built on lies. In a case that has riveted Singapore’s moneyed-classes, Ng was charged last month with four counts of fraud for allegedly raising at least S$1 billion ($740 million) from investors for commodity trades that didn’t exist. The police have called it one of the city-state’s largest-ever suspected investment fraud schemes. It’s also the latest in a series of scandals in the financial and commodities-trading hub, where assets under management have swelled to S$4 trillion thanks largely to inflows from overseas. Much about Ng and his dealings remains shrouded in mystery. But open court proceedings, interviews with investors and charge sheets by Singapore prosecutors indicate the young financier was able to raise huge sums of money by touting average quarterly gains of 15% –- a track record that would have placed him in the same league as the world’s top-performing hedge fund managers. While Singapore offers plenty of legitimate business opportunities, there will likely be other instances of suspect behavior as money flows into the country and investors reach for returns in an era of historically low interest rates, according to Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB Private Banking who’s been working in the country’s finance industry for more than three decades. “This won’t be the last case and that’s the sad reality,” Song said. Attempts to reach Ng for comment via email were unsuccessful. His lawyer, Davinder Singh, executive chairman of Davinder Singh Chambers, didn’t reply to emailed questions. It’s unclear from charge sheets and court proceedings whether Ng has entered a plea. A citizen of Singapore, he’s been released on S$1.5 million bail and is subject to electronic monitoring. The court will hear further proceedings in coming weeks.

Former Packers receiver Donald Driver remembers the shock felt when Brett Favre announced his retirement on March 4, 2008. Of course, Favre went on to play for three more seasons with the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. Perhaps that's why Driver is not taking too much stock in the speculation about Aaron Rodgers' future in Green Bay — one of the leading topics of conversation in the 2021 NFL offseason. "The only (ones) that know what they are going to do are the Packers and Aaron Rodgers," Driver told Sporting News. "As analysts and outsiders, we want to be able to analyze what is going on. That's what makes us great at what we do. The thing is, we have to understand it's still that individual's choice and that individual's decision. "We know that's going be the hiccup," he said. "Aaron is going to be a legend. He's always going to be able to walk into Lambeau Field or wherever he may go, and he's a Hall of Famer. We know that, but it's his decision." MORE: Aaron Rodgers has great response after "Jeopardy" contestant whiffs on Packers question Driver announced his partnership with Master Lock's "Community Champions" program Wednesday as part of his continued charity work within the Green Bay community. Driver is Green Bay's all-time leader with 10,137 receiving yards. He was a seventh-round pick in the 1999 NFL Draft who emerged as a favorite target for Favre and Rodgers, and he spent all of his 14 seasons with the Packers. Driver is quick to point out that every retirement story has different wrinkles. He was part of a receiving corps that featured Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb and James Jones during Green Bay's Super Bowl 45 run after the 2010 season. Jennings left for Minnesota after the 2012 season, and Driver had a choice. Driver, however, made a personal decision that allowed Nelson, Cobb and Jones to stay in Green Bay longer. He still received offers to play, including one with NFC North rival Minnesota. "I knew if I stayed longed enough, then those guys would have had to go somewhere else and play like we've seen them all do (later)," Driver said. "It was easy for me to walk away knowing they were good friends of mine and that allowed them to play the game they wanted to in Green Bay. I knew that if I walked away, then I would have a better platform to do other things." Driver had a 90-yard touchdown reception in Favre's last game with the Packers — a 23-20 loss to the Giants in the NFC championship game on Jan. 20, 2008. He watched the NFC championship game last season — a 31-26 loss to Tampa Bay at Lambeau Field — and has heard similar rumblings about Rodgers' future with the franchise ever since. Rodgers added to that when he said, "A lot of guys' futures, they're uncertain, myself included," after the loss to the Buccaneers. Driver pointed to the 2021 NFL Draft and free agency as factors that could help change the narrative around Rodgers, 37, who has spent 16 seasons in Green Bay. The Packers ignited speculation about how much longer Rodgers would be in Green Bay after taking quarterback Jordan Love in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. "I think we all know what the No. 1 position was we all talked about last year," Driver said. "They needed a receiver. Marquez (Valdes-Scantling) stepped up last year. (Allen) Lazard stepped up. Those guys stepped up and played, but you have to take the pressure off Davante (Adams). You have to find a good defensive end and some linebackers that can fill on the defensive side and make your pick from there."

my vote goes to V2. the way to write font is a good idea & clear image & brush. i like it much

A new report from Juniper Research predicts that software-based facial recognition to secure payments will be almost ubiquitous by 2025, thanks in part to Apple’s FaceID implementation. According to the firm, there will be more than 1.4 billion users of facial recognition software used for payments alone in 2025, up from 671 million in 2020. Apple’s FaceID is driving growth in the wider facial recognition market, even though masks and other facial coverings have become more common since COVID-19. Beyond facial recognition technologies, fingerprint sensors and voice recognition are also picking up significant momentum. “Hardware-based facial recognition is growing, but the ability to carry out facial recognition via software is limiting its adoption rate,” explains Juniper Research and author of the research report, Susan Morrow, says. “As the need for a secure mobile authentication environment grows, smartphone vendors will need to increasingly turn to more robust hardware-based systems to keep pace with fraudsters’ evolving tactics.” According to the Mobile Payment Authentication: Biometrics, Regulation & Market Forecasts 2021-2025 report, fingerprint sensors will be on 93% of smartphones with biometric hardware by 2025, while hardware-based facial recognition will only be on 17% of phones. Voice recognition for payments is gaining po[CENSORED]rity: In 2020 voice recognition had 111 million users - this is expected to rise dramatically to more than 704 million users by 2025. Juniper Research states that voice recognition is primarily used in banking, and there are few other ways in which it can expand. The reason for this lack of growth could be due to robustness concerns. “Juniper Research recommends that vendors adopt a multi-method biometric strategy, which encompasses facial recognition, fingerprints, voice and behavioural indicators to ensure a secure payment environment.” A similar study from Juniper Research, titled Digital Wallets: Key Opportunities, Vendor Analysis and Market Forecasts 2021‑2025, found that there could be as many as 4.4 billion users of digital wallets by 2025, up from 2.6 billion in 2020. China and India are leading the way in digital wallet transactions, however developed markets such as the United Kingdom and the United States are experiencing slower uptake. ‘In developed markets, mobile wallets facilitate card payments, but in emerging markets, wallets in places have bypassed cards entirely,” explains Juniper Research report co-author Nick Maynard. “Wallet providers in developed markets need to focus on building acceptance and analytics features, in order to boost their appeal in a card-centric environment.” Payment via QR code will become less po[CENSORED]r over time - they will account for 40% of all digital wallet transactions globally in 2025; compared to 47% of transactions in 2020.

It seems that Realtek has joined the long list of supply chain bottlenecks. DigiTimes today reported that the company is struggling to meet demand for the various chips manufacturers use in their notebooks, automobiles and other kinds of devices. In the story, DigiTimes remarked that Realtek has extended their delivery lead times to 32 weeks as the capacity of the foundries is currently tight and there are shortfalls in the supply of the necessary raw materials. Those chips are found in a wide variety of products. The audio+LAN chips are used in notebooks, for example, and the xDSL chips are being used in "smart city projects" by Samsung. But the shortage of networking equipment might be most worrisome. Realtek is reportedly falling short of demand for wired networking (Ethernet chips and switches) and wireless communication chips such as Bluetooth. There are alternative solutions, of course, but Realtek is said to supply 70% of the audio+LAN chips used in the global notebook market. Manufacturers can't just find alternative suppliers for all those notebooks—especially during a global chip shortage. All of this means that Realtek's problems are in many ways the rest of the world's problems. DigiTimes said the company's supply issues have caused production delays for notebook makers, the automotive industry and other sectors. DigiTimes reports that Dell, HP, and other notebook manufacturers have raised concerns with Realtek, exerting pressure to ship more chips to meet the demand. But with supply issues extending even to Apple, the world's most valuable company, the relaying of concerns seems unlikely to solve the issue. Those companies will just have to wait for Realtek's chips. Many will also be looking for improved supplies of other chips, display panels, display drivers, and many other components besides. Just don't expect those shortages to be addressed overnight.

While we were reading up on Nvidia's Grace CPU and datacentre DGUs yesterday, Nvidia was hosting an investor day for its shareholders. During which the company's top brass spoke a little on the current GPU shortage—the bane of many PC builders' lives at current—and how long the company thinks this may go on for. Sadly it's not looking up for the entirety of 2021, as Nvidia revises its outlook once again. "Overall demand remains very strong and continues to exceed supply while our channel inventories remain quite lean," says Colette Kress, CFO of Nvidia in a blog post. "We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year. We believe we will have sufficient supply to support sequential growth beyond Q1." Kress had previously relayed a message of a lean channel inventory lasting throughout Q1, which by Nvidia's corporate calendar would have left us waiting around until May. Well, May isn't that far off now and a return to normalcy appears to be even less likely over the course of the coming months. Yet according to Nvidia's own figures from its Investors Day slides, Ampere's launch has been very successful. Nvidia reports that Ampere has more than doubled Turing's first six months across Steam, and has continued a strong ramp up in sales for the generation's first 18 weeks. That's perhaps not all that surprising, considering Nvidia is selling out of cards as quick as it can make them, but it does highlight how increasingly huge demand has become for GPUs in 2021. Demand not only from gamers but cryptocurrency miners and those looking to profit from the lack of availability by selling cards for profit, too. Acer recently spoke of component shortages easing up by the second half of 2021, which could signal a return to a stronger supply chain, following constraints in global supply largely due to the coronavirus. AMD is also struggling to meet demand for its new RDNA 2-based RX 6000-series GPUs, and has so far kept relatively quiet on when it believes supply will return. If Nvidia can at least maintain a steady supply throughout the year, then perhaps demand will naturally dip as the year progresses, in turn making it that little bit easier to pick up a graphics card without long waits or furious refreshing. That's my hopeful outlook, anyways, as clearly the official guidance is anything but optimistic.

To reduce the public health risks associated with the sale of live wild animals for food in traditional food markets, WHO, OIE and UNEP have issued guidance on actions that national governments should consider adopting urgently with the aim of making traditional markets safer and recognizing their central role in providing food and livelihoods for large po[CENSORED]tions. In particular, WHO, OIE and UNEP call on national competent authorities to suspend the trade in live caught wild animals of mammalian species for food or breeding purposes and close sections of food markets selling live caught wild animals of mammalian species as an emergency measure. Although this document focuses on the risk of disease emergence in traditional food markets where live animals are sold for food, it is also relevant for other utilizations of wild animals. All these uses of wild animals require an approach that is characterized by conservation of biodiversity, animal welfare and national and international regulations regarding threatened and endangered species.

A few weeks after its unveiling, the new Peugeot 308 crossed our path. This is the opportunity to get an idea of its design, in the street. New Peugeot 308 2021 - Admiring new automotive products, such as fashion engravings, in the press or on billboards, is good. But very quickly, we want to get an idea of the silhouette of a car by crossing it in the street , in order to gauge its proportions, and to scrutinize it in great detail. As they say: "I am waiting to see it for real". This is the chance we had, in mid-April, only a few weeks after its revelation , when we came face to face with a pre-production copy of the new Peugeot 308 , in the Paris region. Unfortunately, it was only possible for us to immortalize the beauty 3/4 before. This is why, in addition to this white livery, we have added to our slideshow a selection of pictures taken during our first static comparison, against the Volkswagen Golf. We will have to wait until this fall , at the time of the first deliveries, to see the proliferation of new Peugeot 308s on our roads. In the meantime, orders will begin before summer , when the 308 SW station wagon will be revealed. The base price for the 5-door body is estimated at around € 27,000.

“I woke up on a Saturday morning. I was getting ready to do some errands with my husband, and I noticed this like pop in my neck so you know sometimes your neck pops — no big deal — but as the day progressed, the pain got more and more like noticeable and annoying," Strawder said. Concerned, she went to the hospital. “I was told that I needed to rest for a few days and gave me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and two narcotics, so it was pretty serious," Strawder said. Doctors diagnosed her with Fibromyalgia, a disorder which causes widespread pain, loss of sleep and problems with memory and mood. With the medications, Chasity said she felt like a zombie. "I was miserable. I was pretty much between the doctor's office and my bed and sleeping with a neck pillow just not getting any relief from it.” Desperate, she reached out to University Hospitals Connor Integrative Health Network, which takes a holistic and “whole health” approach. Chasity said she was in tears when she asked her new doctor for help. “She said, 'You want to hear the truth?' I said, absolutely. I need help. So she talks to me about the plant based diet and she talks about how I seriously need to dump the meats and, you know the grease, and the fast food, the sugar, you know, and all the things that I was doing, and she said you know, 'I want you to do this. I want you to try it for at least six weeks.'" Chasity went home and tossed anything thing that wasn't plant-based. She began walking every day. She made serious changes and just a few weeks later, she said she returned to UH a completely different person. “I remember walking down the hallway for the follow up appointment, and she's like, 'Oh my gosh, is that Chasity?' At that point I lost 30 pounds. I was no longer sleeping with a neck pillow. By the time I had gone to see her for the follow up, I was walking up to five miles a day consistently, and I had the best sleep probably since I came out of the womb. So I completely took charge of my health and got off all those bad [prescription] drugs that we're just going to continue to cripple me and waste my time and money, and I decided that I wasn't looking back," Chasity said. It's a trend health professionals are continuing to see at medical institutions: Finding the root of the problem and trying to treat that rather than just treating symptoms. Integrated health often blends two worlds: Conventional medicine and evidence-based holistic medicine. Integrated Health is patient-focused. Director of the Connor Integrative Health Network at University Hospitals Dr. Francoise Adan explains that everything is connected. “So you have to look at the patient as a whole and what outcome is important to that patient rather than just aiming to treat the illness or injury by any means necessary. Instead of asking yourself the question what is wrong with the patient (or) what’s the matter with the patient, the question really is what matters to them? Because that’s going to be their motivation. And how were going to help them to have the energy and the courage and the motivation to change some of their habits. Because it’s hard, let’s face it,” Adan said. The Connor Integrative Health Network at UH also works on the preventative end. You can work with a clinician to evaluate your life style and make appropriate changes to ensure you continue to be healthy.

Funeral preparations are under way for Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband, who died on Friday aged 99. The ceremonial royal funeral will be held at St George's Chapel, in the grounds of Windsor Castle, at 15:00 BST on Saturday, 17 April. The event will be televised. Here's what we know about plans for the day: Where will the funeral take place? Prince Philip is reported to have requested a funeral of minimal fuss and will not lie in state - where members of the public would have been able to view his coffin. Instead, he will lie at rest in the private chapel at Windsor Castle until the day of the funeral. The duke's coffin is draped in his personal flag, his standard. The flag represents elements of his life, from his Greek heritage to his British titles. A wreath of flowers has also been placed on the coffin. When the duke got engaged to the then Princess Elizabeth in 1946, he renounced his Greek title and became a British citizen, taking his mother's anglicised name, Mountbatten. The Mountbatten family is therefore also represented on the standard, alongside the castle from the arms of the City of Edinburgh - he became Duke of Edinburgh when he married.

In 2023, NASA will launch VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), which that will trek across the surface of the moon and hunt for water ice that could one day be used to make rocket fuel. The rover will be armed with the best instruments and tools that NASA can come up with: wheels that can spin properly on lunar soil, a drill that’s able to dig into extraterrestrial geology, hardware that can survive 14 days of a lunar night when temperatures sink to ˗173 °C. But while much of VIPER is one of a kind, custom-made for the mission, much of the software that it’s running is open-source, meaning it’s available for use, modification, and distribution by anyone for any purpose. If it’s successful, the mission may be about more than just laying the groundwork for a future lunar colony—it may also be an inflection point that causes the space industry to think differently about how it develops and operates robots. Open-source tech rarely comes to mind when we talk about space missions. It takes a tremendous amount of money to build something that can be launched into space, make its way to its proper destination, and then fulfill a specific set of tasks hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of miles away. Keeping the know-how to pull those things off close to one’s chest is a natural inclination. Open-source software, meanwhile, is more usually associated with scrappy programming for smaller projects, like hackathons or student demos. The code that fills online repositories like GitHub is often an inexpensive solution for groups running low on cash and resources needed to build code from scratch.

The modern society relies on complex, intelligent electronic systems. Automotive, avionics, medical, smartphones, communication and 5G networks, critical infrastructure, data centers, and other applications are ever more dependent on integrated circuits (ICs) that deliver high performance, low power consumption, safety, cybersecurity, and continuity of operation. Hardware is so central to competitiveness and user experience that large companies have reversed established trends and invested in building IC development teams dedicated to their products. Google, Facebook, Tesla, Alibaba, and Apple are prominent examples. Many people are familiar with software vulnerabilities and the resulting need to frequently install patches and the latest releases of software tools and mobile apps. However, in recent years, industry executives, policymakers, and the public have been exposed to an increasing number of articles presenting semiconductor components as a concerning source of cybersecurity risks for vehicles, IoT devices, network equipment, and even defense and critical infrastructure systems. In 2015, news of the Jeep hack reached mainstream publications. Meltdown and Spectre, and other microprocessor security flaws discovered by security researchers, were widely reported on news outlets like BBC, going well beyond the scientific and hardware engineering community. The Cisco router bug discovery, where an FPGA device could be partly reversed engineering and remotely reprogrammed to switch off critical security features, highlighted how an otherwise minor hardware detail could be leveraged to expose the communications of sensitive institutions. The Huawei 5G controversy also shows how difficult it is to assess critical network equipment security independently. Finally, it is worth noting that organizations like the World Economic Forum have published articles to raise the awareness that hardware is the foundation of the pervasive electronic systems that are so crucial to modern society, and therefore deserves much scrutiny. At the consumer level, hardware security features are not yet clear product differentiators, like display resolution, camera pixels, memory size, processor performances, and power consumption. However, hardware security is already at the top of the agenda of many organizations and institutions. Determining how and where hardware security holes arise is a critical step in developing secure device. As hardware is being designed, the pre-silicon design steps, including RTL coding and IP integration, may introduce weaknesses and vulnerabilities in hardware components. A simple error in the reset value of a register could grant unrestricted access to a critical asset at boot time. Under rare conditions, an encryption key could be temporarily stored in a register visible in the address map and accessible by software. In some corner cases, a register used to configure security functions could be writable by an unauthorized peripheral. Protected information could have minor but measurable effects on a low-privilege process regarding execution timing, power consumption, or other factors. Illegal bus transactions, violating interface protocol rules, could interfere with the secure boot execution. Faults, such as bit flips in memory cells, could disable security functions. Unlike target users, attackers spend significant resources to misuse and abuse the hardware component. Functional bugs in corner cases that are irrelevant to the target application can become a valuable security-breaking feature. Meltdown, Spectre, or Orc show that even hardware that has been implemented correctly can be vulnerable to transient execution (or micro-architectural side-channel) attacks. Simple power analysis (SPA) and differential power analysis (DPA), examples of physical side-channel attacks, leverage power consumption measurements to extract secure data. Focused ion beam (FIB) or voltage glitch controllers are po[CENSORED]r ways to insert faults for malicious purposes. An interesting and often overlooked aspect of physical attacks such as fault injection is that they are often considered to require expensive equipment and physical access to the device, thus significantly reducing the number of potential attackers. Unfortunately, many physical attacks can also be carried out remotely through software processes that use dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) functionality or specific memory access patterns (see rowhammer), for example. Principle 1: Security is not an afterthought, something that can be bolted on an existing product. On the contrary, security must be built into the system from the concept phase and taken care of during the entire development lifecycle. One of the challenges is that the methodology must be applied to all the system’s components, including the silicon. Although each system and application have specific requirements, hardware components and semiconductor IPs are often developed out of context. IPs that are not developed following a rigorous security-by-design approach can only target an increasingly smaller set of applications. Principle 2: Another important aspect to consider is that security is a very dynamic field. New vulnerabilities are discovered daily, while the system is already operating in the field. The development environment continues to play a critical role after production. A model-based analysis is essential for an efficient, comprehensive assessment of a component vulnerability’s impact and to validate patches and updates. This is no longer true only for software components but also for hardware. With highly configurable heterogeneous computing platforms, FPGAs, and eFPGAs powering advanced AI-based applications, the development environment must support the continuous validation and verification of hardware updates.

Teamfight Tactics is introducing an experimental new gamemode you can fit in a bathroom break, courtesy of next season's new Labs feature. Riot teased the inclusion of a "simpler, faster" gamemode earlier this year, hinting at a version of TFT that could be played in under 20 minutes. With the reveal of TFT's Reckoning set, the developer has introduced Hyper Roll—a vastly streamlined new mode that arrives as part of a new "Labs" feature for testing new gametypes. Starting at a meagre 10 health, Hyper Roll will knock you down 1hp (increasing to 2 later on) at the end of every loss. Gold interest has been removed, while sweeping changes have been made to drops, levelling and neutral minion rounds. In short, it sounds very appealing to folks like me, who bounced off autobattlers upon finding they weren't any shorter than a full round of the MOBAs they spun off from. Reckoning is making some sizeable changes to regular ol' TFT, mind. A new season means new classes, with Reckoning's line-up including Forgotten, Hellion, Nightbringer, Cavalier, Ironclad, Revenant, and Dawnbringer. But the big new feature this time 'round are shadow items—corrupted versions of existing items that promise greater power, at a price. Shadow Components used to build these items will start appearing in the carousel after round one. But they'll also pop-up in the new Armoury, a shop akin to the existing champion store that'll let you straight-up buy a limited selection of item parts. Finally, this season's Reckoning Pass introduces new cosmetic booms, little legends and arenas, including two new stages flaunting a live band, beachside grill, and a "win-streak powered spatula". Reckoning begins on April 28th, though the new set will go live on the game's test servers later this week.

Documentary’ is an expletive. To many of us, it has come to mean a dreary film, and of late, a piece of sanctimonious propaganda issued by the empathy industry. So there has to be a more reverential way of classifying My Octopus Teacher, a film that I kept hearing about even before it was shortlisted for an Oscar in the ‘Best Documentary Feature’ category. Maybe we should call all unearthing of facts about us ‘anthropology’. And that is what I want to call My Octopus Teacher—a beautiful work of anthropology. But then, as you will see, it is an unflattering description of the film, which thinks of itself largely as the biography of a feral common octopus. But in reality the film is about its biographers—us. It is always about us. Everything we see, especially in animals, is all about us. We are full of ourselves. That is the human condition. In My Octopus Teacher, an unhappy man named Craig Foster, whose unhappiness we don’t fully understand, finds peace in a kelp forest on the edge of the Atlantic, in South Africa. One day, in the shallow marine wild, where he appears to fly among spectacular seaweeds and animals, he finds a common octopus. At first the “liquid animal" is wary. But, after Foster returns to its den everyday, they seem to become friends. He dives without a heavy oxygen tank, and he is never in a wet suit, which means he never appears like a shark to the mollusc. A professional filmmaker, and a competent diver who has the capacity to hold his breath for several minutes, Foster captured his experiences on camera for over a year. TRENDING STORIESSee All Bank holidays depend on festivals being observed in specific states and might differ from one state to the other. Banks to remain closed for 4 days from tomorrow in these cities. Details here 1 min read . 12:09 PM IST Data Centre to be established at AdaniConneX’s Chennai facility Flipkart partners with Adani Group to enhance supply, logistics infra 2 min read . 12:58 PM IST Sensex fell over 1800 points while Nifty was down 3.5% Nifty breaches 14,300, Bank Nifty crashes 5%. Key levels to watch now 2 min read . 01:55 PM IST A healthcare worker administers a dose of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine India may approve third covid vaccine soon, expert committee to consider Sputnik V today 1 min read . 10:56 AM IST As the lifespan of a common octopus is about a year, Foster observed it everyday for “80% of its life". In the course of their acquaintance, the octopus rides on him, and at times extends a tentacle to touch him, which lends a strong visual sense of the expression ‘reaching out’. She lets him see her the way humans have probably never seen an octopus. She appears to walk on two tentacles. She camouflages by heaping shells over herself. In an extraordinary scene, when a pyjama shark attacks her, she finds the safest spot—on the back of the shark. The audience erupts in ‘oohs’ as though they have witnessed a Roger Federer backhand from an impossible angle. In Foster’s attempt to make the octopus more comprehensible to us, he uses the word “intelligent" often. But was the Octopus everything that Foster saw in her? Are animals everything that we see in them? We want animals to demonstrate that their lives are more than just about co[CENSORED]ting and eating and caring for their young, even though many humans may not be able to claim as much. We love it when we find evidence of an animal showing emotion, or just playing, or reasoning. There is a video of a stray cow in Mumbai, which joins a group of boys playing football, and starts kicking the ball around. It first chases the ball, and after capturing it appears reluctant to lose it. We want to believe that it was playing with the boys, and that there is more to its life than chewing cud. We know of robber gangs that use monkeys to steal from tourists in return for food; and we delight in the fact that the monkeys now know what kind of stolen goods fetch more food. In My Octopus Teacher, there is a moment when the octopus drives a school of fish to and fro, an act that Foster seems keen to believe is not hunting, but playing. Another time, Foster suggests that the Octopus has used him as a tool in her hunting. MORE FROM THIS SECTIONSee All Photo HT Any negligence in the long battle against covid-19 could prove fatal 5 min read . 12:24 AM IST Photo: Mint A Burmese shadow over India’s monetary policy update 4 min read . 05:43 AM IST Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davison needs to fight off me-too apps Clubhouse can hear rival apps rushing to chase its lead down 4 min read . 11 Apr 2021 Photo: AFP Vaccination certificates need a framework to govern their use 4 min read . 11 Apr 2021 We don’t know actually what was going on inside the octopus’s head, and arms, which have millions of neurons. So often when humans see human qualities in animal behaviour, it is more self-absorption than science. We admire, for instance, the monogamy of the albatross, which has turned out to be not as monogamous as earlier thought. Millions believe in the myth of the dolphin’s therapeutic powers, that swimming with them is beneficial for children with physical disabilities and even autism and attention deficiency. Every time there is a natural calamity, there is talk of how “cleverly" animals escape. In the 2004 tsunami, some people like to say, very few wild animals perished. But then, humans count their dead, unlike what we know of wild animals, and that may be why they seem to get away. Even Jane Goodall gave questionable anthropogenic attributes to chimpanzees. In fact, a part of Goodall’s fame surely rests of how much she made chimpanzees recognizable to us. But then, maybe we have got even dogs wrong. What if, as a forgotten person once said, dogs lick you because they know there is a bone inside? Alright, alright, endearing pets aside, maybe we get animals wrong because we are a megalomaniac species that sees ourselves in everything. Even in machines, the very basis of the hysteria around computers becoming self-aware. We search for alien life by looking for planets with water and carbon, and which are as distant from their stars as we from our Sun. Actually, sometimes when I get to hear some conjecture of alien life, I feel we are searching for Americans in other solar systems. Clearly, modern humans feel lonely in the universe; they want other sort of humans, who are different in an exotic way but still not so quaint that they will be incomprehensible. Maybe all animals see themselves in every other animal. Maybe the octopus got comfortable with Foster because she thought he was just some lame mollusc, who had four tentacles missing. Manu Joseph is a journalist, and a novelist, most recently of ‘Miss Laila, Armed And Dangerous’ Subscribe to Mint Newsletters Enter email address Click here to read the Mint ePaper Mint is now on Telegram. Join Mint channel in your Telegram and stay updated with the latest business news. Let us bring the summary of the day’s most important news directly to you with our newsletters! Subscribe for free Recommended Quelle est la taille de votre prostate ? Faites le test !Promoted Quelle est la taille de votre prostate ? Faites le test ! Nouvelle Page Santé Sendgrid blames lack of 2FA for mountains of spamPromoted Sendgrid blames lack of 2FA for mountains of spam TechBeacon Covid-19 panic brings misinfo, malware, unintended consequencesPromoted Covid-19 panic brings misinfo, malware, unintended consequences TechBeacon Recommended by

Hang on to the SUVs! The Chevrons are finally back on the front of sedans, with an offbeat proposition. How does the Citroën C5 X intend to reinvent the genre? New Citroën C5 X 2021 - In 2016, Citroën created a stir at the Paris Motor Show by exploring new avenues to reinvent the sedan segment , through the CXperience concept car . A very sharp model, in terms of style, which left doubt as to the return of the CX name, to replace the C5, which has disappeared from the catalog since 2018 . Three years later, Citroën is finally back to business, with an original proposal to say the least. The right timing? Neither C5 nor CX, here is the Citroën C5 X. A name which both refers to the CXperience concept, but which above all legitimizes its penchant for the world of SUVs , given its high ground clearance. If adventurer station wagons have been part of the automotive landscape for many years, as the Audi A6 Allroad attests , raised family sedans remain a curiosity. Volvo tried its luck in 2015, with an S60 CrossCountry unloaded from the catalog after only a few months, for lack of success. The tide seems to have turned six years later. Ford will take this path, from next year, to replace its Mondeo , but Citroën is grateful to him, as well as to all the competition, by landing on the European market with an offbeat architecture that is very successful on Asian markets. This is also the reason why the French will be assembled exclusively in China, in Chengdu. A bet on the future Unmistakably, this Citroën C5 X challenges and will not fail to fuel discussions between early Citroënists. But for Citroën, this original proposal was the only way, from its point of view, to return to a segment D in strong loss of speed. So much so that Renault plans not to replace the Talisman, and that Volkswagen could ignore a future Passat. With the extinction of the "papa sedan" , this C5 X perhaps heralds the development of a new breed of sedans. Mixture of genres Slightly raised sedans, but not too much. At 1.48 m tall, the Citroën C5 X is only 2 cm taller than a Renault Talisman , for comparison. We are very far from the 1.60 m that most SUVs easily exceed . From these, the Citroën mainly inherits the raw plastic protections , all around its body, but in a rather discreet way. It spares us the eternal clogs at the bottom of the shield or even the roof bars. It just exaggerates its wheel arches by imposing flats. But for the rest, we are dealing with the codes of a sedan , or even a station wagon, according to its parents. Clearly,the C5 X assumes its mix of genres, at the risk of moving away from the natural elegance that emanated from the CXperience concept car. It must be recognized that its large rear overhang is far from lightening its silhouette. Habitability in subdued ... So yes, this new C5 X imposes it. As usual with Citroën, we are promised a very spacious interior where comfort is king . But on paper, although it is 5.5 cm longer than the Peugeot 508 , its wheelbase is surprisingly shorter than that of the Sochalienne, by one centimeter. We also expected this new Citroën to be much longer. With a rating of 4.80 m , it returns 5 to 7 cm compared to a Renault Talisman or a Skoda Superb. We also hoped that the French would equal the Czech, in legroom, in the rear seats. But the Citroën is unfortunately served by a length of wheelbase a little tight, which places its habitability in the category average, without shining. However, we feel good on the seat of this C5 X , well designed to accommodate three passengers who will enjoy the incomparable softness of the Citroën seats, but also a significant headroom. ... but a trunk to spare What makes the strength of this new C5 X is the return to a hatchback, unlike the previous C5 which played it a little too “German sedan” with its classic trunk . Accessibility improves considerably, as in the heyday of the XM, Xantia and the first generation of C5s. On the volume side, Citroën announces for the moment a rather generous water volume of 545 l for the category. She knows how to receive Behind the steering wheel, rather than the dashboard, let's talk about interior furniture . The interior of the Citroën C5 X plays the part of appeasement, in a warm atmosphere, failing to be luxurious . But as a worthy Citroën flag bearer, the sedan pays more attention to details than the rest of the range. Foamed plastics are legion when the finish is very correct. We appreciate the multiple nods to the Chevrons that dot this environment , both in terms of the stitching pattern as on the perforations of the leather, on the speaker covers or even on the elegant bamboo-style headband which bars the cockpit and extends to the door frames . This C5 X, which only offers automatic transmissions , cleans up its central console. In the absence of a lever, replaced by a discreet slider, space is released between the front passengers to offer multiple storage. But we regret that this large sedan ignores certain tips available on its little sister C4 . Here, no drawer above the glove box, even less support for touchscreen tablets. Promising amortization We expected to be very comfortable in this C5 X, and this is the case , for the one who takes advantage of the experience acquired by the C4 and C5 Aircross in terms of seating comfort . Like its little sisters, it promises first-rate sound insulation with its laminated windows . Like its little sisters, it uses progressive hydraulic stopper suspensions to filter out irregularities in the road. So, inevitably, it needed a little more to stand out from the rest of the range. To make a difference, it is equipped with an active suspension . But nothing to do with the gas factories that Citroëns historically embarked on.Here, no sphere. The work of the shock absorbers with progressive hydraulic stops is reinforced by the electronics of a conventional controlled suspension. It remains to be seen whether this system will live up to the Citroën myth during a future test drive in the coming months. Unexpected equipment This new Citroën has been developed on the same evolution of the EMP2 V3 platform, recently introduced by the new DS4 and Peugeot 308 . From these compacts, it inherits the new tactile interface, more efficient and responsive , on a screen even larger than its cousins, since it extends over 12 ” . Connectivity includes four USB-C sockets, as well as induction charging for the smartphone , while the software updates in real time, via the Cloud. We also note the introduction of voice recognition in natural language , like the Mercedes MBUX system. We didn't ask for so much on a Citroën. A brand which, for several years, has been promoting an essential, no-frills car philosophy. This C5 X is not lagging behind in terms of technology , although, at first glance, one could blame it for the small size of the digital handset housed behind the wheel, inherited from the DS4, which spans only 7 ”Diagonal. Yes, but like on the DS4, we have a giant head-up display which projects information through the windshield in augmented reality, in 21 ”format . Another nice surprise. Driving aids also allow the C5 X to reach level 2 in terms of autonomous driving . The Highway Driver Assist combines the adaptive cruise control with Stop & Go function and helps to maintain in the way to manage the speed and trajectory of the vehicle. For its part, blind spot monitoring increases its range to 75 m, when the Rear Cross Traffic Alert system detects a danger nearby when reversing. A safe arsenal that however skips the Matrix LED headlights . Plug-in hybridization Conversely, this new C5 X is converting to rechargeable hybridization , dear to the Stellantis group. For the moment, Citroën simply evokes the block accumulating 225 hp , as on the C5 Aircross , which allows about 50 km of 100% electric driving. But, subsequently, we imagine that the 180 hp PHEV engine, which has just been inaugurated in the Peugeot 308 , will also be part of the trip. A block which will be essential for him to hope to convert, at a lower cost, diesel enthusiasts to hybridization . Because, unfortunately for some, the seasoned sedan will ignore diesel. Side 100% thermal, it will only be necessary to rely on a range of gasoline engines which has not yet been unveiled. Citroën C5 X price Indisputably, Citroën is taking risks to return to the D segment. But let us recognize that a classic offer would probably have been doomed to failure. This C5 X, it is perhaps the solution to bring down the clientele from SUVs gradually to sedans . The future will tell. In the meantime, orders for this new C5 X will start this fall , before the first deliveries expected at the very end of the year, or even early 2022 . As for prices, the base price should be around € 30,000, according to our estimate.

In the past year living with COVID-19 restrictions, you’ve likely made a lot of changes in the name of health — for your family and your community. Ready to make a few changes for the health of the planet? As people all over the world strive to find a new normal, now is a perfect time to take your daily green routine up a level or two, to move toward less waste. READ MORE: Canada ‘not immune’ to health impacts of climate change, experts say According to Community Research Connections (CRC), a research group committed to sustainability based in Victoria, B.C., Canadians create a lot of waste, more “per capita than any other country on earth.” The group says each of us is responsible for approximately 2.7 kg of garbage each day. More and more, people are adopting sustainable and zero-waste lifestyles. From one person just starting out to another with decades of experience, here are some tips to get you moving in a more earth-friendly direction. Anne Marie Matthews and her husband moved from Toronto to the Niagara peninsula in Ontario in 2019. While the pair have always embraced a life of wellness and sustainability — they formerly owned and operated yoga studios in the GTA — homesteading on their 10-acre property has sparked greater connectivity with nature and a deeper sense of responsibility for the environment. Matthews and her husband began raising chickens and cultivating an organic vegetable garden, among other things. “The process of tending to the plants, having my hands in the soil and feeling so profoundly nourished by nature transformed me. It was hard work, but I am changed because of it,” Matthews says.

You cannot reveal other people's lies just by looking at them, but psychologists have recently focused their attention on other methods that may be more effective in detecting lies. Police officers assumed that Marty Tancliffe appeared too calm after discovering his mother had been stabbed to death and his father had been beaten to death with a club in the family's spacious home on Long Island, USA. Although he denied the charges against him, authorities did not believe him, and he spent 17 years in prison. In another case, investigators assumed that 16-year-old Geoffrey Skovich appeared more distressed than usual and was suspiciously eager to help investigators, after his high school classmate was found suffocated. The court found that he was a liar and he spent nearly 16 years in prison. In the first case, the young man was not bothered enough, and in the second case he was more disturbed than usual. How can these contradictory feelings expose the falsehood of the accused in both cases? Maria Hartwig, a psychologist and researcher in deception techniques at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University in New York, says the defendants, who were later acquitted, were victims of a common misconception that it is possible to tell whether a person is a liar or true by looking at the way he is behaving. . This is why people across cultures believe that behaviors such as avoiding eye contact, nervous movements and stuttering, expose the deceiver. But after decades of searching, researchers have found little evidence to support this belief. "One of the problems that lie researchers face is that all people think they are polygraph experts," Hartwig says. "But errors in lie detector have huge implications for society and people who are victims of wrong opinions and judgments." This overconfidence in indications of falsehood has often misled justice, and Tankliffe and Discovic are well aware of its consequences. Psychologists have realized how difficult it can be to detect a lie. In 2003, Bella DePaolo, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleagues combined 116 trials that compared people's behaviors when they believe the words and when they create gossip. The studies evaluated 102 potential nonverbal indicators of lying, such as avoiding eye contact, blinking quickly, having a high pitched voice, shaking the shoulders to express apathy or ignorance, and changing the position and movements of the head, hands, arms and legs. But it has not been proven that any of these behaviors were indicative of lying, although few of them were associated in some cases with lying, such as dilated pupils and very slight elevation, which the human ear does not perceive, in the tone of the voice

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Software-Defined Storage (SDS) represents one of the hottest trends in data storage with the capability to be hardware agnostic, run in the cloud and provide storage without storage. Let me explain what could be seen as a strange animal. Instead of doing storage with dedicated storage arrays or file servers, the idea of Software-Defined Storage is to build similar data storage services based on commodity server hardware coupled with an intelligent storage software. SDS finally transforms a rack of servers into a large storage farm to be used via one or several interfaces, such as block, file and/or objects, like S3. This design implicitly associates the concept of scale-out, such as multiplying servers to provide scalability, capacity, availability, durability and performance. StorPool picks the block interface and exposes the logical storage space via iSCSI or its own access protocol and targets primary storage. The product is already validated for bare-metal, virtualisation and container environments. Users adopt block SDS and StorPool in particular for demanding applications deployed on-premises, hybrid or public clouds with clear needs for low latency and pretty high throughput with attractive IOPS. StorPool software runs on Linux OS and operates in multi active/active controllers. For data protection, the engineering has adopted three-way replication, but also provides snapshots, clones, thin provisioning and changed block tracking. The Storage Pyramid. The storage service can be deployed with classic storage entities connected to applications servers or in a converged mode where applications run directly on storage nodes. Storage in action At Dustin Group, StorPool consolidates and replaces legacy platforms such HPE, EMC and NetApp for performance and cost reasons. For Amito, a UK-based cloud and managed service provider, storage farms powered by StorPool are deployed on multi-site data centers to provide a scalable and resilient storage. Katapult, one of the largest UK web hosting companies, selected StorPool for its performance, simplicity and its capabilities to provide deployment agility on Linux servers. With some effort to gain visibility, StorPool occupies a pretty unique position in Europe as a storage ISV able to be deployed in a wide range of configurations, from the high demanding to the classic use cases.

This is the year to bet on atoms over bits. For most of 2020, investors went ga-ga for cloud computing, bidding up shares of any company supporting the adoption of remote work, learning, and shopping— Zoom (ticker: ZM), Chegg (CHGG), and Shopify (SHOP)—or helping companies move to the cloud— Snowflake (SNOW), DocuSign (DOCU), and Okta (OKTA). But those stocks have sagged in 2021, as tech investors rotated to cheaper bets with exposure to an expanding economy and accelerating corporate IT spending. There is growing evidence of companies boosting their outlays for PCs, servers, disk drives, and other tech goods. And while hardware stocks are already trouncing the broader market this year, there’s reason to think that earnings estimates for them are lagging and that the stocks are still cheap. So, time to go long atoms. Morgan Stanley hardware analyst Katy Huberty was on this idea six months ago. Last October, she turned bullish on hardware. Last week, she doubled-down on the idea, raising her estimates and target prices across the group. A new Morgan Stanley survey of chief information officers has convinced Huberty that the outlook is even better than she had thought. omputer growth that emerged during the pandemic has legs. “I’m not a believer in the Covid bump,” she told me. “I think there’s been a Covid reset to higher demand.” She notes that in the U.S., the average household owns only 1.2 PCs. “When you think about one or two people working from home, and one or two kids learning from home, 1.2 PCs isn’t going to cut it.” She also says that more consumers are shifting from desktops to notebook computers, which have a faster replacement cycle. There’s also strong demand in emerging markets, she says. In China, only 12% of K-12 students have access to a PC at home. Meanwhile, any slowdown in consumer demand could be offset in the enterprise as IT spending bounces back. She points out that most companies haven’t refreshed their PCs in the past year. “What we’re hearing from CIOs is that they are thinking of the PC as an employee satisfaction driver,” she says. “I think of it as, ‘How are we going to get people back in the office? We’re going to make sure they have an advanced, updated workstation, with all the peripherals they need to still work in a hybrid work environment.’” Huberty has Overweight ratings on both Dell Technologies (DELL) and HP Inc. (HPQ). Both stocks also are benefiting from non-operating factors. For HP, it’s an aggressive stock repurchase program—at least $1 billion a quarter, or an expected 20% of the outstanding shares over two years. For Dell, it’s the value that could be unlocked from a spinoff of the company’s majority stake in VMware, an idea Dell is considering. Huberty upped her target on Dell last week to $107, from $96. But she thinks the stock in a VMware spin scenario could be worth $133 a share—a potential gain of about 50%. Reopening bet: Huberty remains bullish on NCR (NCR), the 137-year-old provider of retail sales systems and automated teller machines. She thinks NCR will benefit from pent-up demand as more retailers and restaurants resume normal operations. She also sees a higher minimum wage driving demand for self-checkout systems, which come at 10 times the price of traditional cash registers. As for ATMs, Huberty notes that banks are closing branches and replacing them with versatile ATMs that can do things like complete loan applications via video links to remote bankers. The cloud’s hardware: Huberty is bullish on hard-disk drive maker Seagate Technology (STX). Thanks to a multidecade period of consolidation, Seagate is the only remaining pure play on hard drives; its rival Western Digital (WDC) has evolved into a flash-memory business, as noted in last week’s column. As I’ve observed before, the cloud isn’t made of water droplets; most of it consists of data on hard drives. Huberty sees Seagate as a direct beneficiary of higher IT spending. Sticking with Apple: Huberty remains one of the Street’s most enthusiastic Apple (AAPL) analysts. She thinks investors have become too cautious on iPhone sales, and she sees 20% upside for the stock. The iPhone replacement cycle reached four years during the pandemic, well above historical trends, she notes. Huberty also remains bullish on Apple’s services business. Last week, she lifted her 2021 and 2022 revenue estimates based on a likely boost to search revenue from Google as online ads recover. She also sees another strong year ahead for Macs, iPads, and wearables. And she thinks the odds are better than 50/50 that Apple will be making cars five years from now. Cars, of course, are rich with atoms.

isher a certain amount of money whether or not their game actually sells enough to cover it. For example, Epic paid Remedy $10.45 million for Control. In its end-of-year report, Epic said that players spent $700 million on the Epic Store in 2020, but third-party game sales only accounted for $265 million of that spending. That $444 million isn't close to being recouped, then. Some of those deals probably haven't started making money yet (as in, the game hasn't released), but according to Apple's learnings, Epic is going to eat "at least $330 million in unrecouped costs from minimum guarantees alone" if you consider 2019's deals, too. As for how much the Epic Game Store will have lost in total by the end of 2021, projections say it's less than $600 million. Just a bit of spending money, then. These estimates are available to us because Epic and Apple have laid out the (pretty spicy) arguments they'll be bringing to court next month. As part of its defense, Apple's lawyer army wants to show that the Epic Games Store isn't comparable to its iOS App Store, and so its fact finding includes everything Epic has said about how unprofitable the Epic Games Store has been. Citing depositions from Epic Games Store VP and GM Steve Allison and Epic VP of business development Joe Kreiner, Apple says that Epic lost $181 million on the Epic Games Store in 2019, projected a loss of $273 million last year, and projects another loss of $139 million this year. Added up, that's nearly $600 million that the Epic Games Store will need to recoup before it'll be profitable on the whole. Apple points out that Epic doesn't think that'll happen until 2027. Epic puts a more positive spin on its finances, saying that it expects the Epic Games Store to start earning annual profits in 2023. And what Apple calls losing money, Epic would probably call investing money. This spending is all part of the plan, says the company, and its 12 percent revenue cut will eventually be enough to sustain the store. "EGS is not yet profitable at its current scale and stage of development because it has front-loaded its marketing and user acquisition costs to gain market share," reads Epic's filing, citing CEO Tim Sweeney. Back in Apple's filing, the iPhone maker takes a few jabs at Epic for the same thing many gamers have: the Epic Store's relative lack of features compared to Steam. "By its own admission, the Epic Games Store—two years after it launched—is still missing 'critical' features," writes Apple. Epic points out that it has been building new features, such as self-service refunds, and that it's also giving away free games every week—another way it's been spending money. (Funnily, Apple says that the Epic Games Store's funding has come from "other parts of its business" that have been "incredibly profitable." I wonder which parts those are?)

Green Animals Topiary Garden, a historic property along Narragansett Bay featuring more than 80 boxwood, privet and yew plants shaped like animals and other decorative forms, will open daily to the public beginning Friday, April 16, The Preservation Society of Newport County announced today.. Green Animals will join Marble House in Newport as the two Preservation Society of Newport County properties currently open for tours, but other schedule changes are coming in May. “We believe Green Animals will be a po[CENSORED]r place to visit, as it was last summer and fall, because people are still looking for outdoor activities during the pandemic,” said Trudy Coxe, CEO and Executive Director of the Preservation Society in a statement. “And once again it will be part of our ‘Stroll the Gardens and Grounds’ ticket, which we introduced last year to allow people to enjoy the landscapes at all of our properties that are open.” “Stroll the Gardens and Grounds” is an outdoors-only ticket that includes permission to picnic on the properties. It costs $18 for adults and $8 for children, and will be available atwww.NewportMansions.orgstarting April 14. Members of the Preservation Society are always admitted for free. Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. In addition to the topiaries, which were begun in the early 20th century by an immigrant gardener from the Azores, the 7-acre property includes flower and vegetable gardens. In 2019, it was recognized by the American Daffodil Society as one of 28 official Daffodil Display Gardens in the United States, and one of only three in New England. The property features 16,000 daffodil bulbs in 42 varieties as well as many other flower species that bloom at different times of the year. Green Animals is also part of the annual Newport Daffodil Days celebration. Visitors with a 2021 daffodil pin (https://newportdaffydays.com) will receive $1 off admission through April 30. The historic Brayton House on the Green Animals estate will remain closed to the public until further notice. Other Newport Mansions schedule changes The Breakers, the largest of the Newport Mansions, will open on Monday, May 3. Marble House will close from May 3 until Friday, May 28. Starting Memorial Day weekend, The Breakers, Marble House and Green Animals will remain open every day through the summer. For the full Newport Mansions operating schedule, go towww.NewportMansions.organd look under “Plan A Visit.”

The Vulcanett brand offers wipes capable of cleaning all surfaces, exterior and interior. We tested them. During our tests, our comparisons in particular, cleaning cars is always a challenge. Sometimes, the lack of washing stations nearby. On paper, the solution proposed by Vulcanett therefore appears to be ideal since a single product can both clean the rims and clean the floor mats or windows. The use is simple. Just take out a wipe (the box containing 80), and, ideally, start cleaning with the least soiled parts. After leaving the product to act for a few tens of seconds, a microfiber contained in the cap of the assembly allows, at the very end of cleaning, to remove traces of the reagent, but not the dirt. Theoretically, and provided that the order of the tasks to be accomplished is respected, the microfiber therefore always remains clean. The product proving to be very effective , whether on brake dust or for cleaning windows, a single wipe is enough to clean everything. A “pocket” washing station in a way, certainly less efficient than its big sisters with powerful jets essential for very dirty cars, but ideal for troubleshooting in almost all circumstances. Price: from 42.90 euros