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Most people have seen the hashtag #vanlife on social media and the image it conjures up is of young millennials in shiny, decked-out campers waking up to a sunrise in Big Sur. But in Chloé Zhao’s new film, Nomadland, an older woman named Fern goes on the road after her husband dies and the company-owned mining town she used to live in is left abandoned as a casualty of 2008’s Great Recession. Based on a book by the same name, the movie gives audiences a glimpse into the nomad community of America. To make it more realistic, the director chose to cast a lot of real-life nomads to play versions of themselves in the film. One such person is nomad Bob Wells, the vlogger and author who's arguably the most famous of these real-life nomads featured in the film. But for those who aren’t initiated into the nomadic lifestyle, who exactly is the real Bob Wells? Bob Wells has been a full-time nomad for the past 12 years. He’s the founder of CheapRVLiving, a website where he shares tips for how to live on the road, and he also runs a non-profit called the Home on Wheels Alliance, which funds programs in service of the nomadic community. Before he became committed to a nomadic lifestyle, Bob lived in Anchorage, Alaska, where he worked as a union clerk. He enjoyed all the usual perks of modern life until his divorce at the age of 40. Suddenly, Bob was paying child support and alimony, which left him in dire financial straits. One day, as he was worried about his finances, Bob came across a van for sale. He bought it, gave his landlord notice, and started to live out of the van. At first, Bob was devastated that his life had come to living out of a vehicle. But after a while, he had a change of heart and “fell in love with the freedom, simplicity, frugality, independence, and earth-friendliness of the nomadic way of life.” After the first month of not having to pay rent, his finances started to improve, and soon, Bob was able to customize his van. He also didn’t have to work as many hours in the week to keep up with his expenses and was consequently able to start spending more time with his sons. Realizing the better quality of life the van had afforded him, Bob started Cheap RV Living in 2005 so he could share his valuable knowledge. He started to grow a loyal following and after the Great Recession, Bob realized the community was bigger than ever. He went on to create a live meetup group called Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, a version of which is featured in Nomadland. The event started out with 45 vans in 2011, but by 2018, it had grown to an estimated 10,000. And Bob sees the nomad community continuing to grow in the years to come. “If the Great Recession was a crack in the system, Covid and climate change will be the chasm,” he told The Guardian. But with his YouTube channel and the Home on Wheels Alliance, Bob hopes to be able to guide many more people in their pursuit of a nomadic lifestyle.

Having whittled down proposals from over 200 artists after January’s open call for submissions, four individuals aged between 18 and 25 will now create works inspired by an English Heritage site of their choice. Charged with rethinking what heritage means in a modern context, the quartet will explore their selected historic setting – digitally at first, in person when restrictions allow – to draw out ideas for a new work. “Inevitably it was incredibly difficult to narrow down to the four successful artists,” says Dr Dominique Bouchard, head of learning and interpretation at English Heritage, who served on the judging panel. “Across more than 400 of the country’s most important historic places, English Heritage’s sites have been offering inspiration to artists for more than 6,000 years. Now, we are excited to get a new perspective on these places through the lenses of these exciting young artists. I can’t wait to see how they use their creative energy to engage the next generation with the stories they have to tell.” The commissions form part of England’s New Lenses, a broader partnership between Photoworks and English Heritage’s Shout Out Loud national youth engagement programme. The scheme is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported by the UK Government’s Youth Accelerator Fund.

Oxbotica is a U.K.-based company that takes care of the navigation, perception, user interface, fleet management, and other intricate features and software required to power self-driving vehicles. This startup was launched in 2014 by Paul Newman and Igmar Posner, both professors at the Oxford University. From then onwards, this company has grown from one strength to another. The main aim of Oxbotica is to create software that drives autonomous vehicles without having to depend on any third-party for the conduction of operations. Oxbatica recently raised $47 million of funding in the Series B round, taking the net funding to about $76.4 million. This funding would be primarily utilized towards accelerating the commercial deployment of the software in the leading industries and markets all over the globe. Self-driven cars have captured millions of people’s attention, but these cars have not been deployed on a large scale due to safety concerns. Oxbotica aims to bridge this gap and provide software that acknowledges all the situations. The basic technology in play here is a general adversarial network (GAN) based simulation technology-selenium. The GAN works as a generative model that employs two neural network models where one model is known as the generator, and the other is the generative network. This technology, when applied successfully, generates photorealistic images within a brief time. The technology can reverse the road signage and even change a particular image’s lighting to demonstrate the different times of the day or even the seasonal change. For example- it can replace a tree with a building in the photorealistic image while also ensuring that the reflection indicates precisely what it should. These synthetic images are deployed to teach the software aptly and to verse it well with reality. The technology generates every possible experience down to even raindrops.The platform that Oxbotica is developing seeks to include mapping, simulation, indexing, logging, diagnostics, and vehicle to vehicle communication. This software will also need less computing power and would easily blend in with cloud management. Safety will be the primary concern in the development of this software. For that purpose, lidar sensors, radar for localization and perception have been put into place. All these will increase the fleet’s intelligence, and therefore the safety of any individual will not be put into jeopardy by the self-driven vehicle. This software has been practically implemented on private roads, test tracks, and simulations for hundreds of thousands of miles. It has been found to work in almost all scenarios across the American, European, and Australian tracks. Oxbotica also plans to retain the vehicle’s manual control, thereby making the vehicle function dually. The company also conducts regular penetration testing to look out for potential hackers who could wreak havoc. With the world facing a pandemic, this technology’s deployment is likely to take place sooner than expected. Self-driving cars, vans, and trucks will help control the pandemic as it will reduce person-to-person contact. This could also potentially assist in establishing the trust of people with autonomous vehicles.

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a production-linked Incentive scheme for IT Hardware. The scheme proposes an incentive to boost domestic manufacturing and attract large investments in the value chain of IT Hardware. The target segment under the proposed scheme includes laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, and servers said Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. The total cost of the proposed scheme is approximately Rs.7,350 crore over 4 years, which includes an incentive outlay of Rs.7,325 crore and administrative charges of Rs 25 crore. "Rs 30,000 crore worth of laptops and Rs 3,000 crore worth of tablets are currently sold in India. Of this, more than 80 per cent is imported. As a result of the latest PLI, the government hopes to draw to India the top 5 global companies which control 50 per cent of the international market. A total Rs 3,26,00 crore worth of production will be achieved, of which 75 per cent will be made up by exports," Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, said. The scheme has an employment generation potential of over 1,80,000 (direct and indirect) over 4 years. The Scheme will provide impetus to Domestic Value Addition for IT Hardware which is expected to rise to 20% - 25% by 2025. Government further extended the PLI scheme worth Rs 15,000 crore for pharmaceuticals, to reduce imports and boost domestic production. The minister said the pharmaceutical industry is $40 billion and our global contribution is 3.5 per cent but high-end patented drugs still come through imports. The PLI scheme will make India's pharmaceuticals globally competitive. Prasad further said that the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme for mobile phones and components which was announced in April during the height of Covid-19 delivered production worth Rs 35,000 crore, created 22,500 jobs, and brought around Rs 1,300 investment.

They created a family of algorithms (software-based instructions for solving a problem) able to complete classic Atari games, such as Pitfall. Previously, these scrolling platform games have been challenging to solve using artificial intelligence (AI). The algorithms could help robots better navigate real-world environments. This remains a core challenge in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. The types of environments in question include disaster zones, where robots could be sent out to search for survivors, or even just the average home. The work in this study falls into an area of AI research known as reinforcement learning. A number of games used in the research require the user to explore mazes containing rewards, obstacles and hazards. The family of algorithms, known collectively as Go-Explore, produced substantial improvements on previous attempts to solve games such as the wittily titled Montezuma's Revenge, released in 1984, Freeway (1981) and the aforementioned Pitfall (1982). One way the researchers did this was by developing algorithms that build up archives of areas they have already visited. "Our method is indeed pretty simple and straightforward, although that is often the case with scientific breakthroughs," researchers Adrien Ecoffet, Joost Huizinga and Jeff Clune said in response to questions sent over email. "The reason our approach hadn't been considered before is that it differs strongly from the dominant approach that has historically been used for addressing these problems in the reinforcement learning community, called 'intrinsic motivation'. In intrinsic motivation, instead of dividing exploration into returning and exploring like we do, the agent is simply rewarded for discovering new areas." A problem with the intrinsic motivation approach is that, while searching for a solution, the algorithm can "forget" about promising areas that still need to be explored. This is known as "detachment". The team found a way to overcome this: by compiling the archive of areas it has visited, the algorithm can return to a promising intermediate stage of the game as a point from which to explore further. But there was another problem with previous approaches to mastering these games. "They rely on random actions that may be taken at any point in time, including while the agent is still going towards the area that actually needs to be explored," the scientists told BBC News. "If you have an environment where your actions have to be accurate and precise, such as a game with many hazards that can instantly kill you, such random actions can prevent you from reaching the area you actually want to explore." The technical term for this is "derailment". The new method, described in the prestigious journal Nature, resolves the derailment problem by separating the process of returning to previously visited areas from the process of exploring new ones - and tackles them in different ways. The team members, who carried out their work while employed by Uber AI Labs in California, said the work lends itself to algorithms used for guiding robots in the home or in industrial settings. They say that Go-Explore is designed to tackle longstanding problems in reinforcement learning. "Think about asking a robot to get you a coffee: there is virtually no chance it will happen to operate the coffee machine by just acting randomly." The scientists added: "In addition to robotics, Go-Explore has already seen some experimental research in language learning, where an agent learns the meaning of words by exploring a text-based game, and for discovering potential failures in the behaviour of a self-driving car."

The Cowin X3, a successor to the Chery Tiggo 3 model dating back to 2014, has received a facelift landing with front fascia improvements and a new engine, among other highlights. The car is still 4,335 mm long, 1,796 mm wide and 1,665 mm tall with 2,530 mm between the axles (U.S. LWH: 14.22 / 5.89 / 5.46 feet, wheelbase: 8.3 feet). Exterior changes include the radiator grille and the front bumper. The ground clearance amounts to 190 millimeters (7.4 inches), and tires can be sized 215/60 R17 or 215/55 R18 depending on wheel size. Notable additions inside include a classical analog dashboard with a 7-inch display, a 10.1-inch infotainment touchscreen, and a HVAC system with an air purifier. Chrome accents seem more common than ever before, and you can opt for a dual-tone fake leather. The old 1.5-liter non-turbo mill rated at 116 PS (114 hp / 85 kW) and 143 Nm (105 lb-ft) of torque retires alongside its five-speed manual transmission. A new turbo-four engine with the same displacement volume takes its place, hitting a CVT box with 156 PS (154 hp / 115 kW) and 230 Nm (170 lb-ft). The drive stays locked on the front axle, as usual. Sales in China start tomorrow, February 26, 2021. The pre-facelift Cowin X3 (see video) has been losing customers lately, going down from 24,013 and 24,919 units sold in 2016 and 2017, respectively, to only 6,760 units sold last year.

The silhouette of Jerry West has been the NBA's logo for over five decades. An artist was first commissioned to design it in 1969 and the league has not changed it ever since. It is simple and iconic and has given the NBA one of the most recognizable logos of all of the professional sports leagues. But Kyrie Irving would prefer to update it. The Brooklyn Nets guard had a particularly close relationship with Kobe Bryant, and on Wednesday, he took to Instagram to argue that the Lakers legend should replace West as the league's logo. "Gotta Happen, idc what anyone says," Irving wrote. "BLACK KINGS BUILT THE LEAGUE." Irving and Bryant were close up until Kobe's tragic death in a January 2020 helicopter accident. When Irving's Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 championship, Irving FaceTimed Bryant from the locker room as his teammates celebrated. Shortly after Irving called for Bryant to be the league's new logo, Vanessa Bryant, Kobe's wife, responded by sharing Irving's post to her Instagram story and saying "Love this @kyrieirving." Vanessa also shared multiple photos of the late Lakers star and daughter, Gianna, following the Irving post. West himself advocated for a logo change during a 2015 interview with the Huffington Post but pushed for a different player to receive the honor. "I hate to say it's not a Laker, but Michael Jordan," West said. "He's been the greatest player I've ever seen. And I'm probably a harsh judge of talent in the sense that I admire players that are really good defensive players and really good offensive players. And I felt that at his time in the game, he was the best defensive player in the game, but more importantly, he was the best offensive player. And he made his teams win." The NBA renamed the All-Star Game MVP trophy in Bryant's honor. After Bryant died in 2020, a petition circulated on change.org to make him the logo and drew over 3.2 million signatures. The league has announced no plans to consider a logo change. The NBA trade deadline is a month away. Given that both conferences' standings are bunched up in the middle, it's still not completely clear who the buyers and sellers will be, but it's getting more difficult for certain teams to convince themselves they still have a shot at making something out of this season. Derrick Rose has already been moved, and two former All-Stars who shared a frontcourt for a playoff team a couple of years ago have been shelved. This is a primer for trade season, a list of 40 players who might be moved. It will be updated and expanded multiple times before the March 25 deadline. (Stats reflect games played through Feb. 23.)Washington won five straight games before a 19-point loss to the Clippers on Tuesday, and it continues to maintain that its franchise player isn't going anywhere. Beal is averaging a league-best 32.7 points on 59.1 percent true shooting. He's 27 years old and starting in the All-Star Game. It is understandable that the Wizards want to do everything they can to build around him, especially if he seems content to play out the season before reevaluating things. One has to wonder, though, just what kind of offer would convince them to pivot from their plan. Could they get the same type of package the Rockets got for James Harden? Would they really turn that down? LaVine is having the best, most complete season of his career and is a deserving All-Star. Given that he's 25 years old and under contract until 2022, the Bulls should not be in a hurry to trade him. We're just a couple of months removed, however, from LaVine and the front office failing to agree to a contract extension. If Chicago wants to play the long game, it could still potentially sell (extremely) high on LaVine, move its veterans -- more on them later -- and take itself out of the short-term playoff picture. Seems much less likely now, though. The Raptors' slow start predictably led other teams to surmise that Lowry might be on his way out. They've turned their season around, though, and the type of team most interested in a soon-to-be 35-year-old point guard typically isn't the type of team that can easily trade for a $30.5 million contract. If Lowry informs Toronto that he doesn't plan on re-signing as a free agent, you'd think the front office would try to move him. Otherwise, this remains a mutually beneficial partnership, and there are non-sentimental reasons it could continue beyond this season.Mark Cuban denied that the Mavericks have even discussed Porzingis with other teams, but there is at least some smoke here. Rival executives believe that they've explored the idea of trading him, per Bleacher Report's Jake Fischer, and the front office has reached out to the Golden State Warriors to gauge their interest, per SNY's Ian Begley. At his best, Porzingis is the kind of player who would normally be untouchable: A 7-foot-3 dude who makes deep 3s and protects the rim at an elite level. Based on his recent play, however, it is fair to be concerned about the rim-protection part of the equation. If Dallas thinks Porzingis will remain a defensive liability, it would make sense to trade him to a team that disagrees.Ideally, the Rockets would have had more than two full months to evaluate Oladipo and how he might fit long term before deciding whether or not to flip him at the deadline. Instead, as a result of a foot injury, they're going to have to figure it out based on a much smaller sample. He has played just 11 games in Houston, just six of them alongside big man Christian Wood, who is sidelined with an ankle injury. Oladipo turns 29 in May and is on a $21 million expiring contract; potential suitors need to be confident about his health and his willingness to re-sign.

The 55-year-old star likes to take on physically demanding roles and is known for films like “The Grey,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” He moved up to the leading role as Sergeant Leo Barnes in “The Purge: Anarchy” and “The Purge: Election Year.” He was also the main character in the television drama series “Kingdom,” portraying the owner of a mixed martial arts gym that helped train fighters. In real life, Grillo trains with professional athletes, pro boxers and practices mixed martial arts. It’s not just about looking fit on screen, though; it’s also so he doesn’t get hurt as he says he insists on doing many of his own stunts. “I eat really well and I have a pretty good lifestyle,” Grillo said during a recent phone interview. “My only vice is that I like to drink red wine, but my Italian grandparents would say that’s not a vice.” Grillo has a total of eight feature films coming out in 2021. He plays Vin in the indie drama “Body Brokers,” which focuses on abuse in Southern California drug rehab centers, and he stars opposite Gerard Butler in the forthcoming action thriller “Copshop.” He also teams up with Bruce Willis for “Cosmic Sin” and plays a lead in Blumhouse Productions’ new drama “This Is the Night.” His latest film, “Boss Level,” in which he stars and serves as a producer, will be released on Hulu on Friday, March 5. Grillo plays former special forces agent Roy Pulver who is trapped in a time loop that repeats the day of his murder. Before each death, he finds out a little more about who killed him while he races to chase down Colonel Ventor (Mel Gibson) to break the time loop and save his ex-wife (Naomi Watts). Grillo and director Joe Carnahan navigated a last-minute budget change that took filming from 41 days to just 27. Within that time frame, Grillo’s character dies so much it becomes comical. The actor said he had a good time dying on screen in a variety of ways — his character is stabbed, shot, and dropped from a high-rise building, among them (as well as an even more violent demise he mentions in the next quote) — but he got to show off his martial arts skills in all the fight scenes. “What cracks me up every time is getting my head chopped off,” he said of one the character’s gruesome endings. “I have a dummy that follows me. We just finished a movie called ‘Copshop’ and my dummy from ‘Boss Level’ was on that movie, too. It’s just this running joke. My dummy gets his head cut off, my character gets his head cut off … for some reason for me that’s hysterical.” Grillo has a stunt double, Greg Fitzpatrick, who he says can talk him out of doing anything crazy. But that’s not an easy task. “I did 90 percent of that on my own,” he said of his scenes in “Boss Level.” “I did the sword fighting and I did most of my own stunts. I did most of the driving, but I do have a person in double that travels with me on every film. He’s my brother, my guardian. He makes sure if something really is dangerous, he doesn’t let me do it. These are the unsung heroes of the film business.” Though he still enjoys being in front of the camera, he’s learning a lot behind the scenes. Grillo said since he started taking on the responsibility of a producer or executive producer on some of his films he’s gained a new perspective on the business.“Joe Carnahan and I started our company five years ago with the movie called ‘Wheelman,’ and we learned a lot about producing and controlling the process,” he said. “I learned how to be a better actor and not to take things so personally. I remember being a young actor and thinking, ‘Oh, I went in there and I was amazing. It was a great read … why didn’t they pick me?’ There’s so many things that go into choosing the cast and putting a movie together, so it’s been a great education. And look, I’m getting a little long in the tooth, so I have to kind of start learning other skills, and this is a great thing to segue into.” Aside from the films, Grillo is also reprising his role as the villain Crossbones for Marvel’s “What if…?” animated television series on Disney Plus. He said he just finished recording his voiceover for an episode in the closet of his home. Though he’s not suiting up and physically fighting Captain America, Grillo said he’ll do anything that’s related to Marvel. “Whatever legacy I have as an actor, I am part of that Marvel Universe and it has changed my career tremendously,” he said. “I’m a secondary character … so that just goes to show you the power of Marvel and the world is fascinated by these movies and take them very seriously.” In his spare time, he’s hanging out with his three sons at home. They’ve been enjoying the pool and trampoline in the backyard and playing a lot of video games, but Grillo said that like most parents these days he can’t wait for them to return to in-person schooling. He’s also keeping up with his workouts just in case he gets a call to action and he’s been focused on how grateful he is for everything. “To be able to combine that [martial arts and boxing] with what I do for a living and get paid, it’s like, Wow, I must have saved a bunch of nuns on a burning bus in another life,” he said with a laugh. “Somebody blessed me here! I’m at this stage in the game where there’s still an ascension happening and I keep working hard and hoping we can keep pumping out some good stuff.”

Luther Burbank High School senior Emili Carrillo is finding ways to learn English — but lately, school isn’t making that easy. The 17-year-old moved from Mexico nearly four years ago with her dad, and works part-time as a cashier at a grocery store. “Working has helped me a lot, because I have to practice my English,” Carillo said about chatting with customers on the job. But learning English at her South Sacramento school — an entirely computer-based activity since last March — is another matter. “It’s been hard for me,” she said about attending classes online, which eliminates opportunities to practice English with peers. “When we were at school … we kind of communicated more with our classmates. And this year, during the pandemic, we don’t even talk sometimes.” As the momentum builds to reopen schools in California, early evidence suggests that English-learning students have fallen behind more than their peers. Education experts say school leaders should act now to reverse a widening achievement gap between students with financial resources and kids with less support at home. “Now is the time where we have to acknowledge that these gaps have widened during the pandemic and really be intentional about providing extra supports,” said Heather Hough, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education at Stanford University. Hough says that, with the right resources and support, educators can fast-track learning. “And this doesn't have to have a long term catastrophic event on their lives,” Hough said of the pandemic. Hough’s research released in January showed that California students in 18 school districts grew less in mathematics and English language arts than they would have over a typical year. The evidence was most pronounced in the younger grade levels. But the most concerning impacts, according to Hough, were that kids in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, which in the study included low-income students and English language-learning kids, were further behind than their peers. “In the fifth grade, our research shows that students learning English are about 30 percent behind where they would be in a normal year in English language arts, compared to 10 percent for students that are not learning English,” Hough said. And this is a significant group: English-learning students make up almost a fifth of California’s public school po[CENSORED]tion, according to California Department of Education estimates from 2019. Although some may already be fluent in English, more than 40% of the students enrolled in California public schools overall — some 2.5 million kids — speak a language other than English at home. More than 81% of English-learning students in California schools speak Spanish, according to the state statistics. Larry Ferlazzo teaches history and English to non-native-speaking students of all levels at Luther Burbank. He tries to make the best of “Zoom school” by teaching with humor and interactive online quizzes. But the quality is not the same as learning face-to-face, he said, where gestures and informal interaction can help student comprehension. “There’s no question that grades are suffering, not just for [English-learners], but for all students,” Ferlazzo said about how students are doing nationwide. He writes extensively about education trends and improving school instruction for national outlets such as EdWeek. During a couple of his online classes one recent Wednesday morning, almost all students had their cameras off, with just cartoon characters or animal photos to represent their space on the screen. Students responded to Ferlazzo or teacher aide questions by writing in the chat, instead of verbalizing their answer. But the technical glitches and physical distance are not the only thing preventing non-native English speakers from learning more. Ferlazzo says many of his students are children of immigrants from all over the world — Afghanistan, Central America, Vietnam, and the Pacific Islands — and family responsibilities sometimes keep them from attending class. “Many of our students are having to take care and assist younger siblings,” he said. “A fair number of our students are also having to work nearly full time to help their families during the recession.” And Ferlazzo says he hears of a case of COVID among one of his students, or their family members, at least once a week. “When you’re sick, when you’re worried, you just can’t concentrate,” he said. Hough says the learning gap between disadvantaged groups and other students during the pandemic is directly tied to the different supports kids have at home. “In some families, students have full time tutors, or even a credentialed teacher, who's at home supporting their learning. Or a parent who doesn't work, who's supporting their learning full time,” she said. “On the other end of the continuum, we have families where perhaps there isn't an adult at home during the day at all because all adults in the family are out working multiple jobs.” The California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are still deadlocked about how to reopen schools, and what resources will be available when they do. Samantha Tran of Children Now says policymakers should focus resources on the most disadvantaged kids, such as English language learners, and that should include summer school and partnerships with community-based organizations. “How do we address some of this learning loss in a way that engages kids, that gets them excited about learning, and dare I say … be fun?” Tran asked. Emili Carrillo has juggled many things during the pandemic, including being a peer tutor for Ferlazzo’s class. She says she knows teachers are trying their best to connect with students during the pandemic, but she still sometimes has trouble communicating. Carrillo will likely be able to feel more connected to her peers and teachers in a couple of months. The Sacramento City Unified School District plans to restart in-person instruction for the youngest grade levels in early April. High schoolers would see each other again in May, but only if the COVID threat level goes down in the county.

Let’s face it, as a small business owner you’ve a lot on your plate, and filing your taxes might seem like an overwhelming task on your long to-do list. But the right online tax filing software can help you save time and money. Tax software programs allow you to complete the filing process online, so there’s no need to deal with the back-and-forth of working with an accountant. And don’t worry if you’re not a tax pro — these services walk you through the filing process, so you can check off all the boxes before you hit file. If you want advice on your tax situation, many online software programs provide the option to upgrade to get live support that may include one-on-one assistance with a tax professional. CNBC Select evaluated po[CENSORED]r tax filing software programs that offer plans focused on people who are small business owners, which generally includes the self-employed, freelancers, sole proprietors and anyone with a side gig (or two). We evaluated these programs on a range of features, including cost, user experience, expert tax assistance and Better Business Bureau rating. (Read more about our methodology below.) Here are the best tax filing software programs for small business owners, so you can file your taxes before the April 15 deadline.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday extended the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the pharmaceutical and technology hardware sectors, approving ₹15,000 crore and ₹7,325 crore worth of incentives, respectively, to encourage domestic manufacturing. The cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the PLI scheme for pharma will be effective over FY21-FY29, while manufacturers of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers and servers, will enjoy the benefits for a four-year period. The move will boost local manufacturing and reduce India’s dependence on imports. The government estimates the scheme will help the pharma sector clock incremental sales of ₹2.94 trillion and incremental exports worth ₹1.96 trillion during the six years, while the IT hardware segment will be able to build production capacity worth ₹3.26 trillion, of which 75%, or ₹2.45 trillion, will be for exports, in the next four years. The government also expects the top five global manufacturers of laptops and tablets, including Apple, Dell and HP, to set up local units.The PLI scheme for pharmaceuticals, the government said, is expected to generate employment for both skilled and un-skilled personnel, estimated at 20,000 direct and 80,000 indirect jobs. “The objective of the scheme is to enhance India’s manufacturing capabilities by increasing investments and production in the sector, and contributing to product diversification to high-value goods in the pharmaceutical sector," electronics and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. It is expected to promote innovation for the development of complex and high-tech products, including emerging therapies and in-vitro diagnostic devices, besides building self-reliance in key drugs. It is also expected to improve accessibility and affordability of medical products, including orphan drugs, for the Indian po[CENSORED]tion, it added. The manufacturers of pharmaceutical goods registered in India will be segregated based on their global manufacturing revenue (GMR) to ensure wider applicability of the scheme across the industry and to meet the objectives of the scheme.The Indian pharma industry, the third-largest in the world by volume, is worth ₹4,000 crore, and contributes 3.5% of total drugs and medicines exported globally. India exports pharma products to over 200 countries, including highly regulated markets such as the US, the UK, European Union and Canada.At present, low-value generic drugs account for a majority of Indian exports, while a large part of the domestic demand for patented drugs is met through imports. At present, local pharma companies lack high-value production capabilities and the necessary research and development centres. The government expects the IT and hardware industry to receive additional investment of ₹2,700 crore, besides earning direct and indirect revenue of ₹15,760 crore, besides creating 180,000 jobs in four years.“Production-linked incentive is a very simple term. Come to India, invest in India, set up your factory, manufacture produce, export outside and earn incentive. We have already discussed the scheme with the manufacturers," Prasad added. “The scheme shall extend an incentive of 4% to 2%, 1% on net incremental sales (over base year i.e. 2019-20) of goods manufactured in India and covered under the target segment, to eligible companies, for a period of four years," an official statement said. India imported laptops and tablets worth $4.21 billion and $0.41 billion, respectively, in 2019-20. The market for IT hardware is dominated by seven global companies, which account for about 70% of the world’s market share. “These companies are able to exploit large economies of scale to compete in global markets. It is imperative that these companies expand their operations in India and make it a major destination for manufacturing of IT hardware," it added. The move comes at a time when global manufacturers are looking to diversify their manufacturing locations to mitigate the risks involved in depending on a single market.

Over the past year, the coronavirus crisis has spurred app usage in the United States as people stay indoors to limit contact with others. Mobile games particularly have enjoyed a boom, and among them, games from Chinese studios are gaining po[CENSORED]rity. Games released on the U.S. App Store and Google Play Store raked in a total of $5.8 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, jumping 34.3% from a year before and accounting for over a quarter of the world’s mobile gaming revenues, according to a new report from market research firm Sensor Tower. In the quarter, Chinese titles contributed as much as 20% of the mobile gaming revenues in the U.S. That effectively made China the largest importer of mobile games in the U.S., thanks to a few blockbuster titles. Chinese publishers claimed 21 spots among the 100 top-grossing games in the period and collectively generated $780 million in revenues in the U.S., the world’s largest mobile gaming market, more than triple the amount from two years before. Occupying the top rank are familiar Chinese titles such as the first-person shooter game Call of Duty, a collaboration between Tencent and Activision, as well as Tencent’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. But smaller Chinese studios are also quickly infiltrating the U.S. market. Mihoyo, a little-known studio outside China, has been turning heads in the domestic gaming industry with its hit game Genshin Impact, a role-playing action game featuring anime-style characters. It was the sixth-most highest-grossing mobile game in the U.S. during Q4, racking up over $100 million in revenues in the period. Most notable is that Mihoyo has been an independent studio since its inception in 2011. Unlike many gaming startups that covet fundings from industry titans like Tencent, Mihoyo has so far raised only a modest amount from its early days. It also stirred up controversy for skipping major distributors like Tencent and phone vendors Huawei and Xiaomi, releasing Genshin Impact on Bilibili, a po[CENSORED]r video site amongst Chinese youngsters, and games downloading platform Taptap. Magic Tavern, the developer behind the puzzle game Project Makeover, one of the most installed mobile games in the U.S. since late last year, is another lesser-known studio. Founded by a team of Tsinghua graduates with offices around the world, Magic Tavern is celebrated as one of the first studios with roots in China to have gained ground in the American casual gaming market. KKR-backed gaming company AppLovin is a strategic investor in Magic Tavern. Other po[CENSORED]r games in the U.S. also have links to China, if not directly owned by a Chinese company. Shortcut Run and Roof Nails are works from the French casual game maker Voodoo, which received a minority investment from Tencent last year. Tencent is also a strategic investor in Roblox, the gaming platform oriented to young gamers and slated for an IPO in the coming weeks.

Built in the early 1970s, the E9 3.0 CSL was the first BMW M touring coupe. Apart from achieving the fastest production-car lap time at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the 3.0 CSL managed to take home six European Touring Car Championship trophies. The car featured aggressively flared fenders and a massive rear wing that earned it the nickname “Batmobile.” Although it was not officially badged as an M car, the 3.0 CSL is still one of the best BMW M cars in history. Its legendary performance made it the face of BMW’s Motorsports efforts and forged the way for other M cars. Produced between 1984 and 1989, the E24 M635CSi is one of the best cars to ever come out of BMW’s M division with confidence enough to represent its era with style and class. The M635CSi, often considered the top model in the E24 series, embodied the ultimate combination of luxury and wild performance. Considered avant-garde in its time, today, the E24 M635CSi is one of the most sought-after classic BMWs thanks to its typical M characteristics. The car is powered by the M88 in-line 6-cylinder engine established by the legendary BMW M1. After BMW’s withdrawal from F1 racing in 1986, its Motorsport division diverted its efforts to touring-car racing. This pivot brought to life one of the most adored M cars, the original BMW M3. Under its hood was a DOHC 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine that produced 192 horsepower. This mill helped the M3 win more than 1500 races, including two European Touring-Car Championships and two DTM trophies. In 1990, the M division released 600 models of the M3 in a lightweight, racing-spec Sport Evolution semblance. The Sport Evolution represented the zenith of the revered M3 and came with a more powerful, 2.5-liter four-cylinder powerplant that delivered 235 horsepower. Even before the M5 adopted an eight-cylinder engine to become the peerless E39 M5 in 1998, it had already built a legacy itself. It was one of the fastest sports sedans of the 20th century. Under its hood lay a sonorous 5.0-liter V-8 engine that produced 394 horsepower and 368 lb-ft of torque. The massive V8 was paired with a six-speed manual transmission and the car could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds. With intuitive controls, stunning body design, and a business-class cabin, the E39 M5 was one of the most desirable sedans of its time. Even in the modern days, the E39 is widely regarded as a benchmark sports sedan. In 2003, BMW M released yet another beautiful version of the M3, the E46 M3 CSL. The car borrowed its lightweight sports coupe nomenclature from the iconic 3.0 CSL but focused more on reduced weight. BMW used carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic on the door panels, the center console, front and rear bumpers, and the roof. These weight-cutting efforts reduced the car's curb weight to just slightly above 3,000 pounds, 243 pounds lighter than the standard M3. BMW naturally added power to the M3's 3.2-liter inline-six engine from 343 to 360 horsepower. A touch of a button on the steering wheel activated a Track driving mode. The E46 M4 CSL accelerated from 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds with the launch control function activated. M cars were not powered by V8 engines until 1998 when the then-new E39 M5 debuted with one. The next-generation E60 M5 took things a notch higher by adding two more cylinders to the already mighty V8. The 2007 E61 was powered by a 5.0-liter V-10 powerplant inspired by BMW's F1 racing engines. The 10-cylinder engine produced 500 horsepower and 383 lb-ft of torque, redlining at a screaming 8250 rpm. What made the E61 M5 so special was that it brought back the station-wagon body style to the lineup. Who doesn't love V10 screaming under the hood of their family hauler anyways? BMW M cars did not have all-wheel-drive systems until 2010 when the original X5 M and X6 M SUVs debuted. Both muscle SUVs came with BMW's corporate V8 that powered the X5 and X6, 5-series, and 7-series. The V8 was upgraded with twin-scroll turbochargers and BMW's first-ever crossover exhaust manifold. Although many BMW fans didn't love the tall SUVs, the E71's mill produced 555 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque that helped the massive vehicle go from 0-60 mph in less than 5 seconds. In 2016, BMW M decided to do things differently by building a special edition M4, the F82 M4 GTS. This was not a car for everybody; it was made available for a select group of 300 lucky Americans. The GTS was an M4 coupe running an innovative water-injection system that helped boost the twin-turbocharged inline-six engine's power from the base coupe's 425 horsepower to 493 horsepower. This power also helped push the GTS around the Nürburgring in a blistering seven minutes and 28 seconds. The two-door also set a time of 2:52.9 around Virginia International Raceway, around 8 seconds quicker than the regular M4. With a 0-60 mph acceleration time of 3.2 seconds according to BMW, the latest-generation F90 M5 is one of the quickest M cars ever produced. The vehicle achieves these impressive numbers with the latest and the most muscular version of BMW's corporate V-8 engine. The twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V-8 produces 600 horsepower and 553 lb-ft of torque, 40 hp and 53 lb-ft more potent than its predecessor. A new M-specific all-wheel-drive system called M xDrive helps distribute this massive power to the pavement, allowing the F90 M5 to achieve its swift acceleration. Here comes the mighty king of the M lineup, the M8 Competition. At the heart of this powerful missile of a car lies BMW's S63 twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V-8 engine with 617 horsepower and 553 lb-ft of torque. The standard M8 produces 600 horsepower. The massive V8 powerplant is paired with BMW's M-specific all-wheel-drive system, the M xDrive, which sends power to the rear wheels. The M8 Competition accelerates from 0-60 mph in just 2.5 seconds and clears the quarter-mile in 10.7 seconds at 129 mph.

In August 1901 Marshall "Major" Taylor of Indianapolis arrived by train in Newark, New Jersey after a campaign that spring as a match sprinter in Paris and other destination cities around the Continent. He had won 42 of 57 races he started against national champions on their home velodromes, including France's world champion Edmund Jacquelin. Taylor's early season earned him more than $10,000 in prize money and appearance fees, worth $310,000 today—and far greater than Major League Baseball stars, like Honus Wagner pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, earned that year. Taylor lined up at the Newark Velodrome in this photo, never published in his lifetime. He sat between Iver Lawson, a Swedish immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen living in Chicago, on the outside, and Willie "Boy Wonder" Fenn, Sr., from Waterbury, Connecticut, on the pole. They rode scratch, behind a dozen pros staggered ahead on the track, to begin a ten-mile handicap race. More than 10,000 onlookers filled the grandstand and cheap seats. Hundreds of others stood on the infield, including Black men in suits and stylish bowler hats like bankers, joining the rail birds. Taylor, 22, reigned as America's national professional sprint champion from the previous season, based on points awarded in the National Cycling Association summer series of races from the quarter-mile to the mile. He had won the 1899 world sprint championship in Montréal – only the second Black athlete, following Canadian boxing champion George Dixon winning the 1892 bantamweight boxing title, ever to claim a sport's world title. At the turn of the 20th Century, basketball was a new sport spreading like a rising tide from Northeast college campuses to the South and Midwest. Football drew as much interest as badminton. Major League Baseball remained racially segregated until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers (today's LA Dodgers) as a first baseman in 1947. America was fraught with racial segregation. Douglas A. Blackmon in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II observes that the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of "separate but equal" in Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned contemptuous attitudes of Whites toward Blacks. Taylor lived and raced as much for the challenge of testing himself against rivals as to show audiences that he had chain lightning in his legs and a tactical mind for winning as sharp as anyone. He specialized in match sprints over a mile, or a kilometer, pitting one rider against another to see who could hit the finish line first on the home straight in front of the grandstand. Promoters built two-hour programs with events culminating in the match sprints. "In a word I was a pioneer, and therefore had to blaze my own trail," Taylor wrote in his self-published autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World. Taylor recounts battles he had beyond the muscle-burning, lung-bursting effort of all-out pedaling. One rider he had defeated got off his bicycle, grabbed Taylor by the neck, and choked him. Some promoters refused to allow Taylor to start a race after they had invited him there at his expense. Many restaurants around the country had staff that refused to serve him. Yet in his autobiography he remains gracious. "There will always be that dreadful monster prejudice to do extra battle because of their color." Rather than settle old scores, Taylor in his book writes: "Life is too short for any man to hold bitterness in his heart." He didn't live long enough to know that Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball. But the Supreme Court's 1896 separate-but-equal ruling remained in effect and continued to reinforce racial segregation in Robinson's career. Holding Taylor in this photo is his personal trainer, William Buckner, who had accompanied Taylor in his spring tour. Buckner would become an athletic trainer for the Chicago White Sox in 1910, one of the rare Black athletic trainers in racially segregated MLB. Taylor rode an Iver Johnson bicycle, for which he was paid $1,000 – now worth $31,000. Made in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Iver Johnson frames were equipped with an innovative underslung curved top tube, designed make the diamond frame more rigid. On his right, Iver Lawson rode under contract for Cleveland Bicycles, made in Chicago. Lawson grew so frustrated from losing NCA national sprint championships to Taylor and then to Taylor's rival and fellow Hoosier, Frank Kramer of Evansville, that in 1904 Lawson shipped out on his own across the Atlantic to the world championships in London. Lawson dethroned defending champion Thorvald Ellegaard for the world title. Holding Lawson is his older brother, John, known as "The Terrible Swede" for pedaling over a rider who had fallen in front of him in a six-day race. In the following winter, John Lawson would die of pneumonia. This photo came from Fenn, a first-year pro at age 20. He had turned pro after winning the 1900 NCA national amateur championship. On the start line, Fenn rode a special motor-pace bicycle, with a standard 28-inch rear wheel and an 18-inch front wheel that lowered his center of gravity. His bicycle was made by George Pierce in Buffalo, remembered for his Pierce Arrow automobiles that became iconic in the 1920s Jazz Age. Holding Fenn was William Collett, a pro from New Haven. Fenn's lower center of gravity may have aided him as he led the pursuit of the handicappers. Fenn won by edging Taylor at the finish line. For the rest of the season, Taylor gamely competed in NCA championship races but he couldn't make up for missing points lost during the spring he spent in Europe. Frank Kramer, who had lost the title to Taylor in 1900, beat him in points for the 1901 title. Advertisement A week after the photo was taken, Fenn won a five-mile handicap race and set a new world record: 10 minutes and 33.4 seconds. He settled in Newark. When he retired in 1905, he operated a corner gas station. His son, Willie Fenn Jr., succeeded him as the 1924 NCA national amateur sprint champion, competed that year in the Paris Olympics, and turned professional. Taylor died in 1932, age 53, the same age as Jackie Robinson, who died in 1972. Peter Joffre Nye is author of the second edition of Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing (University of Nebraska Press). He serves on the board of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.

In 2011 Turia Pitt’s life changed forever when she was caught in a bushfire while competing in an ultra-marathon. The mining engineer suffered burns to 65 per cent of her body and wasn’t expected to survive her injuries. But despite the odds Turia recovered and has since flourished becoming a best-selling author, motivational speaker and mum of two. In news.com.au’s new podcastHow To Be Happy, Turia tells host, journalist and former news.com.au editor-in-chief Kate de Brito, about the surprising reason why she is happier now than she was before the burns incident. “I think the Turia from 10 years ago, it’s not like I was unhappy because I was a happy person, but I was very much focused on what I didn’t have in my life,” she said. “I was focused on what wasn’t going good for me.” Turia said being caught in the fire taught her “to be grateful for my life as it is now”, which she admits can sound counterintuitive at first if you’re ambitious. “Whenever we’re focusing on what we’re grateful for in our lives we’re focusing on the positives and I think that helps us to build a more positive mindset,” she said. In her new book, Happy (and other ridiculous aspirations), Turia explains her GSA method to being happier: gratitude, savouring and anticipation. “Savouring is about I guess being mindful in the moment that you’re in and trying not to get caught up in massive to-do lists and the laundry and all the work you’ve got to do … just enjoy the present moment and savouring in it and relishing in it,” she said. But what about when the present is not-so-good? Well, Turia believes the bad shouldn’t be skipped over. It’s much more gratifying to instead drop the “bulls**t facade that everything is OK” and acknowledge what is happening, she said. “If the moment isn’t pleasant I would probably recommend that you don’t try and savour and relish and extenuate that moment,” she said. “But I also think if you’re having a bad day, whether that’s a flat tyre or going through this coronavirus pandemic that a lot of us are facing right now, if you’re having a bad day there’s a real power in just accepting it and acknowledging it and saying it’s actually a really crap day.” Turia’s other happiness tips include: It’s not always going to be lattes and laughter at work: Remember that not all aspects of your job, especially when you’re working towards a bigger goal, are going to be great all the time. “I’m sure even Beyonce has to eat some kind of s**t sandwiches that she doesn’t necessarily froth on, I think we all do,” Turia said. “It’s just about how many s**t sandwiches are you willing to eat to get to where you want to be.” Your tribe will impact your vibe: “I think if you’re spending time with people that make you feel like s**t and like crap then they’re probably not the best people to be spending time with,” Turia said. “And I think conversely if you spend time with people who make you feel good about being the person that you are and that accept you for who you are, I think you’re going to feel a lot better about yourself.”

Most farmers' leaders are of the view that despite all their efforts through kisan panchayats and mahapanchayats in several states, the message is not percolating well, especially in southern part of the country. Hence, they are thinking of new ways to send the message to grassroots. While several mechanisms are being thought about how to make it a more inclusive agitation, but so far, the organisers haven't been successful. The reason is a language barrier. But now, farmers have found a new way of sending the message across masses and even in states which are yet not connected with the movement. Farmers' leader Jagtaar Singh Bajwa tells India Today TV, "Most of our leaders deliver their speeches in either Hindi or Punjabi. It is difficult to make people in non-Hindi speaking states understand their language. Hence, we are now posting all important speeches with English subtitles." The decision was not quite easy as there are several local dialects and providing transcripts in regional languages is not an easy job. To overcome this challenge, a team led by young leaders has been assigned this job. Rajkishore Singh, who looks after the co-ordination with media at Ghazipur border, explains, "We actually want to translate the speeches in multiple languages like Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam and Kannada. But it's not possible to provide simultaneous subtitles in all these languages. We have started with English and will provide subtitles in other languages later on." While farmers have been camping at Delhi borders for over three months, their protest isn't limited just to the national capital. Kisan panchayats and mahapanchayats are being routinely held and well-attended in several states. Farmers' leader Baljinder Singh Mann while explaining the new strategy says, "We are now working as an IT cell of the entire farmers' movement. Our job is to track all speeches. We keep our eyes on important points made in a particular speech. For example, if Rakesh Tikait is addressing a crowd, then we listen to his speech through Facebook and immediately after it ends, we prepare subtitles." The team is growing every day. Its members also include college students. Prince Das is the young brain behind it. He says, "We are already a team of 15-20 people. All of them are from different backgrounds and states. In days to come, we will have volunteers from almost all states for translation and transcription." The farmers say the idea behind this is to keep spreading their message u

HPE’s Cloud-Based Machine Learning Sales Proposal Breakthrough Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday unveiled a breakthrough cloud-based machine learning platform that slashes the time it takes for partners to do custom sales proposals from as much as 45 days to just 45 seconds, said HPE Storage Senior Vice President and General Manager Tom Black. Black—the hard-charging leader of HPE’s storage business who conceived of the new AI platform—said the Software Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE) is a game-changer for partners looking to drive sales growth based on a detailed AI-based cloud assessment of a customer’s IT environment. “This is a massive productivity increase for partners looking to get to the sales close meeting and get the PO [purchase order],” said Black. “When you partner with HPE, we help you go fast. We help you increase your revenue. We help you increase the velocity of your growth and increase your customer relevancy in a way that our competitors currently do not have the ability to do. Sales productivity goes up substantially with the SDOE. What used to take 45 days can now be done in 45 seconds.” The SDOE is simply one more example of HPE’s commitment to use cutting-edge AI technology to help its partners increase sales, said Black. “When you partner with us you can be assured we have invested in modern cloud technology and software to make you more profitable and to help you grow faster,” he said. “And we don’t charge partners for this. This is a benefit of doing business with HPE.” Here is a look at five top things partners need to know about the SDOE.

Graphs—data structures that show the relationship among objects—are highly versatile. It's easy to imagine a graph depicting a social media network's web of connections. But graphs are also used in programs as diverse as content recommendation (what to watch next on Netflix?) and navigation (what's the quickest route to the beach?). As Ajay Brahmakshatriya summarizes, "Graphs are basically everywhere." Brahmakshatriya has developed software to more efficiently run graph applications on a wider range of computer hardware. The software extends GraphIt, a state-of-the-art graph programming language, to run on graphics processing units (GPUs), hardware that processes many data streams in parallel. The advance could accelerate graph analysis, especially for applications that benefit from a GPU's parallelism, such as recommendation algorithms. Brahmakshatriya, a Ph.D. student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, will present the work at this month's International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization. Co-authors include Brahmakshatriya's advisor, Professor Saman Amarasinghe, as well as Douglas T. Ross Career Development Assistant Professor of Software Technology Julian Shun, postdoc Changwan Hong, recent MIT Ph.D. student Yunming Zhang Ph.D. '20 (now with Google), and Adobe Research's Shoaib Kamil. When programmers write code, they don't talk directly to the computer hardware. The hardware itself operates in binary—1s and 0s—while the coder writes in a structured, "high-level" language made up of words and symbols. Translating that high-level language into hardware-readable binary requires programs called compilers. "A compiler converts the code to a format that can run on the hardware," says Brahmakshatriya. One such compiler, specially designed for graph analysis, is GraphIt. The researchers developed GraphIt in 2018 to optimize the performance of graph-based algorithms regardless of the size and shape of the graph. GraphIt allows the user not only to input an algorithm, but also to schedule how that algorithm runs on the hardware. "The user can provide different options for the scheduling, until they figure out what works best for them," says Brahmakshatriya. "GraphIt generates very specialized code tailored for each application to run as efficiently as possible." A number of startups and established tech firms alike have adopted GraphIt to aid their development of graph applications. But Brahmakshatriya says the first iteration of GraphIt had a shortcoming: It only runs on central processing units or CPUs, the type of processor in a typical laptop. "Some algorithms are massively parallel," says Brahmakshatriya, "meaning they can better utilize hardware like a GPU that has 10,000 cores for execution." He notes that some types of graph analysis, including recommendation algorithms, require a high degree of parallelism. So Brahmakshatriya extended GraphIt to enable graph analysis to flourish on GPUs. Brahmakshatriya's team preserved the way GraphIt users input algorithms, but adapted the scheduling component for a wider array of hardware. "Our main design decision in extending GraphIt to GPUs was to keep the algorithm representation exactly the same," says Brahmakshatriya. "Instead, we added a new scheduling language. So, the user can keep the same algorithms that they had before written before [for CPUs], and just change the scheduling input to get the GPU code." This new, optimized scheduling for GPUs gives a boost to graph algorithms that require high parallelism—including recommendation algorithms or internet search functions that sift through millions of websites simultaneously. To confirm the efficacy of GraphIt's new extension, the team ran 90 experiments pitting GraphIt's runtime against other state-of-the-art graph compilers on GPUs. The experiments included a range of algorithms and graph types, from road networks to social networks. GraphIt ran fastest in 65 of the 90 cases and was close behind the leading algorithm in the rest of the trials, demonstrating both its speed and versatility. GraphIt "advances the field by attaining performance and productivity simultaneously," says Adrian Sampson, a computer scientist at Cornell University who was not involved with the research. "Traditional ways of doing graph analysis have one or the other: Either you can write a simple algorithm with mediocre performance, or you can hire an expert to write an extremely fast implementation—but that kind of performance is rarely accessible to mere mortals. The GraphIt extension is the key to letting ordinary people write high-level, abstract algorithms and nonetheless getting expert-level performance out of GPUs." Sampson adds the advance could be particularly useful in rapidly changing fields: "An exciting domain like that is genomics, where algorithms are evolving so quickly that high-performance expert implementations can't keep up with the rate of change. I'm excited for bioinformatics practitioners to get their hands on GraphIt to expand the kinds of genomic analyses they're capable of." Brahmakshatriya says the new GraphIt extension provides a meaningful advance in graph analysis, enabling users to go between CPUs and GPUs with state-of-the-art performance with ease. "The field these days is tooth-and-nail competition. There are new frameworks coming out every day," He says. But he emphasizes that the payoff for even slight optimization is worth it. "Companies are spending millions of dollars each day to run graph algorithms. Even if you make it run just 5 percent faster, you're saving many thousands of dollars."

Sony is planning to bring more of its PlayStation games to PC. First up will be Days Gone this spring, Sony president and chief executive officer Jim Ryan told British GQ. Developer Bend Studio also confirmed the news via Twitter, adding: “Stay tuned for more details.” In the past, Sony has shown reluctance to port games to PC, though it notably eased its stance last year when it announced Guerilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn would receive a PC port, which launched last August. Asked why the company seems to have changed its tune, Ryan told the publication that there are a few factors at play. “We find ourselves now in early 2021 with our development studios and the games that they make in better shape than they’ve ever been before,” he said. “Particularly from the latter half of the PS4 cycle our studios made some wonderful, great games. There’s an opportunity to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognize the economics of game development, which are not always straightforward. The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the calibre of the IP has improved.” Ryan added it’s easier as well to make PS games available to non-console owners, making it “a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.” It’s still unclear which other PlayStation titles might make the jump to PC.

Tesla's years-long dominance of electric-car sales may soon end as traditional automakers introduce a slew of new battery-powered models, BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said. Tesla delivered almost 500,000 vehicles last year, up 36 percent from 2019. While that growth in the midst of a global pandemic sent Tesla shares soaring, Zipse said Monday that established automakers are countering with more EV offerings. "It won't be easy for Tesla to continue at that speed because the rest of the industry is moving ahead big time," Zipse said during the DLD All Stars tech conference. Auto executives rarely make public digs at competitors, so the CEO's remarks reflect new-found self-confidence among traditional manufacturers pouring billions into electrifying their lineups. BMW is adding battery-powered versions of its X1 SUV as well as the 5 Series and 7 Series, and will introduce a new flagship model, the iX. Tesla said last month it expects to increase vehicle deliveries by about 50 percent annually over multiple years, and that it will grow faster than that in 2021. BMW's larger peer Volkswagen Group may not be far off from eclipsing Tesla's EV sales this year. VW plans to at least double the share of its sales that are full electric in 2021, with the high end of its target range suggesting it could come close to Tesla's expected deliveries of at least 750,000 cars. VW launched its first ID model, the compact ID3 hatchback, in the second half of 2020. By the end of the year, VW had sold more than 54,000 ID3s in Europe, with the model trailing only the Renault Zoe (more than 99,000 sales) and the Tesla Model 3 (more than 85,000 sales) among EVs in the region, according to data from JATO Dynamics. VW has also launched a second ID model, the ID4, which is the first global EV from the ID family. By 2030, the automaker expects to have built a total of 26 million EVs worldwide. Tesla CEO Elon Musk plans to start making Model Y crossovers at a plant under construction near Berlin in the middle of this year.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ Republican attorney general and lawmakers have unveiled legislation that would prohibit transgender athletes from playing in girls’ and women’s sports teams at schools. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Monday said she wasn’t aware of any instances of transgender athletes playing on school sports teams, but called the legislation a preemptive effort in response to an executive order President Joe Biden signed that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity in school sports and elsewhere. Similar legislation has been introduced in at least 20 states so far this year including Mississippi and Tennessee. A similar measure was approved in Idaho but blocked by a court.