Ale X Erfan

Initial release date: 2019 Publisher: Ubisoft Type: Action-adventure game Author: Julian Gerighty, Mathias Karlson Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One ,Stadia Software developers: Ubisoft ,Massive Entertainment (Pocket-lint) - So-called games-as-a-service - of which The Division 2 is one - have often tended to find greater favour with their publishers than with gamers. Designed to take place in persistent universes, and thereby providing endless opportunities for those who play them to spend money on loot boxes, recent examples like Anthem and Battlefield V have been unleashed into the wild in a barely half-finished state. Happily, The Division 2 bucks the trend in a very impressive manner. Perhaps that's because it's the second instalment of the franchise - Destiny 2, the second instalment of the franchise that established the games-as-a-service blueprint was also markedly better than its predecessor. Like that game, The Division 2 stands up very well indeed in pure gameplay terms, even without considering all its online, persistent elements. A complex cover-shooter The Division 2 is easy enough to describe: as a third-person cover-shooter (although you can enter first-person mode for sniping), it feels pleasingly similar to the Gears of War games. Mechanically, it is beautifully fettled: wherever you are in its huge game-world there are always countless cover options, and it has an exemplary mechanism for moving from cover to cover while keeping your head out of the line of fire. And you will have to move around, since excellent artificial intelligence (AI) dictates that enemies will always try to outflank you. UBISOFT It's a much more complex game than Gears of War, though, in common with its games-as-a-service peers, and much of that complexity feeds cleverly into its gameplay. You level-up as if you were playing a role-playing game (RPG) - which grants you ever-increasing health stats - and an excellent loot system, which is more or less identical to that of Destiny 2, brings a constant stream of new guns and armour components, most of which can be modded extensively. There's a perks system, too, although rather annoyingly you're likely to max it out long before hitting the magical level 30, which unlocks the end of the main storyline, followed by the endgame. Using your skills But the most important element of the armoury that The Division 2 provides you with is the section entitled Skills. You can wield two of those at any time, and they range from the likes of drones and turrets that shoot enemies you designate, to a gas-deliverer which can create explosive clouds around enemies, among various shields and various delivery mechanisms that offer buffs and remote recovery to your allies. Skills operate for a finiter time and have cool-downs, so you must use them intelligently. UBISOFT The Division 2 makes an awful lot more sense when played with others - it has been set up for four player co-operation - and while you can work your way as a solo operator through all the story missions, side missions and the vast majority of the game's plethora of activities, you will progress much more quickly if you avail yourself of the game's excellent matchmaking system (you can, for example, fast-travel to a team-mate if they start a mission) or better still play through it with a bunch of mates. It doesn't really matter if the odd player drops out as The Division 2 scales its difficulty accordingly - but it is worth bearing in mind that it's definitely harder to play as a solo operator. It throws a lot of enemies at you, of escalating skills and abilities, with some that are essentially bosses, and, while it is checkpointed once you start a mission, it isn't when you're just engaging in freeplay. So if you die, you will have to respawn at the nearest safehouse or settlement. Top PS4 games 2021: Best PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro games every gamer must own By Rik Henderson · 28 December 2020 We've put together a list of games that are are well worth adding to your library, with many bargains available too. What's the story? If you're expecting narrative thrust from The Division 2, prepare to be disappointed. It doesn't really have a coherent story - rather a premise which, admittedly, is a decent one. As in The Division, you're an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, created to restore order after a national emergency - which was the release of a virus that killed off vast swathes of the po[CENSORED]tion and left America's cities abandoned by ordinary citizens and overrun with military factions. In The Division 2, the action switches from New York to Washington and, once again, you're entering a city in complete meltdown and anarchy, and must pretty much restore a semblance of order single-handed. UBISOFT Luckily, there are pockets of sanity in the form of settlements - barricaded oases where ordinary people are trying to rebuild their lives. As you carry out story and side missions, you upgrade those, generating more manpower for the fight to restore order. Cutely, your main base of operations is the White House (in disarray at the start of the game, with the just-installed President missing, presumed dead after Air Force One was shot down). Many of the story and side-missions involving rescuing individuals who have been captured by the various enemy factions in the game, and they tend to take place in meticulously reconstructed versions of Washington's landmarks. At one point, for example, you must rescue the Declaration of Independence from the National Archive. The missions are long, multi-stage affairs that showcase the varied opposition offered by the different factions, who might rush you wearing suicide vests, or employ various technological aids that match your own. Dark Zones are back Beyond the missions, there are vast amounts of activities to pursue, including winning back control points, disrupting public executions, taking down propaganda broadcasts and clearing Strongholds (which are the game's equivalent of dungeon), sending waves of enemies at you. UBISOFT Still-contaminated Dark Zones, as seen in the first iteration of The Division, are back, providing player-versus-player (PvP) action with their own separate levelling-up. They reward you with the best loot, but have been effectively rethought for The Division 2, with everyone's stats undergoing normalisation, so they are less intimidating when you first enter them. And a new mode, Conflict, takes PvP out of the Dark Zones and onto Washington's streets. Verdict The Division 2 is huge and complex, but its complexity has logic behind it. It's a very meaty game - expect to spend 30 to 40 hours working your way through the story and up to the level 30 milestone, before the endgame kicks in. When that happens, there is one slightly annoying aspect: all your good work towards is disrupted by a new fearsome faction called the Black Tusk. But even that makes a form of sense, since it gives The Division 2 a compelling endgame - something its predecessor sorely lacked. Ubisoft has already set out an extensive roadmap of new elements it will add to The Division 2 to keep people playing it and as far as any existing games-as-a-service are concerned, it looks like it is in at least as good a position as any when it comes to sustaining interst indefinitely. Whatever your opinions on the merits or otherwise of games-as-a-service model that underpins The Division 2, it's tricky to find fault with it. It looks superb - its vision of a post-pandemic, extensively wrecked Washington is chillingly believable - and it's really absorbing and addictive to play. It certainly feels as though it has benefited from the sort of dress rehearsal for the genre that the first game offered, and it makes the likes of Anthem feel half-formed and lacking in depth. Whether such a complex game can grab the public imagination remains to be seen, but you have to respect Ubisoft for the impressive manner in which it has honed the franchise's vision.

Nick: @- Blaziken Real name: Irfan Ali How old are you?: 15 Near To 16 Which Games you play? and for how long?(each of them): (8 Ballpool - Last Year) - ( Cs 1.6 - 5 Years/Zm Plague 6.2 - 2 Years) Where are you from?(country and city): Quetta , Pakistan Describe yourself(at least 50 words): I'm am Good In Math's And Crafting I Love Playing Games / Building And Creating My Own Things , I'm Friendly With Who Is Friendly With Me / Who Bad With Me I Am Bad With Him , I Am honest , And one of my Best Quality is that i'm muslim , I am Good At Managing And Have much Experience about it because i have much confedance ,And Confedence id Good in every pasrt of Life , I'm From middle Class family , Even Much Poor and Hard worker , Football Lover , Cricket Lover , Scrabble Champion , Chess Player, Never Drunk Or Smoked. Note some of your qualities: Over Minded / Debate Lover / Friendly / Intelligent / And Science Lover + Good Behavior Tell us some of your defects: I'm Some How Lose Minded When I Am Angry I Totally Do Wrong Thing Like , Dishearting My Own Self , Bad Words , And Fight Had you before any kind of responsabilities(describe it): Yeah I Have Been Managing A Center/Tussion Class As Teacher Of Math's / Teaching Crafts Student And Having My Own Crating Teaches Classes And Centers / And I Am Working All Profects Daily Activity And Responsibility In All Section Forum like , Gog Etc, With Out GFX Desinears On which category/categories have you been active lately?(describe your activity): I Have Recently Joined The Community And I Have Applied For All And I Can't Do 3 Of Them Because Only 3 Allowed But I Will Show Daily Activity On All 6 Of Them And I Have Applied This Ones Lately : VGR - Devil Harmony - Devil Memoir - Journalists - Devil Harmony - Gamblers Which category/project you want to care off?: Gamblers - Devil Memoir - Devil Harmony if 4 Allowed Also VGR How well you speak english?(and other languages): (English: 85%) - (Urdu - 100%) - (Persian - 100%) - (Hindi - 80%) Do you use TS3? Do you have an active microphone?: No I Have Problem With Ts3 Download in my PC Recently Asked From Our Experienced Staff Member @Happy boy And He Tries But He Can't Download , So I Can't Make Activity On Ts3 But I Am Sure I Might Help Forum Alot For how long can you be active after you get accepted?(days, weeks, months, years): Month's Then Go For Study S/Where Else Then I Will Be Again Back Alteast I Might Be Here Till Death ❤️ 😅 Contact methods: Forum / Fb / Instagram Last request: First 1 Regards ❤️

Audi has shown off its new RS3 LMS, revealing a fresh contender for global TCR racing categories with a number of mechanical, technological and safety upgrades. The 2021 Audi RS3 LMS – which will take on rivals such as the Hyundai i30 N TCR, Renault Megane RS TCR and Honda Civic Type R TCR – also gives us our first glimpse of the new RS3 road car. Design has taken a dramatic step forward as well, featuring a gigantic front valance with a wide grille, pumped-out wheelarches, a deep-vented bonnet and a central-exit exhaust under a big rear wing. It might be hard to see the forthcoming road car within its aggressive shape, but its angular lights, a toned-down wide grille and accentuated rear end should feature on the new-generation A3's RS variant. The new RS3 LMS, like the previous version, has an EA888 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine under the bonnet. It's packing more than your garden-variety Golf GTI, though, given this version delivers around 335bhp and 310lb ft to the front wheels through an updated six-speed sequential racing transmission (with paddleshifters). Race engineers are able to adjust the newly developed multi-disc locking differential quickly from the outside. Audi has also pointed out the new RS3 LMS is one of the safest race cars in the segment. 'No other TCR touring car offers as many optional safety components as are on board as standard in the Audi RS3 LMS,' Audi says. These safety additions include a steel-tube rollcage, a six-point harness system, an exit hatch through the roof, strong polycarbonate rear window, strategically-placed racing bucket seats and a fire-extinguishing system. Seat-wrapping safety nets are optionally available. Head of Audi Sport customer racing Chris Reinke praised the success of its predecessor and expects the new car to be available in the second half of 2021. '[The previous RS3 LMS] has been one of the best sellers of Audi Sport Customer Racing. One hundred and eighty cars have been built and they won many TCR races and titles all over the world,' said Reinke. 'The 2021 model is now ready to undergo an intensive testing programme and hopefully it will be available for our customer teams in the second half of the year.'

BOSTON — Bonding between a mother and her newborn child may come naturally, but a new study reveals how human brain chemistry is hard at work for both babies at parents during loving interactions. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, set out to determine exactly how human bonding takes place. It was known that parents and children do connect through an act called “synchrony,” where they mirror each other’s movements. But researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital wanted to take these findings a step further and find out how that works from a neurological level. The team, led by Northeastern University’s distinguished psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, confirmed that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a big part in the process. They studied 19 mothers and their babies and looked at the reward centers in their brains as they interacted with one another. To monitor the brain’s activity, the researchers relied on a machine capable of performing an fMRI and a PET scan at the same time. mother, newborn baby A new study explains how brain chemistry and the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a role in how mothers bond with their babies. Before the brain scans, each mother was filmed interacting with her baby at home in order to determine the level of synchrony between the two. The babies were also filmed playing by themselves. During the brain scans, each mother was shown the video footage of her baby playing, as well as a video of an unfamiliar baby playing. Mothers with higher levels of synchrony were found to have increased levels dopamine in their brain when watching the videos of their own children. “Animal studies have shown the role of dopamine in bonding but this was the first scientific evidence that it is involved in human bonding,” Barrett explains in a university release. “That suggests that other animal research in this area could be directly applied to humans as well.” Dopamine controls the reward center of the brain and is the chemical that drives addiction and cravings. The researchers realized that the chemical played a significant role in how mothers and babies respond to one another and ultimately guides the strength of human bonds. “We found that social affiliation is a potent stimulator of dopamine. This link implies that strong social relationships have the potential to improve your outcome if you have a disease, such as depression, where dopamine is compromised,” explains Barrett. “We already know that people deal with illness better when they have a strong social network. What our study suggests is that caring for others, not just receiving caring, may have the ability to increase your dopamine levels.” The researchers admitted that the findings were cautionary at best, but also reiterated that the “parents’ ability to keep their infants cared for leads to optimal brain development, which over the years results in better adult health and greater productivity.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a trial hearing over alleged corruption crimes, at the Jerusalem district court in Salah El-Din, East Jerusalem, on Monday. Photo by Reuven Castro/EPA-EFE Feb. 8 (UPI) -- As his corruption trial resumed in Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, briefly appeared in Jerusalem District Court to formally enter the please. "I confirm the written answer is submitted in my name," Netanyahu said during his appearance, pointing to a court document his attorneys filed with the court in January. Netanyahu's attorneys asked for a three- to four-month postponement of the next phase of the corruption trial, at which witnesses would begin to testify. Prosecutors have called for an immediate start. Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit first filed the charges against Netanyahu a year ago. "The indictment was served a year ago. You knew months ago this case was going to court," judge Rivkah Friedman-Feldman told Netanyahu attorney Boaz Ben Zur Monday when he asked for a delay in the evidentiary phase. The court could delay the witness phase until after Israel's next national election on March 23. It will be the country's fourth vote in two years. All three of the prior elections failed because Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz failed to form a workable governing coalition. Netanyahu supporters crowded streets around the courthouse last year, but the prime minister is asking them, this time, to stay away due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Anyway, everyone sees that the witch hunt against me is crumbling," Netanyahu said. "Everybody understands it is another transparent attempt to topple a strong prime minister."

The mid-January release of the Chrome 88 browser will include privacy and security measures that raised concerns among some developers during recent months of testing. Google announced in a blog post that new restrictions incorporated in the Manifest V3 programming interface for its browsers will be imposed on extensions, including ceilings on the number of rules extensions can execute as a web page loads. Rules are critical to po[CENSORED]r ad blocker extensions that allow users to limit intrusive and annoying pop-up ads. Those ad blockers utilized an API that provided them with "access to potentially sensitive user data," Google stated. Chrome 88 will now require the use of a more restrictive API that Google says will protect users' privacy. Chrome extensions are permitted to use up to 30,000 rules, which seems a quite hefty number, but considering po[CENSORED]r ad blockers such as EasyList use 60,000 or more rules, the new limitations are likely to force many extension developers to either rethink their strategies or modify their capabilities. The Chrome team, however, says it has heard developers' concerns and tried to address them. The team says that a future browser iteration, Chrome 89, will raise the rules threshold to 300,000. "We believe extensions must be trustworthy by default, which is why we've spent this year making extensions safer for everyone," Google said in the blog post Wednesday. "After an extensive review of the concerns raised by content blockers and the community, we believe that a majority of those concerns have been resolved or will be resolved," Microsoft said. The new rules will affect other major browsers as well. Microsoft Edge, Opera and Vivaldi also use the Chromium open-source code and are expected to embrace Manifest V3 interface. Manifest V3 will also bar the use of remotely hosted code. Google says malicious code downloaded after installation allowed ill-intentioned developers to bypass Google's malware screening tools. The new restriction permits quicker and more thorough review of extension submissions, Google said. The problem was a significant one: Google recently reported it blocks about 1,800 malicious uploads each month. Google has tripled the number of engineers assigned to detect extension violations and quadrupled the number tasked with reviewing apps. Further changes will arrive later next year. The Chrome team says users will gain greater control over personal data collected by extensions. Extensions will be required to include a "Privacy practices" section in the Chrome Web store that lists data the extension would collect. Users will be permitted to opt in or out at the time of installation. In addition, extensions will no longer be permitted to update code via third-party sites. Rather, updates must be executed through the Chrome Web Store. Not everyone is happy with Manifest V3, despite Google's efforts at compromise. "The main victim of Manifest V3 is innovation," said Andrey Meshkov, co-founder and chief technology officer of the ad-blocker extension AdGuard. He said that his company and others sought to improve the efficiency of their products through AI, but that Manifest's restrictions will curb their efforts. "This is not that relevant anymore. Now Chrome, Safari and Edge dictate what can or cannot be blocked and how it should be done." The Chrome Web Store will begin accepting extensions adhering to Manifest V3 rules in mid-January. Users can experiment with Manifest V3 browsing with the Chrome 88 Beta, available now.

(Pocket-lint) - During 2020's Facebook Connect, Oculus announced that Assassin’s Creed VR and Splinter Cell VR were going to make an appearance for Oculus devices in the future. Now it seems that those VR games have been re-confirmed by job listings on Ubisoft's official website. Best Oculus Rift and Oculus Rift S games and experiences The company is looking to hire for a number of positions related to the new games. For Assassin's Creed VR, for example, there are several different roles listed that include VR game designer, senior VR game designer, development tester and QA tester. Meanwhile, Ubisoft is also set to recruit as many as 17 people to assist with Splinter Cell VR. This includes everyone from Producers to lead game designers, proper artist and more. Upload VR spotted that at one point "Network Programmer" was listed as one of the roles. The job description for that post seemingly involves "...developing multiplayer core features and game services using existing online infrastructure." This could be a hint that not only is Splinter Cell VR firmly in the works, but that Ubisoft is considering options for making a multiplayer mode for the game too. Another point of note is that the roles for both these new virtual reality games mention the need for experience with the Unity game engine. This isn't Ubisoft's standard engine and may well imply that these games are being built from the ground up, specifically for virtual reality. It's possible that since these games were first announced by Oculus, they will be coming to that company's headsets first. Perhaps for the Oculus Quest 2? Time will tell. Top Nintendo Switch games 2021: Best Switch games every gamer must own By Rik Henderson · 7 February 2021 Unfortunately, there's no word on the release date for these games, but it's reasonable to assume it's going to be a while yet. We can't wait.

TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday the US must "completely lift" sanctions first, followed by verification by Tehran, before the Islamic republic returns to its nuclear deal commitments. "If they want Iran to return to its commitments ... America must completely lift sanctions, and not just in words or on paper," Khamenei said in a televised speech to air force commanders. "They must be lifted in action, and then we will verify and see if they have been properly lifted, and then return," he added. The 2015 landmark deal has been hanging by a thread since US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from it in 2018 and reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Tehran a year later suspended its compliance with most key nuclear commitments to the deal. The new administration of US President Joe Biden has expressed willingness to return to the deal, but insisted that Tehran first resume full compliance. On January 4, Iran announced it has stepped up its uranium enrichment process to 20 percent purity, far above the 3.67 percent level permitted by the deal, but far below the amount required for an atomic bomb. And it may restrict by February 21 nuclear inspections if US sanctions are not lifted or other key parties to the deal do not help Tehran bypass them, according to a law passed by the parliament in December. According to Khamenei, Iran has "a right to set conditions for the continuation" of the deal as it has upheld its end, unlike the US and the three European members of the deal -- Britain, France and Germany -- who have "violated all their commitments". "No one in the Islamic republic cares for the nonsense claimed by those not entitled to anything," he said. Khamenei insisted that the condition set by Tehran for the US is Iran's "definite policy". Iran "will not turn back from" it, he said. On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif asked the European Union to coordinate a synchronised return of both Washington and Tehran into a nuclear deal, after a diplomatic standoff on who will act first.

Jeep’s Super Bowl commercial starring Bruce Springsteen is a groundbreaking achievement for advertising because “The Boss” just doesn’t do commercials. But the two-minute appeal for national unity that is running during the second half of the Big Game in Tampa, and already has been released via social media, also created a potentially huge moment in the political debate that has deeply riven the American po[CENSORED]ce these days. With “The Middle,” the new commercial that ends, “To the ReUnited States of America,” Fiat Chrysler arguably became the most prominent company specifically calling for a coming together of a sharply divided U.S. body politic. Unlike the many other big corporations that have rallied loudly behind progressive interpretations of what’s wrong with the country, the automaker — now part of the transatlantic giant Stellantis — blew past me-tooism to make a significant plea for the only thing that ultimately will keep America going. And the opportunity to call for such reunification was the exact moment that drew Springsteen into a Super Bowl ad. The spot was shot in Lebanon, Kansas, in the precise geographic center of America. There’s absolutely no subtlety involved in the poetic plea shaped by The Boss, and delivered to his fans and everyone else, to put aside today’s intense political and ideological differences in an effort to keep the great American experiment on the rails. PROMOTED Deloitte BRANDVOICE | Paid Program Smart Factory Transformation: The Time Is Now UNICEF USA BRANDVOICE | Paid Program Yes, Some Good Things Happened In 2020 Civic Nation BRANDVOICE | Paid Program The Best Job In The World In the sparsely shot Super Bowl ad that focuses almost entirely on images of Springsteen spending a winter’s day in the Great Plains — with hardly an actual Jeep in sight — he asks Americans to “come meet here in the middle” ideologically and “to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.” “All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle,” Springsteen intones over predictably placid backdrops in the heartland. “It’s no secret: The middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear. MORE FOR YOU Ford Connects Mustang Mach-E To ‘Christmas Vacation’ In New Ad To Put Springsteen In Super Bowl, Jeep Needed Big Cast Of Characters Jeep’s Wrangler 4xe Proves Worthy Of Sagan’s Seminal ‘Pale Blue Dot’ “Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. And as for freedom, it’s not just the property of the fortunate few: It belongs to us all.” A flag waves on a front porch. “Whoever you are, wherever you’re from. It’s what connects us. We need that connection. We need the middle.” Yet unlike past Super Bowl commercials by Fiat Chrysler that have helped shape cultural, social and even political conversation in this country going back a decade, betting on Springsteen as a unifying voice carried some significant risks for the company and for its marketing maestro, Olivier Francois. Clearly, the message of “The Middle” promises nothing but upside for Jeep and the company. But is it possible that Springsteen is the wrong messenger? For Springsteen broke character during Donald Trump’s presidency to criticize harshly the man whom the American people elected in 2016 and whom nearly half of the adult po[CENSORED]ce voted to re-elect in 2020. “I believe that our current president is a threat to our democracy,” Springsteen said of Trump last fall, joining a loud chorus of entertainment, cultural and sports celebrities whose condemnation of Trump echoed for more than four years. He also narrated some campaign materials for Joe Biden. And Springsteen didn’t let up, talking with millions of listeners on his Sirius XM channel instead of the hundreds of thousands who would have attended his concerts last year. At one point he urged President Trump, “Wear a f——— mask.” So if watchers of Super Bowl LV leaned conservative as NFL fans generally do, or even if they reflected a perfectly half-and-half America, many viewers might have a hard time swallowing a plea for unity from the partisan that Springsteen has revealed lately. But Francois largely dismissed such concerns. “He is the closest thing to a unifier,” Stellantis’s chief marketing officer insisted, noting the broad appeal of Springsteen’s music and persona over decades. “You couldn’t think of a better name, because I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Francois told me. “The politics of Bruce Springsteen are exactly a reflection of America. If you go to one of his concerts, there’s proof that he’s not polarizing.” To Francois’s point, the 71-year-old Springsteen still ranks as one of the most po[CENSORED]r singer-songwriters in America, his esteem highest among his contemporary generation but even very high among millennials. And he exercises broad appeal demographically in other ways, as illustrated by the 2012 po[CENSORED]r song, “Springsteen,” by country star Eric Church. “Are there going to be some Trump diehards?” Francois said. “America is so divided that everything is seen as a symbol. [Springsteen] is so widely po[CENSORED]r. You may recall that Clint Eastwood was a Republican,” Francois said, noting a Jeep ad called “Halftime in America” that ran in 2012 featuring Eastwood’s appeal to keep the national chin up in the wake of the Great Recession. “It was the same kind of message, and he didn’t create a backlash.” Yet national division is a bigger problem today than at any time in the recent past; disunity arguably poses a larger threat to the future of America than even the stumbles of the economy created by the pandemic and governments’ responses. That’s why “literally, the intent of this ad was to deliver a healing message,” Francois said. “Together, all of us wanted to do literally a prayer. “I think we ended up with the most spiritual commercial in the game — maybe even in [Super Bowl] history.” And, indeed religious — specifically Christian — symbolism extends throughout “The Middle,” including scenes inside the chapel that sits on the geographic centerpoint of the Lower 48, as well as crosses perched outside of it. Near the end of the ad, Springsteen lights a votive candle. Sage for the age is a role that Springsteen has embraced, and that his fans have granted, since he took the baby-boomer generation by storm in the early 1970s, riding albums such as Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., as well as his lively concerts, to iconic status as a performer. He was a kid from New Jersey who went on to hail the American working class and build a reputation for authenticity in the profession, which also gave him some credibility as a sometime social critic. Meanwhile, over the last several years, Francois’s advertisements for Fiat Chrysler brands also were building toward this moment. He started with “Born of Fire,” the iconic two-minute commercial for the Chrysler brand, in 2011, a rallying cry for the entire company and the city of Detroit as both were trying to come back from the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. The Eastwood ad followed in 2012, addressing not political divisions as much as economic disappointment. Bob Dylan, a generational voice even before Springsteen, weighed in via a later commercial, as did the posthumous voice of Paul Harvey celebrating “The Farmer.” Social media will give Stellantis and Springsteen an early reading on the effectiveness of their unification bet, and surely Ad Meter and other instant analyses of the effectiveness of Super Bowl ads will render a verdict. But it may be a while before we can tell if Springsteen’s prayer will be answered.

“I’m gonna save the world,” Eustace Conway tells me. “I see the light, and I’m gonna point it out.” Light would be nice. It’s early August, 2020, and dead dark on Eustace’s back porch overlooking Boone, North Carolina. It’s rural, Southern dark: the type that fools me into thinking the bleached lights of Wal-Mart aren’t just down the road, obscuring the stars I don’t know I can’t see. The type that compels me to take notes by candlelight and Leslie, Eustace’s housekeeper, to set a pot of chicken soup directly on my recording equipment. But Eustace refers to light of a different sort: the very light of human salvation, glimpsed by his younger self. He laughs now at his naïveté. “Please.” He was gonna save the world, remember? As the 20th century lurched toward the 21st, Eustace tried shepherding us instead into the seventeenth. In 1987, he founded Turtle Island Preserve—now over 1,000 acres of mostly pristine Southern Appalachian wilderness, serving as a preindustrial farm and education center. He aimed to bring us with him, hosting countless people at camps, yearlong internships, skills-based workshops, and volunteer weekends. He took up that elusive mantle that so many have before him: teaching humanity again how to live with nature rather than kill it. Lessons in squirrel-snaring, food-foraging, and fire-building were taught right alongside those in honor, frugality, and humility. Elizabeth Gilbert chronicled this mission in her 1998 GQ article and 2002 biography on Eustace, each christening him “the Last American Man.” The title stuck, and Eustace garnered something of a folk hero status. He spurred the many who flocked to his year-round programming to create islands of their own: pockets of moral and ecological refuge in an ocean of vice and sprawl. WATCH YBN Almighty Jay Breaks Down His Tattoos But the seas kept rising. “I’ve worked my whole life trying to wake people up in time,” Eustace says. “But I’m failin’.” Eustace Conway Wants to Retire. Can The Last American Man Find His Replacement ADVERTISEMENT As he says, it’s not for lack of trying. To build and market the Preserve, Eustace was “on call, 24/7, for over 30 years.” He would start work in the predawn, felling trees or raising barns or speaking to schools or negotiating a land purchase, and keep at it until well after dark. He would skip meals, sleep four hours a night, and go months without brushing his teeth, taking a bath or changing his clothes. He would put off taking a shit until the labor at hand allowed him a perfectly convenient window, disciplining his bowels “just like a yogi learns to control their breath.” He likens Turtle Island’s toll to PTSD (he’s not the first worker of this land I’ve heard do so). “If I kept going,” he says authoritatively, “the stress level would literally have killed me... Not figuratively. It would have killed me. I would be dead. Period.” ADVERTISEMENT And so he pulled back. Eustace doesn’t know how old he is, supplying me only his birth year (I do the math; he’s 59). Add the sheer amount he’s worked and the damage it’s done to his body, and he’s well past retirement age. Though I doubt the words “social security” are in his vocabulary, he is slowing down by his own relentless terms. He’s rarely at the Preserve, and recently decided to “just try this weekend thing.” But he’s still working. In fact, he’s a star. The tenth season of the History channel's Mountain Men premiered early this year. On Thursday nights, from the comfort of your home, you can catch Eustace in situations he’s trained his whole life to avoid: injuring his apprentices, leaping from the path of falling trees, chasing runaway trucks down the mountain. It’s television, after all— a medium which Eustace decries to this day. He claims he tried to use the show as a mouthpiece for his original message, the best way to reach the masses. “Turn off your television!” he implores the camera between takes. “Go outside!” Needless to say, such pleas are left on the cutting room floor. Showbusiness is complicated. Much simpler is Eustace’s other project: for the past several years, he’s been buying and restoring old houses in the area surrounding Boone. He considers this a simplified version of his Turtle Island mission. The houses are his new classroom—he employs young laborers, claiming that construction can serve as a tangible model for the change and growth possible within a human being. “I thought it might be easier to change a few old houses than change the whole world,” he explains. “Still have the high expectations for both... Seems like I always will.” Once completed, he rents most of the houses on AirBnb. One of them he now calls home, nearly twenty years after Gilbert first speculated that Eustace would “move out of the cabin and into a large and expensive show house full of walk-in closets and appliances and family and stuff.” The house looks expensive; appliances and stuff abound. Leslie greets me at the door, instructs an Amazon Alexa to cut the Fleetwood Mac, and points me out back, where the celebrity is. His white-columned porch overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains, laden with their signature isoprene haze. He’s finishing up a call on his cell phone and eating shrimp a la Leslie, cooked on a modern stove rather than a campfire. The shells he either casts into his large, sloping backyard, swallows whole (“I figure it cleans the colon!”), or feeds to his new Pyrenees/Heeler mix, Rebel. So here he is: Eustace Conway, finally caught up with his time. He has fulfilled Gilbert’s prophecy in spades—minus, of course, the family. Absent an heir, the Last American Man threatens to be just that, the last. Which is why Plan B is underway. Eustace hopes to establish a team of people to inherit Turtle Island, continue his mission and ensure his life’s work wasn’t in vain. One of those people, I came to learn in 2019, is me. I was fifteen years old when I first set foot on Turtle Island Preserve. I’d just read Into the Wild—an impressive book at an impressionable time—and, like so many, itched to emulate its controversial subject, Christopher McCandless. Depending on who you ask, McCandless is a patron saint or a cautionary tale: the learned young man shirked a life of privilege and material comfort to travel the continent, eventually coming to die young in the Alaskan wilderness. My mother, hoping to provide me a tad more structure, signed me up for Turtle Island Older Boys camp. It was an impactful two weeks. I was formally introduced to the south (Bojangles! chaw! roadkill cuisine!). I used my hands, constructing a sweat lodge in which I would drip alongside my fellow campers. I fraternized with adults, feeling for the first time that I was one myself. ADVERTISEMENT Somewhere at the periphery of all of this was Eustace. Though he helmed Turtle Island’s first summer camp in 1989, by the time I attended in 2010, he’d retreated into near myth. He’d slink into basecamp occasionally—to eat, teach a class, move the horses—only to disappear just as suddenly, zipping on a motorcycle up into the dark, verdant hills. As I fell in love with the place and returned every few summers to work at camp as a kitchen troll (a position about as glamorous as it sounds) or a counselor, Eustace kept his distance. When he pulled me aside to make his offer in 2019, it was the first time we’d spoken for more than a few minutes. We’d shared space for a decade, but I hardly knew the man. He must have felt he knew me well enough, though, for his request was a solemn one. Eustace asked me to join the transition team: a group enlisted to help ease the Preserve into a phase where it could survive without him. I had excited discussions with those also being tapped, the electricity of a new thing crackling in the air. I was also daunted. Eustace Conway Wants to Retire. Can The Last American Man Find His Replacement What would the gig entail? In short, everything. There’s the physical work: maintaining the Preserve’s grounds, its dozens of buildings, its garden, its animals. There’s the clerical: writing grants, doing PR, sustaining a social media presence, planning programs, balancing budgets. And then there’s the personal: committing, whole-heartedly, to a life stuck in time. Needless to say, I wasn’t Eustace’s first choice. For years, the Turtle Island internship program—a twelve-to-fourteen-month exchange of work for room and board—kept the property running, but was also a means of grooming people for succession. Few made it the full year, much less proved worthy of taking over the whole damn enterprise. Several summers ago, after countless disappointments, Eustace scrapped the program entirely. The problem was that for Eustace to realize his utopic vision within his lifetime, democracy wouldn’t cut it. He warned denizens accordingly: “Welcome to Turtle Island. I am a dictator.” A benevolent dictator, he was quick to add: Eustace maintains that he always held “people as the highest value, more than myself.” By “people,” I have to assume he’s speaking generally—referring to society, civilization, humanity. Surely, the individual subjects of the Conway Regime wouldn’t agree: I’ve lost track of the number of horror stories I’ve heard. Those who’ve come recently, and worked the Preserve without him physically present, haven’t fared any better. From a distance, he still exercises near total authority. His workers are to call him four, six, ten times a day, and keep him abreast of just about every decision they make. His permission is required to use some of the countless pieces of equipment that sit rusting on the property, or to move a single desk out of a single cabin on the 1,000-acres. As one ex-worker put it: “There’s more red tape at Turtle Island than at your local government building.” ADVERTISEMENT Turtle Island, like the gangly teens who frequent its summer camps, remains trapped in an awkward transition. Eustace’s serious case of founder’s syndrome and his uniquely domineering personality create a catch-22. I’ve seen the vicious cycle unfold several times: in equal measure, he wants someone to take this albatross from his neck—and to control that someone’s every move. His skills are antiquated, so he’ll have to surrender to someone who can’t do what he does, but he’s unwilling to gamble his life’s work on such a person, so he micromanages them to oblivion. He and his would-be successor both grow miserable, and quit on each other, and then it’s back to square one. This is the curse of the Last American Man: the very tenacity, ferocity and sacrifice that gave birth to this splendid place may prove precisely the thing that kills it. Eustace disagrees. To his eye, he’s not the problem. It’s everyone else. He considers the single biggest mistake of his career as being too nice to too many people for too long. “The young people are less and less capable every year,” he tells me. This isn’t your standard millennial bashing—to Eustace, modern Americans are “the most incapable people that have ever existed on the face of planet Earth in the last three million years of human existence. Period.” Eustace Conway Wants to Retire. Can The Last American Man Find His Replacement But there are notable exceptions. Through an endless tide of disillusioned and disillusioning workers, there is a constant. Desere, 44, who asked that I omit her last name, could be dubbed “The Woman Behind the Last American Man,” so wide-ranging have her contributions to the Preserve been. For whatever reason, Desere has been able to stay the course for nearly fifteen years, keeping both myriad projects of the Preserve and her relationship with Eustace afloat. When Eustace and I discuss successors, he tells me “she’s not only a candidate, she’s doing it, like right now... If it weren’t for her, it wouldn’t be happening. Period.” So why doesn’t he just walk away? Why not just officially pass the reins to Desere, and focus exclusively on house-flipping and tv-making? If she’s not worthy, when and how will this transition ever actually occur? Desere answers without missing a beat. “When Eustace is no longer among the realm of the living. Because for so long, Eustace and Turtle Island were interchangeable. There wasn’t one without the other. And the more he’s willing to let go of, the more we’ll grab a hold of and move forward into the future with.” For now, Desere remains stretched unfathomably thin. Part of Eustace’s desire for a team of others is to ease her burden: though he maintains that he did, in fact, do it all, he stresses that no one should. ADVERTISEMENT And, despite the staunch individualism implied by a handle like “the Last American Man,” it was never Eustace’s intention that anyone would. From the outset, his vision has always been communal. He co-founded the Preserve with two close friends, hoping that, within a few years, they would all have families living on the property together. Soon enough, his pals were beckoned with other obligations back in that place we call the real world. But one of them, Preston Roberts, kept contributing what he could. He balanced work on the Preserve (constructing about a third of its buildings over the years) with his high school teaching job and the family he did eventually have—making a home not on Turtle Island, but nearby. If ever there was proof that Eustace was capable of surrendering control, it was Preston. At one time, Eustace was just as attached to his summer camp program as he was to the Preserve in general. But Preston seamlessly adopted Eustace’s ethos and took over as Camp Director, a position he served when I was a camper, and Eustace felt comfortable fading into the woodwork. Preston excelled: I still remember him leading us in a rooster slaughter, speaking frankly and eloquently to teenagers about the horrors of industrialized agriculture. As the birds’ heads lay blinking in the grass, he lined his cheeks with their blood, a solemn reminder of the killing we so prefer to outsource. We had rooster stew that very night. “He was more present in front of the people than I was,” Eustace recalls. “So he became more like the spokesperson or figurehead.” But God had other plans. In 2017, Preston’s first doctor’s visit in over thirty years revealed a tumor raging in his liver, and within weeks, gone was the answer to Eustace’s perennial search. Preston is buried on the Preserve, a turtle-shaped headstone marking his grave. Eustace has retreated even more markedly after Preston’s death. Running Turtle Island is simply “not quite as fun without him.” I ask Eustace how much his old friend remains a presence for him. “Completely,” he answers. “Every day, all the time...I think I could grieve for five more years and not kinda get to where I really could do well without him.” The loss is so acute because the people to whom Eustace feels he can relate are very few and very far between. Though you don’t become the Last American Man by keeping similar company, Eustace doesn’t yearn for hermitdom. The most lasting lesson of Preston’s friendship? “His profound and severely dedicated love to his wife and dedication to supporting and being there for his children.” When Eustace tells me he has “never set out on and failed on a single journey,” he’s referring to the McCandlessian ones: “kayakin’ across Alaska or canoein’ across America or bicyclin’ across Germany.” As for trials more intimate—a wife, children: “That is a journey that I haven’t really succeeded at, that I have set out on... I’d still be happy to have a family. That’s actually my greatest desire of all.” He pauses a moment before adding: “Depending on what you mean by family.” It’s an important clarification. His father, Eustace Sr., who died of stroke complications five years ago, subjected his son to decades of relentless verbal abuse. Even at the end, Sr. summoned the strength to cast doubt on those journeys by which Eustace measures his life, hissing things at his son like: “I remember when you said you hiked the Appalachian Trail.” Eustace Conway Wants to Retire. Can The Last American Man Find His Replacement ADVERTISEMENT Eustace has a theory that has eased some of the pain. He hypothesizes that Sr.’s behavior—particularly the lack of a verbal filter—was due to an undiagnosed case of Asperger’s. Eustace has self-administered tests for his father and himself, both scoring “off the chart, 100%.” Indeed, Eustace’s undaunted focus, his difficulty connecting with people, his unshakeable conviction that he’s living in a different reality than everyone else—all could be thanks as much to upbringing and neurology as lifestyle. “It’s painful and challenging to not have the easy, flowing ability to pick up social cues and be normal,” Eustace admits. “I’m still learnin’ all the time.” Though the pain is audible, Eustace says he forgives his dad. His torment proved a blessing in disguise. “We wouldn’t have Turtle Island if I didn’t grow up being horrifically abused. Period. It created the capacity in a human being to let go of his personal needs and forge on to a higher value in the face of all kinds of discomfort.” And right around here, approaching our eleventh hour of conversation, the Last American Man begins to cry. His voice quavers as he paraphrases Martin Luther King: “A true measure of a man is not where he stands in times of comfort and convenience, but in times of challenge and controversy.” In the end, I turned Eustace down. Romantic though I am—McCandless’ lifestyle tempts me still—I tried to consider my life running Turtle Island in realistic terms. I thought about how I’ve only experienced the place in its summer camp season, surrounded by lovely people. I thought about the remaining forty-eight weeks, and the howling loneliness and cold that might accompany them. I thought about the sleepless nights, the skipped meals, the near-total absence of creature comforts. I thought about the suffering to which Eustace attributes his success, and the relative comfort and convenience in which I’ve stood all my life. I thought about how his accusations of my generation ring true: in Turtle Island context, I am incapable. I thought about how I would likely need years under Eustace’s tutelage to get to the point where I could run the place, and how our relationship might sour during that time, as so many of his have. I thought about coming to resent the land he’s preserved so pristinely, that place I love so well. I took a job in Minneapolis instead. And then came 2020. As COVID-19 brought the world to heel, George Floyd was slain on a curb five miles from my apartment and the West Coast burst into flames, I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t in a secluded, off-grid valley, studying self-sufficiency and survival. With the compounding crises facing humanity, it seems we can’t heed Eustace’s call soon enough. The rub is that we have to do it together. As with Turtle Island, so the world: no one can do it all. I have no doubt the Preserve will remain a part of my life. In what capacity, I can’t say. But sure as anything, I’ll be forever drawn to this heavenly place—and in that regard, I’m far from alone. Eustace Conway Wants to Retire. Can The Last American Man Find His Replacement ADVERTISEMENT “There’s an older fella,” Eustace tells me at the end of our first interview, “from South Carolina I’ve never met, but he’s been on the phone with me for... a year or more. He knows me through the television... He’s from an old-school culture. About three weeks ago, I told him I’d call him tonight and he said, ‘You’re a man of your word. You told me you’d call me tonight, and you did.’” Eustace takes solace in this: another would-be Preston out there, another outlier, a delegate from that fading land of honor, integrity and dependability. The feeling is mutual. Eustace tells me the older fella on the other line is “very uncomfortable... in the modern world, cause it’s just a bunch of shit to him... He sort of wants a place to come and live out his days and die. And so I’m sure he overly-romanticizes my existence, and I’m sure he has no comprehension in the world of how many things I’m spread out on... I hope I can provide a place for him.” Saturday comes and goes, and the older fella doesn’t show. Perhaps he’s less a man of his word than he seems. Perhaps he’s just getting on in years. Either way, he’s reneged on the trip several times, his most recent postponement blamed on bad Chinese food. But Eustace keeps faith that, someday, the older fella will come. Someday, he’ll drive his life out to these thousand acres and lie down in the grass and the bald sun and die in whatever’s left of peace. As for Eustace? “The only thing that would keep me from having the peace I deserve is... the drive to help other people and show people a different way.” He’ll be back at it on Monday. Will Bahr is a writer living in Los Angeles.

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(Pocket-lint) - There are certain fixtures you can rely on in the gaming calendar, releases that come around like clockwork, and a regular Call of Duty release is absolutely one of the most predictable. It's a series that has put out roughly a game per year for absolute aeons now, and with Black Ops Cold War firmly out there now, it's time to start looking forward to what's next. Rumours and details are starting to circulate around what we can expect from 2021's Call of Duty, so we've gathered all the information you need right here. Read on to find out everything you need to know. COD 2021 release date As already discussed, Call of Duty games don't tend to work on particularly flexible release timings - you can generally expect one to come out in Autumn each year, and it looks like 2021 should be no different on that front. The received wisdom at the moment has the game's main developer as Sledgehammer Games, which previously created Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and World War II, both relatively solidly-received entries in the series. In fact, it would seem that Sledgehammer was actually initially targetting 2020 for its game, but that it slipped to 2021, and Treyarch stepped in to finish off Black Ops Cold War instead. Hence, it would make a lot of sense for Sledgehammer's game to be polished off for this year. The development situation for Call of Duty is a bit of a maze nowadays, with at least four major studios all attached to the franchise - Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software, all under Activision's ownership umbrella, so it could be that there's a fair amount of collaboration going on. Now that timeline has become even more likely - an Activision earnings call in February this year confirmed that there's a new marquee title coming in Q4 2021, to complement the ongoing success of Warzone and Cold War. COD 2021 platforms When it comes to platforms, Black Ops Cold War can again be a firm guide for what to expect from 2021's Call of Duty - it'll be on a heck of a lot of platforms, basically. Next-generation consoles will be approaching their first anniversary when the game releases, so you can expect them to fly the flag for more graphically intensive and smooth-running gameplay. However, there will still be tens of millions of players who are on the PS4 or Xbox One, so the game will absolutely come out on those platforms as well, and we'd expect there to be cross-platform and cross-generational multiplayer, just like Cold War offers. Whether an extra year in the oven can see the next COD push its graphics further than Cold War will remain to be seen, of course, but we're hoping for 4K action and ray tracing to make sure everything looks its very best. COD 2021 gameplay Here's where things might be a little harder to predict than you might think - while there are a few things we can be certain of when it comes to a COD game, there are still some real variables. What we can rely on is that it'll be a first person shooter with quick time-to-kill and twitchy gameplay, and that it'll come with a relatively short but bombastic campaign, alongside a chunky multiplayer component. That multiplayer will have various team modes across different objective styles, and use both new maps and eventually a selection of remastered classics. The above is true of pretty much every COD game, but when you look at Sledgehammer's previous games you can see some variety - in particular when it comes to player movement. Advanced Warfare featured possibly the most in-depth and radical movement in any COD game to date, with double jumps, boosting and more allowing for truly vertical tactics. That has since been rolled back as players were divided by where it took the series, but it's entirely possible we'll see another such departure from the norm. Equally, the WWII route would see us get another down-the-line COD with limited movement that's more reliant on aim than traversal. We'll be able to get more of a sense for what to expect gameplay-wise as more information trickles out ahead of the game's release. Another open question is how the new game will integrate with Call of Duty: Warzone, which has smashed expectations to gain nearly 100 million players already. The integration with Cold War in December 2020 was more than a little clumsy and bug-ridden, so we'll have to hope that the next time it happens, for COD 2021, things go more smoothly. COD 2021 story On the story front, what we said about player movement is instructive - Sledgehammer has created two CODs on its own so far, working as a support on others, and they're drastically different from each other: Advanced Warfare and World War II. The safe money would be on one of those franchises getting a sequel, whether it's another Second World War game, or something set far into the future. Best PS5 games 2021: Amazing PlayStation 5 titles to pick up By Max Freeman-Mills · 6 February 2021 What setting the game has is likely to be the biggest variable for both its gameplay and story, in terms of tone and plot, so it'll be interesting to see what ends up being chosen. When we get more of a sense for this, we'll be able to start drawing conclusions about what shape its story might take.

IBM Corp.'s first-quarter net income fell 1 percent due to delays in closing several of the technology company's large software and mainframe computer deals. The results fell short of Wall Street's expectations, sending IBM's stock lower in after-hours trading. IBM is seen as a good gauge of technology demand because it sells to major companies and governments around the world. That said, it's not immune from economic uncertainty and currency fluctuations, which showed in the quarter's results. IBM said Thursday that it earned $3.03 billion, or $2.70 per share, in the January-March period. That's down from $3.07 billion, or $2.61 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Last year's quarter had more outstanding shares, which lowers per-share results. Earnings excluding one-time items were $3 per share in the latest quarter, below Wall Street's expectations of $3.05 per share. Revenue fell 5 percent, to $23.41 billion from $24.67 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected revenue of $24.7 billion "Despite a solid start and good client demand we did not close a number of software and mainframe transactions that have moved into the second quarter," said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty in a statement. "The services business performed as expected with strong profit growth and significant new business in the quarter." Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said on a conference call that weakness in the Japanese yen hurt the quarter's results. A weak yen translates to fewer dollars for IBM on sales in Japan. Adjusted for currency fluctuations, IBM said its revenue would have only declined by 3 percent for the quarter, rather than 5 percent. IBM kept its full-year guidance intact. It still expects adjusted, per-share earnings of at least $16.70 for 2013. Analysts predict $16.77. Rometty said the company expects to close the delayed transactions and expects to benefit from investments in growth initiatives. She said IBM is also trying to improve the weaker parts of its business. The company has been focusing on growing its software business, which is more profitable, over hardware. Revenue from technology services declined 4 percent during the quarter, to $9.6 billion, and business services revenue fell 3 percent, to $4.5 billion. Software revenue was flat at $5.6 billion, while hardware revenue dropped 17 percent to $3.1 billion. Shares of the Armonk, New York-based company fell $7.55, or 3.6 percent, to $199.60 in after-hours trading. Before the earnings announcement, the stock had closed down $2.52, or 1.2 percent, at $207.15.

South Korean vendor Emtek (via harukaze5719) has taken a bit of old-school inspiration for its latest rendition of Nvidia's flagship GeForce RTX 3090. The graphics card, titled GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition, respectfully pays homage to the blower design. The GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition isn't the only blower-style GeForce RTX 3090 on the market, though, as both Asus and Gigabyte have both released similar offerings. Emtek's version checks in with a dual-slot design and dimensions of 268.6 x 112 x 38.5mm. The graphics card features a gold, metallic exterior that's complemented with a matching backplate. The GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition is equipped with an internal copper vapor chamber for cooling, and its only option of active cooling comes as a single 72mm cooling fan. The graphics card is based on Nvidia's GA102 (Ampere) silicon and brings 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB of 19.5 Gbps GDDR6X memory to the table. The GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition comes with an 18-phase power delivery subsystem. The specification table doesn't expose the graphics card's base clock speed, but does confirm that the boost clock is rated for 1,695 MHz, which is the same boost clock as the Founders Edition. The PCB for the GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition appears to be a reference design with a small daughterboard to relocate the 8-pin PCIe power connectors to the rear of the graphics card. Asus and Gigabyte also shifted the power connectors to the back, as well. The GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition respects a 350W TDP envelope, so it's still fed by a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors – you won't find Nvidia's 12-pin PCIe power connector on the GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition. However, it's still recommended to pair the graphics card with a decent 750W power supply, at a minimum. The display outputs, on the other hand, conform to Nvidia's reference specifications. There are one HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. This configuration allows for up to four 4K monitors or two 8K monitors of your choice. The GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition retails for 2,797,000 South Korean Wons, which equals approximately $2,502.35. The price tag seems hefty, but it actually is right in the alley of what many custom GeForce RTX 3090s are selling for, given the situation that we're in.

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Auto Trader has revealed the footballer’s cars in the transfer window on its website – including a Bentley Continental owned by England manager Gareth Southgate. In a weird and wonderful mix of motors, the classified site has found a number of cars once owned by footballing stars, and not all of them are in original condition. Several car dealers have got the models up for sale across the country and, where possible, have been proudly shouting about their star pasts. Unfortunately, some of them have been what can only be described as horrendously modified, but we’re sure there will be some buyers out there for them, probably describing themselves as ‘influencers’. Read More Jack Butland’s Range Rover Sport Horrendously modified Range Rover Sport Price: £97,995 As we know, footballers have literally no taste whatsoever. Proving that perfectly is goalkeeper Butland and the Range Rover he’s owned since December 2018. It has had extensive ‘modifications’, with an exterior body kit with carbon-fibre elements, and an interior upholstery designed to mimic that of a football. Ask yourself why? Answer: More money than sense. Gareth Southgate’s Bentley Continental Gareth Southgate's Bentley is up for sale Price: £79,950 England boss Gareth Southgate has been keeping it British. He owned a Bentley Continental convertible that he appears to have been using as his daily driver, putting 41,000 miles on the clock – about 16,000 more than the average, according to Auto Trader. Lots of space to hang up his waistcoat in the back. Mystery footballer’s Bentley Bentayga and Mercedes-Benz G-Class Painfully horrible Bentely Bentayga Price: £124,995 and £109,995 The owner of these two vehicles is being kept anonymous by this dealer – and after the crimes they’ve committed against this Bentley that’s probably sensible. Both the Bentayga and G-Class are wearing body kits from ‘leading design house’ Onyx, based in London. Both are also said to have cost more than £200,000 when new and have covered just 20,000 miles each since 2017. Emre Can’s Mercedes-Benz S Class Mercedes S Class owned by Emre Can Price: £53,995 We have no idea where this one has been hiding. German-born Can played for Liverpool between 2014 and 2018, before switching to Juventus in Italy then his current club Borussia Dortmund. Given the fact he hasn’t lived in England for three years, it’s anyone’s guess why his car has only just turned up for sale… near Caerphilly in South Wales. It’s a lovely example of an S63 coupe, though, painted Obsidian Black Metallic with red brake callipers. What’s this? A footballer with taste… never. Get more from Car Dealer Mark Hateley’s Ferrari 512 Footballer Mark Hateley's Ferrari 512 Price: £174,900 Now, this is one we can agree with. A classic supercar now, and with a classic player in the form of Mark Hateley, whose career started with Coventry in 1978 and ended with Ross County in 1999. Hateley was the first owner of this Ferrari 512, but it’s now back up for sale touting the former footballer’s ownership as a selling point. Vincent Kompany's Ford Mustang Price: £43,999 Footballers are shy and retiring types aren’t they? Hide away from the limelight, that sort of thing. No, of course they aren’t which is why this Mustang is orange and very loud. Professional footballer Vincent Kompany, opted for the rare Shelby GT-California example, number 50 of 215, which has a 4.6-litre V8 with a Saleen supercharger and has completed just 4,000 miles. Probably all of which were done in first gear.

I recently took up the federal government’s offer regarding home downsizing, selling my property and purchasing one of lesser value. In the process, I lost the age pension and gained money in the bank. I have been thinking about your statement in a previous column that $500,000 in the bank is more important than hanging onto a part-pension. I looked at my actions, disregarding – but not forgetting – the costs associated with moving, land tax and other expenses. I determined that $20,000 in pension was the equivalent of $400,000 – the potential gain in the property sale. The way I considered this was the $20,000 pension would either stay the same or slowly increase but the money in the bank would definitely decrease. Even if it was invested at the best bank interest rate available it would only provide an income of about $5000 – $15,000 short of the pension – plus I would have extra outlay money to cover no-longer subsidised services, such as rates, telephone etc. In the years after, I would have to draw on the capital in the bank more and more, causing it to shrink. It would be nice to have a calculation of what each dollar of pension is worth in respect to money in the bank. This figure would be a sliding scale, as the first dollar is worth the most as it gives you the subsidised services. It also varies with life expectancy. G.M. I think you are comparing apples with oranges – having a reasonably large amount of your own money to spend as you wish, compared to a grant of taxpayer’s money, which is enough to stop you from starving but not allowing much in the way of luxury. Downsizing can provide a large amount of cash that you can spend as you wish. Downsizing can provide a large amount of cash that you can spend as you wish.CREDIT:SIMON LETCH It is hard to put a value on pensioner concessions, many of which are available to non-pensioners through the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC), the Low Income Heath Card and the various state seniors cards. As a general rule of thumb, concessions are thought to be valued at about $2000 a year, although this varies with each individual. For example, how often would you need a free ambulance service in New South Wales, available to both pensioners and CSHC holders? There are literally dozens of such senior or pensioner concessions, not all of which are useful to everyone, such as the Victorian Recreational Fishing License, free to pensioners or seniors cardholders. That might explain pre-pandemic research finding that Australian retirees are among the happiest in the world. I suspect that, given our success in handling the pandemic, they are now even happier. Don’t forget that if you spend the proceeds of the downsizing having too good a time, you could always fall back on the age pension, which would grow as your assets diminish. I expect to see more and more government effort at getting us to spend our retirement capital, rather than falling back on the pension. I will be 86 in March and was recently widowed after 65 years of marriage. I would be grateful if you could show how Centrelink calculates the part-aged pension. I receive two defined-benefit pensions from CBA Group Super – $1174.38 and $239.35 per fortnight each – plus I have $270,000 in cash. I also own a significant amount of shares in BHP, CBA, Telstra and Woolworths Clearview Australia Share Growth units. Could you also please inform me of the cut-off amount for the CSHC? J.M. Centrelink measures both your income and your assets and whichever results in the lower grant of pension is used. A Commonwealth Seniors Health Card is highly valued by retirees as it gives them access to cheaper prescription medicines. Opinion Ask an expert Commonwealth Seniors Health Card a valuable commodity The income means test counts your two defined-benefit pensions and “deems” your “financial investments,” such as cash, shares and funds to earn 0.25 per cent on the first $53,000 and 2.25 per cent on the rest. It begins to phase out the age pension when fortnightly income reaches $178 for singles, such as yourself, and eliminates the pension above $2066.60. The assets test eliminates the pension for assets above $583,000 for single homeowners and your investment portfolio is valued well above that. It is not uncommon for new widow(er)s to lose the single age pension when, as a couple, they had previously received a part pension. The CSHC measures your “adjusted taxable income” which, in your case, would be your taxable income. Your CBA Group Super defined-benefit pensions should be untaxed over age 60, so your taxable income should be well within the card’s cut-off threshold of $55,808 a year for singles. If you have a question for George Cochrane, send it to Personal Investment, PO Box 3001, Tamarama, NSW, 2026. Help lines: Australian Financial Complaints Authority, 1800 931 678; Centrelink pensions 13 23 00. All letters answered.

African leaders will open a two-day virtual summit Saturday to discuss the continent’s COVID-19 response as well as security issues that have been overlooked during the pandemic. The African Union summit comes almost exactly one year after Egypt recorded the first case of COVID-19 in Africa, prompting widespread fears that member states’ weak health systems would quickly be overwhelmed. But despite early doomsday predictions, the continent has so far been hit less hard than other regions, recording 3.5 per cent of global virus cases and 4 per cent of global deaths, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). Today, though, many African countries are battling damaging second waves while straining to procure sufficient vaccine doses. African leaders are speaking out against hoarding by rich countries at the expense of poorer ones. “There is a vaccine nationalism on the rise, with other rich countries jumping the queue, some even pre-ordering more than they require,” said Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairman of the AU’s executive body, the African Union Commission, in a recent interview the AU posted online. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver a pandemic response update during the closed portion of the summit Saturday, according to a draft programme seen by AFP. Vaccine financing is also expected to be discussed, Africa CDC director John Nkengasong told a press conference this week. – Elections and crises – Separately, member states are due to hold internal elections to lead the restructured commission — the results of which will shape how the AU responds to the pandemic and a host of economic and security challenges. Faki, a former prime minister of Chad, is running unopposed for a second four-year term as commission chief. He still needs to get two-thirds of the vote, overcoming accusations — which he denies — of “a culture of sexual harassment, bribery, corruption and bullying within the commission,” the International Crisis Group wrote in a recent briefing. In another race, Nigerian Bankole Adeoye is favoured to head the AU’s newly-merged political affairs and peace and security departments, diplomats say, though AU rules dividing top positions among Africa’s sub-regions could lead to a surprise result. Whoever wins could play a critical role, along with Faki, in addressing crises the AU is accused of overlooking. There are multiple internal conflicts the AU has done little to resolve. Its Peace and Security Council has failed to hold meetings on the conflict between government forces and anglophone separatists in Cameroon, for example, as well as rising Islamist militancy in Mozambique. A three-month-old conflict in the AU’s host country Ethiopia, pitting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government against the former ruling party of the northern Tigray region, has proved especially sensitive. Abiy has rejected appeals from high-level AU envoys for talks with Tigrayan leaders, sticking to his line that the conflict is a limited “law and order” operation. This weekend’s summit comes as new US President Joe Biden vows to re-engage with multilateral institutions like the African Union. In a video message posted Friday, Biden said his administration would engage in “sustained diplomacy, in connection with the African Union, to address conflicts that are costing lives all across the African continent.”

The promise of slowing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the development of vaccines are offering hope that workers exiled at home can get back to work again. While no one expects a rapid return to the workplace, one thing seems clear: How we work has likely changed forever. Pre-pandemic, only 3 percent of employees worked from home. Last year, thanks to COVID-19, remote work has soared to 40 percent of the workforce. The almost overnight overhaul of the way workplaces have operated for years is forcing companies to rethink how they manage and communicate with employees. Microsoft claims more than 115 million users rely on its suites of software and cloud-based office productivity apps, and its officials understand their services will need to accommodate the broad sweep of change in the coming post-pandemic months and years. With such change in mind, Microsoft on Thursday introduced Viva, a suite of tools referred to as "an employee experience platform" that integrates with Microsoft 365 and Teams. It connects employees to the company by providing work, research and educational resources in an intranet setting. Viva includes several modules: Connections provides employees with company news and policies; Learning offers educational resources; Topics manages the company database and has been called "a Wikipedia for the organization" by Jared Spataro, who heads Microsoft 365; and Insights will generate data for managers and leaders to monitor work patterns and trends. "We need to stop thinking about work as a place, and start thinking about how to maintain culture, connect employees, and harness human ingenuity in a hybrid world," Spataro said. "As the world of work changes, the next horizon of innovation will come from a focus on creativity, engagement and well-being so organizations can build cultures of resilience and ingenuity." Microsoft hopes to juggle all aspects of an individual's workday—scheduling, meetings, phone calls, video chats, text messaging, research—into a common framework that will help employees navigate a new work world that accommodates changing hours and possible shifts between working from home and working at the office. All the while, the system would foster a sense of community. "We have participated in the largest at-scale remote work experiment the world has seen and it has had a dramatic impact on the employee experience," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. "As the world recovers, there is no going back. Flexibility in when, where and how we work will be key." The Learning module, which will be made available to all later this year, collects educational resources for new employees navigating their way through their first days and for established employees seeking to broaden heir knowledge. It includes content not only from the company but from LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, Coursera, EdX and others. Similarly, Topics coordinates helpful data from experts throughout the company, using AI to scan an employee's database, for instance, and match it up to appropriate resources for analysis. Insights in effect is the company therapist. Keeping tabs on an employee's workflow and habits, it can be utilized to gently suggest break times and encourage relationships with fellow workers. Also, according to a Microsoft blog post, Insights "allows organizations to combine employee feedback from LinkedIn's Glint with collaboration data from Viva Insights, enabling leaders to more accurately identify where teams may be struggling, proactively adjust work norms, and then quantify the impact of those changes over time." While Microsoft said personal privacy will be protected, this module is eerily similar to last year's introduction of a "productivity score" feature in Microsoft 365 that drew criticism from privacy experts. The feature allowed managers to track employee activity at work or at home, and produced scores based on factors such as workflow, participation in discussions and number of emails. Swift criticism of the feature followed. "The word dystopian is not nearly strong enough to describe the fresh hellhole Microsoft just opened up," said David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of the office productivity suite Basecamp, referring to productivity scores. "Just as the reputation of a new and better company was being built, they detonate it with the most invasive workplace surveillance scheme yet to hit mainstream. Being under constant surveillance in the workplace is psychological abuse," he said. Microsoft eventually removed the ability to identify individual users, stating that the score "is a measure of organizational adoption of technology—and not individual user behavior." Microsoft said this week that Insights data are "aggregated and de-identified by default to maintain personal privacy." The Topics module is now available for Microsoft 365 customers, and Insights and Learning are available for preview for all beginning this week.

Nvidia will now require that companies selling laptops with the latest RTX 30-series graphics cards list total graphics power and clock speeds, the GPU maker told The Verge. Previously, the company had told Tom's Hardware that "We strongly encourage OEMs" to list this data. Most companies, including Dell, Asus, MSI and more had not included them. The change should make it easier for people to know what type of performance to expect from a gaming laptop before buying or waiting on third-party reviews to confirm which version of the GPU is being used. Gigabyte and Asus have begun adding the information. XMG and Schenker, sibling companies that sell primarily in Europe have been more specific since launch, including Max-Q status. Max-Q has been a tricky question since the RTX 30-series laptop launch. The branding hasn't gone away, but Nvidia has told Tom's Hardware that it "is a holistic set of platform technologies and design approach to building powerful and thin laptops," rather than an indicator of performance. It is, however, still listed in the Nvidia Control Panel. Table of Nvidia GPU specs, as seen on Nvidia's website. (Image credit: Nvidia) Maximum TGP has been previously listed in Nvidia Control Panel, but mysteriously disappeared in Game Ready Driver 461.40 Nvidia tells Tom's Hardware this is a bug, and there is now a hot fix available, 461.51. It will be rolled into the next Game Ready and Studio drivers, as well.