Sprinter

Nickname : RAIDEN Age: 19 Link of Reviews you have posted recently: u can find it in vgr section & How much you rate VGame Reviewers Team 1-10: 5 Why do you want be part of the Reviewer's team: I was here before and i wanna back , like everyone says i wanna help this section to be better :V Any suggest you want to make for your Request: No , thx

Xiaomi 14 Cinematic Vision (long for Civi) is the company's first smartphone, co-engineered with a Leica tagline at a price point that was tough to imagine at this price earlier. Gadgets 360 was the first publication that reported about the launch of Civi in India last month. But before diving into 14 Civi, let's talk about Xiaomi's tryst in the premium smartphone segment. The first attempt to crack the premium segment in India was led by the Xiaomi 12 Pro in 2022, followed by the Xiaomi 13 Pro, the first in the company's line-up to come with the Leica collaboration. But both these smartphones were priced above Rs. 60,000 in India. If you look at the company's current line-up, there's a huge gap between the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ and Xiaomi 14. And that's where the Xiaomi 14 Civi launch makes all the more sense. Before diving into our first impressions, let's talk about the prices. Xiaomi 14 Civi price in India is set at Rs. 47,999 for the 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. The 8GB RAM + 256GB storage is priced at Rs 42,999. The smartphone goes on sale in India starting June 20, 2024, at 12:00 PM IST and will be available across Mi.com, Flipkart and select offline retailers across India. Xiaomi 14 Civi: The package Looking at Xiaomi's 14 Civi spec sheet hints that the company tried its best to put in everything a smartphone enthusiast can think of at this price point. Right from the top-of-the-line chipset, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor and the Leica Vario Summilux camera setup feature a 50-megapixel primary camera accompanied by a 50-megapixel telephoto camera and 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera. Of course, thanks to being co-engineered with Leica, the 14 Civi gets all the bells and whistles one expects in the camera division, including two photographic styles - Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant looks and much more. The Xiaomi 14 Civi is also the only smartphone currently in the Indian market to offer dual selfie cameras - a dual 32-megapixel setup at the front. At 7.4mm thickness and 177 grams weight, the Xiaomi 14 Civi is among the slimmest and most lightweight smartphones at this price point. To add some context, the Pixel 8a is 8.9mm thick and weighs 188 grams. On the other hand, iQOO 12 is 8.1mm thick and weighs 198.5 grams. The OnePlus 12R, priced under Rs. 50,000, is 8.8mm thick and weighs 207 grams. Coming to the display, the 14 Civi at 6.55-inch sits perfectly between Xiaomi 14's 6.36-inch and 14 Ultra's 6.73-inch displays. It gets a 120Hz refresh rate, 3000nits peak brightness, Dolby Vision, and HDR10+. The 14 Civi packs a 4700mAh battery with a 67W fast charging adapter in the box. Xiaomi 14 Civi: Initial thoughts While the Xiaomi 14 Civi appears to tick many right boxes on paper, the real test is yet to come. We will thoroughly test this device and provide you with a review in the coming days. Stay tuned for our verdict, where we'll delve deeper into the performance, camera capabilities, battery life, and more. Advertisement With metal frames, the 14 Civi feels solid in the hands, and thanks to its dimensions, it is comfortable to use with just one hand. It comes in Cruise Blue, Matcha Green and Classic Matte Edition, which we got for our review. It's worth mentioning that Xiaomi's attention to detail for each colourway is fantastic. https://www.gadgets360.com/mobiles/reviews/xiaomi-14-civi-first-impressions-5871547#pfrom=indepth

As per the headline, there's some added goodness for legacy titles, including Crysis (2007) and Crysis 2 (2011). The latest Intel Game On driver release boosts the original Crysis performance at 1080p with Very High settings by up to 10% on a discrete Arc GPU. Crysis 2 also gets up to a 6% increase in 1080p performance - this time on a Core Ultra chip with Arc graphics. With that, the answer to the question of whether Intel Arc GPUs can run Crysis is now "better than before." Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/video_cards/index.html Compact builds are becoming increasingly po[CENSORED]r each year. Small form factor (SFF) cases can lead to a smaller desk footprint or a rig that can sit snugly underneath a TV. The big concern, at least when trying to assemble an SFF build that is powerful enough to play the latest PC games, is whether or not the hardware will fit. Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/video_cards/index.html Noticing the trend, NVIDIA announced, as part of its Computex 2024 announcements, a new 'SFF Ready' label that denotes which GeForce RTX 4070 through to GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPUs can fit in smaller SFF cases. It all boils down to GPUs and SFF cases meeting specific dimension criteria (NVIDIA told us that pretty much all GeForce RTX 4060s are SFF Ready), and you can see all of the GeForce RTX cards (and compatible cases) here. With that, ASUS is introducing a new line of budget-friendly GeForce RTX GPUs that are SFF Ready and called ASUS Prime. So far, the company has announced three models: the Prime GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, Prime GeForce RTX 4070, and Prime GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/video_cards/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/video_cards/index.html

Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a leading candidate to be Donald Trump’s vice president, liked tweets in 2016 and 2017 that harshly criticized Trump and his policies — including one speculating that Vance could serve in former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s administration. Other tweets liked by Vance said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and, in a since-removed set of tweets, harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – something Vance now defends Trump over. Vance’s past anti-Trump stances have been well-documented, but these new examples, unearthed by an extensive review of Vance’s past social media activity, demonstrate they were more widespread and scathing than previously known. Their discovery also comes as Vance has solidified his standing in Trump’s inner circle as a frequent defender of the former president and is among a handful of people under consideration to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick. As CNN’s KFile previously reported, Vance deleted past anti-Trump tweets ahead of his announcement in July 2021 that he would run for the open Ohio Senate seat. Vance once privately wondered whether Trump was ‘America’s Hitler’ in February 2016, and a few months later wrote in The Atlantic that Trump was “cultural heroin.” Vance also said he even contemplated voting for Clinton, but ultimately said he would vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin for president in 2016. Once regarded as a “Trump whisperer” for his understanding of the aggrieved White working class and a self-described “Never Trump” Republican, Vance shot to fame over his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” published in June 2016. Vance was a frequent guest on cable news programs and later became a CNN contributor in 2017. His subsequent transition from vocal Trump critic to staunch supporter has been widely scrutinized. Vance has become a key surrogate for the former president and routinely defends Trump on television, including during his hush money trial in New York last month. Vance also helped orchestrate Trump’s June 6 fundraiser in San Francisco with tech industry donors. Trump is expected to meet with congressional Republicans in Washington, DC, on Thursday. In a statement to CNN, Vance cited Trump’s “many successes in office” and claimed that realizing the “corporate media and Deep State’s” coordinated efforts to undermine Trump changed his perspective. “I’m proud to be one of his strongest supporters in the Senate today and I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure President Trump wins in November - the survival of America depends on it.” Prior to the publication of this story, Vance’s communications director sent along two supportive statements from Donald Trump Jr. and Jason Miller, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign. Trump Jr. criticized news outlets for repeatedly covering Vance’s past anti-Trump comments writing, “We’re 100% confident that JD is America First to the core” and “no one in the Senate has been a stronger supporter of my father.” Trump Jr. added they were “long past all of this,” saying they had “discussed it with him at length.” Miller wrote, “It’s important to keep in mind that politics is ultimately politics,” and likened Vance’s past criticism to criticism by Kamala Harris of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary over his past opposition to desegregation busing in the 1970s. In an interview published Thursday, Vance told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat about his political conversion to a pro-Trump Republican. “Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration,” Vance said. Anti-Trump social media activity from 2016 CNN reviewed Vance’s past likes on Twitter, the platform now known as X, before X changed its policy to make users’ likes private and hidden from others. A majority of the newly uncovered social media activity dates from the last five months of the 2016 presidential campaign. They include Vance liking a number of anti-Trump posts on Twitter, including those criticizing Trump’s immigration policies, acknowledging antisemitism from Trump supporters, questioning the integrity of voting for Trump over Clinton and even raising concerns over Trump having access to the country’s nuclear codes as president. In February 2016, Vance liked a tweet featuring a photo of Trump, two women and O.J. Simpson with the caption, “Here is an old picture of one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs. Also in picture: OJ Simpson.” Vance also liked tweets from August 2016 that praised his book and envisioned a role for him in a potential Clinton administration and another tweet suggesting he could provide Clinton with the “seeds to a plan to defeat Trump.” But Vance soon began liking several tweets with the hashtag #NeverHillary through October 2016. While promoting his memoir and appearing on news programs in 2016, Vance liked a series of tweets calling then-candidate Trump a “monster” and a “nemesis of the GOP.” He also liked a tweet acknowledging “threats and derogatory terms Trump supporters hurl at Jews.” He even liked a tweet from CNN anchor Jake Tapper criticizing Trump’s tweet about a woman’s appearance amidst then-first lady Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying. He also liked a tweet that read, “Does any dad (or future dad) want to look his daughter in the eye and explain why he voted for Trump instead of 1st woman president?” Among the harshest tweets Vance liked was one that called out Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, capturing previously unaired lewd and sexually aggressive remarks by the presidential nominee. “Maybe the Central Park 5 could take out a full-page ad to condemn the coddling of thug real estate barons who commit serial sexual assault,” the tweet read. Other tweets Vance engaged with criticized signature Trump policies, including Trump’s hardline position on immigration and the tax cuts from 2017. In August 2017, Vance criticized Trump’s response to the White supremacist violence in Charlottesville earlier that year, linking in a since-deleted tweet to a TV segment that called Trump a “coward” for his response, and then liked a tweet indicating he did not consistently support the GOP or Trump. “There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote, while also criticizing left-wing violence. “You may not like @JDVance1’s view - but it’s hard to pin him down as consistently supporting views of either Trump or GOP,” read the tweet Vance liked. Pro-Trump pivot Despite his earlier harsh criticism of Trump, by 2021, Vance dismissed left-wing condemnation of Trump’s comments — where Trump equated White nationalist protestors and counter-protestors as “fine people on both sides”— as “the ridiculous race hoax in Charlottesville.” Ahead of his Senate campaign that year, Vance apologized for previously calling Trump “reprehensible,” in tweets first uncovered by CNN’s KFile. “Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” Vance told CNN in 2021. “I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said, adding he thought Trump was a good president. In a previously unreported blog post Vance wrote in April 2010 under his previous legal name, J.D. Hamel, he wrote in support of legal immigration, advocating to “massively increase” the number of migrants allowed into the country. “Border security is a good start, but if we plan to control the border, then we must also plan to massively increase the number of legal migrants allowed into the country,” Vance wrote. “The day that America no longer welcomes decent, hardworking foreign nationals is the day that our nation loses something very central to its character and its economic diversity.” Vance told CNN, “It was a stupid opinion from 15 years ago when I was in my twenties. All anyone needs to do is check my voting record as a Senator to see that I have consistently opposed increased immigration levels into America.” Vance said in September 2016 that Trump’s immigration policies were overly simplistic. “At the heart of Trump’s immigration message is that if we had less immigration, we would have much better jobs,” he said. “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. My own sense is that Trump definitely simplifies these problems. I don’t think if you build a great Mexican wall, all of a sudden, all of these steel mill jobs are going to come back to southern Ohio, but it at least gives people something to latch onto.” Three months ago, Vance reiterated his support for Trump’s immigration policies. In an interview on Fox Business Vance said, “If we don’t get control of the southern border – tens of millions of illegal aliens are now in our country, tons of fentanyl killing over 100,000 people – we don’t have a country anymore if we don’t get control of that border.” This story has been updated with more information. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/13/politics/kfile-jd-vance-harsh-twitter-likes-trump-vice-president/index.html

As much as enthusiasts would love a new MR2 and/or a Celica, Toyota can't justify spending the R&D money on what would ultimately be a niche product. It partnered with Subaru for the GR86/BRZ and with BMW for the Supra/Z4 to share development costs and make bean counters happy. The Japanese brand is determined to pump out more sports cars but admits it can't ride solo on this endeavor. Speaking with Australian media, Gazoo Racing President Tomoya Takahashi said new fun cars are on the radar. However, Toyota has crunched the numbers and the math doesn't work out in its favor. The GR boss told Cars Guide that "the sports car market is shrinking in the future. We cannot maintain sports cars as one brand, Toyota. Collaboration between brands will increase in the future." It hasn't made up its mind with which other automakers it’ll join forces. This tells us a new sports car is unlikely to be launched in the coming years. However, that's not necessarily true since the Toyota GR GT3 race car prototype spotted late last month at Spa-Francorchamps will spawn a road-going Lexus version. It could go by the "LFR" name and pack a V-8 engine, supposedly with a pair of turbochargers thrown in for good measure. Expect to see it as early as next year. Takahashi went on to say the mission is "not for one manufacturer to survive, but to protect car enthusiasts." That's why "we need to collaborate sometimes" to spread out costs and make a sports car project financially feasible. In October 2023, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda hinted at a Celica reboot. However, even if it's happening, the absence of spy shots suggests a market launch is several years away. Before launching another low-slung and fairly impractical car, GR might do the exact opposite. Last month, Takahashi argued that a performance SUV is needed in the lineup for families who want more space. Whatever the case may be, GR's top brass said the goal is to roll out fun cars instead of just fast cars. It looks as though an all-Toyota sports car is out of the question, save for the GR GT3/LFR. It’ll be interesting to see whether the world’s largest automaker will join forces with Mazda since the two are already collaborating on trying to save internal combustion engines. Toyota also has a five-percent share in Mazda, so a joint effort wouldn’t be such a surprise. With the MX-5 likely to be electrified for its next generation to meet stricter emissions regulations, Toyota's hybrid know-how might come in handy. Lest we forget Mazda built a Miata-based 124 Spider for Fiat, so the Zoom-Zoom company could be interested in sharing costs once again. That would make sense considering Mazda is a small company, especially when compared to an automotive juggernaut such as Toyota. Of course, this is all speculation on our part, but we're glad Toyota isn't giving up on making sports cars. The GR Yaris hot hatch just went through a mid-cycle update and the Supra is about to spawn a hotter GRMN derivative with extra BMW power. https://www.motor1.com/news/723505/toyota-more-fun-cars-planned/

Put a baking sheet in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 °F (204 °C). According to Chef Ollie George Cigliano,"leftover [crispy] fries freeze beautifully and bake off well in the oven," so this method works well for baking fries from scratch or from reheating previously fried and frozen french fries. Place a rimmed baking sheet into the middle of the oven. Then, turn the oven on so it preheats and the sheet gets really hot.[1] When you place the french fries on the hot sheet, they'll immediately begin to crisp up. Peel 2 1⁄2 pounds (1.1 kg) of russet potatoes if you want crispy fries. Rinse about 5 large starchy potatoes and peel them. Although you can leave the peels on, the fries will be slightly chewier than if you'd peel them.[2] Don't peel the potatoes in advance or they'll begin to brown. Cut the potatoes into 1⁄2 inch (1.3 cm) sticks. Place the peeled potatoes on a cutting board and cut them lengthwise into 1⁄2 inch (1.3 cm) thick slices. Lay the slices flat and cut them lengthwise again into 1⁄2 inch (1.3 cm) thick sticks.[3] If you prefer even crunchier french fries, you can cut them into 1⁄4 inch (0.64 cm) thick sticks. Since they're smaller, reduce the cooking time by 5 to 8 minutes. Toss the french fries with olive oil and salt. Get out a large bowl and put the french fries into it. Drizzle 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of olive oil over them and sprinkle over 1 teaspoon (5.5 g) of sea salt. Use your hands or large spoons to toss the fries so they're coated in the oil and salt.[4] The oil prevents the fries from sticking to the sheet. It also helps them become crunchy as they bake. Arrange the fries on the hot sheet. Put on oven mitts to remove the hot baking sheet from the oven. Then, spread the seasoned french fries on the sheet so they're in a single layer. If you forgot to preheat the sheet, you can still spread the fries on a cold baking sheet. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-French-Fries

The French would dearly love to know who is the real Jordan Bardella. The question was interesting when Mr Bardella was merely president of the country’s biggest party, the far-right National Rally (RN). Now that he is being openly spoken of as the country’s next prime minister, it has become a matter of urgency. In two weeks the country goes to the polls in a snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron following his humiliation by the RN at the European elections last Sunday. If the RN has pulled off another big win after the second round of voting on July 7, then Macron will have no choice but to offer it a chance to govern. And if that happens, Mr Bardella – who shares the party leadership with Marine Le Pen – is expected to be named as prime minister. The French all know the basics about Mr Bardella, and his lightning rise from jobless school-leaver in the northern Paris suburbs to Le Pen protégé and president of the party. They know that he is ridiculously young, just 28, but that this seems to matter less nowadays, when experience no longer counts for much. The current president is just 46, and the prime minister 35. They know he is perpetually neat, that he speaks well, is ultra-presentable. But what he thinks, where he stands ideologically, what kind of person he is – these are unknowns. The French have the distinct feeling that the man they see is a package. Nicely-wrapped, but the contents are a mystery. The official version of Mr Bardella – the one on the label – is a young man who grew up in a deprived estate in Seine-Saint-Denis and after living with the scourge of drugs, poverty, lawlessness and uncontrolled immigration came to believe that only the hard-right had the answer. This is “le story-telling”, a French borrowing from the world of marketing. As he himself has said: “I am in politics because of everything I lived through there. To stop that becoming the norm for the whole of France. Because what happens there is not normal.” The truth is more nuanced. Mr Bardella was indeed brought up by his single mother, Luisa, in the Cité Gabriel-Péri in the town of Saint-Denis, so his experience is real enough. Both his parents are of Italian origin, and his father had an Algerian grandmother. But Mr Bardella’s father, Olivier, who moved out when Jordan was very young, ran a drinks distribution business, and was relatively well off. He lived in the commuter town of Montmorency. And Mr Bardella did not go to the nearest state school, but to a semi-private Catholic establishment po[CENSORED]r with the middle-classes. “The young Bardella had a foot on either side of the tracks,” said Pierre-Stéphane Fort, the author of a critical biography of the RN president. For a recent profile in Le Monde newspaper, the authors went back to Saint-Denis to find friends and acquaintances of the young Mr Bardella. They found he had left little trace. Friends – of mixed racial backgrounds -- remembered that he was a fan of video games, and set up a YouTube channel to discuss the latest releases. They recalled that he had given literacy classes to immigrants after hours at his lycée when he was 16. But they did not remember any particular interest in far-right politics. “My theory is that he looked around the political world and spotted the place where there was the best chance of climbing the ladder,” Chantal Chatelain, a teacher at his lycée, told Le Monde. Mr Bardella joined the party at 17, and his rise was meteoric. It happened because he became part of Ms Le Pen’s outer circle. Much at the top of the RN operates around personal relationships and clan loyalties, as it did when Ms Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, was at the helm of the party that was then known as the Front National (FN). Mr Bardella became the boyfriend of the daughter of an old FN hand, Frederick Chatillon. Within days of being introduced to Le Pen in 2017, she had named him the party spokesman. In 2019 she asked him to head the party’s candidate list at the European elections, which the RN won. He became an MEP. Then in 2022, she made him party president. According to Pascal Humeau, a media trainer who worked with Mr Bardella for four years, Ms Le Pen spotted straightaway how the young man – with his perfect tale of banlieue hardship – would be of service to the party. She called him her “lion cub.” But Mr Humeau is far from complimentary about Mr Bardella himself. The two parted ways after a row over money, so his testimony needs to be treated with caution. But today he describes the RN leader as a product of pure PR. “He was an empty shell. In terms of content there wasn’t much there,” Mr Humeau said. “He didn’t read much. He wasn’t curious. He just absorbed the elements of language given him by Marine.” Mr Humeau said he worked for months on getting Mr Bardella to shed his stiff bearing, and to smile more naturally. “I had to humanise the cyborg. My job was to get people who would otherwise hate him to say, ‘huh! for a fascist he’s nice!’” The biographer Pierre-Stephane Fort is another critic of Mr Bardella who says there is little substance behind the personable image. “He is a chameleon. He adapts perfectly to the environment around him,” he said. “And he is a chronic opportunist. There is no ideology there. He’s pure strategy. He senses where the wind is blowing, and gets in there early.” Indeed, identifying Mr Bardella with any of the RN’s different courants or political clans is impossible. At different times he has been with the “social” wing, with its focus on the poor and building social housing, and the “identity” wing with its focus on race and preserving French culture. But mainly he goes where Ms Le Pen goes. Like her, and the party as a whole, he has a general standpoint built around a tough response to crime and immigration, and has spoken of France being “submerged by migrants”. But on specifics, the answers are left deliberately hazy. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvvlp096eko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eReZPXVzqg8&list=RDSua3g0DBwv8&index=6&pp=8AUB

Music title: 3faret el asflt Signer: Wegz Release date:2022 Official YouTube link: Informations about the signer: Your opinion about the track (music video):

Voted !!

1. CREATING THE BASICS For this entire ‘Make Your Own Game’ series, led by instructor, Heath Close, we’re going to learn how to make a wall jumper game called ‘GLTCH’ from start to finish. In this first lesson, a lot of information will be covered to provide you with a solid foundation to work with. We’ll explain exactly what Buildbox is and how you can use it to build your own game without using a single line of code. Then you’ll get a detailed tour of the software’s options and settings, which will help you become more familiar with the features and editing tools that you’ll be using. You’ll learn about the creator tool and how to use it to make a playable skeleton of your game ‘GLTCH.’ We’ll also cover how to use the scene editor to customize your game with different backgrounds, characters menu screen graphics and more. 3. BUILD YOUR FIRST LEVELS As discussed in the previous lesson, we’re going to take a closer look at world settings and how they affect your game. In this video we’ll show you how to customize and edit your world settings to make your levels interesting. You’ll learn how to play around with various properties to adjust the gravity, time warp, bounce settings and more within your game. We’ll also further explain the different character gameplay settings, the art of layering and how to test out your levels in the debug mode. In this hands-on tutorial, you’ll get to watch and follow along with the instructor as you build the first game level in ‘GLTCH’ together. There’s a bonus time-lapse segment that plays immediately after of 10 more levels being built. Pay attention and watch closely to learn https://www.buildbox.com/make-your-own-game/

The best laptops for programming are fast, powerful, portable, with a keyboard that makes coding comfortable. But which models come out top? We put these machines to the test. Our expert team of reviewers have gone hands-on with the best laptops, best business laptops, so we know what to look out for when choosing a laptop for coding, whether you're a professional programmer or just starting out. In our experience, a good programming laptop blends seamless operation, fluid performance, and a quality, durable build capable of withstanding the hammering of the keyboard throughout the day (and night). We also appreciate bright, high-resolution screens that let you see exactly what you're doing when writing, running, and testing code. As part of our review process, we've compared device specs, ran battery life tests, and benchmarked speed and performance across a range of office and creative tasks. Alongside assessing screen and picture quality, we also explored weight, dimensions, and overall design across a range of Windows, Apple, and Chromebook laptops for computer programmers. 1. Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2023) View at John Lewis View at John Lewis Check Amazon Best programming laptop overall Powered by the M2 chip, the Apple MacBook Pro 14in is a high-performance machine with easily the best screen on a laptop right now. Ideal for complex workloads. Read more below Dell XPS 15 on white backgroundBEST FOR WINDOWS 2. Dell XPS 15 (2022) View at Dell Technologies UK View at Dell Technologies UK View at Amazon Best Windows laptop for programming The Dell XPS 15 "delivers laptop perfection" - that was our verdict after testing out this impressively powerful Windows laptop. All-day battery life makes it highly portable, too. Read more below Microsoft Surface 9 5G on a white backgroundBEST SURFACE 3. Microsoft Surface Pro 9 5G View at Amazon Best Surface laptop for programming Microsoft's Surface 9 5G is a great choice for those who want a slimline, lightweight laptop with fast mobile connections. The only downside is the custom ARM chip. Read more below Apple MacBook Air on a white backgroundBEST LIGHTWEIGHT 4. Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022) View at Amazon View at John Lewis View at very.co.uk Best lightweight laptop for programming The Apple MacBook Air is the perfect choice if you prize portability paired with power. A sleek laptop that weight little, ideal for carrying to multiple locations. Read more below Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage on a white backgroundBEST 17-INCH 5. Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage Check Amazon Best 17-inch laptop for programming For those who need a larger screen, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD is a stellar choice. It's a beast of a gaming laptop, which means it has all the top-end specs needed for programming. Read more below Lenovo ThinkPad X1 on a white backgroundBEST WORKSTATION 6. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme View at Amazon View at Amazon Best mobile workstation for programming A choice for coding professionals and the super-productive, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme is a powerhouse mobile workstation. The trade-off comes in its portability. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-laptop-for-programming

Regularly playing Destiny for the past decade, through all its unforgettable highs and painful lows, has been a tremendous leap of faith for me and my fellow Guardians. This uneven saga hasn’t always felt like it was leading somewhere worth following, but with Destiny 2: The Final Shape, our faith has been rewarded at last. The campaign ends a tale that started way back in 2014 on a high note, the new Prismatic subclasses are exactly the badass shock to the system its sandbox needed, the fresh set of weapons are a literal blast to mess around with, and the fearsome Dread enemy faction add welcome variety and difficulty to the battlefield. Even the raid, which I only managed to best after days of getting my teeth kicked in, is one of the most impressive and devilishly challenging activities developer Bungie has ever produced. Destiny 2 might still be quite messy, with its hodgepodge of long running issues and the Milky Way’s most confusing RPG systems and menus, but it’s also more fun to play than it's ever been right now, and that’s just about enough to bring a tear to this veteran player’s eye. If you’re arriving extremely late to the space opera party, The Final Shape is the latest and greatest expansion in Bungie’s ongoing, magically-infused multiplayer FPS. As an immortal and homicidally-inclined Guardian, I’ve had the privilege of defending humanity against all manner of alien threats over the years, from evil sorcerer insects to an extremely boring robot army, all while looting cool weapons and armor, unlocking sweet space magic abilities, leveling up, and juggling so many currencies, menus, and ill-explained RPG systems that your head is liable to explode Arc of the Covenant-style if you don’t have a friend to initially walk you through it all. After seven years of expansions, patches, and seasonal updates, Destiny 2 has grown into one of the best and twelve of the worst games you’ll ever play, all wrapped into a live-service package unlike anything else out there. It’s great; I hate it. This campaign finally sold me on the existential horror of The Witness. “ The Final Shape has the unenviable task of concluding the main story of good vs. evil that’s haphazardly played out since the first Destiny. Although that story has mostly been a veritable jambalaya of overused tropes, sci-fi gobbledygook, and lore so convoluted one player had to make a ten hour YouTube video to explain it, it occasionally brings the heat with some genuinely compelling characters and meaningful moments, like those found in 2022’s The Witch Queen. Thankfully, The Final Shape counts itself among those rare instances of solid storytelling, finally focusing on the big bad that’s been alluded to from the very beginning for a showdown with the fate of the universe on the line. That archenemy comes in the form of The Witness, and although I wasn’t impressed with the character’s initial reveal or the setup that’s taken place over the past two years leading up to this finale, The Final Shape’s campaign, packed with hard-hitting cutscenes that explain a whole lot, finally sold me on this existential horror. I won’t go into details to spare you any spoilers, but The Witness ended up being a much more interesting villain than I’d anticipated, the threat humanity is facing finally feels real instead of like some distant shadow we have an appointment with, and I’m thrilled we’re finally getting some actual answers to the questions we’ve had all these years. That said, there are still plenty of points in The Final Shape where Destiny’s usually sloppier storytelling continues in that tradition, like when the middle act pivots to some drama with the stoic and stalwart Commander Zavala, who suddenly (and with only the scarcest whiff of justification) becomes an emotional loose cannon to add a bit of unearned tension into the mix. There’s also some side stories with obscure characters returning from seasons you might not have played or lore entries you probably didn’t read, which mostly pulls focus away from the conflict at hand without adding a whole lot – the kind of par-for-the-course wonky Destiny storytelling that’s irked me since 2014. The Final Shape actually manages to deliver a satisfying end to this epic story. “ But The Final Shape manages to succeed in its most crucial mission: actually delivering a satisfying ending to this epic tale, and I’m genuinely shocked by how well they managed to pull that off. There’s still plenty of loose threads and unanswered questions that will presumably be addressed in whatever comes next for the series, but we finally got a proper conclusion to the main plot we’ve been following all these years, with some really epic fights and emotional moments wrapping things up much more neatly than I thought possible. The levels you’ll play and new areas you’ll explore while enjoying the campaign are also some of my favorites yet. Delving into the body of a God, you’ll explore The Pale Heart of the Traveler, a bizarre reality where one’s memories, desires, and fears manifest themselves in the physical world. What starts as an idyllic but peculiar world begins to shift into a horrific landscape, as the twisted wishes of The Witness corrupt it, with a bunch of gross hands and faces filling up the environment. That gives it an uncomfortable and surreal quality that’s a massive departure from the mostly grounded areas our Guardians have visited so far. It’s also fantastic that we finally got a map that isn’t just a loop with a few small areas to explore, instead favoring a fairly linear layout that feels like traveling from the Shire to Mount Doom on an epic quest to put the world right. I’m still exploring its nooks and crannies, shooting and looting everything I can find, but it’s already easily my favorite destination to date. Similarly, its missions follow in the fantastic footsteps of The Witch Queen by adding light raid mechanics and challenging combat encounters, which provide more than the mindless shooting hallways that Destiny sometimes finds itself reduced to. In one level, you’ll hop between two realities to solve a puzzle in order to kill a massive boss, and in another you’ll battle to the top of some icy peaks, taking advantage of gale winds to propel yourself across massive gaps. Each level does a great job of teaching you a new mechanic here and there, slowly adding to the complexity of gunplay and puzzle solving, until somehow you’re juggling half a dozen things at once by the final battle, taking out an army of foes in one of the most badass showdowns so far. One of the things that makes these missions so enjoyable is the first new enemy faction Destiny has gotten in six years, called the Dread. Even the two other enemy factions added in previous Destiny expansions were mostly remixes of existing enemies, so one could argue that the Dread are the first fully original faction so far, and what a difference that makes. The Grim, batlike creatures that fly around pelting you with blaster fire and screeching at you to slow your movement are overwhelming in large groups, while the Husk are melee bruisers who rush in with deadly blades and send explosive creatures flying at you if you don’t kill them in a specific way. Most of these additions are completely awesome, injecting some desperately needed variety into a sandbox that has stagnated over time. That said, there are a few that are less inspired: Attendants and Weavers, for example, appear almost as reskinned enemies from an existing race and pelt you with irritating abilities, including one that makes you move extremely slowly for way too long, which resulted in more than a few deaths that felt a bit cheap. Still, these are minor qualms I have with a faction that’s been a ton of fun to fight. The Dread are awesome, injecting much needed variety into the sandbox. “ As always, the latest Destiny expansion comes with a whole arsenal of unique toys to loot and bring to bear upon your foes, and The Final Shape has some really nice additions. The Call, a small sidearm that shoots mini rockets, is absolutely phenomenal to goof around with, while Lost Signal is a grenade launcher that shoots a smattering of explosives that do damage over time. My personal favorite new item is an exotic called Hazardous Propulsion that launches a flurry of missiles from your back whenever you use your class ability, which has gotten me out of so many tight spots lately – I’m completely obsessed. Destiny has always been renowned for its gunplay, even when other aspects of the shooter have come up short, so none of this is particularly surprising. But even for a game that’s known for its great weapons and armor, The Final Shape is a standout in what it offers. They really cooked on this one, folks! The Final Shape also adds to Destiny’s space magic repertoire with a new subclass called Prismatic, which allows you to mix and match certain Light and Darkness abilities found in other subclasses to create interesting combinations. It then adds some new abilities of its own on top of that, from grenades that combine different damage types and status effects in order to do things like suspend enemies in the air and electrocute everything in the vicinity, to new super abilities that might let you throw giant exploding axes onto the battlefield, then pick them up to wreak havoc on the enemy. Being able to wield a mix of elements and abilities that were previously locked behind their own specific classes is a major game changer, and takes buildcrafting to the next level in terms of customization and playing around with different possibilities. After many hours of trying out the subclasses and unlocking all the different customization options, I still feel like I’m only just scratching the surface of what’s possible with this super unique and deeply configurable new toolset – that goes a long way in a live-service shooter that can often feel stagnant after so many years of lobbing the same sparkly magic abilities. https://www.ign.com/articles/destiny-2-the-final-shape-review

In retrospect, the original Hellblade was never going to be an easy game to make a sequel to. Protagonist Senua's personal journey to self-acceptance was introduced and fully resolved, and most of the events of the story were seemingly hallucinations. That doesn't give you a lot to springboard off into a wider world, and indeed Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga struggles throughout to rise to that challenge. Seeking to stop the Viking raids on her homeland at their source, Senua allows herself to be captured and brought to Iceland, with bloody vengeance against their leader on her mind. She arrives to find that things will not be so clear cut—this is a cursed land where the people live in fear of man-eating giants, and their reasons for taking slaves from other lands aren't as black and white as she thought. Now trapped in Iceland herself, and fresh from carving her way through gods and monsters in the first game, Senua resolves to track down and slay the giants, recruiting the aid of local people and weirder allies as she goes. For the player, that means about eight hours of cutscenes, lightly interactive setpieces, mild puzzle-solving, and sword fights. It's a visually spectacular world. The landscape is scanned in from the real world using photogrammetry, and Iceland's bleak but beautiful vistas are just as startling and strange as any alien planet or fantasy realm. Mocap is used to phenomenal effect, both in the subtle performances of the human characters, and the deeply unsettling movements of the giants. There's a photo mode in the game at launch, and even as someone with little eye for that sort of thing, I couldn't help but snap shots of every horizon, skybox, and character close-up. And it all runs smooth as butter, on my machine at least, with no bugs or stuttering or even a loading screen along the way. The series' focus is the idea that we're seeing the world from the perspective of someone with severe psychosis—Senua hears voices in her head relentlessly, and her reality is utterly distorted. The first game seemed to be a journey into her own mind, full of not just hallucinations but also metaphors for her mental state. When she fought terrifying undead warriors, the implication was they were simply human Vikings seen through her terrified eyes. The magical disease that was slowly killing her represented her fear and shame at her mental illness. Her confrontation with the Norse god Hela was really a confrontation with her own reluctance to process grief and trauma. But though Senua is certainly still hearing voices, she now seems to be in a world of actual monsters and magic, phenomena observed and confirmed by other people around her. There are still metaphors at play, but it all seems to be physically real too. Iceland has its own undead Vikings, for example, and perhaps these too are not quite as they appear, but the locals call them monsters, name them draugr, and confirm that they eat people and perform magical rituals, so there's little room for interpretation. The entire concept of Senua becomes muddled. If myth is real, why should we assume any of what she experiences is hallucination, rather than actual magic and the real voices of spirits? How is a distinction between what's real and what isn't meaningful if surreal and impossible things can happen in either world? And if she really can stand up to seemingly physical gods, then were the events of the first game all literal after all? Sure, you could simply say every character she meets and everything she experiences in Iceland is all one enormous hallucination, but that doesn't get you anywhere narratively, and it's not really how the game presents itself. It's a jarring symptom of a wider problem, which is that Senua simply feels out of place in her own sequel. Where the first game was deeply personal to her character, in this story she feels like she's wandered into a sidequest in a setting she has no connection to. With her arc of self-discovery already completed, she doesn't have a meaningful journey left to go on, and half the time it feels like she's pushing forward out of habit rather than any real drive to see this through. Even the performance seems out of place. That's no slight to Melina Juergens as Senua—she's as wonderfully intense and surprising as ever, with advanced tech giving her even more opportunity for expression through the mocap. But she's now surrounded by much subtler, more naturalistic characters, and her heightened delivery clashes, emphasising the feeling that she's an alien to this world. Neither approach is inferior (though Juergens' is certainly more memorable) but they don't click together. That might have worked as a deliberate touch if the story was about Senua as a stranger in a strange land, but that doesn't seem to be what it's going for. Instead, it's about her becoming a hero to the local people, and the difficulties and burden of leadership. That's really not a role that Senua as portrayed is able to slide into. She's quiet, haunted, and erratic—half the time people ask her something, she just flatly ignores them while her eyes dart around, and she never explains to anyone around her any decision she makes or what she's doing. With her grand feats in the story, it makes sense that she would inspire awe, fear, even respect, but as a leader she feels totally out of place, as does the speed with which the locals' wariness turns to devotion. It's a jarring symptom of a wider problem, which is that Senua simply feels out of place in her own sequel. Where the first game was deeply personal to her character, in this story she feels like she's wandered into a sidequest in a setting she has no connection to. With her arc of self-discovery already completed, she doesn't have a meaningful journey left to go on, and half the time it feels like she's pushing forward out of habit rather than any real drive to see this through. Even the performance seems out of place. That's no slight to Melina Juergens as Senua—she's as wonderfully intense and surprising as ever, with advanced tech giving her even more opportunity for expression through the mocap. But she's now surrounded by much subtler, more naturalistic characters, and her heightened delivery clashes, emphasising the feeling that she's an alien to this world. Neither approach is inferior (though Juergens' is certainly more memorable) but they don't click together. That might have worked as a deliberate touch if the story was about Senua as a stranger in a strange land, but that doesn't seem to be what it's going for. Instead, it's about her becoming a hero to the local people, and the difficulties and burden of leadership. That's really not a role that Senua as portrayed is able to slide into. She's quiet, haunted, and erratic—half the time people ask her something, she just flatly ignores them while her eyes dart around, and she never explains to anyone around her any decision she makes or what she's doing. With her grand feats in the story, it makes sense that she would inspire awe, fear, even respect, but as a leader she feels totally out of place, as does the speed with which the locals' wariness turns to devotion. It feeds into an oddly patronising atmosphere—Senua is special and important just because she is and everyone recognises it on sight and praises her for it. It starts to seem like she's a Make-A-Wish child whose request was to be in God of War. It's a feeling made far worse by the very rudimentary mechanics. You're constantly being told that you, as Senua, are accomplishing incredible feats and doing things no one else could have done—the reality is that most of the time you're just holding forward on the stick, or doing puzzles a child could solve, so it all feels deeply unearned. In one sequence where the characters were lost in a strange forest, I was heaped with praise for using my insight to find a way through—when literally all I was doing was following the one clear path in front of me. The occasional battles are a little tougher, but still stripped down and simplified even from the first game. You only ever fight enemies one-on-one, and all are beaten with just a simple toolset of a fast attack, strong attack, parry, dodge, and slow mo power. There's no nuance to be found beyond learning each of the handful of enemy types' limited attack patterns, and if you do falter, the game seems reluctant to actually kill you—it is possible to die, but you're given second chance after second chance, and on the default "Dynamic" difficulty, the game gets easier and easier the more you falter. Simple mechanics aren't inherently a bad thing, of course. The game is clearly aspiring to a cinematic feel, rather than the kind of system mastery demanded in previous games from Ninja Theory such as Enslaved or DMC. And it does have the visual chops to swing for something like that. It's always gorgeous, often truly breathtaking, and there are a few moments where the sheer spectacle of what you're seeing does convince you that you're playing the part of this incredible warrior. Some of the encounters with the giants in particular are wonderfully terrifying and really give a sense of tiny little humans coming face-to-face with immortal, elemental forces. It's an impressive feat of both design and technology, pulling off sights very few studios could even hope to match. With the right story behind it all, it could perhaps have gotten away with such a thin veneer of interactivity, but in a tale all about accomplishing the impossible, it feels absurd that more often than not all you're really accomplishing is walking and pressing a button. And despite that visual approach to the storytelling, there's an awful lot of breaking the rule of 'show, don't tell'. The voices in Senua's head, though atmospheric (and particularly creepy if you wear headphones), constantly over-explain what's happening in a story that would hugely benefit from some moments of quiet. You're never allowed to wonder about what a line might mean, or the significance of a particular facial expression or gesture, because the voices are there to talk all over it like YouTubers making a Let's Play. At their worst, they make a game trying to be intelligent and artful feel like it has no respect for the audience's intelligence, explaining the most basic of plot points multiple times in a row and offering a jumble of advice for overcoming simple obstacles. It's a problem the first game had, but it's exacerbated here by how disconnected Senua and her psychosis are from the narrative. With no new personal backstory to exposit on or anxieties to work through, they don't really have anything of substance to talk about. Even Senua just ignores them most of the time, which has the unfortunate effect of creating lengthy sequences without a peep from her at all. I'd much rather watch more of Juergens at work than "She must go back! She'll die!" "No, she can't! She must go on!" ad nauseam. But the problem extends beyond the voices. Through the Icelandic characters, we're told about the effect the giants are having far more than we see it, and Senua's more mystical allies are able to simply relate to her the backstory and weaknesses of all of her greatest foes whenever she's en route to challenge them. There's never a sense that either she or the player need to figure something out or speculate on a clue—it's always presented plain as day, which feels bizarre for a series so interested in the surreal and ambiguous. A dulled blade The only thing that leaves you to really ponder on is the game's broader themes and metaphors, but they're too disjointed to inspire much analysis. Narrative threads related to leadership, power, parents, betrayal, redemption, mercy, and the question of whether someone can truly change drift in and out of the plot without ever really feeling relevant to anything Senua is going through, and the revelations of the climax are a culmination of ideas that weren't really explored sufficiently in the lead up. Often it feels like chunks of the story are missing, especially in the character arcs of the supporting cast, some of which feel rushed while others are abandoned part way through. That's not helped by frequent disorienting time-skips that artificially break up what is otherwise one long, continuous shot. As with the first game, in the lead up to Hellblade 2 huge emphasis has been placed in the marketing on the authenticity of the depiction of psychosis. I don't have the personal experience to say whether it is representative or not—I'll leave that to others—but what I can say is that I don't think Senua's psychosis feels relevant to the story this game is telling. It isn't really even a psychological tale—it's a dark fantasy parable with some surreal imagery that evokes but doesn't actually explore the idea of distorted reality. That's probably a sign that the first game didn't need a sequel at all, or certainly not one on this scale. Hellblade 2 was always an odd fit as a flagship title for a publisher as big as Microsoft, and perhaps that pressure to go bigger, more epic, and more mainstream was too much for Senua to carry on her shoulders. Whatever the case, visual spectacle and intricate motion capture can't save this sequel from feeling like an unengaging and inessential adventure. THE VERDICT https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/senuas-saga-hellblade-2-review/

A truism of American politics is that older voters prefer the Republican and younger voters prefer the Democrat. That’s what happened in 2020, when Democrat Joe Biden won voters under 50 and Republican Donald Trump won voters over 50, according to exit polls. Biden’s margin among younger voters — he got 65% of voters ages 18-24 — helped him overcome the fact that Trump got 52% of older voters, who accounted for more than half the electorate. In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College even though she got more votes than him, but the pattern of younger voters supporting the Democrat held. Clinton got more votes among voters ages 18-44, and Trump got more votes among voters ages 45 and older, according to exit polls. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney lost the election, but he did better than Democrat Barack Obama among voters 45 and older. Voters under 30 haven’t preferred the Republican since 1988, when George H.W. Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis in a landslide. Voters over the age of 65 haven’t preferred the Democrat since 2000, when Al Gore lost the election despite getting more votes than Republican George W. Bush. Former President Donald Trump, meets with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee office in Washington, DC, on Thursday, June 13, 2024. RELATED ARTICLE Trump turns 78, a birthday he says he’d like to pretend ‘doesn’t exist’ But the old rules don’t seem to apply in this year’s presidential election, where both candidates are old men and their fitness to serve is a top issue. Older voters are gravitating to Biden, and younger voters are taking a look at Trump. A new Marist poll in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, for instance, showed a tight race overall with Trump at 47% and Biden at 45%, a within-the-margin-of-error difference. Trump is making inroads with voters of color and is nearly even with Biden among voters under 45 in that poll. But older voters have gone in the opposite direction, and instead of favoring Trump, are nearly split in the Marist poll. It’s a trend that extends to other states. In a nationwide Quinnipiac University poll released in May, Biden and Trump split younger voters, but Biden has an edge among voters 65 and older. Not every poll shows the same level of shift, but the general movement among both younger and older voters is a departure from past results. Biden is now leaning into questions about his age that have dogged his reelection campaign and worry voters in opinion polls. “Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it,” first lady Jill Biden said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin this week, part of a three-day swing designed to boost his support among older voters. Older voters are essentially Biden’s and Trump’s peers. Both men were born in the 1940s. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Eric Bradner note that older voters were “alive in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, a period Biden has attempted to tap into as he casts Trump as a threat to democracy.” They also write that “in 2024, baby boomers now make up a wide majority of the senior vote for the first time — an enticing demographic shift the Biden campaign is seizing upon in Michigan and across the country.” In Michigan, Zeleny and Bradner talked to Linda Van Werden, a retired real estate agent who only got active in politics after Trump’s 2016 victory. “I never thought I’d be one of those people holding up a political sign or being involved, but I can’t sit back anymore and watch this happen,” she said. Despite the shift of older voters in the direction of Biden (and younger voters away from him), I was surprised to see older voters still have reservations about Biden’s age. In a February New York Times/Siena College poll, nearly three-quarters of registered voters ages 65 and older said Biden was too old to be effective as president compared with less than half who said the same about Trump. Those figures tracked with the po[CENSORED]tion at large. CNN’s Ronald Brownstein noted last year that older voters were more likely to approve of Biden’s job performance and argued that some of his policy wins, like pushing for lowering drug costs in Medicare, appeal directly to seniors. Whatever the reason, if Biden is to overcome questions about his age to keep his job, it will be with help from people his own age. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/15/politics/election-age-what-matters/index.html