So... now that face masks are compulsory in all British stores, can one Brit explain to me why they're called face masks? I mean, are there any other kinds of masks? Strictly speaking, I like the term face coverings better but making your own face covering from a hanky doesn't mean they're protective in any way.

So... now that face masks are compulsory in all British stores

Will be from the 24th July, currently they are still optional, and in all the BBC reports they are called "face coverings"

A Brit might not be able to explain mask, might need a yank? Separated by a common language.

Yank:

mask |mask|
noun
1 a covering for all or part of the face, worn as a disguise, or to amuse or terrify other people.
2 a covering made of fiber or gauze and fitting over the nose and mouth to protect against dust or air pollutants, or made of sterile gauze and worn to prevent infection of the wearer or (in surgery) of the patient.
• a protective covering fitting over the whole face, worn in fencing, ice hockey, and other sports.
• a respirator used to filter inhaled air or to supply gas for inhalation.
• (also masque) a cosmetic preparation spread over the face and left for some time to cleanse and improve the skin.
3 a likeness of a person's face in clay or wax, especially one made by taking a mold from the face.
• a person's face regarded as having set into a particular expression: his face was a mask of rage.
• a hollow model of a human head worn by ancient Greek and Roman actors.
• the face or head of an animal, especially of a fox, as a hunting trophy.
• archaic a masked person.
4 a manner or expression that hides one's true character or feelings; a pretense: she let her mask of moderate respectability slip.
5 Photography a piece of something, such as a card, used to cover a part of an image that is not required when exposing a print.
6 Electronics a patterned metal film used in the manufacture of microcircuits to allow selective modification of the underlying material.
7 Entomology the enlarged lower lip of a dragonfly larva, which can be extended to seize prey.
verb [with object]
cover (the face) with a mask.
• conceal (something) from view: the poplars masked a factory.
• disguise or hide (a sensation or quality): brandy did not completely mask the bitter taste.
• cover (an object or surface) so as to protect it from a process, especially painting: mask off doors and cupboards with sheets of plastic.

Brit:

mask |mɑːsk|
noun
1 a covering for all or part of the face, worn as a disguise, or to amuse or frighten others.
2 a covering made of fibre or gauze and fitting over the nose and mouth to protect against air pollutants, or made of sterile gauze and worn to prevent infection of the wearer or (in surgery) of the patient.
• a protective covering fitting over the whole face, worn in fencing, ice hockey, and other sports.
• a respirator used to filter inhaled air or to supply gas for inhalation.
• archaic a masked person.
3 (also masque) a face pack: this exfoliating mask helps clear your pores and leaves your skin feeling soft and healthy.
4 a likeness of a person's face moulded or sculpted in clay or wax.
• a person's face regarded as having set into a particular expression: his face was a mask of rage.
• a hollow model of a human head worn by ancient Greek and Roman actors.
• the face or head of a fox or other game animal, as a trophy.
5 a manner or expression that hides one's true character or feelings: I let my mask of respectability slip.
6 Photography a piece of material such as card used to cover a part of an image that is not required when exposing a print.
7 Electronics a patterned metal film used in the manufacture of microcircuits to allow selective modification of the underlying material.
8 Entomology the enlarged labium of a dragonfly larva, which can be extended to seize prey.
verb [with object]
1 cover (the face) with a mask: he had been masked, bound, and abducted.
2 conceal (something) from view: the poplars masked a factory.
• (of a taste, smell, etc.) prevent the perception of (another sensation): brandy did not completely mask the bitter taste.
3 cover (an object or surface) so as to protect it during painting: mask off doors and cupboards with sheets of plastic.
ORIGIN
mid 16th century: from French masque, from Italian maschera, mascara, probably from medieval Latin masca ‘witch, spectre’, but influenced by Arabic masḵara ‘buffoon’.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0m3BzQscS_k

Far Cry 6 trailer.
Tell me if it's a movie or animated. And then wonder if what you do with your graphics card is worth it?

Glory: What seemed like an age ago, I received a communication from armed forces pensions. (I had previously contacted them with regards to my entitlement and asking if it could be added to my NHS pension. At that time I was told that after only doing six years, I wasn't entitled to anything.

Out of the blue, shortly before Covid-19 appeared on the scene this communication asked me to fill in some details to see what I was entitled to which I did. Nothing heard till today when I received a letter saying I am entitled to a lump sum plus £1,500 ish a year from June 2016 (when I turned 60). Not a fortune but I can start looking at that new computer and a little higher spec than I had been thinking of.

Nice bonus, woohoo!

I just allowed Windows 10 to update itself to version 2004. So far so good. It kept my installed AMD driver. It kept all privacy settings as I set them before install. It's come quite some ways.
Even reliability is up, almost to 10 these days. So no complaints.

ROFL, Intel. After they were telling you that you void warranty on your Intel CPU when you overclock it - despite them giving an overclock manual on their site- now they're going as far as saying using XMP on your memory is overclocking and that voids warranty on your Intel CPU if you tell them you ran XMP and the CPU died. Yes, even on a Z-motherboard, with a K-chip. You should not overclock anything.

Glory: What seemed like an age ago, I received a communication from armed forces pensions. (I had previously contacted them with regards to my entitlement and asking if it could be added to my NHS pension. At that time I was told that after only doing six years, I wasn't entitled to anything.

Out of the blue, shortly before Covid-19 appeared on the scene this communication asked me to fill in some details to see what I was entitled to which I did. Nothing heard till today when I received a letter saying I am entitled to a lump sum plus £1,500 ish a year from June 2016 (when I turned 60). Not a fortune but I can start looking at that new computer and a little higher spec than I had been thinking of.

Been putting together a machine on http://pcspecialist.co.uk If I put my computer to sleep/hibernate, when I wake it up again the browser window keeps my spec of Ryzen9 12 core, 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2,400MHz, 1TB Seagate Barracuda, 256GB M2 SSD etc. etc. And the price on waking up the computer drops from just under £1,000 including VAT to £449.00 including VAT. Wondering if I press the proceed button if it will give it me for half price? Changing any item to something else and back again shows the full price rather than the one before I started changing components.

Edit: Tried clicking on proceed and that processor is out of stock till Sept 6th. will have to try changing it to something else, hibernating, waking up and trying again.

I'd say, because you don't want to have slow memory on a Ryzen 3900X (or XT). 2400 is slow. Look for 3200 or above. You can perfectly fine overclock the memory, but 2400 never gets as high as 3200.

I'd say, because you don't want to have slow memory on a Ryzen 3900X (or XT). 2400 is slow. Look for 3200 or above. You can perfectly fine overclock the memory, but 2400 never gets as high as 3200.

Thanks. The last time I had a cutting edge processor, it had a co-processor sitting in another socket so I am not really up on these things!

Edit:And it didn't put up the price by very much either.

So you want to report a bug to Ubisoft, but have noticed their moderators haven't been in their forums the past 5 days. What do you do then?
I tried reverting to Support. Logging in, making a ticket. Only to be stopped by a message saying "In the light of the current situation, we are restricting our support to Live Chat only"

The Submit my Support Case option is greyed out... but then so is the Start Chat option, because....
"Chat is current unavailable. Please choose another support method."

Yes. Sure.

I'd say, because you don't want to have slow memory on a Ryzen 3900X (or XT). 2400 is slow. Look for 3200 or above. You can perfectly fine overclock the memory, but 2400 never gets as high as 3200.

Thanks. The last time I had a cutting edge processor, it had a co-processor sitting in another socket so I am not really up on these things!

Edit:And it didn't put up the price by very much either.

Now ordered. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)

16-18 Days lead time to delivery. I expect next time I roll my own BOINC all the pretty colours will fly across the terminal a little faster when I run make.

Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz 4GB Ram is the machine it is replacing.

Looks like another successful possibility.

South Australian coronavirus vaccine candidate shows positive results in phase one human trials

SA breweries' expired beer to generate renewable energy for sewage plant

Bypassing the middle man. :)

Grumble: Since Update 2.1.0 of Ghost Recon Breakpoint I can no longer play the game in 4K. Not even half that. No even at 1920x1080 I have stuttering trouble, both in DirectX and Vulkan.
So after the forums couldn't help me any more, they sent me to tech support. I followed their initial things such as Update & Repair Windows, reinstall files, the usual stuff.

And then came....
"In the meantime, I also recommend disabling any RGB lights you might have from your motherboard and other components. Make sure to also turn them off via the RGB controller software and service."

What? You sent me an update to the game. It broke my gaming experience. And since that time I had to repair and reinstall all kinds of things in my software and now you want me to remove RGB?
What? Why? What extreme garbage has your game become that the RGB on my motherboard, GPU, water cooling, fans, probably keyboard, mouse and headphones as well.... interferes with your game in such a way that I have severe FPS drops, drops to as low as 5 FPS...
What?

And then because I don't want to disable the RGB without any good given reason, they refuse to help me any further. Can someone explain to me how the RGB anywhere in a computer or on any peripherals interferes with the drawing of a game on a monitor?

I'll go advise that to the next person coming here with BOINC trouble. "Yes, disable all your RGB and try again." ...

The reason that tech support said disable all RGB is because most programs that control RGB are garbage and corrupt things like memory, DMA bus etc. etc. In general they cause nothing but instability.
This is a well known tech problem among all vendors that the RGB vendors refuse to fix. A few programs like SIV and HWinfo have developed work arounds for the failures of the RGB components.
But still best advice is to set your RGB scheme and then completely unload and disable the control programs.

Yes, but for that I don't use a program to set my RGB. Just explained that to them as well. I have set it via the BIOS, as I use the RGB controller on the motherboard. I do that because the controller that came with my case was broken when the case came and the arrival of the replacement took over two months. By that time I wasn't interested anymore to exchange the controller and plug everything into the case controller, then go fiddle with software. So the only option for me to disable RGB here... is to unplug stuff and I don't think that's a good idea.

And besides, the past hours I have tested things. Played the game in various resolutions, and I only immediately have problems when putting it in 4K (even at Very High). No trouble at 2560 or 1920, until.... I fly the drone in the game around. Then all chaos breaks loose.

This forum is in danger of being canceled due to lac of posts.