DroidIt!

Let me start off by saying I think not. Full stop. I just watched the most recent WAN show where Linus and Luke touched on the Intel/PT benchmarks. I've also watched the Gamers Nexus coverage and Steve's interview with a PT co-owner I believe it was. BOTH seemed to take a middle of the road approach from different angles. Linus looked at it by putting himself in an Intel exec's shoes and Steve asked the guy about specific hardware choices that may have compromised the results of any testing PT did. So each outlet used its expertise to hit at the issue from different angles. In no case did either PROMOTE Intel. Linus's conclusion was that it was Intel being Intel at each major product release it has. Who knows the real reason Intel went with PT. Linus said that either could be equally to blame. Steve laid the blame with Intel ultimately because it published the PT test results (gave its approval). I agree in both cases. All that being said, I don't get why people are so damn upset in the comments at Linus and saying he's a shill. If you want to take the same attitude, is Steve then a PT shill because he blames Intel? Imo, BOTH companies are equally culpable, Intel for not vetting what got published under its name and PT for its shoddy testing procedures. Saying Linus is a shill though simply because he isn't as unreasonable as most others seem to be though is bordering on just...hysteria. A little more perspective: it's a fukken piece of silicon that runs electricity across it. If you buy it before it gets tested (again as Linus said), that's on you. Linus a shill because he didn't try to drown the witch without any evidence (ie. because he kept a level head)...nope.

Agreed. It's simple for setup after first boot. Most people I know don't go through the trouble because they either need to set up a VM or partition. Sure a clean install is simple, but most people would rather not wipe Win off their machines for Linux. Heck, I won't do it because gaming.

As far as Linux update scheme vs. Win. Generally even to get Linux installed takes a little more know-how than Win. Run on a VM, dual boot, separate partitions, what about system resources to allocate to it? For those reasons and more, I think it's fairly assumed those running Linux are a bit more tech savvy than the average person. So, maybe it's assumed the Linux crowd will proactively check more frequently for updates. Making some assumptions, but I think probably pretty valid ones. As far as personal security. All our infos are so spread out all over the place, I'm not even sure hacking is needed anymore. Surprised somebody doesn't just build an advanced scraper to take publicly available info for a target/crowd and run with it. You could probably do just as much damage. I'll personally still update and use best practices, how effective even is that anymore?

Here it is directly from the source https://research.checkpoint.com/new-iot-botnet-storm-coming/ There is also a full listing of affected devices at that link. But it appears only devices running on the Lua programming language are targeted. So no Pc's, smartphones, etc. Lua code is run in a register-based VM like dalvic for Android. Lua is basically a very light programming language which makes it ideal for IoT devices. I'd suggest even if your device isn't listed, might still not be a bad idea to figure out what programming language is used on your gadgets.

I decided to go with a gaming laptop over desktop, not because I take it out of the house, but because then I can be around the fam more whenever I do gaming or photo/video editing. So that's why I chose high-end laptop over desktop. That being said, an SLI laptop does seem overkill. You get the huge extra added weight/less mobility and at that point, in my opinion, why not just get a desktop? I got a ROG with a 6700 HQ, single GTX 1070 and Nvme storage and Elite Dangerous plays good on Ultra.

An interesting article appeared in VentureBeat https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/15/voice-and-facial-recognition-could-help-ai-surpass-humans-in-emotional-intelligence/ that got me thinking about AI and humans and how AI is perhaps surpassing human ability on a front that I wouldn't have necessarily thought possible: emotional intelligence. The article title mentions voice and facial recognition, but delves pretty deeply into algorithms and how based on those algorithms, computers have become better than humans at emotional intelligence. Basically the author makes the point that algorithms were written by Facebook, Google et al. and from what I gather, the algorithms are self-improving through AI. That's why sometimes you hear a sound byte on the news that Facebook doesn't know what it's own algorithm is doing when it comes to deleting posts, putting inappropriate ads next to unrelated content/a companies brand, and so on. Facebook, Google, etc. loosed these algorithms on the world (i.e. us) and now they are surpassing humans in (maybe) surprising ways, one of them being in emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is basically the human capability to read what another human is feeling or communicating through facial expression and body language and to also predict elicited emotion from others. These algorithms are becoming so advanced, they can more accurately read not only basic mood and predict emotional responses, but also read humans in ways that we generally can't such "as sexual orientation, political leaning, or IQ" through facial and voice recognition. Now that all may very well be true. AI has already allowed computers to surpass human capability in more than a couple areas such as chess playing/strategy and knowledge such as Jeopardy. Perhaps AI is better at emotional intelligence now than we are. The line between human and machine appears to be getting increasingly blurred. The article made me think about the question: can a machine become human? I personally would argue that an algorithm applied to any machine can make that machine approximate human behavior, but not make that machine human no matter how close that approximation is. A fundamental fact exists that machines and humans took different evolutionary routes and our physical make-ups too different. So, at this point, I can see that humans can be modelled after and yes, surpassed by machines in some ways, but we are not equivalent to each other nor do I believe that machines can literally become human.

I haven't read all 125 comments but here's a great summary article https://www.xda-developers.com/wpa2-wifi-protocol-vulnerability-krack/ What makes it worse is it's not just routers, but also appears to affect any Android device running 6.0 (Marshmallow) released back in fall 2015 as per the article. Nasty stuff. However, if you're into rooting and can load a newer Lineage OS build, you can patch your phone yourself that way https://www.xda-developers.com/future-lineageos-14-1-builds-safe-krack/

Ok. Soooo, moral of the story is the US is really really behind pretty much every other developed nation in terms of mobile data speed. Funny how T-Mob in the US sounding like it has THE worst speeds of anywhere. Well, hopefully we'll catch up a bit when 5g goes live and modems start being put in phones.

Ok, ok. Good to know. Lol, I can't even imagine 100 Mb/s. Yeah, I'm in the Chicago area and I have an app that puts internet speeds on my status bar. I know I've never hit 11 Mb/s. From what I've read it'll obviously need to be higher frequency to achieve the kind of speeds they're looking at, hence short range. So mainly stationary targets, or perhaps onboard a plane or train. It'll be interesting to see power draw along with everything else.

The main article about Qualcomm producing the first 5g modem came from Android Headlines and can be read here https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/10/qualcomm-snapdragon-x50-is-worlds-first-5g-modem-for-smartphones.html. I personally kind of have a hard time believing that 5g speeds will be achieved any time soon. As far as I can tell, according to the ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union Radio) communications sector, to be considered true 4g, a network needs to have peak download speed of 1 Gbit/s or about 125 Mb/s. We never came close to that. The highest I've ever personally seen on an uncongested off-peak time on T-Mobile in the US is about 10 Mb/s. All the 4g/LTE crap you've heard over the years is marketing hype. The governing bodies that set the standards let carriers get away with labeling non-4g services as 4g as far as I can tell. Now, advancement is always good. A better modem is always welcome, especially if it can increase current mobile data speed on existing infrastructure. However, it's my opinion we won't see true 5g for a long time. 4g as a standard has been around for years and we don't REALLY even have that yet.