It isn't all that difficult to design a properly secured system, and all you really need to do is to isolate the stations from the outside world.
Each voting machine should tie into a local "server", and after every vote, send up an encrypted packet with the voting choices to that server. Locally, the machine should keep a paper version of every vote, a local copy of the count, and after a given period, do a sync with the server with totals to verify that what has gone to the server from each station has not only been received, but also that the count for each person is correct. This would avoid tampering, and if there is a difference between them, an alarm could go off to indicate that there is a problem. Since there is no connection to the Internet while voting is going on, there can't be any tampering with the vote from outside.
Now, there could be a more secure connection that only has a single UUCP type connection between the server and the outside world. At no time can there be incoming connections from the server over that link to the outside. At no time do you need wireless connections, you don't have a big footprint, so people can't just plug into the local connection(and there can be security to lock out any devices that are not authorized to be even connected to the local LAN). So, you have inside security, you have local paper trails, and you have TEMPORARY connections to the outside, initiated by the local server to upload statistics, but incoming information wouldn't work to try to change anything.
Clean, secure, and there is a paper trail. Logging for each station would show and even have checks to verify number of people using the machines to make sure that nothing gets changed or forged.
This basic structure is something I just put down, didn't need to really think too hard about, and yet, it is probably safer and easier to implement than the incompetent systems that are so easily hacked. You don't need everything to be connected to the Internet, or to even have local networks that are connected to the outside world, so why is security so difficult for these companies that get paid to provide a system?
Hillary is universally hated by virtually every Republican, and disliked by a good percentage of the Democrats. Then you have those who are not in either party but tend to vote for one party over the other, and THOSE tended to dislike Hillary a lot as well. The best way to avoid foreign interference is to have candidates who people want to see as president, rather than candidates who are only seen as slightly better than the other(depending on your perspective). Clinton vs. Trump, neither one should have been allowed anywhere near the White House!
If everyone gets rid of the time change, then you just figure out which time zone people are in, the same way it is now. I just wish we would get rid of that stupid idea here in the USA as well, because no one actually wants to change the clocks EVER. It just throws everyone off.
Yea, until you see that in another four years, everyone will be looking at 7nm and better fab processes, and they are left with nothing that people actually want. Zilog used to be huge in the CPU business back in the 1980s, and while still alive, it is insignificant these days. If 7nm were as close to being ready as it seemed to be at GF, dropping it right now just seems foolish. It would be like EA dropping a title that they had put millions of dollars into developing, everything was set and actually good, but two months before release they just cancel the title because they didn't feel like finishing what would be a very profitable title. Deciding not to do future titles would be one thing, but not finishing up what was already ALMOST done seems foolish.
AMD not being competitive at the high end of the CPU market is what allowed Intel to sit back and do NOTHING to really advance the PC industry. The moment AMD came up with something that could really compete at the high end, Intel was forced to accept that dual-core is for low end budget machines rather than mainstream, and quad-core should have been seen as the entry level even four years ago.
Intel had processors that could run at 5GHz four years ago, and they intentionally crippled the ability to run at higher speeds by using a really bad thermal interface material just to make it seem like chips had less overclocking headroom than they really did. So, three to four years where the overclocking potential of Intel chips has not improved.
Even if 7nm AMD is similar to Intel 10nm, Global Foundries dropping 7nm means they lose an almost guaranteed source of income very close to when 7nm or whatever you call it should be ready to ship in volume for AMD chips, including orders from AMD. The big question at this point is if Global told AMD that it wasn't able to produce enough Ryzen chips at 7nm due to the yields being too low first, or if AMD pulled out due to some other issue.
Yes, R&D costs a lot, but guess what, if 7nm were as close for them as expected, stopping 7nm this close to release strikes me as a foolish move. It would be like what happened to Zilog where they went from one of the biggest players to a niche CPU producer in only a couple of years due to foolish decisions.
It has nothing to do with the use of natural resources, and instead is based on the modern version of what happened in the Industrial Revolution where the wealthy had all the money, and everyone else was poor, with relatively little in between. It doesn't take all that long before there is an uprising against the wealthy who horde all the money and there are relatively few scraps spread out to those who actually work for a living. Of course, this is based on my observations here in the USA where many areas of the country are more like a third world country and where government services are limited by corrupt government officials.
With every new generation of technology has come threats to low end jobs. The problem is that we are getting to the point where even mid-range jobs may be taken by automation. Now, to be fair, we are still looking at low end jobs that are being threatened by technology, mostly in the form of those who take orders for items. Ordering food that requires no adjustment to the menu items at all can already be done via an app. It won't take long before in-store food ordering kiosks reduce the need for people in the ordering process. Even the ability to specialize an order should be easily available to customers.
Food preparation is also getting close to being something that can be automated(pizza robots for example). Now, this stuff doesn't require much in the way of AI, and even self driving cars, many people already get driving routes via GPS/apps, and being able to re-route based on traffic conditions would be a basic form of AI, so taxi services, even the driving of trucks might become automated.
In the medium-term, humans will still be needed for maintenance and to handle mechanical failures, but in the longer term, AI will handle maintenance as well. Medical technology will move to AI, simply because the cost of education plus malpractice will make it so being a doctor is more of a headache, and medical robots won't require downtime/rest the way humans do. In the end, civilization will need to change, because people with limited ability to figure out what they want to do and without the ability to contribute in a positive way will simply be a drain on the resources of the planet(or universe).
One thing we can count on is that there WILL be a war between the wealthy and those who actually work for a living(or try to). Training for jobs that in turn will be eliminated by AI makes the future a lot more of a challenge, so figuring out how to provide services that AI just can't do, to adapt to unusual circumstances, that is the future.
I will note that we can at least be happy with the knowledge that most lawyers will end up being rendered obsolete, and without the skills to figure out what to do, because most of them can't figure out solutions to problems, and only point to those who already had to figure out solutions to the same problem.
Look at some of the programs out there that went completely wrong, and chances are, they were lacking in people with a focus on architecture. Mass Effect Andromeda is the perfect example. Good ideas, but how to design the thing? If you just have a bunch of coders without any clue about design, you have a lot of pieces that don't work well together, and the end result is a mess that disappoints everyone. If the design was done early, and with Computer Science people, the whole idea of, "How might this break?" is in the design, and you end up with fewer design flaws.
Remember, you can take a great design and have bugs(which can be fixed), but if you have a crap design, then you can't fix the problems which are fundamental to the design.
And yet, the world does not revolve around Apple, so depreciating OpenGL means that developers KNOW they can't count on their software working in the future. Do they spend millions of dollars to make sure their software works on a platform that may very well disappear in the not so distant future? Apple may be dropping x86 as well and switching to ARM on all devices based on some of the rumors, so would it be a good choice of where to spend money, on a platform that may be going away?
Before 3Dfx, 3D acceleration was so new, there was no standard. Glide was actually better than anything else out there at the time. Standards only show up once there is more than a single player. OpenGL and DirectX showed up because there was a need for standardization.
Apple basically decided, "We know there are standards out there, but we want to force some proprietary graphics API on an industry so we can control it", and you are seeing that not every company out there is going to automatically cave in to what Apple demands. You require a massive overhaul so you can't reuse code between platforms, you risk driving developers away.
To address Specter and Meltdown problems, Intel needs a more significant change to the core design, and that won't happen until 2019 or 2020. These chips won't have those fixes.
In some cases, the PCI Express lanes are a function of the chipset, not the CPU. AMD is closer to the system on a chip approach by having the PCI Express lanes having dedicated lanes right on the CPU itself. The only downside to that is that socket AM4 places limits due to the number of pins, so more PCI Express lanes and more memory channels would actually require a new socket. On the positive side, Zen2 cores will be the 2019 generation, and in 2020, even though AM4 will still be used, we may see an AM5 socket for DDR5 memory support, and with the new socket I expect there will be 4 channel memory support in the socket as well, even if lower end chips may not support that much RAM, at least the socket will support it for CPU upgrades.
I also have a hope that we will see Gen-Z showing up in 2020 or 2021, which has a lot of potential to shake up the industry.
From Intel, it has been confusing for a long time. Is a CPU 2 core/2 thread, 2 core/4 thread, 4 core/4 thread, 4 core/8 thread, 6 core/6 thread, 6 core/12 thread, or now, 8 core/8 thread, or 8 core/16 thread? The name alone does not really tell you much, so doing a lookup online is needed. To make it worse, the U series of chips has tended to be dual-core, even if it is branded as an i7.
In general, we have seen the i3 line cover the 2 core and up to the 4 core/4 thread mark(as of the 8th generation i3, the i3 can now be a quad-core chip). i5 has generally been either 2-core/4 thread, or 4-core/4-thread, though with the 8th generation, we are seeing 6 core/6 thread. i7 has been your 4-core/8-thread chip, or 6-core/12-thread. Once 8 core chips came into the picture, suddenly Intel added the i9, and things got really messy, because now, the 6-core/12 thread falls into the i9 range, 8 core/8-thread falls into the i7 range, and 8-core/16-thread will also be i9. This idea of "some chips get HyperThreading and some don't" is what makes it a mess. If it were a simple case of i3 is 4 core/4 thread, no Hyperthreading at all, then saying 4 and 6 core without HT being i5, i7 being 4 and 6 core with HT, and then the 8 core being i9, that would make more sense, make the version with HT have a H at the end of the name, the version without not having the H...it would make it easy to keep track of.
Intel may simply be playing the game of, "sell a crap chip in machines with an i7 brand" to improve sales of crap chips, but it will upset users when their i7 branded laptop with only two cores runs worse than an i5 with 4 cores.
Are you stupid enough to download malware from whatever source? Do you need big brother watching out for you like a babysitter? It would be good to not have these things out there, but honestly, there are weaknesses in any platform, so pointing out problems with one platform just to deflect from the weaknesses of yours is pretty Trumpian of you.
You may have missed how much people are doing with their phones. Apple users are often the ones saying how much faster they feel their web browsers are and such, so speed DOES make a difference to them. If the average download speed is faster on the Galaxy S9, that doesn't work well with the Apple people who insist their phones must be faster because of some sort of Apple magic.
People do more with their phones these days, and they DO find that there are differences in terms of data speeds in the same area on the same carrier between different brand phones. As far as your "none of these differences are even noticeable..." comment, when streaming video, the source will often adjust quality based on speed of connection, and the difference between data speeds between phones CAN be seen in some cases.
You probably see "broadband" and accept the same sort of thing where phone company DSL which tops out at 6Mbps in many areas is still considered broadband, compared to cable or fiber. What you might notice and what others might notice WILL be different, and trying to downplay where Apple may very well be slower is what people are jumping on. Apple just isn't "the best", even if it may be the best in some areas.
Yes, there are going to be those that come from competition in the industry, but there will be a number of good and objective reasons why Apple isn't as good in various areas. Don't defend a company that claims they are the best if they are not.
There are a lot of factors when it comes to performance, as indicated. Weather, the amount of training done before, recovery times, etc. A big factor that many do not think about is form, heel to toe ratios for design, etc. Weight, not just the person, but also their running clothes can come into play in some cases. So, what did Nike figure out, or is it random good luck with people who actually train better?
From personal experience, products such as Stryd, heart rate monitors with better GPS capabilities, and such also make a huge difference. Stryd actually has the most potential to change running in a long time, in the way heart rate monitors changed running and training for those who know how to use them properly.
So, we shall see in time if these new Nike shoes really did the trick, or if something else is at play here.
Who owns any planet/moon/asteroid or whatever should be answered by, "no one", but at the same time, any probe, colonization platform, or spacecraft should be owned by whoever put it there. If a miner is on an asteroid and is working to mine resources, that miner is what should be protected, and certain rights about space around said miner should be "claimed". Any claim should have an expiration period to make sure things are not claimed and then abandoned, with an extension based on "good faith" claims that may be needed if replacement equipment is needed(a defunct piece of equipment might shut down operations, and it might take years to get a replacement piece of equipment into place, even if launched immediately).
Common sense stuff in my opinion, but common sense is not terribly common these days.
That is incorrect. Google is saying that if you want to sell Android phones, they must come with the Google apps as well. They do not say that companies can not sell products with another operating system on them, which WOULD be against the laws in most countries. The real key is that many features in Android itself are tied back into Google Services. You cut that out, and many things just won't work. People saying that Android is horrible and Google is horrible because their no-name phone that had the Google apps and services removed can't do this or that is a valid reason for Google to insist the apps be on there.
EU Law....you assume that any laws were actually broken, rather than just throwing a fine out there to bring in money to the EU when no companies have been hurt. Have they thrown fines at Apple for not allowing other browsers to be put on iPhones sold in the EU market? How about email apps? Nope, they don't go after Apple, which is even worse about the rules about what goes on the iPhone.
Basic concept, third party phone makers might put malware in the custom apps they provide with the phone. You want to worry about spyware, yea, how about that weird browser that is only on a certain brand of phone? Google can easily call it protecting users by saying that all Android phones come with the official Google apps without modification. Having a search widget is such a minor thing, are companies complaining that THEIR search widget isn't being used because a Google version is on the phone?
If they are concerned about competition, then where are the complaints that say that phone makers can't catch a break due to the rules that Google puts out there for re-distributing Android with potential modifications by phone makers? They don't want to include the "base apps" that come with Android, they can always make their own operating system.
For a start-up, the question is always, "What are you bringing to the table that the existing players do not?". Are these startups actually better in any way, other than being NOT one of the current big players? I see replacements for the big social media and search being extremely hard for a startup to get a foothold, just because they will probably not have a technical advantage over the big players. Where startups can break in is the way they always have, coming up with a better implementation of current ideas, or to bring something really new to the table that is not currently out there but that people WOULD see as an obvious benefit.
When it comes to online stores, you have companies like Amazon, but you also have companies such as Newegg, B&H Photo Video, and others that also have amazing turnaround time on orders, so Amazon does not have the market cornered. In the same way that wannabe politicians can't go for longer than one or two terms by simply NOT being a disliked politician, companies can't expect to do well by not being one of the big players, so innovation is key.
Invent something, make it new, and make it useful. There are cases of anti-competitive behavior, but then, there is just the case where most new businesses just don't have a terribly interesting product or concept. Don't blame successful companies if you don't have what it takes to have a competitive product.
Who expects to get operating system upgrades for even ten years after buying a product? If the product works, then fine, but don't expect that a company will release updates forever. End of Support is just that, where the company won't provide new updates. There comes a point where the product won't even run that goes beyond that End of Support point due to licensed components in the operating system going beyond the license date, and THAT is where people need to be concerned. What components in Windows 7 have a license that will end, killing that component entirely beyond a certain point?
Windows Updates....the number of updates for Windows 7 is already fairly low, so not getting additional updates won't really matter to most people at this point. If you keep your computers for over ten years and still expect to get top end service, you must be delusional.
Do a Google search for: Windows 7 EOL and you will get the following: Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015, but extended support won't end until January 14, 2020. This applies as long as you have Service Pack 1 installed.
So, Windows 7 is already well beyond the end of the normal support cycle for consumers, and the extended support is going away in another 1.5 years. If people insist on holding on to what is soon to become a dead end, then you run into the problems you see with Windows XP, where getting it to run on a new computer is problematic and requires a virtual machine, because there are no drivers for the newer components. Want to put antivirus or other programs on there, nope, they won't run on anything older than Windows 7 currently.
The longer you hold on to an OLD product, the more difficult it will be to migrate your programs/data, and at some point, you just won't be able to get your old programs running on newer computers. Then, you end up needing to really hunt for parts to fix your old computer. If you are on a laptop, it becomes even more difficult to deal with a hardware failure due to a lack of standardization in the components in a laptop.
I understand that many people don't like some of the things in Windows 10, but the bulk of those things can be removed or turned off, and it is worth the effort to modernize NOW, before you end up stranded and without a way to move to a new computer when your old machine needs to be upgraded.
So, in the name of diversity, should all of us get fired, just so our employers can get closer to that "perfect" mix of different genders/races/whatever? Think about it, if you work for an employer and there are only five employees, who happen to be male, or female, or fit a certain demographic, if the employer is only looking at the best candidates for the job, no matter what, is there a problem? Should most of us lose our jobs just to force our employers to give the job to someone else who may not be as qualified/experienced, just to fill some "quota" that is seen as politically correct?
For a long time, women were not encouraged to go into science/technology, not just because of jobs, but because their parents had the culture that encouraged these gender roles. It takes generations to change things, not because children are not able or interested in a subject, but because their parents encourage their children, and will generally hope that their children in most cases are like them when it comes to interests. How many generations will it take to get from the 1940s-1950s culture where "a womans place is in the home" and to the point where it should be a very normal thing to see women in just about any field? Remember, we are talking generations, not years. Those in their 50s at this point still come from the culture of the old-school gender norms for many careers, and even when the older crowd enjoys seeing change, it is such a part of the cultural upbringing that many want their children to have similar interests.
When it comes to race, and you know that education in the USA has a huge split between schools in wealthy areas compared to poor or middle class areas, and you also know that there is a much larger percentage of non-whites in poor areas, that means the schools will not be at the same level, meaning there will be a lower percentage of non-white people who will get the education needed for high end careers. Like it or not, and I do NOT like that the USA is like this, it means that relatively speaking, there will be a lower percentage of African-American people who are qualified for many high end jobs. It isn't about race as much as it is the education system being unfairly designed to keep those in poor areas from getting a good education compared to areas with more wealth. At that point, diversity is difficult, because your percentage of qualified applicants of given races will make it more of a challenge. We are not talking about diversity in retail jobs, we are talking about jobs that are NOT all that easy to get, even for those qualified.
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It isn't all that difficult to design a properly secured system, and all you really need to do is to isolate the stations from the outside world.
Each voting machine should tie into a local "server", and after every vote, send up an encrypted packet with the voting choices to that server. Locally, the machine should keep a paper version of every vote, a local copy of the count, and after a given period, do a sync with the server with totals to verify that what has gone to the server from each station has not only been received, but also that the count for each person is correct. This would avoid tampering, and if there is a difference between them, an alarm could go off to indicate that there is a problem. Since there is no connection to the Internet while voting is going on, there can't be any tampering with the vote from outside.
Now, there could be a more secure connection that only has a single UUCP type connection between the server and the outside world. At no time can there be incoming connections from the server over that link to the outside. At no time do you need wireless connections, you don't have a big footprint, so people can't just plug into the local connection(and there can be security to lock out any devices that are not authorized to be even connected to the local LAN). So, you have inside security, you have local paper trails, and you have TEMPORARY connections to the outside, initiated by the local server to upload statistics, but incoming information wouldn't work to try to change anything.
Clean, secure, and there is a paper trail. Logging for each station would show and even have checks to verify number of people using the machines to make sure that nothing gets changed or forged.
This basic structure is something I just put down, didn't need to really think too hard about, and yet, it is probably safer and easier to implement than the incompetent systems that are so easily hacked. You don't need everything to be connected to the Internet, or to even have local networks that are connected to the outside world, so why is security so difficult for these companies that get paid to provide a system?
Hillary is universally hated by virtually every Republican, and disliked by a good percentage of the Democrats. Then you have those who are not in either party but tend to vote for one party over the other, and THOSE tended to dislike Hillary a lot as well. The best way to avoid foreign interference is to have candidates who people want to see as president, rather than candidates who are only seen as slightly better than the other(depending on your perspective). Clinton vs. Trump, neither one should have been allowed anywhere near the White House!
If it makes sense, Trump will make sure not to do it. On the plus side, that would be one more good reason to get rid of the orange idiot.
If everyone gets rid of the time change, then you just figure out which time zone people are in, the same way it is now. I just wish we would get rid of that stupid idea here in the USA as well, because no one actually wants to change the clocks EVER. It just throws everyone off.
Yea, until you see that in another four years, everyone will be looking at 7nm and better fab processes, and they are left with nothing that people actually want. Zilog used to be huge in the CPU business back in the 1980s, and while still alive, it is insignificant these days. If 7nm were as close to being ready as it seemed to be at GF, dropping it right now just seems foolish. It would be like EA dropping a title that they had put millions of dollars into developing, everything was set and actually good, but two months before release they just cancel the title because they didn't feel like finishing what would be a very profitable title. Deciding not to do future titles would be one thing, but not finishing up what was already ALMOST done seems foolish.
AMD not being competitive at the high end of the CPU market is what allowed Intel to sit back and do NOTHING to really advance the PC industry. The moment AMD came up with something that could really compete at the high end, Intel was forced to accept that dual-core is for low end budget machines rather than mainstream, and quad-core should have been seen as the entry level even four years ago.
Intel had processors that could run at 5GHz four years ago, and they intentionally crippled the ability to run at higher speeds by using a really bad thermal interface material just to make it seem like chips had less overclocking headroom than they really did. So, three to four years where the overclocking potential of Intel chips has not improved.
Even if 7nm AMD is similar to Intel 10nm, Global Foundries dropping 7nm means they lose an almost guaranteed source of income very close to when 7nm or whatever you call it should be ready to ship in volume for AMD chips, including orders from AMD. The big question at this point is if Global told AMD that it wasn't able to produce enough Ryzen chips at 7nm due to the yields being too low first, or if AMD pulled out due to some other issue.
Yes, R&D costs a lot, but guess what, if 7nm were as close for them as expected, stopping 7nm this close to release strikes me as a foolish move. It would be like what happened to Zilog where they went from one of the biggest players to a niche CPU producer in only a couple of years due to foolish decisions.
It has nothing to do with the use of natural resources, and instead is based on the modern version of what happened in the Industrial Revolution where the wealthy had all the money, and everyone else was poor, with relatively little in between. It doesn't take all that long before there is an uprising against the wealthy who horde all the money and there are relatively few scraps spread out to those who actually work for a living. Of course, this is based on my observations here in the USA where many areas of the country are more like a third world country and where government services are limited by corrupt government officials.
With every new generation of technology has come threats to low end jobs. The problem is that we are getting to the point where even mid-range jobs may be taken by automation. Now, to be fair, we are still looking at low end jobs that are being threatened by technology, mostly in the form of those who take orders for items. Ordering food that requires no adjustment to the menu items at all can already be done via an app. It won't take long before in-store food ordering kiosks reduce the need for people in the ordering process. Even the ability to specialize an order should be easily available to customers.
Food preparation is also getting close to being something that can be automated(pizza robots for example). Now, this stuff doesn't require much in the way of AI, and even self driving cars, many people already get driving routes via GPS/apps, and being able to re-route based on traffic conditions would be a basic form of AI, so taxi services, even the driving of trucks might become automated.
In the medium-term, humans will still be needed for maintenance and to handle mechanical failures, but in the longer term, AI will handle maintenance as well. Medical technology will move to AI, simply because the cost of education plus malpractice will make it so being a doctor is more of a headache, and medical robots won't require downtime/rest the way humans do. In the end, civilization will need to change, because people with limited ability to figure out what they want to do and without the ability to contribute in a positive way will simply be a drain on the resources of the planet(or universe).
One thing we can count on is that there WILL be a war between the wealthy and those who actually work for a living(or try to). Training for jobs that in turn will be eliminated by AI makes the future a lot more of a challenge, so figuring out how to provide services that AI just can't do, to adapt to unusual circumstances, that is the future.
I will note that we can at least be happy with the knowledge that most lawyers will end up being rendered obsolete, and without the skills to figure out what to do, because most of them can't figure out solutions to problems, and only point to those who already had to figure out solutions to the same problem.
Look at some of the programs out there that went completely wrong, and chances are, they were lacking in people with a focus on architecture. Mass Effect Andromeda is the perfect example. Good ideas, but how to design the thing? If you just have a bunch of coders without any clue about design, you have a lot of pieces that don't work well together, and the end result is a mess that disappoints everyone. If the design was done early, and with Computer Science people, the whole idea of, "How might this break?" is in the design, and you end up with fewer design flaws.
Remember, you can take a great design and have bugs(which can be fixed), but if you have a crap design, then you can't fix the problems which are fundamental to the design.
And yet, the world does not revolve around Apple, so depreciating OpenGL means that developers KNOW they can't count on their software working in the future. Do they spend millions of dollars to make sure their software works on a platform that may very well disappear in the not so distant future? Apple may be dropping x86 as well and switching to ARM on all devices based on some of the rumors, so would it be a good choice of where to spend money, on a platform that may be going away?
Before 3Dfx, 3D acceleration was so new, there was no standard. Glide was actually better than anything else out there at the time. Standards only show up once there is more than a single player. OpenGL and DirectX showed up because there was a need for standardization.
Apple basically decided, "We know there are standards out there, but we want to force some proprietary graphics API on an industry so we can control it", and you are seeing that not every company out there is going to automatically cave in to what Apple demands. You require a massive overhaul so you can't reuse code between platforms, you risk driving developers away.
To address Specter and Meltdown problems, Intel needs a more significant change to the core design, and that won't happen until 2019 or 2020. These chips won't have those fixes.
In some cases, the PCI Express lanes are a function of the chipset, not the CPU. AMD is closer to the system on a chip approach by having the PCI Express lanes having dedicated lanes right on the CPU itself. The only downside to that is that socket AM4 places limits due to the number of pins, so more PCI Express lanes and more memory channels would actually require a new socket. On the positive side, Zen2 cores will be the 2019 generation, and in 2020, even though AM4 will still be used, we may see an AM5 socket for DDR5 memory support, and with the new socket I expect there will be 4 channel memory support in the socket as well, even if lower end chips may not support that much RAM, at least the socket will support it for CPU upgrades.
I also have a hope that we will see Gen-Z showing up in 2020 or 2021, which has a lot of potential to shake up the industry.
From Intel, it has been confusing for a long time. Is a CPU 2 core/2 thread, 2 core/4 thread, 4 core/4 thread, 4 core/8 thread, 6 core/6 thread, 6 core/12 thread, or now, 8 core/8 thread, or 8 core/16 thread? The name alone does not really tell you much, so doing a lookup online is needed. To make it worse, the U series of chips has tended to be dual-core, even if it is branded as an i7.
In general, we have seen the i3 line cover the 2 core and up to the 4 core/4 thread mark(as of the 8th generation i3, the i3 can now be a quad-core chip). i5 has generally been either 2-core/4 thread, or 4-core/4-thread, though with the 8th generation, we are seeing 6 core/6 thread. i7 has been your 4-core/8-thread chip, or 6-core/12-thread. Once 8 core chips came into the picture, suddenly Intel added the i9, and things got really messy, because now, the 6-core/12 thread falls into the i9 range, 8 core/8-thread falls into the i7 range, and 8-core/16-thread will also be i9. This idea of "some chips get HyperThreading and some don't" is what makes it a mess. If it were a simple case of i3 is 4 core/4 thread, no Hyperthreading at all, then saying 4 and 6 core without HT being i5, i7 being 4 and 6 core with HT, and then the 8 core being i9, that would make more sense, make the version with HT have a H at the end of the name, the version without not having the H...it would make it easy to keep track of.
Intel may simply be playing the game of, "sell a crap chip in machines with an i7 brand" to improve sales of crap chips, but it will upset users when their i7 branded laptop with only two cores runs worse than an i5 with 4 cores.
Are you stupid enough to download malware from whatever source? Do you need big brother watching out for you like a babysitter? It would be good to not have these things out there, but honestly, there are weaknesses in any platform, so pointing out problems with one platform just to deflect from the weaknesses of yours is pretty Trumpian of you.
You may have missed how much people are doing with their phones. Apple users are often the ones saying how much faster they feel their web browsers are and such, so speed DOES make a difference to them. If the average download speed is faster on the Galaxy S9, that doesn't work well with the Apple people who insist their phones must be faster because of some sort of Apple magic.
People do more with their phones these days, and they DO find that there are differences in terms of data speeds in the same area on the same carrier between different brand phones. As far as your "none of these differences are even noticeable..." comment, when streaming video, the source will often adjust quality based on speed of connection, and the difference between data speeds between phones CAN be seen in some cases.
You probably see "broadband" and accept the same sort of thing where phone company DSL which tops out at 6Mbps in many areas is still considered broadband, compared to cable or fiber. What you might notice and what others might notice WILL be different, and trying to downplay where Apple may very well be slower is what people are jumping on. Apple just isn't "the best", even if it may be the best in some areas.
Yes, there are going to be those that come from competition in the industry, but there will be a number of good and objective reasons why Apple isn't as good in various areas. Don't defend a company that claims they are the best if they are not.
There are a lot of factors when it comes to performance, as indicated. Weather, the amount of training done before, recovery times, etc. A big factor that many do not think about is form, heel to toe ratios for design, etc. Weight, not just the person, but also their running clothes can come into play in some cases. So, what did Nike figure out, or is it random good luck with people who actually train better?
From personal experience, products such as Stryd, heart rate monitors with better GPS capabilities, and such also make a huge difference. Stryd actually has the most potential to change running in a long time, in the way heart rate monitors changed running and training for those who know how to use them properly.
So, we shall see in time if these new Nike shoes really did the trick, or if something else is at play here.
Who owns any planet/moon/asteroid or whatever should be answered by, "no one", but at the same time, any probe, colonization platform, or spacecraft should be owned by whoever put it there. If a miner is on an asteroid and is working to mine resources, that miner is what should be protected, and certain rights about space around said miner should be "claimed". Any claim should have an expiration period to make sure things are not claimed and then abandoned, with an extension based on "good faith" claims that may be needed if replacement equipment is needed(a defunct piece of equipment might shut down operations, and it might take years to get a replacement piece of equipment into place, even if launched immediately).
Common sense stuff in my opinion, but common sense is not terribly common these days.
That is incorrect. Google is saying that if you want to sell Android phones, they must come with the Google apps as well. They do not say that companies can not sell products with another operating system on them, which WOULD be against the laws in most countries. The real key is that many features in Android itself are tied back into Google Services. You cut that out, and many things just won't work. People saying that Android is horrible and Google is horrible because their no-name phone that had the Google apps and services removed can't do this or that is a valid reason for Google to insist the apps be on there.
EU Law....you assume that any laws were actually broken, rather than just throwing a fine out there to bring in money to the EU when no companies have been hurt. Have they thrown fines at Apple for not allowing other browsers to be put on iPhones sold in the EU market? How about email apps? Nope, they don't go after Apple, which is even worse about the rules about what goes on the iPhone.
Basic concept, third party phone makers might put malware in the custom apps they provide with the phone. You want to worry about spyware, yea, how about that weird browser that is only on a certain brand of phone? Google can easily call it protecting users by saying that all Android phones come with the official Google apps without modification. Having a search widget is such a minor thing, are companies complaining that THEIR search widget isn't being used because a Google version is on the phone?
If they are concerned about competition, then where are the complaints that say that phone makers can't catch a break due to the rules that Google puts out there for re-distributing Android with potential modifications by phone makers? They don't want to include the "base apps" that come with Android, they can always make their own operating system.
For a start-up, the question is always, "What are you bringing to the table that the existing players do not?". Are these startups actually better in any way, other than being NOT one of the current big players? I see replacements for the big social media and search being extremely hard for a startup to get a foothold, just because they will probably not have a technical advantage over the big players. Where startups can break in is the way they always have, coming up with a better implementation of current ideas, or to bring something really new to the table that is not currently out there but that people WOULD see as an obvious benefit.
When it comes to online stores, you have companies like Amazon, but you also have companies such as Newegg, B&H Photo Video, and others that also have amazing turnaround time on orders, so Amazon does not have the market cornered. In the same way that wannabe politicians can't go for longer than one or two terms by simply NOT being a disliked politician, companies can't expect to do well by not being one of the big players, so innovation is key.
Invent something, make it new, and make it useful. There are cases of anti-competitive behavior, but then, there is just the case where most new businesses just don't have a terribly interesting product or concept. Don't blame successful companies if you don't have what it takes to have a competitive product.
Who expects to get operating system upgrades for even ten years after buying a product? If the product works, then fine, but don't expect that a company will release updates forever. End of Support is just that, where the company won't provide new updates. There comes a point where the product won't even run that goes beyond that End of Support point due to licensed components in the operating system going beyond the license date, and THAT is where people need to be concerned. What components in Windows 7 have a license that will end, killing that component entirely beyond a certain point?
Windows Updates....the number of updates for Windows 7 is already fairly low, so not getting additional updates won't really matter to most people at this point. If you keep your computers for over ten years and still expect to get top end service, you must be delusional.
Do a Google search for: Windows 7 EOL and you will get the following:
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015, but extended support won't end until January 14, 2020. This applies as long as you have Service Pack 1 installed.
So, Windows 7 is already well beyond the end of the normal support cycle for consumers, and the extended support is going away in another 1.5 years. If people insist on holding on to what is soon to become a dead end, then you run into the problems you see with Windows XP, where getting it to run on a new computer is problematic and requires a virtual machine, because there are no drivers for the newer components. Want to put antivirus or other programs on there, nope, they won't run on anything older than Windows 7 currently.
The longer you hold on to an OLD product, the more difficult it will be to migrate your programs/data, and at some point, you just won't be able to get your old programs running on newer computers. Then, you end up needing to really hunt for parts to fix your old computer. If you are on a laptop, it becomes even more difficult to deal with a hardware failure due to a lack of standardization in the components in a laptop.
I understand that many people don't like some of the things in Windows 10, but the bulk of those things can be removed or turned off, and it is worth the effort to modernize NOW, before you end up stranded and without a way to move to a new computer when your old machine needs to be upgraded.
So, in the name of diversity, should all of us get fired, just so our employers can get closer to that "perfect" mix of different genders/races/whatever? Think about it, if you work for an employer and there are only five employees, who happen to be male, or female, or fit a certain demographic, if the employer is only looking at the best candidates for the job, no matter what, is there a problem? Should most of us lose our jobs just to force our employers to give the job to someone else who may not be as qualified/experienced, just to fill some "quota" that is seen as politically correct?
For a long time, women were not encouraged to go into science/technology, not just because of jobs, but because their parents had the culture that encouraged these gender roles. It takes generations to change things, not because children are not able or interested in a subject, but because their parents encourage their children, and will generally hope that their children in most cases are like them when it comes to interests. How many generations will it take to get from the 1940s-1950s culture where "a womans place is in the home" and to the point where it should be a very normal thing to see women in just about any field? Remember, we are talking generations, not years. Those in their 50s at this point still come from the culture of the old-school gender norms for many careers, and even when the older crowd enjoys seeing change, it is such a part of the cultural upbringing that many want their children to have similar interests.
When it comes to race, and you know that education in the USA has a huge split between schools in wealthy areas compared to poor or middle class areas, and you also know that there is a much larger percentage of non-whites in poor areas, that means the schools will not be at the same level, meaning there will be a lower percentage of non-white people who will get the education needed for high end careers. Like it or not, and I do NOT like that the USA is like this, it means that relatively speaking, there will be a lower percentage of African-American people who are qualified for many high end jobs. It isn't about race as much as it is the education system being unfairly designed to keep those in poor areas from getting a good education compared to areas with more wealth. At that point, diversity is difficult, because your percentage of qualified applicants of given races will make it more of a challenge. We are not talking about diversity in retail jobs, we are talking about jobs that are NOT all that easy to get, even for those qualified.