The idea of a password rule, as in some set of checks to make sure it meets a certain level of security, is a good one. However it needs to be something complex like entropy calculation. A password can have lots of entropy, and thus be strong (meaning hard to guess/crack) in a number of ways. A truly random set of characters has lots of entropy per character, but a phrase can have plenty, even though it has much less per character and can be easier to remember.
It shouldn't be some hardass thing of "you have to have 3 of 4 groups, no repeating characters, etc, etc". If you want an all numeric password, that's fine, it'll just need to be longer. Test based on actual entropy, not arbitrary bullshit.
Or, if you really care about security, start doing two factor. It always amuses me when some place has ultra-bitchy password rules but has no options to use even weak two factor auth. They care about security, apparently, but not enough to do anything that might be really useful.
I know that feel on 60fps. I've tried to explain to some people that 60fps average isn't a metric I find useful. I want 60fps MINIMUM. I want a setup powerful enough I can vsync the game and never have it drop or stutter. That requires more horsepower. You can have something running at an average of 70fps, but if it dips to 40 frequently, it'll stutter
Not all tasks can simply be split out in parallel. I mean you can see that with physical tasks, just like computer tasks: Some things just have to be done in sequence, you can't speed them up by doing them at the same time.
Well with some kinds of games it may well be there's only so much you can spin off to run in parallel and you are still going to have one or two threads that hit the hardest, so they'll be the limiting factor.
Now that said, it looks like this processor is still plenty fast enough for gaming these days. Most new high end games need a good CPU, but are more GPU bound and it looks like the new AMD processor does fine. You do find some outliers but it is things like Ashes of the Singularity which is not only a notoriously power hungry game, but a bit on an anomaly engine-wise so its performance isn't that relevant to other titles.
It blows me away how on a geek/tech site every time there is a new high end hardware announcement you have people shitting on it and proclaiming they can't understand how anyone would spend money on it. Really? You can't understand how computers are a hobby for people and some people are willing to spend lots of money on their hobby? I mean $700 isn't even that expensive for many hobbies. Get in to auto racing and you'd be happy when some part is "only" $700.
Really I think it isn't that people can't understand, rather it is sour grapes. The grandparent can't afford to get an expensive card like this and rather than just be able to say "well, this isn't a toy for me" they feel the need to hate on it and act like anyone who can afford it and decides to buy it is stupid.
Yes, it is expensive. It is nVidia's flagship video card. They always are because they can be (and because they are expensive to make). No, you don't need one to play games. A mid range 1060 will do plenty fine. However some people have the money, and wish to have the high performance. That is not hard to understand and not something to get mad about. If it isn't for you, just move on with your life.
I'm not sure how a DNA test to determine amount of meat is supposed to work, but even on its face it seems silly because meat isn't 100% meat. What I mean by that is that when you get a cut of meat and weigh it, or measure its volume, not all of that is cells. A large amount is water. Have a look at how much beef jerky comes out of a cut of beef. The extra vanishing isn't magic, it's dehydration.
That aside, it is fairly rare to eat meat as is. Like of take a cut of meat, put it over heat, and then eat it. Usually we like to season it. Guess what? That changes the total composition. So ya when you have a sandwich like the sweet onion teriyaki chicken sandwich where the pieces of meat are literally drenched in sauce, that'll cut down on the ratio of meat to other stuff. That's not an evil conspiracy, that's just basic percentages and it works the same in your kitchen. If you make a meat dish that has a lot of sauce/seasoning on it then the net ratio of meat to sauce will be much lower than if you take a piece of meat and serve it straight with no preparation.
This sounds like a group trying to make headlines with a bullshit study that may be "technically" accurate but really is useless. Guess what? Many of the very best meat dishes in the world at the very best restaurants are not 100% meat. That is because they have other shit mixed in with the meat to enhance and alter the flavour. Welcome to cooking 101.
Or anything solid really. If you have line-of-sight it works pretty well but get anything in the way, and you can have serious issues. I tried it for wireless HDMI and it wasn't able to maintain a solid signal over about 25 feet because there was an interior wall in between the transmitter and receiver.
I was seriously wondering how people could get locked in their rooms. I mean that is such a massive fire code violation and commercial buildings care, a lot, about fire code because you can be sued in to oblivion.
Incorrect clickbait headline. Now that makes much more sense:D.
We have electronic locks at work, and they are on the Internet. They are VLAN'd and firewalled off but they are still on the Internet because the company that administers them is remote. You can argue we should do it our self and I'd agree, but that is the arrangement. However every single one can be overridden on the inside the the handle. The locking mechanism is just that it basically unlocks the door frame so you can push it open from the outside with the electronic lock. Inside, you can always use the handle to override.
The reason is, as you say, fire code. All our doors always open towards the outside, no matter what. Old lock and key doors are the same. You will find a door with a Medeco lock on the outside that can't be permanently unlocked, only turned to move the bolt, but on the inside ti is just a bar you push to open it up. No matter where you are in the building, you can always get out just by following the doors that will open manually with no key/code. The locks are for locking people out, not in.
I mean one option is just to stick with old chargers. Your phone will work fine, it'll just charge slow. If you want a fast charger, just get a good one that is certified to work with it. Anker is a great choice, their chargers are well built and Qualcom certified for quick charging. Likewise get a good cable that is rated to handle the voltage/current. Being a phone it isn't going to be a ton so it really won't be an issue.
If you are going to have power adapters that can provide 100 watts, in the form of 20v 5a that are on the same setup as devices that might draw 5v 100ma you have to have some kind of communication.
It isn't the current draw that is the only issue, it is the voltage. New USB specs allow for higher voltages. That's a problem if the receiving device can't tell it what to set it at. The charger I have for my phone can do 5v, 9v or 12v. My phone wants 9v. Somehow, the phone has to tell it what to send.
In terms of current, that has to be communicated but not with the device, with the wire. USB-C cables that can do high current have to have chips in them to communicate that they have that capability. The reason is easy to see: Look at a standard USB2 cable. Do those wires look like they can handle 5a? Ya.
So the only way to make a standard that remains compatible with the ports and devices we already have and can provide high voltage and current is to use communication.
Otherwise, you need a clean break to a new standard that requires higher gauge cables and uses a higher voltage.
All the monopoly regulations on them expired and with Apple and Linux where they are now, you'd have a lot of trouble convincing a court MS is a monopoly. In the desktop market they are still the big dog, but Apple is a major competitor. Macs are all over the place. In the server market MS is a big player, but so is Linux. I don't know what the split is, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out Linux is on top. In the mobile arena MS is a nothing. Linux (in the form of Android) is by far the biggest with iOS coming in #2.
Thus there's no argument to be made for a monopoly position. When there's very real competition out there in all segments of your market, you aren't a monopoly. Well if you aren't a monopoly, then anti-competition laws don't apply. Companies are free to lock-in their own solution. Again for a great example see Apple, who (tried to) lock their software to their hardware and puts everything in their own controlled ecosystem.
Sorry, but the MS monopoly ship has sailed. Unless the market changes significantly, they are just another player, which means they can do this kind of thing.
There's no voice, only text and data. Reason voice is excluded has to do with archaic regulations as best as I can tell. Things are changing in that regard so it'll probalby change at some point. However right now you get talk to and from the US, Canada, and Mexico. Everywhere else voice is extra charge. Text and data are available in most countries and are included with no extra charge.
Trump says X, traders jump on positions that would benefit from X to try and get out in front. However other than the speculative betting there isn't much movement. Then X doesn't happen, so there is no long term movement. The traders disengage from their positions trying to take as little loss as possible.
This happens over and over and more will learn that acting just loses you money. It's why markets don't do fuck-all in response to Alex Jones. It isn't like his message isn't out there for the world to see, and actually more widely watched than I can fathom, but they don't believe anything will happen based on it so trying to get a first mover advantage can't happen.
You only gain an advantage by getting in first if the move happens. If it doesn't, at best maybe you can get out without a loss but usually you are going to take a hit to some degree. Thus you act only on those things that are likely to generate a move.
Traditionally, things the president said would qualify. However Trump is anything but traditional. He shoots his mouth off all the time, regularly contradicts himself, and changes his mind often.
Traders will soon learn that he fires his mouth off about everything but rarely backs it up, and changes his mind about 20 times a week. They'll stop reacting to what he says because it is just noise.
For a regular school, particularly state school, then yes it gets stacked a lot by test scores and other academic indicators. The better you do academically, the more they are interested in you and the more money they'll try to give you to get you to attend.
However the "elite" schools have a whole bunch of good old boy shit going on. If you look at admissions in to places like Harvard you find that there are some legitimately top performers who come in, but a whole lot who are not and are instead connected some way. They are kids of alums, politically connected, rich, whatever. They are the "right kind of people" and so get the invite.
That's also the reason why parents want kids to go there is the connections. You don't get a better education at Harvard overall. Any university with a good program will do at least as well, and in plenty of disciplines there are schools ranked far better. However it further gets you in to the old boys club and gets you connections to people that gets your opportunities that would not otherwise be available later in life.
You have a plan should you get killed or otherwise be unable to provide the passwords. Where I work, in addition to there being more than one IT staff, all the passwords are safely locked away where the Dean can get at them, if needed. We make sure that even if we are all gone, whoever comes after can get access.
These days the university has policies to that effect but we did it before then because that is what you do. You have a disaster plan, and that plan includes what happens if you aren't around.
Assanage's offer was always empty, given that the US isn't after him, at least not publicly. Now he contends that the US wants to get him in secret, though he's presented no evidence of this and of course one would have to question if they'd agree to a public deal for something secret.
Assanage is wanted by Sweden and the UK. Sweden for a sexual assault case, and the UK for skipping bail in that case. The US has not filed any charges against him, though I'm quite sure they don't like him. If he left the embassy he would be arrested by the UK and shipped off to Sweden. Or they might not send him off, since he's broken UK law by skipping bail and try him there for that crime, then ship him off once she's served his sentence.
And one that often gets me downvoted since Mac users don't like to hear it: Apple is a fashion company. That's why they've been able to do what they do. In fashion, a higher price can be a GOOD thing not a bad thing, whereas consumer electronics are one of the most notoriously price sensitive markets out there.
However the downside is as you say: What is fashionable changes and it is really hard to stay on top of it forever.
1) Some currencies DO move large amounts and that is NOT considered successful. When the pound was experiencing instability, that was a big cause for concern. It was not considered a "success" as people seem to think for BTC.
2) It was 8%, not 30%. Bit of a difference there.
Like I said before: You can't have it both ways. If you want it to be a good currency, then stability is what you want. If you are happy with rapid fluctuations, then it is a speculative betting opportunity.
Not just because it doesn't work as a currency, but because for currencies big swings in valuation, up or down, are no "good performance". Ideally a currency would be completely stable. What $1 buys now would be what $1 buys tomorrow, and what it buys in a thousand years. Of course in reality none of them are totally stable, but the good ones are pretty stable. They move a very small amount, and do so very gradually. They function as a good store of wealth for that reason, and more importantly make for a useful medium of exchange. Since their value is pretty constant, people have a good feeling for how much they are "worth" and can mentally price things.
Bitcoin did well as a speculative bet. If you want to play financial speculation, Bitcoin is a good target as it moves like a very thinly traded stock. That means it can swing bit and make you a lot of money. Also means it can swing big the other way and lose you a lot. So like any sort of speculation, you need to know what you are getting in to and understand the risks.
You BTC promoters can't have it both ways: If Bitcoin is a good currency then it needs to be stable. If Bitcoin is a good investment, then it isn't a currency.
How is this our infrastructure being vulnerable? Russia didn't hack US infrastructure, at least not that I've seen (please provide reliable sources if you know otherwise) they got in to the internal e-mails of campaigns. Also "hack" seems to be a bit of a strong word for what they did. Sounds like they got in to Podesta's e-mails by phishing his username/password. I'm not really sure what you think the federal government can do to fix/prevent that. I mean they already have information out there about "don't click on shit in e-mails" and there is training out there organizations can point people to from groups like SANS.
That aside, even if it was a hack (as in exploiting vulnerabilities) it wasn't a federal government controlled system. So again, what is the fed supposed to do? Take over private e-mail systems? Put up a national firewall on the Internet?
You know a large number of commercial routers run on Linux, right? The Linux kernel isn't some magic sauce that makes you immune to hacking. On the contrary, we see flaws in programs that run on Linux all the time, these being one of them. An exploit like this can work on anything, it isn't limited just to prepackaged routers.
So what you mean is get an x64 system and run a Linux distro, with some built in tools for configuring routing. Ok... So long as it doesn't have any bugs they can exploit or check for, you are fine. If it does, well then you are back to having to update... if an update is available. A lot of the router-type Linux distros aren't very well maintained. Smoothwall, the one I hear the most crowing about, had its last release in 2014.
If you were going to point to something freely available, BSD would probably be a better bet in the form of PFSense as it is actually maintained and supported pretty well. Of course the fact that it runs on BSD is incidental to its security, it is (as best we know) secure because it has competent programmers who maintain it regularly.
However the real problem is that for many people, this is just not affordable. When you try and do all your routing and filtering in software on an x64 chip, you find you need a lot of power to push traffic. The CPUs aren't designed with routing in mind so they aren't super fast at it. PFSense needs about a 2.4GHz 4 core atom to push a gigabit of traffic, and then only if the ruleset is reasonably simple. That's about $550 for an appliance from Netgate that can do that, and that is with no wireless. Well for $180 a Netgear R7000 will push a gig of traffic no issue, and comes with a 3x3 802.11ac radio that does 2.4 and 5ghz at the same time. Likewise an EdgeRouter Lite gets a gig and is wired only for $100. They pull that off by having chips with dedicated routing logic on board.
For normal users it also needs to be easy. A suggestion of "Assemble a computer from parts, load Linux, configure routing in text files and you are good," is totally unreasonable. Even something like buying an appliance and loading code on to it from a cold state is out of reach for most people. They need a ready-made solution.
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The idea of a password rule, as in some set of checks to make sure it meets a certain level of security, is a good one. However it needs to be something complex like entropy calculation. A password can have lots of entropy, and thus be strong (meaning hard to guess/crack) in a number of ways. A truly random set of characters has lots of entropy per character, but a phrase can have plenty, even though it has much less per character and can be easier to remember.
It shouldn't be some hardass thing of "you have to have 3 of 4 groups, no repeating characters, etc, etc". If you want an all numeric password, that's fine, it'll just need to be longer. Test based on actual entropy, not arbitrary bullshit.
Or, if you really care about security, start doing two factor. It always amuses me when some place has ultra-bitchy password rules but has no options to use even weak two factor auth. They care about security, apparently, but not enough to do anything that might be really useful.
It is more software that runs on no platform, because the JRE is always fucked up :P
I know that feel on 60fps. I've tried to explain to some people that 60fps average isn't a metric I find useful. I want 60fps MINIMUM. I want a setup powerful enough I can vsync the game and never have it drop or stutter. That requires more horsepower. You can have something running at an average of 70fps, but if it dips to 40 frequently, it'll stutter
Not all tasks can simply be split out in parallel. I mean you can see that with physical tasks, just like computer tasks: Some things just have to be done in sequence, you can't speed them up by doing them at the same time.
Well with some kinds of games it may well be there's only so much you can spin off to run in parallel and you are still going to have one or two threads that hit the hardest, so they'll be the limiting factor.
Now that said, it looks like this processor is still plenty fast enough for gaming these days. Most new high end games need a good CPU, but are more GPU bound and it looks like the new AMD processor does fine. You do find some outliers but it is things like Ashes of the Singularity which is not only a notoriously power hungry game, but a bit on an anomaly engine-wise so its performance isn't that relevant to other titles.
It blows me away how on a geek/tech site every time there is a new high end hardware announcement you have people shitting on it and proclaiming they can't understand how anyone would spend money on it. Really? You can't understand how computers are a hobby for people and some people are willing to spend lots of money on their hobby? I mean $700 isn't even that expensive for many hobbies. Get in to auto racing and you'd be happy when some part is "only" $700.
Really I think it isn't that people can't understand, rather it is sour grapes. The grandparent can't afford to get an expensive card like this and rather than just be able to say "well, this isn't a toy for me" they feel the need to hate on it and act like anyone who can afford it and decides to buy it is stupid.
Yes, it is expensive. It is nVidia's flagship video card. They always are because they can be (and because they are expensive to make). No, you don't need one to play games. A mid range 1060 will do plenty fine. However some people have the money, and wish to have the high performance. That is not hard to understand and not something to get mad about. If it isn't for you, just move on with your life.
I'm not sure how a DNA test to determine amount of meat is supposed to work, but even on its face it seems silly because meat isn't 100% meat. What I mean by that is that when you get a cut of meat and weigh it, or measure its volume, not all of that is cells. A large amount is water. Have a look at how much beef jerky comes out of a cut of beef. The extra vanishing isn't magic, it's dehydration.
That aside, it is fairly rare to eat meat as is. Like of take a cut of meat, put it over heat, and then eat it. Usually we like to season it. Guess what? That changes the total composition. So ya when you have a sandwich like the sweet onion teriyaki chicken sandwich where the pieces of meat are literally drenched in sauce, that'll cut down on the ratio of meat to other stuff. That's not an evil conspiracy, that's just basic percentages and it works the same in your kitchen. If you make a meat dish that has a lot of sauce/seasoning on it then the net ratio of meat to sauce will be much lower than if you take a piece of meat and serve it straight with no preparation.
This sounds like a group trying to make headlines with a bullshit study that may be "technically" accurate but really is useless. Guess what? Many of the very best meat dishes in the world at the very best restaurants are not 100% meat. That is because they have other shit mixed in with the meat to enhance and alter the flavour. Welcome to cooking 101.
Or anything solid really. If you have line-of-sight it works pretty well but get anything in the way, and you can have serious issues. I tried it for wireless HDMI and it wasn't able to maintain a solid signal over about 25 feet because there was an interior wall in between the transmitter and receiver.
HID is another one.
I was seriously wondering how people could get locked in their rooms. I mean that is such a massive fire code violation and commercial buildings care, a lot, about fire code because you can be sued in to oblivion.
Incorrect clickbait headline. Now that makes much more sense :D.
We have electronic locks at work, and they are on the Internet. They are VLAN'd and firewalled off but they are still on the Internet because the company that administers them is remote. You can argue we should do it our self and I'd agree, but that is the arrangement. However every single one can be overridden on the inside the the handle. The locking mechanism is just that it basically unlocks the door frame so you can push it open from the outside with the electronic lock. Inside, you can always use the handle to override.
The reason is, as you say, fire code. All our doors always open towards the outside, no matter what. Old lock and key doors are the same. You will find a door with a Medeco lock on the outside that can't be permanently unlocked, only turned to move the bolt, but on the inside ti is just a bar you push to open it up. No matter where you are in the building, you can always get out just by following the doors that will open manually with no key/code. The locks are for locking people out, not in.
I mean one option is just to stick with old chargers. Your phone will work fine, it'll just charge slow. If you want a fast charger, just get a good one that is certified to work with it. Anker is a great choice, their chargers are well built and Qualcom certified for quick charging. Likewise get a good cable that is rated to handle the voltage/current. Being a phone it isn't going to be a ton so it really won't be an issue.
If you are going to have power adapters that can provide 100 watts, in the form of 20v 5a that are on the same setup as devices that might draw 5v 100ma you have to have some kind of communication.
It isn't the current draw that is the only issue, it is the voltage. New USB specs allow for higher voltages. That's a problem if the receiving device can't tell it what to set it at. The charger I have for my phone can do 5v, 9v or 12v. My phone wants 9v. Somehow, the phone has to tell it what to send.
In terms of current, that has to be communicated but not with the device, with the wire. USB-C cables that can do high current have to have chips in them to communicate that they have that capability. The reason is easy to see: Look at a standard USB2 cable. Do those wires look like they can handle 5a? Ya.
So the only way to make a standard that remains compatible with the ports and devices we already have and can provide high voltage and current is to use communication.
Otherwise, you need a clean break to a new standard that requires higher gauge cables and uses a higher voltage.
All the monopoly regulations on them expired and with Apple and Linux where they are now, you'd have a lot of trouble convincing a court MS is a monopoly. In the desktop market they are still the big dog, but Apple is a major competitor. Macs are all over the place. In the server market MS is a big player, but so is Linux. I don't know what the split is, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out Linux is on top. In the mobile arena MS is a nothing. Linux (in the form of Android) is by far the biggest with iOS coming in #2.
Thus there's no argument to be made for a monopoly position. When there's very real competition out there in all segments of your market, you aren't a monopoly. Well if you aren't a monopoly, then anti-competition laws don't apply. Companies are free to lock-in their own solution. Again for a great example see Apple, who (tried to) lock their software to their hardware and puts everything in their own controlled ecosystem.
Sorry, but the MS monopoly ship has sailed. Unless the market changes significantly, they are just another player, which means they can do this kind of thing.
There's no voice, only text and data. Reason voice is excluded has to do with archaic regulations as best as I can tell. Things are changing in that regard so it'll probalby change at some point. However right now you get talk to and from the US, Canada, and Mexico. Everywhere else voice is extra charge. Text and data are available in most countries and are included with no extra charge.
Trump says X, traders jump on positions that would benefit from X to try and get out in front. However other than the speculative betting there isn't much movement. Then X doesn't happen, so there is no long term movement. The traders disengage from their positions trying to take as little loss as possible.
This happens over and over and more will learn that acting just loses you money. It's why markets don't do fuck-all in response to Alex Jones. It isn't like his message isn't out there for the world to see, and actually more widely watched than I can fathom, but they don't believe anything will happen based on it so trying to get a first mover advantage can't happen.
You only gain an advantage by getting in first if the move happens. If it doesn't, at best maybe you can get out without a loss but usually you are going to take a hit to some degree. Thus you act only on those things that are likely to generate a move.
Traditionally, things the president said would qualify. However Trump is anything but traditional. He shoots his mouth off all the time, regularly contradicts himself, and changes his mind often.
Traders will soon learn that he fires his mouth off about everything but rarely backs it up, and changes his mind about 20 times a week. They'll stop reacting to what he says because it is just noise.
For a regular school, particularly state school, then yes it gets stacked a lot by test scores and other academic indicators. The better you do academically, the more they are interested in you and the more money they'll try to give you to get you to attend.
However the "elite" schools have a whole bunch of good old boy shit going on. If you look at admissions in to places like Harvard you find that there are some legitimately top performers who come in, but a whole lot who are not and are instead connected some way. They are kids of alums, politically connected, rich, whatever. They are the "right kind of people" and so get the invite.
That's also the reason why parents want kids to go there is the connections. You don't get a better education at Harvard overall. Any university with a good program will do at least as well, and in plenty of disciplines there are schools ranked far better. However it further gets you in to the old boys club and gets you connections to people that gets your opportunities that would not otherwise be available later in life.
You have a plan should you get killed or otherwise be unable to provide the passwords. Where I work, in addition to there being more than one IT staff, all the passwords are safely locked away where the Dean can get at them, if needed. We make sure that even if we are all gone, whoever comes after can get access.
These days the university has policies to that effect but we did it before then because that is what you do. You have a disaster plan, and that plan includes what happens if you aren't around.
Assanage's offer was always empty, given that the US isn't after him, at least not publicly. Now he contends that the US wants to get him in secret, though he's presented no evidence of this and of course one would have to question if they'd agree to a public deal for something secret.
Assanage is wanted by Sweden and the UK. Sweden for a sexual assault case, and the UK for skipping bail in that case. The US has not filed any charges against him, though I'm quite sure they don't like him. If he left the embassy he would be arrested by the UK and shipped off to Sweden. Or they might not send him off, since he's broken UK law by skipping bail and try him there for that crime, then ship him off once she's served his sentence.
So this was always a stunt.
And one that often gets me downvoted since Mac users don't like to hear it: Apple is a fashion company. That's why they've been able to do what they do. In fashion, a higher price can be a GOOD thing not a bad thing, whereas consumer electronics are one of the most notoriously price sensitive markets out there.
However the downside is as you say: What is fashionable changes and it is really hard to stay on top of it forever.
Well two things there BTChead:
1) Some currencies DO move large amounts and that is NOT considered successful. When the pound was experiencing instability, that was a big cause for concern. It was not considered a "success" as people seem to think for BTC.
2) It was 8%, not 30%. Bit of a difference there.
Like I said before: You can't have it both ways. If you want it to be a good currency, then stability is what you want. If you are happy with rapid fluctuations, then it is a speculative betting opportunity.
Not just because it doesn't work as a currency, but because for currencies big swings in valuation, up or down, are no "good performance". Ideally a currency would be completely stable. What $1 buys now would be what $1 buys tomorrow, and what it buys in a thousand years. Of course in reality none of them are totally stable, but the good ones are pretty stable. They move a very small amount, and do so very gradually. They function as a good store of wealth for that reason, and more importantly make for a useful medium of exchange. Since their value is pretty constant, people have a good feeling for how much they are "worth" and can mentally price things.
Bitcoin did well as a speculative bet. If you want to play financial speculation, Bitcoin is a good target as it moves like a very thinly traded stock. That means it can swing bit and make you a lot of money. Also means it can swing big the other way and lose you a lot. So like any sort of speculation, you need to know what you are getting in to and understand the risks.
You BTC promoters can't have it both ways: If Bitcoin is a good currency then it needs to be stable. If Bitcoin is a good investment, then it isn't a currency.
I knew there'd be some self-centered person in the US who'd figure out some way to spin this to make it about America.
How is this our infrastructure being vulnerable? Russia didn't hack US infrastructure, at least not that I've seen (please provide reliable sources if you know otherwise) they got in to the internal e-mails of campaigns. Also "hack" seems to be a bit of a strong word for what they did. Sounds like they got in to Podesta's e-mails by phishing his username/password. I'm not really sure what you think the federal government can do to fix/prevent that. I mean they already have information out there about "don't click on shit in e-mails" and there is training out there organizations can point people to from groups like SANS.
That aside, even if it was a hack (as in exploiting vulnerabilities) it wasn't a federal government controlled system. So again, what is the fed supposed to do? Take over private e-mail systems? Put up a national firewall on the Internet?
You know a large number of commercial routers run on Linux, right? The Linux kernel isn't some magic sauce that makes you immune to hacking. On the contrary, we see flaws in programs that run on Linux all the time, these being one of them. An exploit like this can work on anything, it isn't limited just to prepackaged routers.
So what you mean is get an x64 system and run a Linux distro, with some built in tools for configuring routing. Ok... So long as it doesn't have any bugs they can exploit or check for, you are fine. If it does, well then you are back to having to update... if an update is available. A lot of the router-type Linux distros aren't very well maintained. Smoothwall, the one I hear the most crowing about, had its last release in 2014.
If you were going to point to something freely available, BSD would probably be a better bet in the form of PFSense as it is actually maintained and supported pretty well. Of course the fact that it runs on BSD is incidental to its security, it is (as best we know) secure because it has competent programmers who maintain it regularly.
However the real problem is that for many people, this is just not affordable. When you try and do all your routing and filtering in software on an x64 chip, you find you need a lot of power to push traffic. The CPUs aren't designed with routing in mind so they aren't super fast at it. PFSense needs about a 2.4GHz 4 core atom to push a gigabit of traffic, and then only if the ruleset is reasonably simple. That's about $550 for an appliance from Netgate that can do that, and that is with no wireless. Well for $180 a Netgear R7000 will push a gig of traffic no issue, and comes with a 3x3 802.11ac radio that does 2.4 and 5ghz at the same time. Likewise an EdgeRouter Lite gets a gig and is wired only for $100. They pull that off by having chips with dedicated routing logic on board.
For normal users it also needs to be easy. A suggestion of "Assemble a computer from parts, load Linux, configure routing in text files and you are good," is totally unreasonable. Even something like buying an appliance and loading code on to it from a cold state is out of reach for most people. They need a ready-made solution.