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Posted: December 16, 2017 |
Some analysts had speculated that Intel would delay Skylake to give Broadwell some room to breathe, but during the chipmaker's most recent earnings conference call, CEO Brian Krzanich indicated this wouldn't be the case, saying the first Skylake chips would arrive on schedule in the second half of this year.What seems likely now is that Broadwell chips will mainly target mobile devices and all-in-ones, rather than tower desktops. Most manufacturers will probably skip Broadwell for their high-performance tower machines and go straight to Skylake, which is expected to ship in configurations with thermal design points (TDPs) as high as 95 watts. A privacy hole in WhatsApp allowed anyone to view someone else's profile photo – even if a user had configured the mobile messenger app to only show their pic to their contacts.The privacy slip-up, which came with the debut of WhatsApp’s newly-introduced web interface at web.whatsapp.com, was discovered by 17-year-old security researcher Indrajeet Bhuyan. The service was designed to allow users to chat with WhatsApp contacts through a browser, potentially on a PC or laptop.Privacy settings applied on the mobile app were apparently not carried over onto the browser-based version of the technology, launched just days ago and only available through Google's Chrome browser. On the smartphone side, you can only use the functionality on Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile since there's no iOS version at this nascent stage. There's no suggestion that messages themselves were exposed. Only profile pictures were viewable to world+dog.A second issue, also discovered by the enterprisingly precocious Bhuyan, means that deleted photos are still viewable through the web client even though they appeared as blurred if deleted when accessed though mobile versions of the software. In both case you'd need to be logged in to see pictures in the trash, blurred or otherwise. This issue apparently stems from glitches in syncing functionality.It's unclear if and when the web version of WhatsApp will be updated to iron out these security glitches.WhatsApp recently introduced end-to-end encryption to better secure users’ messages, much to the chagrin of UK politicians such as David Cameron.Bhuyan, who had previously discovered a way to crash WhatsApp on users’ phones simply by sending a specially crafted message, has put together videos illustrating the ?WhatsApp web photo privacy bug? (here) and photo synch bug (here). Security veteran Graham Cluley said even though no sensitive data had actually been exposed, the teenager was right to call WhatsApp out on the latest issues he's managed to uncover."Sure, it’s not the most serious privacy breach that has ever occurred, but that’s missing the point," Cluley explained in a blog post. "The fact of the matter is that WhatsApp users chose to keep their profile photos private, and their expectation is that WhatsApp will honour their choices and only allow their photos to be viewable by those who the user has approved." Johann Hari is most notorious as the ex-Independent journalist who left the paper after having been discovered to have built his entire career on plagiarism. Chasing the Scream is a story motivated by close friends of the author succumbing to addiction.Johann Hari introduces the century-old war on drugs through three characters: Harry Anslinger, the archetypal narc, Arnold Rothstein, the original drug gangster and Billie Holliday, the celeb addict. It all starts to get a bit vintage Pulp Fiction, James Ellroy or William Burroughs. Johann evidently has a penchant to fictionalise.Even so, Hari is a talented writer, though, as is common with journalists, he does tend to push all the human interest buttons at once. His argument is persuasive, insistent and a tad preachy; his prose, though well formed, is too much in-your-face, as there is a lack of irony and nuance.
Hari travels to ghettos, drug frontier towns and most of the current areas of recent legalisation. He meets many dedicated and inspiring individuals, such as Dr Bruce Alexander of Vancouver who equates addiction with dislocated individuals cut off from meaning: “The inner void is not limited to people who become drug addicts, but afflicts the vast majority of people of the late modern era” and former addict Dean Wilson, who tells us “Addiction is a disease of loneliness”.There are many bereaved relatives and casualties of the drug wars who are lined up to support the argument. Hari’s visits to Colorado, Washington, Portugal and Uruguay would seem to indicate that even doubters, such as right wing politicians and police chiefs, are now positive about the local effects of legalisation.Hari’s argument would seem to be won and we are just waiting for legislators with the guts to make changes. So what is the point in this book? Degenerates, hedonists and libertines don’t need a manifesto. On the cover, Russell Brand describes Chasing The Scream as: “Intoxicatingly thrilling” which begs the question: what drugs is he on?Naomi Klein, Elton John, Noam Chomsky and Stephen Fry, all the luvvies love it. According to the latter it’s “Screamingly addictive”. If this book isn’t designed to derange the senses of the liberal left, then it is doing a mighty fine job. Chasing the Scream has an impressive narrative, that will, I think, appeal to few at the coal face, as it is too showbiz for the sociologists. Hari is one to linger in on the poignant soundbite and his subject is in danger of becoming a pet celeb charity in places. It is likely to confirm the prejudices of liberal journalists and would-be liberal journalists, dwellers in think tanks that dress to the left and that ilk.It is not badly written and I agree with most of what he says. Yet his inability to assess his own penchant for narcolepsy medication against other’s stimulant abuse is rather telling. He is kind of righteously annoying, too ready to mount his soapbox and with a prose style that gives you little space to think for yourself.Indeed, Hari seems a broad rather than a deep writer, and his talents would probably serve him better on TV or writing polemic for new left politicians. This is a strange book, well written with a compelling argument, yet curiously uninspiring as a read. By the end my human interest buttons were all but exhausted and I craved another spliff.
Features new to the CF-54 include a standard built-in heater for the SSD (128 or 265GB) or HDD (500GB) so if the machine detects a colder-than-a-witches-tit ambient temperature when you hit the power button, it warms up the drive. Just to prove that this feature is every bit as good as it sounds a senior Panasonic bod pulled a CF-54 out of the freezer and booted it up, no problem.The Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 also has a Full HD (1920 x 1080) and touchscreen option. The latter apparently works with any sort of glove known to the industrial worker, a functionality claim I did manage to put to the test successfully.Another available option is a discrete AMD FirePro M5100 graphics card to partner the Intel Core i5 vPro or i7 vPro CPUs (the latest Broadwell parts, natch, with 4GB of RAM) so you can have a Toughbook with genuine graphics grunt.The keyboard has been given a welcome upgrade too. The new chiclet-esque design is almost Lenovo-like in its quality and much the better to type on than the CF-53’s more conventional keyboard, and it can be had with a four-level backlight.Panasonic made much of the paint job on the keyboard which apparently makes the lettering easier to read in low light without the backlight on. Not sure I got that but lighting conditions at the presentation were not sufficiently subdued to put this feature to the test. Peripheral upgrades include a boost to maximum screen brightness (now up to a maximum of 1,000cd/m²), an 8MP camera built into the lid (apparently a vociferous demand from the loss-adjusting community) and improved loudspeakers.Probably the most useful feature to the man in the street is the swappable DVD drive and battery. If you don’t need the disc player you can just slot a 2960mAh battery in to back up the 4,200mAh standard unit.Of course this being a machine amed more at enterprise than the consumer you can specify a truly bewildering array of optional connectors. Four USB 3.0 ports? No problem. A further internal USB port? Easy. Serial ports – much in demand for the Nordic markets, apparently – sorted.However, what the Panasonic CF-54 Toughbook isn’t, is cheap. The basic 1366 x 768 HDD machine will set you back £1142 ex VAT (£1370). Go for the top-of-the-range Full HD machine with an SSD and touchscreen and that jumps to £1662 ex. VAT (£1994). Options such as the AMD GPU or larger capacity SSD will bump that figure higher yet.
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