Weekend tech reading: ThinkPad 25 detailed, iPhone 8 is faster than i5 MacBook, AMD's...

Matthew DeCarlo

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Lenovo's 25th anniversary ThinkPad leaks with classic design touches The very first ThinkPad was released 25 years ago in 1992, and it looks like Lenovo has something special up its sleeve to mark the occasion. The folks at German blog WinFuture.de have gotten their hands on leaked images and specs for the appropriately named Lenovo ThinkPad 25, which looks to bundle some classic design elements from the series into a modern laptop. Windows Central

The EU Suppressed a 300-Page study that found piracy doesn't harm sales The European Commission paid €360,000 (about $428,000) for a study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies. But the EU never shared the report—possibly because it determined that there is no evidence that piracy is a major problem. The Dutch firm Ecory was commissioned to research the impact of piracy for several months, eventually submitting a 304-page report to the EU in May 2015. Gizmodo

Dear Apple, the iPhone X and Face ID are Orwellian and creepy For the company that famously used 1984 in its advertising to usher in a new era of personal computing, it is pretty ironic that 30+ years later they would announce technology that has the potential to eliminate global privacy. I’ve been waiting 10-years since the first iPhone was announced for a full-screen device that is both smaller in my hand but has a larger display and higher capacity battery. Hacker Noon

Microsoft, Facebook, complete enormous undersea cable Microsoft, Facebook and global telecommunication infrastructure company Telxius have completed the Marea subsea cable, the world's most technologically advanced undersea cable. The Marea crosses the Atlantic Ocean over 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface, connecting Virginia Beach with Bilbao, Spain. Popular Mechanics

PC gaming is back in focus at Tokyo Game Show After taking a back seat to consoles for the past few years, personal computers are enjoying a resurgence in gaming, thanks to the popularity of e-sports, customizable machines and faster software releases. This week’s Tokyo Game Show will feature a main-stage tournament for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a hit online survival PC game that’s been downloaded more than 10 million times since March. Bloomberg

Nvidia: Crypto demand for GPUs very strong, could cool in December, says Mizuho Mizuho’s chip analyst Vijay Rakesh today reports back from day four of a swing through Asia-Pacific, during which he’s been talking with various manufacturers and suppliers. He’s gleaned some positive tidbits on Nvidia (NVDA), whose shares he rates a Buy. It seems graphics processing units, or “GPUs,” sales this quarter are doing better-than-expected, thanks to crypto-currency demand... Barron's

iPhone 8 faster than a Core i5 13-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench; leaves Samsung S8 for dead We noted in our iPhone 8 review that the Geekbench scores of the new iPhone were equivalent to a MacBook Pro. "To put it simply, the iPhone 8 line has a MacBook Pro Intel level processor inside." Fresh tests provide a direct comparison to prove the point – and show the astonishing performance lead the iPhone 8 has over Samsung’s flagship devices... 9to5Mac

NBD: Adobe just dumped its PRIVATE PGP key on the internet An absent-minded security staffer just accidentally leaked Adobe's private PGP key onto the internet. The disclosure was spotted by security researcher Juho Nurminen – who found the key ion the Photoshop giant's Product Security Incident Response Team blog. That contact page should have only included the public PGP key. The Register

Superaccurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018 We’ve all been there. You’re driving down the highway, just as Google Maps instructed, when Siri tells you to “proceed east for one-half mile, then merge onto the highway.” But you’re already on the highway. After a moment of confusion and perhaps some rude words about Siri and her extended AI family, you realize the problem: Your GPS isn’t accurate enough for your navigation app to tell if you’re on the highway or on the road beside it. IEEE Spectrum

Has Team Fortress 2 been improved by its updates? This is RPS, so let’s get literary. Team Fortress 2 is the game version of the Picture of Dorian Gray — but in reverse. Back in 2007, Valve put its near-perfect multiplayer creation on both console and PC. The two versions of Team Fortress 2 started out the same, with the same nine cartoonish classes, weapons, and maps, but ended up with very different lives. RPS

Pi wirelessly charges your devices at a distance, no mat required With the news that Apple's latest iPhones are going to support wireless charging, the tech is back in the spotlight, but it still has its limitations. You still need to find a powered mat or disc to put your phone down on, it's not easy to charge several devices at once and it's not easy to use them while they're being charged. New Atlas

Auto tracking company leaks hundreds of thousands of records online The Kromtech Security Center has discovered a repository that appears to be connected to the vehicle recovery device and monitoring company SVR Tracking. Researchers discovered a misconfigured Amazon AWS S3 bucket that was left publicly available. MacKeeper Security

Experian site can give anyone your credit freeze PIN An alert reader recently pointed my attention to a free online service offered by big-three credit bureau Experian that allows anyone to request the personal identification number (PIN) needed to unlock a consumer credit file that was previously frozen at Experian. Krebs on Security

AMD Radeon phases out the CrossFire brand as multi-GPU gets more complicated When AMD released the Radeon Software 17.9.2 drivers that enabled support for multi-GPU solutions in Radeon RX Vega cards this morning, the announcement post didn’t mention CrossFire -- AMD’s longstanding brand for multi-GPU (mGPU) solutions -- a single time. PC World

One step closer to lifelike robots Researchers at Columbia Engineering have solved a long-standing issue in the creation of untethered soft robots whose actions and movements can help mimic natural biological systems. A group in the Creative Machines lab led by Hod Lipson, professor of mechanical engineering, has developed a 3D-printable synthetic soft muscle, a one-of-a-kind artificial active tissue with intrinsic expansion ability that does not require an external compressor or high voltage equipment as previous muscles required. Columbia University

Canonical & Microsoft make Azure-tailored Linux kernel Canonical has announced that it is joining forces with the Microsoft Azure team to build an Azure-tailored Linux kernel for Ubuntu Cloud Images of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The new kernel will receive the same level of support and security maintenance offered to supported kernels but is not yet compatible with the Canonical Livepatch Service – if this doesn't matter to you, then you’ll be able to enjoy the improvements the kernel brings. Neowin.net

It’s time to kill the web Something is going on. The people are unhappy. The spectre of civil unrest stalks our programming communities. For the first time, a meaningful number of developers are openly questioning the web platform. Here’s a representative article and discussion. Here’s another. Yet another. I could list more but if you’re interested enough in programming to be reading this you’ve already read at least one hilarious rant this year about the state of modern web development. Mike Hearn

A new kind of map: it’s about time How would you describe your morning commute? If you’re like most people, it starts with a ballpark estimate of how long it usually takes. Or maybe several estimates, depending on when you leave for work, how bad traffic is, or whether you’re walking, driving, or taking the bus. Mapbox

AI: This decade’s worst buzz word In hacker circles, the “Internet of Things” is often the object of derision. Do we really need the IoT toaster? But there’s one phrase that — while not new — is really starting to annoy me in its current incarnation: AI or Artificial Intelligence. The problem isn’t the phrase itself. It used to mean a collection of techniques used to make a computer look like it was smart enough to, say, play a game or hold a simulated conversation. Hackaday

Mark Sagar made a baby in his lab. Now it plays the piano People get up to weird things in New Zealand. At the University of Auckland, if you want to run hours upon hours of experiments on a baby trapped in a high chair, that’s cool. You can even have a conversation with her surprisingly chatty disembodied head. Bloomberg

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I had a Thinkpad and used it for years. It was a good business laptop, did the job, was fairly fast and the one thing I liked best ... it rarely crashed or had any kind of hardware issue. Can't say I would buy one again, but it was pretty good for it's day.
 
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