there's news of a rampage this weekend but not the kind where you go to a club
and like fist pump to some bad edm i'm talking
about rampage the security vulnerability
which was just discovered and affects most Android devices dating back to
2012. the bug got its name from the fact that it relies on a flaw in Android's
memory management subsystem that could allow an attacker to peek at sensitive
data or even take control of the device
the underlying idea is pretty simple RAM
page oh that's where it came from
rights to one row of memory over and over again in hopes of getting a bit in
the next row to flip a vulnerability
inherent to modern forms of very tightly
packed memory however even though rampage is making headlines today the
odds of that kind of an attack flipping a bit that could allow for unprivileged
access is exceedingly low you'd actually have a better shot of winning the
lottery google has developed a remarkably
human-sounding ai that you can have a real phone conversation with at least if
you're a restaurant employee the public got its first look at the new
google duplex recently which google demonstrated as a kind of personal
secretary that could make calls on your behalf to set up or cancel appointments
and reservations after asking your google assistant to
take care of making the call for you it should in theory ring up the restaurant
or business in question and make your reservation by talking to whatever
carbon-based life form picks up the phone on the other end not only can
duplex ai handle questions from the person like uh if an alternative
reservation time is okay it'll also interject with ums and yeahs to help the
conversation flow more naturally i think mark zuckerberg would be jealous
your data might be getting a little safer if you're a california resident as
governor jerry brown just signed the california consumer privacy act into law
this is the strictest legal protection of its kind in the u.s the upshot is
that it makes it much more difficult for businesses to sell consumer information
to third parties as consumers will have the right to ask companies what personal
data they have and order them to not
sell it businesses will also be barred from charging customers additional money
to make up for lost revenue from selling the data or from withholding services
as a huge surprise to everyone who had
no ability to recognize patterns whatsoever
tech giants like google uber microsoft verizon and amazon all spent money
opposing the law's passage saying that it would hurt their bank excuse me their
innovation now it's time for rapid
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so are you interested in that 32 core AMD Threadripper that showed up at
computex this month well we've finally gotten what might be some pricing
information as german retailer cyberport
has listed the chip at around 1500 euros or
1750 us dollars now yes that is still cheaper than
Intel's top end model which is only 18 cores so it looks like AMD's strategy is
still to keep undercutting Intel like a salad shooter in a basement kitchen
get it undercutting oh wow that's awful but
it'll still be costing you a pretty benny speaking of costing a pretty penny
razer is releasing a new series of keyboards featuring optical switches
which have only recently been seen on keyboards from companies like bloody and
mooting the huntsman keyboard line will have a
one and a half millimeter actuation point and razer is touting a longer
lifespan than regular mechanical switches and hoping that the 150 to 200
dollar price tag won't stop gamers from thinking their keyboards are lit
because optical
microsoft is bringing back the iconic intellimouse that was last seen about 15
years ago but this time with some major changes it's gonna have a white led
instead of the classic red
and 3200 dpi tracking instead of the old
400. they're hoping that this new intellimouse will be as popular with
gamers as the original and they're going to be on sale for 40 bucks if you want
to go check out the link in the video description
i really don't know if 15 years later
the intellimouse is really going to hold let me know in the comments if you
disagree speaking of things to disagree with you might be seeing esports at the olympics
down the road as the ioc has announced that they will be putting on an esports
forum to help determine if competitive gaming might be suitable for the event
although collaboration between the ioc and esports
could stop short of including actual video game tournaments in the olympics
but i think the question we should all be asking ourselves is is league of legends really any less
worthy than ribbon twirling
speaking of ribbon twirling segway
wait no hold on speaking of terrible segues segway the other segway remember
those guys they've popped back onto the scene with a pair of self-balancing
electric roller skates that are vaguely reminiscent of the original segway's
design aesthetic for better or for worse
because the drift w1 skates don't actually contain your feet though the
device is essentially a two-piece hoverboard
of course the attractive couple in the cheesy marketing video doesn't have any
trouble with them but i do wonder how many takes they had to go through to get
that well that's it for me so
all of y'all have a pleasant canada day weekend even if you live south of the
border and we will see you on wow what are we gonna skip monday
i actually don't know