Intel's Kaby Lake Chip Promises Deeper Internet Immersion

Facing a shrinking market for personal computers and a stalled market for tablets, Intel on Tuesday unveiled its 7th-generation processors, code-named "Kaby Lake," which deliver more speed and power than its 6th-generation chipsets, while improving battery efficiency. Intel has positioned the new Kaby Lake chipsets as ideal for the immersive Internet. Their 14 nm+ technology delivers 12 percent increases in productivity and 19 percent faster Web performance, compared to year-ago processors.

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Zen's Place in the Computing World

AMD, which has been clawing its way out of the doldrums, recently showcased its octacore, 16-thread Summit Ridge desktop processor featuring its Zen core in a performance match-up against Intel's octacore Broadwell-E Core i7-6900K CPU. The two similarly configured processors were locked at 3 GHz for the test, in which they ran the multithreaded Blender rendering application, in a demo presented earlier this month in San Francisco. AMD's Summit Ridge outperformed the Intel processor.

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Election Season Spawns Scams With Political Twist

Dirty tricks during political campaigns are nothing new, but the Internet and the proliferation of mobile devices have allowed tricksters to up their games a notch. It came to light last week, for example, that Donald Trump's campaign app was hoovering the address books on his supporters' phones. Trump's app wasn't doing anything illegal. It wasn't even trying to hide what it was doing. The app seeks the user's permission to download all contacts before it does so. However, both the ACLU and EPIC have rapped the practice.

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Nextdoor Tackles Racial Profiling at Street Level

Nextdoor last week rolled out to all 110,000 of its neighborhoods a new form-based process for making crime and safety reports. Implementation of the tool reduced incidents of racial profiling by 75 percent in areas where it was tested, according to CEO Nirav Tolia. Some Nextdoor members had begun using the site to post problematic messages targeting racial minorities. For example, Oakland members posted vague warnings about suspicious activity focusing on black citizens walking down the street, driving a car, or knocking on a door.

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Snazzier Fitbits Sport Beefed-Up Feature Sets

Fitbit on Monday announced two new fitness trackers with sleeker looks, more durable construction and greater data-gathering capabilities. The Fitbit Charge 2, priced at $149.95, features continuous heart-rate tracking. It uses the data to generate a cardio fitness score and provides guidance for improving it over time. The Charge 2 displays real-time exercise stats, connects to the GPS in a smartphone, and has a set of advanced sensors that make it easier to track activity throughout a day.

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The Peppermint Twist Is Still Cool

The Peppermint operating system is built around a concept not found in most Linux distros. It is a hybrid combination of traditional Linux desktop applications and cloud-based infrastructure. Peppermint 7, the annual update released in June, is a lightweight distribution based on Ubuntu 16.04. It uses LXDE as the default desktop environment, and shows considerable growth since our review of Peppermint 5 two years ago. The key to this process of linking full desktop functionality to cloud apps is an in-house developed application dubbed "Ice."

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#StandWithLeslie and Obliterate Internet Trolls

I think there's a legitimate argument for removing one category of folks from the gene pool, because they spend the little time they are given on Earth making other folks' lives miserable. Back when I was playing MMOs, some twisted folks -- known as "griefers," would lie in wait to mug lower level characters and find creative ways to destroy the fun in a game, often eventually killing it. Then came trolls, folks who drop into forums to attack other members, often driving people away from the forums and killing them.

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