Computing

It smelled like a ransomware and talked like a ransomware but, in fact, it was worse than a ransomware. Although it has been labeled as a strain of a 2016 ransomware, this year's "Petya" malware has been mislabeled. According to cybersecurity outfit Comae Technologies, the so-called Petya.2017 is actually a wiper masquerading as a ransomware, doing irrecoverable damage to data on drives. To add insult to injury, this wiper was specifically designed to look like the first Petya in order to fool media into thinking that it is.

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Last April, Google's machine learning crew revealed AutoDraw, a fun little demo of all that neural network theory. In a nutshell, the web app tries to guess what your scribble looks like and identify it. Now Google's researchers are taking that idea one step further. Called Sketch-RNN, this "recurrent neural network" model does for doodles and drawing that autocomplete does for words and sentences, trying to predict how to best complete your indistinguishable scribble.

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Google is rumored to be developing a new breed of Chromebook, one that will include a model that is supposedly going by the codename 'Eve.' This model, if online tidbits of info are to be believed, will sport a bunch of welcomed features, not the least of which is a fingerprint sensor and a key dedicated solely to Google Assistant. The company creating 'Eve' is still a big mystery, but some of its other features -- including a very-high-resolution display -- aren't.

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Next to Super Mario Bros., Minecraft is now perhaps the most "repurposed" game in the market, owing to how easily it can be ported to different platforms and new uses cases. So it isn't exactly surprising to have seen it make its way to virtual reality or, in this case, augmented reality. It is, however, almost ironic that "Minecraft AR", which Microsoft owns, would be available first on Apple's soon to be released ARKit platform. It's unofficial, of course, but it already shows how it has the potential to be more accessible this way.

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Although the chatter, whistleblowing, and mudslinging revolving around data privacy and security have somewhat died down, it hasn't completely vanished and is perhaps more critical than ever before. That is perhaps why Purism, the folks behind the privacy-focused Librem Laptops, have decided to take a more mainstream approach to their sales, shipping the laptops in just weeks after paying for one instead of the months-long waiting period before.

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In pushing the virtual reality market forward, it really isn't enough just to have a VR headset or a set of demo apps and games. It isn't even enough just to have a platform to build upon. You also need the builders that will utilize that platform. Last year, HTC announced its Vive X accelerator program in a bid to grab that mindshare away from competing platforms like Facebook's Oculus. Now it is announcing the second batch of 33 startups that will get a chance to learn from HTC directly about creating virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences for fun and profit.

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Although it probably had the biggest share in the web browser market, the bloat that was known as Internet Explorer soon dragged Microsoft's name down to the Internet Hall of Shame. Given than notoriety, it almost seemed that its new browser, Microsoft Edge, had an unfair disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, the company put its marketing and advertising machine into high gear, including tests that claim superior battery life for the Edge. However, most, if not all, of these proofs and counter-proofs were made by browser makers themselves. Fortunately, Linus Tech Tips decided it was time to have an independent test done, and the results might surprise you.

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Microsoft is dealing with a significant Windows 10 security headache this weekend, as the company has confirmed that a portion of the operating system's source code was in fact posted online. Shared on the online repository site BetaArchive earlier this week, Microsoft has said that the code is genuine and comes from the Shared Source Kit, which is shared with the company's trusted partners.

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Today David Hill from Lenovo confirmed that there is, indeed, going to be a Retro ThinkPad release. This laptop will sport many of the features of ThinkPad notebooks of the past, but here in 2017 it'll have features that can match the current market. According to Hill, this device will be the culmination of the "Retro ThinkPad initiative" he started nearly 2 years ago.

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It's tough to be Intel these days. AMD just made a big grab for a market that is, for now, the stronghold of Intel's Xeon. But now it seems that Intel has thrown in the towel in a market at the other end of the size and power spectrum, all thanks to a $25 board. Intel has reportedly shelved its Galileo, Joule, and Edison compute modules, the three platforms it hoped would at least let it set a foothold in the fledgling Internet of Things market where the ARM-powered Raspberry Pi is currently the crowd favorite.

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Although Lenovo, even after its Motorola acquisition, is finding difficulty securing a foothold in the mobile market, it remains the world's top PC vendor, especially when it comes to laptops. That has allowed it to venture off into a few experiments, like the more or less successful YOGA line or the so-so Yoga Book and its Halo Keyboard. At its Lenovo Transform event in New York, Lenovo revealed one of its possible future experiments, a laptop that can be folded, rolled, and bended, and doesn't have a trackpad. Lenovo calls it the "Future of Personalized Computing".

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Lenovo has taken the wraps off what it says is the smallest ever workstation with ISV certification: the Lenovo ThinkStation P320 Tiny. As the name suggests, this desktop PC is quite small, measuring in at just 1.4 x 7.1 x 7.2-inches with a weight of 2.9lbs. Despite its small size, Lenovo packs a load of features into this PC, not the least of which is up to a 7th-gen Intel Core i7 processor and up to 32GB of RAM.

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