I use linux for a variety of reasons, but would never recommend it for a 'typical' user. Yes ubuntu, mint, etc. have a pretty decent UI/UX, but there is just simply better software for apple & microsoft - although you are paying for it.

I think the majority of people (with the exception of gamers) barely use the resources of any given computer from the last 10 years. My burner laptop, a thinkpad i7 intent chip with 16gb of ram, I bought used off of ebay for less than $400 and is good enough to do everything I need while I'm traveling.

My macbook pro is great, but I doubt I'll be replacing it anytime soon.

We've had this debate in previous articles, but I'll bite again. I agree TOR is better than a VPN, being decentralized and bounced through 3 random nodes (I think?) but then you're trading speed for security. But: If you are not worried too much about the government forcing a VPN provider to snoop on you, then a VPN provider has little to no downside. Can you give an example of why you wouldn't want to use a VPN? Because I get the impression you are saying something along the lines of "wear a jacket in the cold instead of a t-shirt" and I'm of the opinion that a t-shirt is better than being naked.

The open letter to congress specifically mentions a degradation starting in Feb. but more interesting is the restructuring. I have a feeling that is the real reason, as they sort out who's going to be in charge:

With the latest revelations at VulnCon, we question whether a consortium under NIST makes the most sense. Perhaps a better solution would be to see NVD moved to CISA and have a consortium under the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), which already exists. The collaboration recently established with the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and CISA further underscores the reasons to transfer NVD to CISA. With the importance of NVD, it makes more sense for it to live under CISA whose primary goal is the security of our nation’s critical infrastructure. We request this plan be opened for public comment before it is implemented.

https://docs.google.com/docume...

This is news? I guess throw in AI photos and this scam is somehow novel.

This study is mind boggling, that humans have put so much time, effort, (and money) into understanding the universe is inspiring.

Just skimming through the research, you can see the massive amount of work involved, from other research, to the equipment used:
https://iopscience.iop.org/art...

There's been debate about this, the numbers are higher given the method used. For example, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.123...

"Using this algorithm, we have successfully factorized the integers 1961 (11-bit), 48567227 (26-bit) and 261980999226229 (48-bit), with 3, 5 and 10 qubits in a superconducting quantum processor, respectively. The 48-bit integer, 261980999226229, also refreshes the largest integer factored by a general method in a real quantum device. We proceed by estimating the quantum resources required to factor RSA-2048. We find that a quantum circuit with 372 physical qubits and a depth of thousands is necessary to challenge RSA-2048 even in the simplest 1D-chain system. Such a scale of quantum resources is most likely to be achieved on NISQ devices in the near future."

But that's about all I understand from the research :)

Yes billions, the "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy is concerning and being prepared for.
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/def...

The source article is pretty interesting: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.c...
From what I understand, it's using a hybrid approach of taking the physical qubit and moving it to a virtual (logical) qubit to reduce error rates.

This part caught my attention:
"Three fundamental criteria to advance from noisy, intermediate-scale quantum computing to reliable quantum computing are:

1) Achieve a large separation between logical and physical error rates.
2) Correct all individual circuit errors.
3) Generate entanglement between at least two logical qubits.

We have demonstrated, for the first time on record, that all three of the above criteria have been met. For the first criterion, we achieved an 800x improvement in logical error rate compared to the physical error rate. To quantify this 800x improvement, we entangled qubits and performed runtime error diagnostics and error corrections on the measurements (as seen in Figures 1 and 2), thus satisfying the second and third criteria.

In addition to meeting the three criteria above, we have demonstrated several rounds of active syndrome extraction on two logical qubits, which marks the transition to reliable quantum computing. This achievement is a prerequisite for building a hybrid classical-quantum supercomputer that outperforms even the most powerful classical computers."

"It's a failure"? Billions invested in the technology by industry leaders & governments, entire industry sectors preparing for it to become a reality: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/whitep...

Just because the research hasn't provided a commercial product for you yet, doesn't mean the research is a failure.

We've been having this discussion since before Snowden, the first I remember is echelon.

1) 4th amendment issues.
2) Buying info on your own citizens from OTHER countries to bypass laws.
3) If there is a legitimate legal & security reason to have access to this data, that's what a warrant is for with judicial oversight involved.
4) What is the actual cost (and profit) of the government paying private companies for continuous mass surveillance of its own citizens?

I find it exciting, the first step to fixing a problem is identifying it.

A piano is technically both a percussion & string instrument. When you press a key, it's basically hitting a little hammer on a string.

I was just looking at possibly getting an Adobe subscription, because I'm tired of using GIMP. I had no clue the costs have gotten so high, $90/mo!