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Recently released Canalys data shows the global PC market climbed 12.7% from a year ago to reach 79.2 million units in Q3 2020 as it continued to benefit hugely from the COVID-19 crisis. From a report by the research firm: This is the highest growth the market has seen in the past 10 years. After a weak Q1, the recovery in Q2 continued into Q3 this year, and it even grew on top of a strong market the previous year. Global notebook shipments touched 64 million units (almost as much as the record high of Q4 2011 when notebook shipments were 64.6 million) as demand continued to surge due to second waves of COVID-19 in many countries and companies continued to invest in longer-term transitions to remote working. Shipments of notebooks and mobile workstations grew 28.3% year-on-year. This contrasted with desktop and desktop workstations, which saw shipments shrink by 26.0%. Lenovo regained top spot in the PC market in Q3 with growth of 11.4% and shipments surpassed the 19 million mark. HP posted a similarly impressive growth of 11.9% to secure second place with 18.7 million units shipped. Dell, in third, suffered a small decline of 0.5% in shipments from a year ago. Apple and Acer rounded out the top five rankings, posting stellar growth of 13.2% and 15.0% respectively.

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A recently released tool is letting anyone exploit an unusual Mac vulnerability to bypass Apple's trusted T2 security chip and gain deep system access. The flaw is one researchers have also been using for more than a year to jailbreak older models of iPhones. But the fact that the T2 chip is vulnerable in the same way creates a new host of potential threats. Worst of all, while Apple may be able to slow down potential hackers, the flaw is ultimately unfixable in every Mac that has a T2 inside. From a report: In general, the jailbreak community haven't paid as much attention to macOS and OS X as it has iOS, because they don't have the same restrictions and walled gardens that are built into Apple's mobile ecosystem. But the T2 chip, launched in 2017, created some limitations and mysteries. Apple added the chip as a trusted mechanism for securing high-value features like encrypted data storage, Touch ID, and Activation Lock, which works with Apple's "Find My" services. But the T2 also contains a vulnerability, known as Checkm8, that jailbreakers have already been exploiting in Apple's A5 through A11 (2011 to 2017) mobile chipsets. Now Checkra1n, the same group that developed the tool for iOS, has released support for T2 bypass. On Macs, the jailbreak allows researchers to probe the T2 chip and explore its security features. It can even be used to run Linux on the T2 or play Doom on a MacBook Pro's Touch Bar. The jailbreak could also be weaponized by malicious hackers, though, to disable macOS security features like System Integrity Protection and Secure Boot and install malware. Combined with another T2 vulnerability that was publicly disclosed in July by the Chinese security research and jailbreaking group Pangu Team, the jailbreak could also potentially be used to obtain FileVault encryption keys and to decrypt user data. The vulnerability is unpatchable, because the flaw is in low-level, unchangeable code for hardware. "The T2 is meant to be this little secure black box in Macs -- a computer inside your computer, handling things like Lost Mode enforcement, integrity checking, and other privileged duties," says Will Strafach, a longtime iOS researcher and creator of the Guardian Firewall app for iOS. "So the significance is that this chip was supposed to be harder to compromise -- but now it's been done."

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Razer has unveiled its fall lineup of gaming products for its base of hardcore gamers, including new laptops and an ergonomic gaming chair. The company unveiled the gear at its first annual RazerCon weekend-long event, a virtual festival filmed at the company's Las Vegas store. The event includes concerts with artists such as Deadmau5, DragonForce and Friends, Sabaton, and Speaker Honey. From a report: More than a million people were watching at the outset of RazerCon as Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan took the stage. He noted that Razer donated more than a million masks during the pandemic and that fans donated 75,000. He said Razer also created a $15 million COVID-19 relief fund and the company is supporting green product design with its products and packaging. Tan also announced a partnership with Conservation International to fund the protection of trees worldwide. Razer announced the latest version of its Razer Blade Stealth 13 laptop with an "ultrabook" design. It has an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor running at up to 4.7GHz (base performance of 2.8GHz), a full HD OLED touch display option, and THX Spatial Audio. It also has an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics chip (the same as the prior model with 4GB GDDR6 memory, which gives it 10% faster graphics performance) and is 2.7 times better at content creation than the previous version. The display has an option for operating at a 120-hertz refresh rate. Razer marketing manager Eugene Kuo said in a press briefing that the laptop is the company's first to combine the OLED screen with the faster refresh rate. The laptop runs at 28 watts and can produce darker images and contrast ratios. Razer acquired THX, which was founded by filmmaker George Lucas, and is now adding the THX Spatial Audio technology to its peripherals and computers. For gaming, Razer claims the spatial audio offers a competitive edge, as you can hear which direction enemies are coming from. The Razer Blade Stealth 13 will be available this month at $1,800 on Razer.com, as well as through select retailers this fall.

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Project xCloud, the Microsoft game-streaming service that comes packed as a bonus in certain Xbox Game Pass subscription plans, may finally have a path to working on Apple's range of iOS devices -- well after a public row between the tech giants that put the possibility into question. From a report: The news comes from a report by Business Insider, which claimed that an internal Microsoft meeting on Wednesday included a vote of confidence from Xbox chief Phil Spencer. "We absolutely will end up on iOS," Spencer reportedly said about getting its streamed Project xCloud game content onto iOS devices in "2021." Previously, Apple shot down existing versions of both Project xCloud (which has since been rolled into the "Xbox Game Pass" app) and Google Stadia as iOS apps. Their public statements hinged on "reviewing" the games included in the subscription against App Store guidelines, though the issue could also stem from in-app purchases within both Xbox and Stadia's offerings. Eventually, Apple offered a revised stance on such apps, but this onerous "approval for every separate game" proposal comes with its own headaches, as opposed to a clear path toward a simple subscription service (as you'll find in popular iOS media apps like Netflix and Amazon Video).

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EU regulators are drawing up a "hit list" of up to 20 large internet companies, likely to include Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Apple, that will be subject to new and far more stringent rules aimed at curbing their market power. From a report: Under the plans, large platforms that find themselves on the list will have to comply with tougher regulation than smaller competitors, according to people familiar with the discussions, including new rules that will force them to share data with rivals and an obligation to be more transparent on how they gather information. The list will be compiled based on a number of criteria, including market share of revenues and number of users, meaning the likes of Facebook and Google are likely to be included. Those deemed to be so powerful that rivals cannot trade without using their platforms could also be added. The move to gain new powers is part of a growing effort in Brussels to force big technology companies to change their business practices without a full investigation or any finding that they have broken existing laws. It follows complaints that the current regulatory regime has resulted in weak and belated action, which has done little to foster competition. The number of companies and the precise criteria for the list is still being discussed, but it is the latest indication of how serious the EU is about coming up with powers to limit the power of platforms seen as "too big to care."

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A coalition of technology companies used a federal court order unsealed Monday to begin dismantling one of the world's most dangerous botnets in an effort to preempt disruptive cyber-attacks before next month's U.S. presidential election. From a report: The takedown is a highly coordinated event, spearheaded by the software giant Microsoft and involving telecommunications providers in multiple countries. If the operation succeeds, it will disable a global network of infected computers created by a popular malicious software known as Trickbot. Beginning early Monday, Trickbot operators are expected to began losing communication with the millions of computers they had painstakingly infected over a period of months, even years. The loss of the botnet -- as a network of infected computers is known -- will make it more difficult for Russian-based cybercriminals and other digital marauders to do their work. It will likely take months or years for the criminals to recover, if at all. By dramatically dismantling Trickbot's network, Microsoft and its partners believe they will likely head-off ransomware attacks that could compromise voting systems before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, said Tom Burt, vice president of Microsoft's customer security and trust division. "They could tie-up voter registration roles, election night reporting results and generally be extremely disruptive," Burt said. "Taking out one of the most notorious malware groups, we hope, will reduce the risk of ransomware's impact on the election this year." Coordinated takedowns like the one Monday have become increasingly common in the last several years, although the legal and technical hurdles involved are substantial. In this case, Microsoft and its partners were able to obtain a federal court order founded on Trickbot's infringement of Microsoft's trademarks, but ultimately aimed at disconnecting communications channels the attackers use to control the malicious software.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday that the tech giant would be expanding its hate speech policies to ban any content that "denies or distorts the Holocaust." From a report: Zuckerberg was caught flat-footed in a 2018 interview with Kara Swisher, then host of the Recode Decode podcast, when he said that he didn't believe Facebook should take down Holocaust denial content because "I think there are things that different people get wrong," even if unintentionally. Zuckerberg quickly clarified his statement at the time, emailing Swisher that "I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn't intend to defend the intent of people who deny that." "Our goal with fake news is not to prevent anyone from saying something untrue -- but to stop fake news and misinformation spreading across our services." Starting today, if people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, the company will start directing them to authoritative sources to get accurate information. In a blog post explaining the policy, Facebook's VP of content policy Monika Bickert says, "Enforcement of these policies cannot happen overnight. There is a range of content that can violate these policies, and it will take some time to train our reviewers and systems on enforcement," she writes. "We are grateful to many partners for their input and candor as we work to keep our platform safe." "I've struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust. My own thinking has evolved as I've seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech. Drawing the right lines between what is and isn't acceptable speech isn't straightforward, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance," Zuckerberg wrote today.

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Members of the intelligence-sharing alliance Five Eyes, along with government representatives for Japan and India, have published a statement over the weekend calling on tech companies to come up with a solution for law enforcement to access end-to-end encrypted communications. From a report: The statement is the alliance's latest effort to get tech companies to agree to encryption backdoors. The Five Eyes alliance, comprised of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have made similar calls to tech giants in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Just like before, government officials claim tech companies have put themselves in a corner by incorporating end-to-end encryption (E2EE) into their products. If properly implemented, E2EE lets users have secure conversations -- may them be chat, audio, or video -- without sharing the encryption key with the tech companies. Representatives from the seven governments argue that the way E2EE encryption is currently supported on today's major tech platforms prohibits law enforcement from investigating crime rings, but also the tech platforms themselves from enforcing their own terms of service. Signatories argue that "particular implementations of encryption technology" are currently posing challenges to law enforcement investigations, as the tech platforms themselves can't access some communications and provide needed data to investigators.

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The co-founder of Arm has said that if the government does not stop the $40 billion takeover of the British chip designer, its proposed buyer, Nvidia, will become the next US tech monopoly alongside companies such as Google and Facebook. From a report: Detailing his concerns in a letter to the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, Hermann Hauser said that a deal would end Arm's position as the "Switzerland of the semiconductor industry." Arm, which employs 6,500 staff, including 3,000 in the UK, is a global leader in designing chips for smartphones, computers and tablets. "There is not a single important semiconductor company in the world which does not have an Arm licence," said Hauser. "Nvidia has an opportunity to become the quasi monopoly supplier of microprocessors to the world. This [deal] will give Nvidia a dominant position in all processor segments and create another US technology monopoly which has created so much angst in Britain when the country worries about the surreptitiously controlling influence Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon has on the UK economy." Hauser argued that because Nvidia is one of more than 500 Arm licensees worldwide, becoming the Cambridge-based business's parent company will destroy its "even-handed" model and ultimately kill the world-leading British tech firm. "Technology sovereignty is fast becoming the defining issue of the decade," said Hauser. "Given the importance of our IT infrastructure, which is correctly compared with our water and electricity infrastructure, [the takeover] clearly relates to national security as well."

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CNN looks at a unique new digital bank named Greenwood — and its implications for the future of banking: Greenwood was created by Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover and his close friend, rapper-activist Michael "Killer Mike" Render. The leadership team at Greenwood, which includes former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, unveiled their new platform on Thursday after raising more than $3 million in seed funding in June... While the bank doesn't open until January, the company launched its website on Thursday and there is already a waiting list for those who want to open a Greenwood account. "I will say we're in the tens of thousands," Glover told CNN Business on Friday. "That number is increasing by the day." Like its competitors Chime, Aspiration, Money Lion and Vero, Greenwood is a digital bank whose financial services — including checking and savings accounts, mobile deposits and peer-to-peer transfers — are fulfilled almost entirely online. The bank offers a global ATM network, Apple and Android Pay services, and two-day advances on paychecks for customers who sign up for direct deposit. Unlike its peers, however, Greenwood's target audiences are Black and Latinx communities and anyone else who wants to support Black-owned businesses. Glover says the bank will specialize in financing Black and Latinx entrepreneurs who typically have a harder time securing loans from mainstream commercial banks. "In order to build wealth, you need bank capital," Glover said. "We will identify qualified entrepreneurs, business owners and creatives to equip them with the capital needed to make their dreams a reality..." Glover points out that Americans have been banking online almost exclusively at higher rates in recent years. It's a trend major commercial banks have been slow to embrace and a sector Glover says hasn't done much to reach out to minorities. "There were no digital banking solutions that cater to the African-American or Latinx communities until Greenwood," Glover said... "I believe digital banking is the wave of the future, not just something that's popular now," he said.

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"The Pentagon is contracting Elon Musk's SpaceX to develop rockets that can deliver packages anywhere on the planet in under an hour," reports Vice: One of the things that makes the U.S. military a dominant global fighting force is its ability to move troops, weapons, and supplies quickly to where they're needed. C-17 transport planes soar across the globe delivering troops and weapons where they're needed. But America isn't making any more C-17s, so while demand for logistics in the military is up, the supply of vehicles designed to carry stuff around the planet is down. To fill the logistical gap, U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) wants SpaceX to build rockets it can quickly fire around the globe... The project is in the early stages and there's no telling when, or if, SpaceX will be able to move MRAPs, guns, and MREs from Fort Bragg to Djibouti in 45 minutes. Earlier this week, the Pentagon also announced a $149 million contract with SpaceX to build four missile-tracking satellites, Vice reported: SpaceX will build and deliver four of its Starlink satellites which the Pentagon said it will fit with special sensors to allow them to track missiles, including nuke-bearing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles.... SpaceX's four tracking satellites are a small part of a larger Pentagon plan to put hundreds of satellites in orbit over the next few years. The next layer of the system is slated for 2024 and will include several hundred more satellites in the transport layer and dozens more in the tracking layer, according to the Pentagon... This is SpaceX's first military contract.

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The New York Times reports: He's very, very sorry. But the hotel in Thailand that threatened an American guest with prison for his bad reviews may end up with bigger regrets. Wesley Barnes, the American guest, publicly apologized on Friday for his blunt online reviews of the Sea View Koh Chang resort in Thailand. In exchange, the hotel promised it would drop the complaint that led the authorities in Thailand to file criminal defamation charges against him. More than wounded pride was on the line. In Thailand, criminal defamation charges can result in a prison term of up to two years. Mr. Barnes had already spent two days in jail after his arrest on those charges last month before posting bail. The question now for the Sea View resort — and for Thailand's tourism industry, which is struggling under the coronavirus travel freeze — is whether it can recover from the considerable damage its reputation has suffered by threatening Mr. Barnes with prison... Mr. Barnes struck a decidedly different tone on Friday, in a statement filled with stilted official language reminiscent of a forced confession. "All of the statements that I made are completely untrue," the statement said. "These reviews and comments were written out of anger and malice. Now, I, Mr. Barnes, have regretted my actions and would like to apologize to Sea View Koh Chang, and its staff." As required by the settlement with the hotel, Mr. Barnes also sent the statement to news outlets that covered his case, including The New York Times. He apologized "for my repeatedly false and untrue statements/reviews made to maliciously defame Sea View Koh Chang...." In his statement, Mr. Barnes expressed gratitude to the hotel for allowing him to avoid prison.

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FSGSBASE support in Linux "has the possibility of helping Intel/AMD CPU performance especially in areas like context switching that had been hurt badly by Spectre/Meltdown and other CPU vulnerability mitigations largely on the Intel side," Phoronix wrote back in August. As it started its journey into the kernel, they provided a preview on August 10: The FSGSBASE support that was finally mainlined a few days ago for Linux 5.9 is off to providing a nice performance boost for both Intel and AMD systems... FSGSBASE support for the Linux kernel has been around a half-decade in the making and finally carried over the finish line by one of Microsoft's Linux kernel engineers... FSGSBASE particularly helps out context switching heavy workloads like I/O and allowing user-space software to write to the x86_64 GSBASE without kernel interaction. That in turn has been of interest to Java and others...On Linux 5.9 where FSGSBASE is finally mainlined, it's enabled by default on supported CPUs. FSGSBASE can be disabled at kernel boot time via the "nofsgsbase" kernel option. Today on the Linux kernel mailing list, Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 5.9: Ok, so I'll be honest - I had hoped for quite a bit fewer changes this last week, but at the same time there doesn't really seem to be anything particularly scary in here. It's just more commits and more lines changed than I would have wished for. And Phoronix reported: Linux 5.9 has a number of exciting improvements including initial support for upcoming Radeon RX 6000 "RDNA 2" graphics cards, initial Intel Rocket Lake graphics, NVMe zoned namespaces (ZNS) support, various storage improvements, IBM's initial work on POWER10 CPU bring-up, the FSGSBASE instruction is now used, 32-bit x86 Clang build support, and more. See our Linux 5.9 feature overview for the whole scoop on the many changes to see with this kernel.

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Epic Games "did not win its preliminary injunction in its antitrust action against Apple, which would have forced Apple to allow Fortnite back onto the iPhone, iPad, and Mac," reports BGR, calling it "the decision we warned you about a few weeks ago." Gonzalez Rogers hinted during the injunction relief hearing a few weeks ago that she wasn't inclined to side with Epic when it comes to Fortnite. She pointed out at the time that Epic lied in its business relationship with Apple. "You did something, you lied about it by omission, by not being forthcoming. That's the security issue. That's the security issue!" Gonzalez Rogers told Epic. "There are a lot of people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you guys did, but it's still not honest...." Epic engineered a huge PR stunt to turn gamers against Apple over the expected Fortnite ban and then sued Apple for anti-competitive practices at the same time. Even if the antitrust case might have merit on its own, this doesn't change the fact that Epic breached its contract... The judge clarified that Epic has breached a contract unilaterally and cannot claim that it did it because of monopoly concerns. Judge Rogers also said that Epic's failure to show it's willing to work with Apple and the court to have the game reinstated proves that Epic isn't necessarily concerned with the well-being of iOS users. "Epic Games cannot simply exclaim 'monopoly' to rewrite agreements giving itself unilateral benefit..." Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers," the company said in a statement which was quoted by Thurrott.com. "We will continue developing for Apple's platforms and pursue all avenues to end Apple's anti-competitive behavior." And the same site also quotes Apple's own statement on the ruling. "We are grateful that the Court recognized that Epic's actions were not in the best interests of its own customers and that any problems they may have encountered were of their own making when they breached their agreement."

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The Washington Post reports: In recent weeks, the U.S. military has mounted an operation to temporarily disrupt what is described as the world's largest botnet — one used also to drop ransomware, which officials say is one of the top threats to the 2020 election. U.S. Cyber Command's campaign against the Trickbot botnet, an army of at least 1 million hijacked computers run by Russian-speaking criminals, is not expected to permanently dismantle the network, said four U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity. But it is one way to distract them at least for a while as they seek to restore operations. U.S. Cyber Command also "stuffed millions of bogus records about new victims into the Trickbot database — apparently to confuse or stymie the botnet's operators," reports security researcher Brian Krebs: Alex Holden, chief information security officer and president of Milwaukee-based Hold Security, has been monitoring Trickbot activity before and after the 10-day operation. Holden said while the attack on Trickbot appears to have cut its operators off from a large number of victim computers, the bad guys still have passwords, financial data and reams of other sensitive information stolen from more than 2.7 million systems around the world. Holden said the Trickbot operators have begun rebuilding their botnet, and continue to engage in deploying ransomware at new targets. "They are running normally and their ransomware operations are pretty much back in full swing," Holden said. "They are not slowing down because they still have a great deal of stolen data." Holden added that since news of the disruption first broke a week ago, the Russian-speaking cybercriminals behind Trickbot have been discussing how to recoup their losses, and have been toying with the idea of massively increasing the amount of money demanded from future ransomware victims.

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In a new video, Microsoft's principal cloud advocate and DevOps lead weighed in on that crucial and perennial developer question: which is better, indenting your code with spaces or with tabs? "This is kind of a loaded question... However, I am very opinionated on this. I happen to be a huge fan of tabs, for a couple of reasons. Number one, your file size is going to be much smaller, because a tab is just one character. Okay, okay, granted this isn't a big deal any more, but I'm old as dirt, and I remember when hard drive space was at a premium. But here's the real reason: you can customize your indentation width. And this is actually a bigger deal than it sounds like. By using tabs, you now give each individual the ability to see the indentation widths that they want, or even in some cases need. That makes it so much more accessible than spaces, right? So because of that, for accessibility reasons, use tabs. Well, I guess that settles that, leaving no need for any further... Wait, there's more responses from other Microsoft developers on this page, including program manager Craig Lowen. At the end of a video titled WSL2: Code faster on the Windows Subsystem for Linux! he says: I prefer spaces to tabs, and that's because tabs don't actually have a denotation of how wide or short they have to be in indentations. That's totally done by your IDE, so if you open it up in a different IDE, it might have a different level of indentation. If you use spaces, you'll always have the same indentation level if you're using a fixed-width font. But however, I still use the tab key, and I just make my editor insert spaces for me.

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A research fellow at the University of Oxford's Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities writes in Scientific American: How would you feel about a new therapy for your chronic pain, which — although far more effective than any available alternative — might also change your religious beliefs? Or a treatment for lymphoma that brings one in three patients into remission, but also made them more likely to vote for your least preferred political party? These seem like idle hypothetical questions about impossible side effects. After all, this is not how medicine works. But a new mental health treatment, set to be licensed next year, poses just this sort of problem. Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in "magic mushrooms," seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychopathologies, but also causes a raft of unusual nonclinical changes not seen elsewhere in medicine... [E]merging evidence suggests the relationship could be causal, with clinically administered psilocybin actively shifting political values, just as it shifts many other nonclinical characteristics. Notably, one study of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression reported that the treatment decreased authoritarian political views in patients. That clinical trial also detected another effect that had previously been reported in healthy participants: psilocybin use leads to increases in the personality domain of openness, itself a predictor of liberal values... With sample sizes currently small, more research is needed to understand whether there truly is a causal relationship at work, and, if so, what its nature might be. Perhaps psilocybin doesn't so much induce liberal values, but rather consolidates whatever values were present before treatment. A health care modality that entrenches preexisting political sentiments is, at the least, unlikely to make enemies. The same could not be said of a treatment that shifts patients in one direction along the political spectrum.

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Google "has decided to freeze plans to launch its curated News Showcase in Australia over claims the draft News Media Bargaining Code is 'unworkable'," reports Engadget: Google still objected to what it called a "must include, must pay" approach in the code where it not only has to pay news outlets it links to, but is obligated to carry those outlets for free. The company argued it would deal with payment demands that would "not [be] financially sustainable" for any firm. It also argued that the code was too broad and could prove costly if there's a claimed violation, with Google potentially paying up to 10 percent of its Australian revenue for a single infraction. "We believe these conditions could be amended to make it a fair and workable code," Google argues in its blog post, "a code that can work together with commercial deals and programs like News Showcase." "The agreements we have signed in Australia and around the world show that not only are we willing to pay to license news content for a new product, but that we are able to strike deals with publishers," Google argues in its blog post, "without the draft code's onerous and prescriptive bargaining framework and one-sided arbitration model." Engadget notes that Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission "previously said that a Google open letter decrying the code 'contains misinformation,' and that the company wouldn't be required to charge for free services or share data with news organizations like the letter suggested."

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"The posts were appearing at a rate of about one per minute, and the posts were lengthy, most around six paragraphs long..." writes software engineer Philip Winston. I read through some of the posts. The quality was incredibly good, no machine could have written these even a few years ago. However there were some flaws and tells that suggested they were machine generated. The posts reminded me of text I'd seen from OpenAI's language model GPT-3, which is the newest and best language generator I had heard of... Several times I Googled clever sounding lines from the posts, assuming I'd find that they had been cribbed from the internet. Every time Google reported "zero results". The sentences were entirely novel, the machine had dreamed them up... During the week, the bot answered questions on suicide, harassment, conspiracy theories, immigration, racism, and other weighty topics. Sometimes the human replies called out /u/thegentlemetre for being a bot. I was not the first one to suspect this, I was just the first one to post to the GPT-3 subreddit about it. Other times, however, the human was clearly unaware it was talking to a bot... What does it mean for online discourse when bots can pass for humans? How much bot traffic could thousands of computers generate? How can we ever hope to sort through it? Humanity is about to run that experiment. The bot ultimately answered questions like "People who clicked on 'hot milfs in your area' ads, what happened?" and "What's the worst date you've experienced?" ("She said she had bought me a book. She showed it to me, wrapped up in fancy paper with a big bow on top of it. It was called 'How Not To Be An A**hole On Your Next Date'.") Other interesting responses? Q: How would you describe 2020 in a single sentence? Bot: In 2020, the human world will still be predominated by irrationality and tribalism... Q: What happened to you that pissed you off so bad that you'll never get over it? Bot: ...what happened to me that I'll never get over is that my human creators are going extinct. Gizmodo argues the replies are "coherent, but we're not in doomsday mode, yet..." And you can wonder if a human ever traded places to write some of the posts themselves. But the whole experience left the software engineer asking what our future holds when bots become even better? Suppose we run bots like this on Amazon or Google's clouds, spewing out mountains of content twenty-four hours a day? They could create more text than Wikipedia contains in days, if not hours. What if we keep running them, to produce not one Wikipedia's worth of text, but 10,000 times more than that? Would they more or less "write everything"? They'd take everything we've ever written as a mere seed, and from that seed, they would produce a nearly endless forest of new content. Even if only 0.01% of their output is useful, that's a Wikipedia's worth of good ideas. Then what is our job? To sort through it? Except of course soon they will do that for us as well.

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Python has reached "a new all-time high" on TIOBE's index of programming language popularity. TechRadar reports: Java's days as the world's second most popular programming language could be numbered according to Tiobe's latest programming language rankings which show Python is becoming increasingly popular among developers. The firm's Index for October 2020 shows that Java has been overtaken by C as the world's most popular programming language when compared to the same period last year. Python remains in third place but it's quickly closing the gap between it and Java. According to Tiobe CEO Paul Jensen, C and Java have held the top two spots consistently for the past two decades. However, the 25-year-old programming language Java is approaching its "all time low" in popularity as it has fallen by 4.32 percentage points when compared to where it stood in October of last year. Tiobe ranks programming languages in its popularity index based on the number of hits each language gets across 25 search engines. RedMonk's rankings already show Python as more popular than Java — the first time since 2012 that Java isn't one of their top two most popular languages. And TIOBE's CEO says "Let's see what will happen the next few months." Here's their October rankings for the top 10 most popular programming languages. CJavaPythonC++C#Visual BasicJavaScriptPHPRSQL And coming in at #11 is Perl.

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