New Intel Chips and Benchmarks

• Intel Announces Early 8th Gen Core Processors, Coffee Lake

  Intel has rushed up the announcement of their 8th Gen Intel Core desktop processors following a recent leak. We can now confirm that these new Intel CPUs are en route to retailers, they have already arrived for testing, and will be benchmarked under Linux on Phoronix once that secondary embargo expires.

• Intel Core i9 7980XE Linux Benchmarks: 18 Core / 36 Threads For $1999 USD

  Besides the embargo expiring this morning on the Intel Core i9 7960X, the Core i9 7980XE Extreme Edition processor is also now fair game. Here is our look at the Linux performance for this 18 core / 36 thread processor within a single 165 Watt package.

• Intel Core i9 7960X Linux Benchmarks

  While Intel previously announced the expanded Intel Core X-Series line-up including the Core i9 7960X and Core i9 7980XE processors, only today is the performance embargo expiring as these CPUs begin to ship to further battle AMD's Ryzen Threadripper line-up. Here is today's launch-day Linux benchmarks of the Core i9 7960X.

Android Leftovers

• Lenovo A6000, Launched in January 2015 with Android KitKat, Receives Unofficial Android 8.0 Oreo Port

• Twitter is testing a Twitter Lite Android app in the Philippines

• Android O feature spotlight: Default Wi-Fi hotspot SSIDs are now unique

• Android 8.0 Oreo Causing Alarm Clock Issues, Random Reboots for Some Users

• Android unlock patterns are a boon for shoulder surfing attackers

Packet radio lives on through open source software

Packet radio is an amateur radio technology from the early 1980s that sends data between computers. Linux has natively supported the packet radio protocol, more formally known as AX.25, since 1993. Despite its age, amateur radio operators continue to use and develop packet radio today. A Linux packet station can be used for mail, chat, and TCP/IP. It also has some unique capabilities, such as tracking the positions of nearby stations or sending short messages via the International Space Station (ISS).

Linux 4.14-rc2

I'm back to my usual Sunday release schedule, and rc2 is out there in all the normal places. This was a fairly usual rc2, with a very quiet beginning of the week, and then most changes came in on Friday afternoon and Saturday (with the last few ones showing up Sunday morning). Normally I tend to dislike how that pushes most of my work into the weekend, but this time I took advantage of it, spending the quiet part of last week diving instead. Anyway, the only unusual thing worth noting here is that the security subsystem pull request that came in during the merge window got rejected due to problems, and so rc2 ends up with most of that security pull having been merged in independent pieces instead. Also: Linux 4.14-rc2 Kernel Released