awesome-ml-for-cybersecurity VS DetectionLab

There is a lot you can work on. You can start here : https://github.com/jivoi/awesome-ml-for-cybersecurity. If I had the time, I'd play with this tool : https://github.com/microsoft/CyberBattleSim

Machine Learning for Cyber Security

I would tell someone they should use a cloud lab like Clong's "Detection Lab" which gives them not only the security aspect but the cloud and engineering aspects as well.

Detection Lab Link: https://github.com/clong/DetectionLab

Not sure what your goal with splunk is but I'd recommend Detection lab! Once you get the pre reqs setup, building and tearing down is super easy and you get a pre-baked ad environment to generate logs for you. https://github.com/clong/DetectionLab

I found a great starting point at the repo of DetectionLab : https://github.com/clong/DetectionLab

While it's true what most are saying, that you don't need a powerful system to learn hacking....... You DO have a valid point that a powerful system enables things a weaker system may not. For example with 64GB of RAM you can run a full network lab simulation such as https://github.com/clong/DetectionLab additionally a solid high end graphics card will let you run things like hashcat a lot faster. In theory you could make a rainbow table. You still need a lot of time to understand all the basics but yeah there's a few cool things you can do with more power it's not ENTIRELY unneeded. I wish I knew about the local defcon group long ago. They're welcoming and some have capture the flags you can play. Understand the various job roles there are in security and figure out which one you like. You get paid to do specific things not just learn about hacking.

Github DetectioLab