Zero W Joins Raspberry Pi Family on 5th Birthday

Raspberry Pi turned 5 years old on Tuesday, and to mark the occasion, the foundation announced a new member of the family, the Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a case to go with it. Raspberry Pi Zero W adds wireless LAN and Bluetooth capabilities to tiny computer's growing list of capabilities. Priced at just $10, the device is affordable for anyone who wants to take the Pi for a test drive. "We imagine you'll find all sorts of uses for the Zero W," said Raspberry PI founder Eben Upton."It makes a better general purpose computer because you're less likely to need a hub."

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Nokia 3310 Pushes Nostalgia Buttons

HMD Global, owner of the Nokia phone brand, on Sunday reintroduced the classic 3310 feature phone at the MWC, along with a line of brand new Nokia smartphones that run on the Android platform. The relaunch of the 3310 is the reimagination of one of the world's best-selling feature phones as a sleek, lightweight device that features 22 hours of talk time and an entire month of standby time. Its average retail price will be about $52. The phone will come in four colors: warm red and yellow with a glossy finish, and dark blue and gray in matte.

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Google's Jigsaw Launches Troll-Thwarting API

A new tool is available to check the persistent harassment of online trolls. Google's Jigsaw think tank last week launched Perspective, an early stage technology that uses machine learning to help neutralize trolls. Perspective reviews comments and scores them based on their similarity to comments people have labeled as toxic, or that are likely to result in someone leaving a conversation. Publishers can select what they want to do with the information Perspective provides to them.

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Mobile World Congress: Gigabit Wireless and the Anti-iPhone Set

One of the biggest disappointments at this year's Mobile World Congress is that the Samsung Galaxy 8 phone won't make it. The Galaxy line has been the ultimate iPhone fighter. Rumors around the anniversary edition of the iPhone suggest that it will do amazing, magical things, like 3D selfies. OK, I'm really missing Steve Jobs at the moment -- who the hell wants 3D selfies?!? Still, Motorola and Qualcomm are expected to make huge announcements that could result in the iPhone 8 looking a tad out of date when it finally launches later in the year.

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DebianDog Is a Useful Pocket Pup

DebianDog offers a lot of functionality and customization that frees users from many of the restrictions of a Linux community tied up in developmental red tape. DebianDog is fast and focused on getting work done without a lot of distractions. However, it also is a disorganized desktop environment that can leave new users floundering. For example, the main menu is a mashup of standard system tools, DebianDog-specific utilities, Debian software, and tools to import some Puppy Linux software that's not designed to run on a Debian-based distro.

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Steamed Over Steam

Where would the PC gaming market be without Steam, the digital distribution platform that was developed by Valve Corporation more than a decade ago? It likely would be in worse shape than it is now, but that's not to say it would be bad. First, despite the repeated cries that "PC gaming is dead," the state of PC gaming is actually pretty good and PC gaming is very much alive because of Steam, which also offers digital rights management, multiplayer game hosting and social networking services. Valve can take a lot of the credit.

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What a Linux Desktop Does Better

After I resolved to adopt Linux, my confidence grew slowly but surely. Security-oriented considerations were compelling enough to convince me to switch, but I soon discovered many more advantages to the Linux desktop. For those still unsure about making the transition, or those who have done so but may not know everything their system can do, I'll showcase here some of the Linux desktop's advantages. First and foremost, Linux is literally free. Neither the operating system nor any of the programs you run will cost you a dime.

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GE Digital VP Beena Ammanath: For Most Women, STEM Is an Uphill Battle

Beena Ammanath is VP for data and analytics at GE Digital. She has worked in the data analytics field for more than 20 years and serves as board director at ChickTech, a nonprofit dedicated to recruiting girls and women into the tech workforce and retaining them once they're there. Ammanath also serves on the Cal Poly Computer Engineering Program Industrial Advisory Board, helping to shape the future generation of computer scientists with her expertise. Ammanath recently was named one of the top female analytics experts in the Fortune 500.

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Open Source IoT on Steady Enterprise March

Enterprise IT decision makers have been exploring the potential of Internet of Things technologies, but they are not rushing IoT projects into development and are showing caution in their adoption commitments, according to survey results Red Hat released Wednesday. Of the 215 participants in the company's survey, "Enterprise IoT in 2017: Steady as she goes," 55 percent indicated that IoT was important to their organization. However, only a quarter of those organizations actually were writing project code and deploying IoT technologies.

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Rich Content Makes WhatsApp Look a Lot More Like Snapchat

Facebook has rolled out a WhatsApp update that could threaten Snapchat's share of the mobile app messaging market. The update allows WhatsApp users to share photos and videos through the app's status area. Moreover, like WhatsApp text messages, content shared through status updates is protected by end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption is a key distinction between WhatsApp and its competitors, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That's an important point for people sharing private messages with individuals and groups."

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Microsoft Makes VR Drone Fight Simulator Available on GitHub

Microsoft has introduced an open source virtual reality toolkit for the training of autonomous drones. Part of Microsoft's Aerial Informatics and Robotics Platform, the beta software became available last week. It is designed to allow developers to "teach" drones how to navigate the real world by recreating conditions such as shadows, reflections and even objects that might confuse a device's on-board sensors. The software allows researchers to write code for aerial robots such as drones, and to test the devices in a highly realistic simulator.

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Facebook Puts More Work Into Social Networking

Facebook last week launched new features for advertising job openings on the network. Although many companies already have been using Facebook to find workers, the new functionality formalizes its job search capabilities, the company said. U.S. and Canadian businesses can use the company's new jobs bookmark to list open positions and allow users to apply directly from the site. Page administrators can track applicants and communicate directly with them using messenger. They also can boost job postings to reach a larger audience.

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Could IBM's Watson Fix President Trump?

President Trump offers a good emulation for a future artificial intelligence system, suggests a column I read earlier this month, and his presidency may be an early warning of what could happen if we should fail to think through its training and information sources. Cathy O'Neil, the author of the piece, is a data scientist, mathematician and professor, so she has decent chops. She compares artificial intelligence to human intelligence that is mostly id -- basically because we don't yet know how to create the digital equivalent of a conscience.

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Facebook Gets More In-Your-Face

Facebook this week announced new features for News Feeds videos, along with an app for TV. News Feed videos now have sound turned on by default in mobile devices. This can be disabled in the Settings menu. A larger format to present vertical videos now is standard on iOS and Android devices. The feature became available as a preview last year. A Watch and Scroll feature lets users minimize the video they're watching and drag it to any corner of the screen so they can continue browsing their News Feed while the video is playing.

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Watson Joins Cybersecurity Warriors' Ranks

IBM this week announced Watson for Cyber Security, a powerful new ally for organizations that want to protect their data from Net marauders. The new offering bolsters the ability of information security pros to analyze the flood of information from the roughly 200,000 events that pour into their Security Operations Centers, or SOCs, every day. About 20 percent of that flood is comprised of structured data that can be analyzed with database tools, but as much as 80 percent of it is unstructured data.

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Munich City Government to Dump Linux Desktop

Munich city officials turned lots of heads 10 years ago, when they voted to swap out Microsoft Windows with LiMux -- a custom desktop version of the Linux operating system, based on Ubuntu Linux. The current municipal government wants to dump LiMux and replace its 15,000 computers with Windows 10. The city's general council this week voted to investigate how much time and money it will take to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. The city spent millions of euros over the last decade on the Windows replacement project.

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Apple's Cook Blasts 'Mind Killing' Fake News

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for a campaign against fake news. Its purveyors -- largely interested only in getting the most clicks -- are defeating the people who are trying to tell the most truth, he said. Fake news is "killing people's minds in a way," Cook remarked. The worldwide epidemic of fake news requires a crackdown by both government and tech, he suggested, but care must be taken not to step on the freedoms of speech and the press. Cook suggested the impact of fake news could be curbed by a massive public service campaign.

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Lumina Adds Luster to Linux Desktop

The Lumina Desktop Environment desktop is a standout in the crowded field of Linux graphical user interface choices. Lumina is a compact, lightweight, XDG-compliant graphical desktop environment developed from scratch. Its focus is on giving users a streamlined, efficient work environment with minimal system overhead. Lumina was first developed for the BSD family of operating systems, such as FreeBSD and TrueOS. It is gaining interest among Linux users, having been introduced for a growing number of Linux distros.

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Samsung's Chromebook Pro Earns Respect

Some early reviewers of the Samsung Chromebook Pro characterized it as a "MacBook killer," but others were more restrained in their enthusiasm. Jointly developed with Google and first demoed at CES 2017, the Chromebook Pro is slated for release next month. Samsung's Chromebooks basically are lightweight productivity tools that rely heavily on access to cloud-based resources. They have gained popularity in the enterprise for use with remote workers and in educational settings as entry-level computing tools.

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Capsule8 Launches Linux-Based Container Security Platform

Cybersecurity startup Capsule8 this week announced that it has raised $2.5 million to launch the industry's first container-aware, real-time threat protection platform designed to protect legacy and next-generation Linux infrastructures from existing and potential attacks. CEO John Viega, CTO Dino Dai Zovi and Chief Scientist Brandon Edwards, all veteran hackers, cofounded the firm. They raised seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as individual investors Shandul Shah of Index Ventures and ClearSky's Jay Leek.

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Tesla Goes Underground and Uber Takes to the Skies: The Birth of Magic

As in crazy short, in a very short period of time we have two very different companies looking at two very different ways to eliminate traffic. Tesla wants to tunnel under the ground to avoid traffic, while Uber wants to fly overhead. Transportation has been a tad static for the last 40 years or so, and that apparently is about to change big time. This is just the start. There are amazing efforts cropping up all over the U.S., suggesting that we may be building a lot of things that truly are magical.

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Gadget Ogling: Gaming's New Virtual Reality Frontier and Personal Cargo Robots

Regular readers will know that I've played games my entire life. I hold deep reverence for the care and attention that go into creating these experiences, and I've rarely met a game I didn't want to conquer. Yet I am nervous about virtual reality. I've tried it and found those disorientating worlds difficult to handle, though I suspect that over time I could grow more accustomed to it. I doubt I could say the same for an arcade machine that both locks me into a VR world and pelts me with physical stimuli.

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Dozens of iOS Apps Vulnerable to WiFi Snooping

Dozens of applications for Apple's mobile devices are vulnerable to WiFi snoopers, according to Will Strafach, CEO of the Sudo Security Group. He identified 76 popular iOS apps available at Apple's App Store that were vulnerable to wireless eavesdroppers, even though the connections were supposed to be protected by encryption. There have been 18 million downloads of the vulnerable apps, he said. Strafach categorized 33 of the vulnerable apps as "low risk." Another 24 iOS apps were "medium risk," and the remaining 19 were "high risk."

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Twitter Steps Up Efforts to Silence Trolls

Twitter on Tuesday announced yet another crackdown on abusers. With the goal of making Twitter a safer place, it has come up with new ways to prevent the creation of new abusive accounts; make search safer; and collapse potentially abusive or low-quality tweets. Twitter also pledged to persist in its anti-abuse endeavors, saying it would keep rolling out product changes, some more visible than others, and updating users on its progress every step of the way. Twitter "is more vulnerable than other social media," noted tech analyst Jim McGregor.

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How Linux Helped Me Become an Empowered Computer User

If you were to ask any of my friends, they could readily attest to my profound passion for Linux. That said, it might surprise you to know that hardly two years ago, I barely knew what Linux was, let alone had any earnest interest in switching to it from Windows. Although a shift as dramatic as this seem astonishing when considered in hindsight, analyzing my path from one push or influence to the next paints a more telling picture. I want to share my story of how I came not only to use, but indeed champion, the Linux desktop.

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Anonymous Hacker Pulls Plug on Thousands of Dark Net Sites

Twenty percent of the Dark Net was taken offline last week, when a hacker compromised a server hosting some 10,000 websites on the Tor network. Tor, designed to hide the identities of its users, is widely used on the Dark Web, which serves as a hub for illegal online activities. Visitors to the affected pages were greeted with the message, "Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you've been hacked." The attacker reportedly took Freedom Hosting II offline because 50 percent of its sites contained child pornography.

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SalentOS Switchers Will Have No Regrets

SalentOS is a Linux distro that easily can put a smile on your face. It is a flexible and accommodating desktop platform that balances demands on system resources with efficient performance. SalentOS is not well known, but it has much to offer. This distro makes it easy to leave behind whatever other computing choice you currently use. Salent has been around for the last few years on the Ubuntu base. Its latest release shifts its foundation with an approach that includes elements of GNOME and XFCE desktops. However, it uses neither.

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Was Apple's Outstanding Q1 a Fluke?

Apple had a good quarter, but if you look under the numbers there is a ton of trouble. It just dropped behind Google in brand value, and some analysts have predicted valuation will crater in a few months. The iPhone 7 did well, but that shouldn't be a surprise, given that its biggest competitor, Samsung, saw its phone literally go up in flames last quarter. The Galaxy 8 is coming, though, and it looks really impressive. This suggests Apple's one-up quarter is not repeatable, unless Samsung decides burning phones is a feature.

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Tech Industry Reacts to Trump's Immigration Order

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has resigned from President Trump's business advisory council amid fierce blowback against the recent executive order on immigration, and in the wake of reports that several major Silicon Valley firms, including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google, have been circulating a draft letter opposing Trump's action. Kalanick said he no longer would participate in the council after consumers railed against Uber for continuing to operate at JFK International Airport over the weekend in spite of a strike by taxi drivers.

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LibreOffice Update Offers Fresh Experience

The Document Foundation has announced the general availability of LibreOffice 5.3, one of the office suite's most feature-rich upgrades since 2010, when it forked from OpenOffice at version 3.3. Dubbed "5.3 Fresh," this latest release takes the development of LibreOffice in a new direction with a focus on updating the user experience, according to Italo Vignoli of the Document Foundation. The 3.x Family centered on code cleanup, while the 4.x Family focused on code Refactoring. LibreOffice 5.3 extends the UI with an experimental Notebookbar.

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Facebook Aims to Carve Out a Spot in the Living Room

Facebook is working on a video app for set-top boxes, according to a Wednesday report. The social network wants to deliver longer-form video content -- and with it video ads -- to the living room TV, the one screen it has been unable to reach. The Facebook app soon could be available on a variety of set-top boxes, including Apple TV. The initiative reportedly began in earnest last summer, after incubating for years as a concept. News of this effort follows Facebook's recent announcement that it was refining its News Feed to favor longer-form videos, which can include mid-roll ad breaks.

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3 Teams Advance in Hyperloop Competition

Elon Musk's hyperloop dream began to take shape in reality last weekend as 27 teams, including six from outside the United States, participated in a competition to create the mass transit vehicle of the future. The competition in Hawthorne, California, sponsored by SpaceX, which Musk founded, attracted teams made up mostly of students who created pods designed to run on hyperloop transportation systems. In a hyperloop system, the vehicles, or pods, travel in a vacuum in tubes at speeds close to the speed of sound.

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