EquiSeq CEO Lexi Palmer: Act Like You're Not Scared and Go at It

Lexi Palmer is CEO of EquiSeq, a biotech firm that does genetic testing of horses. Palmer was brought on as CEO by the company's founder, genetic researcher Paul Szauter, in 2015. "I was just finishing up my degree in interpersonal communications, and he told me about the company he'd started," Palmer recalled. "I told him I knew everything about horses and said I could learn everything he did and market it. Two weeks later we were discussing my title. He asked, "Where do you see yourself? What title do you want?" I said "CEO."

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Zephyr Linux: Zippy Performance, Zero Decor

Zephyr Linux, a newcomer to the Linux scene, is still morphing from developmental releases. However, it takes an interesting approach to removing desktop clutter and default software bloat. Zephyr is a collaboration between Leonard Ashley and other developers. Ashley built this distro on Devuan, a fork of Debian, and with it he gives the concept of minimalist design a fresh twist. Zephyr Linux is stripped down so you can remake it your way. Version 1.0 beta 2 stable is available in a separate ISO file for Fluxbox, JWN and Openbox.

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Online Freedom of Speech May Be in Peril: Pew

Trolling, cyberbullying, harassment and just plain nastiness have become commonplace online, and this situation is likely to remain unchanged or worsen over the next decade, suggests a report the Pew Research Center released Wednesday. Pew and Elon University last summer polled more than 1,500 technology experts, academics, and business and government leaders on the future of free speech online. Forty-two percent of the survey respondents expected future online interactions to be about the same as they are today.

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Cloud Foundry Aims to Close Cloud Skills Gap

The Cloud Foundry Foundation has announced the launch of a worldwide cloud-native developer certification initiative. The foundation created the program to fill the widening gap of trained programmers for cloud apps and services. The Linux Foundation -- which has trained and certified more developers on open source software than any organization in the world -- will provide the instruction. More than a dozen leading technology, education and systems integration organizations around the world will participate in the cloud certification program.

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Galaxy S8, S8+ Dazzle in Samsung's Comeback Launch

Samsung on Wednesday launched the Galaxy S8 and S8+, its next generation of smartphones. They feature major improvements in design and security processing power, as well as new digital assistant technology that may challenge the best devices on the market. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are available with 5.8 inch and 6.2 inch screens respectively. Both sport an infinity display using Corning Gorilla Glass, and a bezel-less design that provides a wider viewing area and more immersive experience than traditional smartphones.

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Elon Musk Plans to Build a Human-AI Interface

Tech visionary Elon Musk, who currently helms both Tesla and SpaceX, has launched a startup, Neuralink, dedicated to developing technology that will connect human brains directly to a computer. This venture is in its very early stages, Musk confirmed. Neuralink, which Musk is funding privately, is a medical research firm that aims to develop "neural lace" -- a technology that could allow the implanting of small electrodes into the brain. Musk reportedly has recruited leading academics in the field to work with the company.

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Too Much Communication

The world is a smaller place because we have so many ways to connect and communicate, but it has created a generation gap, a gap of classes and perhaps even a culture gap. This may seem like a serious contradiction; after all shouldn't more means of communication bring us closer together? The obvious answer is yes, but unfortunately this is not the case -- in part because so many technology start-ups have tried to create the next way to connect with friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

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Red Hat Pilots New Program to Ease Digital Transformation

Red Hat on Monday announced a new Application Platform Partner Initiative at its North America Partner Conference in Las Vegas. The goal is to provide a more robust ecosystem for companies engaging in digital transformation. The company has started conducting tests in a pilot program with a small number of solutions-oriented consulting partners in North America. "We are planning to engage with a small group of partners during the pilot phase -- aiming for approximately one to two dozen partners," said Red Hat spokesperson Daniel Thompson.

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UK Home Secretary: Apps Shouldn't Serve as Terrorist Hiding Places

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Sunday called for greater government access to encrypted content on mobile apps. Apps with end-to-end encryption, like Facebook's WhatsApp, should not be allowed to conceal terrorists' communications from law enforcement, Rudd said in a television interview. "There should be no place for terrorists to hide," she said. "We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp -- and there are plenty of others like that -- don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other."

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Don't Let the Next Catastrophic Phishing Scandal End Your Career

What I think is amazing about all of the massive data breaches we hear about is that we know most are not reported. In other words, for every email, customer record, or financial theft in the news, there likely are hundreds that remain in the shadows. This problem is huge and yet another incident came to light last week. A clever Lithuanian individual was able to pull a whopping $100 million from a bunch of unnamed Internet companies using a combination of phishing tactics and fake vendors spread across a multitude of companies.

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Group Demands Apple Pay Ransom for iCloud Credentials

Apple has received a ransom threat from a hacking group claiming to have access to data for up to 800 million iCloud accounts. The hackers, said to be a London-based group called the "Turkish Crime Family," have threatened to reset passwords and remotely wipe the iPhones of millions of iCloud users if Apple fails to hand over a total of $700,000. They have given the company an ultimatum to respond by April 7. Apple reportedly has denied that the group succeeded in hacking its systems.

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OpenSuse Leap Reinforces Linux Faith

OpenSuse Leap 42.2 goes a long way toward maintaining Suse's reputation for reliability and stability. That said, new users might need a push to take the leap from their familiar distros to this latest OpenSuse release. Business users can remain confident that upgrading to the latest edition won't put them too close to the bleeding edge of innovation. There is little cause for worry that upgrading might break their current applications and configurations. Leap 42.2 is a safe way to avoid the pitfalls of upgrading too quickly.

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WikiLeaks Exposes CIA's Device Surveillance Tricks

WikiLeaks has released more Vault 7 documentation online, including details about several CIA projects to infect Apple's Mac computer firmware and operating system. The site unloaded its first batch of stolen Vault 7 data earlier this month. The CIA's Embedded Development Branch developed malware that could persist even if the targeted computer were reformatted and its OS were reinstalled, according to data WikiLeaks exposed. The newly released files shone a spotlight on the CIA's efforts to gain "persistence" in Apple devices.

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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPad, Dresses iPhone in Red

Apple has announced an iPad update, a red iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and a new video-editing app for iOS. The iPad upgrade has a 9.7-inch, 2048 x 1536-pixel Retina display and Apple's A9 64-bit processor. The unit will come in silver, gold and space gray with a starting price of $329 for 32 gigabytes of storage and WiFi-only support. It will cost $459 for a 32-GB unit with WiFi and cellular support. As with prior models, the battery life for the new iPad is 10 hours. It has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and 1.2-MP front-facing FaceTime unit.

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Cracking the Shell

If you've begun to tinker with your desktop Linux terminal, you may be ready to take a deeper dive. You're no longer put off by references to "terminal," "command line" or "shell," and you have a grasp of how files are organized. You can distinguish between a command, an option and an argument. You've begun navigating your system. Now what? File manipulation -- that is, allowing users to traverse the directory structure and interact with its contents -- lies at the heart of Linux. There is a sizable arsenal of tools at your disposal.

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Apple May Alter the AR Competition

Apple is stockpiling resources to make a splash in the augmented reality market. The company reportedly is not only marshaling internal resources behind its AR efforts, but also hiring talented outsiders and acquiring companies with expertise in AR hardware, 3D gaming and virtual reality software. The new outsiders include a former Dolby labs executive, and engineers who worked virtual reality headsets for Google and Microsoft. "We've been waiting for Apple to launch something in AR," said Strategy Analytics' David MacQueen.

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Why Tech Can't Help Donald Trump and Most CEOs

The new president is making almost the identical mistake President Obama made during his first two years. Trump has picked a major entitlement to hang his hat on -- the same major entitlement, healthcare -- and shortly will discover what most CIOs know: You don't mess with anything that touches everybody. The likely outcome will be that like Obama, Trump will lose the house in the next election, and that the Republicans will be forced out of power over the next four to eight years, all for an avoidable, repeated mistake.

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IBM Launches Enterprise-Strength Blockchain as a Service

IBM on Monday unveiled the first enterprise-ready Blockchain as a Service offering based on The Linux Foundation's open source Hyperledger Fabric version 1.0. IBM Blockchain, which lets developers quickly establish highly secure blockchain networks on the IBM cloud, is a transformative step in being able to deploy high-speed, secure business transactions through the network on a large scale, the company said. The platform offers the world's safest Linux infrastructure, with tamper-responsive hardware security modules, according to IBM.

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Google Unveils Guetzli, Open Source JPEG Encoder, to Speed Browsing

Google on Thursday announced Guetzli, a new contribution to its evolving set of tools for the open source community. Guetzli is an encoder that allows JPEG files to be compressed as much as 35 percent, resulting in much faster Web page loading. "Guetzli," which means "cookie" in Swiss German, allows users to create smaller JPEG images while maintaining compatibility with existing Web browsers, image processing applications and the existing JPEG standard, noted Robert Obryk and Jyrki Alakuijala, software engineers at Google Research Europe.

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Crafty Phishing Technique Can Trick Even Tech-Savvy Gmail Users

Gmail users recently have been targeted by a sophisticated series of phishing attacks that use emails from a known contact whose account has been compromised. The emails contain an image of an attachment that appears to be legitimate, according to Wordfence. The sophisticated attack displays "accounts.gmail.com" in the browser's location bar and leads users to what appears to be a legitimate Google sign-in page where they are prompted to supply their credentials, which then become compromised.

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Slackel Openbox Plays Hard to Get

Slackel's Openbox edition is a lightweight operating system that offers reliable performance once you get the box open. It is not ideal for every user, though. Slackel 6.0.8 Openbox, the latest version of the project's lightweight distribution, was released by developer Dimitris Tzemos last fall. Slackel is a Linux distro that offers several benefits for users who step away from the typical mainstream Debian-based Linux distros. Based on both Slackware and Salix, it offers a few advantages not usually found with the Slackware Linux lineup.

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Pro-Turkey Hackers Hit Prominent Twitter Accounts

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Twitter users, many of them high-profile, were hacked Tuesday by someone who appeared to support Turkey in its diplomatic row with the Netherlands. Their accounts displayed a Swastika -- reversed to face to the right -- as well as the Turkish flag and hashtags to the Nazialmanya and Nazihollanda accounts, which displayed comments on the attack. The hackers included a reference to April 16, when Turkey will hold a referendum to give President Recep Erdogan more power.

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Accenture and Docker Team on Container Services

Accenture and Docker on Wednesday announced an expanded global alliance and the availability of container services within the Accenture Cloud Factory. The new services provide a faster industrialized on-ramp solution for enterprises moving to the cloud. They focus on container enablement of applications and feature use of Docker Datacenter Enterprise Edition - Standard. Docker Datacenter is an integrated container management platform for development and IT operations that brings security, policy and controls to the software delivery lifecycle.

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Facebook Gets Tough on Spy Apps

Facebook has moved to prevent spy applications from accessing its users' data. The company has updated its Facebook and Instagram policies to prohibit developers from using data obtained from those platforms in surveillance tools, according to Rob Sherman, deputy chief privacy officer. Facebook already has taken enforcement actions against devs who created and marketed surveillance tools in violation of the company's previous policy, he noted, adding that "we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply."

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Linux Academy Rolls Out New Cloud-Based Training Platform

Linux Academy, an online training platform for the Linux OS and cloud computing, on Tuesday announced a public beta rollout of its Cloud Assessments platform, which is designed to let large enterprise firms train and assess their IT workers and prospective job candidates. The academy offers training on a variety of cloud-based platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Open Stack, DevOps, Azure and others. The Cloud Assessments platform will focus initially on training and testing of AWS, due to strong demand.

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Gadget Ogling: Note-Taker Triumphs, Classic Nokia Returns, and Audio Thrills

There are countless occasions on which I have to transcribe speech. It's tedious, and until voice recognition truly can handle all manner of accents and verbal tics, it's a necessary evil. Hands up, everyone who thinks I wouldn't want a machine to take care of that for me. No one? Good. Titan Note records and transcribes audio, with a particular trick up its sleeve: It can discern different speakers when it's transcribing. It can operate as a speaker as well -- and if you're in a pinch, it can charge your mobile device.

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Malware Found Preinstalled on Dozens of Android Phones

Malware has been discovered preinstalled on 36 Android phones belonging to two companies, security software maker Check Point reported. "In all instances, the malware was not downloaded to the device as a result of the users' use -- it arrived with it," noted Oren Koriat, a member of Check Point's Mobile Research Team. The malicious apps on the phones of a telecommunications company and a multinational technology business were not part of the official ROM supplied by the vendor, he explained. They were added somewhere along the supply chain.

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Donald Trump Should Channel Steve Jobs on Security

We saw yet another government breach last week, and more secrets went to WikiLeaks. I'm ambivalent on this one, because the CIA tools disclosed likely were emulated by others, and WikiLeaks is helping consumer technology companies ensure they no longer work. I don't know about you, but I really don't want any organization spying on me -- not even my own government. Given how I often dress around the house, this is as much for their protection as my own. When Jobs took over, Apple also had a severe leak problem, and he was pragmatic about it.

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Tech Companies Weigh Responses to WikiLeaks Exposure

Following WikiLeaks' publication earlier this week of classified documents stolen from the CIA, major technology companies, including Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Cisco, have been scrambling to assess the risks posed to their customers by the revelations. The so-called "Vault 7" leak includes information about methods and tools the CIA crafted to hack into products produced by those companies. Apple's initial analysis reportedly showed that many of the issues identifed in iOS already were patched in the latest version of the software.

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Nvidia's GeForce 1080 Ti Raises Graphical Chip Bar Yet Again

The first reviews of the newly released Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti came out on Thursday, and by all accounts this card has performed beyond expectations. Nvidia's new GPU can perform 35 percent faster than its GTX 1080, the company has claimed. Based on Nvidia's Pascal architecture, this flagship gaming GPU includes next-gen 11-Gbps GDDR5X memory, and an 11-GB frame buffer. The GTX 1080 Ti, which will be available soon for $699, is even faster and more powerful than the more expensive Titan X Pascal.

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Autonomous Delivery Robots to Hit Virginia's Streets

Autonomous delivery robots this summer will be able to travel on sidewalks, crosswalks and shared-use paths throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. Gov. Terry McAullife recently signed a law permitting the use of Starship Technologies' Personal Delivery Devices, or PDDs. The six-wheeled robots, which resemble coolers, are designed to deliver parcels, groceries and food within a two-mile radius in 15-30 minutes. The PDDs weigh about 40 pounds and can carry a workload of up to 20 pounds. They travel at 4 mph.

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Black Lab Linux 8.0 Is a Rare Treat

The latest release of Black Lab Linux, an Ubuntu 16.04-based distribution, adds a Unity desktop option. You will not find Unity offered by any other major -- or nearly any minor -- Linux distributor outside of Ubuntu. Black Lab Linux 8.0, the consumer version of PC/OpenSystems' flagship distro, also updates several other prominent desktop options. Black Lab Linux is a general purpose community distribution for home users and SMBs. Black Lab Enterprise Linux, its commercial counterpart, targets businesses that want support services.

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Qualcomm, Microsoft to Give Cloud Services a Speed Boost

Qualcomm has announced a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate next-generation cloud services on the 10nm Qualcomm Centriq 2400 ARM-based platform. The collaboration will span multiple future generations of hardware, software and systems. The companies have been working for several years on ARM-based server enablement. They have been optimizing a version of Windows Server for ARM running on the Centriq 2400. "When two vendors see synergies, good things can happen," said Hoolger Mueller, a principal analyst at Constellation Research.

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The Terminal Is Where Linux Begins - and Where You Should, Too

Once you have a sense of the vast potential of Linux, you may be eager to experience it for yourself. Considering the complexity of modern operating systems, though, it can be hard to know where to start. As with many things, computers can be better understood through a breakdown of their evolution and operation. The terminal is not only where computers began, but also where their real power still resides. I'll provide here a brief introduction to the terminal, how it works, and how you can explore further on your own.

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WikiLeaks Dumps CIA Hacking Docs Online

WikiLeaks on Tuesday dumped thousands of classified documents onto the Internet, exposing hacking programs used by the CIA. The torrent of data is just the first in a series of dumps WikLeaks is calling "Vault 7." This first installment includes 8,761 documents and files stolen from an isolated high-security network within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence. This first batch of data introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal, and dozens of zero-day product exploits, WikiLeaks claimed.

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IBM's Quantum Leap Could Redefine 'Magic'

No, I'm not talking about that Quantum Leap. IBM just made a really interesting announcement in that it is enhancing its online quantum computer systems with a new API and improving its simulator so it can handle 20 qubits. While listening to the prebriefing was a bit like pretending I was Penny trying to understand Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang Theory, I think this move does showcase yet another huge approaching computing wave that could eclipse the one we currently are trying desperately, but largely failing, to ride.

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Google Invites Open Source Devs to Give E2EMail Encryption a Go

Google last week released its E2EMail encryption code to open source as a way of pushing development of the technology. "Google has been criticized over the amount of time and seeming lack of progress it has made in E2EMail encryption, so open sourcing the code could help the project proceed more quickly," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. That will not stop critics, as reactions to the decision have shown, he said. However, it should enable the company to focus its attention and resources on issues it believes are more pressing.

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GIT CEO Adriana Gascoigne: More Women in Tech Means More Problems Solved

Prior to founding Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne was one of very few women working at a startup. "I'd look around the room every day and see that there was a huge problem of representation. I knew we needed to change the culture of the company to recruit more women and benefit more women, but we also needed diversity in product development," she recalled. "If you have a diverse team, your product is going to be more successful. I think having a diverse group of people helps you to make a better product in the end."

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Twitter Adds Heft to Anti-Harassment Toolbox

Twitter over the next few months will roll out changes designed to increase the safety of users, including the following: Its algorithms will help identify accounts as they engage in abusive behavior, so the burden no longer will be on victims to report it; users will be able to restrict their tweets to followers for a set amount of time; new filtering options will give users more control over what they see from certain types of accounts; and new mute functionality will let users mute tweets from within their home timelines.

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Zorin Desktop Is a Crowd Pleaser

Zorin OS developers on Tuesday released Version 12.1, offering Linux users a patchwork of software and hardware updates with some performance enhancements and bug fixes. Zorin 12.1 follows the introduction three months ago of the project's 12 series. It is a minor update, but the amount of tweaking applied makes it worth upgrading to the .1 release. For instance, Zorin OS 12.1 introduces an updated hardware stack. It also includes Linux kernel 4.8, an upgrade from kernel version 4.4, and an updated X server graphics stack.

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USB-C Port, Curved Display Top Latest iPhone Rumor List

Apple poked a hornet's nest when it removed the standard headphone jack from the iPhone 7. It may do it again by replacing the Lightning port with USB-C in the next iPhone. The Lightning port, introduced in 2012, is used to charge and connect accessories to the iPhone, but Apple reportedly plans to swap it for USB-C, which the company has been introducing into its computer lines. "It would be a bold step for Apple, because it would mean Apple would be dependent on the advance of the USB-C standard," said IHS Markit Senior Director Ian Fogg.

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Cloudflare Nips Cloudbleed Bug in the Bud

Cloudflare has fixed the Cloudbleed software bug responsible for a buffer overrun problem that caused its edge servers to return private information in response to some HTTP requests. That private information included HTTP cookies, authentication tokens and HTTP POST bodies. However, SSL private keys weren't leaked, said Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming in an online post. "This happened in response to a very small number of requests in the Cloudflare system -- about 1 in 3.3 million," a Cloudflare spokesperson noted.

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