Articles by Jack M. Germain

Three leading smart speaker technology makers -- Amazon, Google and Apple -- have suspended contractor review of consumer recordings following disclosures that the devices are nearly always listening and have captured personal, business and other delicate human interactions Consumers using smart speakers and digital assistant apps from Amazon and G...

TROM-Jaro Linux offers a new twist on the concept of open source as free software First released as a beta version last December, TROM-Jaro's second and current non-beta release was pushed out in June....

GitHub is blocking users in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria from accessing its services to comply with U.S. trade control laws. The Microsoft-owned company disclosed the action on a support page as a courtesy, noting that GitHub users ultimately are responsible for ensuring that their use of GitHub's products and services complies with a...

Microsoft wants to empower its Azure cloud computing service with yet-to-exist artificial general intelligence (AGI) technologies to create new goals for supercomputing Microsoft on Monday announced a US$1B investment through a partnership with OpenAI to build new AI technologies. The two companies hope to extend Microsoft Azure's capabilities in l...

KDE Neon is a bit of an oddball Linux thing. Linuxland has an impressive collection of oddball things....

Earthlings have a natural inclination to gaze at the heavenly bodies. Many even dream of reaching for the stars. Mae C. Jemison is actually planning to get humans to other solar systems within the next century Her goal is not an idle fancy. She has already been to space and back. Now, her passion is to unite humanity to focus on traveling beyond ou...

Twitter on Tuesday unveiled a fresh new look for its desktop website that mimics the look and feel of its mobile platforms The company has been testing a new version of its desktop website since the beginning of the year. The most noticeable change is the organization and layout of the Twitter home screen itself....

Qualcomm Technologies aims to push the speed limits of mobile gaming with the added features in its Snapdragon Mobile Platform announced Monday The Snapdragon 855 Plus Mobile Platform, its newest processor, performs graphics functions 15 percent faster. It will show up in new devices later this year....

After 25 months of development, the makers of the granddaddy of the Linux OSes released an upgrade that updates many of the software packages and plays general catch-up with modern Linux trends....

Amazon workers at the Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center plan to strike for six hours on July 15, the first day of Amazon's annual Prime Day sales event. The strike threat reportedly is linked to unsafe working conditions at Amazon's warehouses, caused by low wages and pressure to meet shipping demands. Union officials also want a larger port...

Mageia 7 redefines the concept of traditional Linux....

The next big Raspberry Pi thing is now here, with lots more computing power and more options The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Monday announced the availability of Raspberry Pi 4, a comprehensive upgrade that touches nearly every element of the computing platform....

Regolith Linux brings together three unusual computing components that make traipsing into the i3 tiling window manager world out-of-the-box easy....

Walmart has a new weapon in the grocery delivery wars against other top e-commerce rivals Walmart online shoppers can subscribe to a US$98-per-year "Delivery Unlimited" plan that aims to siphon customers from Amazon's Whole Foods and Target's home delivery programs....

Sometimes new Linux distros still in beta-only status can offer pleasant surprises with a key feature not available elsewhere. Check out Enso OS for a prime example....

Two of the more commonly used cloud storage services for personal use are Google Drive and Dropbox. Both cloud services are simple to set up and use reliably. Either one can be a suitable choice for storing personal files using free or paid plans That said, Google Drive, despite long-festering promises by Google to provide a non-browser-based file ...

Fraudsters have been stealing online advertisers blind -- to the tune of US$23 billion, based on the latest industry report from Cheq "The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet, Ad Fraud 2019" conservatively places the direct global economic costs of ad fraud at $23 billion and suggests that indirect economic and social costs might increase t...

MX Linux is a blend of mostly old and some new things. The result is an appealing midweight Linux operating system The midweight category is a bit unusual. Desktop environments that run well on minimal hardware typically fall into the lightweight category. Lightweight environments like Xfce, LXDE/LXQt, Enlightenment, and iceWM often are paired with...

Payment processing company Stripe on Monday launched Chargeback Protection, a machine learning-based system to limit the impact of fraudulent credit card transactions on merchants A chargeback is a demand by a credit card provider for a retailer to make good on a fraudulent or disputed transaction by repaying the full purchase amount plus a chargeb...

Open-source operating systems, in general, are less worrisome because their code is open to inspection by anyone with the skills to understand it. Does that mean Linux computing platforms from nongovernmental sources in politically tense countries are equally worry-free? At least one situation last year brought FOSS' safe-to-use reputation into que...