Articles by Jack M. Germain

Plans to bring facial recognition to major U.S. airports by 2021 are on a fast flight path, despite concerns about the new technology's readiness President Trump in 2017 issued an executive order expediting the deployment of biometric verification of the identities of all travelers crossing U.S. borders. It stipulates that facial recognition identi...

Parrot offers several options for running a Linux operating system that pays much closer attention to security matters If you already are handy with digital forensic tasks and want a state-of-the-art system to handle pentesting and privacy issues, check out the Parrot Security release....

Google wants to become your digital shopping catalog through shoppable ads The company on Tuesday said it is testing a new format on a small percentage of traffic with select retailers. Merchants can highlight multiple products available for sale within a sponsored ad among Google Images results.

Target has reported higher gains in last year's holiday sales, largely due to improved e-commerce strategies and store makeovers, and has offered an upbeat outlook for 2019 The company on Tuesday said that its stores fulfilled nearly 75 percent of its fourth-quarter digital sales. Target's earnings rose 4.5 percent in the final quarter of 2018.

Pitney Bowes on Monday unveiled Consumer Connect, a self-service post-purchase marketing solution for retailers and brands. Pitney Bowes provides commerce solutions in the areas of shipping and mailing, data and e-commerce. The Consumer Connect service helps retailers drive new revenue after shoppers press the buy button. It enables retailers to c...

EasyOS is an experimental Linux distribution that either will renew your passion for using something different or leave you disappointed in its oddball approach to computing EasyOS is a blend of the best ideas from Puppy Linux and the now-discontinued Quirky Linux. I have used several of the popular Puppy Linux variants over the years. I adopted Qu...

Amazon on Thursday announced Project Zero, a program that empowers vendors to help drive counterfeits down. The anti-counterfeit campaign will employ Amazon's advanced technology, machine learning and innovation. Amazon will partner with Project Zero's participating vendors to protect their intellectual property by detecting and removing counterfe...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced a settlement of its suit against a company accused of using fake paid reviews to boost sales of its health supplement product on Amazon The settlement puts vendors and marketing firms on notice that the FTC is committed to rigorous enforcement of rules against fraudulent reviews on e-commerce p...

A new cryptovirus called "B0r0nt0K" has been putting Linux and possibly Windows Web servers at risk of encrypting all of the infected domain's files The new ransomware threat and the ransom of 20 bitcoins (about US$75,000) first came to light last week, based on a post on Bleeping Computer's user forum....

The subject of this week's Linux Picks and Pans is a representative of a less well-known computing platform that coexists with Linux as an open source operating system. If you thought that the Linux kernel was the only open source engine for a free OS, think again. BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) shares many of the same features that make Li...

Working with the Linux operating system offers a never-ending series of alternatives. One of the greatest benefits of using the Linux desktop is that you are never at risk of vendor lock-in or of being stranded if your chosen distro flavor suddenly sours.

If you need a task manager application to run on your Linux operating system, tap into a software category filled with options that go far beyond the to-do list app you have stuffed into your smartphone Keeping up to date with multiple daily activity calendars, tons of information, and never-ending must-do lists can become a never-ending challenge....

Endless OS is an unusual Linux distro in that its user interface is more like an Android smartphone or tablet than a Linux desktop computer platform....

A new Linux OS gets to the core of Linux computing with a revamped desktop environment and a new way to have fun with your daily computing tasks Developer Jacque Montague Raymer on Monday debuted the MakuluLinux Core OS. He hopes Core becomes the crown jewel of the Series 15 release family....

Blackbird, Netrunner's version 19.01 release, hit the download servers on Jan. 14, and this distro deserves to be considered bleeding-edge.

Linux apps can now run in a Chromebook's Chrome OS environment. However, the process can be tricky, and it depends on your hardware's design and Google's whims Running Android apps on your Chromebook is somewhat similar, but the Linux connection is far less forgiving. If it works in your Chromebook's flavor, though, the computer becomes much more u...

Independent software vendors, along with Internet of Things and cloud vendors, are involved in a market transformation that is making them look more alike. The similarities are evident in the way they approach software security initiatives, according to a report from Synopsys Synopsys on Tuesday released its ninth annual Building Security in Maturi...

Sometimes it takes more than a few tweaks to turn an old-style desktop design into a fresh new Linux distribution. That is the case with the public release of Blue Collar Linux....

Keeping up to date with multiple daily activity calendars, tons of information, and long must-do lists can be a never-ending challenge. This week's Linux Picks and Pans reviews the best open source Personal Information Managers (PIMs) that will serve you well on whatever Linux distribution you run In theory, computer tools should make managing a fl...

Online and Internet security are not topics that typical computer users easily comprehend. All too often, Linux users put their blind trust in a particular distribution and assume that all Linux OSes are equally secure However, not all Linux distros are created with the same degree of attention to security and privacy control. A misconfiguration of...