Archive for March 8, 2022

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Calico Secures $2.1m Led By Serena Ventures

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

Calico, developers of the first AI-powered smart supply chain management platform, announced today they have raised $2 million in seed funding. The growth financing is led by Serena Ventures following 300% growth since January 2022. Calico’s customer base ranges from emerging DTC brands to multi-million-dollar retail companies.

Through their end-to-end operating system, Calico provides brands a single source of truth for their product development, merchandising and purchasing functions. Coupled with Calico’s platform, is a sought after and extensively vetted manufacturing network that enables brands to stand up new product lines instantly. Brands using Calico have successfully reduced expensive production errors, accelerated time to market by 25 percent, and partnered with some of the world’s most coveted manufacturers.

Joining Serena Ventures in the heavily oversubscribed seed round is Maple VC, Inovia Capital, Hyphen Capital and a group of early Shopify employees. The startup has also garnered investments from leaders at renowned tech companies including Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack, Jeremy Lai, CEO of Italic and Deborah Liu, CEO of Ancestry. The company previously raised pre-seed funding from Forum Ventures. The new round brings Calico’s funding total to date to $2.15 million.

What distinguishes Calico from similar offerings is how they service the supply chain from concept to full production. Calico works as an extension of a brand’s sourcing and production team, empowering smaller brands to compete with giant retailers and achieve economies of scale. Streamlined supply chains mean accurate forecasting, inventory arriving when it’s needed, less cash held up in excess inventory.

Started after the founder’s lived experience scaling multiple DTC brands, Calico tackles critical supply chain problems that hinder most fast-growing brands. Today, products reach consumers through a chain made up of manufacturers, logistics firms, and retailers. Not surprisingly, the system is highly complex, fragmented, and under pressure. Current supply chains are marred by manual workflows and broken processes, which have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in the apparel and accessories industry, Calico’s main industry focus, $1.4 trillion is spent annually on inventory. This spending is usually managed on spreadsheets, email, or clunky outdated systems. With brands growing at a record pace and their spending increasing, these antiquated methods are no longer feasible.

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When It Comes To #AppleEvent, The Rumour Mill Pretty Much Much Got Everything Right

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

Apple just had their “Peek Performance” event and it seems that the rumours were largely correct. With one or two exceptions. So, let’s take my predictions from this article and see what I got right:

  • New iPhone SE: This one was pretty much nailed on. Apple released a new iPhone SE with an A15 processor, 5G, and camera upgrades. Just like the rumours said that they would.
  • New iPad Air: This too was pretty much nailed on as it got 5G as expected. The thing that caught some off guard was the fact that they put an M1 processor in it to make it a poor mans iPad Pro.
  • A new colour for the iPhone 13 along with new cases: The iPhone 13 and 13 Pro got a green color. As expected. As for cases, there appear to new cases on Apple.com that match what was leaked.
  • New Macs: I sort of got this one right. I said that one Mac would be released. And I said it was the Mac Mini. But the rumours of a new Mac called the Mac Studio leaked out late last week and came true today. This Mac Mini on steroids has the new M1 Ultra chip which is a pair of M1 Max chips which give you up to 128 GB of memory, 20 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores and 4 media engines, But it still has the best power to watt ratio says Apple. And it’s a safe bet that Pat Gelsinger who is the CEO of Intel is freaking out right now as this chip promises to destroy anything Intel makes.
  • No M2 MacBook Pro: I didn’t see this happening as I figured that Apple would want the M2 to have its own event. And surprise. It didn’t happen.
  • Wildcards: The Apple Studio Display was the wildcard. It has an A13 processor built in along with 6 speakers, a camera with Center Stage, studio quality mics, and 5K resolution. Strangely Apple didn’t mention the refresh rate. Thus I have to assume it is 60 Hz. Because if it was a ProMotion display, Apple would have made a big deal about it. Though rumours of that leaked out over the weekend as well.

In short, the rumour mill was right. Which means that Apple should hire a plumber or two as they have a serious leaking problem in their environment.

Now with every Apple Event there are products that get killed. I just took a look at Apple.com and the 27″ iMac with an Intel chip is now gone. Thus leaving the Mac Pro as the only Mac with Intel Inside. But clearly its days are numbered as Apple teased that a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon was coming at another event. WWDC perhaps?

So, what didn’t get leaked? We’ll there’s the new Apple Watch Bands for spring to match the new iPhone cases. Though, Apple does have a history of putting out new bands at the same time that they put out new cases. So that’s likely not that big of a deal. But what also didn’t get leaked was Apple cutting a deal with Major League Baseball to have exclusive Friday night games on Apple TV+. There were rumours of that about a week ago. But the way it sounded, Apple wasn’t close to a deal. Thus this was the closest thing to a surprise that this event had.

So what are you most excited about from today’s Apple event? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

UPDATE: The Intel Mac Mini also appears to still be available. Strange.

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A Vulnerability Called Dirty Pipe Has Been Found In Linux

Posted in Commentary on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

This is bad if you rely on Linux. A extremely severe vulnerability has been found in Linux and it is named Dirty Pipe.

The name Dirty Pipe is meant to both signal similarities to Dirty Cow and provide clues about the new vulnerability’s origins. “Pipe” refers to a pipeline, a Linux mechanism for one OS process to send data to another process. In essence, a pipeline is two or more processes that are chained together so that the output text of one process (stdout) is passed directly as input (stdin) to the next one. Tracked as CVE-2022-0847, the vulnerability came to light when a researcher for website builder CM4all was troubleshooting a series of corrupted files that kept appearing on a customer’s Linux machine. After months of analysis, the researcher finally found that the customer’s corrupted files were the result of a bug in the Linux kernel.

Fortunately, this is fixed:

The vulnerability first appeared in Linux kernel version 5.8, which was released in August 2020. The vulnerability persisted until last month, when it was fixed with the release of versions 5.16.11, 5.15.25, and 5.10.102.

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HP Indigo Celebrates ‘100 100K’ Installs

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

HP Inc. today announced the delivery of the 100th HP Indigo 100K Digital Press marking a milestone as customers continue to thrive on the breakthrough press. Adding to their existing fleet of 5 HP Page Wide and Indigo products, award winning print service provider Solopress, continues in their digital transformation this month, with the installation of the HP Indigo 100K Digital press. 

Also being celebrated today, is the 10 year anniversary of the introduction of the HP Indigo B2 portfolio. Since we first introduced the HP Indigo 10000 at drupa 2012 we saw a real revolution in this market. During the last decade, some customers choosing to make long term investments in new fleets, in order to continue to keep up with a surge in orders and customer needs, as the expansion in digital transformation continues globally.

The HP Indigo 100K Digital Press – the most productive digital B2 press in the market, printing up to 6000 sheets per hour, allowing commercial printers to shift greater volumes from offset to digital to meet today’s needs producing a range of commercial applications with superb print quality, high productivity, the range responsible for delivering 60 million B2 sheets per month and shows no sign of slowing.

Also announced today, is the global availability of the B2 HP Indigo 15K Digital Press. Continuing to offer the widest range of B2 application printing in the market, the world’s best selling B2 digital platform, currently has 1200 operating presses in 70 countries globally. The B2 HP Indigo 15K is engineered to address the broadest variety of customer demands in a highly productive way, it features greater media support, including 15 electroinks and unlimited spot colours. 

Continually evolving the platform, HP also announces today the availability of the Auto Pallet Replacement and 5th color station for the HP Indigo 100K Digital Press. Ensuring the printing process doesn’t pause, users are able to utilise a new standby pallet which engages every batch and job as the user requires, pushing the printed stack outside the delivery unit allowing the operator to print, stack and unload as much or little as they need. This system will be available in 2022. 

Ending 2021 with increased momentum, following strong quarterly results and the introduction of technologies including HP xRServices powered by Microsoft Hololens 2 and Print OS Site Flow, HP Indigo continues to match customer demand with services and solutions that support growth, drive digital adoption and integration and support an ever changing industry in 2022. 

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Dasera Announces Its Mt. Rainier Release

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

Dasera, the leader in cloud data protection, today announced its new Mt. Rainier product release. This release fundamentally transforms how short-handed Security and Compliance teams collaborate with Data teams to scale employee access to enterprise cloud data.

The cloud continues to revolutionize the amount of data enterprises are storing and using. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, data stored globally will exceed 200 zettabytes (ZB) in 2025, with over 100 ZB of data in the cloud.

But Security and Compliance teams tasked with protecting data are already overwhelmed. Security teams don’t have sufficient context to know which data are sensitive and who should/shouldn’t have access. Compliance teams don’t have the technology to enforce compliance policies and have largely relied on manual, time consuming audits and self-attestations. Meanwhile, more employees need access to more data to make better decisions. The challenge of empowering employees while protecting data at cloud scale and cloud velocity has largely remained unsolved.

Until now.

Dasera built its Mt. Rainier release by working closely with its early customers. The Mt. Rainier release dramatically improves cross-functional collaboration and to better protect data at scale. The Mt. Rainier release incorporates tailored roles, interfaces, and customized workflows for Data and Compliance team members, all of which save time, streamline cross-functional coordination, and help to detect and eliminate risk as early as possible.

Dasera customers can see value in less than an hour, as Dasera immediately discovers all cloud data stores, and starts classifying all data fields. Security team members can leverage the expertise and knowledge of the Data team to review sensitive data classifications. Data team members can be automatically notified when new fields are discovered in their data sets, improving data quality and data protection. Compliance team members can use Dasera’s no-code policy editor to transform on-paper-only policies into tailor policies that trigger notifications when potential compliance violations occur.

The Mt. Rainier launch follows an eventful year for the company. Dasera achieved SOC II Type II accreditation, created a new Engineering Center of Excellence in India, and grew customer adoption by 100%.

Industry Recognition

Analyst organizations such as Intellyx recognize the growing need of data protection and that best-of-breed technology is addressing the gaps in existing approaches.

In addition, Dasera has won over 10 industry awards in the past year. Highlights include:

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HP Indigo & The Hershey Company Bring Women’s Stories To Life

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

The Hershey Company has been leveraging the power of digital printing technology to transform its iconic chocolate bar packaging into a celebration of women. Now in its third year, and coinciding with International Women’s Day, the #HerShe campaign, sees Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar packaging being used to promote and honor female talent across the world.

First launching the campaign in 2020, Hershey collaborated with HP Indigo and used a highly productive, cost-effective HP Indigo 20000 digital press, by Brazilian print service provider Camargo Cia de Embalagens Ltda, to develop 320,000 limited edition #HerShe chocolate bars. The campaign, which featured artwork to celebrate the talent of female musicians, illustrators, photographers and poets throughout Brazil, saw huge success. In Brazil, the parallel social media campaign reached close to 2 billion impressions.

Fast forward to 2022, the campaign is being run in collaboration with HP Indigo digitally printed packaging for a third time and will help make ‘invisible women, visible by supporting gender equality through a global movement that celebrates female achievements in science, business, sports, activism, and music. This year, the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars will feature a QR code, also printed with an HP Indigo 20000 digital press, that will open consumers’ eyes to the many contributions of women, beyond each bar. In addition, HP will be unveiling a film with Hershey, amplifying how HP Indigo’s digitally printed packaging can be used, not only to keep food safe and airtight, but also to elevating brand engagement through the co-creation of user generated content, to become the ultimate vehicle for cultural relevance and on-pack storytelling.

Recent research carried out by WARC (Sept 2021) on the Marketing Effectiveness of Digitally Printed Packaging, in which more than 9,000 marketing campaigns were analyzed and benchmarked, highlighted that brands have the potential to double their sales and marketing ROI when they utilize personalization and most importantly, user generated content in their packaging.

You can watch the video via this link  and follow the conversation via #HerForShe and #HerShe

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Executives From GRIMM Provide Commentary On International Women’s Day #breakthebias

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd


Today as you know is International Women’s Day. Thus I thought it would be an ideal time to bring some perspectives from three executives from Cybersecurity company GRIMM:

Jennifer Tisdale, CEO:

We need more diversity in this industry. Simply put, if everyone in the industry looks the same, grew up the same, received their education from the same universities we will never achieve the ultimate diversity goal — diversity of thought and problem-solving ability. We need to start talking to and encouraging our young ladies while they are children. Middle school is the age most educators say they begin to lose girls from STEM programs. More encouragement, more representation in their lives, redefining what a career in a STEM field means and all the different interpretations of what this will mean in the future will be incredibly important. We are not very inclusive when we talk about STEM careers. It usually involves engineering jobs, but the truth is STEM careers take many forms. I’ll illustrate using the example of cars. As cars become more automated, and at some point autonomous, we are having discussions about the importance of psychology professionals in the field to help write ethical code. Other sciences and arts will evolve the cyber industry and we need more of everyone, but especially women to be in this field.

Naki Carter, Marketing Director:

I love this year’s “Break the Bias” theme for Women’s History Month, which promotes gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow. It also highlights the deliberate or unconscious bias that has prevented women from excelling professionally. All young girls and women should feel empowered to become digital pioneers and pursue careers in tech and cybersecurity. While amplifying diverse voices sounds excellent in principle, and the business benefits are astounding, a cultural shift towards a fair and equitable workplace is easier said than done. Why? Because it’s a change in mindset that requires embracing vulnerabilities, acknowledging stereotypes, and committing to take immediate action on corporate initiatives. Cybersecurity companies like GRIMM are being intentional about making a positive difference through inclusive hiring practices and promoting equity in all facets of the company culture. GRIMM also has some of the most progressive allies who champion DEI. I encourage technology leaders to prioritize seeking innovative ideas and minds to disrupt the technology landscape positively. Together, if we leverage power for good, we can #BreakTheBias.

Dana Bridges, Talent Acquisition Manager: 

As a female Talent Acquisition Manager in cybersecurity, I feel I have a fiduciary responsibility to advocate for female candidates and set them up for success. In my role at GRIMM, I prioritize recruiting top talent and positioning them where they can grow, thrive, and belong. As the company’s front line to the workforce, I see shocking instances every day where women sell themselves short, from their salary requirements to their skillsets. I’m here to help #breakthebias by showing women their worth, applauding their success, and encouraging them to shatter right through those glass ceilings. This is the lens through which we operate, and it’s one of many reasons I’m proud to work at GRIMM.

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Google Buys Mandiant For $5.4 Billion

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

Google has announced that it will buy Mandiant who are best known for discovering the Solarwinds hack for $5.4 billion:

The acquisition of Mandiant will complement Google Cloud’s existing strengths in security. Google Cloud offers customers a robust set of services including pioneering capabilities such as BeyondCorp Enterprise for Zero Trust and VirusTotal for malicious content and software vulnerabilities; Chronicle’s planet-scale security analytics and automation coupled with services such as Security Command Center to help organizations detect and protect themselves from cyber threats; as well as expertise from Google Cloud’s Cybersecurity Action Team. With the addition of Mandiant, Google Cloud will enhance these offerings to deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments. 

Google’s acquisition is still dependent on approval from Mandiant’s stockholders, and also the approval of various regulatory bodies. Antitrust enforcers will probably scrutinize whether the acquisition will limit access to Mandiant services and products by competitors or customers.

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SCENE+ Gives Members More To Look Forward To

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

SCENE and Scotiabank Rewards merged and recently launched Scene+ Scene+ –– a new, robust lifestyle rewards program that gives Canadians the opportunity to earn and redeem more points faster, in ways that are right for them, for their lifestyle and at their favourite places.  

Along with the new program, Scene+ has launched an all-new intuitive mobile app for members to use for their everyday purchases across a large, flexible, and growing list of rewards partners, including Expedia Group, Rakuten, Best Buy, Apple, 700+ Recipe restaurants and gift cards from 60+ popular brands. 

As part of the launch, Scene+ created an interactive ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ calendar and shared with influencers across Canada. The calendars include educational details and prompts that allow influencers to experience all the possibilities the program has to offer; from shopping to dining, entertainment to travel. Each influencer will share content from their experience. Influencers include: 

·         Roxy Earle

·         Tyrone Edwards

·         Deanna Woo

·         Afiya Francisco 

·         Winston Sih 

·         Priscilla Ventura 

·         Marissa Roberto 

Earn rewards with new partners like Expedia Group, Rakuten, Best Buy, Apple, 700+ restaurants and gift cards from 60+ locations.  

  • Scene+ members can earn 1 point for every $3 spent at over 700 restaurants like Swiss Chalet, Montana’s, Harvey’s, Kelsey’s, East Side Mario’s and much more. 
  • With Scene+ Rakuten, members can earn up to 20% more Cash Back in points – you earn rewards while shopping! 
  • Members can also redeem points for gift cards from 60+ popular brands, like Sephora, Indigo, Gap, Home Hardware and more.   

With Scene+ Travel, Powered by Expedia Group, members can redeem points for flights, hotels and even car rentals – AND you can earn points too when booking travel  

  • Earn 3 points for every $1 spent on hotel or car rental through Scene+ Travel, Powdered by Expedia Group. 

Members can still enjoy perks at Cineplex, The Rec Room, and Playdium.   

  • Earn 5 points for every $1 at Cineplex and the Cineplex Store, plus 1 point for every $1 spent at The Rec Room and Playdium. 

Members can redeem more points faster with their Scotiabank banking cards. 

  • Earn points on everyday purchases with a Scotiabank Scene+ payment card and redeem for a statement credit on your Scene+ credit card or bank account. 
  • Redeeming points for credit is easy, simply visit ScenePlus.ca 

You can find out more by clicking here.

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Guest Post: 52% Of Women Believe Their Gender Is Limiting Their Careers In The Tech Industry

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 8, 2022 by itnerd

Today we can celebrate many talented women who have helped shape the world of technology as we know it. Nevertheless, women are still largely underrepresented in the tech industry and face many obstacles when pursuing a career in the field. 

According to data presented by Atlas VPN 52% of women believe their gender is limiting their career in tech, and one-fifth of women are thinking about leaving their current position.

Women see a lack of promotion opportunities as the most significant barrier to their career advancement in the tech industry. Overall, 38% of women surveyed cited this as a career hinderer.

For 35% of women, a lack of confidence is one of the core impediments of career continuation in tech. Meanwhile, 33% find a lack of relatable senior role models and senior sponsorship a problem. 

Other tech career barriers for women include difficulty balancing work and other responsibilities (31%), and sexism and gender bias (29%).

Women take up less than one-fourth of technical roles in big tech companies

Despite increasing discussions about gender diversity in the technology industry, men still hold the vast majority of positions in tech, even in top companies.

As of June 2021, women made up about 47% of the US workforce. However, in top tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, the percentage of female employees ranged from 45% to 29%. 

The number of women in technical positions at these companies was even lower. On average, women occupied less than one in four technical positions (25% to 23%) at the aforementioned companies. 

Overall, all of the top five tech companies had more female employees in leadership roles than technical jobs. Still, the numbers are far from parity, and gender equality in the tech workforce has a long way to go. 

Ruta Cizinauskaite, the cybersecurity researcher and writer at Atlas VPN, shares her thoughts on the situation: “The lack of women representation in tech is an issue that has been ignored for far too long. To begin with, we should acknowledge the barriers that prevent women from continuing to pursue careers in tech and work to remove them. Only by working together can we make a difference.”

To read the full article, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/52-of-women-believe-their-gender-is-limiting-their-careers-in-the-tech-industry

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