Samantha Donaldson

The Dark Side: How Hackers are Manipulating Our World

By Samantha Donaldson July 14, 2017July 13, 2017

To the average web developer, a hacker may seem simply like a nuisance, easily avoidable with the implementation of security standards and encryption methods. However, to many Americans nationwide, hackers are often defined as “super geniuses” which can “crack” into anything and terrorize our world. The main reason for this somewhat misguided interpretation of the hacking community is the fact that the media typically portrays these individuals as coffee-guzzling, cigarette-smoking rebels dressed in black, hiding in shadows, and wreaking havoc using techniques that are not only visually absurd but also completely inaccurate — think the new Fast and The Furious movie or the 1985 film Weird Science.

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WannaCry Ransomware: Who It Affected and Why It Matters

By Samantha Donaldson May 19, 2017May 18, 2017

Technology is an ever-expanding market full of opportunity and dedicated to making our lives more convenient and advanced in the process. Countless companies across the world have recognized the power in embracing technology to survive and prosper and, with this being said, the world has never been more advanced than it is today — with a future as bright as the people creating it. Furthermore, although many people believe that the modern generation is completely out of their minds and “lazy”, what they do not realize is that this form of innovation and free thinking is exactly what makes these “digital natives” so similar to their ancestors of the Industrial Revolution before them.

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Infinispan’s Java 8 Streams Capabilities

By Samantha Donaldson April 26, 2017April 25, 2017

Let’s be honest: it’s pretty exciting that Infinispan now supports Java 8 for many reasons, but perhaps one of the most anticipated reasons is because of the new stream classes. The main reason for this is the fact that it completely transforms the way we process data. Instead of having to iterate upon the data yourself, the underlying stream does this for you, and all you have to do is provide the operations to perform on it. This is perfect for distributed processing because the implementation handles the iteration entirely.

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Service Workers in the Browser (Not Clerks The Movie)

By Samantha Donaldson March 30, 2017March 29, 2017

As long as there are humans on earth, places to travel to, and mobile devices in their hands, the need to be able to view content offline will remain, and the APIs created to tackle these issues will continue to progress along with the demand. The newest script hoping to support offline experiences and put the control in the hands of the developer is the Service Worker API and, luckily for developers, this API found solutions to most of the issues regarding its predecessor, AppCache, in the process.

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Installing Linux on an Android Phone

By Samantha Donaldson March 16, 2017March 14, 2017

As a web developer, being able to run a Linux distro alongside your pre-existing mobile OS on your android phone is a very enticing offer. With a fully functional Linux program in your pocket at all times, you can begin to utilize your phone for various processes including powering a LAMP server and turning the device into a portable network, troubleshooting tool, and pen-testing device.

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Wearable Tech: A Developer’s Security Nightmare

By Samantha Donaldson March 6, 2017June 2, 2017

Web developers and IT professionals are the foundations of any quality business’ data security.

However, with technology constantly changing and evolving as well as becoming more consumer-friendly, this data’s vulnerability only increases and it can often be hard to even notice how this new technology can actually affect your company until it occurs. Despite this, ignorance to modern hacking techniques does not refute their inability to transform even the smallest of devices into a weapon with which to infect or intrude upon data and the effects of this on a company can mean massive destruction in the infrastructure and beyond.

One of the newest data security threats posed to the IoT, in particular, is the rise of the wearable technology industry. With companies like FitBit and Google developing glasses, fitness trackers, and watches that make everyday life a little bit easier, it may seem as if the wearable tech industry is nothing more than a fun and exciting way to incorporate technology into the average consumer’s life, however, this is not entirely the case.

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The Year of Data Breaches: Why Encryption and Reformatting SSD’s is Not Enough

By Samantha Donaldson March 1, 2017March 3, 2017

2016 was certainly an interesting year and, although we could probably discuss the election alone for an hour, there is one particular epidemic which has plagued the developer community in more ways than we probably care to mention. It seems as though even the best data encryption and reformatting of SSD’s is slowly becoming not enough when it comes to the continuous evolution of the hacker community and this is a pretty unsettling situation.

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