Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Delivery by drone of packages to the doorstep of consumers has been slow in coming, but 2024 could be the year the technology finally takes flight Zipline, a drone delivery outfit in San Francisco, is set to pull the chocks away from a handful of projects in U.S. cities next year, with plans to be flying in 15 burgs by 2025, according to a report b...

The use of generative AI technology has moved beyond the curiosity phase for retailers and become the foundation for software business applications that enable enterprises to conduct business better and more quickly, according to a report released Monday by Coresight Research and Digital Wave Technology The 19-page report outlined how generative AI...

Certification of Wi-Fi 7- the next generation in wireless networking for home, enterprise, and industrial environments- is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2024, according to a post on the Wi-Fi Alliance website "Wi-Fi Certified 7, based on IEEE 802.11be technology, will be available before the end of Q1 2024," the Alliance, an industry ...

A highway safety group released a report Tuesday urging communities to deploy automated enforcement programs using traffic cameras The report by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) maintained that such programs are needed to address the ever-increasing number of roadway fatalities. Over the last decade, traffic deaths have increased 30%...

Quick Response codes can be very convenient for traveling to websites, downloading apps, and viewing menus at restaurants, which is why they've become a vehicle for bad actors to steal credentials, infect mobile devices, and invade corporate systems "We are seeing an exponential uptick in targeted attacks against mobile devices, many of them phishi...

A study of the psychological well-being of two million individuals from 2005 to 2022 in 168 countries released Tuesday by the Oxford Internet Institute found "smaller and less consistent associations than would be expected if the internet were causing widespread psychological harm." "We looked very hard for a ‘smoking gun’ linking technology an...

This may be the season to be jolly for many holiday celebrants, but for porch pirates, it's time to raise the Jolly Roger There seems to be an increased concern about porch pirates during the holiday season, according to Maria Pearlman, spokesperson for Lombardo Homes, a residential home builder headquartered in Shelby Township, Mich....

TV set-top boxes infected with malware are being sold online at Amazon and other resellers, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants the Federal Trade Commission to put a stop to it "Recent reports have revealed various models of Android TV set-top boxes and mobile devices that are being sold by resellers Amazon, AliExpress, and other smaller v...

Despite Microsoft's introduction of generative AI into its search engine Bing, the company has failed to cut into the share of market leader Google According to the latest numbers from market tracker StatCounter, Google's market share of search in the United States in October was 88.1%, a slight increase over its October share in 2022 of 86.75%....

A new initiative to better identify child predators who obscure their activity by jumping among tech platforms was announced Tuesday by The Tech Coalition, an industry group that includes Discord, Google, Mega, Meta, Quora, Roblox, Snap, and Twitch The initiative, called Lantern, allows companies in the coalition to share information about potentia...

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence venture xAI on Saturday announced a generative AI engine called Grok, which could be a potential competitor to leaders in the field, such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude "Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what quest...

Just when it looked like a competitor was going to outflank Apple in the processor wars, the Cupertino, Calif. company raised the bar once again At a pre-recorded evening event streamed online Monday, Apple announced three new processors with better performance and power management capabilities than previous generations of its silicon....

Big Tech leaders are exaggerating the existential threat AI poses to humanity to solidify their market shares through government regulation, a leading figure in artificial intelligence told an Australian financial publication Monday "There are definitely large tech companies that would rather not have to try to compete with open source, so they're ...

Large numbers of Gen Z and millennial TikTok users are frequently mining the platform for career advice, according to the results of an October survey of 1,000 full-time U.S. workers from ages 21 to 40 released Tuesday by ResumeBuilder.com The findings underscore social media's role in influencing professional decisions, especially among younger ge...

Apple is prepared to spend billions to catch the leaders in generative AI technology, according to Bloomberg Apple watcher Mark Gurman In his Power On newsletter Sunday, Gurman wrote that three Apple execs -- John Giannandrea, Craig Federighi, and Eddy Cue -- are leading the company's generative AI push and are on a course to spend US$1 billion a y...

Employees in nearly three out of four organizations worldwide are using generative AI tools frequently or occasionally, but despite the security threats posed by unchecked use of the apps, employers don't seem to know what to do about it That was one of the main takeaways from a survey of 1,200 IT and security leaders located around the world relea...

Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Zillow are the fastest-loading U.S. websites on the internet, according to a study released Monday by web design company DigitalSilk The study rated popular websites based on average mobile and desktop load times. Craigslist crowned the list of fastest sites with an average of 1.35 seconds, 2.0 seconds on mobile, and 0.7 ...

Google hammered another nail in the coffin for passwords Tuesday when it announced it's making passkeys the default login method for its personal accounts That means when users sign in to their personal accounts, they'll see a prompt to create and use a passkey -- typically a face scan, fingerprint, or PIN -- as well as the "Skip password when poss...

If law enforcement officers can use technology to track people, then people ought to be able to return the favor, according to a robotics hacker who created a service enabling people to monitor police activity using Bluetooth Alan Meekins, aka Nullagent, explained at the Def Con conference this summer how a major equipment provider to law enforceme...

Artificial intelligence is coming to more than 100 drive-thru lanes at White Castle, the fast food hamburger chain that invented the "slider" in 1921 The company announced Tuesday that the project will tap into the proprietary voice AI technology of SoundHound and digital signage from Samsung Electronics America to deliver a state-of-the-art custom...