Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Qualcomm unveiled a new Snapdragon chip on Tuesday, designed to give entry-level mobile phones more muscle and 5G connectivity The Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 platform promises all-day battery life, improved camera capabilities, and 1 Gbps peak 5G speeds -- seven times faster than LTE platforms in the same price tier....

One of the largest ransomware payouts that's become public was reported Tuesday by cloud security firm Zscaler The US$75 million payment made to the Dark Angels ransomware group was discovered by Zscaler's security research arm ThreatLabz earlier this year, according to the company's annual ransomware report, which covers a period from April 2023 t...

With the announcement on Tuesday of its low-cost, on-road delivery robot, a San Francisco Bay Area startup believes it has the solution to the high cost of delivering products ordered online The four-wheel robot made by Vayu Robotics eschews expensive LiDAR technology typically used by on-road driverless vehicles in favor of a transformer-based mob...

Since Friday, organizations have been struggling to get their operations up and running after a software update by security vendor CrowdStrike set off an epidemic of "blue screens of death" globally, commonly known as the screen of death for Windows users On Monday, global technology advisory firm Gartner released a research note outlining short-te...

A substantial number of workers are using ChatGPT to get pay raises and promotions, according to survey results recently released by a resume resource website Some 38% of workers say ChatGPT helped them land a pay raise, and 29% say it helped them secure a promotion, according to a survey of 1,666 U.S. employees who spend most or all of their workd...

While large language AI models continue to make headlines, small language models are where the action is. At least, that's what Meta appears to be betting on, according to a paper recently released by a team of its research scientists Large language models, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama, can use billions, even trillions, of parameters to obtain t...

If electric vehicles are going to start crowding gasoline burners off America's roads, not only will its charging infrastructure need a big boost, but so will the software at its charging stations "Software has a very important role to play in improving the ownership and charging experience for EVs," said Edward Sanchez, a senior analyst in the aut...

Ten technologies that need to be on every company's radar were identified Tuesday in a trends report released by global technology research company Forrester The 30-page report identified four technologies expected to deliver benefits in the short term to companies, four predicted to deliver benefits in the medium term, and two that will deliver be...

If a company wants to send customers to a competitor, serving up a negative online experience is a good way to do it, according to survey results released Monday by a quality testing company In a study of 500 U.S. consumers, Sauce Labs discovered more than 50% of them say they'll bolt to the competition if they have from three to four negative onli...

Microsoft aims to boost the PC market with artificial intelligence and Windows 11, but a collateral consequence of those moves could be an early trip to a landfill for many computers "Windows 11 itself does not directly contribute to e-waste," said Kieren Jessop, an analyst with Canalys, a global market research company. "However, due to its hardwa...

Websites posing as local news outlets funded by partisan groups have surged past the number of sites of independent daily newspapers on the internet, according to a report released Tuesday by a disinformation watchdog According to NewsGuard Technologies, a company that evaluates and rates the trustworthiness of news and information websites, the nu...

"Apple Intelligence," the company's answer to the likes of Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, didn't exhibit many tricks not already seen on those other platforms, but it did excel in two areas: integration and privacy The technology, announced in a prerecorded presentation Monday at Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference, largely taps i...

Intel raised the curtain Tuesday on some new tech it's banking will recoup some lost ground to its chip-making rivals At the annual Computex expo in Taiwan, the company announced a new generation of processors for data centers, pricing on its AI accelerator kits, and the architecture for an AI PC chip....

An effective approach to children’s online safety needs to strike a balance between protecting kids' user privacy and free speech, as well as distributing responsibility to the government, online services, and parents, according to a report released Monday by a Washington, D.C. technology think tank No amount of regulation will completely eradica...

Google announced on Tuesday that it's joining the AI laptop party by baking new smart features into its new generation of Chromebook Plus computers The new features include "Help Me Write," AI-generated videoconferencing backgrounds, Magic Editor for photos, and direct access to Google's gen AI agent Gemini directly from a Chromebook's home screen....

How should policymakers handle the many concerns raised by the introduction of artificial intelligence into society? The Center for Data Innovation (CDI) has some answers to that question in a report it released Monday The 56-page document focuses on more than two dozen concerns raised by AI, each accompanied by a description of the issue along wit...

Website impersonation scams have become a growing problem, although many businesses aren't happy with the tools they have to address them A study released Tuesday by digital risk protection solutions company Memcyco found that nearly three-quarters of businesses have deployed a digital impersonation protection solution to avert online scams, but on...

Cat-phishing, using a popular Microsoft file transfer tool to become a network parasite, and bogus invoicing are among the notable techniques cybercriminals deployed during the first three months of this year, according to the quarterly HP Wolf Security Threat Insights Report released Thursday Based on an analysis of data from millions of endpoints...

Google's dabbling with enhancing its search results with artificial intelligence could have dire consequences for anyone with a business that depends on Alphabet's best-known subsidiary for web traffic Anyone who's done a Google search knows it's already stuffing AI summaries into its search results, but it will be upping its ante in AI when a prog...

Apple beefed up its iPad product line Tuesday by upgrading the silicon in its Air models and introducing a new processor, the M4, into its Pro editions, which also got a display boost to OLED "The iPad Pro with the M4 and outdoor viewable OLED screen is arguably the best tablet created so far," Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst with Ende...