Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Malware targeting Linux systems is growing, largely due to a proliferation of devices created to connect to the Internet of Things That is one of the findings in a report WatchGuard Technologies, a maker of network security appliances, released last week....

The United Kingdom's Parliament on Monday reported a cyberattack on its email system over the weekend, when hackers attempted to access user accounts without authorization Due to the "robust measures" in place to protect the legislative body's accounts and networks, fewer than 1 percent of the 9,000 accounts on the network were compromised, officia...

President Donald Trump aims to save taxpayers US$1 trillion over the next 10 years with a little help from America's high-tech industry "Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens," the president said Monday at a roundtable session of the American ...

Microsoft has decided to expand its support for Linux containers in the next release of Windows Server Linux containers and workloads will work natively on Windows Server, said Erin Chapple, general manager for the server operating system, in an online post last week....

News about Apple's plans for the automotive market have been dripping slowly from the company for months, and CEO Tim Cook this week released a few more drops from the faucet. Apple's auto efforts are zeroing in on autonomous systems, he said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Microsoft earlier this week announced the next version of its Xbox line of gaming consoles, ahead of E3 2017, now ongoing in Los Angeles The new Xbox One X, which goes on sale Nov. 7 for US$499, is slimmer than previous models and packed with power....

A med-tech startup has developed a fast and easy way to treat certain burn wounds with stem cells RenovaCare harvests a variety of cells, including stem cells, from a healthy area of skin on a patient. Those cells are then suspended in a water-based solution, which is loaded into the company's SkinGun and sprayed onto the wound.

New voices for Siri and peer-to-peer payments are among the new features in the next version of Apple's mobile device operating system iOS 11, previewed at the company's annual Worldwide Development Conference on Monday "With the new operating system, Apple has doubled down on many of the applications it has developed for iOS," said Ross Rubin, th...

Apple raised the curtain on HomePod, its upcoming smart speaker, during Monday's keynote presentation at its Worldwide Developers Conference The company also announced some desktop OS features for the iPad, and revealed its plans to become an augmented reality powerhouse.

Essential, a company founded by Andy Rubin, the "father of Android," on Tuesday pulled off the wraps on a new high-end smartphone The Essential Phone, priced at US$699, includes radios for connecting to all major U.S. carriers....

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a refresh of its Surface Pro tablet-laptop computer Although Microsoft said the fifth generation of the unit has been redesigned from the inside out with more than 800 new custom parts, the Surface Pro looks similar to its predecessor....

The public got a rare view into how Facebook tries to keep offensive and dangerous content offline in a report published Sunday Confidential documents leaked to The Guardian exposed the secret rules by which Facebook polices postings on issues such as violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornography, racism and self-harm, as well as such subjects as s...

A British data watchdog has raised questions about whether it was appropriate for a healthcare trust to share data on 1.6 million patients with DeepMind Health, an artificial intelligence company owned by Google The trust shared the data in connection with the test phase of Streams, an app designed to diagnose acute kidney injuries. However, the sh...

Echo isn't just for sound anymore Amazon on Tuesday announced Echo Show, a new version of its popular smart speaker that comes with a 7-inch color touchscreen, 5-inch front-facing camera and dual 2-inch Dolby speakers....

A 7-year-old flaw in Intel chips could enable hijackers to gain total control of business computers and use them for malicious purposes The Intel AMT (active management technology) vulnerability is the first of its kind, according to Embedi, which released technical details about it last week....

Odds appear good that Apple will be joining Amazon and Google in the smart speaker competition with a Siri-powered device it plans to introduce at its World Wide Developers Conference next month, according to MacRumors, which cited a report by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities The new home-AI product will have excellent acoustics with one woofer and s...

Gender bias affects contributions to the open source community, according to a paper published Monday in the open access journal PeerJ Computer Science Female programmers' suggestions for code changes in open source projects -- called "pull requests" -- were accepted more often than those of their male counterparts -- 78.7 percent for women versus ...

Three high-profile Internet brands this week announced initiatives to combat "fake news" online Google on Tuesday revealed that it had tweaked its search processes to help bring high-quality content to the top of search result pages....

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has a reputation of playing fast and loose with rules, but it appears that a maneuver his company performed on iPhones took his ride-hailing outfit to the brink of ruin a couple of years ago When Apple discovered Uber was planting code on iPhones that persisted on the devices even after the ride-hailing app was removed, App...

Apple reportedly has begun testing a premium iPhone with a revamped display and body, which could be one of three new models the company is expected to launch this fall. The other two likely will be upgrades to the two existing iPhones The new design will incorporate curved glass and stainless steel. It will increase the surface area of the display...