Articles by John P. Mello Jr

A road map for continued U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence was revealed Monday in a 756-page report released by a national commission Two years in the making, the report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence made a number of recommendations to make the United States a leader in the AI age. Those include:...

Nostalgia website MyHeritage has launched a new service that allows you to create lifelike animations of faces in still photos The AI-powered service called Deep Nostalgia, launched last week, is free to try and is remarkably accurate in depicting how a person would look if captured on video. Their eyes blink, their head moves and their mouth forms...

Despite an environment conducive to phishing scams, malicious actors achieved only a marginal increase in success in 2020, according to a report from cybersecurity company Proofpoint Catastrophic events, like a pandemic, coupled with hasty technological change such as many people forced to work from home immediately, have been a rich environment in...

Nearly 30,000 Macs in 153 countries have been infected with a new malware strain that security researchers are calling Silver Sparrow Discovered by researchers at Red Canary, the malware has been sitting on it hosts waiting for a payload that never arrived....

Researchers have discovered a way to identify existing drugs that can be potentially repurposed to fight COVID-19 in the elderly The drugs are identified in an article published Monday in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and ETH Zurich in Switzerland....

A cyber intruder broke into the computer network of the water treatment system of a Florida city and attempted to poison it with lye News of the attack was made public Monday by officials of Oldsmar, who revealed the attack was foiled by an operator at the facility within minutes of its launch....

Global sales of electric vehicles in 2020 surged despite a drop in overall sales of passenger cars, a market research firm reported Monday Sales of EVs jumped 39 percent globally, reaching 3.1 million units, while sales of passenger vehicles fell 14 percent, Canalys reported....

A step toward engineering a new generation of powerful quantum computers has been made by a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Sydney, Microsoft and EQUS, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems The team, which published their findings in the Jan. 25 issue of Nature Electronics, invente...

Microsoft is set to step in with its Bing search engine should Google make good on its promise to cut service to Australia, the country's prime minister revealed Monday Speaking at the National Press Club of Australia, PM Scott Morrison said he has spoken to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is confident Bing could meet the needs of Australians shou...

An online map of surveillance cameras in New York City is in the works The map project is part of a larger campaign called "Ban the Scan," sponsored by Amnesty International, which is partnering on the initiative with several other tech advocacy, privacy, and civil liberties groups....

Google sent a shock wave through the advertising and publishing industries last year when it announced it planned to scrap third-party tracking cookies, which are an important tool for online marketers. Not to worry, the company announced Monday that it has a viable alternative in the wings "It might be hard to imagine how advertising on the Web co...

A strategic partnership with Microsoft was announced Tuesday by General Motors and Cruise aimed at speeding up the commercialization of shared self-driving vehicles In addition, Microsoft will be joining GM, Honda, and some institutional investors in adding US$2 billion to Cruise's coffers, bringing the value of the shared self-driving vehicle comp...

DuckDuckGo, the search engine that prioritizes privacy, reached a significant milestone last week, racking up more than 100 million searches in a single day According to the search engine's website, it recorded 102,251,307 searches on Jan. 11, a historical high for the 12-year-old company. For the month, it's averaging more than 90 million searches...

Smart devices, the cornerstone of the home of the future, can't seem to capture the imagination or open the wallets of a large number of Americans Some 46.7 million broadband households aren't ready to buy a smart home device, according to a survey released this week by Parks Associates, a market research and consulting company specializing in cons...

The PC market ended 2020 with a big bang, as shipments during the final quarter rose 25 percent over the same period in 2019, according to a report by research firm Canalys Shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations reached a record 90.3 million units during the period, the report noted....

Porch pirates were busier than ever in 2020, according to an annual survey by a market research firm C+R Research, based in Chicago, found that 43 percent of Americans said they had a package stolen in 2020, a seven-point increase over 2019 when 36 percent revealed they'd been theft victims....

A new mobile processor announced by Qualcomm Technologies Monday is expected to spawn a wave of economically priced 5G smartphones Phones with the Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform will be in the $125 to $250 price range, Qualcomm President Cristiano R. Amon predicted on Twitter in September....

Final rules governing unmanned aircraft, commonly known as drones, were released Monday by the Federal Aviation Administration, a move expected to open the door for delivery of consumer packages by air The rules establish minimum standards for safety so drones can fly over populated areas and at night, under certain conditions....

Eight of the top 10 states for mobile Internet coverage are in the Northeast, according to an analysis released by a consumer product and services comparison website The best mobile Internet coverage, though, isn't in a state at all but in the District of Columbia, WhistleOut revealed in its analysis....

A report that Apple is readying its own self-driving car for release in 2024 is being met with a healthy dose of skepticism by some analysts The new vehicle for consumers would include breakthrough battery technology developed by Apple that would "radically" reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's driving range, Reuters reported Mon...