Articles by John P. Mello Jr

It appears there won't be a lot of design changes in the next iPhone, according to a schematic photo NowhereElse published online Monday It shows what's purported to be Apple's upcoming iPhone 7 to be the same size as the 6s....

Viv Labs CEO Dag Kittlaus on Monday demonstrated at Disrupt NY 2016 technology that was designed to make people-to-machine interactions as natural as people-to-people interactions Kittlaus, the former CEO of Siri, and other Siri vets cofoundedViv in 2012....

The Islamic State group's cyberwar capabilities are unsophisticated, but they won't be that way for long That was the conclusion of a 25-page report released last week byFlashpoint....

India's telecommunications ministry has rejected Apple's proposal to sell refurbished iPhones in the country, Bloomberg reported this week Officials rejected the proposal based on rules that prohibit importing used electronics, according to Reuters....

A federal magistrate in Los Angeles ordered the girlfriend of an alleged gang member to open her phone using her fingerprint so prosecutors could look at the data on it for a case they were working on, the Los Angeles Times reported last week Paytsar Bkhchadzhyan, 29, of Los Angeles pleaded no contest to identity theft earlier this year. Within 45 ...

Apple on Thursday made its CareKit platform available through the GitHub open source community CareKit joins two other previously released Apple frameworks for developing healthcare apps -- HealthKit and ResearchKit. It was designed to enable developers to create apps that give users a more active role in managing their health....

As consumers turn to ad blockers to avoid advertising on their mobile and computer screens, marketers and content providers who depend on pitches to pay the bills are searching frantically for ways to counter the pesky programs.BlockIQ offers them one BlockIQ, owned by AdSupply, which recently merged withAdaptive Medias, has launched BlockBypass. T...

Some major players in both the new and old economies on Tuesday announced an alliance to pave the way for self-driving cars in America Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo raised the curtain on their Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which will work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to raise awareness of the safety and societal benefi...

A white hat hacker last week announced the discovery of more than a half-dozen security flaws in some software Facebook used on its corporate network While performing penetration testing of some third-party software in a network appliance Facebook used, Orange Tsai, a security researcher forDevcore, discovered seven vulnerabilities that attackers c...

Opera on Wednesday announced that it would add a free VPN service to the latest version of its browser VPNs, or virtual private networks, add an extra level of security for Web surfers. Companies use them to provide secure communications for employees remotely accessing office systems, and consumers use them to block unwanted snooping on their onli...

If the rash of data breaches in recent months has done anything for businesses, it's raised their awareness of cyber liability insurance The market for cyber liability insurance is expected to increase dramatically as businesses become more aware that their current policies don't adequately cover cyber-risks, according to theNational Association of...

The European Commission on Wednesday charged that Google breached EU antitrust rules by seeking to maintain and expand the dominance of its Android operating system "A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe," said the EC's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager....

MIT researchers have developed a fast, accurate system for identifying security flaws in Web apps written in Ruby on Rails, according to news reports published last week In tests the researchers -- MIT Professor Daniel Jackson and Joseph Near, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley -- performed on 50 popular RoR apps,...

Facebook on Wednesday demonstrated at its F8 developer conference how socializing could take place in a virtual world Two employees some 30 miles apart -- Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer in San Francisco and Product Manager Michael Booth in Menlo Park, California -- showed how they could share the same virtual space....

Facebook's WhatsApp last week announced it would roll out end-to-end encryption for its users to better protect their privacy, but the move could make the service more attractive to spammers, too While encryption can safeguard information from data thieves, it also can block data protectors from detecting malicious activity on their networks....

Facebook on Tuesday unveiled a high-quality 360-degree 3D camera suitable for creating virtual reality content The Facebook Surround 360 system, which made its debut at the F8 developers conference, includes a production-ready camera -- which costs about US$30,000 to build and looks like a flying saucer from a science fiction movie -- and software ...

Most of the changes in the next version of the Apple Watch will be on the inside and not the outside of the case, according to an investors note issued Monday by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities While he was short on details about what the internal changes for the watch might be, the analyst's comments are consistent with rumors circulating last summ...

It appears that the Obama administration will refrain from giving its outspoken support to any legislation that aims to compel high-tech companies to help law enforcement agencies crack mobile phone encryption On the other hand, it won't level any outspoken opposition either....

The battle between the FBI and Apple over access to the iPhone of San Bernardino, California, killer Syed Farook came to an abrupt end last week when the agency announced it no longer needed the company's assistance to crack the device Since the U.S. Department of Justice delayed a hearing on an order to force Apple to assist the FBI in brute-forci...

WhatsApp on Tuesday told its 1 billion users that their communications would be better protected from prying eyes with end-to-end encryption The company always has made data and communication security a priority, according to Jan Koum and Brian Acton, the founders of WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for US$19 billion in 2014....