Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Flir Systems, known primarily for its commercial sensor products, on Tuesday made a foray into the consumer market with a new video camera that can be used for home monitoring, sports, and even as a dash cam ...

Apple on Thursday released a new version of iOS that adds racial diversity to its emoji library In addition to the fair-skinned faces found in prior versions, the new assortment includes brown, black and golden yellow mugs. What's more, there are emojis of same sex couples and families, too....

This week marks the first anniversary of the Heartbleed vulnerability that caused a panic across the Internet last year. While the flaw appears to have faded from the recollections of Net denizens, it still poses danger at many sites in cyberspace Heartbleed was discovered in April 2014 in an open source library, OpenSSL, used by the SSL protocol.

IBM and Apple last week released an octet of iOS apps for the enterprise aimed at improving productivity in the healthcare, airline and insurance industries, as well as on the factory floor The eight new apps are part of IBM's MobileFirst for iOS program, an offshoot of the alliance the companies forged last summer....

Open sourcing the code for Microsoft Windows is "definitely possible," Microsoft engineer Mark Russinovich reportedly said last week during a panel discussion at ChefConf When asked about Russinovich's comments, Microsoft was noncommittal.

Microsoft on Tuesday raised the curtain on its new Surface 3 tablet, targeting users who want a robust Windows tablet at an iPad price Up to now, those looking for a full-featured Windows tablet had to spend US$799 for a Surface Pro 3, but some customers will find their needs can be met with the new $499 Surface 3....

After battling a distributed denial of service attack for four days, GitHub on Monday was able to restore normal service levels The primary target of the assault is GreatFire.org, which is hosted on GitHub. GreatFire has attracted the ire of the Chinese government for offering anticensorship tools, including access to uncensored versions of The New...

The recent data breach at Premera Blue Cross -- in which the personal information of some 11 million customers was compromised -- raises questions about how effective government regulators are at ensuring that healthcare providers adequately protect their patients' data There have been abundant warnings that compliance with government regulations a...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week told an audience at the F8 conference for Facebook developers that the company's future lies in its family of apps and in giving the network's members the ability to share what they want, where they want "We're building this family so we can offer unique, world-class experiences for all of the ways that people...

The Internet has been good for education but bad for morality, according to a study recently released by the Pew Research Center Researchers conducted face-to-face surveys with 36,619 people in 32 developing countries....

If an annoyance contest were held between passwords and CAPTCHAs, passwords would probably win, but not by much CAPTCHA -- Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart -- was created to foil bots attempting to mass-create accounts at websites. Once created, those accounts could be exploited by online lowlifes for malic...

Attorneys on Wednesday advanced their closing arguments in the US$16 million gender discrimination suit brought by Ellen Pao against her former employer, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Final arguments in the trial, which has been ongoing in the Superior Court in San Francisco for about a month, began Tuesday wi...

A new book about Steve Jobs hit store shelves Tuesday amid rave reviews -- from Apple executives Apple execs not only praised the book, but also took the unusual step of providing interviews for it....

Apple typically has impeccable timing for its new product introductions, but that may not be the case with its new smartwatch In a gala event last week, the company announced model and pricing details for its Apple Watch. That came just six days after questions were raised about the security of its mobile payment platform. Those questions haven't g...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced Windows Hello, a feature that allows users to access computers and devices running Windows 10 via face recognition, iris identification or fingerprint matching In addition, the company raised the curtain on Microsoft Passport, a programming system that IT managers, software developers and website authors can use for s...

Growing concern over surveillance in cyberspace has people changing their online behavior, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center. Nearly 90 percent of the 475 adults surveyed said they were aware of government surveillance programs targeting Internet users.

The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the National Security Agency from indiscriminately snooping on United States Internet traffic Using a technique called "upstream" surveillance, the NSA does a spinal tap of the Internet's U.S. backbone, which carries the communications of millions of Americans, the...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday released the final version of its controversial open Internet rules In the introduction to the some 400 pages of new rules, which cover both wired and wireless broadband, the commission stated its "carefully tailored rules" would prevent specific practices that are harmful to Internet openness,...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in hot water over her use of a private email server for official business during her time in office. Aside from the apparent violation of federal rules, the practice is very risky cybersecurity behavior for everyone involved, critics have alleged In taking her mail outside the State Department's systems,...

Ellen Pao on Monday testified in a San Franciso courtroom that she was passed up for promotions and sexually harassed by a partner during her employment at prestigious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Responding to questions from her attorney, Therese Lawless, Pao said that after she broke off a relationship with former Klein...