The 2024 US presidential election is entering its final stretch, which means state-backed hackers are slipping out of the shadows to meddle in their own special way. That includes Iran's APT42, a hacker group affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Google's Threat Analysis Group says targeted nearly a dozen people associated with Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's (now Kamala Harris') campaigns. The rolling disaster that is the breach of data broker and background-check company National Public Data is just beginning. While the breach of the company happened months ago, the company only acknowledged it publicly on Monday after someone posted what they claimed was "2.9 billion records" of people in the US, UK, and Canada, including names, physical addresses, and Social Security numbers. Ongoing analysis of the data, however, shows the story is far messier--as are the risks.

There's a new use for 5G networks: spotting wildfires before they get out of control, an increasing worry as climate change makes fires spread faster and burn longer than before. The startup Pano AI uses a series of cameras that survey the wilderness and AI algorithms that watch for telltale smoke -- an indicator of small blazes that could grow into raging wildfires. That footage is sent to the startup's headquarters for human confirmation, and if a fire is burning, evidence is sent to clients who could be affected. While Pano AI had been sending evidence photos over 4G LTE networks at slow rates of around 20 to 30 6-megapixel images per minute, its new partnership with T-Mobile has it using the carrier's 5G network to send video at 30 frames per second, which is around 90 times more data. Ultimately, getting evidence to Pano AI's clients, which include utility companies, much quicker on 5G means a faster response from firefighters and potentially squashing big fires before they get dangerous.

T-Mobile announced that Lucid Drone Technologies has chosen the Un-carrier to be the exclusive provider of IoT connectivity and management for their fleet of industrial spraying drones. Together, Lucid Drone Technologies and T-Mobile are collaborating to put maintenance teams and exterior cleaning companies out of harm's way using drone technology for high-risk facilities maintenance work like exterior soft-wash cleaning and high-rise window washing. The companies also plan to leverage T-Mobile's industry-leading 5G network in the future to fly drones beyond line-of-sight and power more data-intensive capabilities like video streaming. Lucid Drone Technologies has chosen T-Mobile as the exclusive provider of IoT connectivity and management for their growing fleet of industrial spraying drones that provide commercial cleaning services. Commercial property management firms and developers make significant investments to keep maintenance teams safe.

Identity trust platforms can help distinguish and address different kinds of bots in real-time and ... [ ] without a negative impact on business. Bottom Line: AI shows the potential for thwarting the growing number of bad bot attacks on e-commerce sites and digital channels. Radware finds 58% of bad bot attacks are comprised of distributed, mutating bots that defy easy detection. From selling subscriptions for bad bots to Instacart shoppers willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month in fees to dominating mobile phone providers' contests to capture one of every three prizes, bad bot producers are having a busy year. Cloudflare estimates 40% of all Internet traffic is bot-related.

Conversational artificial intelligence serves as the interface between a person and a computer, through which organizations can achieve engaging two-way interactions. The technology is usually associated with call centers and virtual assistants/chatbots, although it can be applied in practically every vertical industry. Thanks to machine learning and AI breakthroughs during the last couple of years, conversational AI has grown beyond chatbots to include a variety of use cases. The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started.

It's been estimated that 96% of companies consider Account Based Marketing (ABM) as the key driver to increase revenue in B2B sales. ABM enables organizations, such as Reuters, to modify their marketing budgets by focusing on the customers' likelihood of purchase in order to optimize their marketing strategies and target customers who are more prone to convert. Account-based marketing is a data-driven customized B2B marketing approach. It focuses on high-value accounts and delivers messages based on particular traits and needs of these accounts. The sales, marketing, and executive teams sustain and improve their relations with these customers to direct them to buy more expensive or additional products.

The robots are coming, and Elon Musk wants to usher in their arrival. The Tesla CEO revealed the Tesla Bot this week during an event devoted to advances in artificial intelligence. Described as "the next generation of automation" on the Tesla website, the humanoid robot is "capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring." That makes sense as there are many jobs needing done but humans don't want to do, Musk says. At the foundation it is labor," he said during the event.

On "Plat Chat," a talk show that covers the Overwatch League, pink coffee mugs sporting "presented by T-Mobile" also disappeared. The podcast has a rotating cast of commentators, some of whom work full-time for the Overwatch League, though one host told The Post the podcast is completely separate from Activision Blizzard. The host declined to answer questions earlier this week because they said the show is still in active talks with T-Mobile.

Plenty of Tesla owners (and people who hope to own Teslas one day) love their electric cars. But do they love them enough to pay for the car twice? CNBC points out a trend where multiple recent buyers who paid for their cars with direct debit payments say their bank accounts were charged twice. That's annoying when it happens with a movie ticket or a pair of shoes, but can be backbreaking if it's a $53,000 SUV. To make matters worse, while Tesla's zero-contact deliveries and remote service stations can make it convenient to get a car, it's apparently not so easy to contact someone who can work out a way to reverse the charges.

While the circumstances were hardly ideal, 2020 was a big year for cord cutting. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney saw their subscriber numbers soar as people looked for ways to pass the time at home, and the temporary suspension of live sports accelerated the decline of traditional pay TV bundles. While not coronavirus-related, this year introduced two major new streaming services in HBO Max and NBC's Peacock, and we saw some bold attempts to rethink the streaming device with Google's new Chromecast and the TiVo Stream 4K. I've been writing this weekly column (and newsletter) on cord-cutting through it all, so in accordance with annual tradition, I'd like to cap off 2020 by recounting my favorite developments of the year. Here are TechHive's fifth-annual cord-cutter awards: At the start of the year, I wrote that unified streaming TV guides would be one of cord-cutting's biggest trends, and no streaming device delivers on that idea quite like the Chromecast with Google TV.