IoT news of the week February 14, 2020

Apple files a patent for a self-organizing smart home: Let’s kick this off with my usual patent notation. Just because a company files a patent, doesn’t mean we’ll ever see it in the real world. That said, this patent filed by Apple this week is worth noting if only because it offers a practical way to have connected devices hop onto a home network, identify themselves and then organize themselves into a room. Apple suggests a smart device could use time of flight sensors to figure out a room’s layout and then determine where devices and items are in the room. As this article points out, what makes this patent more interesting is that Apple has said that it will work with Google and Amazon for a smart home standard called Connected Home over IP that allows devices to interoperate. This patent could be part of that effort, or more likely is an indication of where Apple might hope to add value as the lower levels of the smart home infrastructure are standardized. (The Verge)

Commercial insurers may be starting to embrace IoT: Samsara, an IoT platform provider that currently focuses on fleet management, has signed a partnership with RLI Transportation, a division of RLI Insurance Company, that helps customers use Samsara sensors and cameras to get a discount on their insurance premiums. This sort of endorsement of IoT tech is a big deal because it helps reduce the time to ROI when buying what might be costly equipment. It also provides credibility to such IoT solutions. I’ve been waiting for more deals like this in the residential and property insurance space, but I’ll take it in the enterprise as well. (RLI Transportation)

California’s privacy law may be leading to data dumps: This is good news, although the evidence in the story is a bit thin. Consumer Reports interviewed two data security companies, a member of a privacy-focused advocacy organization that helped craft California’s law, a lawyer, a couple of VCs, and a few startups building privacy-focused services. All of them said the new law was leading to more scrutiny of the data that companies have on hand, but there was only one example of a company reacting to the law by getting rid of some of the data it had on customers. However, California’s law does force companies to take stock of the data they have and figure out if they want to use it. That’s actually one of the first steps in the new NIST privacy framework as well. So perhaps this could become the new normal. But it certainly isn’t yet. (Consumer Reports)

Praetorian gets $10 million for IoT security: Praetorian is an IoT security firm in my former hometown of Austin, Texas that has just raised $10 million in funding from Bill Wood Ventures and McKinsey & Company. After six years as a bootstrapped business, the company is profitable. The funding will help it expand its consulting services to meet the needs of larger customers and partners. (BusinessWire)

Should we create a new agency for consumer privacy? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, writes that the time has come for the creation of a digital privacy agency under the Federal Trade Commission. In her call to action, she makes a really good point that I’d like to emphasize. She writes:“It’s clear that lawlessness in the data privacy space can give rise to new, unexpected forms of injustice.” In other words, because companies are collecting so much more data and have the computing power to actually make meaning from it, we are entering a new era of targeting. Add to this the fact that the data is easily searchable and can live for years, helping to train algorithms or getting fed into existing ones. And because the development and inner workings of those algorithms are unknown, it’s hard to understand how such data gathering affects people, and if it’s accurate. If we don’t develop a new agency, we at least need to develop laws that require companies to test algorithms for harms and bias. Let consumers know what data entities have on them and give them the chance to correct inaccurate information with ease. (Medium)

Essential is gone: Andy Rubin’s startup Essential, which had a goal of designing a new type of digital assistant (“friend”) tied to a phone and a home hub (only the phone made it to production), has shut down. I had high hopes for Essential, in part because of Rubin’s prior success, and was sad — but not terribly shocked — when The Information laid out his mistreatment of women and Google’s payout to shunt him off. What’s frustrating (and not the case in the selected article) is that most of the coverage of Essential’s shut down is linked to Rubin’s sexual misdeeds. I’m sure having its poster boy tarred and feathered wasn’t great for Essential, but what killed the company was execution. Rubin couldn’t deliver on his vision with just a phone, never mind that the phone itself was undermarketed and some of its crucial features such as the camera didn’t actually work at first. A more interesting question to ask is whether or not it’s possible for someone with the experience and network that Rubin had to create a market-moving tech startup in an area clearly controlled by tech giants. The FTC really wants to know. (Protocol)

Choose a low locomotion mission statement: While this is unsurprising, I’m glad someone did the research. A study shows that companies that have “high locomotion” mission statements — featuring words such as hurry, accelerate, move fast, etc. — also tend to drive employees to make unethical decisions. Meanwhile, companies that use “assessment terms” such as compare, question, investigate, etc. are less likely to exhibit problematic behavior. The researchers used Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) violations as a proxy for unethical behavior, so make of that what you will, but anyone will agree that “Move fast and break things” is a mission/motto that hasn’t aged well. (Harvard Business Review)

Oh, we thought Sonos was a problem? This story about Tesla selling a dealer a used car at auction with $8,000 worth of self-driving features and then pulling those features through a software update after the car was purchased is a clear violation of all kinds of assumptions we have about ownership. The fact that multiple consumers were caught up in this debacle is rage-inducing, and will likely spark a broader conversation about who owns software and for how long. (Jalopnik)

Will tech finally recognize the sweet, sweet lure of debt financing? I started out in finance, covering bonds, derivatives, and other fun financial instruments. When I moved into tech, I had to adjust to a world where equity rather than debt ruled. But any finance student can tell you that equity is the most expensive type of capital, and for established businesses with recurring revenue, debt makes the most sense. This post argues that the tech world is approaching the point where the adoption of SaaS models mean that debt makes more sense than hyperactive venture raises. I also got excited about the concept of securitizing revenue streams at startups, which is something a few companies have already done. For example, Enlighted used to have a financing plan that lets companies pay for the smart lighting system with the cost-saving associated with the Enlighted implementation. We’re also seeing companies look at offering industrial equipment as a service, backed in part by the data that ensures the machines keep working. With high-quality data, securitizing both software and physical products becomes a real and enticing possibility. (alexdanco.com)

The World Economic Forum wants your opinion on IoT: Specifically, the organization behind Davos wants to get opinions about how the risks and regulations of IoT will play out in the enterprise, smart home and in smart cities. The results of the survey will appear in a report on IoT the organization will publish in April. (World Economic Forum)