Here’s the latest news about the Internet of Things from around the web. If you’d like to receive this in your inbox every Friday morning, sign up for my newsletter.
MyDevices gets money from LoRa chip maker: This happened at CES last week but didn’t make the newsletter. Semtech, a company that provides chips for the LoRA low power wide area networking standard, has invested about $3 million in IoT platform company MyDevices. MyDevices makes the Cayenne IoT project building software that is dead simple. It has historically been used by developers with devices like the Raspberry Pi. Two days prior to the investment, MyDevices added support for more hardware to its Cayenne platform, including support for LoRA radios. The goal here is to make it super easy to get developers on board with LoRA as a good radio network for the internet of things. (Semtech)
The FTC goes after D-Link for poor security: Also last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against D-Link alleging that “inadequate security measures left its wireless routers and Internet cameras vulnerable to hackers and put U.S. consumers’ privacy at risk.” The FTC takes issue with D-Link labeling its cameras as secure when in fact they had hard-coded passwords, which means those cameras could be exploited. Hard-coded passwords were one of the vulnerabilities that the Mirai botnet used to gain control of devices. D-Link is fighting back saying that the FTC is filing a complaint because the devices represent a potential threat, as opposed to proving those flaws led to customer harm. This isn’t a terrible strategy by D-Link. Well-heeled companies have been in similar situations with the FTC and successfully fought off fines or other actions. But does someone have to attack D-Link cameras to prove the FTC’s point? (FTC, ZDNet)
Rental cars by the hour: Car rental company Hertz has signed a deal with France’s Orange Telecom services to provide connectivity to cars in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Hertz is using it for its on-demand corporate fleet service called Hertz 24/7, that lets employees at subscribing enterprises use one of the cars in Hertz’s fleet as needed. The cars are also available to consumers at parking lots in Ikea and Costco stores so they can bring large purchases home. For multinationals to offer these types of programs, they will need carriers who can cover large sections of a geographical area at once. Orange fits the bill. (Orange)
Robots will take your job and steal your attention: There were robots everywhere at CES. Some of them were ridiculous, such as the the Beetl robot. It scoops poop from your yard, which seems like an unnecessary solution (plastic bags work well and sometimes they’re free). Others were employed as the equivalent of booth babes to draw attention to products unrelated to the robot itself. And then there were the robots that feel like what you’d get if you locked an engineer in a room with a Roomba, a video camera, Alexa and ET. Seeing a few of them, I don’t think this is what I want in a personal robot (I want arms and the ability to unload a dishwasher). But I’m willing to be surprised. (Wired UK, IEEE Spectrum)
Swarming drones may herald the end: Speaking of robots, this wasn’t at CES because it would have made folks stampede. The Department of Defense showed off an army of 142 drones that exhibited swarm behavior such as self-healing their flight formations and collective decision-making. We are doomed. (Ars Technica)
Don’t look at D-link: Almost half of businesses fell victim to ransomware attacks and it’s the internet of things’ fault. (TechRepublic)
I like this stock art: Roughly 40% of enterprises say the internet of things isn’t yet delivering an ROI, yet spending on IoT is expected to rise, based on a new write up of an older (Nov.) report. (IT Pro Portal)
An epic read on CES: The TL;DR version of this post by Steven Sinofsky is still too long. But basically read it to find out what Sinofsky, who is a former head of the Windows division at Microsoft and now at Andreessen Horowitz, thinks and his analysis of what matters. You can skip his product picks and focus on his insights for product managers. That’s the best stuff. He also devotes sections to IoT, phones, computers, drones and more. You can read what interests you. (Medium)
If every business must embrace tech, it should also embrace failure: Last week I said every business is becoming a tech company and this podcast (or transcript) explains one of the cultural aspects of that transformation: embracing failures. Paul Brody, a partner at EY, and Mark Bidwell of Innovation Ecosystem provide a really great show on the topic. (Innovation Ecosystem)
How are those data science hires coming? Machine learning and the ability to crunch lots of data to deliver insights through your connected product will make or break a company. I think there are some other aspects that will affect a startup’s longevity, but if you aren’t thinking about the long game, maybe this article will convince you. (VentureBeat)
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