Tech News - IoT and Hardware

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is in advanced talks to buy Intel’s smartphone-modem business for at least $1 billion, citing people familiar with the matter. This Apple-Intel deal that will cover a portfolio of patents and staff, is expected to get confirmed in the next week. According to the report, the companies started discussing this deal last summer around the time Brian Krzanich, Intel’s former CEO resigned. However, the talk broke when Apple signed a multiyear supply agreement for modems with Qualcomm in April to settle a longstanding legal dispute between the companies. The dispute was regarding royalties Qualcomm charges for its smartphone modems. After Apple’s settlement with Qualcomm, Intel announced its plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business. The company’s new CEO Bob Swan said in a press release that there is no “path to profitability and positive returns” for Intel in the smartphone modem business. Intel then opened this offer to other companies but eventually resumed talks with Apple, who is seen as the “most-logical buyer” for its modem business. How will this deal benefit Apple This move will help Apple jumpstart its efforts to make modem chips in-house. In recent years, Apple has been expanding its presence in the components market to eliminate dependence on other companies for hardware and software in its devices. It now designs its own application processors, graphics chips, Bluetooth chips, and security chips. Last year, Apple acquired patents, assets, and employees from Dialog Semiconductor, a British chipmaker as a part of a 600 million deal to bring power management designs in house. With this deal, the tech giant will get access to Intel’s engineering work and talent to help in the development of modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work. How will this deal benefit Intel This deal will allow Intel to part ways from a business that hasn't been much profitable for the company. “The smartphone operation had been losing about $1 billion annually, a person familiar with its performance has said, and has generally failed to live up to expectations,” the report reads. After its exit from the 5G smartphone modem business, the company wants to put its focus in 5G network infrastructure. Read the full story on the Wall Street Journal. Apple patched vulnerability in Mac’s Zoom Client; plans to address ‘video on by default’ OpenID Foundation questions Apple’s Sign In feature, says it has security and privacy risks Apple gets into chip development and self-driving autonomous tech business

Yesterday, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the organization that supports the adoption of USB technology, launched a USB Type-C Authentication Program. The USB Type-C Authentication specification defines cryptographic-based authentication for USB Type-C chargers and devices. The USB Type-C has been introduced on leading notebooks, smartphones, and other connected devices as it allows faster data transfer and more power delivery than the widely deployed USB Type-A interface. These USB devices while being extremely helpful in the computing landscape have also introduced new risks that result from simply plugging in a malicious USB device. With the new authentication program, host systems can protect against non-compliant USB chargers and also mitigate risks from malicious firmware/hardware in USB devices that attempt to exploit a USB connection. The protocol also helps the host systems to confirm the authenticity of a USB device, USB cable or USB charger. All of this happens right at the moment a connection is made before inappropriate power or data can be transferred. USB-IF President and COO Jeff Ravencraft said, “USB-IF is excited to launch the USB Type-C Authentication Program, providing OEMs with the flexibility to implement a security framework that best fits their specific product requirements. As the USB Type-C ecosystem continues to grow, companies can further provide the security that consumers have come to expect from certified USB devices.” Characteristics of the USB Type-C Authentication program: A standard protocol for authenticating certified USB Type-C chargers, devices, cables, and power sources Support for authenticating over either USB data bus or USB Power Delivery communications channels Products that use the authentication protocol retain control over the security policies to be implemented and enforced Relies on 128-bit security for all cryptographic methods Includes accepted cryptographic methods for certificate format, digital signing, hash, and random number generation USB-IF selected DigiCert to manage the PKI and certificate authority services for the USB Type-C Authentication Program. Geoffrey Noakes, Vice President, IoT Business Development at DigiCert said, “DigiCert is excited to work with USB-IF and its CA Program Participants from the industry at large to provide the technical expertise and scale needed for the USB Type-C Authentication Program, and we look forward to implementation.” To know more about this news head over to the USB Type-C Authentication specification. Apple USB Restricted Mode: Here’s Everything You Need to Know According to a report, Microsoft plans for new 4K webcams featuring facial recognition to all Windows 10 devices in 2019 DragonFly BSD 5.4.1 released with new system compiler in GCC 8 and more  

According to a report by The Intercept, Ring, Amazon’s smart doorbell company gave access to its employees to watch live footage from cameras of the customers. As per the claim, Ring engineers and executives were allowed to watch the unfiltered footage of the users. Last year in February, Amazon acquired Ring for $1 billion. Amazon had been in the news last year for its data breach where the company leaked out the customers’ email addresses. Ring markets its cameras, mounted as doorbells as a security means that act like a privatized neighborhood watch while the user was away. The staff at Ring was able to gain access to the cameras inside as well as outside the home, depending on where the devices were positioned. Ring has been accused of mishandling videos collected by the smart device and failing to protect the footage with encryption. The Ring customer’s email address is enough to get access to cameras from user’s home. According to The Information and The Intercept, Ring’s video annotation team would watch camera footage and tag objects, humans and other things in the video clips so that its object recognition software could better itself. In 2016, Ring provided its Ukraine-based research and development team unfettered access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that had unencrypted videos created by Ring cameras. Ring’s Neighbors app, that lets users receive real-time crime and safety alerts, doesn’t include any mention of image or facial recognition in its description. Ring’s terms of service and its privacy policy don’t mention any details about the manual video annotation being conducted by humans. Ring tried to justify that the videos weren’t shared by the company. Ring responded to this post stating, “We take the privacy and security of our customers’ personal information extremely seriously. In order to improve our service, we view and annotate certain Ring video recordings. These recordings are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes. Ring employees do not have access to livestreams from Ring products. We have strict policies in place for all our team members. We implement systems to restrict and audit access to information. We hold our team members to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our policies faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties. In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them.” https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1065219981833617408 Because of the privacy concerns, users are now skeptical about using Ring’s smart doorbell. One comment on HackerNews read, “The ring doorbell is installed at your front door. It records pretty much all movement to and from your house. It records audio at the doorstep, so if you're having a conversation with anyone at your doorstep, that gets recorded too.” Another user commented, “If some rando gets my ring doorbell footage and figures out where I live, that's hard to undo. If someone steals my stuff and gets away with it because I didn't have a ring doorbell, that's annoying but much easier to recover from. We are talking about the difference between an insurance claim and moving house.” According to a few users, this device is prone to DDOS attacks. One of the users commented, “Aside from the 700 person team given access to live video feeds and customer databases, the lack of proper security of this product makes it a PRIME target for DDOS attacks that could cripple infrastructure.” But few users are in the favor of such devices as they find them safe and convenient to use. One user commented, “These devices are extremely popular in my neighborhood, and cost/convenience is the only thing keeping them from being universal.” Another user commented, “I'd say, yes. I've been able to watch that many people see the ring (they see the camera), and they back right off the porch. It's been awesome in this respect, people simply ring it less.” Some users believe such surveillance devices shouldn’t use cloud but instead have data stored locally. Others are now looking out for alternatives like Xiaomi Dafang camera, RCA doorbell camera, and Blue Iris. This news surely makes one reflect on how home appliances could get monitored by companies or hackers and personal data might get misused. Note: We have edited this news to include the response from the Ring team to our post. AWS introduces Amazon DocumentDB featuring compatibility with MongoDB, scalability and much more Amazon confirms plan to sell a HIPAA eligible software, Amazon Comprehend Medical, which will mine medical records of the patients US government privately advised by top Amazon executive on web portal worth billions to the Amazon; The Guardian reports

Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs are now publicly available in beta on Google Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engine. Also, Nvidia Tesla P100 GPUs are now generally available. Nvidia Tesla V100 GPU is almost equal to 100 CPUs. This gives customers more power to handle computationally demanding applications, like machine learning, analytics, and video processing. One can select as many as eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, 96 vCPU and 624GB of system memory in a single VM, receiving up to 1 petaflop of mixed precision hardware acceleration performance. NVIDIA V100s are available immediately in the following regions: us-west1, us-central1 and europe-west4. Each V100 GPU is priced as low as $2.48 per hour for on-demand VMs and $1.24 per hour for Preemptible VMs. Making Nvidia Tesla V100 available on the compute engine is part of Google’s GPU expansion strategy. Similar to Google GPUs, the V100 is also billed by the second and Sustained Use Discounts apply. NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU, on the other hand is a good fit if one wants a balance between price and performance. One can select up to four P100 GPUs, 96 vCPUs and 624GB of memory per virtual machine. The P100 is also now available in europe-west4 (Netherlands) in addition to us-west1, us-central1, us-east1, europe-west1 and asia-east1. * Maximum vCPU count and system memory limit on the instance might be smaller depending on the zone or the number of GPUs selected. ** GPU prices listed as hourly rate, per GPU attached to a VM that are billed by the second. Pricing for attaching GPUs to preemptible VMs is different from pricing for attaching GPUs to non-preemptible VMs. Prices listed are for US regions. Prices for other regions may be different. Additional Sustained Use Discounts of up to 30% apply to GPU on-demand usage only. Google Cloud makes managing GPU workloads easy for both VMs and containers by providing, Google Compute Engine where customers can use instance templates and managed instance groups to easily create and scale GPU infrastructure. NVIDIA V100s and other GPU offerings in Kubernetes Engine, where Cluster Autoscaler helps provide flexibility by automatically creating nodes with GPUs, and scaling them down to zero when they are no longer in use. Preemptible GPUs for both Compute Engine managed instance groups and Kubernetes Engine’s Autoscaler optimizes the costs while simplifying infrastructure operations. Read more about both the GPUs in detail on the Google Research Blog and benefits of each on Nvidia V100 and Nvidia P100 blog post. Google announce the largest overhaul of their Cloud Speech-to-Text Google’s kaniko – An open-source build tool for Docker Images in Kubernetes, without a root access How machine learning as a service is transforming cloud  

Yesterday, Intel announced its decision to leave the 5G smartphone modem market and channelize its focus towards 4G and 5G modems for PCs, internet of things devices and other data-centric devices. This news broke immediately after Apple’s settlement with Qualcomm with regards to the ongoing patent violation and royalty dispute because of Apple’s use of Qualcomm modems in the iPhone. None of the companies made a statement regarding the dispute. https://twitter.com/intelnews/status/1118296038337421312 According to a report by Nikkei, Apple had concerns regarding Intel’s ability to supply next year’s iPhone models with 5G modems. Also last year,  Intel became Apple’s sole supplier of smartphone modems as the dispute with Qualcomm got complex. https://twitter.com/jonfortt/status/1118297377620877312 Apple might now use Qualcomm’s 5G modems with the iPhone in 2020 as it seems Intel has backed out of the modem business. This might put Apple in a tough situation to make a decision in the legal battle with Qualcomm. Intel will continue to invest in its 5G network infrastructure business and will also meet the current customer commitments for its existing 4G smartphone modem product line. The company doesn’t have any plans to launch 5G modem products in the smartphone space. Bob Swan, CEO at Intel, said, “We are very excited about the opportunity in 5G and the ‘cloudification’ of the network, but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns.” Swan further added, “5G continues to be a strategic priority across Intel, and our team has developed a valuable portfolio of wireless products and intellectual property. We are assessing our options to realize the value we have created, including the opportunities in a wide variety of data-centric platforms and devices in a 5G world.” This month, Intel might provide more details about its latest development over 4G and 5G modems for computers and other IoT devices in its upcoming first-quarter 2019 earnings release and conference call. To know more about this news, check out Intel’s official announcement. Researchers discover Spectre like new speculative flaw, “SPOILER” in Intel CPU’s Apple plans to make notarization a default requirement in all future macOS updates Ian Goodfellow quits Google and joins Apple as a director of machine learning  

Google is the new platinum member of the Linux Foundation. Google will benefit the platinum member rights and the Linux community will move towards huge financial gains. The annual membership cost for Google will be around $500,000. Linux Foundation, on the other hand, is quite thrilled to have Google as one of the platinum members.  As Google is one of the biggest contributors to and supporters of open source in the tech world. In addition to this, Google leverages one of the most important open source projects for its OS -- the Linux kernel and both Android and Chrome OS, are Linux-based. This membership also secured a seat for Sarah Novotny, Google’s Head of Open-Source strategy for the Google Cloud Platform into the Board of Directors of Linux Foundation. On this achievement, Sarah mentioned, ’Open source is an essential part of Google's culture, and we've long recognized the potential of open ecosystems to grow quickly, be more resilient and adaptable in the face of change, and create better software. The Linux Foundation is a fixture in the open source community. By working closely with the organization, we can better engage with the community-at-large and continue to build a more inclusive ecosystem where everyone can benefit.’ Google joins hands with other platinum members in the Linux Foundation, including Microsoft, Intel, Huawei, Samsung, Facebook, etc. Read more about this exciting coverage at the Linux Foundation’s official announcement. Tencent becomes a platinum member of the Linux Foundation Machine learning APIs for Google Cloud Platform Google introduces Machine Learning courses for AI beginners

Yesterday, Google announced a series of consumer hardware products. This included two new variants of their flagship Pixel smartphones—Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. Also launched was a high-performance tablet, the Pixel Slate and the Google Home Hub. Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL The new smartphones from Google, Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL come with artificial intelligence features. They can automatically answer calls, click powerful photos,  and provide an enhanced visual and audio experience while charging, powered by the Google Assistant. Source: Google Blog With an integration of Google Lens, Pixel 3, can scan and translate text, find similar styles of clothing, or identify popular plants and animals. It also supports Google’s Smart Compose which suggests phrases in emails to help them draft faster. Pixel 3’s on-device AI can also screen phone calls and avoid spam calls. This feature is first, starting out in English in the U.S. Pixel users in the U.S. will also get a taste of an experimental new Google Assistant feature, powered by Duplex technology. This feature will initially be available later this year in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area and will roll out to other U.S. cities in the future. Pixel 3 also supports Digital Wellbeing, which is a suite of tools to help users limit the time they spent on their phones. Users can monitor the time spend time on phones and set time limits on specific apps. Digital Wellbeing also comes with a new Wind Down mode to transition display to a grayscale screen in the night. Google Pixel Slate The Google Pixel Slate is a new high-performance tablet in the likes of Google’s popular Pixelbook. Source: Google Blog This tablet is 7mm thin and weighs 1.6 lbs with rounded edges and curved 2.5D glass. It’s Molecular Display packs 293 pixels per inch for the sharpest picture. Pixel Slate includes 8MP cameras on both the rear and front and dual front-firing speakers. It comes with three months of YouTube TV subscription and up to 12 hours of battery life. It’s Pixel Imprint power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor. Pixel Slate is compatible with the Pixel Slate Keyboard, and the Pixelbook Pen. Pixel Slate starts at $599 with several configurations available. Pixel Slate Keyboard is $199, and Pixelbook Pen is $99. Google Home Hub Another addition to their Home series is the Google Home Hub. This home automation device has built-in Google Assistant to traverse Google’s products —Search, YouTube, Google Photos, Calendar, Maps and more. It’s 7” screen features a floating display to naturally fit on any surface. Purposely, Google didn’t put a camera for privacy. Other features include: An Ambient EQ light sensor which allows the screen to automatically adjust to match the lighting in the room. Connection with 10,000+ types of smart home devices from 1,000+ popular brands. With live albums, a new feature from Google Photos, users can view their recent photos even while Google Home Hub is not in use. Google Hub is available for $149 for pre-order from the Google Store. Google Home Hub will also be available by October 22 at Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and other retailers. In the light of their recent Google+ data breach, Google has also mentioned their guiding principle. Per their website, “We respect our users and put them first. We feel a deep responsibility to provide you with a helpful, personal Google experience, and that guides the work we do in three very specific ways: First, we want to provide you with an experience that is unique to you. Just like Google is organizing the world’s information, the combination of AI, software, and hardware can organize your information—and help out with the things you want to get done. The Google Assistant is the best expression of this, and it’s always available when, where, and however you need it. Second, we’re committed to the security of our users. We need to offer simple, powerful ways to safeguard your devices. We’ve integrated Titan™ Security, the system we built for Google, into our new mobile devices. Titan™ Security protects your most sensitive on-device data by securing your lock screen and strengthening disk encryption. Third, we want to make sure you’re in control of your digital wellbeing. From our research, 72 percent of our users are concerned about the amount of time people spend using tech. We take this very seriously and have developed new tools that make people’s lives easier and cut back on distractions.” Read more about the new products on Google Blog. Google announces new Artificial Intelligence features for Google Search on its 20th birthday. Google’s Stories to use artificial intelligence to create stories like Snapchat and Instagram. Google enhances Wear OS design, adds a Google Assistant feed and much more

Relayr, an IoT middleware startup based in Berlin, has been purchased by German insurance group Munich Re. The deal, which values relayr at $300 million, gives Munich Re’s subsidiary company HSB 100% equity in the startup. The move is significant, marking an important milestone in relayr’s life as it has moved from a crowdfunded chocolate-shaped IoT kit to an industrial IoT middleware platform used by 130 businesses. Essentially, relayr provides businesses with the software needed to connect industrial infrastructure to the internet in order for information and data about the performance and safety of that machinery to be managed and analyzed from a centralized place. But, perhaps even more importantly, the acquisition is evidence of just how attractive IoT is to an insurance industry that sees data as a potential goldmine in gaining a detailed understanding of behavior and risk in a huge range of contexts and across demographics. It’s worth noting that HSB has invested in relayr before - back in 2016 the company put money into the startup’s series B round of funding. What relayr and Munich Re had to say relayr CEO Josef Brunner had this to say about the acquisition: “We are delighted to strengthen our relationship with Munich Re/HSB to push digitalization in commercial and industrial markets and strive for our mission to help commercial and industrial businesses stay relevant… The unique combination of the companies demonstrates the importance to deliver business outcomes to customers and the need to combine first-class technology and its delivery with powerful financial and insurance offerings. This transaction is a great opportunity to build a global category leader.” Meanwhile, Torsten Jeworrek from Munich Re’s Board of Management said that the acquisition “supports our strategy to combine our knowledge of risk, data analysis skills and financial strength with the technological expertise of relayr. This is our basis to develop new ideas for tomorrow’s commercial and industrial worlds.” You can hear in the enthusiasm of both statements that this is a deal that works incredibly well for both parties. Munich Re now has its hands on an Industrial IoT startup that is already making headway in the market, while relayr now has the stability and support it needs to grow its business further. It will be interesting to see how the acquisition influences relayr’s product development and how involved its parent company will be. Read next Why the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) needs Architects Infosys and Siemens collaborate to build IoT solutions on MindSphere IoT Forensics: Security in an always connected world where things talk

Raspberry Pi 4 was released last month, with much hype and promotions. It has a 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU, three memory options of up to 4GB, full-throughput gigabit Ethernet, and a USB-C port as a power connector. The USB-C power connector was the first of its kind addition in the Pi 4 board. However, four days after its release, Tyler Ward, an electronics and product engineer disclosed that the new Pi4 is not charging when used with an electronically marked or e-marked USB-C cables, the type used by Apple MacBooks and other laptops. Two days ago, Pi's co-creator Eben Upton also confirmed the same. Upton says that, “A smart charger with an e-marked cable will incorrectly identify the Raspberry Pi 4 as an audio adapter accessory, and refuse to provide power.” Upton adds that the technical breakdown of the underlying issue in the Pi 4's circuitry, by Tyler Ward offers a detailed overview of why e-marked USB-C cables won't power the Pi. According to Ward’s blog, “The root cause of the problem is the shared cc pull down resistor on the USB Type-C connector. By looking at the reduced pi schematics, we can see it as R79 which connects to both the CC lines in the connector.” “With most chargers this won’t be an issue as basic cables only use one CC line which is connected through the cable and as a result the pi will be detected correctly and receive power. The problem comes in with e-marked cables which use both CC connections”, he adds.  Ward has suggested some workarounds for this problem, firstly he recommends to use a non e-marked cable, which most USB-C phone charger cables are likely to have, rather than the e-marked cable. Also, the older chargers with A-C cables or micro B to C adaptors will also work if they provide enough power, as these don’t require CC detection to get charged. The complete solution to this problem would be if Pi would, in a future board revision, add a 2nd CC resistor to the board and fix the problem. Another option is to buy the $8/£8 official Raspberry Pi 4 power supply. In a statement to TechRepublic, Upton adds that “It's surprising this didn't show up in our (quite extensive) field testing program.”  Benson Leung, a Google Chrome OS engineer has also criticized Raspberry Pi in a medium blogpost which he has sarcastically titled,“How to design a proper USB-C™ power sink (hint, not the way Raspberry Pi 4 did it)”. Leung has identified two critical mistakes on Raspberry Pi’s part. He says that Raspberry Pi should have copied the figure from the USB-C Spec exactly, instead of designing a new circuit. Leung says that Raspberry Pi “designed this circuit themselves, perhaps trying to do something clever with current level detection, but failing to do it right.” The second mistake, he says, is that they didn’t actually test their Pi4 design with advanced cables. “The fact that no QA team inside of Raspberry Pi’s organization caught this bug indicates they only tested with one kind (the simplest) of USB-C cables.”, he adds. Many users agreed with Leung and  expressed their own views on the faulty USB-C design on the Raspberry Pi 4. They think it’s hard to believe that Raspberry Pi shipped these models before trying it with a MacBook charger. A user on Hacker News comments, “I find it incredible that presumably no one tried using a MacBook charger before this shipped. If they did and didn't document the shortcoming that's arguably just as bad. Surely a not insignificant number of customers have MacBooks? If I was writing some test specs this use case would almost certainly feature, given the MacBook Pro's USB C adapter must be one of the most widespread high power USB C charger designs in existence. Especially when the stock device does not ship with a power supply, not like it was unforeseeable some customers would just use the chargers they already have.” Some are glad that they have not yet ordered their Raspberry Pi 4 yet. https://twitter.com/kb2ysi/status/1148631629088342017 However, some users believe it’s not that big a deal. https://twitter.com/kb2ysi/status/1148635750210183175 A user on Hacker News comments, “Eh, it’s not too bad. I found a cable that works and I’ll stick to it. Even with previous-gen Pis there was always a bit of futzing with cables to find one that has small enough voltage drop to not get power warnings (even some otherwise “good” cables really cheap out on copper). The USB C thing is still an issue, and I’m glad it’ll be fixed, but it’s really not that big of a deal.” No schedule has been disclosed on the release of the revision by Upton nor Raspberry Pi till now. 10+ reasons to love Raspberry Pi You can now install Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi 3 Raspberry Pi opens its first offline store in England

California likes to be leading the way when it comes to digital regulation. Just a few weeks ago it passed legislation that looks like it could restore net neutrality. Now, a bill designed to tighten IoT security, is with the governor awaiting signature for it to be carried into California state law. The bill, SB-327 Information privacy: connected devices, was initially introduced in February 2017 by Senator Jackson. It was the first legislation of its kind in the US. Approved at the end of August, it will come into effect at the start of 2020 once signed by Governor Jerry Brown. Read next: IoT Forensics: Security in an always connected world where things talk What California’s IoT bill states The new IoT security bill covers another of important areas. For example, for manufacturers, IoT devices will need to contain certain safety and security features: Security should be appropriate to the nature and function of the device. The feature should be appropriate to the information an IoT may collect, contain, or transmit. It should be designed to protect the device and information within it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure. If an IoT device is requires authentication over the internet, further conditions need to be met, such as: The preset password must be unique to each device that is manufactured. The device must ask the user to generate a new authentication method before being able to use it for the first time. It’s worth noting that the points mentioned above for IoT security are not applicable to IoT devices that are subject to security requirements under federal law. Also a covered entity like a health care provider, business associate, contractor, or employer subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) or the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act is exempt from the title points mentioned. The IoT is a network of several of devices that connect to the internet via Wi-Fi. They are not openly visible as most of them are used in a local network but often do not have many security measures. The bill doesn't have any exact definitions for a ‘reasonable security feature’ but provides a few guiding points in interest a user’s security. The legislation states: “This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified.” Criticisms of the IoT bill Some cybersecurity experts have criticised the legislation. For example, Robert Graham writes on his Security Errarta blog that the bill is “based on a superficial understanding of cybersecurity/hacking that will do little improve security, while doing a lot to impose costs and harm innovation.” He explains that “the point [of good cybersecurity practice] is not to add ‘security features’ but to remove ‘insecure features’.” Graham’s criticisms underline that while the legislation might be well-intentioned, whether it will be impactful remains another matter. This is, at the very least, a step in the right direction by a state that is keen to take digital security and freedom into its own hands. You can read the bill at the California Legislative information website. How Blockchain can level up IoT Security Defending your business from the next wave of cyberwar: IoT Threats

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella published his letter to shareholders in the company’s 2018 annual report, on LinkedIn yesterday. He talks about Microsoft’s accomplishments in the past year, results and progress of Microsoft’s workplace, business applications, infrastructure, data, AI, and gaming. He also mentioned the data and privacy rules adopted by Microsoft, and their belief to, “ instill trust in technology across everything they do.” Microsoft’s result and progress Data and AI Azure Cosmos DB has already exceeded $100 million in annualized revenue. The company also saw rapid customer adoption of Azure Databricks for data preparation, advanced analytics, and machine learning scenarios. Their Azure Bot Service has nearly 300,000 developers, and they are on the road for building the world’s first AI supercomputer in Azure. Microsoft also acquired GitHub to recognize the increasingly vital role developers will play in value creation and growth across every industry. Business Applications Microsoft’s investments in Power BI have made them the leader in business analytics in the cloud. Their Open Data Initiative with Adobe and SAP will help customers to take control of their data and build new experiences that truly put people at the center. HoloLens and mixed reality will be used for designing for first-line workers, who account for 80 percent of the world’s workforce. New solutions powered by LinkedIn and Microsoft Graphs help companies manage talent, training, and sales and marketing. Applications and Infrastructure Azure revenue grew 91 percent year-over-year and the company is investing aggressively to build Azure as the world’s computer. They added nearly 500 new Azure capabilities in the past year, focused on both existing workloads and new workloads such as IoT and Edge AI. Microsoft expanded their global data center footprint to 54 regions. They introduced Azure IoT and Azure Stack and Azure Sphere. Modern Workplace More than 135 million people use Office 365 commercial every month. Outlook Mobile is also employed on 100 million iOS and Android devices worldwide. Microsoft Teams is being used by more than 300,000 organizations of all sizes, including 87 of the Fortune 100. Windows 10 is active on nearly 700 million devices around the world. Gaming The company surpassed $10 billion in revenue this year for gaming. Xbox Live now has 57 million monthly active users, and they are investing in new services like Mixer and Game Pass. They also added five new gaming studios this year including PlayFab to build a cloud platform for the gaming industry across mobile, PC and console. Microsoft’s impact around the globe Nadella highlighted that companies such as Coca-Cola, Chevron Corporation, ZF Group, a car parts manufacturer in Germany are using Microsoft’s technology to build their own digital capabilities. Walmart is also using Azure and Microsoft 365 for transforming the shopping experience for customers. In Kenya, M-KOPA Solar, one of their partners connected homes across sub-Saharan Africa to solar power using the Microsoft Cloud. Office Dynamics 365 was used in Arizona to improve outcomes among the state’s 15,000 children in foster care. MedApp is using HoloLens in Poland to help cardiologists visualize a patient's heart as it beats in real time. In Cambodia, underserved children in rural communities are learning to code with Minecraft. How Microsoft is handling trust and responsibility Microsoft motto is “instilling trust in technology across everything they do.” Nadella says, “We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which is why compliance is deeply embedded in all our processes and practices.” Microsoft has extended the data subject rights of GDPR to all their customers around the world, not just those in the European Union, and advocated for the passage of the CLOUD Act in the U.S. They also led the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which has been signed by 61 global organizations, and are calling on governments to do more to make the internet safe. They announced the Defending Democracy Program to work with governments around the world to help safeguard voting and introduced AccountGuard to offer advanced cybersecurity protections to political campaigns in the U.S. The company is also investing in tools for detecting and addressing bias in AI systems and advocating government regulation. They are also addressing society's most pressing challenges with new programs like AI for Earth, a five-year, $50M commitment to environmental sustainability, and AI for Accessibility to benefit people with disabilities. Nadella further adds, “Over the past year, we have made progress in building a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can do their best work.” Microsoft has nearly doubled the number of women corporate vice presidents at Microsoft since FY16.  They have also increased African American/Black and Hispanic/Latino representation by 33 percent. He concludes saying that “I’m proud of our progress, and I’m proud of the more than 100,000 Microsoft employees around the world who are focused on our customers’ success in this new era.” Read the full letter on Linkedin. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist, and developer dies of cancer at 65. ‘Employees of Microsoft’ ask Microsoft not to bid on US Military’s Project JEDI in an open letter. Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network community, making 60,000 of its patents accessible to fellow members

Ana Holdings Inc., HaptX, SynTouch, and Shadow Robot Company are set to unveil the next generation of robotics technology at the upcoming Amazon Re:Mars Expo. The Amazon Re:Mars will be held in Las Vegas from June 4th and 7th. By incorporating the latest tech from across the field of robotics, they have invented the teleoperation and telepresence system. This system will feature the first robotic hand to successfully transmit touch sensations. This technology is being hailed as the ‘Holy Grail of robotics’ by the inventors. They have combined Shadow Robot’s world-leading dexterous robotic hand with SynTouch’s biomimetic tactile sensors and HaptX’s realistic haptic feedback gloves. This new technology enables unprecedented precision remote-control of a robotic hand. They have also implemented tests on it and in a recent test, a human operator in California was able to operate a computer keyboard in London, with each keystroke detected through fingertip sensors on their glove and faithfully relayed 5000 miles to the Dexterous Hand to recreate. They also promise that combining touch with teleoperation in this way is ground-breaking for future applications to perform actions at a distance, e.g. bomb disposal, deep-sea engineering or even surgery performed across different states. At the Amazon re:MARS Tech Showcase, the trailblazing team will demonstrate their teleoperation and telepresence technology outside the lab for the first time. Check out this video to understand how this technology will function. Kevin Kajitani, Co-Director of ANA HOLDINGS INC., Avatar Division says, “We are only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible with these advanced Avatar systems and through telerobotics in general. In addition to sponsoring the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE, we’ve approached our three partner companies to seek solutions that will allow us to develop a high performance, intuitive, general-purpose Avatar hand. We believe that this technology will be key in helping humanity connect across vast distances.” Jake Rubin, Founder and CEO of HaptX says, “Our sense of touch is a critical component of virtually every interaction. The collaboration between HaptX, Shadow Robot Company, SynTouch, and ANA brings a nat-ural and realistic sense of touch to robotic manipulation for the first time, eliminating one of the last bar-riers to true telepresence.” Dr. Jeremy Fishel, Co-Founder of SynTouch says, “We’ve got something exciting up our sleeves for re:MARS this year. Users will see just how essential the sense of touch is when it comes to dexterity and manipulation and the various applications it can have within industry.” Rich Walker, Managing Director of the Shadow Robot Company says, “Our remotely controlled system can help transform work within risky environments such as nuclear decommissioning and we’re already in talks with the UK nuclear establishment regarding the application of this advanced technology. It adds a layer of safety between the worker and the radiation zone as well as increasing precision and accuracy within glovebox-related tasks.” Paul Cutsinger, Head of Voice Design Education at Amazon Alexa says, “re:MARS embraces an optimistic vision for scientific discovery to advance a golden age of innovation and this teleoperation technology by the Shadow Robot Company, SynTouch and HaptX more than fits the bill. It must be seen.” Amazon to roll out automated machines for boxing up orders: Thousands of workers’ job at stake Artist Holly Herndon releases an album featuring an artificial intelligence ‘musician’ Doteveryone report claims the absence of ethical frameworks and support mechanisms could lead to a ‘brain drain’ in the U.K. tech industry

Last week, Western Digital made Verilog sources for its open source RISC-V core publically available on GitHub under Apache 2.0. What is SweRV Core? ‘SweRV Core’ was made by Western Digital for internal use which they decided to contribute to the open source community. The SweRV Core is a 32-bit, nine stage pipeline core which is two-way superscalar. It is small in size and has a simulation performance of up to 4.9 CoreMarks/Mhz. SweRV Core comes supports data-intensive applications like storage controllers, industrial IoT devices, real-time analytics in surveillance systems etc., Running on a 28mm CMOS battery, the power-efficient design has clock speeds up to 1.8Ghz. This core will be seen in future and upcoming WD products. Martin Fink, CTO of Western Digital, says to the Business Wire: “As Big Data and Fast Data continues to proliferate, purpose-built technologies are essential for unlocking the true value of data across today’s wide-ranging data-centric applications. Our SweRV Core and the new cache coherency fabric initiative demonstrate the significant possibilities that can be realized by bringing data closer to processing power.” What do you need for SweRV Core? Verilator 3.926 or newer Espresso needs to be installed if you want to add or remove instructions To start using it, Core clone the GitHub repo, setup RV_ROOT pointing to the path of your system, and run make with tools/Makefile. Last year Western Digital had also open-sourced SweRV Instruction Set Simulator (ISS). It is a program for designers to simulate code on SweRV core. Optionally, you can determine your config before running make. To get started, you can check out the GitHub repository. The Linux and RISC-V foundations team up to drive open source development and adoption of RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) A libre GPU effort based on RISC-V, Rust, LLVM and Vulkan by the developer of an earth-friendly computer LLVM officially migrating to GitHub from Apache SVN

Yesterday, Microsoft and Amazon announced a public preview of the integration of their intelligent digital assistants, Cortana and Alexa for US users. Both Cortana and Alexa allow each digital assistant to summon each other and access additional apps and services on their Windows 10 PCs and Harman Kardon Invoke speakers. This digital assistant integration was first announced on 30th August last year and was demonstrated at the Microsoft Build Developer Conference, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwjnuhNVIY Why did Microsoft and Amazon collaborate Cortana and Alexa? "I want them to have access to as many of those A.I.s as possible", said Jeff Bezos in an interview with The New York times, while putting forth his vision for users to communicate with AIs as they do with their friends while asking them recommendations about a good restaurant or a famous hiking place nearby, and so on. He further stated, "The world is big and so multifaceted. There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas. Together, their strengths will complement each other and provide customers with a richer and even more helpful experience." Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft added,"Bringing Cortana's knowledge, Office 365 integration, commitments, and reminders to Alexa is a great step toward that goal". Cortana users can have another way of making their lives easier with a great shopping experience. For instance, if you’re at work but remember you have to get soft drinks for a dinner party in the evening and you’re using their Windows 10 PC, iPhone or Android phone, you can simply ask Alexa to order soft drinks using the preferred payment method for their Amazon account. “Alexa, open Cortana” “Hey Cortana, open Alexa” For trying out this exciting update for Alexa on Cortana, and vice versa, you can simply say “Hey Cortana, open Alexa” on a Windows 10 PC, or “Alexa, open Cortana” on an Echo device. https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1029722099789832200 As explained by Amazon in one of its recent posts, “The goal is to have two integrated digital assistants who can carry out tasks across different dimensions of daily life — at home or work, and on whatever device is most convenient. Currently, Cortana and Alexa can each be enabled as a skill on the other.” In Microsoft Office 365 users can simply ask Cortana to summon Alexa through a PC at work or can use Alexa to order groceries, adjust the thermostat before heading home for the day. Also before heading to work, one could enlist Cortana through an Echo device to preview a daily calendar, add an item to a to-do list or check for new emails while making breakfast in the kitchen. As a part of this latest public preview, users can freely offer their feedback on how they can help both the communities in improving the Alexa+Cortana experience. The feedback will be based on what the users like, what they did not, and what features they use the most. With customer feedback, the experience will keep getting better and more precise as more people use it and as changes are updated to the underlying algorithms. “Engineers will use feedback from the public preview to deepen the collaboration between Cortana and Alexa”, stated Jennifer Langston in Amazon’s official post. Read more about this collaboration in detail on the  Amazon blog and Microsoft blog. Amazon Alexa and AWS helping NASA improve their efficiency Amazon Echo vs Google Home: Next-gen IoT war Microsoft Azure’s new governance DApp: An enterprise blockchain without mining

Splunk has announced Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence (Splunk IAI). It's now available on limited release. It would be made open to general availability later this year, in the fall. What is Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence? The Splunk IAI system makes it easy for customers to use Splunk’s data analytics capabilities for analyzing data from industrial systems and devices. Critical industrial systems lack real time visibility. This can lead to a reactive approach to managing industrial operations and problems are often solved via intuition instead of a data-driven approach. Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence (SIAI) has been introduced to combat these challenges facing companies in manufacturing, energy, transportation, oil and gas and other industrial verticals. The SIAI would be built on top of Splunk Enterprise machine data platform. The benefits of Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence Benefits of Splunk IAI include : It correlates data from Industrial Control Systems (ICS), sensors, SCADA systems and applications, making it easy to monitor and diagnose equipment and operational issues in real time. Enables customers to respond to issues faster without affecting production, where unplanned downtime can equate to millions of dollars in lost revenue. The packaged set of capabilities provided by Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence easily integrates with the existing Splunk platform. The Splunk IAI offers a single solution that ensures industrial systems running at full capacity, enabling organisations to significantly save resources and money on unplanned downtime. To learn more about Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence, visit Splunk’s website.