Rival semiconductor giants ARM and Intel (INTC.O) have agreed to work together to manage networks of connected devices from both firms, clearing a major stumbling block to market growth of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).

Britain’s ARM, a unit of Japan’s Softbank Corp (4726.T), said on Monday it had struck a strategic partnership with Intel to use common standards developed by Intel for managing IoT devices, connections and data.

Source: Rivals ARM and Intel make peace to secure Internet of Things | Reuters

Preventing bad things from happening—whether intentional or accidental—has become a shared responsibility for all of us. “If you see something, say something” has become a mantra many of us are familiar with.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has added to our overall safety, and here’s just a few examples of how.

Source: How The Internet Of Things Is Keeping Us Safe | Forbes

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed a bill regulating the cybersecurity standards of internet-connected devices, setting up the state to have the country’s toughest standards for the so-called “internet of things.”

The bill, SB 327, will require a level of “reasonable security” on IoT devices, which are defined as anything capable of connecting to the internet with a Bluetooth connection or internet protocol. Starting on Jan. 1, 2020, those devices will be required to come preloaded with unique pre-programmed passwords or newly generated passwords before they can be accessed for the first time.

Source: California governor signs ‘internet of things’ cybersecurity bill | State Scoop

Chinese ecommerce and technology giant Alibaba has announced that it is to set up a dedicated chip subsidiary.

It aims to launch its first self-developed AI inference chip, which could be used for autonomous driving, smart city applications, and logistics, in the second half of 2019, the company said this week.

The new subsidiary will make customised AI chips and embedded processors to support Alibaba’s push into cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The company’s aggressive drive to develop its own semiconductors comes as Beijing looks to propel China’s high-tech industries into leadership positions in AI, robotics, and autonomous transport, especially in areas such as healthcare.

Source: Alibaba announces A.I. chip unit, new Intel IoT edge partnership | Internet of Business

Have you ever stopped to think about how many items in your home are connected to the internet?

If you have (or even if you are doing it just now), have you stopped to wonder why? The umbrella term for all these connected appliances, electronics and other devices is “smart.”

We are living in the age of the smart home, smart car, smartphone, smart remote, smart thermostat, smart fridge … well, you get the idea.

Source: How to stay secure when your home devices rely on Internet of Things | MyAJC

Two high-profile open-source collaborations are putting their heads together to work out how to take Kubernetes, more familiar in hyperscale environments, out to Internet of Things edge computing projects.

The Kubernetes IoT Edge Working Group is the brainchild of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and the Eclipse Foundation.

Speaking to The Register, CNCF’s Chris Aniszczyk said the idea of using Kubernetes as a control plane for IoT is “very attractive”.

That sums up the brief of the working group, he said, “to take the concept of running containers, and expand that to the edge”.

Source: Open-source boffins want to do for the IoT edge what Kubernetes did for containers | The Register

Microsoft has announced an experimental release of Robot Operating System (ROS1) for Windows as a next step in bringing features like Machine Learning (ML), computer vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud services and other Microsoft technologies to home, education, commercial and industrial robots.

The announcement comes as part of the ROSCon 2018 that is being held in Madrid, Spain where Microsoft is demonstrating a ROBOTIS Turtlebot 3 robot that recognises and steers towards the person closest to it and runs on the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise solution.

Source: Microsoft Robot OS With Machine Learning, Internet of Things Integration Coming to Windows 10 | Technology News

Microsoft has announced a number of updates for Azure, its fast-growing cloud computing platform. Azure and other cloud services benefit a lot from the amount of data generated by IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

Companies will now be building their own comprehensive digital models of any physical environment with Microsoft Azure Digital Twins.

Azure Sphere, a microcontroller, is now broadly available, and developers can now get access to development kits. It comes with integrated cloud connectivity and a secure operating system. Microsoft is probably planning to sell the services through Azure Sphere.

The company has upgraded its IoT provisioning service Map Control API (application programming interface) and its IoT hub message routing tools.

The software giant is also making Azure IoT Central generally available. It’s a SaaS2-based IoT service for businesses.

The company also said its Azure IoT platform will support Google’s (GOOG) Android and the Android Things platform through Microsoft’s Java SDK (software developer’s kit).

Source: Microsoft Is Betting Big on Internet of Things | Market Realist

The Internet of Things (IoT) platforms market is set to expand rapidly in the years to come, with current leading platforms expanding and others entering the space. Business Insider claims that there will be more than 24 billion IoT devices on Earth by 2020. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable things to collect and exchange data.

According to the data collected by HP at different time intervals, dating back to the 90’s, there were already 0.3 million people in the world in 1990 that were using IoT to lower their human labour.

The connected devices that were mostly used by early adapters of IoT in the UK, Germany, Japan, USA, are as follow:

Source: Debunking the Various Applications of the Internet of Things | iSoCIAL

It’s been almost exactly one year since lawmakers — prompted by a massive cyberattack that disabled huge chunks of the Internet — floated a bipartisan bill to set the first cybersecurity standards for the broad group of devices known as the Internet of Things.

In the time since, Congress hasn’t done much with the legislation from Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) introduced in August 2017. But security researchers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas tell me there’s only more urgency now to boost security of connected devices, which include connected thermostats, smartwatches, pacemakers and even shower heads (yes, really).

Source: The Cybersecurity 202: Here’s what security researchers want policymakers to know about the Internet of Things | The Washington Post