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Who Does the Plumbing for IoT?

Who Does the Plumbing for IoT?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
At CES 2022, the IoT community was giddy over Matter, the new IoT application layer that unites wireless devices in a smart home. While Amazon, Google, Apple and Samsung are Matter’s headliners, who does the plumbing for the Internet of Things? Devils linger in the details.

The interoperability of consumer devices – whether installed in “smart homes” or traditional dumb houses – has long been a tough nut to crack.

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The Inscrutability of Black Ice

The Inscrutability of Black Ice

By David Benjamin

“As someone who doesn’t drive, I am not sure how an AI would handle icy road conditions… Autonomous cars are not going to get angry, commit road rage-related crimes, or panic when suddenly confronted with black ice.” —Johnna Crider, CleanTechnica, Dec. 23, 2021

Like many other folks, I’ve faced the prospect of death a number of times. But in none of those circumstances was I ever palpably scared — until the whole horror was over with and I had a chance to think of how close I’d come to strolling into the sunset hand-in-hand with the Grim Reaper.

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Ted Tewksbury, Velodyne’s New CEO

Open Letter to Ted Tewksbury, Velodyne’s New CEO

By Junko Yoshida

Dear Ted, ‌
‌‌
‌Velodyne’s recent announcement introducing you as its new CEO didn’t surprise me. You’re the right executive arriving at the right time to correct the course of a vision-challenged company that has lost its way.

Velodyne went public in September 2020 through the dubious mechanism of a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger with blank-check company Graph Industrial. Since then, as the corporate board and its largest shareholder have relentlessly exchanged accusations, Velodyne has become best known for its dysfunction.

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (Facebook)

Open Letter to Zuck: Prove to Us That ‘Ethics in Tech’ Is Not an Oxymoron

By Girish Mhatre

Dear Zuck,

You can hide behind a rebranding, but you can’t run from your most egregious accomplishment: You’ve delivered, in a most terrifying way, on that infamous slogan of yours, “Move fast and break things.” You’ve broken people, societies and dented American democracy. What you’ve built is nothing less than “a toxic propaganda guidebook for the ages,” according to New York Times columnist Kara Swisher.

Read More »Open Letter to Zuck: Prove to Us That ‘Ethics in Tech’ Is Not an Oxymoron
A Tesla attempts to turn pretty aggressively in front of opposing traffic.

When Teslas Crash, ‘Uh-Oh’ Is Not Enough

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Tesla’s autonomous-vehicle strategy is about to become a playbook for the broader automotive industry on sidestepping the National Transportation Safety Board’s safety recommendations and bending the prior administration’s toothless AV regulations to its will. But when Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta software kills a pedestrian, regulators must do more than say, “Uh-oh”; they must get to the bottom of what went wrong. That requires a deep dive into the software — a task for which regulators today are ill-equipped. Ensuring the public safety requires rewriting the rules and arming the regulators to enforce them.

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Rest in Peace: Arm, 1990 – 2022

Draft of a funereal eulogy to be read in the event of Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm Ltd.

So, farewell, Arm Ltd., you were a fine company. You were a child of Cambridge, England, but you only made it to 32 years old.

Nothing lasts forever. But some things and ideas last a long time and become part of the landscape, part of what defines what else can happen. And some things don’t last so long or cease to endure, and can be moved around or taken off the table for commercial benefit.

Read More »Rest in Peace: Arm, 1990 – 2022