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Latest Read: The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things By Samuel Greengard. Samuel is a business and technology writer whose work has appeared in Wired, Entrepreneur, and other publications. He holds a degree in journalism from California State University-Northridge and is a past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

The Internet of Things by Samuel Greengard

This book is a very lightweight, suitable for a complete novice to technology. However, this content is outside previous MIT Press titles by select content experts. However, every book has an audience and this is perfect for anyone seeking to understand IoT

In fact, beginning with the example when a lamp was merely a lamp. This provides the backdrop to the integration of modern wifi and bluetooth technologies into devices like a lamp, providing lighting controls via a mobile app.

For this reason, Samuel provides how IoT is changing everything in modern society. He helps define the concepts and key terms with mobility as the baseline for all these technologies. However it is the area where he communicates the recent emerging digital technology has now defined IoT. This products now tie services, data, and people. Those models are outlined as Automation, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Edge AI, Analytics, Robotics, 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Blockchain.

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Latest Read: When Gadgets Betray Us

Robert Vamosi wrote When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies in 2013. Today in the age of COVID-19 this book remains very relevant. Upon his book release, Robert spoke at Microsoft Research.

When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies
When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies

When Gadgets Betray Us is really about the internet of things (IoT) and the explosion of cheap gadgets.

This is a two fold problem: the impulse of human behavior to jump right into a new, innovative, ‘shiny’ devices. We more often skip reading the manual. Who reads manuals anyway these days?

However the ability for a nation state to remotely hack building controls and manipulate industrial machines seemed like stuff from a Hollywood movie, even back in 2013.

Clearly Vamosi could not have considered the impact of Stuxnet, the attack by Israel and the US NSA to destroy centrifuges in an underground facility in Iran. My review Countdown to Zero Day will surprise many readers.

This is a good starting point for many readers. Generally When Gadgets Betray Us reveals how our devices (phones, cars, smart watches, home thermostats and even baby monitors leaked location data. Worse, baby monitors permitted hackers to hijack the video feeds meant for remote grandparents, family and friends.

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Tesla Patch Wednesday

Microsoft and Adobe own Tuesdays. Tesla may take over the Wednesday rev cycle as Chinese hackers were able to turn on the model S wipers, open the car doors and even apply the brakes while in motion.
Hackers shut down a moving Tesla Model STencent’s Keen Security Lab posted a video that has gone viral on September 19. Tesla updated an over-the-air software update to their Model S. The Tesla Model S is now running v7.1 2.36.31.

This is not a new issue. Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller hacked a 2014 Jeep Cherokee while on a California highway.  Its a sign of thing to come as the Internet of Things continues.

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FarmBot: Open­source precision farming

FarmBot is an open­source and scalable automated precision farming machine and software package designed from the ground up with today’s technologies. The world’s population is growing and is projected to surpass 9 billion inhabitants by 2050. As a result farms must increase production by about 60 percent to meet demand which is stunning since many believe we have reached the limits of traditional farming.
FarmBot

In comparison to desktop digital 3D printers and CNC machines FarmBot extends the idea of X, Y, and Z directions and applies it to plows, seed injectors, water and sensors in order to accurately and efficiently grow plants and soil. I think that I would like to try this out in my own backyard.

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Introducing the AWS IoT cloud

The emerging IoT developer community received a much anticipated jolt of news when Amazon finally announced new enterprise services dedicated to the AWS IoT cloud launch at their 2015 re:Invent conference.
AWS IoT Cloud PlatformThis new AWS IoT cloud service will permit web based interfaces to manage IoT events from various devices: sensors, wearables, drones, and of course mobile tools and apps around an established AWS ecosystem.

The AWS IoT cloud emerges as Amazon’s long term platform following the SalesForce Thunder platform announced last month. Both vendors look to establish key IoT cloud solutions in the corporate enterprise space. They join Cisco’s IoT, Microsoft’s Azure IoT, Oracle’s Movintracks along side GE’s energy launch of Current IoT. The race is now on to process millions of data events from light bulbs to dishwashers and cars over the MQTT protocol and process those messages in their respective clouds.

Amazon is leveraging 11 services around their IoT Cloud strategy to include existing AWS services: Kinesis, Redshift, S3, SNS, SQS, ML, DynamoDB and Lambda. A key investment to this strategy was the recent acquisition of 2lemetry, a IoT enterprise company tuned for transforming raw data from IoT devices onto their ThingFabric platform.