In San Francisco’s Mission District, the nine-year-old cat “KitKat,” known as the mascot of “Randa’s Market,” was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle operated by Waymo. The company confirmed the incident and expressed its “deepest sympathy.”
The global colocation data center market is experiencing massive growth – and Europe is emerging as one of its key drivers. According to a recent analysis by DC Market Insights, the global market volume is expected to reach around USD 332 billion by 2035.
AT&T and Thales have launched a new eSIM solution based on the GSMA SGP.32 standard, enabling secure, automated IoT connectivity for global device fleets without physical SIM replacement — a key step toward scalable, flexible IoT deployments worldwide.
When the Amazon cloud region us-east-1 failed on October 20, 2025, numerous online services and IoT applications worldwide were affected. EMQ Technologies (EMQ), operator of the IoT data platform EMQX Cloud, reported only limited impact. The company explained its resilience to the widespread cloud outage in its own blog post.
Software developer and blogger Harishankar Narayanan describes on his tech blog CodeTiger an incident that exemplifies the loss of control many users experience over their own devices. His smart vacuum cleaner, the iLife A11, suddenly stopped working—after he blocked its data transmissions to the manufacturer. The case exposes how deeply manufacturers of cloud-based devices can interfere with the autonomy of their customers.
I had promised myself not to write yet another article from the “Internet of Trash” category, lamenting how helpless we all are when the cloud goes down. But fate had other plans: On October 20, 2025, a large-scale outage of the AWS Cloud demonstrated how vulnerable the Internet has become to a single disruption. Ironically, resilience against individual failures was once the very foundation of an indestructible communication network.
Following Baidu and Lyft, Waymo is now planning its own move into the European market. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the Alphabet subsidiary intends to deploy autonomous taxis in London starting in 2026. This would mark Waymo’s first market launch outside North America and Japan – and another step in the global race for driverless mobility services.
A sentence everyone should remember: those who believe they’re buying something future-proof when purchasing a “smart” device are fooling themselves. The shiny new world of the Internet of Things is showing its true face: once again, manufacturers are literally pulling the plug on their customers – not because the devices are technically obsolete, but because keeping them alive is no longer profitable.
In Dubai, the 45th edition of GITEX Global has begun – one of the world’s largest technology trade fairs. From October 13 to 17, more than 6,800 exhibitors and around 2,000 startups from over 180 countries are showcasing their solutions for Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and digital infrastructure at the Dubai World Trade Centre. In parallel, the innovation platform “Expand North Star,” focused on startups and venture capital, is taking place at Dubai Harbour.
The monetization of smart products and applications is taking ever stranger turns: the days of “buy once and own forever” are over. Subscription models and ad placements have become popular tools to generate ongoing revenue over a product’s lifetime. In return, providers promise free updates. Recently, Amazon seems to have gone too far with its “Echo Show” smart displays.
