In mid-October Samsung was one of the first companies to become Matter-certified, and has already rolled out software updates for its existing Aeotec and SmartThings hubs as well as for the Android app to support Matter. Yet, says Mark Tekippe, vice president of Product at SmartThings and board member at Connectivity Standards Alliance, this is only the beginning. ZDNET sat down with Tekippe to discuss Matter, energy consumption, and the future of SmartThings....

The pair’s collaboration began earlier this year and the multi-year contract is worth over $1 billion, the South Korean tech giant said in a statement sent to ZDNet. It’s Samsung’s second-largest deal in the US to supply network equipment so far. In 2020, the company won a deal worth $6.6 billion from US carrier Verizon to supply 4G and 5G network equipment. Under its latest agreement with Dish, Samsung will be supplying its Open RAN-compliant solutions for the carrier’s 5G rollout....

In the search warrant, Santa Clara Police sought to get the name, street address, telephone number, and email address of a specific Signal user. It also wanted billing records, the dates of when the account was opened and registered, inbound and outbound call detail records, voicemails, video calls, emails, text messages, IP addresses along with dates and times for each login, and even all dates and times the user connected to Signal....

This review took several factors into account. We examined each company’s features, including the type of monitoring available, Simplisafe and Ring home security reviews from customers, costs, fees and if any time commitments are required to help you decide which home security system works best for you. SimpliSafe vs. Ring overview *Data as of 06/15/2020 SimpliSafe Best for a customizable system Simplisafe has been revolutionizing home security since it was founded in 2006....

It must have been at least two decades ago now when I attended a media briefing, during which an executive was demonstrating the company’s latest speech recognition software. As most demos went, no matter how much you prepared for it, things would go desperately wrong, including this particular one. The executive’s voice-directed commands often were wrongly executed and several spoken words in every sentence were inaccurately translated into text. The harder she tried, the more things went wrong, and by the end of the demo, she looked clearly flustered....

Called Projected Guardian, the initiative would see the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) collaborate with industry players to explore the “economic potential” of asset tokenisation, the industry regulator said Tuesday. By digitally representing assets or items of value through blockchain-powered smart contracts, tokenisation enabled high-value financial and real economy assets to be fractionalised and exchanged online, on a peer-to-peer basis. MAS noted that applying this to financial services such as borrowing, lending, and trading would allow these transactions to be performed autonomously, bypassing the need for intermediaries....

This year has seen connections to 5G triple to 637 million, suggesting that the rollout of the network is continuing apace. National lockdowns caused by the global health crisis last year slowed network rollout, for example, making it more difficult to send engineers on the ground to physically build the infrastructure. CCS Insight also noted that geopolitical tensions related to Huawei’s role in 5G rollouts led to delays, especially in Western Europe....

For the third quarter, SoftBank reported a net profit of ¥29 billion, which pales in comparison to the ¥1.17 trillion recorded a year ago. The weak performance follows on from a poor second-quarter result when the company recorded a ¥342 billion loss. SoftBank’s third-quarter revenue, meanwhile, rose 6% year-on-year to ¥1.6 trillion. Speaking about the Arm sale fallout, SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son said his company will now aim to take Arm public in the US sometime in the next fiscal year....

Also: The best Bluetooth speakers Also: How to AirPlay to a TV Sonos Era 100 The Sonos Era 100 is available for the retail price of $249 and is a replacement for the Sonos One, the most popular Sonos smart speaker with voice control. The Era 100 features all new acoustics and software, with an improved processor from its predecessor’s, to ensure the audio quality is crisp and rich, no matter the volume....

In a message to customers on the Microsoft 365 message center, the company said that by February, users will be able to turn off notifications during meetings and events. While the Microsoft 365 message is not public, the company confirmed the update to ZDNet, pointing to a Microsoft 365 roadmap page that says the change is coming next month. “Users will be able to mute notifications during meetings thereby helping focus during meetings....

It’s not that I want to stop you from having a good time, visiting family, or seeing your abysmal NFL team squander its chances and stomp on your hopes. It’s that many airlines have managed their businesses about as well as I manage to play the ukulele. Thousands of flights have been canceled. Hundreds of excuses have been given. Alright, I exaggerated that last number. But if it isn’t the weather, it’s Covid....

Coining it “DARE+”, StarHub said Monday it concluded the first phase of its DARE transformation journey last month, which yielded cost savings in excess of SG$270 million ($198.2 million) and was higher than its original target of SG$210 million. It also slashed its operating expenditure by 15%. The telco now would look to attain “sustainable revenue growth”, “potential growth” in dividends, and product margins with the introduction of 5G products and services....

Filed in the US District Court in the Northern District of California, the suit is led by Utah, North Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Nebraska, Politico reports. The suit comes as regulators and developers around the globe question the way Google and Apple wield their power over the marketplace for mobile applications. Last September, Google gave all Android developers a year to adopt its in-app billing system for apps distributed on the Google Play Store to sell digital goods....

The card is aimed at professionals who want to streamline their workflow. Also: Best cameras With modern cameras capturing high megapixel images and 4K video, there’s a demand for high performance. The UHS-II technology offers write speeds up to 180MB/s, and is rated UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) and Video Speed Class 60 (V60), bringing professional grade performance to DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The 1800x is waterproof, temperature-proof, shockproof, vibration-proof, and X-ray-proof....

When it comes to large simulations – like the computational fluid dynamics to simulate a wind tunnel – processing the millions of data points needs the power of a distributed system and the software that schedules these workloads is designed for HPC systems. If you want to simulate 500 million data points and you want to do that 7,000 or 8,000 times to look at a variety of different conditions, that’s going to generate about half a petabyte of data; even if a cloud virtual machine (VM) could cope with that amount of data, the compute time would take millions of hours so you need to distribute it – and the tools to do that efficiently need something that looks like a supercomputer, even if it lives in a cloud data centre....

Founded in 2007, New York-based Taboola is a marketing and revenue driver service for websites and apps seeking to monetize their content. The company caters to over 13,000 publishers that reach over 500 million users per day. Connexity, meanwhile, runs a platform that lets publishers integrate retail product offers on their websites. It also offers a bevy of other monetization tools, like affiliate links, in-stream advertising and shopping search ads....

The UK government commenced work on the proposed laws in May last year to push a duty of care onto social media platforms so that tech companies are forced to protect users from dangerous content, such as disinformation and online abuse. “We don’t give it a second’s thought when we buckle our seat belts to protect ourselves when driving. Given all the risks online, it’s only sensible we ensure similar basic protections for the digital age,” Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said....

After seven years as CEO, Telstra said Andy Penn would be retiring after joining the company in 2012 as CFO before replacing David Thodey to lead the telco. The centrepiece of Penn’s time at the helm has been the company’s T22 strategy, which saw Telstra reform its corporate structure with InfraCo entities, job cuts, and simplified product lines. “There is no doubt the strategy has delivered beyond expectations and has laid the foundations for Telstra’s recently announced T25 strategy and a renewed focus on growth and innovation,” Telstra chair John Mullen said....

The telco said it moved over 8,600 new battery cells weighing a total of 500,000 kilograms across the country. Following the Black Summer bushfires, the government said in May 2020 it would be spending AU$37 million to improve disaster resiliency. “Our priority is to provide Australians with better access to reliable communication services, which is why we committed AU$11.4 million to boost the battery back-up power of these 341 mobile tower sites – all of which were funded under Rounds 1 and 2 of the Liberal and National Government’s Mobile Black Spot Program,” Minister for Emergency Management and Regional Communications Senator Bridget McKenzie said....

First, some information about the laptop itself. It is an Acer Aspire 5 A515-52: Intel Core i5-8265U CPU (Quad-core), 1.6GHz (max 3.4GHz)8GB DDR4 Memory256GB SSD + 1TB HD15.6" 1920x1080 DisplayIntel HD Graphics 620Realtek RTL8411 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)Intel 802.11ac WiFiBluetooth 5.01xUSB3.1 Type C, 1xUSB3.0 Type A, 2xUSB2.0 Type AHDMI PortSD-Card Reader36.34 cm x 24.75 cm x 1.8 cm, 1.9 kg That’s a pretty impressive configuration, especially considering that the regular list price here in Switzerland is CHF 1,199 (~ £945 / €1,065), and it is currently on sale at one of the large electronic stores here for CHF 699 (~ £550, €620)....