It’s been a couple of weeks since Hurricane Ida flooded most of Louisiana, so now it’s time for Tropical Storm Nicholas to dump a half-foot or more of rain across parts of Texas and most of The Soaked State. Luckily, these newsbits are waterproof.

Popcorn time yet again, as Microsoft’s Channel 9 offers a new video on “Building multi-tenant solutions with Azure IoT Central.“

The Smart Home, in the coordinated and interconnected way, may be closer if Matter actually works as intended. Renamed from CHIP, Matter comes from the Zigbee Alliance, a pioneer in the area. Now that Amazon, Google, and Apple signed on, Matter might matter in 2022 when branded products should appear.

Down under, Notion and Honey Insurance will offer an 8% discount to Australian customers with a Smart Home Sensor Kit. Monitors water leaks and more.

If you take the train in Munich, you might see the new Zugvogel vending machine by Deutsche Bahn. Filled with IoT tools like cloud connectivity, temperature monitoring for the fresh local produce inside, screen information, and more.

Construction sites and large facilities now rely on key performance indicators gathered by IoT devices like timeclocks, raw materials, and the large equipment onsite.

The criminals behind the Meris IoT botnet launched targeted DDoS attacks on the Russian search giant Yandex and KrebsOnSecurity this past week. About 250,000 devices sent 21.8 million bogus requests per second.

Perhaps a report released by trade association DigitalEurope recommending regulators prioritize new IoT legislation to address administrative or organizational aspects of recent attacks will get the issue some attention.

The NIST Cybersecurity for IoT released four public documents providing guidance for federal agencies and IoT device makers on IoT security requirements.

European enterprises, slowed in their IoT rollouts last year because of the lockdown, are searching for service providers able to install and consult on IoT projects across multiple countries. Security issues top the requirements list.

A new report from ISG adds to the IoT and Industrial IoT security concerns, and companies are looking for service providers to step up and help.

Some senators are taking aim at the Chinese IoT company Tuya that powers smart doorbells, security cameras, and even refrigerators. Problem? National security threats from Tuya supposedly forwarding American customer information to the Chinese government.

IoT space fans will like to hear how Rocket Lab signed a five-launch contract with Kinetis to launch its 25 satellites, starting in Q2 2023.

Semtech and Cloud Energy, an IoT provider in Vietnam, partnered for a LoRaWAN standard to monitor and manage wireless solar power rooftop systems to provide electricity to buildings.

From our friends at Hackster.io:

Can’t see an important display? Use this project to control 1,152 seven-segment displays as one giant screen.