NTIA will hold a "Digital Northwest" regional broadband summit March 21 aimed at helping communities improve their broadband capacity and utilization, said a notice to be published in Wednesday's Federal Register. "The summit will present best practices and lessons learned from broadband network infrastructure build-outs and digital inclusion programs from the State of Washington and surrounding states, including projects funded by NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and State Broadband Initiative grant programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The summit will also explore effective business and partnership models and will include access to regional policymakers, federal funders and industry providers." NTIA said the meeting, which will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT, is being organized under its Broadband USA program and in conjunction with Next Century Cities.
The FTC approved a final consent order requiring California-based Carrot Neurotechnology and its co-owners to stop making false claims that their app can help improve people's eyesight, the commission said in a news release Tuesday. The commission, which voted 4-0 to OK the final order following a public comment period, issued an administrative complaint and proposed order in September. At the time, the company agreed to settle with the FTC. The commission said the company's ads for the Ultimeyes app falsely claimed that users' vision would improve. The order requires the company and owners Adam Goldberg and Aaron Seitz to provide "competent and reliable scientific evidence" before making such claims, the FTC said. The order also bars the company from misrepresenting any test, study or research. The defendants will pay $150,000 to the FTC. Seitz, a University of California, Riverside professor who conducts perceptual learning research, described the consent order as "chilling," saying it could have a negative impact on his reputation, scientific research, the "brain game" industry and on people who could benefit from such technology. Neither he nor Goldberg, the co-owner, financially gained from his 3-year-old company, Seitz said in an interview. And money they did receive went toward development of the app or to lawyers, he said. Additionally, Seitz said the FTC ignored the scientific research that was provided to it and also ignored the public comments, which he said strongly supported his research. He also said that the FTC is holding him to a higher standard in the consent agreement than it even held brain training company Lumosity, which agreed to settle allegations of deceptive advertising in January (see 1601050026). “We’re going to do what we can to move forward in a manner that has been crippled by the FTC,” he said.
AsusTeK Computer agreed to settle FTC allegations that it put hundreds of thousands of consumers' home networks at risk due to critical security flaws in the Taiwan-based company's routers, and exposed thousands of people's sensitive personal information on the Internet due to insecure cloud services, the commission said in a news release Tuesday. The commission, which voted 4-0 to approve an administrative complaint and proposed consent order, said that Asus must establish and maintain a comprehensive security program over the next 20 years and be subject to independent audits during that time. The company will have to notify consumers about software updates and give them an option to register for direct security notices through email, text message or a push notification, FTC said. The commission will publish the agreement soon in the Federal Register, and the pact will be open for public comment through March 24. The FTC alleged Asus "didn't take reasonable steps to secure the software on its routers," even though the company claimed the devices contained many security features to protect computers from hacking and malware. For instance, the commission said a malware researcher in April discovered a large-scale exploit campaign by hackers who specifically targeted numerous Asus router models, enabling them to hijack consumers' Web traffic. The commission also alleged that Asus advertised secure services on its routers called AiCloud and AiDisk that allowed consumers to plug a USB hard drive into the router to create their own cloud storage, but those services had "serious security flaws." The FTC said hackers could exploit the AiCloud service to get access to people's connected storage device and that AiDisk didn't encrypt consumers' files in transit. In February 2014, hackers exploited these flaws to get access to more than 12,900 consumers' connected storage devices, the commission said. Asus didn't immediately comment.
Domain name registry operator Minds + Machines’ board voted unanimously to fire CEO Antony Van Couvering, the registry operator said Monday. Chief Marketing Officer Toby Hall will take over as CEO pending regulatory approval, the company said. Although Van Couvering, who co-founded Minds + Machines, “has contributed greatly to the business’s development, the Board felt that a fresh approach is required in order to fully exploit the revenue potential of our leading portfolio of TLDs,” the company said in a news release. Minds + Machines’ portfolio of new generic top-level domains includes the .law and Spanish equivalent .abogado TLDs (see 1508210047). Van Couvering said in a CircleID blog post Monday that his ouster “was a surprise” and noted that “there were differences and disagreements” with the company’s board. “Owning a registry, or even better a portfolio of them, is a fantastic long-term business,” Van Couvering said. “Those who can't think long term (no cash) or won't (no vision), will not be well served by what's to come.”
Yahoo said its board formed a committee to “evaluate strategic alternatives for the company,” which may include a sale of its $32 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and other Yahoo components. Yahoo has faced pressure from its investors to take action, given the 40 percent slide in the company’s stock since late 2014. Yahoo announced plans in early February to lay off 15 percent of its staff after reporting a net loss of more than $4.3 billion for 2015. “Separating our Alibaba stake from Yahoo’s operating business is essential to maximizing value for our shareholders. In addition to the reverse spin, there are strategic alternatives that could help us achieve the separation, while strengthening our business," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a news release. Yahoo’s board believes “pursuing these complementary paths is in the best interests of our shareholders and will maximize value,” Chairman Maynard Webb said.
The Open Interconnect Consortium brought into the fold new members ElectroluxAB, Microsoft and Qualcomm and gave itself a new name, Open Connectivity Foundation, it said Friday. The consortium said it hopes to help unify IoT standards so developers and companies can create products that “work seamlessly together.” OCF will accelerate solutions leading to a single, open IoT interoperability specification, it said. Other members of the cross-industry group are Arris, CableLabs, Cisco, GE Digital, Intel and Samsung. The OCF’s vision for IoT is that “billions of connected devices (appliances, phones, computers, industrial equipment) will communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or transport.” If it meets its goal, OCF said, anyone -- from a large technology company to a maker working out of a garage -- could adopt OCF’s open standards, innovate and compete ensuring “secure interoperability for consumers, business and industry.” Samsung’s Seung Hwan Cho, deputy head-software R&D center, said in a statement OIC had been working to develop a standard spec for IoT devices while developing IoTivity as an open-source reference implementation, and it welcomes the new members to OCF. Also in a prepared statement, Michael Wallace, president-Qualcomm Connected Experiences, said Qualcomm helped develop the AllJoyn framework to drive a similar goal, “and now we look forward to collaborating with leading IoT-focused companies to form the OCF for precisely the same reason.” Qualcomm, Electrolux and Microsoft are listed as premier members of the AllSeen Alliance, whose stated AllJoyn-based mission is to “enable industry standard interoperability between products and brands with an open source framework that drives intelligent experiences for the Internet of Things,” the website said. The AllSeen Alliance is "encouraged to see companies coming together to build new technologies through collaboration," AllSeen Board Chairman Danny Lousberg emailed us Friday on our queries about the relationship between OFC and AllSeen. "It accelerates development and innovation," Lousberg said. "Many of the companies committed to Open Connectivity Foundation remain invested in AllSeen Alliance, so we're confident that technology integration and collaboration across efforts will be a priority and can benefit the industry at large," he said. "AllSeen Alliance continues its focus on a robust code base and devices shipping with AllJoyn. As a code-first organization we are supportive of any effort to advance open specifications. We are eager to learn more about the OCF specification and the IP policies that surround it.”
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework has gained significant support among U.S. firms since its release two years ago, NIST said Thursday. Tech research firm Gartner estimated 30 percent of U.S. organizations now use the NIST framework and about 50 percent of companies will use the framework by 2020, NIST said. The framework is “a merger of business sense and cyber-logic,” said NIST Computer Security Division Program Manager-Security Research and Integration Group Matt Barrett in a news release. NIST is collecting comment on the NIST framework through Feb. 23. Comments NIST has received thus far indicate that there isn’t major demand for a full update of the Cybersecurity Framework (see 1602180068).
The 20th complaint seeking class-action status against Vizio and its Inscape smart TV viewer-tracking feature (see 1512060005) was brought on behalf of a Pittsburgh consumer who bought her Vizio TV at a Target store over Black Friday weekend, said court documents. Plaintiff Caroline Tongarm filed the action to “enjoin” Vizio from tracking and collecting users’ personal information without their consent, and to seek damages “on behalf of herself and other similarly-situated owners for violations of their privacy and consumer rights under federal and state law,” said the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Vizio representatives didn’t comment Friday, nor has the company filed defense answers to any previous complaints.
Nvidia believes the self-driving car “is not a solved problem,” CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on a Wednesday earnings call. “Self-driving cars is a field that's going to require the technological muscle of a very, very large industry." Huang thinks the “soul” of any car company is composed of the “driving experience,” the “functionality” and the “safety record” of its vehicles, he said. Those ingredients will be “largely software-defined,” he said. But Huang “just can’t imagine great companies like BMW and Mercedes and Audi” outsourcing “the soul of their car to a chip company,” he said. Nvidia thinks “by partnering with every single car company in the world,” together “we might be able to solve this incredibly daunting challenge and hopefully bring some society good,” he said.
Data brokers settled with the FTC over allegations that they "knowingly" provided hundreds of thousands of people's Social Security and bank account numbers and other personal data to scammers, the commission said in a news release Thursday. Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the stipulated final order filed with U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona against John Ayers, LeapLab and Leads Co. The commission alleged the defendants collected hundreds of thousands of loan applications -- which also contained consumers' names, addresses, phone numbers and employers -- that were submitted to payday loan sites. The defendants would be prohibited from selling or transferring consumers' sensitive personal data to third parties and must destroy any consumer data they still have within 30 days. A $5.7 million monetary judgment was suspended based on inability to pay, FTC said. It said the court entered a $4.1 million default judgment with similar prohibitions against SiteSearch, the remaining defendant. Contact information for the defendants couldn't be found for us to request comment. An Arizona phone number to LeapLab was not answered.