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.

Bitcoin mining operation Butterfly Labs reached agreement with the FTC to settle the agency's case against the company, the commission said Thursday. The FTC sued Butterfly in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Kansas City, Missouri, claiming the company was misleading its customers by delaying or failing to deliver bitcoin mining computers (see report in the Sept. 24, 2014, issue). Butterfly and two of its operators -- General Manager Darla Drake and Vice President-Product Development Sonny Vleisides -- will be prohibited as part of the settlement from “misrepresenting to consumers whether a product or service can be used to generate Bitcoins or any other virtual currency, on what date a consumer will receive the product or service, and whether the product is new or used,” the FTC said in a news release. Butterfly and Vleisides are also barred from taking upfront payments for Bitcoin machines or other machines used to mine virtual currency unless those products are available and can be delivered within 30 days, the FTC said. Butterfly agreed to pay $15,000 of a suspended $38,615,161 settlement against the company and Vleisides, while Vleisides agreed to pay $4,000. Drake will surrender the cash value of all Bitcoins she obtained using Butterfly's machines in exchange for a suspension of a $135,878 judgment against her. The FTC agreed to suspend the monetary judgments because of the defendants' inability to pay, but said those judgments will take effect if the FTC finds Butterfly and others “misrepresented their financial condition.” The Kansas City district court will need to approve the FTC's settlement for it to take effect.

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.

President Barack Obama selected the leaders of the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (CENC) Wednesday, announcing former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon as the commission’s chairman and former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano as vice chairman. Obama formed CENC last week as part of the White House’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan, which industry lawyers and lobbyists have viewed as an ambitious capstone to the Obama administration’s cybersecurity legacy. CENC is required to make recommendations by Dec. 1 on strengthening private sector and public sector cybersecurity (see 1602090068). Donilon "understands government and national security issues" and Palmisano "understands the intimacies of computing, of the digital world, the economic aspects of this, making them the "two of the best possible people to chair" CENC, Obama said, according to a White House transcript. "We're confident that this is going to be the kind of product that is of great importance to everybody. And this is not an ideological issue that should divide Washington along party lines. This is something that everybody has got an interest in getting right." Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson will also be “working very closely” with CENC, Obama said.

Avnet is working with IBM to "increase the development and deployment of [IoT] solutions in the U.S., Europe and Canada," Avnet said in a news release Wednesday. The companies "will help customers develop IoT solutions built on the IBM Watson IoT Platform to help create new revenue streams and operational efficiencies," it said. The partnership is also designed to "help Avnet customers, ranging from original equipment manufacturers to solution providers, capitalize on the opportunities in the rapidly growing IoT market," said Avnet, "to develop IoT solutions that effectively gather information, connect to the Internet, and securely manage and analyze data."