IEEE’s IoT initiative launched a Scenarios contributor program to help developers “get exposure for IoT projects, ideas, and services and to provide a venue for sharing best practices and lessons learned,” the standards group said in a Thursday announcement. The program’s submission process “provides a streamlined means to easily upload IoT contributions in PDF format” through a targeted landing page, it said.

Facebook released its updated employee demographic data Thursday and said in a news release that its work to create a more diverse workforce has produced "some positive but modest change" but "there's more work to do." The data show that, as of May 31, Caucasians make up 55 percent of Facebook's employees in the U.S. and Asians account for 36 percent, while African-Americans and Latinos combined for only 6 percent of its national workforce. Of those holding tech jobs with the company in the U.S., 94 percent identified as being either white or Asian and the remaining 6 percent identified as African-American, Hispanic or being of two or more races. It said 73 percent of U.S. employees in senior leadership positions are white. "While we have achieved positive movement over the last year, it's clear to all of us that we still aren't where we want to be," Maxine Williams, Facebook global diversity director, said in the report on the company's diversity demographics. "It's a big task, one that will take time to achieve." Thirty-two percent of all Facebook employees worldwide are women, and women hold 16 percent of the company's tech jobs and 23 percent of senior leadership positions. The only category in which female Facebook employees outnumber men is in non-tech jobs, making up 52 percent of global workers in that capacity.

Netflix stands by statements it will deliver high dynamic range content later this year when the first "certified" UHD Alliance and Dolby Vision sets come to market, spokesman Cliff Edwards emailed us Thursday in response to Amazon's announcement a day earlier that it had become the first video service to deliver HDR to its Amazon Prime customers (see 1506240038 or 1506240043). Amazon representatives haven't responded to our questions seeking specifics about its HDR offering, including which HDR technology it's using -- UHD Alliance or Dolby Vision -- and how much extra bandwidth its HDR layer will consume. Netflix is a founding member of the UHD Alliance; Amazon doesn't belong. The UHD Alliance's efforts to devise a product logo and certification program for HDR, among other Ultra HD attributes, should bear fruit this year, we were told at this month’s Display Week conference (see 1506030045). Sources familiar with UHD Alliance activities said it's possible the first Ultra HD TVs could begin landing HDR certifications by late summer.

Spotify extended its partnership with Ford through the integration of its music-streaming service into the vehicle manufacturer's new Sync 3 system, said a Spotify blog post. Sync 3 is expected to be launched this summer in the 2016 models of the Ford Escape and Fiesta, and will include updated options for voice-controlled music selection, Spotify said Tuesday.

Within five years, Ford will migrate driver-assist technologies across its product lineup as part of phase two of its transition to advanced engineering and autonomous driving, it said in a news release. Ford’s Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto in California is working on the Ford Smart Mobility Plan that will take the company “to the next level in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience and big data,” it said. A global Ford team is working to make the required sensing and computing technology “feasible for production” and continuing testing and refinement of algorithms, it said. Ford also said Tuesday that Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Detection technology will be available in the U.S. next year on an unnamed Ford-brand vehicle. The carmaker’s plan is to roll out the feature on most Ford products globally by 2019, it said. Ford also has been working to extend vehicle connectivity to wearables. An upcoming MyFord mobile app for smart watches will enable consumers to check from their wristbands driving range and battery charge for their plug-in vehicle and to find their parked cars, said the company.

The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles granted a partial motion to dismiss a data breach class action suit against Sony Pictures Entertainment after the breach of sensitive and personal information of at least 15,000 former and current Sony employees, said a post Tuesday on the Hunton & Williams’ privacy and information security law blog. The class action against Sony alleged negligence, breach of implied contract, violation of the California Customer Records Act, violation of the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, violation of the Unfair Competition Law, declaratory judgment, violation of Virginia Code 18.2‑186.6, and violation of Colorado Revised Statutes 6-1-716, the post said. “Sony moved to dismiss for lack of Article III standing under Rule 12(b)(1) and failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6),” it said. Sony’s challenge against Rule 12(b)(1) was rejected, as the court said the “personally identifiable information (PII) was stolen and posted on file-sharing websites for identity thieves to download, and that the PII was used to send threatening e-mails to employees and their families,” the post said. Challenges to Rule 12(b)(6) were both granted and denied. The plaintiffs' argument that implied contract claim was breached was dismissed, as were the claims the breach violated the California Customer Records Act, and the Virginia and Colorado breach notification claims, the post said. Negligence claims against Sony were granted and the Unfair Competition Law claim also advanced, the post said. Sony had no immediate comment.

Ransomware continues to spread and is infecting devices around the globe, an alert from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said Tuesday. CryptoWall is the most current and significant ransomware threat targeting U.S. individuals and businesses and has been actively used to target U.S. victims since April 2014, the IC3 alert said. “The financial impact to victims goes beyond the ransom fee itself, which is typically between $200 and $10,000,” the alert said. “Many victims incur additional costs associated with network mitigation, network countermeasures, loss of productivity, legal fees, IT services, and/or the purchase of credit monitoring services for employees or customers.” Between April 2014 and June 2015, the IC3 received 992 CryptoWall-related complaints, with reported losses totaling more than $18 million. Ransomware problems begin when an individual clicks on an infected advertisement, email or attachment, or visits an infected site, the alert said. “Once the victim’s device is infected with the ransomware variant, the victim’s files become encrypted.” Once a victim pays a ransom fee, usually with a digital currency like Bitcoin, they can regain access to the files that were encrypted, it said.

Google released Chrome v 43.0.2357.130 for Linux, Mac and Windows to address multiple vulnerabilities Monday, one of which may let an attacker obtain sensitive information, said a U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team alert. “Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix,” Google Chrome Technical Program Manager Anthony Laforge wrote in a blog post Monday. “We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed.”

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and NAB support some of the Consumer Drone Safety Act introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The legislation “strikes the right balance by imposing meaningful guidelines on recreational use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” an NAB spokesman said in a written statement Thursday. “UAVs hold great potential in improving newsgathering capabilities at local stations.” Though ITIF Vice President Daniel Castro generally commended the legislation, he said Friday that its anti-tampering proposed requirements go too far. “UAS as we know them today were created due to a culture of innovation, in which amateur inventors and model aircraft hobbyists built and improved upon the technology organically,” Castro said of unmanned aircraft systems. “This bill would prohibit consumers from ‘jailbreaking’ their drones and put the brakes on permission-less innovation.” Castro proposed steep penalties be imposed on those who violate Federal Aviation Administration safety rules. “The Consumer Drone Safety Act is a small, but important, step forward,” he said. “Congress and the FAA should continue to look for opportunities to enable commercial UAS usage that is risk-based and technology-neutral,” he said. “By modernizing its FAA safety rules, the United States can promote innovation and remain competitive in the rapidly growing global market for drone technology.” Some have said the chances of Congress passing any comprehensive drone privacy legislation are low (see 1506180020).

Facebook's website lists the number of content restrictions the company has complied with for countries including Brazil, India, Israel and Turkey, but the amount of content Facebook blocks in the U.S. is unknown, wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Investigative Researcher Dave Maass in a blog post Thursday. That this information is missing in the U.S. is “odd, considering that Facebook has been suspending the accounts of inmates for at least four years at the behest of prison officials,” he said. EFF’s issue isn’t about prisoner accounts removed from Facebook, but EFF is concerned if the company isn’t reporting these takedown requests that it's censoring other information as well, Maass said. In California and South Carolina alone, more than 700 takedowns were requested for accounts belonging to prisoners, he said. Even if EFF or another outlet filed a public records request in all 50 states, the true number of prisoner takedowns Facebook complied with may not be known because “Facebook’s system allowed prisons to file these requests without creating a paper trail,” Maass said. In EFF’s annual scorecard evaluating how companies handle government requests, Google and Twitter transparency efforts were applauded, he said. While EFF was preparing its 2015 report, “we gave Facebook multiple opportunities to come clean about government requests to suppress content,” he said. Facebook “did overhaul its inmate takedown process,” but “refuses to release top line numbers for the United States,” Maass said. He urged Facebook to “publish the data and show U.S. government agencies that censorship shouldn’t happen in the dark.” The company didn't comment.