A product hazard “enabled by connectivity is not simply a product hazard” but also a “cybersecurity risk,” said CTA in comments, posted Wednesday in docket CPSC-2018-0007 on the Consumer Product Safety Commission's review of potential safety issues and hazards associated with IoT devices (see 1803290032). Internet-connected consumer devices can give hackers “a connected entry point through a vulnerable device to a potentially vulnerable network,” said CTA. “CPSC can play a unique and valuable role with respect to the IoT, but it should not aim to do so alone,” said the group. “The agency should seek to bring its expertise regarding product safety to broader public, private, and joint public-private efforts directed at improving IoT safety and security.” It urged a “focus on product safety, rather than broader cybersecurity risks.” The Retail Industry Leaders Association agrees the commission “must take care not to conflate issues that clearly fall within the agency’s statutory authority and those that do not,” it commented. “Threat of hackers stealing personal data is real, alarming and could cause major damage to consumers,” said RILA, which represents Best Buy, Walmart and other big-box retailers. But the CPSC “has no statutory jurisdiction over privacy data and security,” it said. “That responsibility belongs to the FTC.”

There's often a political urge to try to use antitrust authority to tackle social and economic ills, but the market "is the most effective regulator," wrote International Center for Law and Economics Executive Director Geoffrey Manne and Nebraska College of Law assistant professor Gus Hurwitz in a Cato Institute paper Tuesday. They said activist antitrust proponents' calls for either restraining big tech firms or mandating more smaller firms goes against decades' worth of experience and learning. They said it would mean dumping "the crown jewel of modern antitrust law -- the consumer welfare standard" and returning to days when inefficient firms were protected from competition. The structure-conduct-performance and the Justice Louis Brandeis views of antitrust favor smaller firms, but years of economic research showed large firms are often good routes for maximized consumer welfare. "It's not unusual for efficient, competitive markets to comprise only a few big, innovative firms," they said. Thus modern antitrust law is "fundamentally agnostic" about a company's size or the extent of market concentration, they said.

Basel Action Network is teaming with Dell Technologies to use GPS trackers to verify where Dell e-waste goes after it’s collected through the company’s U.S. consumer takeback programs, said the green group Tuesday. The pilot project with Dell is the start of BAN’s EarthEye commercial tracking services launching officially on Thursday to “all major corporations and institutions,” it said. Dell plans to send 40 hidden trackers into its U.S. takeback logistics chain to “see if things end up where they are supposed to -- in accordance with the law and Dell's strict no-export of e-waste policy,” said BAN.

Amazon Technologies landed a U.S. patent Tuesday that uses drones for more efficient movement of inventory in warehouses. Patent 10,000,284 describes a “collaborative unmanned aerial vehicle for an inventory system.” Modern inventory systems “face significant challenges in responding to requests for inventory items,” and those challenges become “non-trivial” when stock needs to be split between ground floors and upper “mezzanine levels within a large structure,” it said. An inventory system can quickly “dispatch autonomous ground drive units on both the first floor and on the mezzanine to collect the items,” it said. “At the mezzanine, the items can be collected at a staging point and consolidated into a container for transport.” The staging point may double as a “docking station” for a drone, it said. Amazon didn’t comment on commercial implications.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is going to Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington state this week on a new road trip to "highlight" how broadband expansion can close the digital divide and create opportunity, said an advisory Monday. He "will visit Tribal lands, a telehealth facility, an emergency communications center, a mining company, a potato farm, local Internet service providers, as well as meet with elected officials, local broadcasters, business leaders, and first responders."

Startup electric vehicle company Byton sees user interface as the future of the driving experience, said President Daniel Kirchert, addressing the CES Asia conference Thursday in Shanghai. The company’s first step was to do away with a cars’ traditional interface of buttons and knobs as it redefines the car interior as a “digital living space.” Each passenger has an individual full digital experience, Kirchert said. The 49-inch “shared experience display” from the driver's side to the passenger’s window has a dedicated panel for the driver and two separate ones for passengers that can function together or independently. Gone are buttons, replaced by an eight-inch touchpad in the steering wheel, plus voice and gesture control, said Kirchert. Facial recognition will identify passengers and download personal profiles, he said. Kirchert quoted Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as saying technological revolution “will start from the user interface.” Kirchert said “that will definitely be true for the smart car.” Jobs might not have appreciated what Kirchert said next about the user experience in a Byton vehicle: “Passengers will not ever have to take out their smartphone again.” The automaker with $500 million in Series B funding also previewed a concept Level 4 autonomous vehicle sedan.

GAO is making recommendations to agencies about better compliance with 2015's Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act. A report Thursday said the 30 recommendations would lead to full implementation of the act's requirements on procedures for assigning codes to cybersecurity positions and for completing baseline assessments of cybersecurity workforces. The recommendations were to 13 agencies, including DOD, the Department of Commerce and NASA.

About 67 percent of global consumers surveyed have streamed live video, and more than half prefer free, ad-supported streams over subscription services, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported Wednesday. Smartphones are the most popular streaming device, with smart TVs second, said the survey of 4,200 adults in 21 countries.

In Tyson Tuttle’s six years as Silicon Labs CEO, “I think we’ve done seven acquisitions, all around IoT,” he told a Stifel investment conference Wednesday. The Z-Wave buy from Sigma Designs that Silicon Labs completed in April for $240 million in cash (see 1804180064) “was the largest one that we’ve done,” said Tuttle. Like the six previous acquisitions under his watch, Silicon Labs pursued Z-Wave with the purpose of “building up this core platform around IoT,” he said. “That’s been, I think, a very successful set of acquisitions, and we’re starting to see the results of that in the growth of the IoT business.” After the Z-Wave buy, “we have about $525 million in the bank” and about $300 million in available credit, “and so we have the ability to continue to be active on the M&A front,” said Tuttle. In any new acquisition targets, “we’ll continue to focus on the IoT area, and if there’s something that makes sense there, we certainly have the ability to go for it,” he said. “But it has to be culturally aligned, strategically aligned, and it needs to be accretive to the bottom line at the same time.”

Homes with subscriptions to over-the-top video services will exceed 265 million globally by 2022, said Parks Associates Wednesday. Fifty-three percent of U.S. broadband homes own a smart TV, “and both smart TVs and streaming media players are continually improving the user experience to accommodate the shifting habits of consumers, including integration with voice-based digital assistant ecosystems,” said Parks. Consumers own an average of 8.6 connected CE products in their homes, up 87 percent since 2010, said Parks. More than 70 percent of U.S. broadband homes have an internet-connected entertainment device, it said: "With IoT expansion comes added expectations of interoperability. Consumers prioritize general device interoperability over staying within a specific brand ecosystem when considering a purchase.” Parks estimates three in every four consumers “find it important to consider any smart home product brand that will work with other products in their home,” and said 49 percent “find this very important.”