Amazon launched Instant Pickup tied to staffed pickup locations near UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley. Available free to Prime and Prime Student members with deliveries of “two minutes or less,” it goes to self-service lockers, said Amazon. The service is to go online in Columbus, Ohio, College Park, Maryland, and Atlanta. Those locations weren’t operational Tuesday afternoon.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned from the White House's American Manufacturing Council Monday amid bipartisan outcry over President Donald Trump's response to a weekend white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to one protester's death (see 1708140044). “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing," Krzanich blogged.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored a Virginia man's lawsuit​ against data broker Spokeo, which he accused of reporting inaccurate information about him and of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The case was on remand from the Supreme Court, which in May said the 9th Circuit used incomplete analysis in deciding whether Thomas Robins suffered "concrete" harm (see 1605160026). A unanimous three-judge panel said Tuesday, in an opinion written by Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, the FCRA was crafted to protect consumers' "concrete interests in accurate credit reporting about themselves." The opinion said the alleged FCRA violations in this case "actually harmed" Robins' interest. "Robins alleged inaccuracies by Spokeo concerning his age, marital status, educational background, and employment history that could be deemed a real harm to his employment prospects," it said. The panel also rejected Spokeo's suggestion that Robins' allegations were "too speculative." The opinion said "the challenged conduct and attendant injury had already occurred." Spokeo didn't comment. Judges Susan Graber and Carlos Bea joined O'Scannlain in his opinion.

DreamHost and DOJ will square off Friday in District of Columbia Superior Court over the web hosting company's refusal to comply with a July 12 search warrant that seeks more than 1.3 million visitor IP addresses plus contact information, email and photos connected to a website that organized Inauguration Day protests. The company blogged Monday that the government is seeking data about the owner of disruptj20.org and the visitor IP addresses to identify individuals who used the site to express protected political speech. It's "a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority," said DreamHost. More than 300 people were arrested Jan. 20 for rioting and other disruptive activities, said media reports. In a July 28 motion to force DreamHost to produce the information, DOJ said the search warrant was properly issued. The government said the company's contention that some information is protected under the Privacy Protection Act "lacks merit," but even if the law does protect some data, the PPA doesn't preclude DOJ from searching and seizing electronic information via a warrant. Justice discounted the company's concern the warrant is "overbroad" and might result in more information being taken than necessary. DreamHost, working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said last week that handing over the IP addresses would allow the government to identify specific computers that visited the website and what they viewed, endangering "innocent" people's First Amendment rights. It said the warrant "requires scrutiny of 'particular exactitude,'" which shows it "lacks the specificity required by the Fourth Amendment and is unreasonable as a whole."

Google cancelled white supremacist website The Daily Stormer’s attempted domain registration transfer to the company’s Google Domains service Monday after original registry GoDaddy cancelled the website’s registration. GoDaddy told The Daily Stormer Sunday to move its registration to another registry after the website published an article disparaging Heather Heyer, who died in a Saturday attack on counterprotesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The story “violated our terms of service,” GoDaddy tweeted. Google believes The Daily Stormer’s registration is “violating our terms of service,” a spokesperson said. Google Domains says “making available of content that ... glorifies violence, inciting, racist or radical right-wing content” as one violation of its terms of service.

Equifax bought identity theft protection company ID Watchdog for $63 million, the buyer announced Thursday.

Nvidia’s autonomous-driving “road map” will include “development partnerships” it forges this year and next with a “growing number of car companies” on nonrecurring engineering and artificial intelligence projects, said CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on an earnings call. Beginning in 2018, he expects “robot taxis.” Huang expects fully autonomous “branded cars will start hitting the road around 2020 and 2021." He thinks cryptocurrency “is here to stay,” he also said Thursday: "This is a market that is not likely to go away anytime soon, and the only thing that we can probably expect is that there will be more currencies to come. It will come in a whole lot of different nations."

Facebook prevailed in a lawsuit against a country-rap artist who sought removal of pages, and the musician said he'll continue the suit. The Court of Appeal of California, 1st Appellate District Division 2, decided last week that Mikel Knight's allegations were insufficient to defeat an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) motion. The opinion, posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that filed an amicus brief for Facebook, reversed in part a lower court ruling. In Cross v. Facebook, Knight, whose real name is Jason Cross, sued because some users created "Families Against Mikel Knight." In a statement, Knight said Friday: "I'm a Texan! A place historically known for fighting big battles and winning. We will see them in the Supreme Court." The page was created after independent album-selling contractors hired by Knight's marketing company were involved in auto crashes. Knight alleged comments incited "violence and death threats" against him and members of his label. Facebook refused to take down the pages. Its anti-SLAPP motion said the suit's claims were barred by the Communications Decency Act and not viable under California law. The trial court said CDA barred three claims but let stand the others including the right of publicity, which protects a form of IP. Knight alleged Facebook continued to place ads on the unauthorized pages and generated revenue using his name or likeness, but the appeals court said he didn't show the ads appearing next to the pages used his name or likeness or were created by Facebook: "Evidence demonstrates that Facebook has not used Knight‘s identity, and any right of publicity claims fail for this reason alone. Likewise for failure to show appropriation." EFF said if the superior court ruling were allowed to stand, it "would have threatened a huge range of online expression."

Microsoft developed a framework aimed at faster commercial adoption of blockchain technology by streamlining complex development techniques, said a Thursday news release. Microsoft said it will launch the Coco Framework on GitHub in 2018 as an open source project. It said the framework integrated with a blockchain network offers speeds of more than 1,600 transactions per second. The framework provides distributed governance "that establishes a network constitution and allows members to vote on all terms and conditions governing the consortium and the blockchain software system," Microsoft said.

Fossil’s “successful entry” into wearables enabled the company “to expand our addressable market and to work with new wholesale partners in the consumer electronics channel,” said CEO Kosta Kartsotis on a Tuesday earnings call. On the call, the company announced a sizable loss in the second quarter and the stock market reacted Wednesday by dropping the closing share price to $8.87, a 25 percent decline. “But we didn't get as far as we wanted to" during Q2, said Kartsotis. “Much of our time has been spent finalizing the specifics around margin and other details given that this is a new distribution channel for us.” That CE "channel works a little bit differently,” said outgoing Chief Financial Officer Dennis Secor. Fossil suffered from a “lack of understanding exactly how that channel works ... we're catching up quick,” said Secor. The company named a board member to succeed Secor (see the personals section of this issue). “Our products are too big for female customers and female customers are our core,” he said. “We're just going to have a product that looks better; it feels better and allows for much better branding and design.”