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.

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.

Dropbox joined the Information Technology Industry Council, ITI said in a news release Wednesday. The company joined ITI to "help influence the trust, security and privacy issues that matter most" to its customers and users, said Amber Cottle, Dropbox global public policy and government affairs director.

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."

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.

Google provided a seven-page response explaining its K-12 student data collection practices, in response to concerns of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., that the company was using such data for noneducational purposes. Franken publicly released Google's Feb. 12 letter Tuesday, which addresses several questions he posed in a Jan. 13 letter to the company. While Google's response was "thorough," Franken said in a news release he's "still concerned about what exactly Google does with the information it collects and processes from students who are browsing outside websites -- like YouTube -- while logged in to Google’s education services." He said he's interested in whether the company can provide stronger privacy protections to parents and students such as an opt-in for data collection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in December filed a complaint with the FTC, alleging Google was collecting and data mining the personal information of school children (see 1512010068). The privacy group alleged the company's cloud-based software programs called Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and its "sync" feature for the Chrome browser essentially tracked students without getting their or their parents' permission. In its letter to Franken, Google explained how GAFE and the Chrome sync feature are used by schools, what data is collected, privacy policies and how schools and parents can control such data. The company said no student-related data is shared with third parties "except in a few exceptional circumstances," which are outlined in the GAFE agreement and privacy policy.

The Domain Name Association said its new Healthy Domains Initiative (HDI) is focusing on recommending a set of best practices for promoting a healthy domain name system, including surveying the landscape of online abuse. Major industry parties like Amazon, Google, MPAA and RIAA joined with the FBI, registries and content providers during a meeting last week to begin work on those best practices recommendations, DNA said Monday. HDI members will now work on determining how DNA should prioritize the group’s work, while working groups within HDI are discussing potential initial best practices recommendations, DNA said. HDI “is an important step forward to ensure we work collaboratively with our peers toward a more secure and stable Internet naming system,” said DNA Chairman Adrian Kinderis in a news release. Rightside is “encouraged by the positive direction this effort is taking,” said Vice President-Business and Legal Affairs Statton Hammock.

Pandora said it plans to keep spending on music content, on-demand product development and international expansion as rumors swirled that the company is looking for a buyer. With a revenue goal of $4 billion by 2021, Pandora has an ambitious investment plan for 2016 to quickly expand, executives told analysts Thursday after regular U.S. markets closed. The next day, shares closed down 12 percent to $7.99. Content cost increases due to a Copyright Royalty Board rate-setting ruling (see 1512170063) last year will lead to a $160 million jump in content costs this year over 2015, said the company. Additional investments for 2016 include $120 million for marketing, $100 million for product development and $125 million to build “infrastructure for the future, including content licensing and reporting infrastructure,” it said. The Q4 loss was $19.4 million, reversing a year-ago quarterly profit of $12.3 million, though revenue rose about 37 percent to $336 million. Pandora expects to have its on-demand subscription offering in the market before the end of the year but it won’t generate “meaningful revenue” in 2016, said CEO Brian McAndrews on an earnings call. The timing assumes the company will have publishing deals in place with labels, he said. McAndrews wouldn’t comment on a report in the New York Times that Pandora is working with Morgan Stanley on a sale plan. Macquarie Capital has “long believed that its brand and large 81m user base could be attractive” to traditional media companies, Internet or technology giants or “anyone in the music space,” analyst Amy Yong wrote investors Friday.Despite what an analyst cited as a slowdown in growth of listener hours and active users, Pandora expect growth over the next five years from consumer electronics and vehicles, said McAndrews. Pandora’s market share for radio listening in the U.S. passed 10 percent during the year, but with just 2 percent penetration in vehicles -- “which represent nearly half of radio listening” -- the company sees “tremendous upside” as cars become more connected, McAndrews said.

The global success of Netflix “has attracted the attention of attackers” in the form of malware and phishing email campaigns targeting Netflix users’ information, Lionel Payet, Symantec threat intelligence officer, said in a Thursday blog post. “The details are then added to a growing black market that claims to provide cheaper access to the service,” Payet said. Netflix subscriptions allow one to four users on the same account, he said. This means that an attacker could use a phishing campaign to “piggyback on a user’s subscription without their knowledge,” he said. “In these phishing campaigns, attackers redirect users to a fake Netflix website to trick users into providing their login credentials, personal information, and payment cards details. These tactics are not uncommon; cybercriminals are still using them on a daily basis.” The bigger problem is that the attackers “may not just keep this access for themselves,” he said. “There is an underground economy targeting users who wish to access Netflix for free or a reduced price. The products could even allow customers to open their own illegal store.” The most common illicit offers are for access to existing Netflix accounts, Payet said. “These accounts either provide a month of viewing or give full access to the premium service. In most advertisements for these services, the seller asks the buyer not to change any information on the accounts, such as the password, as it may render them unusable. This is because a password change would alert the user who had their account stolen of the compromise.” For their own protection, Symantec “advises users to only download the Netflix application from official sources,” he said. “Additionally, users should not take advantage of services that appear to offer Netflix for free or a reduced price, as they may contain malicious files or steal data.” Netflix representatives didn’t comment.