Shure announced an integrated systems certification program at Infocomm Wednesday. The program, conducted at the Shure Audio Institute, will offer integrated systems training courses for channel partners, AV professionals, systems integrators and audio engineers, said the company. Classes can be taken virtually or through in-person seminars.
GE Lighting recalled LED tube lamps sold at Lowe's stores due to shock and electrocution hazards, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission Wednesday. The Cool White Universal T8/T12 tube lamps, sold exclusively at Lowe's stores, have pins that can be energized during installation and removal, posing shock and electrocution hazards, it said. Consumers should contact GE Lighting to receive instructions on safely removing the lamps and to receive a refund in the form of a $17 gift card, it said.
CEDIA announced a new version of the ESC-T certification exam, updated with input and guidance from Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa volunteers to make content relevant for a global audience, it said. The exam was expanded to cover lighting control and more-extensive networking content, in addition to wiring, control and AV systems. The ESC-T exam is targeted to technicians with two years of experience and represents proficiency in the technical knowledge of the residential electronic systems industry, said the trade group.
The need for FCC regulations, relevancy and function is "fading" like “a snowman in springtime,” due to the rise outside the agency's jurisdiction of the “app economy,” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly blogged Friday. Since services like Facebook and Netflix are increasingly competing or replacing more traditional FCC licensees, the FCC should relax regulations, O’Rielly said. Many focuses of FCC attention “need to be scrapped immediately,” he said. “Why, for instance, should the Commission spend one more minute adjusting the wireline separations accounting rules?” Licensees shouldn’t be thought of as incumbents “based on legacy notions of competition instead of marketplace realities,” he said. The current commission has relaxed regulations in many areas, “but there is capacity to do more if entities would do the work to make the proper showings,” the commissioner said. “If an existing FCC regulatee is in the voice, video, or data business, they should be knocking down our doors to demand fundamental and colossal relief.” The alternative to relaxing more regulations would be to “advocate for new Congressional powers to regulate these services,” but that’s “futile and unnecessary,” O’Rielly said.
Facebook is removing its “Trending” news feature in favor of exploring “breaking news” labels and additional news videos, the social network announced Friday. Trending, introduced in 2014 to promote trending news topics, got less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average, Facebook Head-News Products Alex Hardiman said: “Over time people found the product to be less and less useful.” The platform also will remove “third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends” application programming interface. Facebook will test breaking news labels with 80 publishers in North America, South America, Europe, India and Australia; a “Today In” section devoted to the latest local breaking news; and added news videos in the “Watch” section. “We’ve seen that the way people consume news on Facebook is changing to be primarily on mobile and increasingly through news video,” Hardiman wrote.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a fine of $590,380 against Bear Down Brands, dba Pure Enrichment, for allegedly selling 14 models of consumer-grade electronic personal hygiene and wellness devices that were “apparently noncompliant because they lacked proper equipment authorization, user manual disclosures, and/or FCC labels.” The bureau said 13 models complied with rules as of Feb. 15, and the company “continues to market one noncompliant model that lacks the proper user manual disclosures and FCC labeling in apparent violation of the Commission’s rules.” Pure didn’t comment. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the penalty wasn’t tough enough. “While forfeitures can be upwardly adjusted to account for the severity of the violation, as is done here, it still does not excuse the totally inadequate base forfeiture of $98,000 for the serious violations revealed in this item,” he said. “Compare this proposed forfeiture to robocall violations where the Commission assesses penalties per phone call, resulting in multi-million-dollar fines.”
The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program, a joint program by the National Science Foundation and a 28-company wireless industry consortium, reminded interested parties comments are due Thursday on a request for information on city-scale testing platforms designed to speed fundamental research on wireless communications. To inform a request for proposals, the group is seeking “input from the research community, local communities, and industry on potential applications or use-cases providing community benefit AND the transformative wireless technologies needed to enable those applications,” said a Tuesday notice. The program said it's seeking a “diversity of platforms across technology areas, topology, demography, and geography.”
The State Department’s proposal to collect social media information from nonimmigrant visa applicants could hinder free speech and hurt the value of Twitter, wrote the company's Director-North America Public Policy and Philanthropy Carlos Monje in comments in docket 2018-0002 published Tuesday. The agency also is proposing to collect history from active and inactive social media accounts dating back five years from immigrant visa applicants. The department seeks to access phone numbers and email addresses in the same time span. “If users applying for a nonimmigrant visa are forced to disclose Twitter handles associated with otherwise anonymous accounts, the value of Twitters [sic] platform for such users evaporates,” Monje wrote, calling anonymous speech a hallmark of the platform. Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg also wrote against the changes, saying they “could place many Americans, like journalists, NGO workers, academics and others in mortal danger by giving such a vast amount of information to foreign governments that may not wish them well.” Public comment closed Tuesday.
Amazon completed installation of a 1.1-megawatt solar rooftop installation on its North Las Vegas fulfillment center, it said Tuesday. The company’s 17th installation brings it closer to a goal of 50 rooftop solar systems globally by 2020. The 813,000 square-foot roof, with 3,145 individual solar modules, avoids emissions equivalent to 3.3 million miles driven by an average gas-powered passenger car, said the company.
Facebook’s plan to group journalism with political advocacy content will blur the lines between reporting and propaganda, News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern wrote company CEO Mark Zuckerberg Friday. It threatens “to undermine journalism’s ability to play its critical role in society as the fourth estate,” Chavern said. Facebook didn’t comment.