CES attendees might be surprised by the form factor of their show badges when retrieving their credentials at one of about 30 pickup locations scattered around Las Vegas and at the baggage claim areas of McCarran airport. Gone are the stiff paperboard badges used since the 2014 show that were embedded with NFC functionality for sales lead retrievals and other applications (see 1311130032). In their place are simple paper printouts that are a little less sturdy but are folded into two and fastened to lanyards through perforations at the top. For the 2018 CES, CTA “switched to a new registration vendor that does not use the NFC technology but was capable of printing photo badges,” Karen Chupka, senior vice president-events and conferences, told us Saturday. CTA in September instituted the head shot requirement on CES 2018 badges for the first time as a new security measure and as a means to reduce the number of badges handed off to others without authorization (see 1709070060). Since the NFC functionality “was used in a very limited capacity we were comfortable with the change,” Chupka told us. “It’s not that we weren’t happy” with the NFC function on the old badges, she said. “It’s that for our uses, the barcode works the same,” she said of the QR codes printed on the face of the 2018 badges.

HP recalled 50,000 lithium-ion batteries for notebook computers and mobile workstations Thursday due to overheating, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission. HP received eight reports of battery packs overheating, melting or charring, including three reports of property damage totaling $4,500 and one report of a first-degree hand burn, said CPSC. HP said consumers should check its website for a list of products affected by the recall and for instructions on how to enable a battery safety mode. The batteries aren't replaceable by customers; HP will provide free battery replacement by an authorized technician, said CPSC. The batteries were shipped with or sold as accessories for HP ProBooks, HPx360 310 G2, HP Envy m6, HP Pavilion x360, HP 11, HP ZBook mobile workstations, and as replacement batteries for the HP ZBook Studio G4 mobile workstation, from December 2015 through December 2017.

"Overhyped" at the coming CES are artificial intelligence everywhere, connected cars and virtual currencies, but immersive story telling, social virtual reality and machine learning for security excite CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney, he said. "We've been talking about AI for quite some time" with "lots of claims ... but it's just not there" yet, he said in a video on 2018 tech innovation predictions. "We've had the promise of connected cars for decades, and we're still waiting for them." Cryptocurrencies, which he has talked about since 2010, has seen little progress other than the "overhyped" value, McKinney said Wednesday. Of areas where he sees the network as "the common thread," he said movies and games can make it feel "like you're part of the story" and "not sitting back as a voyeur." And "we've been talking about VR now for a number of years," but social uses take it to the "next level," McKinney said. Monitoring networks and learning from attack patterns can avoid breaches and take "security to an entirely new level," he said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has withdrawn from a planned visit to CES and interview with CTA President Gary Shapiro, the association said Wednesday. This is the second CES in a row that won’t be attended by the FCC chairman -- Tom Wheeler withdrew plans to attend last year. "We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience," CTA said. The commission didn't comment.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are looking at whether very-low-frequency (VLF) digitally modulated magnetic signals and quantum sensors might allow communications and mapping in places where GPS and ordinary cellphones and radios don’t work reliably or at all, including urban canyons, underwater and underground. “The technology may help mariners, soldiers and surveyors, among others. GPS signals don’t penetrate very deeply or at all in water, soil or building walls, and therefore, can’t be used by submarines or in underground activities such as surveying mines,” said a NIST blog post. “GPS also may not work well indoors or even outdoors among city skyscrapers. For soldiers, radio signals may be blocked in environments cluttered by rubble or many interfering electromagnetic devices during military or disaster recovery missions.” VLF already is used for communications between submarines, NIST said, but there’s not enough data-carrying capacity for audio or video, only one-way texts. The big issues raised by VLF are poor receiver sensitivity and the extremely limited bandwidth of both transmitters and receivers, said NIST project leader Dave Howe. “The best magnetic field sensitivity is obtained using quantum sensors,” Howe said. "The increased sensitivity leads in principle to longer communications range. The quantum approach also offers the possibility to get high bandwidth communications like a cellphone has.”

“Bit rot,” the progressive self-corruption of stored data (see 1709270048), “can manifest on any storage device, from floppy discs to hard drives,” Maureen Pennock, head of digital preservation at the British Library, told us. The library’s policy “is that content to be preserved is transferred to approved storage locations or workflows after acquisition and its bit-level integrity established so that it can be monitored thereafter,” said Pennock. The library recognized the challenges of digital preservation, and in the early 2000s “began developing our own purpose-built digital repository for long-term storage and management of our collection content,” she said. She described it as a “four-node replication system,” with copies of content and metadata packages placed in repository “nodes” located in Yorkshire, London, Wales and Scotland. The nodes undergo regular “fixity checking to ensure files have not become corrupt,” she said: “If fixity checks indicate a problem with a file on one node it can be replaced from one of the other nodes.”

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau approved a one-year extension, sought by the Entertainment Software Association (see 1711010056), of rules requiring access to advanced communication services (ACS) in videogames for people with disabilities. Several groups representing the disabled earlier said they were OK with the extension, as long it was the last one granted by the FCC (see 1712040014). The waiver will now expire Dec. 31, 2018, and is conditioned on ESA’s submission of a mid-year progress report to the bureau on July 2, said an order posted Tuesday in docket 10-213. “We are persuaded by ESA’s assertions that a waiver for the class of video game software is merited because this software is capable of accessing ACS, but continues to be designed primarily for the purpose of game play rather than ACS,” the bureau said. “ESA describes and provides examples of several marketing materials for four video game genres (sports games, action games, strategy games, and role-playing games), all of which appear to emphasize game play and not ACS features or functions.” The requirement was first waived in 2012 and the waiver has been extended twice. "We conclude that good cause exists to extend the waiver and that granting the final waiver extension for an additional 12 months is in the public interest," the bureau said.

CTA hailed President Donald Trump for signing the GOP’s “landmark” tax overhaul legislation into law. “American entrepreneurs can now enjoy much-needed tax relief and savings as part of a revitalized and reinvigorated tax system,” said CEO Gary Shapiro in a Friday statement.

The move toward platform neutrality regulation "is anything but neutral," and what's emerging are rules to force companies to behave in ways that achieve policy goals, blogged American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Roslyn Layton Wednesday. Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., "brandished" platform neutrality principles, which Layton sees spanning a "grab bag of concepts such as hate speech, fake news, safe spaces, brand safety, content take down, the right to be forgotten and market power." Another goal of platform neutrality regulation is preventing users "from consuming information that leads them to make the 'wrong' choice at the ballot box." Complexities of regulating tech markets are illustrated in the recent Amazon-Google spat over connected devices and YouTube streaming (see 1712060013 and for related news Wednesday 1712200060 and 1712200061), AEI visiting fellow Bret Swanson wrote earlier this month.

Ex-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said large tech platforms and ISP "monopolies" are so dominant they're writing their own rules (see 1712200044 and 1712060013). "It is a stark repeat of the early industrial era when companies exploited technology to control the economy, squash competition, and dictate take-it-or-leave-it terms to consumers," he blogged Wednesday in the Biden Forum. "We are now at another make-or-break junction. Thus far, the government has stood frozen in awe as spunky young innovators built their businesses -- almost in fear of breaking the magic spell of innovation. These young companies, however, have grown into corporate behemoths," he said, noting high valuations of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. "At the same time, the current FCC has walked away from its responsibility to oversee the behavior of the monopolies of ISPs and companies that deliver internet services to consumers. Their justification is a specious assertion that regulation discourages these companies from investing to improve their connections." These "are not evil companies or malicious executives. In the absence of ground rules, however, human nature and economic incentive take over," he wrote. "The time has come once again for the people to stand up and shout 'Enough!'"