Cisco weighed in with strong support of an ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board request to expand its scope of recognition as a body that accredits test labs under FCC rules. ANAB, already so recognized in the U.S., wants to be recognized to also accredit labs in non-mutual recognition agreement (MRA) countries. The Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment last month in docket 16-313 (see 1707200039). Cisco was the lone commenter. “As a leading vendor of IP-based networking technologies, Cisco values accreditation of test labs in support of the application of consistent certification requirements that apply equally to all market participants, and to enhance traceability,” Cisco said. “Cisco hopes that ANSI-ASQ will be able to accredit US-located laboratories so that US lab data is accepted in countries where there is no MRA, such as Brazil or China.”
Legislation cleared the Assembly Thursday 59-30 authorizing Wisconsin to pay Foxconn up to $3 billion in cash incentives to build an LCD display fab (see 1708040056). The only three Democrats joining Republicans to back the measure -- Minority Leader Peter Barca and Reps. Cory Mason and Tod Ohnstad -- represent districts in southeast Wisconsin where Foxconn likely would build. Rep. Adam Jarchow (R) of the 28th district in Balsam Lake in northwest Wisconsin, was the only Republican voting no. The Senate and Joint Finance Committee, composed of members from chambers, must approve the legislation, but Republicans hold majorities. The legislation is based on a memorandum of understanding signed July 27 by CEO Terry Gou and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) that self-imposed a Sept. 30 deadline for bill enactement.
Decisions by Cloudflare, GoDaddy and Google not to manage neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer (see 1708150001 and 1708140044) are "dangerous" because they can have "far-reaching impacts on speech around the world," blogged Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn, Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm and International Director Danny O'Brien. The actions followed Aug. 12 clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Companies have the right to decide what speech does and doesn't appear on their platforms and are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, said EFF: But "precedents being set now can shift the justice of those removals." Access Now similarly blogged Thursday about the issue and provided recommendations.
With only two weeks to go before IFA opens to the trade and public, show organizers won’t have time to find a replacement keynoter for Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, who abruptly withdrew (see 1708160025), IFA spokeswoman Nicole von der Ropp said Thursday. “The IFA Keynote concept is to offer exceptional CEOs of the world's leading brands a stage and publicity.” As much as show organizers “regret” Gou’s postponement as a keynoter until next year’s IFA, “it is certainly not possible in this short term to present a corresponding CEO,” she said. “We have to ensure that companies are able to prepare themselves in high quality, which would no longer be the case with all professionalism.”
Xfinity Mobile has been rolled out across all of Comcast's footprint, it said in a news release Thursday. The company said it doesn't anticipate soon offering the wireless service beyond that (see 1704270001).
The White House’s Manufacturing Advisory Council (MAC) and its Strategic and Policy Forum (SPF) disbanded Wednesday amid continued fallout over President Donald Trump’s response to a weekend white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one counterprotester dead (see 1708140044). Trump said during a Tuesday news conference in the Trump Tower lobby on his executive order to streamline the environmental review and permitting process for infrastructure projects (see 1708150067) that both the white supremacists and “alt-left” counterprotesters were to blame for the Charlottesville violence. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned from the MAC Tuesday after an earlier Trump response to the incident (see 1708150020). “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople” on MAC and SPF, “I am ending both,” Trump tweeted. Dell CEO Michael Dell was still on the council at the time of dissolution. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and other SPF members decided prior to Trump's tweet to disband that group, with Rometty saying in a memo “this group can no longer serve the purpose for which it was formed.”
CTA President Gary Shapiro took President Donald Trump to task for comments Trump made Tuesday blaming “both sides” for last weekend’s violence during a white supremacists’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (see 1708150020). “Generally I do not comment or write about social issues (other than those involving the LGBT community),” Shapiro emailed us Wednesday. “But I think it is fair to say that American businesses and especially the tech industry believes that our economy is best served by a president who unites us,” said Shapiro. By most “objective measures,” Trump is “fulfilling his famous campaign promise to ‘Make America Great Again,’" Shapiro wrote last week (see 1708110003).
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.
Lionsgate content will now be available at Redbox kiosks the same day as retail sell-through dates, under a new agreement announced in a news release Monday. They said Redbox plans to add 1,500 kiosks nationwide by year-end, giving it more 41,500 total.
The “path to greatness is long, but we're heading in the right direction” under President Donald Trump, concluded CTA President Gary Shapiro in an Aug. 7 Investor’s Business Daily commentary piece. Shapiro hears the anti-Trump “misgivings” of his tech industry colleagues, but “by objective measures, Trump is fulfilling his famous campaign promise to ‘Make America Great Again,’" he said. Shapiro cited eight metrics as evidence “that we are on the right track” under Trump, including his observation that “the stock market continues to break records.” The “record-high” Nasdaq is up 18 percent this year, the S&P 500's tech sector index “hit a record high not seen since its bubble in 2000" and the Dow Jones industrial average “continues to enjoy new highs,” Shapiro said. The article was published a day before Trump’s “fire and fury” remarks on North Korea caused the markets to tumble. Trump’s “newsworthy tweets” and his other daily controversies “may be too much fodder for the media to resist,” he said. “But get past the bravado, the drama and the trivialities -- the fact is that under President Trump, Americans are safer and more prosperous than at any time in the past decade.” Shapiro, an early supporter of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for the Republican presidential nomination (see 1512230039), once declared candidate Trump “unfit” to be president (see 1606170031) and ultimately endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton three weeks before the November election (see 1610150001).