Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Can the Government Block Me on Twitter?: 2018 Year in Review In 2018, federal courts across the country have been asked whether members of the public have a First Amendment right to speak on government social media pages. Three of these cases have been bumped up to appellate courts for review prompting numerous people to write into EFF, their local papers, and request public records asking “Can X official block me on Twitter?” Social media has become so pervasive that government institutions all over the world now use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media pages to announce government services, hold community meetings, and answer questions from their citizens. Every member of the U.S. Senate and most of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives have at least one social media page that they use for official business.   But we keep hearing reports that people are being blocked by their elected officials and by government agencies on social media pages for posting com...

Using Technology to Protect Online Privacy: 2018 Year in Review In terms of technical approaches to protecting user privacy online, 2018 has certainly seen its ups and downs. On a positive note, we added a ton of new features to Privacy Badger, EFF’s anti-tracking browser extension for Firefox and Chrome . We started by revamping the experience for new users and ensuring Privacy Badger is effective right out of the box with pre-training . Unlike most tracker-blockers, Privacy Badger learns as you browse, and it doesn’t send any information about your browsing activity back to EFF. This means that, in the past, Privacy Badger wouldn’t begin blocking trackers for new users until after they’d browsed the web for a while. Now, thanks to a new learning regimen, fresh installs of Privacy Badger block most common trackers from the very start. Furthermore, Privacy Badger installations can now be preconfigured using managed storage , allowing administrators to set global defaults for their...

Written by Guest Blogger, Kevin Connor . I don’t remember every detail of why I joined Schneider Electric in 2015. There were many reasons to join a global company right out of college – job stability, growth opportunities, and the ability to work in a variety of job functions early on. But, one bullet point that stood out was the opportunity to have a role in the energy revolution. With energy consumption rising by 50% and a need to cut CO2 emissions in half, we need to be 3 times more efficient. This is how Schneider posited the challenge to me.  It is a simple way to view a complex problem that is being dubbed a revolution (for good reason). Personally, I have a long history with sustainability. I focused on environmental studies in high school. I then viewed the challenge from an engineering perspective in college. This led me to believe it is possible to mix a successful career and a conscious mind about the environment. I don’t have to solve the problem, but I do have t...

Level Up Digital Freedom The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just launched the Year End Challenge , the final opportunity to raise funds to protect online civil liberties and the open Internet before the end of 2017. If you join before the end of 2017, you’ll help EFF receive additional challenge grants totaling $39,350! EFF is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit and donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Take the challenge Give Before 2018 to unlock Special grants This has been an extraordinary year filled with both triumphs and new challenges to civil liberties, but member support has allowed EFF to fight back. In just the last few months, EFF launched a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to protect travelers from unlawful searches at the U.S. border ; scored a victory against persistent spying by automated license plate readers ; expanded our network of grassroots activists ; and developed new digital security education tools to strengthen every community...

Surveillance Battles: 2017 in Review If you’ve been following EFF’s work, you’ll know that we’ve been fighting against the creeping surveillance state for over 20 years. Often, this means pushing back against the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance programs, but as new technology becomes available, new threats emerge. Here are some of the biggest legislative fights we had in 2017. FISA Section 702 Section 702 is a surveillance authority that is part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. It was created as a way for the intelligence community to collect foreign intelligence from non-Americans located outside of the United States. However, the way the law is currently written allows the NSA to “ incidental ly” collect communications from an untold number of Americans. We say “untold” because the government has never disclosed how many law-abiding Americans have had their communications vacuumed up by the NSA and other intelligence gathering organizations. In addition to b...

What It Means to Fight for Technology Users in 2017 EFF fights for technology users. We believe that empowering and protecting users should be baked into laws, policies, and court decisions, as well as into the technologies themselves. Since our founding in 1990, we have paired this goal with the common-sense recognition that in order to properly consider these questions, you need to listen to the voices of those who understand, deeply, how the technology works. This guidestar has served us from the very beginning of EFF. EFF helps courts and lawmakers recognize that the speech of Internet users must be protected against government censorship, that technology users should not be subject to overbroad search and seizure, and that strong encryption ensures that users have security and privacy in the digital world. We work to protect against copyright and patent laws that threaten technologies that empower users to co-create our culture—technologies like podcasts, user-created videos,...

(The following information is applicable to readers living outside North America.) Did you know that lightning strikes the earth every second? Even though we’ve been rightly conditioned to worry about personal harm from a lightning strike, the odds are far greater that a strike will damage your home’s electrical components and your electronic devices. The electrical surges generated by lightning produce voltage spikes powerful enough to overload and damage TVs, computers, and any other appliance plugged into an electrical outlet. Lightning-related damage costs billions of euros, according to Meteorage . How it happens Damage occurs when a power surge delivers voltage that exceeds the device’s peak voltage. For example, in France, where residential voltage is 230 volts, appliances have a peak operating voltage of about 320 volts. A lightning strike can generate overvoltage many times higher than that. Direct strikes are the most damaging, generating millions of volts able to disru...

Microgrids come in all shapes and sizes, allowing power to reach a wide range of consumers and locations. They can be broken into categories based on their connection to the main grid (grid connected or off grid) and type of ownership (facility or community). Their benefits can vary depending on the category, but in general, all categories of microgrid provide increased reliability, resiliency, and security, and reduce the use of fossil fuels. Although microgrid implementation projects differ in some regards, such as their business model and scope of work, they still encounter many of the same challenges.  Focus on the primary microgrid implementation challenges and how you can overcome them — by sizing microgrids carefully and correctly, overcoming design challenges using project-specific engineering studies and calculations, and using software and simulation tools. Preliminary sizing is a key action because it determines potential solutions and the microgrid’s economic viabili...