Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Federal Court Orders That Patent Troll Can’t Hide Its Machinations A federal judge has ordered that prolific patent troll Uniloc cannot hide its shell games from the public. After EFF filed a motion to intervene seeking access to sealed court records, Judge William H. Alsup of the Northern District of California has ordered [PDF] that the relevant documents should be made public. Judge Alsup stayed his order for two weeks, however, to give Uniloc an opportunity to appeal to the Federal Circuit. We are pleased by the court’s ruling and will defend it if appealed. The sealed documents have an importance far beyond this case. As Judge Alsup suggested in court, Uniloc appeared to be using complex machinations to hide its patents or its assets, possibly to avoid being hit with sanctions. The public has a right to know who owns patents, especially patents like the ones Uniloc claims to own, since the company has claimed its patents entitle it to payments from a vast array of technol...

Work with EFF this Summer! Apply to be a 2019 Google Public Policy Fellow Are you passionate about emerging Internet and technology policy issues? Come work with EFF this summer as a Google Public Policy Fellow ! This 10-week fellowship gives undergraduate and graduate students a paid opportunity to work alongside EFF’s International team on projects advancing debate on key public policy issues. EFF is looking for someone who shares our passion for the free and open Internet. You’ll have the opportunity to work on a variety of issues, including censorship and global surveillance. Applicants must have strong research and writing skills, the ability to produce thoughtful and original policy analysis, a talent for communicating with many different types of audiences, and be independently driven. More specific information can be found here . This year’s program will run from early June through early August, with regular programming throughout the summer. If selected, you can work w...

The world is generally a noisy place that is sometimes soothing or relaxing, but most often unpleasant with excessive levels of noise. In urban areas, there is constant noise emanating from car engines, bus and delivery truck engines, and even noise from jet engines in the sky. In the suburbs, it’s the lawn mower, grass trimmer engines or snow blower engines (in colder climate areas). In warmer climates, especially along the coast, it’s quite common to hear the Harley Davidson motorcycle engines reverberating down the strip. Conversely, if you’ve ever almost been run over by an electric car in a parking lot, you know because its’s virtually silent. Regarding the other noise generating devices I mentioned, I recently purchased an electric lawn trimmer and I have to say that this gen 3 product with advanced Lithium Ion batteries replicates the power of an old gas trimmer and is much lighter to boot – without the super load gas engine. Electric push lawn mowers have been around for a whi...

Article 13 and 11 Update: Even The Compromises are Compromised In This Copyright Trainwreck If you’re in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Sweden, or Belgium — tell your government to oppose Article 13 and 11 today . Politicians are meant to broker compromises in the pursuit of the public good – though in a year that is already overloaded with government shutdowns and Brexit logjams , that skill seems in short supply. But sometimes there are no compromises to be found. Sometimes, even the most talented diplomats are handed an impossible task. The Romanian Presidency is struggling to finish negotiations the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive together. But two parts of that law —Article 13, intended to introduce compulsory copyright filters, and Article 11, a new licensing requirement on reproducing snippets of news articles—are so controversial that they risk sinking the entire process. Just hours before a key vote on this Friday, the Presidency ha...

Anyone—Even the Government—Can Ask the Patent Office to Review Invalid Patents The exclusive rights granted by a U.S. patent create monopolies that can threaten innovation. We all benefit from the  pro-innovation effects  that come from cancelling monopolies that should not exist. That’s why the 2012 America Invents Act broadly allows “[a]ny person other than the patent owner” to challenge a patent at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.   But what if the government itself was banned from asking for this type of patent challenge? That would mean patent holders can demand big payments from government agencies, with access to taxpayer funds—yet those same agencies wouldn’t be able to efficiently test whether the patents are valid.   Now, the Supreme Court is poised to consider the question. EFF has filed an amicus brief , explaining that the government should be able to bring challenges in the Patent Office, based on century-old legal principles, as well as...

Don’t Put Robots in Charge of the Internet We’re taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation. Last year, YouTube’s Content ID system flagged Sebastian Tomczak’s video five times for copyright infringement. The video wasn’t a supercut of Marvel movies or the latest Girl Talk mashup; it was simply ten hours of machine-generated static . Stories like Tomczak’s are all too common: Content ID even flagged a one-hour video of a cat purring as a likely infringement. Filters are most useful when they serve as an aid to human review. But today’s mandatory filtering proposals turn that equation on its head. But those are only a small glimpse of a potential Internet future. Today, with the E...

Now EVERYBODY Hates the New EU Copyright Directive Until last spring, everyone wanted to see the new European Copyright Directive pass; then German MEP Axel Voss took over as rapporteur and revived the most extreme, controversial versions of two proposals that had been sidelined long before as the Directive had progressed towards completion. After all, this is the first refresh on EU copyright since 2001, and so the Directive is mostly a laundry list of overdue, uncontroversial technical tweaks with many stakeholders; the last thing anyone wanted was a spoiler in the midst. Anyone, that is, except for German newspaper families (who loved Article 11, who could charge Big Tech for the privilege of sending readers to their sites) and the largest record labels (who had long dreamed of Article 13, which would force the platforms to implement filters to check everything users posted, and block anything that resembled a known copyrighted work, or anything someone claimed was a known cop...

There was a time when ideas like efficiency, sustainability and resiliency were thought to be mutually exclusive terms. This was a problem for those involved in data center operations from colocation service providers to enterprise facilities, where the primary objective was to ensure service availability. Inevitably that demanded complex 2N electrical designs that were energy depleting. Colocations have evolved tremendously and are looking at a future ripe with even more environmentally friendly options. Reap the Benefits of Sustainability Today the majority of people and big businesses involved both in IT and colocation data centers have come to realize that sustainable energy supplies bring a lot of benefits. Besides guarding the health of the environment, sustainable practices can reduce operating costs by decreasing energy usage. One approach to capture energy efficiencies is to operate in cooler climates and more remote locations. This means companies that operate responsib...

Semiconductor manufacturing involves hundreds of steps . These take place on a variety of tools: saws, furnaces, photolithographic steppers, testers, and other specialized equipment. Some of this gear requires little electricity, an example being a track transfer system that moves wafers from one spot to another. Other tools demand substantial electrical power, and those needs are growing as process technology evolves. For instance, the next generation of steppers currently being rolled out use EUV, or extreme ultraviolet, lithography. They may require 10 times the power of the previous technology , in part because of a conversion efficiency of only a few percent of an infrared pump laser into the desired extreme ultraviolet output. So, there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will work to ensure power availability and quality. Instead, what’s needed is a fit-for-purpose approach. That is, the power solution should be customized as needed for a specific task. Let’s look at thre...

Welcome to my sixth blog in the Top 10 Reasons to Become an EcoXpert Partner series , centered around  collaboration! Have you ever lost a project bid or contract because you lacked a specific area of expertise that the project scope required? This is precisely where collaboration plays an integral role in broadening your bid scope. No business can be expert at everything. But you can increase your chances of landing contracts when you have partners locally – and globally – who are willing and ready to team up with you. That’s one of the most important advantages of the EcoXpert Partner Program , a partnership between Schneider Electric and some 4,000 systems integrators, specifiers, panel builders, electricians, and other technology partner companies worldwide. EcoXpert partners are trained and certified in our IoT-enabled architecture and platform, EcoStruxure , equipping them with some of the most-sought-after skill sets in their industries and enabling them to deliver Inno...

EFF and Lookout Uncover New Malware Espionage Campaign Infecting Thousands Around the World Mobile Devices Compromised by Fake Secure Messaging Clients – Hundreds of Gigabytes of Data Stolen San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and mobile security company Lookout have uncovered a new malware espionage campaign infecting thousands of people in more than 20 countries. Hundreds of gigabytes of data has been stolen, primarily through mobile devices compromised by fake secure messaging clients. The trojanized apps, including Signal and WhatsApp, function like the legitimate apps and send and receive messages normally. However, the fake apps also allow the attackers to take photos, retrieve location information, capture audio, and more. The threat, called Dark Caracal by EFF and Lookout researchers, may be a nation-state actor and appears to employ shared infrastructure which has been linked to other nation-state actors. In a new report, EFF and Lookout trace ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two terms often used interchangeably or considered to be synonyms.  AI refers generally to the concept that a machine or system can be “smart” in carrying out tasks and operations based on programming and the input of data about itself or its environment.  ML, on the other hand, is an approach or method for making a machine or system more intelligent…to enable it to be more autonomous and self-adjusting as conditions change. ML is fundamentally the ability of a machine or system to automatically learn and improve its operation or functions without human input. ML could be thought of as being the current state of the art form of imbuing a machine with AI. Data Center Physical Infrastructure systems have some form of AI today.  UPSs, cooling units, etc. have programmed firmware and algorithms that dictate how the equipment operates and behaves as conditions change.  For example, cooling control systems actuate...

Copyright, The First Wave of Internet Censorship We’re taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation. When someone wants to remove speech from the Internet, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) notice and takedown process can provide the quickest path. This has made copyright law a tempting tool for unscrupulous censors. As content companies push for even more control over what gets posted online, it’s important to remember that any tool used to police copyright will quickly be abused, then adapted, to censor speech more widely. We’ve seen abusive DMCA takedown notices from a would-be Senate candidate , small businesses , and Ecuador’s President . We’ve also seen robots-run-a...