Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

The energy internet will cause as much disruption as the internet caused over the last 20 years. The question is, what can you do now to prepare for it? That was a question on the minds of many energy, finance, and technology industry leaders at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Summit. At the summit, two takeaways emerged that I want to talk about in this post. The first: There are no winners or losers yet, and new opportunities already exist for companies ready to innovate. The second: No single company can navigate the energy transition alone — we must all collaborate to succeed. 1. The energy internet is already generating new opportunities It is no longer a question of whether modular, decentralized energy technology will be deployed; it’s a question of how quickly it will happen. And for early adopters of new energy technologies, there are clear opportunities to create new business models. A recent survey of the C-level showed that 68 percent of respondents expect their...

Censorship Can’t Be The Only Answer to Disinformation Online With measles cases on the rise for the first time in decades and anti-vaccine (or “anti-vax”) memes spreading like wildfire on social media, a number of companies—including Facebook , Pinterest , YouTube , Instagram, and GoFundMe —recently banned anti-vax posts. But censorship cannot be the only answer to disinformation online. The anti-vax trend is a bigger problem than censorship can solve. And when tech companies ban an entire category of content like this, they have a history of overcorrecting and censoring accurate, useful speech —or, even worse, reinforcing misinformation with their policies. That’s why platforms that adopt categorical bans must follow the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation to ensure that users are notified when and about why their content has been removed, and that they have the opportunity to appeal. Many intermediaries already act as ...

Section 230 Is Not A Special “Tech Company” Immunity Members of Congress are fond of wrongly calling Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) a “big tech company” immunity, implying that it doesn’t protect anyone else. And they are not alone in this mistake. We frequently hear the same mischaracterization from friends in academia and legacy news media.   The characterization is wrong because Section 230’s protections have been enjoyed and employed by a wide variety of Internet users. The law’s protections are in no way limited to “tech companies,” of any size. Section 230, by its language , provides immunity to any “provider or user of an interactive computer service” when that “provider or user” republishes content created by someone or something else, protecting both decisions to moderate it and those to transmit it without moderation. “User,” in particular, has been interpreted broadly to apply “simply to anyone using an interactive computer service.” This includes anyone who m...

Smart manufacturing is all about leveraging the collective benefit of advanced technologies to optimize operations and gain competitive advantage.  Smart infrastructures within plants enable a more efficient manufacturing process allowing for faster responses to dynamic marketplace demands.  A core component within the smart manufacturing facility is the smart machine . This is why OEM machine builders now find themselves at the heart of the industrial digitization revolution. The smart machines they build are the pillars of smart manufacturing. Core to the smart machine is the smart controller. To a design engineer, “smart” means a controller built not only to control a process, but one that is also capable of communicating and linking to an IT layer. This linkage allows for the interpretation of data that can signal dynamic changes in machine workload demand, material and resource availability, and, when considered in aggregate, the overall plant capacity.  The link ...

Buildings are THE cornerstone of modern smart cities , and in the digital economy, a new breed of buildings is emerging. Advances in mobile, cloud-based and IoT technologies are creating enormous opportunities for information gathering, sharing, and analytics impacting the way buildings are run.  In parallel, occupants demand more and more control over their work space driven by a “there’s an app for that” mentality. Today, this technology is evolving and can help re-invent buildings and people’s experience living in them. There are some key megatrends behind the changes impacting cities and buildings for the years to come. First, our planet is facing an historic transition with the greatest urban migration of all times. 2.5 billion people are expected to migrate to cities by 2050. At a global level, it is the equivalent of building 30 cities the size of Paris every year for the next 30 years! This migration creates tensions for Buildings developers and owners, and for city plann...