Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

EFF’s Newest Annual Report For nearly thirty years, member support has allowed EFF to grapple with technology and its impact on the future of our civil liberties. When our eyes are so keenly focused on the horizon, sometimes we forget how far we’ve come.  Our just-published Fiscal Year 2017 Annual Report  includes a snapshot of that progress, with an update from EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn  and highlights from the year, including: EFF’s  groundbreaking border search case  and our battle against the dangerous rise of surveillance technology ; our continuing fight to preserve the open web  and  protect creators and fight poor patent claims ; and our efforts to meet the security needs of growing communities  and speak up for bloggers and technologists silenced by the state . You’ll also find information about our finances for fiscal year 2017 . EFF is deeply grateful for supp...

Human error accounts for nearly one quarter of all unplanned data center downtime, which costs the average company $300,000 per hour . To reduce the amount of human error in data center management , we would do well to learn lessons from what may seem an unlikely source: the U.S. Navy, and in particular nuclear submarines. How nuclear subs relate to data center skills While a nuclear submarine may seem like a completely different beast from a data center, the similarities in how they should be managed are striking and many. A nuclear sub contains a nuclear reactor plant, a steam plant, electrical and cooling plants, auxiliary systems and more – all stuffed into the back half of the sub. You can imagine the complexity that goes into such a vessel, yet the Navy has succeeded in minimizing human error in the environment by implementing detailed processes and policies – and ensuring they are consistently followed. In addition, multiple levels of system redundancy and interlocks exist, ...

A key challenge facing Oil & Gas executives is how to justify funding of downstream technology modernization projects. Most executives have traditionally only considered outlay of capital for installation and the ongoing cost of maintenance. In fact, an overlooked ratio, Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), provides a more comprehensive and accurate method for calculating efficiency and profitability of a company’s capital investments. ROCE represents the percentage return that a company makes over its invested capital, a measure of the profitability and value-creating potential after taking into account the amount of initial capital invested. The ROCE ratio is expressed as Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) / Capital Employed. Thus, ROCE can serve as a useful metric for calculating efficiency and profitability and can help determine how to squeeze a higher return out of corporate capital investments. The topic of industrial plant modernization represents a critical success ...

Written by Victor Kareh, Project Manager and former Army Aviator (West Point Alum) I spent many years in the military before making the leap into a corporate career.  The main factor behind my transition out of the military was for more family stability and to maintain a reasonable work-family balance.  I found a great fit with Schneider Electric.  Schneider Electric was recently awarded the status of Military Friendly® Employer , and I’d like to share my experience. Traveling Around the World I spent years moving from base-to-base; I know most military families can relate. Three weeks after graduating high school, I traveled from San Diego, CA to West Point, NY and reported to the cadet in the red sash as I began cadet basic training. After graduating, I reported to Ranger School and the Basic Officer course at Fort Benning, GA.  Then I moved to Fort Rucker, AL for flight training.  After graduation, I moved to Pyeongtaek, South Korea and spent a year...

House Judiciary Committee Forced Into Difficult Compromise On Surveillance Reform The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved the USA Liberty Act, a surveillance reform package introduced last month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI).  The bill is seen by many as the best option for reauthorizing and reforming Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which is set to expire in less than two months. Some committee members described feeling forced to choose between supporting stronger surveillance reforms or advancing the Liberty Act, and voiced their frustration about provisions that only partly block the warrantless search of Americans’ communications when an amendment with broader surveillance reforms was introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Ted Poe (R-TX).  Complicating their deliberations was the fact that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has already reported out a bill with f...

TSA Plans to Use Face Recognition to Track Americans Through Airports The “PreCheck” program is billed as a convenient service to allow U.S. travelers to “ speed through security ” at airports. However, the latest proposal released by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reveals the Department of Homeland Security’s greater underlying plan to collect face images and iris scans on a nationwide scale. DHS’s programs will become a massive violation of privacy that could serve as a gateway to the collection of biometric data to identify and track every traveler at every airport and border crossing in the country. Currently TSA collects fingerprints as part of its application process for people who want to apply for PreCheck. So far, TSA hasn’t used those prints for anything besides the mandatory background check that’s part of the process. But this summer, TSA ran a pilot program at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and at Denver International Airport that used those...

Cyber-attacks cost companies worldwide an estimated $300-400 billion each year in unanticipated downtime and that number is projected to increase sharply. Some large industrial organizations estimate their cost of downtime in the millions of dollars per hour . When a plant shuts down unexpectedly, it takes 3 to 4 days to get everything started up again. These are sobering business continuity-related lost revenue numbers. The more connected nature of oil & gas operations, driven in large part by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and related digitalization trends, although beneficial to bottom lines, introduces an element of cyber-risk that should be addressed. In fact, inaction is not an option. Cybersecurity is now a cost of doing business. The question is, what is the optimal approach? When considering the issue of cybersecurity and its impact on business continuity, several types of threats come into play. The first is the exposure of employees to outside emails. Over 4...

If you’re a colocation provider and could find a way to get 30% more IT capacity out of your existing data center power infrastructure while reducing operating costs by 60%, I’m certain you’d be more than a little interested. If so, just read on. These are not pie in the sky figures. They’re actual results customers are getting by employing second-generation air economizer cooling technology. We’ve known for years that economizers can reduce cooling costs; they’ve been doing a great job at that since we delivered our first-generation products in 2010. But technology changes quite a bit in 7 years so it should be no surprise that today’s versions are considerably more efficient. This was the topic of a presentation I made at a recent event, which we recorded so you can view it here . The gist is that our new Ecoflair air economizers have some features that enable them to be employed virtually anywhere in the world; you’re no longer constrained to using economizers only in moderate...