Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Among the dizzying array of new technologies that are reshaping business today, blockchain is among the most intriguing.  The theory behind blockchain is quite compelling. Networks of computers use consensus mechanism and cryptography to allow each participant on the network (or along the supply chain) to update a distributed ledger in a highly secure manner, without a central authority.  For a hacker to breach one of the blocks in the chain would be difficult, but breaching all links in the chain at the same time would be nearly impossible.  In private blockchain, this can be complemented by access rights rules defined by each participant of the blockchain based solution, so that it is difficult to access the data of the ledger without the proper access rights. Moreover, some blockchain technologies have ‘smart contracts’ capability so that defined rules can be executed on the data of the ledger, in a similar secured way. As a result, the level of trust built into such ...

Who Speaks for The Billions of Victims of Mass Surveillance? Tech Companies Could Two clocks are ticking for US tech companies in the power centers of the modern world. In Washington, lawmakers are working to reform FISA Section 702 before it expires on December 31st, 2017. Section 702 is the main legal basis for US mass surveillance, including the programs and techniques that scoop up the data transferred by non-US individuals to US servers. Upstream surveillance collects communications as they travel over the Internet backbone, and downstream surveillance (better known as PRISM) collects communications from companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. Both programs have used Section 702’s vague definitions to justify the wholesale seizure of Internet and telephony traffic: any foreign person located outside the United States could be subjected to surveillance if the government thinks that surveillance would acquire “foreign intelligence information”—which here means information ...

EFF Files Brief in Support of Ability to Challenge Bad Patents at the Patent Office The Patent Office doesn’t always do the best job. That’s how Personal Audio managed to get a patent on podcasting, even though other people were podcasting years before Personal Audio first applied for a patent. As we’ve detailed on many occasions , patents are often granted on things that are known and obvious, giving rights to patent owners that actually belong to the public. As a result, it’s important for the public to have the ability to challenge bad patents. Unfortunately, challenging bad patents in court can be hard and very expensive. In court, challenges are often decided by a judge or jury with little technical knowledge. Courts also require a high level of proof (“clear and convincing”) that can be hard to come by, especially after the passage of time . In order to help alleviate that problem, in 2011 Congress passed the America Invents Act , which created new procedures at the Patent...

One of the best ways to cool beer on a day out is to have a good time on the river, where the moisture makes the air cooler. The result is a rapid transfer of heat, and so the liquid in the bottle quickly matches the outside temperature. Likewise, in industrial settings, air-water exchangers are a very good solution. This is especially true for situations complicated by an aggressive external environment or by the need to control clean air in facilities. Examples include chemical industries, cement plants, mines, foodstuffs, pharmaceutical, and so on. When deciding to use an air-water exchanger, it is usually because the air temperature is too high, more than 40 o C. Also, it could be that the quality of the air outside makes it impossible to work with ventilation, air conditioner or other solutions that need outside air for cooling. For instance, in the case of cement plants, filters are quickly blocked due to airborne particulates. Paper mills, printing facilities or chemical pla...

In my last blog post, I took a look at how the newest power management solutions are helping healthcare facilities address financial challenges like energy and maintenance costs, as well as meet regulatory requirements. In this post I’d like to look at another top concern of healthcare executives: patient safety. While the healthcare motto is “First, do no harm,” the World Health Organization estimates that “in developed countries, as many as 1 patient in 10 is harmed while receiving hospital care.” Though there are a variety of causes behind this statistic, a facility’s electrical supply can be a contributing factor. For medium and large hospitals as well as smaller outpatient facilities, 24/7 power and data availability are critical. Power availability is a matter of life or death in the hospital environment. To help ensure safe and reliable power for patient and staff well-being, it’s important to safeguard against risks and find issues fast before problems occur. Beyond improvi...