Monthly Archives: February 2022

Perhaps you saw this in the news: Telstra recently signed a $100 million deal to provide connectivity for Intellihub's smart meters that will add 4.1 million SIMs to Telstra's IoT network, and it was all built on Cisco IoT Control Center. Just like Telstra, service providers around the globe are seeing big business opportunities in the massive explosion of low complexity, cellular-enabled devices such as utility meters, asset tracking tags, medical devices, and agricultural sensors.

With low bandwidth consumption, low levels of complexity, and deterministically predictable usage patterns, these devices are often connected over wide areas with 3GPP LPWA (NB-IoT, LTE-M) networks. LPWAN delivers reliable, cost-effective IoT connectivity for low-cost devices supporting a broad range of low-power use cases and business models, from a water meter that sends a burst of data once a week to a city parking meter that handles transactions at all hours of the day and night.

And the business opportunity is massive. Investment in digitalization is just starting and has the potential for continued growth over many years as more countries, industries, and enterprises automate human-focused activities and leverage wireless technology at scale to power this digital transformation. Just consider recent Gartner Research findings that show 3GPP LPWAN will reach 1.2 billion worldwide connections by 2025. Energy and utilities, agriculture, government, smart cities, and healthcare will account for 90 percent of NB-IoT and LTE-M connections over that time.

But adding this extremely low-cost mass IoT segment to your service offerings puts downward pressure on profitability and requires rethinking how you deliver connectivity across all segments. Will your current value chain and economic model be able to support the next wave of IoT growth? Increasing your relevance in the value chain and reconsidering the economics of managing multiple Connectivity Management Platforms (CMPs) are keys to thriving in this growing market.

Zero Touch Deployment adds relevance to increase value

Let's talk about relevance in the value chain. Today the machine builder/smart meter manufacturer understands their connected products must be factory tested, shipped to the destination, installed, configured, and managed both from a connectivity and an ongoing monitoring and analytics/operational perspective. Each step in this multi-stage process adds cost and time, and the IoT connectivity provider is often last in line when it comes to getting their share of the wallet. Without being relevant by delivering more value, IoT providers are limited to competing for revenue per device, per month. One way to achieve relevance that leads to more wallet share is to play a bigger role in the end-to-end enablement of the devices and services. Part of the vision of the digitization dream is to reduce human involvement and the resulting cost. Zero Touch Deployment (ZTD), which leverages multiple, well-defined technologies, is an excellent option for driving that relevance for service providers.

Let's revisit the workflow using ZTD. The device is manufactured, tested, shipped with the standard factory configuration, installed in a desired location with peripherals connected, and powered on. The device powers up and pulls down its pre-defined set of parameters from the cloud, and now is automatically configured, security policies are enabled, it's visible to the enterprise, and data is being collected by the cloud-based analytics. This is done leveraging capabilities that align with the IoT connectivity provider skillsets. Will you get an enterprise's attention based on this new workflow? Absolutely! By enabling end-to-end process automation that delivers cost savings and faster time to deployment, while eliminating manual errors that lead to operational costs and service downtime, ZTD increases the value you provide and improves your relevance, leading to greater wallet share.

Low-complexity deployments don't mean low risk

There are other ways to increase relevance. It's a mistake to think that low-complexity deployment at scale means simplified operations or reduced security risk. For example, let's assume a stationary smart meter starts roaming across a wider geographic region. Clearly the device has been compromised. But as perhaps just one out of thousands or millions of devices, determining that a single device is exhibiting an anomalous behavior is humanly impossible to do manually. However, machine learning can determine and detect out-of-ordinary patterns and help you proactively identify problem devices.So low-cost deployment at scale must go hand in hand with the necessary guard rails to quickly mitigate risk. If the IoT connectivity provider can utilize machine learning capabilities that offer real-time monitoring, rapid detection, alerting, and automated remediation of such issues, this presents another opportunity to increase value and relevance with the enterprise.

What about costs?

Now that we've discussed how increased relevance leads to increased revenue, I'll take a closer look at the other side of the profitability equation - Operational Expenditures (OpEx). Let's start by considering how different types of IoT devices are handled by the connectivity provider. The CMP usually determines the experience that's delivered to the enterprise. Multiple CMP platforms used within an IoT connectivity provider is very common and the CMP the device is placed on is based on a price negotiated for the device and the complexity of the required management capabilities. High-value devices usually end up on platforms with rich feature sets including security, while low complexity devices may be targeted for lower feature-set platforms.

With this ecosystem of multiple CMPs, visibility, which is key to successful and cost-effective operations, is split across the platforms. Multiple CMPs increase complexity and can require significant additional resources in development and operations. In a cost-constrained business, consolidation of platforms should be considered a serious part of any strategy to successfully capture the low-cost mass IoT market and be profitable moving forward. Ultimately a one-to-one relationship, 'One Enterprise' to 'One Platform', delivers the most comprehensive and cost-effective business outcomes.

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To effectively harness the power that IoT offers - to become both relevant and profitable as a service provider - it's important to consider new ways of thinking about your deployments. We've talked about a few ideas here like ZTD and consolidating your CMPs, but we've got plenty of other ideas that will benefit you on your digitalization journey. Come visit the IoT Control Center team at Mobile World Congress to learn more about where we see this exciting new technology advancing and learn how your organization can add relevance and obtain more wallet share. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Cisco : What's the Next Evolution of IoT? - marketscreener.com

Chicago based Tool Innovator Launches its Most Advanced Lineman Utility Industry Tools

ADDISON, Ill., Feb. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Huskie Tools, LLC (HUSKIETOOLS.COM), located just outside of Chicago, Illinois has built their 45-year reputation on designing and manufacturing the highest quality and safest battery-powered, hydraulic utility linemen tools in the industry. Today, Huskie Tools announces the introduction of the new streamline SLC lineup, the next evolution in precision cutting and crimping tools.

SLC BY HUSKIE TOOLS AN EVOLUTION IN BATTERY POWERED HYDRAULIC CUTTING & COMPRESSION TOOLS FOR UTILITY LINEMEN"At Huskie Tools, it is our mission to build and deliver the industry's most innovative tools that meet the demands of linemen. We know they work in tough conditions overhead through storms and underground in the dark. We took those difficulties into account when developing the new SLC line. Compact and ergonomic with an industry-only selectable 360 LED light ring, the new compact SLC tools will weather the storms with maximum reliability, durability and safety," stated Nicholas Skrobot, CEO, Huskie Tools.

YOUR JOB IS TOUGH YOUR TOOL CHOICE IS EASYHuskie Tools' focus for over 45 years has been developing and building the best-performing, most durable, dependable, and safest line of cutting and compression tools for linemen in the utility industry. "We have the experience, knowledge, and resources to engineer the best and safest hydraulic tools in the industry. I'm proud to be part of such a talented product team launching the SLC line. This line has incredible new features such as the 18V brushless motor to provide longer life, an electronic switch for maximum reliability, durability and ease of use, plus an industry first -- our 360 LED light ring for working in dark areas and EVS jaws with improved performance and longer life. This is the reason we are the #1 choice of experienced linemen," explained Dan Voss, Product Development Director and 30-year Huskie Tools veteran.

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FIRST TO INTRODUCE BATTERY-POWERED TOOLSHuskie Tools introduced the industry's first line of battery-powered hydraulic cutting and compression tools in 1989, and today offer over 190 battery-powered tools on three leading battery platforms: Makita, Huskie Tools, and Milwaukee. We also have a full line of manual tools, presses, dies, and pole pullers -- no one in the industry has a deeper, wider utility industry product solution offering than Huskie Tools. We know what it's like to use our tools in a driving rainstorm with thousands of families depending on you to restore their power. Or to have to twist and contort your body just to access an underground area that needs repair. That's why we continue to offer battery-operated hydraulic tools, such as SLC, that are among the fastest, and most ergonomically designed and balanced on the market today," stated Charlie Kelly, VP, Sales.

ABOUT HUSKIE TOOLS, LLCBorn in Chicago over 45 years ago, Huskie Tools is a full-service company and proven leader in providing utility industry linemen a complete range of product solutions including battery-powered cutting and compression tools, presses, pumps, dies, manual tools and the TiiGER pole puller for all distribution, substation, transmission, overhead and underground utility projects.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: HUSKIETOOLS.COMDan Voss, Engineering, Product Development Director, 329955@email4pr.com, 630-485-2253Greg Holmes, Brand Manager, 329955@email4pr.com, 630-485-2270

*NOTE: Huskie Tools is not affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation. Milwaukee listed batteries and chargers are being re-sold by Huskie Tools. Milwaukee M18 REDLITHIUM are registered trademarks of Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation. Huskie Tools is not affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by Makita Corporation. Makita listed batteries and chargers are being re-sold by Huskie Tools. Makita and LXT are registered trademarks of Makita Corporation.

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Huskie Tools Introduces the Next Evolution of Battery Powered Cutting & Compression Lineman Tools - the SLC Series - Yahoo Finance

February 16, 2022

The collective activity of lifeall of the microbes, plants, and animalshave changed planet Earth.

Take, for example, plants: plants invented a way of undergoing photosynthesis to enhance their own survival, but in so doing, released oxygen that changed the entire function of our planet. This is just one example of individual lifeforms performing their own tasks, but collectively having an impact on a planetary scale.

If the collective activity of lifeknown as the biospherecan change the world, could the collective activity of cognition, and action based on this cognition, also change a planet? Once the biosphere evolved, Earth took on a life of its own. If a planetwith life has a life of its own, can it also have a mind of its own?

If we ever hope to survive as a species, we must use our intelligence for the greater good of the planet, says Adam Frank.

These are questions posed by Adam Frank, the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues David Grinspoon at the Planetary Science Institute and Sara Walkerat Arizona State University,in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. Their self-described thought experiment combines current scientific understanding about the Earth with broader questions about how life alters a planet. In the paper, the researchers discuss what they call planetary intelligencethe idea of cognitive activity operating on a planetary scaleto raise new ideas about the ways in which humans might tackle global issues such as climate change.

As Frank says, If we ever hope to survive as a species, we must use our intelligence for the greater good of the planet.

Frank, Grinspoon, and Walker draw from ideas such as the Gaia hypothesiswhich proposes that the biosphere interacts strongly with the non-living geological systems of air, water, and land to maintain Earths habitable stateto explain that even a non-technologically capable species can display planetary Intelligence. The key is that the collective activity of life creates a system that is self-maintaining.

For example, Frank says, many recent studies have shown how the roots of the trees in a forest connect via underground networks of fungi known as mycorrhizal networks. If one part of the forest needs nutrients, the other parts send the stressed portions the nutrients they need to survive, via the mycorrhizal network. In this way, the forest maintains its own viability.

Right now, our civilization is what the researchers call an immature technosphere, a conglomeration of human-generated systems and technology that directly affects the planet but is not self-maintaining. For instance, the majority of our energy usage involves consuming fossil fuels that degrade Earths oceans and atmosphere. The technology and energy we consume to survive are destroying our home planet, which will, in turn, destroy our species.

To survive as a species, then, we need to collectively work in the best interest of the planet.

But, Frank says, we dont yet have the ability to communally respond in the best interests of the planet. There is intelligence on Earth, but there isnt planetary intelligence.

The researchers posit four stages of Earths past and possible future to illustrate how planetary intelligence might play a role in humanitys long-term future. They also show how these stages of evolution driven by planetary intelligence may be a feature of any planet in the galaxy that evolves life and a sustainable technological civilization.

University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw

Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet, Frank says. The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we dont know how to move to a mature technosphere yet.

Although we dont yet know specifically how planetary intelligence might manifest itself, the researchers note that a mature technosphere involves integrating technological systems with Earth through a network of feedback loops that make up a complex system.

Put simply, a complex system is anything built from smaller parts that interact in such a fashion that the overall behavior of the system is entirely dependent on the interaction. That is, the sum is more than the whole of its parts. Examples of complex systems include forests, the Internet, financial markets, and the human brain.

By its very nature, a complex system has entirely new properties that emerge when individual pieces are interacting. It is difficult to discern the personality of a human being, for instance, solely by examining the neurons in her brain.

That means it is difficult to predict exactly what properties might emerge when individuals form a planetary intelligence. However, a complex system like planetary intelligence will, according to the researchers, have two defining characteristics: it will have emergent behavior and will need to be self-maintaining.

The biosphere figured out how to host life by itself billions of years ago by creating systems for moving around nitrogen and transporting carbon, Frank says. Now we have to figure out how to have the same kind of self-maintaining characteristics with the technosphere.

Despite some efforts, including global bans on certain chemicals that harm the environment and a move toward using more solar energy,we dont have planetary intelligence or a mature technosphere yet, he says. But the whole purpose of this research is to point out where we should be headed.

Raising these questions, Frank says, will not only provide information about the past, present, and future survival of life on Earth but will also help in the search for life and civilizations outside our solar system. Frank, for instance, is the principal investigator on a NASA grant to search for technosignatures of civilizations on planets orbiting distant stars.

Were saying the only technological civilizations we may ever seethe ones we should expect to seeare the ones that didnt kill themselves, meaning they must have reached the stage of a true planetary intelligence, he says. Thats the power of this line of inquiry: it unites what we need to know to survive the climate crisis with what might happen on any planet where life and intelligence evolve.

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Can a planet have a mind of its own? - University of Rochester

The two most influential liberal Justices of the U.S. Supreme CourtChief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennanwere Republicans appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reportedly called them his two worst mistakes. The story of Ikes statement may be apocryphal, but the phenomenon of Republican appointees disappointing their erstwhile sponsors is real. Nixon appointee Harry Blackmun, Fords John Paul Stevens, Reagans Sandra Day OConnor and Anthony Kennedy, and George H.W. Bushs David Souter all proved less reliably conservative than advertised.

Then the phenomenon apparently stopped. Shortly after his 1991 confirmation, Justice Clarence Thomas famously quipped I aint evolving. He wasnt and he hasnt. With one exception, neither have any of the Justices appointed by Republican Presidents in the years since. Why not?

In a 2007 article in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, I hypothesized that as Supreme Court decisions became more politically salient to their constituents, Republican Presidents got better at screening out potential evolvers by nominating people they knew to be reliable conservatives because the nominees were familiar to the Republican legal establishment based on service in the executive branch of the federal government. Looking at the twelve Republican appointees from the Nixon administration onward, I observed that the six Justices who had not previously served in the executive branch of the federal government evolvedthat is, proved to be liberal or moderatewhereas the six who had served in the federal executive did not evolve. Noting that it was far too early in their tenure to draw any conclusions about Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, I nonetheless predicted that based on their prior experience, they would both remain reliable conservatives.

I was right about Alito but wrong about Roberts.

To be sure, no one would mistake John Roberts for a liberal. He joined the leading decisions finding gun rights in the Constitution, dissented from the Courts decision establishing marriage equality, wrote the Courts opinion rejecting judicial review of political gerrymandering, and has, more broadly, steered the Court in roughly the same direction as his conservative predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist (for whom Roberts clerked as a young lawyer).

Yet lately Chief Justice Roberts has been as likely to join his Democratic-appointed colleagues in high-profile cases as he is to join his fellow Republicans. In the summer of 2020 and thereafter, Roberts joined the Democratic appointees in rejecting challenges to public health regulations, even bringing along Justice Brett Kavanaugh to create a 5-4 majority for upholding the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for workers in federally funded health-care facilities last month. Despite previously dissenting from the Courts abortion rights rulings, Roberts cast the fifth and decisive vote to strike down a Louisiana abortion restriction in a 2020 case, concluding that the challenged law was indistinguishable from a Texas law the Court had only recently invalidated, even though Roberts had dissented in the Texas case.

While Roberts has sometimes played a pivotal role, since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs death and her replacement by the very conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Chiefs evolution has had little impact on the outcomes of cases, as there are now five Justices to his right. Thus, although Roberts joined his Democratic colleagues in voting to allow lawsuits against the Texas attorney general to block the Lone Star States notorious SB8which replaces public enforcement of an abortion ban with large private bountiesthey were outvoted by the other Republican appointees, who permitted only a very narrow challenge and then sent the case back to the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit despite the Chiefs statement that the district court should have been permitted to resolve the case for the abortion providers quickly. Instead, the appeals court has slow-walked the litigation while abortion after six weeks remains essentially illegal in Texas.

Perhaps most dramatically, last week the Chief Justice joined the Democratic appointees in dissenting from the majoritys decision to block a lower court ruling that had invalidated Alabamas racially biased electoral map. Roberts, the author of the notorious 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holderwhich invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Actthought that this time the Court had gone too far.

Does the surprising evolution of Chief Justice Roberts matter? Perhaps not. The five Justices to his right seem intent on rolling back abortion rights, promoting gun rights, weakening the separation of church and state, and invalidating all race-based affirmative action. Roberts might even join them in some of these projects.

Still, if Roberts is becoming a moderate or a liberal, that could make a difference. It is much harder to find two unexpected votes for a liberal outcomeas one must on a 6-3 Courtthan to find just one. Kavanaughs vote in the vaccine mandate caselike Justice Neil Gorsuchs 2020 majority opinion finding that a 1964 civil rights law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity (which Roberts but not the other Republican appointees joined)illustrates that shifting the Chief from a presumptively conservative vote to a potential moderate or liberal vote changes the dynamic on the Court.

Whatever the ultimate impact of the Chiefs evolution, we might wonder what is causing it.

To begin, we might identify a backlash effect. Even as a judge on the Eighth Circuit, Harry Blackmun was substantially more liberal than President Nixon realized, but it was not until after he wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade that Blackmunwho was vilified by the right for itbecame reliably liberal. Being attacked by the right played a role in what Linda Greenhouses elegant biography aptly called Harry Blackmuns Supreme Court Journey.

(So far as I am aware) Roberts has not had to endure the picketing, hate mail, death threats, or assassination attempt that were aimed at Blackmun, but for nearly a decade he has been cursed by Republicans as an apostate for joining with his Democratic colleagues in 2012 in upholding the Affordable Care Act. That experience may well have had a moderating effect on him, especially given his commitment to a view of the Court as above politics. Roberts may have been genuinely taken aback by the suggestion that as the appointee of a Republican president, he owed the party his vote in opposition to the signature legislative achievement of a Democratic president.

As a nominee appearing before the Senate, John Roberts likened the judicial role to that of an umpire calling balls and strikes. In one sense, that is simply the kind of formalistic cant that all Supreme Court nominees feel compelled to recite. Even though everyone knows that presidents select nominees based on their values and views, to win confirmation, nominees must swear fealty to a disembodied law, as though its application in contested cases did not call upon value judgments.

For Roberts, however, the commitment to at least the appearance of an impartial judiciary is not mere confirmation fibbing, but foundational to his self-conception. Writing in The Atlantic in 2019 to review Joan Biskupics insightful biography of Roberts, Michael ODonnell described a war within Roberts between, on one hand, his love for the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary as institutions, and, on the other hand, the conservative commitments Roberts formed during his youth and strengthened during the Reagan administration. The backlash against the Obamacare decision led Roberts to realize that he could not always be both an institutionalist and a conservative ideologue. Roberts chose institutionalism.

We might also understand the Roberts journey as a sign of the times. Blackmun used to complain that pundits who described his evolution were wrong. He did not move left, he said; the Court moved right, and thus he only appeared to move by contrast. As Greenhouse shows, that is not entirely accurate. Neither would such an account be entirely accurate with respect to Roberts. But it would contain more than a kernel of truth.

In the 2020 Louisiana abortion case, Roberts seemed genuinely puzzled that his fellow conservatives could claim to be applying rather than overruling the recent ruling involving an identical Texas statute. In the SB8 litigation, he took much the same view: so long as the abortion right remains on the books, states should not be rewarded for circumventing it. And that was his position again last week in the Alabama Voting Rights Act case: maybe the Court should re-examine its precedents, but until it does, a lower court shouldnt be reversed for applying them faithfully.

In these and other cases, Roberts has hardly been staking out a strongly liberal or progressive position. Rather, he is simply insisting on what have hitherto been principles that liberals, moderates, and conservatives all agreed upon: apply the law on the books while it remains there. Or, more boldly, dont lie about the law.

Seen in this light, the evolution of John Roberts does look a fair bit like a man standing still while the landscape moves past him (and to the right). It also makes Roberts look a fair bit like another prominent Republican, Mike Pence. Despite sterling conservative credentials and four years spent demeaning himself as Donald Trumps Vice President, when push came to shove there was a line Pence would not crossand it was much the same line that Roberts has been unwilling to cross. Neither man would brazenly lie about the law to further partisan ends.

It takes nothing away from the personal courage and integrity of John Roberts or Mike Pence to observe that the remarkable fact is not that they have stood up for previously uncontroversial principles but that so many of their fellow Republicansincluding elite conservative lawyers who surely know betterhave not.

With apologies for the ableist metaphor, on a Court of the blind, the one-eyed man is Chief.

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The Evolution of Chief Justice John Roberts - Justia Verdict

The Bounx and Evolve9 platform collaboration is now available to tennis academies around the world.

At the Evolution Kids Tennis Coaches Conference, Feb. 8-10, Mike Barrell, founder and CEO of Evolve9, and Julian R. Ellison, founder and CEO of BounxSport, announced the new product launch to tennis academies across the globe to build more excitement, energy, and engagement for Under 10s tennis.

"We have been working closely with Mike and his Evolution Kids Tennis program for the past 12 months and have seen how his systematic approach to coaching U10 kids combined with the unique gamification and feedback functionality built inside Bounx, creates an advanced but extremely simple system for tennis academies and clubs to deploy," Ellison said. "We have taken the best of coaching insights, academy operations, and video game engagement methods to create a unique and gamified academy management experience right on a real tennis court."

"Sometimes technology can go too far and lose sight of what matters most for coaches and kids," Barrell said. "Kids must enjoy their time on court and want to come back to play more. Coaches must use the time they have on court as efficiently as possible and provide a lasting memory to players. And most importantly, academies need to create better and more sustainable business models so they can keep inspiring better tennis.

Bounx is the first sport tech that truly understands the union of the three core elements that power successful academies."

The Bounx and Evolve9 collaboration was piloted at three locations on three continents and is ready to be deployed at academies around the world.

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EVOLUTION KIDS TENNIS ON BOUNX IS NOW OPEN - PRNewswire