Archive for December 3, 2020

Here Are Some Ontario Ordering Trends On SkipTheDishes

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 3, 2020 by itnerd

SkipTheDishes has released their end of year report, looking at the ordering trends of Ontarians and Canadians alike.

In 2020, the top three items ordered through SkipTheDishes in Ontario were Asian dishes, burgers and pizza. And the most popular cuisines were American/Canadian (Scarborough), Italian (Niagara Falls) and Chinese (Sudbury).

October 9, 2020 a Toronto resident ordered the most expensive order recorded in Ontario coming in at a whopping $779.90! That order included 30 salads, 12 orders of pad thai and 10 orders of red curry!

Ontarians capitalized on the addition of convenience items on the Skip network in 2020. Their most ordered items were slushies, taquitos and fountain drinks. But while some munched on sugary treats, others chose more specific dishes as Ontario ranked first for the province with the most orders of halal food (followed by Quebec and the Maritimes), second for kosher food (behind Alberta and followed by Saskatchewan) and third for organic food (behind B.C. and Alberta).

Ontario trends include:

  • 743 is the number of orders placed by the most frequent orderer in Ontario
  • The fastest growing segment of new users were those above the age of 65
  • Late night orders grew by 38%
  • Canadians are more willing to try something new as roughly half of users who open the app don’t know what they’re going to order
  • And 81% of customers have ordered from a restaurant that they have never been to in person
  • Patio season has its limits, and that limit for most Canadians is 12ºC

To see Skip’s full report, click HERE.

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Trump Escalates His Section 230 Rants By Threatening Defense Spending

Posted in Commentary with tags , on December 3, 2020 by itnerd

Donald Trump must really hurting from #DiaperDon trending on Twitter as he’s now taken his Twitter rant and gone next level with it. He’s now serving up threats that if he doesn’t get his way by having congress repeal section 230, he’ll deprive the armed forces of funding:

President Donald Trump has long been an outspoken foe of big technology companies. And in recent months, he has focused his ire on Section 230, a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that shields online platforms from liability for content posted by their users. In May, Trump called on the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret the law — though it’s not clear the agency has the power to do that. Since then, he has tweeted about the issue incessantly. On Tuesday evening, Trump ratcheted up his campaign against Section 230. In a tweet, he called the law “a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity.” He warned that “if the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill.” 

The NDAA is a massive spending bill that Congress passes each year to authorize funding for the military. This year’s version, now under active discussion on Capitol Hill, is expected to cost around $740 billion. The NDAA is seen as a “must pass” bill because no one wants to be blamed for holding up funding for the troops. So inserting language into it can be a way to pass proposals that might not stand on their own. But there’s also a risk of a backlash — especially if a measure is seen as unrelated to the military. This may be why Trump has started claiming that Section 230 is a “threat to our national security,” since that would theoretically make it germane to a defense funding bill. Trump’s campaign to repeal Section 230 appears to go beyond mere tweets. The White House is reportedly telling members of Congress the same thing in private that the president is telling his 88 million Twitter followers: that he will veto the NDAA if it doesn’t repeal or at least overhaul Section 230.

You just have to shake your head at this as this sounds like something an 8 year old would do. Which is really sad. The fact is that I don’t see congress doing this, and as a result people in harms way may get hurt. And that’s simply wrong.

Oh well, at least he will go away on January 20th 2021 and hopefully never to return.

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US States Plan To Try And #DeleteFacebook By Suing Them: Report

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 3, 2020 by itnerd

For those who really would like to see someone #DeleteFacebook, they might get their wish. Reuters is reporting that a group of states is going to sue Facebook. Here’s the details:

A group of U.S. states led by New York is investigating Facebook for possible antitrust violations and plans to file a lawsuit against the social media giant next week, four sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The complaint would be the second major lawsuit filed against a Big Tech company this year. The Justice Department sued Alphabet’s Google in October. More than 40 states plan to sign on to the lawsuit, one source said, without naming them. 

It is not known what the states plan to include in their complaint. One allegation often made against Facebook is that it has strategically sought to buy small potential rivals, often at a big premium. These include Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has argued in congressional testimony that the company has a range of competitors, including other tech giants. He has defended controversial acquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp by saying the social media platform helped them expand from small, insignificant companies into powerhouses.

Well this will cause Zuckerberg to freak out and then force them to change their pants because a lawsuit like this has the potential to alter their business model in ways which would make Facebook non-viable. And that would be a good thing as Facebook isn’t known for respecting user data among other things. If this lawsuit happens, it will be very much worth watching.

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Most Canadian Companies Continue To Struggle To Realize Full Business Value From Their Cloud Initiatives: Accenture

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 3, 2020 by itnerd

Despite years of focused effort, many Canadian enterprises are still struggling to realize the full value of their cloud investments, a new report from Accenture reveals.
 
In its latest report, “Sky High Hopes: Navigating the Barriers to Maximizing Cloud Value,” Accenture surveyed 750 senior business and IT professionals at large enterprises across 11 industries and 17 countries, including Canada. It found that just 34% of Canadian companies say they are achieving the full value expected on their cloud investments, compared to 37% of companies globally.
 
While value realization has never been more important, 51% of Canadian business and IT leaders say they are “very satisfied” with their cloud outcomes, compared to 45% globally. Moreover, just 18% of Canadian businesses are completely confident that their organization’s cloud migration initiatives will deliver the expected value at the expected time.
 
Accenture’s report highlights that, when businesses have gone more heavily into the cloud, outcomes are significantly better. Looking globally, 46% of high adopters report fully achieving their expected cloud benefits, compared to 36% of moderate adopters and 28% of low adopters.
 
Businesses in Canada recognize that they need cloud technologies for speed and agility to mitigate the major challenges they are facing and to drive transformational change to create new opportunities and value. According to the report, 95% of Canadian business executives now look to cloud as a means of mitigating business uncertainty and lowering risk. In addition, 90% view cloud as a critical component of their strategy for achieving their corporate sustainability goals.

The research also examines what may be holding Canadian businesses back when it comes to driving their cloud agendas and achieving their goals. “Security and compliance risk” was most frequently cited as perceived barrier (53%), followed by “complexity of business / operational change” and “legacy infrastructure & application sprawl” at 44% and 36% respectively.  Every barrier listed was included as a top barrier by one-third of respondents. 


The global findings also show that CEOs have markedly different impressions of cloud results and concerns than fellow C-suite leaders and high-ranking company officials: 54% of CEOs globally are completely confident in their organizations’ ability to deliver cloud initiatives with the expected value at the expected time, versus 34% of CIOs and only 28% of CFOs. 

To extract the full business value of cloud technologies, Accenture recommends that organizations adopt fundamentally new ways of working, shifting to new operating models and developing new roles and skills. Four key areas for companies to address include:
 

  1. Business value focus: develop an optimal cloud strategy anchored to comprehensive economic business cases to identify revenue upside and cost efficiency opportunities while aligning goals and putting company leaders on the same page.
  2. People and culture change management: implement new upskilling and talent readiness programs, along with new operating models, to help transform and enhance how people work so they can better meet rapidly changing needs.
  3. Data and AI: unlock industry- and function-specific data insights and intelligence trapped in legacy systems with the power of cloud data models.
  4. Partnering for success: leverage the skills and experience of strategic partners to expand and enhance the organization’s existing capabilities. Cloud-managed services are often an option for companies looking to access the right skills while maintaining cost efficiency.  

Accenture’s new research follows the formation of Accenture Cloud First, which provides the full stack of cloud services to help clients across every industry become “cloud-first” businesses so they can accelerate their digital transformation, innovate faster, and create differentiated, sustainable value. Powered by 70,000 cloud professionals, and a $3 billion investment over the next three years, we bring together an unmatched depth and breadth of cloud experience and skills, industry cloud solutions, ecosystem partner capabilities and assets that help clients realize greater value from cloud at speed and scale. For more info, visit www.accenture.com/cloud.

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A Look At Apple AirPlay 2 And HomeKit Support On Roku Devices

Posted in Commentary on December 3, 2020 by itnerd

Not too long ago, Roku announced that they were bringing support for Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to their devices and 4K TVs. This is something that Roku that were in the Apple ecosystem have wanted for a very long time. Now to be clear, not every Roku device will get this new functionality as part of Roku’s rollout of Roku OS 9.4. To see if your Roku device is part of this rollout, Roku have a list that you can find here. If you have a Roku TV, you might want to reach out to your TV manufacturer to see if they are rolling this support out. In my case, I have a Roku Streambar and a TCL TV which both got version 9.4 recently. And I have had a chance to walk through what this new functionality has to offer.

I’ll start with HomeKit support. Once the 9.4 update is on your device, you’ll see it in the Home app:

In my case there’s both the Streambar and Roku TV which is how my TCL TV is identified. Digging into either device brings up this:

Like any other HomeKit device, you can add it to a Scene, which is a way to control several HomeKit devices at once, and create automations. Such as the one that is listed above which is to turn off the Streambar when the last person leaves home. It uses the location of iPhones and Apple Watches to determine if people are home or not. And in the case of my wife and I we have both devices and it works reliably. You’ll need to set your Roku device up in the Home app, but the set up process is really easy.

Now over to AirPlay 2.

For this example, I used my iPhone 12 Pro to broadcast a song to my choice of AirPlay 2 devices. That includes both Roku devices and the HomePod Mini in my bedroom. When you select a Roku device, it displays the album art on the screen:

One catch though. This takes over your TV and punts you out whatever Roku app that you’re in, as well as switching you from whatever input you happen to be watching. For example, if I was using the HDMI input that is attached to my computer, and I want to play some background music while playing Call Of Duty Warzone, I can’t as it will punt me out the computer input and play the music on with the album art displayed. This is also true for the Streambar. While I acknowledge that this is an edge case, it would be a nice to have. I will note that I suspect that this has more to do with Apple rather than Roku. But I’d be interested to hear if other smart TVs with AirPlay 2 support do the same thing.

The other thing that you can do with AirPlay 2 is to mirror the display of your iOS device or your Mac to your TV. On an iOS device simply go to Control Center and choose Screen Mirroring:

You should then see something like this:

My iPhone in this case see both Roku devices. If you’re on macOS, you may have an AirPlay icon in your menu bar that allows you to choose the device to AirPlay to:

If you don’t have this icon, simply go to System Prefences –> Display and make sure that this option is enabled:

The one thing that I will note in all cases is that there is a bit of lag when using AirPlay. But it isn’t objectionable.

With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, you can use Siri on your iPhone to send a video to your TV. You can also ask Siri to play a specific show in a specific room. Or you can ask Siri to play specific song on a specific TV. That really extends the functionality of AirPlay 2 and HomeKit.

There’s one last thing that I want to touch on. I posted a story not too long ago about the rollout of Roku OS 9.4 not going well. Now I’ve been watching social media as well as the so called “mega thread” thread on Reddit and my observation is that the noise surrounding this update is starting to calm down as I see that the volume of complaints is decreasing since I originally posted my story. This implies that Roku is getting a handle on this, but issues still exist. I also note that in the Reddit “mega thread” as well as on Twitter that Roku is trying to help people as best as they can. And that’s a good thing. But it would have been nice if Roku had gotten back to me with their side of the story as it would have been valuable to yours truly as well as the people who reached out to me to bring this to my attention to understand what happened here. That part is disappointing. But at least things appear to be moving in a more positive direction and I hope those with issues are getting them addressed in a timely and fulsome manner.

Roku OS 9.4 with HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support is currently rolling out. If you don’t have it yet, it will eventually show up on your Roku device. Or on your Roku device, go to Home –> Settings –> System –> System Update > Check now and see if it downloads. It’s definitely going to add value to your Roku device.

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