Archive for February 7, 2023

Uber Reports On The Top 10 Alcohol Orders On Uber Eats And Debuts Their Super Bowl Ad

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

For the past three years, Canadians have been watching the Super Bowl at a social distance. As we get ready to gather for our first game together en masse, Uber is partnering with MADD Canada to give you some tips for a fun and safe celebration. 

Order for delivery – You can now order alcohol for delivery with Uber Eats. Here are the top 10 alcohol items people are ordering on Uber Eats: 

  1. Vodka
  2. Whiskey
  3. Lager 
  4. Red wine
  5. Ready-to-Drink cocktails
  6. Rum 
  7. White wine
  8. Tequila 
  9. Champagne & sparkling wine
  10. Ale 

Consumers 19+ can order spirits, wine, and beer for delivery to their doorstep. Before ordering alcohol through the app, a consumer must confirm they are 19+ in the app. When the delivery is made, the consumer’s sobriety and age will be verified. Per provincial regulations, only Smart Serve certified delivery people may deliver alcohol orders.

Opt for a safe ride home – Remember that just because you drove to the party, it doesn’t mean you are capable of driving home. No matter how you get home, Uber and MADD Canada are supporters of all rides that get you there safely. Plan ahead, call a friend, have a designated driver, stay overnight, find a ride with the Uber app, or take transit to get home safely.

Save with Uber One membership – Uber is also excited to share that Uber is returning to the Super Bowl for the third year in a row with a new ad focused on making Uber One the most memorable membership out there. The kind of membership that you can’t get out of your head and that really sticks – just like a hit song. In the ad, you’ll see Uber teaming up with none other than Sean “Diddy” Combs with a simple ask: dream up a one hit song for Uber One.

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Cybrary Makes 500+ Hours of Premium Training Content Free

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

Cybrary is introducing Cybrary Free Access, 500+ hours of new, free premium content that provides individual users with the full essential skillset needed to launch a cyber career.

The move marks a sharp departure from the industry’s failing training options, and is designed to address the longstanding cybersecurity skills shortage. Through Cybrary Free Access, participants gain access to guided instruction on key foundational roles and concepts, certification preparation, and threat-based training, developing skills to defend against real adversaries.

Cybrary Free Access includes three categories of premium content with more than 500 hours of material to help users advance towards their career goals, including:

  • IT Foundations and Cybersecurity Foundations Paths: a comprehensive, deep dive into the core concepts found across all cybersecurity roles and the IT ecosystem:
    • IT Foundations: hardware, systems architecture, operating systems, networking and context.
    • Cybersecurity Foundations: career paths, threats and adversaries, vulnerabilities and risks, cryptography, hacking systems, defending systems, security architecture, controls, scripting, etc.
  • Certification Prep Courses: help for those who are not only looking to achieve recognized accreditations, but are also looking to understand the underlying concepts behind the certifications.
  • Advanced Courses: experienced talent seeking to further advance their skills can access a sampling of interactive labs based on realistic attack scenarios.

Visit Cybrary’s blog post to learn more about their commitment to solving the cybersecurity skills shortage and how to sign up for the Cybrary Free Access offering.

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Nikon Announces the Ultra Slim and Lightweight NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 Pancake Lens And The NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S Lens

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

Nikon Canada Inc. has announced the highly anticipated NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S, a professional-level ultra-fast prime lens that exemplifies the powerful potential of the Nikon Z Mount for those capturing stills or video footage, whether it be studio head shots, weddings, events, high fashion, b-roll, close ups and more. This 85mm portrait lens with an incredibly fast f/1.2 aperture delivers the ultimate in image quality for the most discerning clients, plus the benefits of a flattering, compressing focal length that dissolves the background into a beautiful and intoxicating bokeh. Nikon has also released the slimmest and lightest full-frame NIKKOR lens ever created, the NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 “pancake” lens. This new ultra-compact lens is made for creators, offering versatility for capturing all kinds of content from street style and landscapes to everyday casual snaps. 

NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S: Beautiful Bokeh and Precise AF

The view from this premium S line lens is nothing short of captivating. Ultra-high-resolution and intense sharpness renders skin texture and hair realistically, with a striking yet gradual depth of field and abundant light gathering ability that only a lens with a wide f/1.2 aperture could offer. Focus on the eyes creates a deep human connection between the viewer and the subject, with three-dimensional rendering that portrays a heightened level of emotion and depth. 

What makes the new NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S lens extraordinary isn’t immediately apparent; the outstanding optical performance goes beyond the impressive sharpness to create a truly unique optic, with special emphasis given to the distinct character of the bokeh and out-of-focus area. The background blur is soft and natural, while the transition from the plane of focus is subtle and gradual. Wide open, the depth is utterly astounding, and even when stopping down it’s downright dreamy and opulent with smooth and circular bokeh that drives attention to the subject to create a glamourous appearance that’s desirable for fashion, boudoir and brides. 

Similar to the coveted NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 NOCT, the optical construction includes 11 rounded diaphragm blades, which work together with the fast aperture to melt away point light sources into round and soft circles. Additionally, the use of ED glass suppresses colour fringing, while the position of lens elements is carefully considered to eliminate any kind of “onion-ring” characteristics.

The new NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S benefits from Nikon’s advanced multi-focusing system for enhanced optical performance at close distances as well as rapid AF performance that enables precise accuracy even with the razor-thin depth of field at f/1.2. This is the precision that helps to capture what’s most important; from a model’s dynamic poses, a couple’s fleeting emotional embrace, or intricate event details. To achieve this level of performance, the NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S’s multi-focusing system consists of two stepping (STM) motors to coordinate positioning of two focusing lens groups simultaneously. These small-diameter, high-torque STM’s in the AF mechanism ensure outstandingly quiet, fast, and accurate operation. 

Additional Features of the new NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S

  • A Nikon first, f/1.2 aperture on an 85mm lens, provides shallow depth of field, gorgeous bokeh and amazing light gathering capability. 
  • A minimum focusing distance of only 2.8ft / 0.85m lets you get close to subjects for immaculate details.
  • Embrace shooting with challenging backlight thanks to a Nano Crystal Coat that suppresses ghosting and flare.
  • Videographers will appreciate the quiet operational sound and fast AF afforded by the STM motors, the minimized focus breathing as well as the support for manual linear focusing on select cameras. 
  • The independent control ring and an additional L-Fn button are fully customizable.
  • The optical formula consists of 15 elements in 10 groups with 2 aspherical elements and one ED element. The ED lens effectively reduces chromatic aberration while the aspherical lens reduces spherical aberration, distortion, and other aberrations. 
  • The lens is constructed of durable magnesium alloy, while superior dust and drip-resistance is ensured by sealing in various areas including movable parts of the lens barrel and mount.

The NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8: A Premium Pancake for Every-Day Carry

The new NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 is a super-thin wide angle prime for Z series mirrorless cameras, and it’s Nikon’s slimmest and lightest full-frame AF lens ever. Despite its small size, the lens packs a tremendous punch with superior sharpness and beautiful blurred backgrounds with a fast f/2.8 aperture. This is the first NIKKOR Z lens to be slender and light enough to be considered a true “pancake”, with a total length of less than one inch (23.5mm) and a weight of approximately 4.5oz (125g). 

The new NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 is so small and lightweight, it’s easy to take anywhere to capture photos and video with maximum impact. Whether shooting street photography, travel vlogs or landscape shots in a unique location, the NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 has you covered as the perfect companion wherever the journey may lead. 

Additional Features of the NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8

  • The slimness and lightness are achieved thanks to the adoption of an All-element focusing system, as well as three aspherical lens elements.
  • When mounted on a DX-format camera, the focal length becomes 39mm (equivalent), similar to a standard angle lens.
  • A minimum focus distance of approx. eight inches (0.2m) lets users to get close to their subjects. 
  • Use of an STM motor enables a highly accurate AF drive.
  • Functions such as aperture and exposure compensation can be assigned to the control ring.
  • Includes a new lens cap and a lens hood that has been specially designed to be slim and work with 52mm filters. (filters sold separately)
  • The lens is fitted with a durable metal mount, and the body is designed carefully considering dust- and drip-resistant performance enabling it to be taken anywhere with greater confidence.

Price and availability:

The new NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S will be available in late March 2023 for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $3,799.95, the NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 will be available in late March for $679.95 MSRP. For more information about the latest Nikon products, including other NIKKOR Z lenses and the entire collection of Z series cameras, please visit www.nikon.ca

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Microsoft Outlook Has Suffered A Significant Outage

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

Starting at 11PM EST yesterday, users of Microsoft Outlook found that they couldn’t access or send emails through neither the application nor the website. This was confirmed by Microsoft via Twitter:

If you follow that thread, you’ll see that Microsoft has kept users up to date with their recovery efforts, a change to their infrastructure might have caused this. Though we are seeing things start to get better at present. Microsoft doesn’t detail what exactly has changed, but the timing of the outage is not good for the company as there was another recent outage where a change caused a lot of Microsoft’s services to take a dive. I believe a lot of hard questions will be asked of Microsoft because of that.

For the latest on this, the Microsoft Service Status page will have the latest details. And I for one look forward to reading the root cause analysis that Microsoft will be posting to see what went wrong this time.

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EnGenius Announces The ENH500-AX Outdoor Wireless Point To Point Client Bridge

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

EnGenius Technologies Inc., a leading provider of networking solutions for any sized businesses, today announced the launch of the ENH500-AX, a Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 5GHz 2×2 outdoor wireless point to point client bridge. 

This innovative new product takes advantage of the latest Wi-Fi technology to deliver high-density transmissions between buildings and large outdoor properties without needing the complexity or costs of fiber cables. The EnGenius Wi-Fi 6 outdoor bridge boasts Wi-Fi 6 capabilities and features that significantly improve throughput, efficiency, and accommodates 8k ultra-HD video and heavy multi-application traffic with extended bandwidth over greater distances. 

The ENH500-AX “invisible wire” bridge comes with Qualcomm® Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53s @ 2.0GHz CPU and is a game-changer for businesses looking to connect multiple buildings or extend their networks to outdoor spaces without the expense of running fiber cables. Designed for peak performance in harsh climates, EnGenius Fit Wi-Fi 6 outdoor access points feature IP55-rated waterproof and dustproof enclosures ensuring they can withstand harsh outdoor environments.

The ENH500-AX bridge offers high 26 dBm output power and utilizes beamforming technology to optimize client antenna signal, reception, and reliability, while it can achieve longer ranges when paired with another Wi-Fi 6 bridge in a point-point/multi-point deployment. It comes equipped with high-gain 16 dBi directional antennas that emit a narrow signal beam to limit interference and ensure stable connectivity, high bandwidth, and speeds of up to 1200Mbps for up to 5 miles.  

Key Features and Benefits: 

  • Wi-Fi 6 technology for high-performance and efficient Wi-Fi in outdoor environments  
  • Beamforming optimizes antenna signal, reception, and reliability for clients 
  • 2×2 directional antennas to support up to 1,200 Mbps in 5 GHz 
  • High transmit power extends Wi-Fi to yard or building-to-building 
  • High gain integrated directional antenna extends wireless networks up to 5 miles point-to-point
  • IP55-rated weatherproof & dustproof housing 
  • Simple, intuitive interface via EnWiFi app for local AP configuring & monitoring 
  • Flexible operation modes: access point, WDS access point, WDS station 
  • Remotely & centrally manage via EnGenius Private Cloud software 
  • Gigabit Ethernet PoE port supports flexible power options

The ENH500-AX is now shipping and available to order.

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Folio Photonics Expands Engineering Leadership Team And Scores A Patent

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd


Folio Photonics today announced the appointment of industry veteran Greg Kittilson as Vice President of Engineering. In this position, Kittilson will lead the engineering team in developing and delivering the first-ever enterprise-scale, immutable active archive solution, that provides breakthrough cost, margin, and sustainability benefits to the market. He will act directly under the CEO, Steve Santamaria, and work across functional teams to further the product development process.

A seasoned product development leader, Kittilson brings a wealth of experience and demonstrated accomplishments throughout his long career in the computer hardware industry, having led functional areas of servo development, electrical engineering and software engineering.

Prior to Folio Photonics, Kittilson worked many years at Seagate Technology, initially as drive core team leader, where he and his team delivered the first 2.5″ gaming drive for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the first automotive drive and the first hybrid drive (named one of the 25 most innovative products of 2008 by PC World). He went on to serve as Seagate’s Senior Director for CORTX Object Storage Data Path development and, most recently, as PMO Director for Lyve Cloud Engineering.

Before Seagate, Kittilson held leadership positions in product development and engineering with Dot Hill Systems, where he led a team that defined and delivered the next-generation storage architecture centered on a RAID Companion Processor ASIC for entry-level storage arrays.

Kittilson holds a BS in Engineering from St. Cloud State University and an MBA and Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University. He also owns a United States Patent for a “Disk drive employing method of writing a data block to a data sector following a defective servo sector.”

Folio Photonics Secures Patent for Advancements in Multi-layer Optical Disc Storage

In a related announcement, Folio Photonics also unveiled today another great leap forward in the development of the first-ever enterprise-scale, immutable active archive solution. Folio has been awarded a United States Patent for “Systems and Methods for Increasing Data Rate and Storage Density in Multi-layer Optical Discs.”

The patent abstract states: “Systems and methods, e.g., optical apparatuses, for digital optical information storage systems that improve the speed, signal to noise, controllability, and data storage density for fluorescent and reflective multi-layer optical data storage media. The systems and methods include an optical system for a reading beam of a data channel from a moving single or multi-layer or otherwise 3-dimensional optical information storage medium that comprises at least one optical element characterized by restricting the field of view (FOV) of the reading beam on an associated image plane to 0.3 to 2 Airy disk diameters in a first direction.”

In lay terms, the novel inventions protected under this patent will deliver numerous benefits, including improved performance and ease of management of Folio Photonics’ multi-layer optical disc storage technology. In addition, newly enhanced signal strength relative to background noise will lead to higher throughput, lower latency and increased performance. And, allow the storage capacity potential of a Folio Photonics disc to dramatically increase.

The innovations, which build on the Folio Photonics archive solution’s breakthrough cost, security and sustainability benefits, were invented by Folio Photonics’ Founder, Kenneth D. Singer, Ph.D. and COO/CTO, Irina Shiyanovskaya, Ph.D., together with Asher Sussman, and Thomas Milster, Professor of Optical Sciences and Young Sik Kim, Assistant Research Professor of Optical Sciences, both of whom are from the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

To learn more about Folio Photonics, visit: https://foliophotonics.com/.

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Torq Introduces Parallel Loop

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

Torq – an Insight Partners backed no-code cybersecurity automation startup that operates across Israel and the US—has unveiled a new capability which will exponentially increase security operations professionals’ ability to easily process bulk data from security tools and shorten workflow automation completion time by 10x or more. This is called Torq Parallel Loop.

This will benefit companies by:

  • Reducing risk of security incidents to improve an organization’s overall security posture.
  • Improving efficiency to reduce the time it takes to complete a process by allowing multiple tasks to be performed concurrently
  • Increasing scalability to keep up with demanding workloads and enhanced flexibility for organizations to fine-tune security processes to meet their unique needs

Here’s a video that describes Parallel Loop in action:

The announcement can be found here.

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Less Than 0.2% Of Twitter Users Subscribe To Twitter Blue

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 7, 2023 by itnerd

A number of readers overnight pointed me to a paywalled story that was posted by The Information which illustrates that Elon Musk may be failing miserably at getting people to sign up for Twitter Blue:

So let’s assume that this is true, and I’ll get back to whether it is or is not in a moment. Elon by his own admission said that half of Twitter’s revenue had to come from subscriptions for Twitter to make money. This is nowhere close to that, and highlights that Elon is in very deep trouble here. Because of this, I honestly don’t see a scenario where this improves to the level where Twitter’s finances hit the “breakeven” point that he spoke of yesterday. I also honestly don’t see how he’s going to convince companies to pay for their gold verification checkmark if he can’t convince the public to pay for their blue ones. I personally think that the core issue is that there is no value in paying $8 to $11 a month for a blue checkmark because there’s no added value other than the perceived “flex” of having a blue checkmark next to your Twitter handle. Which to be frank only validates that you pay Elon money and nothing else. Thus I have to conclude that the combination of that plus all that surrounds Elon from a negative perspective is making this Twitter Blue thing a #fail.

As for if this is true or not, I have no doubt that it is true because The Information in the past has been very, very accurate when they break stories. And they wouldn’t go to press with this if they didn’t have every fact lined up and perfect. I am sure that Elon will protest this report and call it false. But unless he opens his books for all to see, his protesting of this report is meaningless. And he will have a new problem on his hands as a result. Which is that Twitter under Elon’s leadership is failing, and now everybody knows it. How will his fragile ego handle that?

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