Proper equipment is essential in the healthcare industry so medical professionals can do their jobs and patients can receive high-quality care and services. Over time, however, equipment receives too much wear and needs replacement. Ultrasound machines are no exception. Here are some signs that it’s time to replace your ultrasound machine.
Newer, more advanced ultrasound machines typically function at higher levels with faster speeds and clearer imaging. On average, ultrasound machines last for about five to seven years. If your machine is older than seven years, it’s probably best to find a modern replacement.
Hot to the Touch
Another sign that you need to replace your ultrasound machine is if you notice it’s hot to the touch. If the system overheats, it can cause serious problems and damage to other parts of the machine.
Dirty filters and fans can be the cause of an ultrasound machine overheating. Sometimes, you can easily correct this problem by replacing a filter or fan. However, if the problem persists after a filter or fan replacement, this can suggest a deeper issue with your machine. In that case, you will want to replace the entire system.
Recurring Problems
Recurring problems are also clear signs that your ultrasound machine needs a replacement. If you find that you are consistently dealing with issues and malfunctions with your system, even after you repair parts, your machine is likely in need of a complete replacement.
You want to avoid spending too much money on replacing parts in a machine that is failing. It will be more cost-effective to replace your entire machine. The sooner you replace your ultrasound machine, the sooner you will be able to avoid these continual issues and continue providing high-quality care to patients.
Be sure to stay on the lookout for these signs that you should replace your ultrasound machine. Replacing an ultrasound machine is absolutely essential in the healthcare industry so you can continue to provide top-of-the-line care and services.
Cloud is all, correct? Just as all roads lead to Rome, so all information technology journeys inevitably result in everything being, in some shape or form, “in the cloud.” So we are informed, at least: this journey started back in the mid 2000s, as application service providers (ASPs) gave way to various as-a-service offerings, and Amazon launched its game-changing Elastic Compute Cloud service, EC2.
A decade and a half later, and we’re still on the road – nonetheless, the belief system that we’re en-route to some technologically superior nirvana pervades. Perhaps we will arrive one day at that mythical place where everything just works at ultra scale, and we can all get on with our digitally enabled existences. Perhaps not. We can have that debate, and in parallel, we need to take a cold, hard look at ourselves and our technology strategies.
This aspirational-yet-vague approach to technological transformation is not doing enterprises (large or small) any favors. To put it simply, our dreams are proving expensive. First, let’s consider what is a writ (in large letters) in front of our eyes.
Cloud costs are out of control
For sure, it is possible to spin up a server with a handful of virtual coppers, but this is part of the problem. “Cloud cost complexity is real,” wrote Paula Rooney for CIO.com earlier this year, in five words summarising the challenges with cloud cost management strategies – that it’s too easy to do more and more with the cloud, creating costs without necessarily realizing the benefits.
We know from our FinOps research the breadth of cost management tools and services arriving on the scene to deal with this rapidly emerging challenge to manage cloud cost.
(As an aside, we are informed by vendors, analysts, and pundits alike that the size of the cloud market is growing – but given the runaway train that cloud economics has become, perhaps it shouldn’t be. One to ponder.)
Procurement models for many cloud computing services, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, are still often based around pay-per-use, which isn’t necessarily compatible with many organizations’ budgeting mechanisms. These models can be attractive for short-term needs but are inevitably more expensive for the longer term. I could caveat this with “unless accompanied by stringent cost control mechanisms,” but evidence across the past 15 years makes this point moot.
One option is to move systems back in-house. As per a discussion I was having with CTO Andi Mann on LinkedIn, this is nothing new; what’s weird is that the journey to the cloud is always presented as one-way, with such events as the exception. Which brings us to a second point that we are still wed to the notion that the cloud is a virtual place to which we shall arrive at some point.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Instead, technology options will continue to burst forth, new ways of doing things requiring new architectures and approaches. Right now, we’re talking about multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models. But, let’s face it, the world isn’t “moving to multi-cloud” or hybrid cloud: instead, these are consequences of reality.
“Multi-cloud architecture” does not exist in a coherent form; rather, organizations find themselves having taken up cloud services from multiple providers—Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and so on—and are living with the consequences.
Similarly, what can we say about hybrid cloud? The term has been applied to either cloud services needing to integrate with legacy applications and data stores; or the use of public cloud services together with on-premise, ‘private’ versions of the same. In either case, it’s a fudge and an expensive one at that.
Why expensive? Because we are, once again, fooling ourselves that the different pieces will “just work” together. At the risk of another spoiler alert, you only have to look at the surge in demand for glue services such as integration platforms as a service (iPaaS). These are not cheap, particularly when used at scale.
Meanwhile, we are still faced with that age-old folly that whatever we are doing now might in some way replace what has gone before. I have had this conversation so many times over the decades that the task is to build something new, then migrate and decommission older systems and applications. I wouldn’t want to put a number on it, but my rule of thumb is that it happens less often than it doesn’t. More to manage, not less, and more to integrate and interface.
Enterprise reality is a long way from cloud nirvana
The reality is, despite cloud spend starting to grow beyond traditional IT spend (see above on maybe it shouldn’t, but anyway), cloud services will live alongside existing IT systems for the foreseeable future, further adding to the hybrid mash.
As I wrote back in 2009, “…choosing cloud services [is] no different from choosing any other kind of service. As a result, you will inevitably continue to have some systems running in-house… the result is inevitably going to be a hybrid architecture, in which new mixes with old, and internal with external.”
It’s still true, with the additional factor of the law of diminishing returns. The hyperscalers have monetized what they can easily, amounting to billions of dollars in terms of IT real estate. But the rest isn’t going to be so simple.
As cloud providers look to harvest more internal applications and run them on their own servers, they move from easier wins to the more challenging territory. The fact that, as of 2022, AWS has a worldwide director of mainframe sales is a significant indicator of where the buck stops, but mainframes are not going to give up their data and applications that easily.
And why should they if the costs of migration increase beyond the benefits of doing so, particularly if other options exist to innovate? One example is captured by the potentially oxymoronic phrase ‘Mainframe DevOps’. For finance organizations, being able to run a CI/CD pipeline within a VM inside a mainframe opens the door to real-time anti-fraud analytics. That sounds like innovation to me.
Adding to all this is the new wave of “Edge”. Local devices, from mobile phones to video cameras and radiology machines, are increasingly intelligent and able to process data. See above on technology options bursting forth, requiring new architectures: cloud providers and telcos are still tussling with how this will look, even as they watch it happen in front of their eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots to like about the cloud. But it isn’t the ring to rule them all. Cloud is part of the answer, not the whole answer. But seeing cloud – or cloud-plus – as the core is having a skewing effect on the way we think about it.
The fundamentals of hosted service provision
There are three truths in technology – first, it’s about the abstraction of physical resources; second, it’s about right-sizing the figurative architecture; and third, that it’s about a dynamic market of provisioning. The rest is supply chain management and outsourcing, plus marketing and sales.
The hyperscalers know this, and have done a great job of convincing everyone that the singular vision of cloud is the only show in town. At one point, they were even saying that it was cheaper: AWS’ CEO, in 2015, Andy Jassy, said*: “AWS has such large scale, that we pass on to our customers in the form of lower prices.”
By 2018, AWS was stating, “We never said it was about saving money.” – read into that what you will, but note that many factors are outside the control even of AWS.
“Lower prices” may be true for small hits of variable spending, but it certainly isn’t for major systems or large-scale innovation. Recognizing that pay-per-use couldn’t fly for enterprise spending, AWS, GCP, and Azure have introduced (varyingly named) notions of reserved instances—in which virtual servers can be paid for in advance over a one- or three-year term.
In major part, they’re a recognition that corporate accounting models can’t cope with cloud financing models; also in major part, they’re a rejection of the elasticity principle upon which it was originally sold.
My point is not to rub any provider’s nose in its historical marketing but to return to my opener – that we’re still buying into the notional vision, even as it continues to fragment, and by doing so, the prevarication is costing end-user enterprises money. Certain aspects, painted as different or cheaper, are nothing of the sort – they’re just managed by someone else, and the costs are dictated by what organizations do with what is provided, not its list price.
Shifting the focus from cloud-centricity
So, what to do? We need a view that reflects current reality, not historical rhetoric or a nirvanic future. The present and forward vision of massively distributed, highly abstracted and multi-sourced infrastructure is not what vendor marketing says it is. If you want proof, show me a single picture from a hyperscaler that shows the provider living within some multi-cloud ecosystem.
So, it’s up to us to define it for them. If enterprises can’t do this, they will constantly be pulled off track by those whose answers suit their own goals.
So, what does it look like? In the major part, we already have the answer – a multi-hosted, highly fragmented architecture is, and will remain the norm, even for firms that major on a single cloud provider. But there isn’t currently an easy way to describe it.
I hate to say it, but we’re going to need a new term. I know, I know, industry analysts and their terms, eh? But when Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White, it meant something. Labels matter. The current terminology is wrong and driving this skewing effect.
Having played with various ideas, I’m currently majoring in multi-platform architecture – it’s not perfect, I’m happy to change it, but it makes the point.
A journey towards a more optimized, orchestrated multi-platform architecture is a thousand times more achievable and valuable than some figurative journey to the cloud. It embraces and encompasses migration and modernization, core and edge, hybrid and multi-hosting, orchestration and management, security and governance, cost control, and innovation.
But it does so seeing the architecture holistically, rather than (say) seeing cloud security as somehow separate to non-cloud security or cloud cost management any different to outsourcing cost optimization.
Of course, we may build things in a cloud-native manner (with containers, Kubernetes and the like), but we can do so without seeing resulting applications as (say, again) needing to run on a hyperscaler, rather than a mainframe. In the multi-platform architecture, all elements being first class citizens even if some are older than others.
That embraces the breadth of the problem space and isn’t skewed towards an “everything will ultimately be cloud,” nor a “cloud is good, the rest is bad,” nor a “cloud is the norm, edge is the exception” line. It also puts paid to any idea of the distorted size of the cloud market. Cloud economics should not exist as a philosophy, or at the very least, it should be one element of FinOps.
There’s still a huge place for the hyperscalers, whose businesses run on three axes – functionality, engineering, and the aforementioned cost. AWS has always sought to out-function the competition, famous for the number of announcements it would make at re:Invent each year (and this year’s data-driven announcements are no exception). Engineering is another definitive metric of strength for a cloud provider, wrapping scalability, performance and robustness into the thought of: is it built right?
And finally, we have the aforementioned cost. There’s also a place for spending on cloud providers, but cost management should be part of the Enterprise IT strategy, not locking the stable door after the rather expensive and hungry stallion has bolted.
Putting multi-platform IT strategy into the driving seat
Which brings to the conclusion – that such a strategy should be built on the notion of a multi-platform architecture, not a figurative cloud. With the former, technology becomes a means to an end, with the business in control. With the latter, organizations are essentially handing the keys to their digital kingdoms to a third party (and help yourself to the contents of the fridge while you are there).
If “every company is a software company,” they need to recognize that software decisions can only be made with a firm grip on infrastructure. This boils down to the most fundamental rule of business – which is to add value to stakeholders. Entire volumes have been written about how leaders need to decide where this value is coming from and dispense with the rest (cf Nike and manufacturing vs branding, and so on and so on).
But this model only works if “the rest” can be delivered cost-effectively. Enterprises do not have a tight grip on their infrastructure providers, a fact that hyperscalers are content to leverage and will continue to do so as long as end-user businesses let them.
Ultimately, I don’t care what term is adopted. But we need to be able to draw a coherent picture that is centred on enterprise needs, not cloud provider capabilities, and it’ll really help everybody if we all agree on what it’s called. To stick with current philosophies is helping one set of organizations alone. However, many times, they reel out Blockbuster or Kodak as worst-case examples (see also: we’re all still reading books).
Perhaps, we are in the middle of a revolution in service provision. But don’t believe for a minute that providers only offering one part of the answer have either the will or ability to see beyond their own solutions or profit margins. That’s the nature of competition, which is fine. But it means that enterprises need to be more savvy about the models they’re moving towards, as cloud providers aren’t going to do it for them.
To finish on one other analyst trick, yes, we need a paradigm shift. But one which maps onto how things are and will be, with end-user organizations in the driving seat. Otherwise, their destinies will be dictated by others, even as enterprises pick up the check.
*The full quote, from Jassy’s 2015 keynote, is: “There’s 6 reasons that we usually tell people, that we hear most frequently. The first is, if you can turn capital expense to a variable expense, it’s usually very attractive to companies. And then, that variable expense is less than what companies pay on their own – AWS has such large scale, that we pass on to our customers in the form of lower prices.”
NASA completed a significant step Sunday toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface with the successful completion of a test mission that sent a capsule designed for human spaceflight to orbit the moon and return safely to Earth.
The Orion spacecraft, which had no astronauts on board, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the Baja California peninsula of Mexico under a trio of billowing parachutes at 12:40 p.m. Eastern time.
Orion’s homecoming came 50 years to the day after the Apollo 17 spacecraft landing on the lunar surface in 1972 at the Taurus-Littrow valley, the last human mission to the moon. And it heralded, the space agency said, a series of upcoming missions that are to be piloted by a new generation of NASA astronauts as part of the Artemis program.
The flight was delayed repeatedly by technical problems with the massive Space Launch System rocket and the spacecraft. But the 26-day, 1.4 million-mile mission went “exceedingly well,” NASA officials said, from the launch on Nov. 16 to flybys that brought Orion within about 80 miles of the lunar surface and directly over the Apollo 11 landing siteat Tranquility Base.
“From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA’s journey to the moon comes to a close. Orion, back on Earth,” NASA’s Rob Navias said during the agency’s live broadcast of the event.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it was “historic because we are now going back to space, to deep space, with a new generation.” The successful mission augurs a new era, he added, “one that marks new technology, a whole new breed of astronauts, and a vision of the future.”
“This is what mission success looks like, folks,” Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis I mission manager, said at an afternoon news conference. “This was a challenging mission. … We now have a foundational deep space transportation system. And while we haven’t looked at all the data that we’ve acquired, we will do that over the coming days and weeks.”
Now that the spacecraft is safely home, NASA will immediately begin to assess the data gathered on the flight and prepare for the Artemis II mission — which would put a crew of astronauts on the spacecraft for another trip in orbit around the moon. NASA hopes that mission would come as early as 2024, with a lunar landing to come as early as 2025 or 2026. That would be the first time people walk on the moon since the last of the Apollo missions.
NASA has yet to name the crews assigned to those flights — that would come in early 2023, said Vanessa Wyche, the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. But its astronaut corps has already shifted its training to focus on Orion and lunar flights, after spending decades focusing solely on missions to the International Space Station.
One of the most significant tests for the Orion spacecraft came Sunday morning when it hit Earth’s atmosphere traveling at nearly 25,000 mph, 32 times the speed of sound. The friction generated extreme temperatures — 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — that stressed the capsule’s heat shield. A series of parachutes then deployed, delivering the spacecraft to the ocean at under 20 mph, where a Navy recovery ship, the USS Portland, and several small boats and helicopters were waiting to greet it.
Nelson said the heat shield performed “beautifully,” and Navias said the landing was “textbook.”
The successful mission gives NASA some momentum after years of stagnation in its human spaceflight program. After it retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA was forced to rely on Russia to send its astronauts to the space station. SpaceX finally started human spaceflight missions for NASA in 2020, and Boeing, the other company contracted for flights to the ISS, hopes to send its first crew there next year.
But now, for the first time in decades, NASA has another destination for its astronauts — the moon — and a program, Artemis, that has survived subsequent presidential administrations, to get them there.
The program, which vows to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, was born under the Trump administration and carried on by the Biden White House. That continuity stands in stark contrast to decades of presidential administrations pointing NASA’s human space exploration directorate to different goals in the solar system, from the moon, to Mars, an asteroid, and back to the moon again.
The question now is: Can NASA maintain the program’s momentum and keep Congress funding it? Support for spaceflight programs can be fickle — even the Apollo missions quickly began to lose support from Congress and the public’s interest. And while NASA might be celebrating the Artemis I as a triumph today, that enthusiasm could easily fade by the time Artemis II is ready to fly in 2024.
In the post-flight news conference, Nelson, a former U.S. senator from Florida, said he is confident the excitement would continue to build with the public, particularly as NASA names the crew for the next mission. Congress is also invested in the program, he said. “I am not worried about the support from the Congress,” he said. “That support is enduring.”
While that remains to be seen, NASA was celebrating the first step toward returning astronauts to the moon and fulfilling the pledge of Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, who vowed, as he departed the moon for Earth, “We shall return.”
Robert Cabana, NASA’s associate administrator and a former astronaut, said that he wished Cernan “were alive and could have seen this mission. It would have meant a lot to him.”
Later, when Austin and his team analyzed snapshots of the recordings, they noticed differences in the brain during active and quiet sleep. During active sleep, when the babies were more fidgety, brain regions in the left and right hemispheres seemed to fire at the same time, in the same way. This hints that new, long connections are forming all the way across the brain, says Austin. During quiet sleep, it looks as though more short connections are forming within brain regions.
It’s not clear why this might be happening, but Austin has a theory. He thinks that active sleep is more important for preparing the brain to build a conscious experience more broadly—to recognize someone else as a person rather than a series of blobs and patches of color and texture, for example. Various brain regions need to work together to achieve this.
The shorter connections being made during quiet sleep are probably fine-tuning how individual brain regions work, says Austin: “In active sleep, you’re building up a picture, and in quiet sleep [you’re] refining things.”
The more we know about how healthy newborn brains work, the better placed we are to help babies who are born prematurely, or who experience brain damage early in their lives. Austin also hopes to learn more about what each phase of sleep might be doing for the brain. Once we have a better understanding of what the brain is doing, we might be able to work out when it is safest to wake the baby for feeding, for example.
Austin envisages some kind of traffic light system that could be placed close to a sleeping baby. A green light might signal that the baby is in an intermediate sleep state and can be awakened. A red light, on the other hand, might indicate that it’s best to let the baby stay asleep because the brain is in the middle of some important process.
I’ve tried to do something similar with my own kids. A cloud-shaped toy in their room turns green and plays a song when it’s safe to wake Mummy. The cloud is ignored. Unfortunately, once their brains are ready for wakefulness, they don’t seem to mind that mine isn’t.
Read more from Tech Review’s archive:
“This kid is squealing like crazy. The mom is nervous. The whole thing is stressful.” Rachel Fritts explores just how tricky it is to study babies’ brains in fMRI scanners in this piece from last year.
A fetus can start to hear muffled sounds from 20 weeks’ gestation. The poor quality of these sounds might be essential for early brain development, writes Anne Trafton.
Enlarge/ This is John. He doesn’t exist. But AI can easily put a photo of him in any situation we want. And the same process can apply to real people with just a few real photos pulled from social media.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica
If you’re one of the billions of people who have posted pictures of themselves on social media over the past decade, it may be time to rethink that behavior. New AI image-generation technology allows anyone to save a handful of photos (or video frames) of you, then train AI to create realistic fake photos that show you doing embarrassing or illegal things. Not everyone may be at risk, but everyone should know about it.
Photographs have always been subject to falsifications—first in darkrooms with scissors and paste and then via Adobe Photoshop through pixels. But it took a great deal of skill to pull off convincingly. Today, creating convincing photorealistic fakes has become almost trivial.
Once an AI model learns how to render someone, their image becomes a software plaything. The AI can create images of them in infinite quantities. And the AI model can be shared, allowing other people to create images of that person as well.
John: A social media case study
When we started writing this article, we asked a brave volunteer if we could use their social media images to attempt to train an AI model to create fakes. They agreed, but the results were too convincing, and the reputational risk proved too great. So instead, we used AI to create a set of seven simulated social media photos of a fictitious person we’ll call “John.” That way, we can safely show you the results. For now, let’s pretend John is a real guy. The outcome is exactly the same, as you’ll see below.
In our pretend scenario, “John” is an elementary school teacher. Like many of us, over the past 12 years, John has posted photos of himself on Facebook at his job, relaxing at home, or while going places.
Enlarge/ These inoffensive, social-media-style images of “John” were used as the training data that our AI used to put him in more compromising positions.
Ars Technica
Using nothing but those seven images, someone could train AI to generate images that make it seem like John has a secret life. For example, he might like to take nude selfies in his classroom. At night, John might go to bars dressed like a clown. On weekends, he could be part of an extremist paramilitary group. And maybe he served prison time for an illegal drug charge but has hidden that from his employer.
At night, “John” dresses like a clown and goes to bars.
Ars Technica
“John” beside a nude woman in an office. He is married, and that’s not his wife.
Ars Technica
“John” spends time on weekends training as part of a paramilitary group.
Ars Technica
John relaxing shirtless in his classroom after school.
Ars Technica
John served time in prison for drug charges just a few years ago and never told the school system.
Ars Technica
John in a great deal of pain, or perhaps doing something else. We’ve cropped out the operative parts.
Ars Technica
We used an AI image generator called Stable Diffusion (version 1.5) and a technique called Dreambooth to teach AI how to create images of John in any style. While our John is not real, someone could reproduce similar results with five or more images of any person. They could be pulled from a social media account or even taken as still frames from a video.
IKEA and Sonos collaborated three years ago to build a table lamp with an embedded speaker. Embedding a Wi-Fi speaker inside a lamp isn’t as nutty a proposition as it might sound—we were quite pleased with the result. Now, the two companies have collaborated to build the Symfonisk floor lamp speaker.
The new device looks very similar to the second-generation Symfonisk table lamp speaker, but this one is mounted to a tripod-style stand with a circular weighted base. It comes with a bamboo lamp shade, but you can personalize it with glass or textile alternatives that start at $39 each.
As with all the other speakers in the Symfonisk line, this one can be incorporated into a Sonos multi-room speaker system alongside other Sonos or Symfonisk speakers and controlled with the Sonos app. Buyers will also be able to control the speaker using IKEA’s Dirigera smart home hub. While Symfonisk speakers are not full-fledged smart speakers, they can be controlled with Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant.
As with any Sonos speaker, the new IKEA Symfonisk floor lamp speaker can be controlled at the device itself or via Wi-Fi connectivity.
IKEA
Sonos compatibility also includes Sonos’ Trueplay speaker-tuning software (although that depends on your having an iOS device) and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol. And Sonos speakers are unparalleled in their support for subscription music services, ranging from Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Spotify, to Qobuz and Tidal. Sonos Radio (free) and Sonos Radio HD (paid, but higher resolution and commercial-free) are also excellent.
Any Symfonisk speaker can be paired with a Sonos subwoofer for bass reinforcement, and a pair of them can be used with a Sonos soundbar for home-theater surround sound. Incorporating speakers into floor lamps is a very smart idea, since it not only eliminates the need to have a pair of tables on which to set surround speakers, it’s an improvement over hanging speakers on the walls with unsightly power cords dangling from them.
IKEA says its new Symfonisk floor lamp speaker will be available to purchase in January, 2023 for $259.99, a $30 premium over the table lamp version.
Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, rejoice: around 100,000 RPi Zero W, 3A+, and 2GB/4GB RPi 4s are being distributed to resellers for holiday season consumer sales.
Commercial and industrial customers, on the other hand, are being warned that substantial backlogs remain, and likely will through 2023.
“Happy Christmas,” Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said in a blog post announcing the trove of Pi devices, which are being released “as a thank-you to our army of very patient enthusiast customers in the run-up to the holiday season.”
The mini-computer maker’s advice from earlier in the year still applies: only buy from authorized resellers to prevent shortages, and use rpilocator to get a near real-time look at where devices are in stock.
It’s also worth considering whether an RPi Pico or Pico W would be a good fit for your project, Upton said, because stock is plentiful.
The Pi-demic is abating
Upton said he’s confident supplies will recover to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2023, and by the second half of the year will be “unlimited.”
Still, the RPi company “will continue to actively manage our commercial and industrial customers through 2023,” Upton said. He told us that will entail speaking to OEMs and determining the minimum demand they need to stay in production.
Companies would “receive the units they need,” Upton said, while noting steps were being taken to prevent “inventory building behavior which would otherwise prolong the shortage.”
Part of the reason for the continued commercial shortage is likely stemming from a drive to increase single-unit sales, which Upton said would be a priority in 2023. “The goal is to keep going through these last few months of shortage, and to turn up the supply to individual customers as soon as possible,” Upton told The Register in an email.
By the end of the third quarter 2023, Upton said the company’s entire supply channel (commercial and consumer alike) will have recovered to its equilibrium stock level, beginning with Zero and Zero W, followed by RPi 3A+ and finally RPi 4.
Upton told us that means backlogs from RPi to resellers will be caught up, and neither commercial volume orders or individual purchases will be limited.
Unfortunately, the pandemic and its supply chain disruptions will leave a mark on the Raspberry Pi world in the form of slightly higher prices, Upton said.
“We’ve generally absorbed these cost increases ourselves, holding the prices of our products constant,” Upton said, but the company simply can’t do so on Pi Zero units anymore.
Everything that goes into an RPi, regardless of size, has increased, Upton said, and at new manufacturing price points the Pi Zero is “no longer commercially viable,” causing the company to double the cost of the original Pi Zero, from $5 to $10 (£4.07 to £8.15), and the Pi Zero W will get an additional 50 percent tacked onto its price, bringing it from $10 to $15 (£12.22).
However, once Zeros reach volume availability next year, purchase restrictions will be lifted, Upton said. ®
A startling new discovery was designed totally by incident that could quite possibly adjust everything that we know about black holes, physics and place. Scientists, for the 1st time, have observed a black gap, regurgitating or spewing out components of a star that it had earlier devoured.
In 2018, astronomers noticed the vibrant flare of a star becoming shredded by a black hole identified as the AT2018hyz. The AT2018hyz is a black hole that is about 20 million situations more substantial than our Solar and is 665 million lightyears away. Just about a few yrs later, the black gap showed substantial signs of action, in which it spewed out unknown products again into room, almost as if it was burping out the remnants of the star that it had devoured.
The observation was initial released in The Astrophysical Journal. Yvette Cendes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, one of the co-authors of the paper which noted the phenomenon. “This caught us entirely by surprise—no 1 has at any time observed anything at all like this ahead of,” explained Cendes in an interview.
The way a black gap consumes a star is that it shreds the star with its impressive gravitational forces. This is referred to as a TDE or tidal disruption party.
It is a well-known misunderstanding that black holes behave like cosmic vacuum cleaners, ravenously sucking up any make a difference in their environment. In actuality, only things that passes past the party horizon, together with gentle, is swallowed up and just cannot escape, even though black holes are also messy eaters. That signifies that part of an object’s subject is truly ejected out in a strong jet.
In a TDE component of the star’s original mass is ejected violently outward. This, in change, can type a rotating ring of make a difference (aka an accretion disk) about the black hole that emits potent X-rays and noticeable light-weight. The jets are one way astronomers can indirectly infer the presence of a black hole. People outflow emissions commonly take place soon after the TDE.
When AT2018hyz was very first found out, radio telescopes didn’t decide up any signatures of an outflow emission of product in the very first handful of months. In accordance to Cendes, that’s genuine of some 80 per cent of TDEs, so astronomers moved on, preferring to use treasured telescope time for additional most likely interesting objects. But very last June, Cendes and her group decided to check out again in on numerous TDEs around the last couple several years that hadn’t revealed any emission earlier, employing radio facts from the Quite Large Array (VLA). This time, they observed that AT2018hyz was lights up the skies once more.
One particular important update as aspect of iOS 16 is the reimagined Lock screen and the array of options and variations that will come together with it. One of people features is the Depth Outcome. In essence, what it usually means is that section of the wallpaper on your lock monitor that covers the time will give you a 3D impact as if it is interacting with the clock on your mobile phone. This is accomplished by equipment understanding and it works fairly sound irrespective of what wallpaper you use.
See Also: How to Clear away Applications from Apple View?
In the beta model, I tested this function with far more than 10 visuals and it is effective actually nicely with about 8 of them. I’m yet to take a look at it in the steady launch that came out this thirty day period and I’m hoping that they have built important modifications to make sure it operates all the time. So, in this report, we will look into some of the iOS 16 alterations and also how to set time driving wallpaper applying the depth Outcome.
iOS Lockscreen Alterations
With iOS 16, Lockscreen has new options like a Customizable lock monitor, stay actions, small widgets and so considerably much more. Notifications also get a revamp with 3 distinctive viewing alternatives expanded listing, concealed perspective, and also the stacked watch. The Wallpaper gallery has been greatly redesigned to include things like a whole lot a lot more choices of themes, photographs, and a lot of much more.
See Also: How to Improve Training Goal on Apple Look at?
The Stay Actions brings in additional context to actions that are occurring in the track record without owning to open the app just about every one time like media player, navigation, buy shipping tracking, and so on.,
How to Place Time Behind Wallpaper in iOS 16?
Let us see how to do this on your Iphone. As this title implies, you require the iOS 16 on your Iphone to use this attribute the place you can put time guiding wallpaper. Assuming you have now completed this part, let us see how you can do that on your Apple iphone. Abide by the actions one particular by one particular and it should not be challenging to adhere to.
See Also: How to use Dynamic Island on Android?
Press and Hold above the lock screen the place you want to set the time powering the wallpaper and wait till you see the display searching like the one particular under. The moment you are there, faucet on the Customize button at the base so that you can begin enhancing it.
After you are in the Customise manner, you will locate the choices menu at the base as you can see. Tap on that.
In the Selections menu, there will be only one particular feature named Depth Effect. Pick out that possibility.
When you select the Depth effect selection, you will see the time part of the widget instantly place powering the layer of the wallpaper. If you are happy with the way it appears to be like faucet on the Carried out button at the major correct corner of the display.
Then you will be prompted as to whether or not you want to set the solution of placing time behind the impression for both of those the lock display screen and also the property monitor. Make the decision and it will be used accordingly.
The remaining graphic looks like this and it applies not for all the visuals and will glimpse great for visuals with that layer.
See Also: How to use Dynamic Island on Android?
So, that’s how you can place time powering wallpaper on your Apple iphone. There is no restrict as to how a lot of instances you can really do this and the feature is exclusive to individual lock screens in scenario you do not want this on a various lock display screen you can opt for to do so.
This is unquestionably a function that does not increase a ton of price to your efficiency or anything at all but it’s a function that you can use if you sense like it’s a thing. Most men and women won’t even trouble to discover this attribute if it hasn’t been enabled by default. At greatest, this is just a 3d-on the lookout function and absolutely nothing much more than that.
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To be truthful, I never feel it is a fantastic function to be psyched about. Also, this characteristic is not going to get any updates either. What do you guys feel? Do permit us know in the feedback down below.
SINGAPORE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Azentio Software (“Azentio”), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that Bank of Abyssinia (“BoA”) has successfully gone live with iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem in less than four months, to support the growth of its Islamic window operations.
Azentio’s Shariah-compliant profit calculation and distribution system makes profit distribution highly efficient. With the company’s AAOIFI-certified Islamic banking suite, BoA will be able to compete with both, Islamic banks and conventional banking methods of interest payouts, in rates and customer satisfaction, reducing time-to-market for new products and distribution of profits. All profit rate adjustments are made within the confines of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence and handled automatically by the system.
Mohammed Kateeb, Global Head of Islamic Banking and President of Middle East & Africa at Azentio, commented, “We are proud to support BoA, one of the leading private banks in Ethiopia, to achieve the highest levels of transparency and complete automation to manage the restricted and unrestricted Islamic investments, compute and share profits as prescribed by the Shariah. iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem were integrated online with the bank’s existing core banking platform and are running smoothly as standalone applications. The approach we adopted during the implementation phase was an innovative deviation from the normal one, enabling BoA to save the costly process of migration iterations, frequent CIF and account updates maintenance.”
Abdulkadir Redwan, Director – Interest Free Banking at BoA, said, “Islamic banking has been growing rapidly in recent years in Ethiopia. Choosing the right technology partner was critical to stay nimble and move fast. We made a great choice in partnering with Azentio, because of their in-depth experience, system understanding, vast industry expertise and the team professionalism. This partnership will create an edge for our Islamic banking operations to operate in a more Shariah-compliant manner and comply with the National Bank of Ethiopia’s regulations.”
About Azentio Software Private Ltd
Azentio Software provides mission–critical, core and vertical-specific software products for clients in banking, financial and insurance services primarily across the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and India.
PRTG software for apple’s ios or Android. Save your time and check your own community while on the go!
Overview tracking information, look at the products and sensors, have wise via push announcements, and perform numerous factors!
To utilize the PRTG software, you will need to install PRTG first.
The way the PRTG applications services
The PRTG software hook up to PRTG machines making use of HTTPS or HTTP over VPN in cellular sites or WiFi/WLAN.
The PRTG programs offer straightforward Ping to check on server reachability without having to connect to a PRTG machine.
Create nearly whatever you may do during the PRTG online user interface: recognize sensors, pause and resume devices, set concerns and preferences, instantly browse their circle status, use the pass program, and edit item commentary.
Accessibility reports, send the research as PDFs via email, or print these with AirPrint.
Furthermore, QR signal checking makes it simple to straight head to a detector or even to include a user accounts for the PRTG applications.
Qualities
Become versatile
Use multiple consumer records and easily change between the two to straight away read keeping track of information various PRTG installments.
Log in to PRTG Hosted Monitor via single sign-on (SSO) and add individual profile along with supported personal logins inside the PRTG programs.
Determine your own code: the PRTG programs are available in English, German, and Dutch.
Check your community on your own wrist: PRTG for iOS supports the Apple see and PRTG for Android os helps various Android os smartwatches.
Obtain the facts
The PRTG programs hook up to your PRTG servers, to view your product tree, detector records, sensor information, maps, libraries, and many more. Also showcase object responses and recent logs.
The data show immediately adapts towards display dimensions, so you see as much facts as you can instantly.
Refresh a webpage by hauling an overseeing item downhill.
Feel informed
The PRTG applications can alert you of outages or breached restrictions.
The PRTG apps can send instant push announcements to your smart phone’s notice pub. Push notifications incorporate effortlessly in to the notification notion of PRTG and may feel designed into the PRTG web screen.
With force announcements, you have the power over just what triggers a notice and just how usually the PRTG programs should look for brand-new alarm systems.
Get widget announcements: the PRTG apps poll your PRTG servers for a fast standing search even if you couldn’t clearly beginning your own PRTG application.
Get notified more easily via drive notifications
This free of charge function of PRTG is readily developed and has an entire case of strengths: like an SMS, you may be right away notified whenever one thing pops up. Drive notifications in addition never strain your battery, because just limited the main PRTG software works whenever your program receives a push content.
To send drive notifications, just set up a corresponding notice trigger for your sensors.
For reveal manual on how best to created push notifications, understand Knowledge Base: how can the PRTG affect deliver drive notifications?
Tutorials
These quick training explain to you just how quickly you can handle their PRTG installations with this PRTG applications for iOS or Android os.
PRTG application get
Program criteria
Android version: you will need Android 4.0 or after (or a Kindle flames HD) to install PRTG for Android os. Homes screen widgets can be obtained as of Android 4.1. The QR signal scanner is certainly not available on Kindle Fire HD.
apple’s ios type: You will want iOS 9 or afterwards to install PRTG for apple’s ios.
PRTG machine: The PRTG server your connect with has to be reachable through the network your own product is linked to; either immediately or via a VPN connections. The PRTG server must work PRTG 13 or later on. If you want to configure force announcements, your own PRTG server must operated PRTG 14.4.13 or later on.
Notice: The PRTG applications for iOS or Android carry out at this time not help PRTG group configurations. Should you call for more detailed information or additional support, be sure to call [email safeguarded] .
FILE – This Aug. 26, 2015 photo shows an Apple iPhone with a cracked screen after a drop test from the DropBot, a robot used to measure the sustainability of a phone to dropping, at the offices of SquareTrade in San Francisco. As software and technology gets infused in more and more products, manufacturers are increasingly making those products difficult to repair, potentially costing business owners time and money. Makers of products ranging from smartphones to farm equipment can withhold repair tools and create software-based locks that prevent even simple updates, unless they’re done by a repair shop authorized by the company. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)
Ben Margot
AP
As software and other technologies get infused in more and more products, manufacturers are increasingly making those products difficult to repair, potentially costing business owners time and money.
Makers of products ranging from smartphones to farm equipment can withhold repair tools and create software-based locks that prevent even simple updates, unless they’re done by a repair shop authorized by the company.
That can cost independent repair shops valuable business and countless labor hours sourcing high quality parts from other vendors. Farmers can lose thousands waiting for authorized dealers to fix malfunctioning equipment. And consumers end up paying more for repairs — or replacing items altogether that could have been fixed.
“If we don’t address these problems, and let manufacturers dictate terms of what they allow for repairs, we really are in danger of losing access to the repair infrastructure that exists,” said Nathan Proctor, senior director for the Right to Repair campaign at U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group.
While it’s difficult to put a dollar sign on how much the restrictions cost small businesses, the U.S. PIRG estimates it costs consumers $40 billion a year. That averages out to $330 per U.S. family, who end up replacing broken phones, laptops, refrigerators, and other electronic instead of having them repaired.
Jessa Jones owns iPad Rehab in Honeoye Falls, New York, which specializes in microsoldering, which means repairing electronics on a microscopic level .
She recalls a potential customer who drove an hour and a half to her repair shop because his home button stopped working on his iPhone 7.
Jones says the iPhone had a tiny nick on the home button cable.
“I have a brand new iPhone home button, I could cure the problem if I was allowed,” she said.
What stymied Jones is Apple’s software that calibrates different parts of a phone like the screen and battery. While Jones herself is certified by Apple to fix phones, iPad Rehab isn’t an authorized Apple repair shop, so she couldn’t access the software or official part and repair the iPhone 7. Many independent repair shops opt not to get authorized because the terms can hamstring their business in other ways.
“Counterintuitively, Apple Authorization would force me to decline 90% of the jobs that we do or lose the authorization,” Jones says.
The customer left without a repair, and Jones missed out on a fee for what would have been an “easy fix.” IPad Rehab’s data recovery and repair services can cost anywhere from $35 to $600. She said in the past three years, her business has been forced to pivot from half repairs and half data recovery to 90% data recovery and only 10% repairs.
The Federal Trade Commission recently signaled things might be starting to change when it adopted a policy statement supporting the “right to repair” that pledges beefed-up enforcement of current antitrust and consumer protection laws and could open the way to new regulations .
For its part, Apple says its restrictions are in place for quality and safety concerns. They authorize technicians who pass a software and hardware exam annually. They also started an independent repair provider program in 2019 and say the latest iPhone 12 “allows for more repairs to be performed at more repair locations than ever before.”
While Apple has been the most publicly in the crosshairs about the right-to-repair issue, all smartphone makers have similar policies. The issue spans other industries too. Farmers and farm equipment repair technicians complain they can’t fix what should be fixable problems on tractors and combines due to the software installed by manufacturers.
Sarah Rachor is a fourth-generation farmer, who runs a farm with 600 acres in Eastern Montana with her father that grows sugar beets, wheat, soybeans and corn.
She has a tractor from 1998, mainly because it was before new technology was installed in farm equipment, along with an older 1987 combine for backup. The 1998 tractor has a manual with codes that she uses to manually reset it when something goes wrong. That’s not possible with newer machines, she said.
“Anything newer than that, I’d have to call certified repair places,” she said .
The wheat harvest lasts just a few weeks, and any breakdown that takes days to fix could be a disaster, she added.
“A weeklong break down can easily cost thousands of dollars, on top of the repairs needed,” she said. “If I know how to do something, I shouldn’t have to wait and call a technician for something simple, or even to diagnose the problem,” she said. “I love technology, but it is making simple things harder.”
John Deere says it “supports a customer’s right to safely maintain, diagnose and repair their equipment,” but “does not support the right to modify embedded software due to risks associated with the safe operation of the equipment, emissions compliance and engine performance.”
Justin Maus has owned RNH Equipment in Mount Hope, Kansas, since 2019. He repairs agricultural equipment like tractors and combines.
“We run into situations where a moisture meter on a combine needs to be replaced,” he said. “We can replace it in 20 minutes, but it will not operate. We have to have a dealer come out and put software on it to make it work.” The wait for the dealer can sometimes be a day or more.
During harvest time, when agricultural equipment like combines are running at full throttle for several weeks, it’s common for mechanical problems to arise. In June alone, the moisture meter problem came up three or four times with customers, Maus said.
One customer drove four hours to get a controller from a dealership. But he still had to wait another day for the dealer to have time in his schedule to install it.
The restrictions cost not only lost revenue, but growth opportunities, he said.
Without them, “not only would we be able to repair just about anything with the equipment we work on, making us more attractive to new and bigger customers, but we would also be more attractive to young new techs coming into the workforce,” he said.
Kyle Wiens, CEO and co-founder of electronics repair company iFixit, in San Luis Obispo, California, which sells repair parts for electronics and gadgets online to consumers and small businesses, says without regulators stepping in, the problem will just get worse.
He said the FTC’s involvement is a good start, but more is needed. In addition to the FTC, the “right to repair” movement is making progress with state legislation. There are right-to-repair bills of some form in 27 states, Wiens said.
“A policy is good, but we’re going to need a rule they enforce,” he said. “We want to get back to a fair playing field.”
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