Networking

Image: Sundry Photography/Shutterstock SpaceX and US mobile carrier T-Mobile have teased an announcement, to be shared today, that they claim will “increase connectivity”.  The two companies, along with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, announced the surprise event via their respective Twitter accounts. It will be held at 7:00pm CT today at SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport in Texas […] More

Sling TV has an a la carte approach to channels that separates it from its competitors. Sling TV offers two basic packages: Blue, with 43 channels for $35, and Orange, with 32 channels for $35. You can get them both as a package deal for $50, and you can add small packages of other channels, called Sling Extras, for small additional fees.For NFL fans this is a mixed blessing. I like it because it lets me get the channels I want, but it’s also a tad confusing. Some channels are available on both Sling Orange and Sling Blue. Orange is basically an ESPN/Disney package, while Blue offers a Fox/NBC package. Blue also includes The NFL Network. Your best deal, if you want a broad selection of channels, is to subscribe to the combo for $50.Sling TV’s Extra packages, besides such common offerings as Showtime channels, cost from $6 monthly. For pro ball fans, the $11 Sports Extra comes with 15 channels, including NFL RedZone. What you won’t get, though, is your local CBS affiliate. For that, Sling TV urges you to use an over-the-air antenna. Sling TV offers its own streaming device, the $99.99 AirTV 2 More

HyperTrack, which provides standard logistics application programming interfaces (APIs) for enterprise last-mile delivery and fulfillment operations, today released a new developer platform called BuilderX, which enables developers to create customized logistics technology for on-demand use cases.The Berkeley, Calif.-based company also announced it has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by WestBridge Capital and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners to support company growth and expand global engineering teams.Globally, analysts believe that the logistics market represents a whopping 12% of the world’s GDP. A huge trend in 2022 is the shift to on-demand fulfillment delivery logistics, with the gig workforce causing the automation technology required to skyrocket. In view of this trend, HyperTrack provides order planning, assignment, location tracking, and mapping infrastructure as simple APIs so product development teams can build functional last-mile logistics solutions in days with custom business logic and workflows. “Gig workers and the growing need for same-day delivery in the ‘here and now’ economy requires re-thinking of the logistics stack,” Kashyap Deorah, founder and CEO of HyperTrack, told ZDNet. “This funding will help fuel our mission in changing the way all industries deliver products and services.” What BuilderX doesAs the gig economy expands with increased demand for same-day deliveries, traditional logistics technologies can no longer accurately track the ground truth of order lifecycles, resulting in unsatisfied customers, inaccurate driver payments and delayed product development roadmaps, Deorah told ZDNet. “HyperTrack brings to market end-to-end order fulfillment APIs, giving developers the tools they need to quickly build solutions for scheduling as well as on-demand order planning, assignment, and tracking,” Deorah said. BuilderX includes software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) to plan, assign and track orders for last-mile logistics with custom business logic and workflows, Deorah said. Logistics tech builders no longer need to develop for months with a team of engineers to build out the consumer and driver apps for mobile, live location tracking, operations dashboard and cloud infrastructure, he said.  BuilderX enableshttps://hypertrack.com/self-improving-routeseach step of the order lifecycle, from order planning and assignment to the precise point of fulfillment. Capabilities include: Planning and assigning orders for efficient operations: Developers can build custom business logic and workflows for on-time delivery with higher capacity utilization and predictable per order cost.Tracking orders for on-time fulfillment: Includes live location tracking with driver and consumer apps and an operations dashboard for continuous real-time visibility.Learning and improving end-to-end order fulfillment lifecycle: Includes intelligence built on ground truth of logistics operations including addresses, service, and route times.Develop and deploy end-to-end order fulfillment lifecycle solution for last mile logistics in days without a team of mobile, maps, and cloud expertsBuilderX is available starting today on the HyperTrack website. More

With RDMA over Converged Ethernet, or RoCE, ethernet switching is ready to replace InfiniBand as an interconnect for GPUs, says ethernet switch chip vendor Broadcom. Broadcom 2022 For some time now, specialists in the area of computer networking have been talking about a second network. The usual network is the one that connects client computers […] More

Specs:Printer type: InkjetInk included: YesPaper sizes: 3.5″ x 5″, 4″ x 6″, 5″ x 7″, 8″ x 10″, 8.5″ x 11″, A4, B5, A5, A6, Legal, Half letter, Executive, User definable (3.5″ – 44″ in length)Connection type: Windows 10, Windows 8, 8.1 (32-bit, 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit); Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2012R2, 2016; Mac OS X 10.6.8 – macOS 10.13.xPrinter output: ColorAlso, an inkjet printer, the Epson Expression Home XP-4100, will work with your smartphone, PC, or laptop. With Wi-Fi compatibility, it is a compact wireless model that does not command too much space and boasts an affordable price tag at around $100. Appropriate for both the home and office, the color printer has a 100-page tray and offers the option for automatic two-sided printing. There is also voice-activated printing for even greater convenience. Print, copy and scan from your smartphone or tablet, or you can opt for Wi-Fi Direct connectivity. The instant-dry ink is affordable, too, further lowering your costs. Pros:Simple to operateDecent outputGood connectivityCons:You can only use Epson cartridgesNo ADF feature More

In her hit song, Cher sang, “If I could turn back time.” For her, that would be a good thing. But in the computing world, Meta, formerly Facebook, believes it would be a very bad thing indeed. In fact, Meta wants to get rid of leap seconds, which keep computing time in sync with Earth’s rotational time. Meta’s not the only one that feels that way. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), its French equivalent (the Bureau International de Poids et Mesures or BIPM), Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all want to put an end to leap seconds. 
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Why? As Meta explained in a blog post, “We bump into problems whenever a leap second is introduced. And because it’s such a rare event, it devastates the community every time it happens. With a growing demand for clock precision across all industries, the leap second is now causing more damage than good, resulting in disturbances and outages.” Therefore, Meta concludes, we should simply “stop the future introduction of leap seconds.” Computers require accurate timekeeping for pretty much everything they do — security, identification, networks, and more. Some systems rely on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) appliances and the GPSD daemon to tell the exact time.The problem is Earth’s rotational time is not absolute; Earth’s spin speed varies in response to geological events. For example, Earth’s ice caps and ice-topped mountains are constantly melting and refreezing, affecting the Earth’s rotation’s angular velocity. This, in turn, slows down and speeds up our days. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) tracks this, and every few years, it adds a leap-second to the year. This is done to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is the standard universal time system. Why do we have leap seconds? In 1972, the idea of leap seconds was introduced by IERS. This periodical UTC update kept computer time in sync with observed solar time (UT1) and the long-term slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. That made astronomers and navigators happy — programmers and IT administrators, not so much. UTC is used by the internet’s Network Time Protocol (NTP) to set the time. For its part, NTP keeps all of our internet-connected devices in sync with each other.How does NTP know what time it is? By synchronizing NTP servers with atomic clocks. NTP is based on a hierarchy of levels, where each level is assigned a number called the stratum. Stratum 1 (primary) servers at the lowest level are directly synchronized to national time services via satellite, radio, or modem. Stratum 2 (secondary) servers are synchronized to stratum 1 servers and so on. Usually, NTP clients and servers connect to Stratum 2 servers. So far, so good, but how do stratum 1 servers sync up with clocks? Many of them use GPSD. This service daemon monitors one or more GPSs for location, course, velocity, and — for our purposes — time. The problem is that this system is complicated and prone to failure. If you’re a system or network administrator, you already know this. Meta’s researchers insist that “introducing new leap seconds is a risky practice that does more harm than good, and we believe it is time to introduce new technologies to replace it.”In the past, leap seconds have crashed programs or even corrupted data, due to weird data storage timestamps. For example, both Reddit and CloudFlare have had nasty outages due to leap seconds. As Linux founder Linus Torvalds said in response to the problem that tripped up Reddit, “Almost every time we have a leap second, we find something. It’s really annoying, because it’s a classic case of code that is basically never run, and thus not tested by users under their normal conditions.”Worse still, Meta points out that “with the Earth’s rotation pattern changing, it’s very likely that we will get a negative leap second at some point in the future. The timestamp will then look like this: 23:59:58 – > 00:00:00.”What happens then? We don’t know. “The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers.” Meta explains, “With a growing demand for clock precision across all industries, the leap second is now causing more damage than good, resulting in disturbances and outages.” Therefore, we should simply “stop the future introduction of leap seconds.”Period. End of statement. And if our computing clocks don’t agree with the stars above us? That’s a problem for astronomy application developers, not the rest of us.Eventually, we’ll need to change the clocks again. After all, the lack of leap days eventually led to our losing 10 days when we switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. But Meta thinks that we’ll do just fine for the next thousand years or so without any more leap seconds.  More

Singtel says its standalone 5G coverage in Singapore has exceeded 95%, three years ahead of the government’s 2025 target. The local telco is looking to drive adoption amongst businesses with use cases spanning the public, transport, and tourism sectors. Its nationwide standalone 5G network currently covers more than 1,300 outdoor locations and 400 in-building sites, including underground, according to Singtel. The mobile carrier was awarded the 3.5GHz and millimetre wave spectrum in June 2020, when Singapore’s industry regulator Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) handed out two nationwide 5G licences. An additional 2.1GHz spectrum was issued in November 2021. Singtel’s 5G infrastructure runs on Ericsson equipment, while joint 5G licensees StarHub and M1 have built their networks on Nokia. All three telcos previously launched their respective consumer services, running these on 5G non-standalone architectures. Licensees are expected to obtain at least 95% standalone network coverage by end-2025.In its statement Friday, Singtel said it was looking to drive 5G adoption amongst businesses with use cases that included the public sector. The telco launched a 5G testbed in the southern island of Sentosa last year alongside several government agencies.The Singapore government last October unveiled plans for 5G pilots across various industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, and construction, with 15 live trials running on Sentosa. It said it was targeting to ramp up this figure to at least 30 by the first half of 2023. Singtel also inked various partnerships with industry players, including Micron and Hyundai to roll out 5G services that aimed to enhance operational efficiencies and decision making. These initiatives would run on Singtel’s Paragon orchestration platform, which the carrier said pulled together essential resources across 5G and edge computing into “one touchpoint” to ease deployment and integration for businesses. In April last year, it introduced a “portable 5G platform” to offer 5G network resources anywhere, with an available power source, on which enterprise customers could deploy and test their apps. Tucked inside a suitcase-sized container, it would enable organisations to experience 5G capabilities and test use cases on-site, in their own premises, Singtel said.”Now that our nationwide 5G coverage is in place, we expect commercial adoption to accelerate,” said its group enterprise and regional data centre CEO, Bill Chang. He added that its 5G infrastructure supported functions such as real-time computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge, which would facilitate mission-critical enterprise applications that included automated inspection in factories, smart city planning, and connected autonomous vehicles. RELATED COVERAGE More

Pros Reliable and speedy connection User-friendly interface No activity logs Available on most platforms A large number of servers Variety of useful features Cons Not the cheapest Only six simultaneous connections Some features not available for Apple productsNordVPN More