Is it time for our industry to consider using pascals for static pressure measurements? What would the transition from inches of water column to pascals look like and how hard would it be?

Motivated both by rising energy costs and sustainability concerns related to climate change, consumers have grown more desirous of energy-efficient living.

With more than a trillion dollars designated from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) starting to hit the wider economic field, HVAC contractors and the utility industry should be aware of how to cash in.

The ACHR NEWS sat down with ACCA CEO Bart James and ACCA Vice President of Membership, Advocacy, and Events Sean Robertson at the recent ACCA conference. The trio discussed issues that are affecting HVACR contractors including regulations, legislation, and business management.

“While the recent news is a formality, it makes the victory over these burdensome regulations official."

I’ve heard a lot about power bills, even with new a/c units. New units show increased savings, but it’s nothing like the mini splits of today.

Technicians need to understand the basic electrical fundamentals and how they relate to each other in order to better troubleshoot electrical failures.

Catch up on the latest headlines in our NEWSRoom video series.

As the federal government plans millions in grant funding to boost heat-pump manufacturing in the U.S., a big player in the market as well as a newcomer are thrilled with the opportunity.

Unfortunately, we can easily forget the role that suction driers can play in protecting the compressor and the compressor oil.

The "magic number" 1.08 is convenience factor. It is a bunch of math combined into one factor as a shortcut, although sometimes more precise calculation is better.

The two donated Airedale ClassMate packaged units were installed in the football team's fieldhouse at Parry McCluer High School in Buena Vista, Virginia.

The Pelican™ case housing provides a watertight, crushproof, dust-proof enclosure with heavy-duty deflector ribs for extra protection from shocks and impacts.

This product now features mercury-free temperature elements as an option in any 8- or 12-inch case configuration, in ranges between minus 30˚ and 600˚F.

“It's simple. If you want to encourage women to prosper and develop, provide them with some prospering women to inspire them to develop.”

GreenChill recognized nine supermarket and commercial refrigeration leaders for exceptional achievements to reduce the impacts of commercial refrigeration systems on the environment. 

At the AHR Expo, manufacturers talked about what’s fueling their design of smart products and ensuring they are simpler, more integrated, and save energy and time.

Products are emerging that help simplify homeownership.

Contractors must be careful when sizing heat pumps for colder climates in order to avoid mold problems and homeowner discomfort.

Due to a lack of training, time constraints, and numerous other reasons, many HVAC contracting companies are not performing combustion testing, potentially compromising customers’ safety.

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Nov 02

In this Episode we talk about the Scala language with its creator Martin Odersky. Scala is a language that fuses object oriented and functional programming. Martin started out by providing a two-minute overview over the language, and then talked a little bit about its history. We then discussed the basics of functional programming. The main part of the episode features a discussion of some of the important features of the Scala language:

• Case Classes and Pattern Matching
• Multiple Inheritance and Compound Types, Traits, Mixins
• Closures
• Functions as types, "Function pointers", Anonymous functions
• Higher Order Functions
• Currying
• (Sequence) Comprehensions
• Generics
• Type Bounds (Upper, Lower)
• Static/Dynamic Typing, Type Inference
• Operators
• Implicits

In this episode we have the pleasure of talking to Anders Hejlsberg, Chief Language Strategist at Microsoft. We started by discussing his more distant past, namely, his involvement with Turbo Pascal and Borland's Delphi. We then looked at the influences Delphi had on C# and how C# evolved from Delphi. In the next section we discussed a couple of general language design issues, among them components and checked vs. unchecked exceptions. Next, we discussed interesting issues about languages of the future, static vs. dynamic typing, functional programming, meta programming as well as the importance of good support for concurrency. We concluded the discussion by looking at the interplay between languages and IDEs.

This episode is part of our series on agile software development. We talk with David Anderson about Kanban, an agile software development method that is quite different from most of the other agile methods out there. We discuss the basic ideas behind Kanban, the differences between Kanban and Scrum and when and why projects can benefit from using Kanban. This episode is done in cooperation with the German magazine ObjektSpektrum (thanks for sharing this interview with us).

This episode is an update on the developments around the Scala language.

Recording Venue: WebEx Guest: Wil van der Aalst Robert Blumen interviews Professor Wil van der Aalst of the Technical University of Eindhoven, one of the world’s leading researchers in business process management and workflow systems. Professor van der Aalst leads off with an overview of the main concepts in the field business processes, business process […]

Adrian Cockcroft discusses the challenges in creating a dynamic, flexible, cloud-based platform with SE Radio host Stefan Tilkov. After briefly discussing the definition of “cloud computing,” Adrian explains the history behind Netflix’s move to the cloud (which he led). After highlighting some of the differences that have developers and architects must face, Adrian talks about […]

Alex Budzier of the Oxford Saïd Business School and Jürgen Laartz of McKinsey Berlin join Robert Blumen to talk about the their research on large IT project failures. Why do large projects fail and to what extent are these failures avoidable?

Felienne talks with Alexander Tarlinder on how to test as a developer. What can and should developers test?

Felienne interviews Marian Petre & André van der Hoek on their book ‘Software Design Decoded’, which contains 66 scientifically backed insights for the design process.

Jonathan Boccara, author of The Legacy Code Programmer’s Toolbox discusses understanding and working with legacy code. Working with legacy code is a key skill of professional software development that is often neglected.

Learn how to simplify your application architecture with the introduction of a messaging system. You'll hear how different messaging patterns can make your application more flexible, easier to maintain, and improve its performance.

Felienne interviews Margaret Burnett on GenderMag, a systematic way to assess the inclusivity of software.

Aaron Vonderhaar, maintainer and open source contributor to the Elm programming language, talks with host Adam Conrad about the Elm language, its foundations, features, and applications in the front end web development ecosystem.

Jens Gustedt, author of the Modern C book discusses Modern C, what is legacy C and all aspects of the C programming world with its historic flaws, modern improvements and simple beauty.

Felienne discusses diversity and inclusivity in software development with Shawn Wildermuth, Microsoft MVP and creator of the Hello World movie.

Otakar Nieder, Senior Director of Development at Bohemia Interactive Simulations, discusses how simulation apps are different from gaming with host Kanchan Shringi.

Alexander Pugh discusses why and when to use Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Host Jeremy Jung spoke with Pugh about interacting with systems without APIs like mainframes; the importance of having developers involved when building bots; the difficulty...

Richard L. Sites discusses his new book Understanding Software Dynamics, which offers expert methods and advanced tools for understanding complex, time-constrained software dynamics in order to improve reliability and performance. Philip Winston spoke with Sites about the five fundamental computing resources CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and Locks, as well as methods for observing and reasoning when investigating performance problems using the open-source utility KUtrace.

Michael Fazio, Engineering Manager (Android) at Albert and author of Kotlin and Android Development featuring Jetpack from the Pragmatic Programmers, speaks with SE Radio's Gavin Henry about how the Android ecosystem looks today, and why it's an excellent time to write native Android apps. They explore a wide range of topics about modern Android development, including when to go native, how to keep a lot of decisions in your back-end API, Kotlin co-routines, Jetpack and Jetpack Compose, the MVVM design pattern, and threads, as well as activities, fragments, Dagger, room, navigation, Flutter, and improvements in simulators. They also examine details such as IDEs, API selection, how to choose a list of support devices, Java vs Kotlin, handset manufacturers, XML layouts, and why Jetpack is a safe bet for all your future Android development.

Ross John Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at University of Cambridge, discusses software obsolescence with host Priyanka Raghavan. They examine risks associated with software going obsolete and consider several examples of software obsolescence, including how it can affect cars. Prof. Anderson discusses policy and research in the area of obsolescence and suggests some ways to mitigate the risks, with special emphasis on software bills of materials. He describes future directions, including software policy and laws in the EU, and offers advice for software maintainers to hedge against risks of obsolescence.

Jeroen Mulder, author of Multi-Cloud Strategy for Cloud Architects, joins host Robert Blumen for a discussion of public cloud, private cloud, and multi-cloud computing architectures and trends. They start by considering what defines cloud computing and what differentiates the major cloud providers, including whether they are more alike or different in the services they offer.  Jeroen discusses governance, regulatory compliance, and data locality as drivers of where enterprises want to run their workload. They explore use cases for multi-cloud, and discuss architectural challenges in migrating to kubernetes, as well as issues with networking, security, and identity management with multi-cloud architectures. Finally, they discuss running public cloud compute on on-prem resources with Anthos, Outback, and related technologies.

Andy Suderman, CTO of Fairwinds, joins host Robert Blumen to talk about standing up a kubernetes cluster. Their discussion covers build-your-own versus managed clusters provided by cloud services, and how to determine the number of kubernetes clusters an organization needs. Andy describes best practices for automating cluster provisioning, and offers recommendations about customizations and opinionation of cloud service providers, choice of container registry, and whether you should run complementary services such as CI and monitoring on the same cluster. The episode also examines the day 0/day 1/day 2 lifecycle, cluster auto-scaling at the cloud service level, integrating stateful services and other cloud services into your cluster, and kubernetes secrets and alternatives. Finally, they consider the container-network interface (CNI), ingress and load balancers, and provisioning external DNS and TLS certificates for cluster services.

Frances Buontempo, author of the new book Learn C++ by Example, discusses the C++ programming language, a widely used general-purpose programming language. Host Philip Winston spoke with Buontempo about where C++ fits into the landscape of existing programming languages and how recent C++ standards have changed things. They talk about specific language features such as lambdas, templates, concurrency, ranges, concepts along with tips for learning and using C++. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

Jonathan Schneider, the cofounder of Moderne and the creator of OpenRewrite, talks with SE Radio's Gregory Kapfhammer about automated software maintenance. In addition to exploring the design and implementation of OpenRewrite, Schneider explains how the tool can automatically support software maintenance tasks such as framework migration and security fixes for programs implemented in languages like Java. The episode also explores how OpenRewrite uses the lossless semantic tree to support automated refactoring though the use of recipes. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Chuck Weindorf, a retired IT director and chief engineer with nearly 40 years' experience in software engineering, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about the concepts in Chuck's book, Leaders & Software Engineers. Through personal anecdotes and insights gleaned from his extensive career, Chuck underscores quality assurance's critical role in building trust with users and fostering a proactive culture of defect resolution within development teams. He highlights how ethical considerations underpin trust and integrity within the software engineering profession.

Chuck and Jeff examine the significance of thorough documentation and the vital role of effective communication in overcoming silos within organizations, and ensuring that projects meet their intended objectives while maintaining high standards of quality and reliability. They discuss how to cultivate a positive, innovative culture within engineering teams. Chuck shares strategies for addressing challenges and opportunities presented by change, advocating for adaptability and continuous learning as essential qualities for both new and experienced engineers navigating the evolving technological landscape. He offers advice for those transitioning into leadership roles, emphasizing the importance of developing soft skills and the ability to empathize with and inspire team members. Finally, the episode explores the potential impact of emerging technologies, such as low-code platforms and artificial intelligence.

Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. 

Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin join host Giovanni Asproni to talk about their proposed approach to modernizing legacy systems. The episode starts with some high-level perspective to set context for the approach described in their book, Architecture Modernization (Manning, 2024). From there, the discussion turns to important details, including criteria for deciding which aspects to revisit; some of the activities, processes, and tools; and the importance of data engineering in modernization efforts. Nick and Jean-Georges describe how to successfully implement an architecture-modernization effort, and how to fit that work with the teams' other priorities. The episode finishes with some warnings about the typical risks associated with modernizing a legacy system, and suggestions on how to mitigate them.

This episode is sponsored by QA Wolf.

TerraMaster�s TD2 Thunderbolt 3 is a 2-bay DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) drive aimed at professional users and, as the name suggests comes with a pair of Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. TerraMaster�s TD2 Thunderbolt 3 looks just like a 2-bay NAS with the obvious exception that the TD2 comes with a very useful carrying handle. The enclosure is built from ... [PCSTATS]

Brent Simmons, the developer of the NetNewsWire RSS reader, is questioning his decision to put an unread count next to each feed, reasoning that it encourages people to be too obsessive about reading every item:

Instead of a dozen bookmarks, people had a hundred feeds. Or two hundred. Or two thousand.

And there was a tyranny behind keeping track of unread items and showing an unread count. People reacted in different ways, but many people felt like they always had to go through everything.

Including me. To this day.

I did not know this was going to happen. That was not the idea: it was a side effect of reasonable (at the time) choices.

I like seeing these counts on feeds where I need to read all items that are posted, but that's only a small percentage of the 100-120 feeds I follow. It would be nice to turn that off for others I read more casually.

Feedly presents unread counts on each feed and folder of feeds. There's a Mark As Read button to clear a count, but when you click it, the confirmation dialog acts like it's an extremely consequential decision: "Are you sure you want to mark this entire source as read? This operation cannot be undone."

I've posed a question on the RSS-Public mailing list: Do you think feed readers should count unread items?