Rationale for minimum data set for evaluating energy efficiency and for controlling data centre equipment in view of power saving

Potential for primary energy savings in TLC/ICT centres through free cooling

Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning - Opportunities and legal challenges

Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning - Strategy and roadmap

Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning - Engineering Feasibility Study

HSTP.IPTV-Gloss - Glossary and terminology of IP-based TV-related multimedia services

FSTP-UMAA - Use cases for assisting persons with disabilities using mobile applications

Digital Financial Services (DFS) - Glossary

HSTP-DIS-UAV - Use cases and service scenarios of disaster information service using unmanned aerial vehicles

U4SSC - Case study - Air quality management in Southern California, USA

U4SSC - Case study - Data driven energy savings in the Hyperdome shopping centre in Queensland, Australia

QSTR-SS7-DFS - SS7 vulnerabilities and mitigation measures for digital financial services transactions

U4SSC - Snapshot - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

U4SSC - Factsheet Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Digital signage: Glossary and definitions

U4SSC - City Snapshot Santa Fe, Argentina

U4SSC - Verification report, Santa Fe, Argentina

U4SSC - City Snapshot - Kristiansand, Norway

U4SSC - Verification report - Kristiansand, Norway

U4SSC - City Snapshot - Sande, Norway

QSTR-USSD - Low resource requirement, quantum resistant, encryption of USSD messages for use in financial services

FIGI - DFS - Technical Report on SS7 Vulnerabilities and mitigation measures for DFS transactions

FIGI - DFS - Technical Report on SS7 Vulnerabilities and mitigation measures for DFS transactions

FSTP-SLD-UC - Gap analysis: Use cases of safe listening devices

TR.Reqts-SAN - Requirements of semantic-aware networking for future networks

YSTR.HTSA-overview - Overview of ICT based highway traffic safety assessment

TR.qs-dlt - Guidelines for quantum-safe distributed ledger technology systems

QSTR-MCM-UC - Use cases on the combat of multimedia content misappropriation

Requirements and technical specifications of a cable TV hybrid set-top box compatible with terrestrial and satellite TV transport

Guidelines for international short message service (SMS) interconnection

Guidelines for day sales outstanding (DSO) management

International aspects of universal service

Universal power adapter and charger solution for mobile terminals and other hand-held ICT devices

Test suites for assessment of the external universal power adapter solutions for portable information and communication technology devices

Test suites for assessment of the external universal power adapter solutions for stationary information and communication technology devices

Functional requirements and framework of green data centre energy-saving management system

Operational Bulletin No. 1293 (1.VI.2024) and Annexed List:
List of Signalling Area/Network Codes (SANC) (Complement to Recommendation ITU-T Q.708 (03/1999)) (Position on 1 June 2024)

List of Signalling Area/Network Codes (SANC)

Information technology - Generic applications of ASN.1: Cryptographic message syntax

Client to authenticator protocol/Universal 2-factor framework

Universal authentication framework

ITU-T X.1242 - Supplement on guidelines on countermeasures against short message service phishing and smishing attacks

Signalling architecture and requirements for IP-based short message service over ITU-T defined NGN

Proposal of second draft of K.soft_ba "Overview of particle radiation effects on telecommunications systems"
Source: Fujitsu Limited, Xilinx Incorporation

Automatic answering equipment and/or parallel automatic calling equipment on the general switched telephone network including procedures for disabling of echo control devices for both manually and automatically established calls

When it comes to testing your user experiences, there are plenty of methods you can use that will get you the information you need. From interviews to assistive technology testing, these methods offer a more streamlined and beneficial process capable of revealing the insights you need to revolutionize your UX. But how can you know […]

The post Testing: User, Usability, and Others You Should Be Using appeared first on Usability Geek

Shares of Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) are skyrocketing in early-morning trading after the company announced its Q3 2024 results, which beat expectations. As of the time of this writing, SHOP stock is up an impressive 23% to above $110 per share. 

However, Shopify’s stock isn’t on fire only because of its good Q3. There are some other reasons why Shopify is exciting investors this morning. Here’s what to know:

Shopify’s ‘outstanding’ results

Shopify would probably disagree with the statement that the company had a good Q3. As the company’s president, Harley Finkelstein, said in a press release, the results were “outstanding.”

Why was the quarter so outstanding? A big part of it was the company’s Q3 revenue, which came in at $2.16 billion. That represents a whopping 26% year-over-year growth rate from Q3 2023.

As Reuters notes, it even surpassed many analysts’ lofty expectations of $2.11 billion in revenue, leading to the ninth time in a row that the company has beat analyst expectations on sales.

Not only did Shopify beat analyst expectations again, but its 26% revenue growth for this quarter marked “our sixth consecutive quarter of greater than 25% revenue growth excluding logistics,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said.

In a slide deck, Shopify also announced that as of Q3 2024, the company had facilitated $1 trillion in global sales since the platform’s inception and that it now has a 10% share of the U.S. e-commerce market.

Okay, but why did Shopify have such a good Q3?

As also noted by Reuters, Shopify attracted more merchants to its online e-commerce platform this quarter. One of the attractions for the merchants seems to be a new artificial intelligence tool Shopify started rolling out in June called Sidekick.

Sidekick is an artificial intelligence assistant currently in early access for some merchants. Shopify says the AI bot “will act as your very own advisor, guiding you with tailored, skilled advice to make your business stronger.”

It does this by shouldering some of the mundane but necessary tasks that any businessperson needs to do to manage their business. Sidekick can help easily keep track of a merchant’s inventory, generate myriad reports that reveal new insights about your business, and even suggest ways to attract more customers to a storefront.

Sidekick is in addition to another AI tool Shopify offers, this one called Shopify Magic, which helps merchants create product images for their wares, write product descriptions, and even help them generate FAQs for their stores.

These AI tools are making it easier than ever for customers to manage their storefronts, and their availability is clearly a draw for some merchants.

The future looks promising, too

But Shopify’s stock isn’t only surging because the company had a terrific Q3. If anything, investors seem most excited about what the company has predicted will happen next.

Shopify’s current quarter, Q4, is arguably the most important of the year for the company and its merchants. This is the all-important holiday shopping quarter—and Shopify has anounced it has strong hopes for the period.

The key metric that Shopify has forecast is its revenue expectations for Q4, which the company says it expects will “grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.”

That’s music to investors’ ears, as it means Shopify expects it may do even better in Q4 than its just-completed outstanding Q3. That revenue growth estimate is also more than the 22.7% revenue growth many analysts were expecting, noted Reuters.

A resurgent stock

Shopify’s stock started 2024 with prices hovering in the high seventies before dropping to the low sixties over the summer. But since the beginning of the fall, SHOP shares have been on an upswing. Today’s 23% surge means SHOP shares are actually up over 38% year-to-date.

However, despite the resurgent stock, SHOP shares are nowhere near their all-time high of above $152 per share. Those highs were achieved in mid- to late-2021 when e-commerce was enjoying a pandemic boom as more people preferred online shopping over brick-and-mortar stores.

If hybrid cars can cut CO2 emissions on the road, can hybrid-electric planes do the same in the air? 

NASA is exploring that possibility, announcing this week two contracts to aviation startup Electra. The company claims it can meet NASA’s goal of reducing airliner fuel use by 60% to 80% by 2035 with a hybrid design that features generators powering motors to drive a large number of propellers. While this may sound like a convoluted way to power an airliner, the company claims it ultimately requires far less fuel than a traditional plane. 

Electra is already flying a two-seat test plane with this kind of system and will debut a nine-seater with a 380-mile range this week. It’s now partnering with American Airlines, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, MIT, and the University of Michigan to guide the design and scale up the tech to airliners.

Electra’s grants, totaling about $3.5 million, are part of the $11.5 million, to four companies and one university for the first phase of its Advanced Aircraft for Sustainable Aviation (AACES) 2050 program. First announced in August 2023, AACES challenges companies to propose aircraft concepts that could help bring passenger and cargo plane emissions to zero by 2050.

The aviation industry has long touted zero-emission fuels (for example, jet fuel made from biomass, or hydrogen produced with green electricity) as the ultimate climate solution. It’s easier to make enough of these fuels if new planes need a lot less of them—hence NASA’s challenge to Electra and the other winners to develop radically more-efficient designs.

The case for electric-powered planes

A number of companies are developing electric airplanes, but most are for short-range air taxi services. Toyota-backed Joby Aviation, for example, promises to put a four-passenger plane into service as soon as 2025. Powered 100% by heavy batteries, packing about 1/40th as much energy per pound as jet fuel, Joby’s plane can fly 100 miles per charge.

Electra stands out as one of the few companies, alongside Sweden’s Heart Aerospace and Ampaire and Whisper Aero out of the U.S., testing different hybrid concepts to dramatically extend range. (NASA has also been testing hybrid tech with other companies.) Electra and its allies’ initial concept for NASA is a 114-seat airliner that can fly nearly 3,300 miles, says Electra’s vice president and general manager, JP Stewart. But he says the tech can scale to NASA’s largest target: carrying about 300 people up to around 8,600 miles.

Electra’s take on hybrid technology is called a “series hybrid.” On a traditional plane, each propeller (or jet engine) requires a big, expensive turbine that burns jet fuel. By using turbines to power generators instead, Electra can run more props using lightweight electric motors. Electra’s initial sketch has five propellers across each wing (plus three in the tail), which the company says can improve airflow and boost the wing’s ability to lift the plane—tech that’s already working on its two-seat prototype. For its NASA proposal, Electra envisions an airliner that uses this hybrid tech and a new design of the fuselage (the tube carrying passengers) to take off with smaller wings, which will produce less drag and save fuel in flight.

Another benefit of hooking a turbine to a generator, says Stewart, is that the turbine can run at its most-efficient speed throughout the flight. Airplane engines have to be very flexible, gunning it on takeoff and landing and running less intensely when the plane is cruising in the air. Turbines that power the propellers directly don’t have the flexibility to do both tasks efficiently; electric motors do. Finally, by adding batteries to the mix, the plane can use a smaller turbine that needs to produce just enough power for cruising, says Electra. For takeoff and landing, battery packs join in to provide the extra oomph only when needed.

Electra’s concept is just one of several ideas NASA has given the green light to. Another contract winner, JetZero, has proposed a liquid hydrogen-powered, “blended wing body” concept for a jetliner or cargo plane that ditches the traditional design of a metal tube with wings and a tail. Instead, it has a tail-less, triangular shape that looks a bit like a B2 Stealth Bomber and promises major fuel savings. 

Other winners include Georgia Institute of Technology, Pratt & Whitney (part of the RTX conglomerate), and Boeing-owned Aurora Flight Sciences, which are working on several engine and body technologies. (Aurora founder John Langford went on to found Electra in 2020.)

The task now for Electra, JetZero, and other winners is to produce a final airplane design in 18 months. Getting real planes in the air will take many more years.

After a tumultuous year filled with anxiety and a legal battle about its future in the U.S., TikTok may have just been thrown a lifeline by the man who was once its biggest foe: Donald Trump.

The president-elect, who tried to ban the social media platform the last time he was in the White House, has repeatedly pledged during his most recent campaign to oppose a ban on the short-form video app, which could happen as soon as mid-January if the company loses a court case that’s currently underway in Washington.

For months, TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance have been embroiled in a legal battle with the U.S. over a federal law that forces them to cut ties for national security reasons or stop operating in one of their biggest markets in the world. The measure, signed by President Joe Biden in April, gives ByteDance nine months to divest its stakes, with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. If that happens, the deadline could be extended into the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.

The companies have claimed that divestiture is not possible, and the law, if upheld, would force them to shut down by January 19, just a day before Trump’s second inauguration. Attorneys for both sides have asked a federal appeals court reviewing the case to issue a ruling by December 6. The losing side is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority and could decide to take up the case, potentially dragging out the process even longer.

When reached for comment, the Trump transition team did not offer details on how Trump plans to carry out his pledge to “save TikTok,” as he said on a Truth Social post in September while encouraging people who care about the platform to vote for him. But Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the transition team, indicated in a statement that he plans to see it through.

“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said. “He will deliver.”

During a March interview with CNBC, Trump said he still believed TikTok posed a national security risk but opposed banning it because doing so would help its rival, Facebook, which he has continued to lambast over his 2020 election loss. He also denied changing his mind on the issue because of Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, a ByteDance investor who Trump, at the time, said he had only met “very briefly.” He said Yass “never mentioned TikTok” during their meeting.

Still, ByteDance—and groups connected to Yass—have been attempting to exert their influence. Lobbying disclosure reports show that this year, ByteDance paid veteran lobbyist and former Trump campaign aide David Urban $150,000 to lobby lawmakers in Washington in favor of TikTok. The company has also spent more than $8 million on in-house lobbyists and another $1.4 million on other lobbying firms, according to the nonprofit OpenSecrets.

Meanwhile, in March, Politico reported that Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump aide, was being paid by the Yass-funded conservative group Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok in Congress. A spokesperson for the organization said Conway was hired as a consultant to conduct polling. Conway and Urban did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a national security risk, declined to comment.

If the courts uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The fines would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services who would be barred from supporting it. Leah Plunkett, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, said from her reading of the statute, the attorney general has to investigate violations but can decide whether or not to drag such companies to court and force them to comply.

Trump could do other things to prevent TikTok from disappearing.

He could issue an executive order to nullify the ban—which Plunkett believes would not be lawful—or urge Congress to repeal the law. That would require support from Congressional Republicans who have aligned themselves with Trump but have also supported the prospects of getting TikTok out of the hands of a Chinese company.

In a statement sent to the AP after the election, Republican Representative John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said Trump’s “long-standing concerns” about TikTok align with the law’s requirement for divestment.

“The Trump Administration will have a unique opportunity to broker an American takeover of the platform,” he said.

ByteDance, though, has previously said it has no intention of selling the platform despite interest from some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Analysts say the company is even less likely to sell the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app. That means even if TikTok is sold to a qualified buyer, it is likely to be a shell of its current self and would need to be rebuilt with new technology.

Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, said it’s also possible that Trump could take the issue back to the drawing board and direct his administration to negotiate a new deal with TikTok.

TikTok said in 2022 that it presented the Biden administration with a draft agreement that would bolster protections for users and provide it more oversight over the company’s U.S. operations. But the administration has argued in court documents in recent months that it would be challenging to enforce the agreement due to the size and the technical complexity of the platform.

Trump hasn’t been privy to new intelligence material on the matter for a few years and it’s possible he could change his mind—and abandon his campaign promise—once he does, Kreps said.

Plunkett, the Harvard Law lecturer and author of Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online, said if she were counseling TikTok, she would advise it to come up with a divesture plan that is compliant with the law and as favorable to the company as possible, noting, “There is too much uncertainty about what a Trump administration is likely to do.”

—By Haleluya Hadero, Associated Press

What it is: Recently, the good people at SAM Labs sent me an Alpha Kit to play with and review. You guys, this is such a cool product! I love that as soon as students open it up, it puts them in charge of the learning. Best of all, it encourages the learning to happen...