MIAMI AND TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 16, 2022–

XTM, Inc. (“XTM” or the “Company” ) (QB:XTMIF / CSE:PAID / FSE:7XT), a Miami and Toronto-based Fintech company in the neo-banking space, providing mobile banking and payment solutions worldwide, is pleased to announce the deployment of Apple Pay and Google Pay for users of the US Today program.

This press release is multimedia. Read the full press release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220316005603/en/

XTM launches Apple and Google Pay on its US Today digital payment solution (Photo: Business Wire)

Apple Pay and Google Pay allow all Today Card holders to use their Apple or Android devices to make point-of-sale (“POS”) payments. At checkout, the merchant invites the customer to hold their activated device near the merchant’s payment terminal or reader and the payment will be made securely using NFC technology. Apple says Apple Pay is already accepted at more than 90% of US retailers.

As previously announced, XTM has worked diligently on rolling out over 100,000 mobile wallets and by adding Apple Pay and Google Pay to the Today program, it will not only improve the offering with more convenience, but it will boost POS spending and will allow XTM to increase its interchange revenue percentage when calculated as a percentage of gross dollar value (“GDV”).

“We have two main priorities – our customers and our shareholders – critical to our success,” said Marilyn Schaffer, CEO of XTM. “Providing the best customer experience and offering convenient and secure payment options to all Today program members addresses both priorities, driving happy customers and higher revenue.”

About XTM

XTM, www.xtminc.com, is a Miami and Toronto-based fintech innovator in the neo-banking space, helping businesses and service workers in the hospitality and personal care space to spread and access salaries and rewards earned. XTM’s Today solution, consisting of a free mobile app and a Visa or Mastercard debit card with free banking features, is used by thousands of restaurants, salons and employees in Canada and the United States. United. XTM is a global card issuer and real-time payment specialist. Our technology is used free of charge by restaurants, salons and service personnel to automate and accelerate access to earned salary and gratuities, increasing time and attendance and removing money from ecosystems. XTM’s Today solution improves operational efficiency and delivers a tailored user experience designed specifically for service workers.

This press release contains “forward-looking information” and “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws (the “forward-looking statements”), within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, including the expected performance of XTM, the expectation that companies that XTM does business with or has committed to do business with will do so within the expected timeframe, the continued trend towards electronic payment methods, that integrations will entice new business owners to use the Today program, and XTM’s terms and conditions and earnings. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as “expect”, “plan”, “anticipate”, “project”, “target”. , “potential”, “schedule”. “, “expect”, “budget”, “estimate”, “intend” or “believe” and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions “will”, “would”, “could”, “could”, “should” or “could” happen. Although XTM can do its best to estimate when businesses will reopen or return to pre-Covid 19 levels of activity, there is no guarantee that this will happen. will occur within the time frame anticipated by the Company or as may be appropriate. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Such forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, results or results anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that the plans, intentions or expectations regarding the on which the forward-looking statements are based will occur.

CSE has not approved or disapproved of the contents of this press release, and CSE accepts no responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

See the source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220316005603/en/

CONTACT: For more information, please see:

xtminc.com

or contact:

Marilyn Schaffer

416.260.1641

[email protected]

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CANADA FLORIDA

KEYWORD INDUSTRY: MOBILE/WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY RETAIL OTHER BUSINESS SERVICES TRAVEL FINANCING BANKING RESTAURANT/BAR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES OTHER TECHNOLOGY OTHER BUSINESS SOFTWARE DATA MANAGEMENT SECURITY

SOURCE: XTM, Inc.

Copyright BusinessWire 2022.

PUBLICATION: 03/16/2022 08:30 / DISK: 03/16/2022 08:32

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220316005603/en

Copyright BusinessWire 2022.

The global chatbot market is expected to reach a valuation of USD 102.29 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 34.75% over the forecast period 2021-2026. Efficiency. According to the MIT Technology Study, up to 90% of companies reported faster complaint resolution with bots.

Advances in natural language processing (NLP) have made chatbots more accurate, intuitive and autonomous. However, most of the chatbots available in the market are English first or English only. According to statista, only 1.35 billion of the world’s population speak English as their first language or as a second language.

Since 2009, Reverie Language Technologies has offered content in multiple languages ​​in real time to bridge the language gap. Reverie has now branched out into voice-driven social commerce activations and conversational AI for contact center automation. Recently, the company partnered with Boonbox (a proprietary rural assisted commerce platform) to cater to the needs of the non-English speaking Indian community.

In an exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine, Vivekananda Pani, Co-Founder and CTO, Reverie Language Technologies and Ramachandran Ramanathan, CEO, Boonbox talked about their plans to build multilingual bots from scratch.

AIM: How does Reverie build multilingual chatbots from scratch?

Vivekananda Pani: We consult with companies to understand “why the bot is needed”, “what languages ​​are needed”, “are users comfortable typing in their language?”

Then we understand that use cases need to be automated through the bot. This is a step-by-step process to understand the desired user journeys for the different actions the BOT is supposed to perform. Broad compartments for the same can be order or transactional. Once we have the desired flow plan, we (along with our partner) convert the existing process into a conversation flow between the end user and the bot.

Once the flow is finalized, the deployment is directly worked on the chatbot platform. This bot development includes API integrations with any of the third-party APIs. The development conversion of the bot flow would take into consideration the usage behaviors of an Indian-speaking user and modify the flow accordingly. Once the bot flows are developed, intents and entities are then identified for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) training. It’s about creating all possible variations in which a user could ask in their language.

For example: a user’s intent may be to “check bank account balance”, in this case the user may ask the query as follows:

• English:
  • “What is my account balance”
  • “How much money is in my account”
• Hindi
  • “मेरे खाते में कितने पैसे हैं”
  • “मेरा बैंक बैलेंस कितना है”
  • Simple bank account mein kitna balance hai

NLU’s training in Indian languages ​​is what gives our technology the edge. It is trained on the native script, so the NLU is able to better understand the context and provide greater accuracy. Text-to-speech (STT) is also fine-tuned based on the use case to provide the highest accuracy. Once all components are ready, automated tests are performed on all components to ensure stability and performance. Another part of the testing is done by the language users to ensure that the bot is able to answer the different questions from the users. Failing cases are then recycled using a human-in-the-loop approach to make the engines and bot robust.

Finally, the bot can be published seamlessly on a wide range of channels such as IVR lines, website, mobile apps, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and many more.

AIM: How does the Whatsapp multilingual bot work?

Vivekananda Pani: A WhatsApp bot is like another contact on your phone: either the bot can initiate the conversation, or you can start just by saying “hi” or simple commands like “do you have any table fans” (in the case of a social commerce interface). At the very first step, the user is asked about their language preferences, the user can either give input via menu based buttons, type the message and even by voice. Users can always change the language at any time during the conversation. Once the user begins to interact with the bot, the message begins to pass through Reverie’s voice suite to deliver responses in the selected language, either by text or voice notes.

AIM: What is the technology stack behind your products? What languages ​​does Reverie support?

Vivekananda Pani: Reverie’s Voice Suite supports English and 10 Indian languages ​​including Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi and Odia.

The technology stack:

• STT/ASR: Reverie’s Speech to Text (STT) module is developed using advanced deep learning technologies and carefully selected data with coverage of various accents, ages and genders.
• Language detection: Language detection is an essential part of the multilingual chatbot, because we need to understand which languages ​​are spoken by the user before they can be understood by the NLU engine.
• NLU: Reverie’s Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is developed using state-of-the-art transformer technologies that understand Indian languages ​​as well as English.
• Reverie’s TTS: Text-To-Speech provides fast and natural human speech in both genders with extensive customization options to generate perfect responses.

AIM: Which industries are seeing the highest demand for multilingual bots?

Vivekananda Pani: The main areas where we see the highest demands include:

Banking:

• Core Banking – To check account balance, transfer funds, mini statement, checkbook request
• Collections- Loan collections for different loan products through multiple channels like IVR, WhatsApp.
• Customer Support – Product Information, ATM/Branch details
• For employees – Retrieving information from banking process documents for compliance etc.
• Analyze – agent sentiment, tone and performance.

Assurance:

• Complete the customer onboarding journey, including payments – Purchase life and general insurance (health, travel, auto, etc.)
• Service Requests – Policy renewals, change of nominee, address, claims handling, policy, etc.
• Analyze – agent sentiment, tone and performance.

Retail/e-commerce:

• Product Ordering – To select and order products through multiple channels
• All transaction commands

Decoders:

• Order and search for use cases like – open, launch or play/view a program.
• Language and channel switching use cases.

The most demanded channels for the same are IVR bots, voice activated chatbot and Whatsapp.

AIM: How important is interacting in the local language to build customer trust?

Ramachandran Ramanathan: Boonbox has sold products to over 2 million customers in rural India. Our customers are confident, aware and eager to improve their lifestyle. Boonbox is completely “local” and our interactions with our customers are only in the local language. Our clients are from different states and one of the common characteristics is that they do not converse or communicate in English. Conversing with them in their local language means increased interaction and in doing so builds trust. Whether it is verbal communication or via applications, the language is, by default, local.

AIM: What is the scope and potential of “voice commands” in relation to rural and social e-commerce, especially via Whatsapp?

Ramachandran Ramanathan: The voice is intuitive, making it an ideal means of communication with any group of customers. Broadcasting certain messages to customer phones has always been part of Boonbox’s go-to-market strategy. Overall, most customers in non-metro cities are uncomfortable typing even if they have had some school education. It’s disconcerting that companies have yet to realize the potential of voice in customer interactions. The key here is to make the customer understand that voice communication is an option. Boonbox connects with its customers and also drives business transactions using Whatsapp, where the use of Voice could potentially be a game-changer.

Vivekananda Pani: Over the years, WhatsApp has become a familiar customer communication channel and is establishing itself in the era of social commerce and Direct to Customer (D2C) players.

AIM: What does the partnership with Reverie mean for Boonbox?

Ramachandran Ramanathan: Reverie’s expertise in Indian language technologies and solutions makes it an ideal solution for Boonbox, where “local” is the default option and the only way to build customer trust. Reverie’s role would cover Boonbox apps, communicating via Whatsapp and using voice technology whenever possible. The Boonbox-Reverie collaboration has the potential to make e-commerce and social commerce second nature to Boonbox’s rural footprint.

By Vanderland ·

March 7, 2022

The explosion of e-commerce has placed disproportionate demands on retailers’ order fulfillment operations. Whether it’s reduced delivery expectations for consumers, dynamic inventory turnover and growth, changing SKU speeds, or high return volumes, warehouse operators are re-evaluating their automation options.

Shuttle-based automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) systems for goods-to-person (GtP) order fulfillment, particularly in direct-to-consumer e-commerce operations, offer a flexible and adaptable solution to retail order fulfillment challenges. However, to ensure a successful implementation, matching the right type of shuttle-based automation to its optimal application is essential.

Read our latest white paper, “How Roving Shuttles Improve Order Fulfillment Operations,” to learn what sets the different types of shuttle systems apart on the market. You’ll also learn how implementing AS/RS roaming freight-to-person technology delivers benefits that go far beyond realization to positively impact your bottom line, including:

• Improved command accuracy
• Increased flexibility in daily operations
• Labor issues resolved
• Shorter order times/limits
• Reduced downtime and increased availability

If you’re ready to improve your customer experience, optimize your operations, and maximize profitability, be sure to check out this white paper today.

Vanderlande has been solving the toughest automation challenges for decades.
Vanderlande uses a consultative and collaborative approach to ensure maximum return on your automation investment. Our scalable solutions seamlessly integrate innovative systems, intelligent configurable software, and industry-leading lifecycle services to deliver the best materials handling that maximizes throughput, regardless of peak demand and calendar.

Discover the Vanderlande difference.
At Vanderlande, our employees are our greatest asset. We are focused on providing materials handling operations with the solutions they need to be more efficient – with systems that offer unprecedented flexibility and enable organizations to use their data for greater impact than ever before. And our commitment to optimizing the solutions we install means we won’t rest until your operations are running at peak performance.

Find out why the world’s largest retailers choose Vanderlande to future-proof their warehousing operations.
Join us at MODEX 2022 at booth #B5406 for real-time, interactive demonstrations of our industry-leading warehouse automation solutions. Our teams will be on hand to answer your questions and demonstrate our systems, including:

• SUITABLE: Our automated shuttle-based storage and retrieval system allows warehouse operators to manage an unparalleled range of carton, tray and bin sizes while traversing warehouse levels and aisles independent of platforms elevators. ADAPTO easily sequences and prioritizes orders, allowing warehouses to use individual, direct-connect picking stations that dramatically increase the efficiency and accuracy of fulfillment operations. All of this is done on a system with a much smaller footprint than other shuttle-based systems. The result is that organizations can stock more SKUs and increase the storage density of their facilities, while increasing the speed of their operations.
  

• Goods-to-Picker (GtP) workstation: Modular in design to offer maximum flexibility and a truly streamlined picking process, Vanderlande’s GtP workstations are highly intuitive and ergonomic. Customers benefit from dramatically improved picking performance on a system that requires minimal training and allows new operators to operate the system in minutes. Seamlessly integrated with ADAPTO, Vanderlande’s GtP workstations also enable individual selection and highly refined sequencing for batch or discrete approaches.
  

• Front paddle: Vanderlande’s AV (autonomous vehicles) pallets facilitate operations to improve warehouse safety and easily automate pallet movements through the different levels of a warehouse environment (conveyors, racks and floor). Organizations also gain productivity and flexibility with a smaller footprint. The Pallet AV load carrier portfolio includes a variety of automated forklifts (AF) and autonomous mobile robot (AMR). All Vanderlande Pallet AVs use Toyota’s Autopilot technology perfected in more than 700 autonomous vehicles.
• Smart software: Vanderlande’s next-generation software stack makes it easy for organizations to adapt their warehouse automation to meet the needs of today’s consumers, enabling businesses to stay nimble and adapt quickly without making adjustments extensive software. The solution can be plug-and-play or be customized to match specific warehouse processes, while providing real-time insight into warehouse processes.
  

MODEX 2022 is a great opportunity to see why the world’s leading retailers are choosing Vanderlande to keep up with an exponentially changing market. You can schedule time in advance to meet Vanderlande’s automation experts during the show by contacting: [email protected]

March 7, 2022

This article was written by Yaniv Iarovici, IoT Segment Marketing Director.

The space race is heading into new territory, and there’s no room for error. Initiatives can include expensive one-off missions — such as NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope — or expand to small satellites, also called “smallsats,” that offer new ways to explore and capitalize on this booming market.

What the two have in common, however, is that any space initiative must be able to survive the extreme conditions and perils of outer space. An enormous amount of R&D, planning, and strategy goes into every technological element of these rockets and devices to ensure they exceed the unique requirements needed to successfully complete missions.

That research and development has had a unique impact on the technologies we use every day, as product development teams leverage these learnings and apply them to everyday technology. These include global positioning systems (GPS) and smartphone cameras based on CMOS sensors, both developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Here are three major lessons the real world can learn from developing technologies for the universe that can secure the future of our existence and help improve the products we use every day.

The relevance of reliability

Space has an absolutely unforgiving environment not seen anywhere on Earth – and getting there (or back) presents equally challenging conditions for technology to endure the extremes.

On liftoff, electronic components take a beating from extreme vibration, and once in orbit, every material must be able to withstand wildly changing thermal changes that can cycle through 260 degrees Fahrenheit (126.67 degrees Celsius) every hour of every day. Components must also be able to withstand space radiation, which threatens to degrade them until they cease to function – and survive random space phenomena and ionizing particles that can pierce microchips like a hot knife. in the butter.

Even the James Webb Space Telescope, a technological innovation and renowned resource, still has 344 points of failure who can condemn the mission at any time.

All of this means that reliability is mission critical for space technology – and that reliability has been deliberately developed, proven and built into surrounding technologies. Product development teams from all space organizations have shared some keys to reliability, resulting in materials that are considered “space-grade”. And for semiconductor memory, in particular, they are “radiation resistant”.

From automotive parts that can stand the test of time, to “simple” kitchen utensils designed to withstand the repetitive stress of high heat, to some common electronic devices in our daily lives, countless products we interact with have benefited from learning about reliability from space. . Reliability has also influenced product design, which ensures that each product is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also remarkably functional.

Western Digital engineers have worked with companies in the space on their approaches to data storage. The use of an approach known as Design for Reliability (DFR) has become popular as a standard engineering practice, which aims to design product reliability using state-of-the-art methods. As technology continues to advance and highly complex devices continue to shrink and miniaturize, DFR can ensure high performance and low voltage requirements so that new electronic components can overcome various limitations. DFR has made giant strides in the development of space technologies, and the fruits of this work are subtly penetrating more and more products.

Data integrity requirements

Everything in space, from rockets to small and large satellites, generates vast volumes of data. For example, according to HSAT, in 2020, there were 2,666 operational satellites in orbit. These satellites all capture thousands and thousands of terabytes of data every day, which equates to petabytes every year. For context, 1 petabyte equals 1000 terabytes and 1 terabyte equals about 1000 gigabytes, which is enough to around 250 feature films. It’s a tonne of data.

And in the future there will even be Continued data collected – NASA is planning two space missions called WORK and NISAR which should produce around 100 terabytes of data per day. Not all of this data can be sent back to Earth in real time, nor should it, which means storing it efficiently in space is the only way to make this data useful and actionable.

To properly process and manage this data spatially, to make this data usefulengineers discovered acute data integrity requirements to ensure data retains the ability to be analyzed in space – or relayed home for analysis.

Although there are different definitions of data integrity, such as UBER – or uncorrectable bit error rate, which is a definition of data integrity that also applies to enterprise applications – maintaining Data integrity is critical because data corruption and loss can lead to incorrect calculations – and crashes.

Just as cars on earth use data in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), rockets and satellites use similar systems that rely on data and data integrity to operate. As space technology expands to develop ever more capable data integrity systems, those same systems are becoming more effective in the intelligent application use cases around us, models based on AI in the enterprise to autonomous vehicles on the road.

Requirements for data storage in space

While data integrity is critical to success in the space, data storage is just as important, if not more so, as it is the foundation upon which data can be accessed, stored, and analyzed. Data storage tends to be one of the most overlooked, yet important aspects of the technology around us; how data is stored, processed, and moved directly impacts the computation and analysis applied to it, which dictates its usefulness.

Data storage in space must be able to withstand the rigors of a space mission, the previously mentioned challenges around launch, orbit and return to earth, and the evolution of data storage reliability has led to an evolution of the advanced use of case data storage around us. Some examples of this growth can be seen in places such as the transport industry, with cars, buses and trains now taking advantage of advanced data storage technologies that essentially turn these vehicles into traveling data centers on wheels. (or on tracks). Advances in data storage are driving countless industries forward – and this has set off a virtuous cycle of advances in reliability, then advances in data storage, that repeats itself over and over again.

Jump into the future

As space technology grows in sophistication, each of us benefits from advancements, and it’s likely that these applications will continue to appear subtly in the technologies we use every day. After all, space is the ultimate testing ground – if anything can survive there, it can survive anywhere.

We are already seeing the fruits of rocket science in the reliability of the technology, and this has directly spurred advances in data integrity and storage. Advances in data integrity have spurred smarter intelligence in applications, from smart cars to enterprise software, and advances in data storage have completely transformed industries such as transportation, driving advances in “roaming data centers”.

While we may take some of these takeaways for granted, we hope these innovations excite and inspire us – as new advancements are made, they will in turn improve our everyday experiences.

Yaniv Iarovici is the IoT Segment Marketing Director at Western Digital.

The rise of 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications has led to an increase in data in finance, government and manufacturing sectors. Therefore, storage systems face higher demands than ever. Traditional systems cannot provide the service and operating expense (OPEX) performance necessary to keep IT systems online at all times and under all conditions. As a result, all-flash storage has become a popular choice for increasing production efficiency in all industries, especially for transactions, analytics, high-performance file sharing, development and testing, disaster recovery and backup, as well as high-performance computing. Solid-state drives (SSDs) are rapidly replacing hard drives (HDDs) to deliver superior data performance and better data protection in all scenarios.

Huawei unveiled three flagship storage product series and solutions for the Full-Stack data center solution:

1. The OceanStor Dorado All-Flash storage series is famous for its rugged reliability and high performance, and it has been widely adopted in various industries for basic production applications. The new OceanStor Dorado systems launched at MWC feature all-new network-attached storage (NAS) features along with many other security features, such as quotas, quality of service (QoS), and ransomware protection. Together, they help ensure secure file sharing between services. The new Dorado systems also adopt a unique intercluster global distributed file system architecture and state-of-the-art FlashLink architecture to deliver 30% better performance than their industry counterparts. Additionally, the OceanStor Dorado series simultaneously supports active-active storage for storage area network (SAN) and NAS to ensure services are running 24/7. Dorado arrays are especially suited for semiconductor electrical design (EDA) automation, product research and development (R&D), and financial data exchange scenarios, serving as an efficient and reliable infrastructure for applications with over a trillion small files.
2. The OceanProtect Backup Storage series features a multi-stream engine for end-to-end acceleration and an active-active architecture for high reliability. With revolutionary inline variable-length deduplication and feature-based compression algorithms, it delivers three times the speed of data backup and five times the speed of data retrieval than competing products, as well as a 72:1 high data reduction ratio. Also, it provides a comprehensive ransomware protection solution to help users protect their data from attacks.
3. The OceanStor Pacific Mass Data Storage Series breaks the performance, protocol, and capacity limits of high-performance data analytics (HPDA) applications. It is the only storage series in the industry to support hybrid loads, which means an OceanStor Pacific system can be used simultaneously for HPDA, big data, video, backup and archive applications. The new OceanStor Pacific systems further improve storage utilization by 30% in HPDA scenarios through algorithm optimization and data compression techniques. Plus, supporting near real-time big data processing, they reduce the time to analyze 100 billion datasets from days to just minutes, dramatically speeding up application development.

For more information about Huawei OceanStor storage, please visit https://e.huawei.com/en/products/storage

MWC Barcelona 2022 takes place from February 28 to March 3 in Barcelona, ​​Spain. The Huawei Enterprise exhibition stand is located at 1:50 a.m. in Hall 1 of the Fira Gran Via. For more details on the digital transformation of industries, please visit: Huawei Enterprise at MWC 2022 | New value together

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1758729/Huawei_Storage_Reveals_Three_Flagship_Products.jpg

SOURCEHuawei

World leader in advanced connectivity to deliver Premium
European car manufacturer with next-generation telematics

SEOUL, February 25, 2022 – LG Electronics (LG) continues to up the ante in the automotive connectivity market with recent deals to supply 5G telematics solutions to a high-end European automaker. Already an established player in telematics, an area that combines multiple disciplines including telecommunications and vehicle parts technologies, LG Vehicle Components Solutions (VS) has proven that it has the technological know-how and the experience needed to lead the automotive industry in the 5G era.

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, by 2026 around 67 million new vehicles worldwide will be equipped with telematics capabilities. 5G telematics communication modules, introduced only last year, are expected to account for more than 25% of the total automotive telematics market by 2026. With its highly advanced and far-reaching core technologies, LG has already secured a competitive advantage in 5G standards. , accounting for about 10% of global 5G standard patent approvals and ranking second in the world.

From vehicle-to-everything (V2X) systems to integrated hardware and software packages and in-vehicle communication gateways, LG’s industry-leading 5G telematics innovations deliver a new level of connectivity and safety on the road. An essential component of autonomous vehicles, V2X allows vehicles to communicate in real time with other vehicles, nearby pedestrians and infrastructure to create a safer environment for everyone. Quickly approaching the Society of Autonomous Engineer (SAE) Level 4 threshold in which autonomous vehicles no longer require human interaction to operate, LG’s 5G-V2X technology delivers more consistent vehicle data transmission speeds. Faster, more stable communications mean vehicles can instantly recognize and react to a variety of road conditions and driving situations, while high-precision positioning technology, known as Advanced Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS ), can locate the exact location of a vehicle within 40 centimeters even when traveling at high speed.

Utilizing Dual SIM Dual Active (DSDA) technology, LG’s solutions simultaneously support connected car and self-driving functionality, allowing vehicle occupants to enjoy entertainment services, convenience features and enhanced safety. . The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Version 16^* The 5G module offers significantly improved performance and more reliable connections. Additionally, the flat, smart antenna allows automakers to retain the aerodynamic lines of their original designs that would have been impossible with traditional “shark fin” antennas.

“With our experience and expertise in automotive telematics, LG has successfully won a number of new contracts with established global automakers,” said Eun Seok-hyun, President of LG Vehicle component Solutions Company. “With solutions that are extremely easy to implement in various vehicle models through our integrated modular design, LG’s telematics hardware and software systems provide an unparalleled level of flexibility for manufacturers and diverse services for end users. Trusted Partner automakers around the world, LG is helping to create a better and safer future on the world’s roads with its growing portfolio of advanced mobility innovations.”

# # #

* 3GPP Release 16 enables more advanced features for autonomous vehicles, brings smart city capabilities through advances in industrial IoT, and improves wireless speeds and data throughput transmission for millions of devices. Source: www.3gpp.org/release-16.

There are a handful of cloud services available to Linux users that provide native apps.

Dropbox is one of the oldest and most popular. Then there’s Mega and pCloud. Google shamelessly decided not to create a Google Drive client for Linux.

You can also Self-hosted Nextcloud or Seafile, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Recently I was approached by another cloud storage provider called Internxt. I asked if they provide a desktop app for Linux users, and the answer was yes. I also found this they are open source both server side and client side.

Nice, I installed Internxt on my Ubuntu system, and here I will share my experience.

Internxt review: A healthy mix of privacy, security and freedom

Internxt is based in Spain. Like several other EU-based companies, encryption and privacy are at the heart of its concerns.

It’s a zero-knowledge encrypted cloud storage service. This means that no one but you can access your data. Your data is encrypted before being downloaded and decrypted with your password. The server does not have access to keys that could be used to decrypt your data.

It also means that you should not lose your password with Internxt. If you lose the password, you completely lose your data.

There is more to Intenxt’s offering when it comes to privacy and security, however.

With particular attention to Web3he uses a decentralized approach. Files uploaded to Internxt Drive are sharded, client-side encrypted, and distributed worldwide. A single server never contains a complete file, but just an encrypted data fragment.

The icing on the cake is that Internxt is open source. You can check the source code of various components on their GitHub repository.

How cool is that! Let me share my experience with Internxt over the past two weeks.

The Internxt Drive experience on Linux

Internxt’s main offering is Drive, cloud storage for all kinds of files. They also have a product called Photos to securely store photos and videos from your smartphone on the Internxt drive.

I focus here on Internxt Drive. It is a new product, and therefore more features will be added in the near future.

Setup and setup

For Linux users, there are AppImage and DEB files. You can also get the DEB package from their official website, and you can find various installation files on its GitHub repository.

Installing the DEB file is easy. After installation, when you start it for the first time, it displays a few screens to help you get familiar with the Drive.

(Click to enlarge the images)

On first run, it creates a new folder named Internxt in your home directory. All the files you place here are synced to the cloud and you can access them on any device through a web browser. Likewise, any files you keep on the drive are added to the Internxt folder on your local drive.

Internxt adds an applet indicator to the top panel for quick access to settings and preferences. It works with Ubuntu, but I don’t know how it would work with elementary OS and distros with vanilla GNOME as they disallow applet flags.

This is the default behavior. You can change the sync folder to any other folder you want. I went with the default options.

Now, here’s the thing. Sync doesn’t start immediately and automatically, so I had to manually press the sync button. You can drag and drop files into the Internxt folder, but to sync it to the cloud, you need to go to the Internxt applet indicator, press the Show/Hide button, and then press the Play button.

But that’s by design, apparently. It was mentioned in the configuration screens. It probably syncs automatically after some interval, but it probably doesn’t happen immediately.

It was a surprise for me. But the Internxt team told me that real-time synchronization will arrive in the next version with selective synchronization.

Yes, Internxt does not have the option to choose which web drive folders you want to sync to your local drive at this time. This should be added in future releases.

Synchronization and backup

Internxt offers two ways to store your files: synchronization and backup.

Backup lets you sync any folder on your computer to the cloud. Any changes you make to this folder(s) should be reflected in the cloud.

In this case, you don’t need to copy and paste the files into the Internxt folder to save them to the cloud.

The backup is not in real time at the moment. You can select the update frequency from its settings.

I don’t think the backup feature supports versioning. It might be a good feature to add in the future release, though.

Internxt Update

Luckily, a new version of Internxt came out soon after I installed it. I got the notification when I tried to access Internxt settings.

The “Download update” option confused me a bit because it was downloading the DEB file for the latest version. Installing the DEB file required deleting the existing Internxt installation.

I wasn’t sure if this would delete the Internxt folder as well, but I continued and luckily everything stayed in place.

Experience with Internxt Drive on the web

Internxt’s web interface is clean and simple, and it looks modern compared to pCloud’s web interface.

There are limits to what you can do on the web interface. As of writing this review, it is not possible to read text files or Markdown files. I didn’t feel the need to check the doc files as that wouldn’t work for sure.

However, you can read PDF documents, which is surprising.

It displays the images if you click on them but not their thumbnails. This feature will be added in future releases.

And no, it cannot play videos at the moment.

You can share individual files with others but not folders, and I found that a little weird.

Overall, the web experience is fine for file storage, but it needs some improvements on the file viewing part.

However, I have not tested Internxt on mobile devices.

Is Internxt worth using?

Internxt is quite new and under heavy development, and new features will be available in future releases.

With the added features, it can be a promising alternative to popular options.

Internxt is open source software, and you can find all the source code. However, you don’t have to worry about hosting it yourself. You can start using Internxt immediately by registering with them. With zero-knowledge encryption, your files should stay secure and private.

Internxt offers 2GB of free cloud storage when you sign up. The free storage can be expanded up to 10GB by “completing challenges”, such as downloading its mobile app.

However, you should opt for their paid plan if you can afford it. You get access to more cloud storage space, and the retail price is as low as $12 per year for 20GB.

But if you follow my suggestion and if it is affordable for you, you should opt for their lifetime plan. With this, you get 1TB of cloud storage for a one-time payment of €99 (plus tax).

Note that Internxt will stop selling its lifetime plan by the end of this month. They had already interrupted for the general public but I asked for an extra week. If you get it before the end of February, you’ll get cloud storage for one payment. If you’re considering it, decide before the end of the month.

They have one 30-day money back guarantee, so you can get your full amount back if you don’t like it. What more can you ask for?

The money back guarantee should have you covered if you don’t like it.

Internxt also strives to include Photos (for photo backup), Mail (for encrypted email), and Send (for large file transfer) in its offering. All of this makes Internxt a worthwhile investment.

Internxt is one of the few open source projects that ticks so many boxes. It is an open-source but easy to use commercial product. Like all other offerings, it’s not perfect and there’s room for improvement.

Currently I am using pCloud to dump all kinds of data as I have their 2TB lifetime plan. Now I will be using the 2TB of Internxt storage to store photos and videos from my phone. I have a nine month old and I’m always running out of space because I keep taking too many photos and videos!

If you decide to use Internxt or have used it before, share your experience in the comment section. Do you think it’s worth recommending to others?

As more and more of our world becomes digital, the tangible impacts and externalities of our daily lives become increasingly abstract. But at the end of the day, as easy as it is to forget, the internet is not made up of ones and zeros flying through the atmosphere, but of wires running across the ocean floor. The cloud is not, as its name suggests, an ethereal, untouchable floating non-entity, but increasingly huge clusters of servers in data centers around the world. And all that analog infrastructure has a tangible – and in some cases severe – environmental impact.

Data centers are among the worst culprits, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per unit floor area than a standard commercial office building. According to the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, data centers collectively account for approximately 2% of energy consumption for the entire United States. “As the use of information technology in our country increases, the energy consumption of data centers and servers is also expected to increase,” the government agency said. reports.

The data has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as the sector’s energy footprint grows at the risk of undermining efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the context of increasingly desperate calls to mitigate climate change. But some scientists hope that the data sector will not be the last straw, but rather the saving grace of the climate.

One of the emerging ideas in the growing and rapidly evolving energy storage industry is the concept of “information stacks”. The idea is relatively simple: information batteries would “perform certain calculations in advance when energy is cheap, such as when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and cache the results for later.” according to a researcher. explanation by Ars Technica. The beauty of this concept is that it would require no additional infrastructure or specialized hardware, and would allow data centers to replace up to 30% of their current energy consumption with surplus renewable energy that would otherwise have been wasted. .

“Information farms are designed to work with existing data centers,” researchers Jennifer Switzer and Barath Raghavan wrote in a recent scientific article describing the concept. “Very limited processing power is reserved for the IB [information battery] manager, which manages the scheduling of real-time compute and bake tasks. A cluster of machines or VMs is designated for baking. The IB cache, which stores the results of these precalculations, is kept locally for fast retrieval. No additional infrastructure is required.

Batteries are just one in a litany of budding ideas for potential energy storage solutions. Renewable resources such as solar and wind power are variable, meaning their output rises and falls with weather and time of day, unlike fossil fuels which can provide constant, controlled energy to the network on demand. This means that in a 100% renewable energy landscape, sometimes supply will far exceed demand, and at other times demand will skyrocket when the wind is not blowing and the sun has set. Energy storage is therefore vital to make a green energy transition viable and reliable.

The problem is that, until now, the energy storage sector has largely depended on lithium-ion batteries, which can only hold energy for a limited number of hours and require earth metals to manufacture. rare non-renewable. Now, The race is on to deliver the most reliable, efficient and cost-effective long-term energy storage solution, and the innovative solutions on offer run the gamut from high concept green hydrogen diagrams to ideas as simple as relying on pulleys and gravity. “Information stacks” are one of the most unconventional ideas in the field today, but they could have huge potential to appeal to Silicon Valley and tech-savvy angel investors.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

More reading on Oilprice.com:

Paid feature In a tech industry as complex as this, it pays to keep things simple where you can. Databases are no exception. So why do cloud service providers offer multiple databases for different tasks when one was enough before? This article examines how traditional SQL relational database systems have evolved to serve as simpler general-purpose platforms for cloud applications.

First, let’s address the fragmentation of database wallets. Customer expectations have evolved to the point where the traditional RDBMS is inadequate for many, warns Andrew Oliver, senior director of product marketing for MariaDB Corporation.

“Modern apps are still active,” he says. “For many companies, there is no room for failure when the system must survive not only failures, but also the deployment of new software, services and features.”

This was not a problem until web-scale applications evolved. An online service that cannot scale efficiently will suffer from availability issues when it reaches capacity. If your online storefront is showing timeout errors instead of last minute freebie options, that’s a problem.

The limits of RDBMS scaling

The traditional RDBMS was not built with this kind of massive scale in mind. Vendors have solved this problem by increasing the size of their databases. This usually meant hosting them in big-iron servers with memory architectures carefully matched to the software. To scale, you replace your server with an even larger server.

Scaling was an expensive, vendor-bound proposition. Over time, the industry has evolved to more easily increase capacity as it scales. First, he developed distributed systems. Then the cloud made things even simpler. It promised elastic compute and storage capacities to handle the kinds of volatile workloads associated with large-scale web applications. It’s harder to dynamically scale the capacity of an RDBMS running on hardware you’ve already paid for.

Reliability is also an issue. Despite all its promises of never failing, the cloud sometimes takes databases offline. Cloud service providers are selling the idea of ​​multiple Availability Zones to support redundancy, but traditional client-server RDBMS was not designed for that.

“In 2021, my database is running on someone else’s server in someone else’s data center connected to many infrastructures, and I can’t control or predict its future configuration “, says Oliver. “I need software that doesn’t require me to trust the underlying infrastructure.”

One way to support the scalability of RDBMS in the cloud is to use read replicas, with one node for writes and any number of nodes for reads. This allows applications to scale, at least for read requests.

However, the changing nature of today’s large-scale applications has created a need beyond read replicas. Whether you’re updating your location in real time or unwittingly giving your data to an advertising network, there are plenty of apps where the writes outnumber or equal the reads.

The shift to polyglot persistence

Businesses have responded to these challenges by moving away from relational models. This often took a long time. Amazon began to move away from its Oracle-based RDBMS after the database began to fatigue under the weight of so many queries, but didn’t. shut down your last Oracle server until 2019. He developed databases based on key-value stores, columnar architectures and document structures. NoSQL providers like MongoDB and Couchbase have long offered relational alternatives to the market.

Their creators have adapted these systems for applications with needs for resilience, scalability and flexibility. The underlying implication is that every database was the right tool for the right job, otherwise known in database circles as polyglot persistence.

The problem with this emerging fad is that NoSQL databases have often dropped features built into the venerable general-purpose relational model. One of them was support for ACID transactions.

ACID is the gold standard for consistency models. He rocks Atomicity (all operations in a transaction must succeed, otherwise none succeed), VSconsistency (all transactions leave the structurally sound database), Isolution (the transactions do not conflict), and Durability (all transactions are permanent).

Many NoSQL databases focus on BASE consistency, which is more forgiving. Basique AAvailability means that the database is working most of the time. Sthe oft state means stores (such as replicas don’t need to be write-consistent all the time), regarding Eeventual consistency (these stores may update lazily, perhaps at play time). Although most NoSQL databases later added some form of ACID transaction, they still do not offer the same guarantee or level of consistency performance as traditional RDBMSs.

Many applications need ACID’s stricter standards, along with other things that NoSQL databases often leave out, like the ability to use joins for efficient data storage. These more demanding applications include many back-office functions such as finance, where you want to ensure that everyone’s account is balanced at all times.

Companies often bridge the functional gap between these two databases by creating customer-facing NoSQL systems while letting the RDBMS reconcile critical or financial data behind the scenes. This, however, creates complex architectures, while increasing maintenance and support overhead.

Multiple databases of different types mean two sets of developer skills, plus glue code for each database to communicate with the others. The more of these systems you have in your infrastructure, the more expensive skills and glue become.

The Rise of Distributed SQL

How can companies avoid finding themselves in this delicate situation? “What we really need is a database that can handle scale, survive multiple outages across cloud Availability Zones, and provide true consistency,” says Oliver. In short, a versatile platform that properly supports cloud-based models without giving up the benefits of RDBMS.

This is where distributed SQL comes in. This technology is actually a hybrid of SQL and NoSQL technologies, providing the regular SQL-based RDBMS structure while supporting the distributed operations that NoSQL systems are known for.

Distributed SQL partitions and replicates relational tables in the background, allowing them to run on multiple read and write nodes in a scalable environment. MariaDB Xpand, a distributed SQL database, handles this partitioning automatically by using a hash of a fragment key to create index partitions and algorithmically assign them to nodes.

The product automatically rebalances partitions to maintain performance on all available nodes and avoid “hot spots”. This rebalancing also supports the addition and removal (accidental or otherwise) of nodes, always keeping the data consistent and available.

To ensure adequate replication and resiliency, each shard has a set number of copies so that if one node goes missing, another replica is still there. This gives customers at least two replicas of each partition of each table, each running on different Availability Zones.

Distributed SQL in MariaDB SkySQL

MariaDB SkySQL, the cloud version of the open source database, additional support for SQL distributed in May 2021. In addition to traditional row-based indexes, it provides columnar indexes, which allow for more flexibility in data searches while using less space. Traditional row-based indexes require a dedicated composite index for each specific combination of columns they want to use in a query. Columnar indexes can be combined in any way to create a variety of indexes, allowing developers to perform powerful ad hoc queries and intraday operational analyzes against a transactional database.

SkySQL also handles semi-structured documents, as do many NoSQL databases. JSON, the lingua franca of key-value and document database stores, has been part of the SQL standard since SQL:2016. The cloud database can store a JSON document in a table. It can retrieve a JSON document from a row through an SQL projection (a subset of columns in a row).

MariaDB has also added other features to position its cloud database service as a versatile product that can handle things seamlessly for users. These include a database proxy that handles node failures independent of the client. It provisions a single IP address for the application to communicate with all nodes. Instead of returning failed transactions to the application, the database automatically handles transaction replay in the background. This eliminates error handling for failed nodes on the application side.

Benefits of a Generic Data Platform

An SQL database encompassing these properties brings several benefits, not the least of which is the scalability and performance of the distributed database operation. Developers don’t have to write different code to support cloud operations. They can use the SQL language they know to manage their distributed databases, but can still access JSON storage and manipulation if they need it.

Simplifying the architecture of a distributed database in this way makes it possible to reduce development time, and therefore overall costs. It provides customers with a single source of truth that supports ACID-level consistency without having to assemble a bunch of databases serving different applications. It does all of these things while providing the benefits of a scalable cloud architecture.

For many companies, distributed SQL is the middle ground between old and new. This gives them a proven and trusted relationship model that has powered larger organizations, along with the benefits of cloud-based environments.

In a world of many choices, distributed SQL and cloud computing have made the relationship more relevant than ever.

Sponsored by MariaDB.