#channel partners

[jcmarchi]

Josh Wong, Founder & CEO of ThinkLabs AI – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/josh-wong-founder-ceo-of-thinklabs-ai-interview-series/

Josh Wong, Founder & CEO of ThinkLabs AI – Interview Series

Josh Wong is the Founder and CEO of ThinkLabs AI. He previously worked at GE Vernova as a General Manager, Grid Orchestration. Josh Wong attended the University of Waterloo.

ThinkLabs AI is a specialized AI development and deployment company. Its mission is to empower critical industries and infrastructure with trustworthy AI aimed at achieving global energy sustainability. The company is developing its flagship product, ThinkLabs Copilot, a digital assistant that comprehends the real world through proprietary physics-informed AI digital twins, providing a foundational model for engineering systems.

Can you tell us more about the vision behind ThinkLabs AI and what inspired its creation?

The vision behind ThinkLabs is a reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy infrastructure powered by trustworthy AI. We understand that the grid remains at the center of the energy transition. To decarbonize we must electrify. To electrify we need the grid, and the grid really must modernize. We believe the intersection of electric power systems engineering, AI, and cloud computing is the solution.

How does ThinkLabs AI differentiate itself from other AI startups in the grid management sector?

The grid is complex, and so much so that AI in itself cannot learn about the complex power flows and operational processes that exist in the grid space. ThinkLabs combine the rich history and confidence of traditional power systems engineering with AI, as trustworthy physics-informed AI, for confidence in scaled, automated inferencing and decision support for critical infrastructure. It also takes more than technology, but an experienced team that understands the nuances of the grid and how utilities and regulators think. Our team comes from the electric power systems space with proven track record, including founder Josh Wong who has sold his previous company Opus One Solutions to GE, and stands at the intersection of engineering, AI, and cloud computing.

What specific challenges in grid management does ThinkLabs AI aim to solve?

Automated analytics and recommendations for real time situational awareness across the grid, large scale simulations, and continuous learning and recommendations to mitigate grid constraints and optimize grid performance. Specific functional areas include:

Insights – near real time state estimation of grid power flow, detecting congestions, voltage violations and how capital assets are actually utilized.

Solutions – optimal dispatch recommendations, including switching, grid devices and DERs, for congestion relief, mitigate DERs interconnections, reduce losses, restore outages, etc.

Model validation – validation and corrections in utility source data sets for grid models, saving OpEx and increasing operator confidence for grid operations.

Operator’s Copilot – operator dispatch recommendations trained with grid physics, business rules, standard procedures, and operational experience, empowering workforce training and upskilling.

What is the ThinkLabs Copilot, and how does it enhance grid planning and operations?

ThinkLabs Copilot is a digital assistant that that understands the real world with proprietary physics-informed AI digital twins that provide a foundation model for engineering systems. It works with utility planners and operators, to model the grid into its “AI digital twin”, perform high speed and large scale analytics including in near real time, and make recommendations on grid operations, plans, and designs.

Can you explain what a physics-informed AI digital twin is and how it benefits grid reliability?

AI by itself can’t learn such a complex system as the grid with measurement data only. AI digital twins of the real world are trained by, work for, and work with engineering systems, hence “physics-informed”. Training is done using large amounts of synthetic data generated from engineering simulation. Traditional physics-only, impedance-based digital twins are deterministic and mathematically optimized, yet challenged by data quality, high computing power needed, and slow response time. Conversely, general AI techniques promise speed, yet sparse data, hallucinations, and “black box” effects concerns mission critical grid operations. A physics-informed AI digital twin offers transparent and trustworthy analytics, resilient and robust against bad data, fast response and action suitable for real time operations, preparedness with large pre-trained operating scenarios, and a closed-loop, continuous learning and improvement process.

How does ThinkLabs AI ensure the reliability and accuracy of its AI models in real-world scenarios?

Nature of physics-informed AI keeps AI grounded, tied to the real world, and bounded by the real world. We also do continuous learning and monitoring of model performance.

What makes your AI technology particularly suited for dealing with the complexities of modern electrical grids?

Being trained by determine engineering models, but handling the imperfect data quality of real world operations. AI also bring a wealth of optimization and generative techniques unmatched by traditional engineering mathematics.

How does ThinkLabs AI’s technology integrate with existing grid management systems like ADMS and DERMS?

ThinkLabs integrate as a Copilot with existing ADMS, DERMS, and AEMS, which will remain as the fundamental communications and control platform, while ThinkLabs will layer on additional intelligence and automation as similar to a vehicle’s driving assistance system.

What does the recent $5M seed investment mean for the future of ThinkLabs AI?

This seed investment has enabled us to spinoff and launch from GE, partner with a group of world class investors, invest in our team and product, coming to market with our first commercial Copilot, and work with a number of channel partners to bring this into the hands of our customers. This is the first foundational step to subsequent expansion and scale.

How do you envision the role of AI evolving in grid management and other critical infrastructures?

We see grid management and other critical infrastructure as being increasingly “AI first”, especially with physics-informed AI. Open up far greater understanding, situational awareness, and increasing automation decision making and orchestration of critical actions. Yet, always remain humble and trustworthy as AI, being true to the foundation laws of physics and engineering design.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit ThinkLabs AI.

[shubhbank]

Join us to explore new horizons together. Be Our Partner and unlock endless opportunities for growth and success!

[hybrix-hidings]

Honestly everyone give it up for repulsed aces/aros. Yall get so much shit for having boundaries and its frustrating to watch. You're all getting sent complimentary gift baskets

[selldorealestatecrm]

5 Advantages Of Collaborating With Real Estate Channel Partners

Explore ways to boost your real estate business through effective partnerships. Discover the benefits of collaborating with channel partners in the real estate industry.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 74

When a new black-haired blue-eyed person appeared in the manor, one could easily be forgiven for thinking that Bruce’s adoption problem had struck again. So color many a batkid surprised that no, this kid isn’t a new sibling, no he didn’t get grabbed from the street, and actually he’s here for Alfred. Apparently Alfred never found it important to mentioned that he has a husband- that the kid kind of implies isn’t human what with the casual way he says he himself is half human- and that this kid is apparently their child. For once it’s Bruce’s turn to come home to a surprise sibling. 

Danny on the other hand just learned that his Clockpa has a semi-mortal partner who has offered to take him in, (in another dimension even! And there’s aliens!!) while the ancient takes care of some stuff at home. And yeah it’s in a rich-manor but Sam has proved that not all rich people are evil, and based off of Mr Pennyworth’s stories the Waynes weren’t bad either. Though based off of the others’ reactions perhaps he should wait to mention that there wasn’t one new family member but three…

[alaezasmystery235]

(☆) ʟᴇᴛ ᴍᴇ ᴛᴇʟʟ ──── ʏᴏᴜ 𖥔 𝒔𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕

꒰⠀here I'm gonna channel what u need to hear right now from your future spouse . Those who aren't interested in it you can request it by your spirit guides too !!!!

ᯓ★ like reblog and follow me

ᯓ★ reblog any 2 Pick a Card readings by me

ᯓ★ send me your name / initials , an emoji u associate with mention from whom you want it - future spouse or spirit guides and a song you can channel from my Future Spouse .

ᯓ★ if you want 3 card pulls you can have it for $6 ( instant )

ᯓ★ feedback is compulsory

[front-facing-pokemon]

[shithowdy]

realized a drawing i'm doing rn is almost identically posed to one i did 8.5 years ago of a different oc, except the old drawing was instantly tainted by one of the players featured messaging me asking if i could take it down because their abusive, possessive rp partner saw it and got jealous of them "roleplaying behind their back" and i said "nah" and it became a whole Thing that i should have walked away from at that exact moment but didn't and the 6 months that followed contained some of the most truly condensed batshit i have ever witnessed in an rp community already well-known for its batshittery.

... anyway i love my friends. so happy to accidentally redeem the pose.

[jcmarchi]

NIS2 is coming - why you should act now - CyberTalk

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/nis2-is-coming-why-you-should-act-now-cybertalk/

NIS2 is coming - why you should act now - CyberTalk

By Patrick Scholl, Head of Operational Technology, Infinigate

NIS2 – the Network and Information Security Directive – is a revision of the NIS Directive, which came into force in 2016, with the aim of strengthening cyber security resilience across the EU.

The revision tightens reporting requirements and introduces stricter control measures and enforcement provisions. By October 17th 2024, the NIS2 Directive will be a requirement across all EU member states. Despite the urgency, businesses still have many questions.

Distributors like Infinigate are committed to supporting the implementation of NIS2 by offering a broad choice of cyber security solutions and services in collaboration with vendors, such as Check Point.

Supporting NIS2 implementation

In Germany, as an example, NIS2UmsuCG, the local directive governing the implementation of the EU NIS2 to strengthen cyber security, is already available as a draft and defines EU-wide minimum standards that will be transferred into national regulation.

It is estimated that around 30,000 companies in Germany will have to make changes to comply. However, thus far, only a minority have adopted the measures mandated by the new directive. Sometimes, symbolic measures are taken with little effect. In view of the complexity of the NIS2 requirements, the short time in which they are to be implemented and the need for holistic and long-term solutions, companies need strong partners who can advise on how to increase their cyber resilience.

Who is affected?

The NIS2 directive coming into force in autumn 2024 will apply to organisations across 18 sectors with 50 or more employees and a turnover of €10 million. Additionally, some entities will be regulated regardless of their size — especially in the areas of ‘essential’ digital infrastructure and public administration.

The following industry sectors fall under the ‘essential’ category:

Energy

Transport

Banking and finance

Education

Water supply

Digital infrastructure

ICT service management

Public administration

Space exploration and research

Postal and courier services

Waste management

Chemical manufacturing, production and distribution

Food production, processing and distribution

Industry & manufacturing (medical devices and in-vitro, data processing, electronics, optics, electrical equipment, mechanical engineering, motor vehicles and parts, vehicle manufacturing)

Digital suppliers (marketplaces, search engines, social networks)

Research institutes

It’s worth bearing in mind that NIS2 regulations apply not only to companies, but also their contractors.

Good to know: The “size-cap” rule

The “size-cap” rule is one of the innovations that come with NIS2 and is intended to level out inequalities linked with varying requirements and risk profiles, budgets, resources and expertise. The regulation is intended to enable start-ups and medium-sized companies as well as large corporations to be able to implement the security measures required by NIS2.

You can get NIS2 compliance tips here: https://nis2-check.de/

NIS2 in a nutshell

In Germany, companies are required to register with the BSI (Federal Office for Information Security), for their relevant areas. A fundamental rule is that any security incidents must be reported immediately.

Across Europe, the strict security requirements mandated by NIS2 include the following:

Risk management: identify, assess and remedy

Companies are required to take appropriate and proportionate technical, operational and organisational measures. A holistic approach should ensure that risks to the security of network and information systems can be adequately managed.

Security assessment: a self-analysis

Security assessment includes questions such as: what vulnerabilities are there in the company? What is the state of cyber hygiene? What security practices are already in place today? Are there misconfigured accounts that could be vulnerable to data theft or manipulation?

Access management: protecting privileged accounts

Companies subject to NIS2 regulations are encouraged to restrict the number of administrator-level accounts and change passwords regularly. This lowers the risk of network cyber security breaches threatening business continuity.

Closing the entry gates: ransomware and supply chain security

One of the main concerns of the NIS2 directive is proactive protection against ransomware. Endpoint security solutions can help here. Employee training is another necessary step to create risk awareness and help identify and prevent cyber attacks.

The focus here should be on best practices in handling sensitive data and the secure use of IT and OT systems. Supply chain vulnerability is a major area of concern. Companies need to ensure that the security features and standards of the machines, products and services they purchase meet current security requirements.

Zero tolerance strategy: access control and zero trust

In a world where corporate boundaries are increasingly blurred due to digitalisation, cloud infrastructures and decentralised working models, perimeter-based architectures have had their day. A zero trust concept provides multiple lines of defence, relies on strong authentication methods and threat analysis to validate access attempts.

Business continuity: prepared for emergencies

Business continuity management measures are essential to ensure that critical systems can be maintained in the event of an emergency. These include backup management, disaster recovery, crisis management and emergency plans.

In summary, we should not let the complexity of the topic discourage us from taking action; after all, NIS2 is for our benefit, to help us protect our business assets from increasing cyber risk.

Businesses would be well advised to start on the route to assessing their security posture and current status vis-à-vis NIS2 requirements. You can make a start by simply identifying all relevant stakeholders in your organisation, starting a task-force and gathering intelligence on your cyber risk.

Identify key steps and build a roadmap to compliance that is manageable for your resources; your channel partners can help by providing expert advice https://page.infinigate.com/nis2-checkpoint.

[shubhbank]

Explore opportunities with us to co-create, innovate, and drive change. BE OUR PARTNER for a better tomorrow!

[grahamcore]

hannibal au where they go to cuba after the fall and become vloggers that do cooking livestreams and mukbangs and grwm to go on a killing spree videos

[starwarsanthropology]

The tragedy of ur boyfriends not letting u bite them just a little. As a Treat.

A Tup from @trudemaethien’s excellent fic Edeemi, Baby, One More Time that I drew back in May! I didn’t have a Star Wars tumblr at the time and wasnt planning on posting it anywhere so I forgot about it until now, but I had such a fun time playing around with lighting effects and his expression!

I really love their mer universe and I’m especially fond of Tup’s POV in this fic. It’s such a good job of expressing the confusion and frustration of communication barriers and reasonable, best-intent misunderstandings between all of them, while still leaning into the positive aspects of discovering the world and representing it from slightly different perspective than people normally take 10/10 highly recommended

Closeup of the sketch for his expression under the cut because I was super happy with it

[zagglepropel]

Motivate and incentivize employees and channel partners with Zaggle Propel's rewards and recognition platform. Zaggle Propel helps you to increase channel loyalty, and drive employee engagement.

[capricores]

sagittarius gemini virgo and pisces placements when u tell them they cannot successfully study and become fluent in eight different languages at once