Bright Future for EVs, GrayMatter TechStream, Deep-Sea Data

Could we all be driving EVs in 2035?

If someone writes a yes/no question headline, the answer to that question is usually, “No.”

Try it out next time you see one.

In this case, it’s still probably a “no,” but maybe yes if you plan to be living in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday intended to ban the sale of “new gas-powered passenger” cars by 2035. Newsom signed the order on the hood of a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle, which Ford says can travel 210 to 300 miles per charge.

It’s the first time a U.S. state government has announced this type of regulation. A great deal can change in 15 years, including the political will and leadership behind the order, but it’s hard not read into the symbolism.

That’s especially true when, in the same week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk re-issued a promise to make available a Tesla that costs $25,000 w— within three years.

Tesla made a similar promise before that didn’t really pan out — a Tesla Model 3 was briefly available for $35,000, so we’ll see.

Make a plan for your WFH virtual training this Fall

Create boundaries between on and off hours. Spruce up your home office. Invest in a better webcam and lighting.

These are all great work-from-home strategies. Just as important: Planning your time. And blocking time for yourself to learn from others outside your organization. No one is showing up to offer in-person training, so you have to seek virtual training opportunities.

That’s what GrayMatter had in in mind when planning our virtual training events this Fall. There are five events (totaling nine days) set right now and more that we plan to announce by the end of September. Sign-up is easy, free and, in some cases, we’ll throw in lunch via a service like GrubHub. Check us out on LinkedIn for more on that or, better yet, sign up for our email alerts, if you haven’t already.

All you have to do is register in advance.

Here are three of GrayMatter’s events coming up next:

• Sept. 29, 11 a.m. ET – emPOWERUP Virtual: September TechStream – The return of our highly rated technical training series with the addition of segments focused on lean manufacturing and deception technology for industrial cybersecurity.

• Oct. 5-9, 11 a.m. ET – ProjectX TechStream Week – A *NEW* five-day, progressive online event that prepares you to develop and implement a motion control and motion safety solution. 

• Oct. 14, 2 p.m. ET – Empowering Citizen Data Scientists & Energy Engineers with Advanced Industrial Analytics – Join this one-time webinar hosted by GrayMatter VP and Co-Founder Carson Drake and Erik Udstuen, CEO of TwinThread, who will discuss how Advanced Industrial Analytics technology and strategy can reduce operational costs and WAGES (water, air, gas, electricity and steam) consumption.

Microsoft’s data center is in deep

Imagining how someone in the future might explain this photo with no context could be fun.

“Archeologists in the year 2948 have recovered an ancient underwater tomb marked with multi-colored windows that contains a series servers that rely on primitive silicon chips.”

In truth, it’s Microsoft’s Project Natick, a mission to test improving the reliability of data center servers by submerging them in about 100 feet of water in the North Sea.

“The result was a success as the servers in the underwater data center showed a failure rate of one-eighth that of land-based data centers, according to Microsoft,” reports CRN.

Why did they do it?

“As we are moving from generic cloud computing to cloud and edge computing, we are seeing more and more need to have smaller data centers located closer to customers instead of these large warehouse data centers out in the middle of nowhere,” said Spencer Fowers, a principal member of the technical staff for Microsoft’s Special Projects research group, in a statement to CRN.

Interestingly, early theories suggest the success could be attributable to the ideal conditions maintained within the sealed container, “a static, dry nitrogen environment” rather than one with “oxygen, humidity and temperature fluctuations” and human interactions, which would occur with a land-based center.